Caitlin continued to breathe heavily. She jerked her head around as if looking for something.
“What is it?”
“She’s here. She is here.”
“Caitlin, no—we’re alone.”
Caitlin got up, ran down the hall, putting her ear to Jacob’s door. He was reading aloud. Captain Nemo was having a hard time of things with his ship but Jacob sounded fine. She turned and shuffled back unsteadily, falling into the nearest chair and stared at the floor. After a moment, her eyes rose and found Ben.
“It was Maanik all over again,” she said.
“No, it was not that. What you saw was an old vision of fire.”
“I don’t mean that,” Caitlin said. “I don’t mean they were souls trying to do a ritual. The woman I saw, the woman I was, is trying to communicate something now, through a child. Why? Why Jacob?”
Ben crawled toward her. He took up her hands again. “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with a child, or with trauma as it did last time,” he suggested. “Maybe they’re doing it because they know you will listen.”
Caitlin stared at Ben and nodded. “Okay. That may be true. But… listen to what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, picking up his phone.
“Did you at least get any new words?”
“Just the names. Which is pretty considerable, if you think about it. We can start building a who’s who with Enzo and Dovit—”
No sooner had the names been uttered than the burst of cold returned with a plummeting shriek, a whistle that could have been the wind or a scream. It swept around them like an unbottled genie until they felt as if they were inside a column of ice.
“No,” Caitlin yelled, scowling at a point between her and Ben. “No!”
The wind stopped and an instant later Jacob cried out. Caitlin bolted from the chair and ran to his room. Squatting by his bedside, she looked into his eyes to make sure he was present.
He was. His eyes were searching behind Caitlin, but they were not lost in an ancient place. They were darting through the room as though he were looking for a loose parakeet.
“What is it, hon?” she asked, touching his hair with one hand as she signed with the other. “Did you just call me?”
“I thought there was a snowman,” he said.
“A snowman?” Caitlin said, forcing a smile. “Tell me about him.”
His eyes stopped moving and narrowed in contemplation. “Maybe not a snowman,” he said. “A snow woman. A pretty lady made of ice.”
That was all Jacob said before lying back on the bed. Caitlin did not press for more. She placed the covers under his chin and then lay beside him. Ben, who had been observing from the doorway, smiled and left them alone.
Mother and son stayed that way for quite some time as late afternoon shaded to dusk.
Ben stood staring out the window, where the last of a brilliant red sunset was ebbing from the dark sky.
“What do we do next?” he asked after she finally emerged from the bedroom.
Caitlin shook her head. “I hate to say it, but I’m thinking the next move is up to a snow woman.”
Ben made an unhappy face. “I don’t feel good about leaving you here.”
“You know, I’m okay with that. Despite all that’s happened with Jacob,” Caitlin said. “This time I didn’t get the feeling that… whoever I was wanted to hurt him, or me. Any of us.”
Ben’s mouth twisted slightly. “Let me ask you this—and I need an honest answer. Would you have come back if I hadn’t brought you back?”
“I don’t know, Ben.”
“So what will you do if it happens again?”
“I don’t know that either, Ben.”
“Two ‘Ben’s,” he said. “In Caitlin speak, that means, ‘Time to go.’”
“It is, but only because I’m really beat,” she said. “I’m gonna make dinner for me and the lad and try not to think about any of this tonight.”
Ben nodded in accord. That was easy to do when there were no other options.
She thanked him for his help and for taking the time off from work and kissed him good-bye on the cheek. He gave her a brief, part-sad, part-wry look of That’s it? before she shooed him out the door. The click of the latch sounded uncommonly loud, like the door of a walk-in freezer.
Caitlin stood by the window and looked at the remaining crescent of sun, the same sun that had set over Galderkhaan.
She woke Jacob for dinner and together they made franks and beans; why was it that passed gas always lifted boys’ spirits? When they finished, they channel surfed for a while until Jacob fell asleep with his head in her lap. Not without effort, Caitlin carried him to bed. She wondered how many more times she’d be able to do this. The kid was getting big. She wondered if he would be six-foot-five big like his father, or five foot six like her father.
A pointless mom-exercise, she thought, smiling at herself. But right now, pointless felt good.
The apartment was quiet. The whole city felt quiet. Caitlin looked at lamplights across the street, figures sitting down to meals, and thought about the people she and Ben had passed on their walk toward Paley Park. Everyone had seemed remarkably buoyant. It had been such a difference in tenor from the weeks when Kashmir had verged on nuclear war. Individual confidence had surged back. People’s lives were brightening here despite the darkness in other parts of the world.
The observation gave Caitlin no comfort. The opposite, in fact. The last recession had driven home the fact that confidence too easily spawns rashness, then crashes, then despair. She felt like she was seeing the beginning of the next end already.
She sat on the couch and rubbed her temples, trying to relax. It wasn’t coming. Of course not: there was unfinished business. Whether it was her own life or the life of a patient, she could never compartmentalize that easily.
Caitlin was almost grateful when her phone rang and though her screen gave only a number, she accepted the call.
“Yes?”
“Dr. O’Hara?” said a young woman’s voice.
“Yes, who is this?”
“It’s Maanik Pawar.”
Nausea and fear filled her throat. Caitlin hunched and both hands involuntarily clutched the phone in panic. It’s starting again! her mind screamed. She fought hard to sound natural.
“Maanik, hello! It’s so nice to hear your voice. How are you doing?”
“Really well!”
Caitlin suddenly felt like crying. “Tell me!” she said.
“I’ve gained back all the weight I lost and you should see my arms. My papa arranged for a doctor to use this stem cell spray stuff. They said it was the fastest recovery they’d seen so far. My skin completely healed from the scratches in like a day. Well, they were more than just scratches, I guess.”
“Gouges,” Caitlin said very gently.
“Yes.” Maanik sounded thoughtful, not upset.
“That’s, well, incredible, Maanik. How are you sleeping? Are you having any strange dreams or even daydreams?”
Maanik laughed. “I’ve been daydreaming about becoming a bioengineer instead of a diplomat, does that count?”
Caitlin laughed. “Sorry, no. By the way, you know I spoke to your parents last week.”
“They told me.”
“They said you didn’t seem to remember anything that had happened?”
“Yeah,” Maanik said. “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved about that, Dr. O’Hara. Do you think my memory will return?”
“No,” Caitlin said. “At least it hasn’t for others who experienced trauma like that.”
“Anyway, I wanted to call and thank you personally. I don’t know what you did for me specifically but you saved my life. I don’t think my parents were exaggerating when they said that. And I’m so grateful.”