The Year of Disappearances Read Online Free Page B

of songs that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and loneliness, each of them plaintive in its own way.
    When we left the bar, I noticed a beige van parked down the road, near Murray’s Restaurant. “That looks like the van I saw yesterday,” I said.
    It drove away before I could tell for sure.
    Mãe and Dashay didn’t even hear me. They were each thinking about Bennett.

    Later that night, when Dashay had retired to her room, I came back to the living room, sat on the sofa, and tried to tune in to her thoughts.
    My rationale was simple: she was my friend; she was in trouble; and, clearly, she and my mother weren’t ready to tell me what had happened in Jamaica. I couldn’t stand being left out any longer.
    Mãe glided into the room, wearing a white silk robe that shimmered as she moved. She took one look at me and knew exactly what I’d been doing. “You did hear what I said about eavesdropping?” She spoke in a fierce whisper. “It’s a bad thing—”
    I said quickly, “Father always said that there are few if any moral absolutes.” I was suddenly reminded of how much he disliked people who interrupted others. The art of conversation in America is utterly dead, he’d said once. “Excuse me for interrupting,” I added.
    “And so how would you justify eavesdropping?” She sat in the armchair facing me.
    “Well, the infringement of her privacy is outweighed by the possible benefit,” I said, thinking as I spoke, hoping it sounded plausible. “I love Dashay. And I might be able to help her.”
    “I don’t think you’re being logical,” my mother said slowly.
    “You let me listen to your thoughts. What’s so bad about eavesdropping?”
    “I let you listen sometimes,” she said, and proved it by blocking them; it’s easy to do that, if you’re one of us, though I often don’t remember to make the effort. “I’m not an ethical expert like you and your father, but in my opinion it’s not fair to eavesdrop or listen to the thoughts of someone who’s upset. It’s meddling, pure and simple, and meddling is wrong.”
    I folded my arms across my chest. “Even if you think you can help them?” It was the first time I’d talked back to my mother, and I found it exciting. I wondered if I’d have had the nerve if the room wasn’t so dark.
    Suddenly Dashay swept into the room. “Let it go, Ari,” she said.
    But I had what I thought was the last word: “Dashay, you must have been eavesdropping.”
    Sassy girl, Mãe thought. And Dashay thought, Just like her mother.
    In spite of what I’d said, I knew that Mãe was right: listening to others’ thoughts was an intrusion, warranted only in exceptional circumstances. The trouble was, so many circumstances felt exceptional, that year.

    In the end, I didn’t have to eavesdrop to hear the story. Dashay told me herself, a few days later.
    Bennett had never wanted to go to Jamaica, she said. Dashay hadn’t been home for years—she left soon after her parents died in an accident—and the funeral of a grandmother didn’t strike him as the right occasion to meet her family. But Dashay cajoled him into going. (Bennett was easy to cajole—he was the sort of man who danced through life, laughing easily, making women want to flirt.)
    From the first night, things didn’t go well. For starters, Dashay’s family had no idea that they were entertaining vampires. Dashay had grown up an ordinary mortal, but when she left home she was “vamped” (her word) in Miami—a city popular with the more vicious sorts of vampires. (Bennett was an other, too—but how that happened is another story entirely.)
    In any case, Dashay’s family was a suspicious bunch, and her auntie was the worst. She wanted to know what was in the blood-colored flakes Dashay and Bennett sprinkled onto their food. She wanted to know why Dashay “didn’t smell right”—of course, vampires have no smell.
    Auntie had always blamed Dashay for leaving Jamaica when her parents died, for not