Page 60 of Second Start: Family
“About Dan. Not about Annie.” She took an audible breath. “But I wouldn’t be an interfering mother-in-law now and it might help you and Dan see each other better.
“Don’t take Dan at Annie’s face value. She kept you away from him — him and the other kids. To keep them all to herself, especially as babies. Part of that was saying you were no good at it, part was telling you how different the kids were from you, indicating you’d never understand them. Part of it was also what she told the kids.”
“That I wasn’t interested in them.”
After a pause she said, “She was never that blatant. Might have been easier if she had been. But, yes, she gave that impression. To the kids and others. Even tried it with me. That was the big fight we had, when I decided to move down here after your father died.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were married to her. And you were trying with every bit of strength you had to keep the ranch and your marriage going. And right after she died … well, you all had to start walking before anybody worried about running.”
“But now…”
“Now you need to get to know your son, without the filters Annie placed there. And you need to let him know you.”
*
The old bus was spectacularly spooky.
Underneath it, Bexley and her committee had created a graveyard, with tipped headstones and the hints of dead bodies emerging from mounds. Despite its faint prosaic hum, a fog machine added eerie mistiness to the ground, wreathing in and around the graves and their escaping occupants.
They’d painted the bus, including a ghost looking into the back window. Rust spots became blood pools. Flaking areas opened to more graves. Painting made solid windows appear as if they were broken, leaving sharp points of glass, decorated with artistic drips of blood.
They’d done even more inside, including ghosts and goblins on pullies operated by volunteers hidden behind seats, plus recordings of spooky music and sounds.
It was a very popular item at the ticket sales table, with the big sign next to it saying all proceeds went toward a new bus for Mason School.
Their Friday business had been brisk, but word must have spread about the event, because tonight’s was downright crowded from the minute they’d opened.
Kenzie stood beside the schoolhouse’s front steps, not wanting to block customers, but keeping an ear open for any issues in her classroom.
Visitors could also buy tickets for the games set up in her schoolroom or the haunted “cabin” created in Vicky’s classroom.
Kenzie had seen Dan and others after Bexley’s makeup jobs on them yesterday, and totally understood the delighted screams of those going through the carefully directed and darkened maze in the “cabin.” It wasn’t big, but no one who exited the schoolhouse’s back door had complaints about not getting their money’s worth.
With their friend Zara, Molly and Lizzie, with Bobby between them, came out of her classroom at that moment and headed toward the other room.
She couldn’t hear individual words, but their excitement was clear — capped by Zara going to their house for a sleepover tonight after the festival.
It didn’t get any better than that.
Lori Felton had told her it was the first sleepover at the Quick house since Annie’s death. She obviously approved of the move.
Evan Kevery stood at the entry to the “Haunted Cabin,” collecting tickets, outfitted in a tux t-shirt, fangs, and ghoulish makeup as a sort of cross between Dracula and Joel Grey inCabaret. He played the role to the hilt.
“Come join the realm of the dead…” He beckoned with one hand — complete with long, curled false fingernails in blood red — and collected their tickets with the other. “Where the dead rise … You will walk with them forever … Whooo….”
Bobby screamed.
Not in delight, but in such true terror that Lizzie and Molly froze at his side.
Kenzie reached the boy first, scooping him up. He curled into her and she held him tight, rocking.
Hall was there in the next breath. He touched the boy’s back, but Bobby ducked away, clinging to Kenzie.
Hall held her elbow as they came down the steps and moved to the side, with Molly and Lizzie hovering.
“It’s not real, Bobby,” Hall said. “It’s like on TV. It’s … it’s acting.”
