Something Beautiful. Marilyn Tracy

that sense that all things—bad and good—would eventually pass away.

      “Allie, has Lyle ever told you exactly why he came here? Came to you?”

      Allie tilted her head, making Jillian ache. “Yes,” Allie said finally. “To change things.”

      Jillian felt herself relax. Gloria had been right; Allie needed Lyle. As she had apparently needed Steven. She remembered trying to ask him, that first afternoon, what he wanted, what he needed, but instead she’d only asked if she could help him.

      And he’d answered promptly with a simple “Yes,” as if that answered everything. Then he said he’d seen her place, and thought he might be what she needed. And she remembered thinking that he’d spoken nothing but the raw truth, that on some deep level she did need him.

      Was that how Allie felt about Lyle?

      Allie was quiet again, assuming her “listening” pose. She nodded once, but didn’t translate for Jillian.

      Jillian waited, trying to convey love through her touch alone.

      Finally, Allie said somewhat defiantly, “If Lyle touched you, you’d know what I mean.”

      Jillian steeled herself. “Okay, sweetie. Tell Lyle to touch me.”

      “He can hear you,” Allie said. Then, sending a chill of pure horror down Jillian’s spine, she added, “He’s coming now.”

      Jillian felt her entire body go cold, suddenly, abruptly, and felt she might faint. Anticipation made her dizzy. This was patently ridiculous, but she found herself holding her breath.

      Then, lightly, grazingly, against her loose trousers, just above her knees, she felt a brush of air, a soft, delicate touch.

      Lyle!

      Instinctively, as though responding to an atavistic knowledge of the rainbow creature, she jerked aside, her mouth wide with an unvoiced scream. Her eyes strafed the reflection in the glass for some glimpse of what—who— had touched her.

      And saw Allie’s hand outstretched behind her. About knee-level. She gulped in air, sagged against the doorway a little, and pulled Allie sharply closer.

      “Don’t ever do that again!” she gasped out. “Not unless you want to have to run get Steven to pry me from the ceiling!”

      “Do you feel changed, Mommy?”

      “Do I ever!” Jillian said with heartfelt honesty.

      “Lyle says Steven can’t change you like he can.”

      Jillian felt inadequate to answer this, too. She didn’t like the implication, and she didn’t like knowing that Lyle was wrong. Steven had already changed her, though she couldn’t have spelled out exactly how, or why. Just his very presence had shifted her life on a fundamental level.

      She remembered how that first day Steven had hesitated before taking her proffered hand, almost as though he were as conscious as she of the significance of their first touch. And she’d lowered her hand, rubbing it against her thigh, feeling relief, because she’d had the singular, staggering thought that their palms were meant to be touching, that she would be safe as long as she remained linked to him.

      “Lyle can do anything,” Allie said with a matter-of-fact attitude. She even nodded, as if settling some unvoiced question.

      Jillian couldn’t help but smile. “Anything but become visible to everybody but you,” she quipped.

      “Oh, Mommy!” Allie said, and then giggled.

      Allie’s hands dropped to pat her jumper in a parody of an adult performing a knee-slap, only to become serious again almost immediately.

      “Lyle says someday soon you’ll be able to see him, too.”

      Jillian felt her smile stiffen. This was a new twist, a turn she didn’t particularly care for.

      Allie, still smiling up at her, said, “But he can touch you again, if he wants. ’Cause you said he could.”

      For a glittering moment, Jillian actually thought her daughter was telling her that Lyle was about to touch her. Again. She felt a shudder of horror course through her.

      “Well, he can’t now,” she said through dry lips.”

      “Oh, yes, he can. He’s like a vampire. All you have to do is invite him once.”

      Jillian heard an odd conversation played in her mind. A friend meeting her on the street, asking how Allie was doing these days. “Oh, she’s just fine,” she’d say. “She has an invisible friend who is just like a vampire. We love that creature of ours.”

      “Tell him I uninvite him.”

      Allie looked up at Jillian, her expression somber. “You can’t do that, Mommy. It’s against the rules.”

      Jillian forced a smile to her lips. “What rules are those?”

      Allie shrugged. “The rules.”

      Jillian’s back tickled, her skin seemed to contract in on itself. Allie made Lyle seem so real, so present. Jillian couldn’t hold in the shiver this time. The idea of Lyle’s reality thoroughly revolted her.

      She wished she knew, with complete certainty, what was real and what wasn’t.

      At that precise moment, like an echo of her thoughts, she heard the sound of the gate’s latch and focused her eyes to see beyond her own reflection.

      Jillian couldn’t withhold a gasp as Steven stepped through the narrow aperture.

      At first glimpse, she was certain he was naked. His bare golden shoulders reflected the dull light from the bug lamps.

      Then she saw that he held one hand tightly against his chest and his profile was rigid and stiff. Something was dreadfully wrong.

      She realized then, with some relief, that he wasn’t naked, only minus a shirt. His golden, muscled shoulders were hunched in obvious pain.

      With only the slightest of hesitations, she released the catch on the lock and depressed the French door’s handle and pushed the paned glass outward, exactly the way she hadn’t done the day Allie found Lyle.

      “Are you all right?” she called.

      Steven looked up, and even through the gloom of the thick, moonless night she could make out his green eyes.

      He’s in terrible pain, she thought. She knew.

      Automatically she reached for and clicked on the back floodlights, the extra lights Steven had installed a few days before. The harsh glare from the floods struck his eyes, and he froze, like an animal snared by a poacher’s illegal hunting lights, and yet he didn’t look afraid, only vastly wary. His eyes glittered, and her breath caught in some unreasoning atavistic fear.

      His eyes are this big. She heard her daughter’s voice, saw the little hands forming a two-fisted circle.