Chapter 12 of The Half Life of Dragons

by Sonja Hakala

PREVIOUSLY IN THE HALF LIFE OF DRAGONS: It’s been seven years since Timmen Eldritch, lead singer of the mystical rock band Calliope, disappeared. To this day, most people believe he died. But there are enough conspiracy theories swirling online to keep his ardent cult members hopeful of “Timmens’ return .”

Eldritch and Calliope recorded their last album in an old farmhouse in Carding, Vermont so the town has become a reluctant mecca for Calliope culties, as they call themselves. They’ve already started to gather, and no one in Carding is happy about it. 

You can catch up on previous chapters of this novel in progress here.

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Faye barely spared the sky a second glance as she turned up her collar against the wind. The weather was changing its mind again, this time opting for a thin gruel of drizzle mixed with bits of ice. Faye wasn’t exactly sure what gruel was but it rhymed with cruel, and that was enough for her to quick step to Suzanna’s house, her head bent, and her hands jammed into her pockets.

“Enough,” she whispered as she hurried along. “Enough with the wet already.”

As she skidded around the corner of the street where her friend lived, the fine rain became more insistent so Faye was relieved to leap onto the Owen’s front porch. Suzanna was sitting in the window with her grandfather.

“Whoa, you are just in time,” Suzanna said as she opened the door. “Gramps and I just voted for cocoa and more wood in the stove.”

“That sounds really good to me,” Faye said as she stripped off her wet jacket.

“Here, let me have that, and you go sit with Gramps while I make the cocoa,” Suzanna said. Then she leaned in close, lowering her voice. “He’s doing okay today. Reminiscing a lot. I’ve been taking notes.”

Faye caught the glimmer of tears in her friend’s eyes, and gave her a quick hug. “I’ll put wood in the stove, and stir it up.”

After the damp chill of the outdoors, the dry heat of the burning fire was welcome. Faye pulled on the leather gloves hanging on a nearby peg to open the top of the stove, and spread out the pulsing orange embers in a more or less even layer across the bottom.

“Who’s there?” Robert Owen’s voice was thin.

“It’s Faye Bennett, Mr. Owen. I just dropped by for a visit,” she said as she dropped two chunks of wood into the stove.

“You’re going to come in and say hello, aren’t you?”

“You bet.”

Robert’s son, Ted, and his wife Paula had turned their family room over to Robert’s care as he proceeded into the final stages of Parkinson’s disease. For a man whose life had been dedicated to the outdoors, the inertia of the disease was difficult to accept. So Ted and Paula placed his bed facing the windows on three sides so he could watch both the sunrise and sunset as the seasons turned from winter to spring. Friends honked and waved as they drove by, and for his ninetieth birthday, the students in Patti Warren’s art class made signs using the words to the “Happy Birthday” song, and then stood on the sidewalk to hold them up for Robert to see.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the Owen household that day, I can tell you that.

Faye had never been sure how to greet the elderly man who had taught her how to ski when she was but three years old. He was Mr. Owen then, and it felt odd to her to call him anything else. Greeting him with a kiss was totally out of the question, and she judged him too frail for a hug. She finally settled on taking his hands in hers for a gentle squeeze. It was a gesture that pleased them both.

“So, are you ready for Black Mountain?” he asked.

“Whoof, as ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose,” she said. “I must be nervous because I keep waking up in the middle of the night with my head just buzzing about my jumps, and where my hands need to be, and how far to twist my shoulders, and oh, just everything.”

Robert chuckled. “That’s pretty normal at this point. I think you’re just where you need to be.”

“I just hope the snow’s good,” Faye said. “With this rain and being a bit warmer the other day, who knows? I’m hoping their groomers know what they’re doing because this stuff can turn to ice so quickly. It’s tough when that happens.”

“Ted called over there this morning, and was told it had stayed cold enough to keep the snow. And they’ve been grooming a lot. Hopefully that will take care of any problems,” Robert said.

Then he leaned toward Faye and dropped his voice. “I need to ask you a favor, Faye.”

“Of course, Mr. Owen. What is it?”

“It’s something I need you to do when I die,” he said.

Faye sat up straighter, and felt her throat constrict. Robert’s grip on her hands tightened a little with his sense of urgency. Faye took a deep breath, and nodded.

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

Robert looked up at the ceiling for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “My daughter, Allison, is coming to see me while you are all in Maine for the competition. Ted and Paula know this but Suzanne does not.” He shook his head. “I had hoped…but Suzanna…” He cleared his throat. “She’s not ready.”

