“Nice to meet you, young man,” Bogie said, ducking his head. So humble. He’d organized the commune, yet he’d let the much younger Aurora take charge. “Aurora’s lying down. Let me tell her you’re here.”
“Oh, no, let her sleep. Please.” Feeling as rattled as she did, she wouldn’t mind delaying her first contact with her irascible mother.
“She’d never forgive me.” Bogie thudded down the wooden floor of the back hall.
Christine was dripping with sweat, ridiculously nervous. Her mother needed her help and she was here to give it. Maybe it would be as simple as it sounded.
“So…Crystal? What’s that about?” David asked.
“Lord. Aurora changed our names when we got here.”
“She named you Crystal Waters?”
“And she wasn’t joking, either. She wanted it to be a spiritual rebirth, like a baptism. I was to be sharp and true and sweet as the truth.” She’d resisted at first, but her mother had been so excited and happy, she’d given in.
“That is so whack.”
“You’re telling me.” Seeing David so amused, she told more of the story. “Picture the whole second grade laughing their heads off when I got introduced that first day.”
“That would be harsh for sure.” He smiled his old smile and Christine’s heart lifted. So far, so good. “What about Grandma’s name? Aurora sounds made up.”
“It was. Her real name’s Marie. Aurora means dawn. She wanted to experience daybreak as a bright new woman.” The words had stayed with Christine. When her mother had been that happy, Christine had felt swept away on a merry current. When she turned sad or angry, the trip became a churning tumble over sharp rocks. Probably how all kids felt.
“That’s so trippy,” David said, just as Aurora tromped in from the hall, Bogie on her heels.
“I can get out of bed on my own, dammit. Quit treating me like an invalid, Bogart.”
Christine sucked in a breath at how small and frail her mother looked. Aurora had always seemed larger than life and tough as an Amazon warrior, even once Christine became an adult. When David was five, Aurora had come to Phoenix for a short, awkward visit and seemed as substantial and strong as ever.
Christine hid her alarm with a smile. “Aurora, hi.”
As always, her mother’s brown eyes slid away without making contact. “It’s about time you got here. Bogie, get them iced tea. It’s rose hip,” she said to Christine.
“No need to fuss. We snacked the whole trip.” But Bogie was already in the fridge.
“You look wrung out to me,” Aurora insisted. “What are you doing in a silk top out here?”
“I don’t know. It’s light and cool.” She smoothed her hair as if to prove how fresh she was. God. She’d automatically defended herself against her mother’s tossed-off criticism.
“Look at you, David, tall as hell.” Aurora started to move forward—to hug him perhaps?—but instead sank into a chair, breathing heavily.
“Should you be resting?” Christine asked, alarmed at her mother’s weakness.
Aurora drilled her with a look. “Don’t you start the invalid treatment, too.” She swung her gaze to David. “Nice tat.” She meant the ring of yin-yang symbols around David’s heartbreakingly thin upper arm.
“I think it’s awful,” Christine said. It was a Brigitte idea, along with the eyebrow stud.
“It’s a kid’s job to rebel,” Aurora said. “That’s how they individuate. You rebelled by conforming.” She turned to David. “Your mother loved to iron. Can you imagine that around here?” She winked at him. “She brushed her hair a hundred strokes, flossed her teeth every night, followed every rule. We didn’t have many, so she made up some of her own.”
“She still loves rules, that’s for sure,” David said.
“I’m not that bad, am I?” If being the butt of a joke or two helped David get comfortable here, Christine would dance around the room with boxer shorts on her head.
“Get the herbed goat cheese and some pita, Bogart,” Aurora said gruffly. Bogie had already set out four mason jars of iced tea. “So, David, how’d you get kicked out of school anyway?”
“He wasn’t expelled, Aurora. We talked the principal down to a suspension. As long as David keeps his side of the bargain.”
Her son colored, not pleased about being reminded.
“So what kind of hell did you raise?” Aurora asked. “Back talk? Independent thought? Authority figures in institutions hate people who think for themselves.”
“No shit,” he said.
“Language,” Christine warned. “It was for fighting, disrespecting teachers and—other things.” Suspected marijuana possession, which was the part that most worried Christine. He had been using pot, she knew. Stopping was part of their deal.
David had promised to finish his schoolwork online and return in the fall with a new attitude. And Christine would do everything in her power to make that happen, including getting David some counseling. Aurora had told her about a therapist in nearby New Mirage, which was a lucky break in such a minuscule town.
“Christ, kids are kids, Crystal. They’re not all taking Uzis into social studies class.”
“Aurora…” Christine shot her mother a look. They’d discussed this over the phone, since Christine was concerned about her mother’s permissive style and the free-to-be atmosphere at Harmony House.
“Okay,” Aurora said. “Your mother wants me to remind you to obey the rules. There aren’t many, but the ones we have we mean. No fighting. No smarting off…well, maybe a little smarting off. No drugs, of course. A fresh start, right? Pull your weight with chores. We all share and care. That’s our motto. Always has been.”
She nodded at the commune rules posted next to the chore board, where everyone was assigned duties. It looked as though there were only a half-dozen residents at the moment.
“Are we agreed?” Christine said to David. They had to be on the same page if they had any hope of her plan working.
“Chill, okay?” David said. “I got it.”
“We’ll have fun anyway,” Aurora pretended to whisper behind her hand. That was typical Aurora. When she’d visited, she’d let David sip mescal, skip dinner and stay up all night watching vampire movies that gave him nightmares for a week.
David, of course, had adored her.
“Here we go.” Bogie set down a plate of creamy cheese and big triangles of pita bread.
“Sit down, you two,” Aurora said, spreading blobs of the cheese onto the pita, then handing them out. “Eat, Bogie,” she said. “Since the radiation, he hardly eats.”
“I do fine,” he said. “I have…uh…medicine.”
Christine felt a twinge of worry. Bogie grew a few marijuana plants for medicinal use, since pot was good for pain suppression, nausea and poor appetite. He’d promised to never smoke around David and to keep his half-hidden grow-room locked.
In the old days pot had been everywhere at Harmony House, a fact that had annoyed Christine immensely, since it led to so much silly, lazy behavior in the grown-ups.
Christine took a bite of the pita. The cheese was lemony and so delicate it melted like butter on her tongue. “Mmm,” she said, then sipped the rose-hip tea, which tasted fresh and healthy.
David grimaced at the tea and barely nibbled the pita. He was