‘What do you mean?’
Above us, floorboards creaked. Malcolm was shuffling across the living room.
I looked back at her. ‘I mean, he needs time.’
Mary glanced around the basement, her eyes locking on the photograph albums in the opposite corner.
She raised her head to the ceiling, then turned back to me.
‘The AD has been really bad these past few weeks.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He can’t retain anything. Not even things he used to repeat before. When I bath him, he looks at me and I can see he has no memory of me at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.
‘I know I can’t do anything about it. But it hurts.’ She looked again at the ceiling. ‘I’d better go and check he’s all right.’
I nodded. ‘And I’d better go.’
We walked up the basement stairs, into the kitchen and through to the living room. Malcolm Towne was sitting in front of the television, the colours blinking in his face. He looked tired and old. He didn’t turn to face us. When Mary went to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, he glanced up at her. His eyes drifted across to me. Total confusion. Behind those eyes, there were conversations with Alex that would never come out, and Mary would never know. I felt sorry for them — for both of them.
‘Are you okay, Malc?’ she said.
He didn’t reply — just gazed at her. His mouth was slightly open, a blob of saliva on his lips. Mary spotted it and immediately wiped it away with her sleeve. He didn’t even move. He glanced at me again and I smiled at him, but nothing registered.
‘Would you like a sweet?’ Mary asked him.
The minute detail in his face had become important to her. When a part of his mouth twitched, she took that as a yes. She went to the drawer and got out a bag of sweets. Took one out and unwrapped it.
‘Here we are,’ she said, slipping it into his mouth.
‘Aren’t you worried about him choking on it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He seems to be all right with these.’
She held the bag of sweets against her, and watched him suck on it. His lips smacked a little, the only part of him moving with any kind of normality. I could see what she meant about his illness — it had definitely got worse since the last time. After a while, he slowly turned back to the television.
‘Would you like a sweet, David?’
She held out the bag to me. I took one.
‘They’re Malcolm’s favourites,’ she said, following me towards the front door. ‘It’s about the only way he’ll interact with me these days.’
We walked on to the porch and down the driveway towards my car. I could see her hanging on the back of that last sentence. Staring into the face of what had become of the man she loved, and wondering how it might have been different without his illness.
As I flipped the locks on the car, a fierce winter wind ripped up the road. Distantly, something registered — a noise I recognized — and I looked back at the house.
Mary was standing behind me.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
I listened.
‘David?’
I shook my head. ‘Guess it’s nothing.’
I got into the car and pulled the door shut, buzzing down the window. As Mary stepped in towards the car, I unwrapped the sweet and popped it into my mouth.
‘Thank you for all your help, David,’ she said.
‘It will come together, Mary.’
‘Okay.’
‘You will get the closure you need,’ I said. ‘You were right. Right to come to me, right to force me to believe you. But something like this… it’s more complicated than a simple missing persons case. There’s no file, no proper line of enquiry. Your son has been places and seen things that he needs to process himself before he can come back to you. I don’t know everything, but what I do know is that a lot of those things need to come from him.’ I put my hand on hers briefly. ‘He’ll be back, Mary. Just give him time.’
Wind roared up the road again and pressed in at the car windows, so hard they creaked. Mary stepped sideways, pushed by the wind, her hand sliding out from beneath mine.
And then that noise again.
I looked past Mary to the house. Hanging baskets swayed in the wind. The front door swung on its hinges. Leaves swirled around.
‘What’s the matter, David?’ she asked again.
‘Uh, nothing, I gue…’
Then I saw it.
On top of the house, almost a silhouette in the evening light. A weathervane. The wind buffeted it, spinning it around. And then, as the wind died down again, the weathervane gently started squeaking, as if a part of it had come loose. Metal against metal. A noise I’d heard before.
On the farm.
The weathervane was an angel.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked her, pointing at it. She looked back at the house. As she did, a second reaction hit me, even more powerful than the first.
My mouth.
‘… colm bought it from a shop before he got Alz…’
I lost what she was saying. Suddenly it was like I’d been smashed across the face with a baseball bat. At the tip of my ear, I could feel someone’s breath, warm and saccharine like the smell of boiled sweets. The night down in Bristol, before they’d taken me out to the woods to kill me. The man with the saccharine breath.
His tone had altered, but I’d recognized his voice.
It hadn’t been Andrew.
It was Malcolm.
I opened the door and headed up the path. Behind me, I could hear Mary saying my name. I turned to her and held up a hand.
‘Wait there,’ I said.
I left her like that and moved back inside. The heat of the house hit me. I could see Malcolm had changed positions. He had his back to me.
‘I knew there was something off about you.’
He almost fell off the sofa. When he saw who it was, surprised at the sound of my voice, he held up a hand, made a noise. A grunt. Fear darted across his eyes.
‘Don’t hurt me.’
‘I saw it that first time I came round.’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said again.
‘Is this all an act?’
He shifted position on the sofa, moving back to where he’d been before. He looked me up and down. His eyes darted backwards and forwards. Left to right. He was trying to see whether there was anything nearby he could use to protect himself with. There wasn’t. He moved further across the sofa.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said a third time.
His voice trembled. Frightened.
‘Is this all an act?’
‘Where’s Mary?’
‘You want Mary?’
He remembered her.
‘Where is she?’
I took a step closer. ‘You know her now?’
‘Mary!’ he yelled, looking beyond me.
‘Malcolm,’ I said again. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Where’s Ma—’
‘I know about you.’
He was up on his feet now, over on the other side of the sofa. In front of the window that looked out over the garden. He glanced over my shoulder again.
‘Mary!’
‘You wanted me dead.’
‘Mary!’ he screamed again.
‘You tried to kill me.’
Tears filled his eyes.
‘Do you remember?’
‘David?’
I turned. Mary was in the doorway, her face white.
‘David, what the hell are you doing?’
Her eyes darted from me to Malcolm, then back again.
‘Wait there, Mary.’
‘David!’
‘Wait there.’ I turned back to Malcolm. ‘How did you do it?’