CHAPTER 18 TAKE ME BY THE HAND #2
She smiles. “Come on, I need to tell you something.”
I follow her into the hall but as I glance back, I notice the motion-activated light in the cold storage room is back on.
“Can I tell you both something?” my mom asks when we rejoin Noah in prep room two.
I don’t know if right now is the time for a heart-to-heart but I’m not gonna tell my mom that.
She flips the lid off the Vis-O-Guard gel and uses a small spatula-like tool to smear it on the end of Noah’s wrist. She coats the entire surface of it and makes sure to get it inside where the cleanly cut shards of ?bone and tendon are visible.
“When I first came to be . . . ?this”—Mom gestures to herself before returning to her work—“I patched up cuts and dents myself. Even repaired my own teeth as they fell out of their sockets.”
I glance over at her. “I thought you got veneers.”
“I did,” she says. “But I had to learn how to shape the composite material and do the bonding myself because I couldn’t chance going into a dentist’s office and getting hooked up to a machine that wouldn’t find a pulse or the body temperature of a normal human being.”
Another piece falls into place. I realize she’s probably never been to a doctor in the years since the accident. No doctor, no dentist, nothing.
“All that to say that I never had anything catastrophic happen outside the wounds I got in the car accident,” Mom continues.
She picks up Noah’s hand and applies more of the preservative gel to the stump.
Noah’s fingers curl up as she does. “I don’t think the reanimated are meant to go on for as long as I have. ”
I think about having to repair a body over and over again. A body that won’t die no matter what.
“What does Dad think about that?” I ask.
“Nothing,” my mom sighs. “I don’t think he has a full picture of the origins of his power.
He knows it’s passed down to him, he has the book, but because he was so distant from his father, I think there are things he doesn’t know.
These people who’ve come after us clearly can’t wield the book themselves or they wouldn’t need Jonathan.
They can’t even see the damn thing much less read from it. ”
Mom laces a thick cord of waxed mortuary thread through a curved needle and sets it aside before picking up a small drill, something you might see in a nail salon but sturdier.
She pulls back the flesh from Noah’s wrist, exposing the white bone of the radius which has been cleanly shorn in half and drills a small hole in it.
She drills another hole in the other piece of the radius that is jutting from Noah’s detached hand.
Looping a length of steel wire through the holes, she strings the hand and wrist together, cinching it tight.
“Jonathan reanimated me,” Mom continues as she picks up the curved needle and begins to reconnect the bits of flesh around Noah’s injury.
“It got harder and harder for me to do the maintenance on my own. I can see the toll it takes on him.” She presses her lips together.
“Imagine watching somebody you love fall apart right in front of you.”
A terrible tightness grips my chest as I think about all of this through my father’s eyes. “He does it because he loves you,” I say. “ We love you. If ??he doesn’t want to do it or if ? he gets tired, I’ll do it.”
My mom shakes her head. “Baby, it’s not about that.”
“What’s it about, then?” I ask. I’m suddenly angry again.
My mom flashes me that check-your-tone look and I try to remember that while some things have changed, others have not. I drop the attitude and just try to be honest with her.
“I don’t like the way you and Noah make it seem like you’re a burden to me or to Dad,” I say. “I’d do anything for either one of you. I’d put you back together a thousand times if that’s what it takes.”
My mom’s expression hardens. “Is that what you’d want if it was you?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to tell her that it’s not me. It’s her and Noah and yes, I’d do it if it meant keeping them close to me.
She finishes reattaching Noah’s hand and when she’s done patching the outer layer of skin with mortuary wax and painting it to match Noah’s skin, it looks almost identical to his other wrist.
Mom sits back and crosses her arms over her chest. “We have to get to your father, and I think the only way to do that is to track down the people who have him.”
I head toward the door. “Okay. So let’s go.”
“We can’t,” Mom says. “I have no idea where they are.”
“Dad was always going to the Cornell campus,” I say. “Maybe they took him there. Maybe they’re like a secret society or something.”
“I don’t think we can just walk around the campus asking people where their shady secret society hangs out,” Noah says. “And they probably have more than one secret club, right? It’s a lot of rich old men up there and you know they love a secret club. Skull and Bones, Freemasons, stuff like that.”
“Skull and Bones is at Yale, but you have a point,” my mom says. “But I also don’t know where else to even start looking for him.”
We are at an impasse. We have no clue where my dad is but I want to do something . Sitting around feeling helpless is pointless.
“Let’s go through his stuff,” I say. “Maybe there’s something in there that can tell us more about who these people are and what they want. Maybe it’ll point us in the right direction.” It’s a long shot but there’s nothing else for us to do.
My mom nods and heads upstairs. Noah and I trail along behind her. As she makes her way to the upper floor Noah hesitates and we hang back near the kitchen.
“Hang on,” Noah says. He goes into the kitchen and grabs the bracelet I’d left on the counter. He quickly loops it around my wrist and fastens it. “This belongs to you. Promise me you’ll keep it this time.”
He gently presses his forehead against mine and puts his arms around me. “Promise,” I say.
“We gotta find your dad,” he says. “We have to make all this right.”
“I don’t know how,” I say.
Noah slips his newly repaired hand under my chin and lifts my face to his.
“We are gonna figure this out together because that’s the only way we can figure it out,” Noah says. “You trust me, I trust you. That’s all that matters.” He pulls me closer to him.
“I’m the girl whose whole life revolves around death,” I say. “You know how lucky you are that it worked out like that? Imagine if it was somebody else.”
“Somebody like Caleb?” Noah asks. “Imagine him having to deal with this.” Noah holds up his hand and wiggles his fingers.
“Or this.” He lifts my hand and places it on his cheek where the work I’d done on his wound is still holding up.
“He’d be passed out somewhere and I’d be doing all this alone. ” He sighs. “I would, you know.”
“Would what?” I ask, trying to concentrate as I slip my hand around the back of his neck.
“I’d do it alone if you said you couldn’t deal,” Noah says. “I’d never want to do anything to make you uncomfortable and I get it if you see me differently now.”
I stare into his face. Even though it is changed in a way that feels impossible, I still love everything I see. There is nothing he could be that would make me turn away from him.
I stand on tiptoe and press my lips against his.
The jolt I normally feel in my hands is in my lips now.
I realize that I’ve been feeling it almost every time we’ve touched since he came back to me.
Everything is changed now that I know what that spark can do but I don’t care.
He cups my face in his hands and I breathe him in. We will make this new reality our own.