Faye nodded. “And you wish she was.”

Robert smiled a sad little smile. “Yes, so much. Allison has been sober for quite a while now. I was quite pleased when she got in touch with me. We talked for a very long time. My daughter was—and is—broken in a lot of places, and part of that is my fault. When my Anna died, I couldn’t feel anything but my own pain, and Allison…well, I’m sure you know the stories.”

“Some of them, yeah.”

“Anyway, Allison tells me she does a little mending on herself each day. She makes soup, you know, at a place called The Brick in Burlington. I understand she’s really good at it.” He sighed. “Coming back to this house will be difficult for her.”

“I’m sure.”

Robert sat still, watching the rain ooze down from the sky. Finally he said: “At this point, I don’t know if I have enough time to see Suzanna and her mother reconciled. But I do know it’s a wound that needs healing on both sides.” He hesitated, and Faye thought she’d never seen anyone so tired.

“You want me to encourage Suze to patch things up with her Mom, am I right?” she asked.

“Will you?”

“Well, you and I both know that no one can push Suze to do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Faye said.

“Agreed.”

“So how about I do this—I will sound her out, listen to her, be there for her, go with her to see her mother if she wants me to, and do anything I can do to encourage her if she decides to see her mother,” Faye said. “But I honestly think that if I tried to push her to do that, she’d shut the whole idea down. Does that sound right?”

Robert leaned back in his chair with a soft sigh and a smile. “That’s perfect. Thank you, my dear. It’s important to me that I know she has you by her side. I’ve always been so glad you are my granddaughter’s friend.”

A clatter at the doorway announced the arrival of cocoa. Faye jumped up to help with the tray, and it was the work of a minute for the two young women to get snugged up around Robert, cups in hand. He didn’t say much, just drank in their energy and excitement about their trip to Maine.

Suzanna caught his cup just before it slipped from his fingers. “Would you like me to put your chair back, Grampa?”

“Yes, and if you wouldn’t mind, could you put my blue quilt over my lap?” he asked.

As the two friends tiptoed from Robert’s room, Suzanna asked: “Can you hang around for a bit? I have something to show you.”

Faye raised an eyebrow. “Sure. What’s up?”

Suzanna shook her head then started for the stairs to the second floor. “Today is a day for secrets, I guess,” Faye thought as she followed.

When it became obvious that Robert needed more care, Suzanna moved her bedroom upstairs after a flurry of painting and redecorating. Robert had objected—he didn’t want to cause trouble—but when Suzanna joined the effort to persuade him, the switch was made. She liked having the whole second floor to herself, and called the bedroom her “garret”.

“So what’s the big hush-hush?” Faye asked.

Suzanna waited until the bedroom door was closed. “So did Gramps tell you about his being in touch with my mother?”

Faye opened her mouth to object but then closed it again. Lying was obviously useless. “Yeah, he did.”

“I knew he would. That’s why I stayed in the kitchen making cocoa when you showed up. And I figure he asked you not to tell me, right?”

Faye felt a bit squirmy under her friend’s laser-like gaze. “How much did you hear?”

“Not much, but then I didn’t need to,” Suzanna said. “My grandfather is an awesome, wonderful man.” Her voice trembled a bit but after a deep breath, she continued. “But he’s not subtle at all. He’s been talking about my mother quite a lot, and I know he wants me to…to…talk to her before he…” She struggled to swallow. “Oh dammit, Faye, this is so unfair. Parkinson’s is such a cruel disease. Why does Gramps have to have it?”

Faye grabbed a handful of tissues from a box, pressed them into her friend’s hand, and then wrapped Suzanna in a tight squeeze to wait for the storm to pass.

“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she murmured while Suzanna shook with silent sobs.

It took a while, and a bit more trembling but finally Faye sensed longer quiet spaces between her friend’s tears. Finally, Suzanna pulled away. “Wow, that was unexpected,” she said as she mopped her face. “It’s just that sometimes it gets a bit much, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, it’s like when my Dad got hurt,” Faye said. “I thought I was handling it all right, but then suddenly, I wasn’t. Wil went through the same thing. Mom was a wreck but trying not to show it so we thought we had to be strong for her. It became a not-so-funny joke that we had to take turns falling apart.”

Suzanna took a few more breaths, each one less shaky than the last. Then she squeezed Faye’s hand. “Thanks.”

“You bet. So are you up to telling me about your big hush-hush? Or was it that you knew what your grandfather was asking me?” Faye said.

Suzanna gave her face a final wipe. “Wow, crying is exhausting, you know? Anyway, help me move this, will you?”

