A Simple Distance by K. E. Silva Page B

sleeping skin.

CHAPTER 14
    The dogs barked me awake from under the open window. Outside it was pitch black, except for a sliver of moon on the water far below, fast clouds moving past.
    My heart hit my throat, stole my breath on its way up: They could not have arrived on their own.
    Barking, barking.
    Out there, in the country, I voiced a cautious yell … Mom! Received no reply.
    Rascal and Lucia had quieted down but I still heard their movements in the front, by the carport. If they were alone, they would have been here already, running muddy inside the house.
    I reached under the pillow, felt for the harmless handgun with shaky fingers, found it, and took hold.
    Who’s there?
    A voice from the bottom of the drive. Hello, hello! Young Pascal, it is Mr. Petion. I’ve found your mummy’s dogs … And I’ve a friend for you to meet.
    Embarrassed, I slipped the pistol back underneath the pillow, padded over to the still-open front door and halfway down the drive to meet them in my bare feet, the dogs at my heels, turning red with mud.
    It’s a good thing those dogs remember your smell. A tall, lanky stranger in slacks and a button-down dress shirt like the one Uncle Martin wore to the beach the last time I was here extended his free hand to mine and we shook. His mannerisms vaguely familiar—something about his easy smile.
    I’m Jean. Souza. Sophie Pascal’s daughter from California. My name meant nothing without that point of reference. Have we met before? I feel I know you from somewhere.
    Mr. Petion shared his friend’s easy smile, let me in on their secret. This is Leonard Hill, my business partner. I am godfather to his second child, Susan.
    Hill looked me straight in the eyes. Seeing me prone, perhaps, on top his daughter, in the dirt, doing our filthy nonsense. Maybe he was there to get back at me for touching Susan.
    My knees grew weak, unstable. If I were a true Pascal , I stammered, I’d have something to offer you … some coconut juice, a snack of fried plantain. I clenched and unclenched my hands behind me, backpedaled toward the house, tried to stay calm, feet on the ground in the cleared bush, and continued, I’m sorry I have nothing for you.
    I didn’t think I had time to reach the gun. Rascal and Lucia, still at my side, knew the men too well to attack. I had worked myself into some mess. Who was I to go there, armed with only my mother’s last name, two strikes against me—what I’d done and who knew it. My eyes began to tear.
    I was treading water. Barely. Something in their look made me suspect they could see my arms flailing underneath the surface.
    You came back, na. For your mummy’s house. To me, that has Pascal written all over it … George’s funeral was the first Susan’s been back to Baobique in a year, and your grandmother made such a fuss! It was Mr. Hill who spoke.
    Maybe they weren’t the other side. I broke. Look. I’m sorry. But I don’t see my mother and I have to find her. She hasn’t been well of late …
    My mother was missing again and I couldn’t negotiate Godwyn without her. Even if I’d known how to unlock her phone, I couldn’t call the police. That’s not how you solve your problems there.
    Apparently enlisting their help, I asked them: Where did you find my mother’s dogs? They hadn’t been here when Mr. Petion dropped us off from the airport.
    We didn’t find them at all. They found us. Met us at the edge of the road and your mummy’s drive. Down by the access road.
    The access road had been cut by Grampy when he got the idea about the bay trees. They grow exceptionally well in Baobique.
    The only thing I remember about bay, growing up, was not to eat the leaves in the spaghetti sauce. But in Baobique it makes rum. Grampy had twenty of their forty acres at Godwyn covered with bay. Bay got him the land at Milieu, got Uncle George and Uncle Martin educated in England; Uncle Charles, in North America.
    The access road cuts all the way through the estate,