“Agreed,” said Bree. “A rationing of zombie shows.”
Footsteps. The lights began to go out. Sunday collapsed against the far wall of the van, laughed, and said, “That’s how a perfect criminal does things.”
Acadia began to laugh, too, and crawled over to him hungrily.
Chapter
59
I felt someone shaking my shoulder, startled awake, and found my younger son’s earnest face about seven inches from my own.
“I know there was a zombie, Dad,” he said in a forceful whisper. “When I went in to take a pee, he was there, and when I came out he was gone.”
Sighing, I glanced at the clock: 7:30 a.m. Bree shifted in bed next to me, still fast asleep. Gesturing out the bedroom door with my finger, I slid out from under the sheets, grabbed my robe off the hook, and went out after Ali.
As soon as I shut the door, Ali insisted in a whisper, “He was right where you were standing. It wasn’t a dream or a nightmare like you said.”
I glanced down at the carpet where it met the staircase and saw bits of sawdust. We had all vowed to be careful to remove our shoes inside the house during the construction, but there was sawdust here and there all over the house. Some could easily have come in on someone’s pant legs, my pant legs.
Downstairs I could hear the rumor of Nana Mama talking to Jannie, but I made out nothing distinct other than my daughter’s using the phrase “never home.” Noticing a bit more sawdust here, a bit more sawdust there, I went down the stairs.
When I reached the lower landing, Ali was right behind me and said in a loud voice, “Dad, why don’t you believe me?”
Irritated by lack of sleep, I glared at him and said, “Keep it down. Bree is trying to sleep. And why don’t I believe you? Because you say you saw him when you were half asleep, and when you came out later, more awake, he was gone. Doesn’t that sound wrong to you?”
“No, that’s one of the reasons I know it was a zombie.”
A headache began to throb. Confused by this seven-year-old logic, I said, “What was the other reason?”
“I smelled him,” he said earnestly.
Rubbing at my temple, too tired to be having this conversation, I said, “So you smelled something dead in the house? Don’t you think I would have smelled something like that? Or Bree?”
He appeared puzzled, and I took that as a chance to give him a wink and head toward the dining room.
“No, he didn’t smell like something dead,” Ali called after me. “But it wasn’t a smell we have here in the house. It was like—”
“Quit while you’re ahead, son,” I said, and turned into the dining room to find Nana Mama pouring coffee from an old metal percolator and Jannie eating Raisin Bran with a sullen expression.
“You look happy this morning,” I said to her as I sat at the table and my grandmother handed me the cup of coffee.
“What do you care?” Jannie asked, not meeting my eyes.
“Okay?” I said. “What’s up?”
Jannie said nothing, just fumed.
“She’s upset and she has a right to be,” Nana Mama announced.
“Over?”
“Jannie made the varsity track team at Benjamin Banneker yesterday, the youngest in the school to do it, the only freshman, and the coach thinks she has a great future in the sport. She tried to wait up to tell you, but it was after midnight and you hadn’t come home.”
Once again I was reminded how much I was missing in the day-to-day life of my children, something I’d vowed to end too many times to count. Too many times I’d used the excuse of having to work, but this wasn’t one of them.
“I was with a guy who had a heart attack,” I said. “I had to get him to a hospital. That’s why I wasn’t home until after midnight.”
My daughter was unmoved. In fact, my answer seemed to make her even angrier. At last she turned to look at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Did you ever notice that there’s always someone who needs you more than we do, Dad?”