“This” turned out to be a large bulletin board draped in a white cloth. The two friends pulled it out from behind Suzanna’s bureau to lean against her closet door.

“Okay, here’s what I’ve been working on,” Suzanna said as she removed the cloth.

Faye blinked. “This looks like one of those boards the police use on the mystery shows on TV,” she finally said. She took a step closer, and leaned in to take a closer look. 

There were four pictures tacked horizontally across the top of the board—Timmen Eldritch, Mugs Gallagher, Nicholas Kelvey, and Oliver Quigley. A second vertical column on the left also had four pictures, all of them women who were known associates of Calliope—Ashley Bentsen, Pearl McGregor, Jaini Haskell, and Suzanna’s mother, Allison Owen. Lengths of yarn in different colors stretched from each photo to a date pinned somewhere in the center of the board, connecting the members of Calliope to the women who had been part of their circle while they lived in Carding.

Faye took her time examining Suzanna’s work thoroughly before she asked: “So has this helped you figure out who your father is? Because that’s what you’re doing, am I right?”

“Yeah, it is. When I got old enough to ask who my father was, my mother always changed the subject or made up some stupid story or just out and out lied to me,” Suzanna said. “But I’ve always suspected that it is one of those guys.” She pointed to the top of the board.

“This is amazing, Suze. Have you come to any conclusions?”

“Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out it wasn’t Smugs Gallagher because I was conceived in either January or February of the year I was born, and he was in jail in Florida for a drug bust. And my mother was in California by then, just starting on that television show of hers. I have to say that I was glad to know that because from everything I’ve been able to find out, Smugs Gallagher is a verifiable creep.”

“Why did you put all four of those women there? If you want to know about your mother, why bother with the other three?” Faye asked.

“That’s the way I started but then I found out that there’s all these gaps in the time sequence of the guys. But sometimes I could pick up their trails by looking for the women. And now I’m hoping I can find them because I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask them,” Suzanna said. “Well, not Ashley, of course. But that Pearl and that Jaini are both online. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that one or both of them are in Carding right now.”

Suddenly Faye’s head snapped up, and she focused in on the pictures of Pearl and Jaini. “Do you have any pictures of those two that are more recent?”

“That’s the most recent one of Jaini Haskell. She’s got a website and podcast called Mysteries of New England, and she’s been talking about Calliope a lot, which is why I figure she’s either in Carding now or will be soon.” Suzanna made a face. “She’s kind of a drip though she thinks she’s a really big deal over the Calliope thing. As far as I can figure, she was nothing more than Eldritch’s gofer.”

“Though a gofer could leave a trail,” Faye said.

“True.”

“So what about this one, Pearl McGregor. This looks like an old picture. Did you find anything more recent? Is she doing something online?”

Suzanna laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. She’s really careful about not letting any picture but that one get on the web. She’s hawking all of these quack meds on her website under the name Black Pearl. The only recent picture I could find was of her leaving a courthouse in Boston. She’d been accused of fraud but the trial was delayed because a key witness is missing.” 

Suzanna plopped down at her desk to open her tablet. “Give me a minute, and I’ll see what I can find.” She poked and scrolled then finally said: “Yeah, here she is coming out of the courthouse.”

Faye caught her breath as soon as she looked at Suzanna’s screen. It was definitely the woman who didn’t like Faye’s use of the word “vermin” to describe the Calliope culties invading Carding. “I can tell you for sure that she’s in Carding. I saw her on the green on my way here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. Do you want me to help you find her?”

“Yes, but not yet. We’re going to Maine tomorrow, and I want your help with something else.”

Faye raised both her eyebrows this time. “And that is?”

“I want your help persuading your Dad and my Uncle Ted to take us to the farm where Nicholas Kelvey lives. It’s near Black Mountain,” Suzanna said. “In all this time, he’s never given an interview or talked about Calliope. But I think he knows or can guess who my father is. And I need the answer to that question before I talk to my mother so that this time, she tells me what I want to know.”

The two friends looked at one another. “So,” Suzanna asked, “are you in?”

“You deserve to know who your father is, Suzanna, and I’m going to help you do just that.”

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Thanks for sharing some of the minutes of your life with me and Carding, Vermont. I hope you’re enjoying The Half Life of Dragons and can visit next week for the latest chapter.

When I reach the end of the tale, the entire book will be available here as an ebook. In the meantime, if you need to catch up or would like to share this adventure with someone else, you can do so by clicking this link.

~ Sonja Hakala