The flame seemed blinding, but he didn’t stir. I stood at his bedside, candle in my hand, and gazed down at him: his mouth parted slightly, as though he were on the verge of speaking to someone in his dream. His eyes moved behind his eyelids. His breath was warm and smelled of toothpaste and alcohol. He was beautiful.
Everything is random. That’s what I used to believe. Nothing happens for a reason, nothing happens because we will it. I never believed in gods. I believe in Furies. I think there are beings, people, impelled by the power to do harm. Sometimes the impulse is momentary. Maybe in some instances it’s eternal. And maybe that’s the one thing in the universe that isn’t random.
When I was raped, I ran into one of those Furies. Over the years, I became one myself.
But if there is an opposite to whatever I am, it—he—was lying there in front of me. As I stared at him I realized that what I had first sensed outside the motel room, that black roil of damage … it had nothing to do with Gryffin Haselton, nothing at all. He’d looked at me, and I’d seen a glimpse of myself in his eyes. My own rage and fear had come back at me like bullets bouncing from a wall.
Nothing else.
I shot the last four frames. I steadied the camera on the edge of the desk so that my shaking hands wouldn’t ruin the exposure. Even so, I knew the images would be blurred. Like when you’re outside shooting the moon without a tripod—no matter how hard you try to remain still, you move, and the moon moves, and the earth moves. And the camera captures everything.
Now, in Gryffin’s room, very little seemed to be moving: but I knew the photos would show differently. They would show how everything changes, a fraction of a second at a time. Death is the eidos of that Photograph, Roland Barthes wrote, but not even death is static like a picture is. If you look at a corpse long enough, you see things move beneath the skin, as real and liquid as the blood in your own veins.
Now I saw a sleeping man, motionless. Four frames. When I was done, I rewound the film inside the camera then removed the roll. I needed to hide it.
Gryffin might find it in a drawer, or under the mattress. I saw the turtle shell on the windowsill and remembered what I’d found in the room above the Island Store. I picked up the shell, pressed my finger against the bit of carapace that formed a trap door where the turtle’s head had once retracted. It moved to reveal an opening big enough for the roll of film.
I slid it inside then shook the shell. The film didn’t move; it was wedged tight. I put the shell back on the windowsill, turned and watched Gryffin sleep.
Our gaze changes all that it falls upon…
I never wanted my gaze to change him.
But, of course, it already had. I blew out the candle, removed my boots and leather jacket, wrapped my camera in the jacket and set it on the floor.
Then I pulled the blanket back and slipped beneath the covers. Gryffin made a small questioning sound and shifted onto his side.
“It’s me,” I whispered. “I’m cold.”
“What?” He mumbled and turned toward me. “Huh?”
“Cass. There’s no heat in my room. I’m freezing.”
I could see him frown. Then he shut his eyes.
“Whatever,” he said, and put his arms around me. “Just go to sleep.”
Gradually the cold ebbed from my body; gradually the room grew light. I listened to the humming in my head and the sound of Gryffin’s breathing.
Finally I slept. It wasn’t exactly the sleep of the just. But for those few hours, it was enough.
part two
SHADOW POINT
17
“Get up.”
I buried my face in the pillow and groaned.
“Get up.” The voice came again, louder. The bed shook. It was a moment before I realized this was because someone had kicked it, another moment before I figured out the someone was Gryffin. I rolled onto my back and stared up at him, blinking in the morning light.
“What?”
“My mother.” He was fully dressed but looked terrible: unshaven, eyes bloodshot, his face knotted with grief. “You have to get up. My mother’s dead.”
“What?” I sat up and felt as though someone had jabbed a steel rebar through my skull. “Oh shit.”
“For God’s sake.” He lowered himself onto the bed. “Something happened, she fell or something. She—”
He covered his face with his hands and began to shake.
“Your mother?” I didn’t have to mime shock as memory overwhelmed me, her pallid skin, the pinprick froth of red on her lips. “Gryffin…”
He didn’t look up. I touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me. He turned, and I leaned against him. His entire body shuddered as I stroked his arm.
At last he pulled away. He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “It’s terrible.” His voice was raw. I wondered how long he’d been awake. “I heard the dogs in there whining. She—it looks like she fell. By that goddamn woodstove, she never even uses it—”
He choked and got unsteadily to his feet. “You better get dressed and come downstairs. The sheriff’s on his way over.”
“What?”
But he was gone.
I got up and dressed. I have as many words for “hangover” as an Inuit has for snow. None of them did justice to how I felt. I tried to make myself look presentable. I hadn’t imagined I could feel any worse, but the thought of being questioned by a cop pushed me close to panic. I popped another Adderall and hoped it would kick in before the sheriff arrived.
I went downstairs. The door to Aphrodite’s room was shut.
I found Gryffin in the kitchen. The deerhounds loped across the room to greet me, whining. I looked at Gryffin.
He sat staring out the window. It was overcast—high, swift-moving clouds but no fog, just an endless expanse of steely water and sky. A raven pecked at something on the gravel beach. On the horizon hung a ragged black shadow. Tolba Island.
“There’s coffee,” he said at last. He gestured toward the pot but didn’t look at me. I poured myself some then sat by the woodstove. After a minute, he turned.
“I went up to let the dogs out. Usually they come downstairs if she’s not awake. It looks like she hit her head on the woodstove.” His voice cracked, and he took a gulp of coffee. “I—I guess she was drunk and she tripped. I mean, every time I come here, I think I’m going to find something like this. And now…”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “God. Do you remember what time it was when we came in? Was it around midnight?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“And you didn’t see her, did you? Before you—before you came in to get warm.”
“No.” I cupped my hands around my mug.
Tears fell onto his shirt. He rubbed his eyes. One of the dogs turned and raced toward the mudroom and began to bark. The others followed, yelping. Gryffin ran a hand across his face.
“That’ll be him.” He went to get the door.
I waited in the kitchen. I thought of when Christine had died, and how the fact that we hadn’t gotten along or even recently spoken just made it worse. Any chance of making things right was gone.
I pushed the thought away, tried not to think about what lay on the floor upstairs. I heard the door open. The dogs’ barking rose to a frantic crescendo then diminished. There was the sound of male voices, a rumble of sympathy. Gryffin walked back into the room, trailed by a uniformed policeman and Everett Moss. Moss looked at me in surprise.