Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1) Read Free Page A

the man she remembered. She’d expected him to be a bit frailer, a bit vaguer, but still her father.
    She barely recognized the man in the chair by the living room window. The white hair no longer sprang from his head like he’d just come out of a bracing wind. It now hung in lank strands. Underneath, she could see the pink of his scalp. The dark eyes that used to glow with fiery intelligence were milky now, and bloodshot. He was a husk of a man, so fragile he could be blown away with a gentle breath.
    “Dad?” Russ said in a loud voice. “Look who it is. It’s Meg. Meg’s come home.”
    “Meg?” the old man quavered. “Meaghan? Meaghan’s my daughter.”
    Russ grabbed her arm and dragged her close. “This is Meaghan, Dad.” He held her hand out to Matthew. “Meaghan’s right here.”
    Matthew squinted at her and recognition flared. He beamed at her, a joy on his face she’d never seen before.
    She felt the hot prickle of tears and willed them away. “Hi, Dad. Here I am.”
    Matthew squeezed her hand and began to cry.
    She wasn’t sure later what unnerved her more. His physical decline or his joyful tears at seeing her. Sniffling, her own tears now flowing, she hugged him. “I’m home, Daddy. I’m home.”
    For the moment, all was forgiven. Her fatigue and his dementia opened a door through the imposing emotional wall between them. She knew it probably wouldn’t last, but for right now, the past was forgotten.
    Even Russ cried, Meaghan noticed. But then emotion had always been easy for him. He was like their mother that way. Kind, open, forgiving. Everything that Matthew and Meaghan so often were not. Russ smiled at her, then headed for the kitchen to check on supper. Another way Russ was like Mom. He was a great cook.
    Meaghan held her father’s hand, sniffing back her tears. After ten minutes, he dozed off.
    She untangled herself and went out to her car, parked in the driveway beneath a large oak tree, to get her overnight bag. The rest of it could wait until tomorrow. The early summer twilight lingered, soft and golden. In Arizona, sunsets, although spectacular, were harsher and faster. The sky turned pink, then orange, then red, and the sun dropped like a rock behind the horizon. Night fell like a curtain at the end of a play.
    But in early June, this far north, twilight lasted awhile. She took a few minutes, sitting on the front steps, to be alone and calm down a bit. All her expectations had been turned upside down. Her father was thrilled to see her. After the forbidding forests, the town was lovely and welcoming.
    For the first time since Russ’s call for help, Meaghan felt good. She hadn’t even realized the dread she carried until it lessened. It wasn’t all gone, but it was better.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of soft light. She glanced towards it and saw another. And another.
    Fireflies. Lightning bugs, she and Russ called them when they were kids.
    She watched them, transfixed. Like gentle sparks, the fireflies floated in the air. Fireflies didn’t exist in Arizona or anywhere in the west and she’d forgotten how magical they were. She and Russ had spent many warm evenings as children running through the soft twilight catching the flashing insects. They carried empty jam jars filled with grass and leaves, air holes punched in the lid, to hold the captured fireflies. Meaghan liked to fall asleep with the flashing jar next to her pillow. Once she’d drifted off, her mother would slip into her room, take the jar outside, and shake the fireflies back into the soft night air, to be caught another time.
    Then Matthew had his breakdown and there were no more fireflies. His drinking escalated out of control, and she, Russ, and Mom fled to Arizona. She was thirteen and Russ was eleven. Soon after, Matthew got fired from his law firm in Manhattan and ended up in Eldrich.
    Mom sued for sole custody with no visitation and Matthew didn’t contest it. By the time Matthew cleaned