Fairyville (Fairyville #1)(14)
Author: Emma Holly

Goosebumps prickled down Alex’s arms. "Do you remember the woman’s name?"

"Chloe something. No. Zoe. Zoe Clare, like clairvoyant. But she’s nice for one of those weirdos. She told me my Grandma Ellen was watching over me. She sang the little song Grams used to put me to sleep with." Alisha’s eyes went misty. "I wasn’t even paying her. She just said Grams had asked her to pass it on. I don’t think a woman like that would be putting crazy theories into Mrs. Pruitt’s head."

"No doubt you’re right." His throat gone tight, Alex closed his notebook and tucked it into his breast pocket. "Thanks so much for being patient with our questions."

Alisha Kerry looked surprised to see him rising from the couch, and maybe even disappointed. "You sure I can’t offer you some ice tea before you go? It’s hot out there."

Alex was sweltering where he was, despite the ranch’s powerful AC. "We’re good, but thank you for asking. We’ll contact you if we have more questions."

"You can have my pager," Alisha said, scribbling the number on the corner of an old magazine.

Alex accepted the scrap of torn paper.

"Thank you," he said, not meeting her eyes this time. She wasn’t being obvious, but he still knew what he’d find in her expression, and it had nothing to do with Oscar Pruitt’s parentage. If he’d met her in a bar, he’d probably have encouraged her. Alisha Kerry was his type in a lot of ways. Smart, pretty, hungry for human connection. Most of all, she didn’t seem to have a lot of expectations. She was the kind of woman he could spend a weekend with, the kind who might wish he’d stick around, but who wouldn’t bother crying when he left.

Alex always left. That was a constant you could take to the bank.

His lip curled in self-contempt as he and Bryan escaped into the bright sunshine. Sweat immediately popped out beneath his clothes, but it felt better than being inside that gloomy house. When he opened the door to the Audi, the metal handle nearly burned his skin. The interior was too hot to get in.

"Well, that didn’t get us very far," Bryan observed across the Audi’s roof. "She confirmed what we suspected. Lizanne Pruitt is nuts."

Alex stood in the street with the car doors open, a hook of memory tugging at his consciousness. A red-tailed hawk floated on a thermal high above the slightly shabby suburban homes. The memory was something to do with babies being expected to die but then recovering.

He pulled out his cell phone as it came to him.

"I have to call my mother," he explained to Bryan. "I’ll be done in a few minutes."

Amanda Goodbody lived in San Diego. She’d moved there after her youngest son had been metaphorically run out of Fairyville on a rail. Though she loved all her boys, Alex was her baby. His behavior fifteen years ago might have disappointed her, but she adored him no matter what. She’d had a hard time forgiving people who couldn’t find it in themselves to forgive him.

She picked up after the second ring.

"Sweetie!" she cried. "How lovely to hear your voice!"

"You haven’t heard it yet," he teased, turning slightly away from Bryan. Taking the hint, though it hadn’t been deliberate, Bryan got into the sun-baked car.

"I saw it on the caller ID! Thanks again for my phone. I’m really enjoying it. I’m in the garden talking to you!"

Alex felt his heart well up with love with her, picturing her among her beloved peonies. "I’m glad you like the present, though I don’t know how I’ll top it for your next birthday."

"You don’t have to," she assured him. "I’ll still be grateful for it then. Your father says I spend so much time talking on it, he thinks I’ve been reborn as a teenager."

"Good." Alex propped his h*ps back against the hot metal of car. "Mom, I have a question I need to ask. You used to tell me a story about when I was born, about how I got sick in the hospital."

"Lord, yes," she said. "That was a terrible time. You were a preemie, and that Fairyville General wasn’t the showplace it is today. You picked up some sort of antibiotic-resistant infection: nosocomial something or other, they called it. I remember sitting by your incubator hour after hour, knowing it must be bad because the nurses didn’t kick me out. You were just a quivering, hairless kitten, too weak to cry, and me praying and praying until I thought my prayer would fall off."

"But I got better."

"Yes, you did, and to this day nobody quite knows why. I remember nodding off with your tiny fist clenched around my pinkie, and then when I woke up you were all right. The nurses thought it was wishful thinking, but when I finally convinced them to check your vitals, they were crying right along with me."

"So you actually thought I would die."

"Yes, I did, and I suspect that’s part of the reason you’re precious to me now."

Alex shoved his hand through his hair, unsure where to go with this next.

"Why do you want to know, sweetie?" his mother asked into the pause. "I hope your doctor hasn’t found something wrong."

"It’s a case," Alex said. "Just a thread I wanted to track down. I’m healthy as a horse, like always."

"Well, I’m sure you’ll solve whatever it is. You tell that nice Bryan fellow ‘hello’ from me."

Alex smiled, because Bryan was always that ‘nice Bryan fellow’ to his mom.

"I will," he promised, then said "I love you" and hung up.

His hands were shaking just a little when he slid the key into the ignition.

"Everything all right?" Bryan asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Just a weird coincidence."

Except his gut was telling him it was more than that. He thought of his older brothers: Jason, Mark, and Steve. None of them had caused his mom the trouble Alex had. All of them had played sports, but none had excelled to the extent that Alex did. They were TV warriors now, every one slowly going soft. They’d all settled down with nice, cookie-baking wives, whom they seemed to have no trotible being faithful to. Alex doubted they’d kissed a man on the cheek other than their father, much less gone adventuring the way Alex had. Hell, the idea that Alex worked for himself was exotic enough for them. Alex loved his brothers, but there were huge portions of his life that were as alien from theirs as the Milky Way.

I’m different from them, he thought, his stomach clenching uneasily. Probably as different as Oscar Pruitt is from his relatives.

"Where to now?" Bryan asked, his tone carefully light.

Alex considered swinging by the hospital to see if they could track down more former staff. His other choice was to find Zoe. See what she might have noticed with her "extra" senses on the night Oscar was born.