He nodded. “That works. Enid and I can chat, gossip about the neighbors, that kind of thing.” He leaned over so she could see his face. “Won’t that be fun? Maybe we can even have some of that carrot cake. It smells delicious.” Then he reached into his jacket, took out the keys to the truck, and tossed them my way.
I grabbed them out of the air. “What room is he in?” I asked her.
She glared at me.
“Tell me what room he’s in, or I’ll call the cops myself.”
She gave that a moment’s thought, knew that once I got to the hospital I’d probably be able to find out anyway, then said, “Third floor. Room 309.”
Before I left the house, Vince and I exchanged cell phone numbers. I got in his truck, fiddled with getting the key into the ignition. A different vehicle always takes a minute or two to get used to. I turned on the engine, found the lights, then backed into a driveway and turned around. I needed a moment to get my bearings. I knew Lewiston was south of here, and that we’d gone south from the bar, but I didn’t know whether continuing in a southerly direction would get me where I had to go. So I backtracked up Main, cut east, and once I’d found my way back to the highway, headed south.
I took the first exit once I saw the blue “H” in the distance, found my way to the hospital parking lot, and entered by way of the emergency department. There were half a dozen people in the waiting room: a set of parents with a crying baby, a teenage boy with blood soaking through the knee of his jeans, an elderly couple. I walked right through, past the admissions desk, where I saw a sign indicating that visiting hours had ended a couple of hours ago, at eight, and found an elevator to the third floor.
Chances were good that someone was going to stop me at some point, but I figured if I could just make it to Clayton Sloan’s room, I’d be okay.
The elevator doors parted onto the third-floor nurses’ station. There was no one there. I stepped out, paused a moment, then turned left, looking for door numbers. I found 322, discovered the numbers got bigger as I moved on down the hallway. I stopped, went back in the other direction, which was going to take me past the nurses’ station again. A woman was standing with her back to me, reading a chart, and I walked past as noiselessly as possible.
I looked for numbers again. The hallway turned left, and the first door I came to was 309. The door was partly ajar, the room mostly in darkness except for a neon light mounted to the wall next to the bed.
It was a private room, one bed. A curtain obscured all but the foot of the bed, where a clipboard hung on a metal frame. I took a few steps in, beyond the curtain, and saw that there was a man in the bed, on his back, slightly raised, fast asleep. In his seventies, I guessed. Emaciated-looking, thinned hair. From chemo, maybe. His breathing was raspy. His arms lay at his sides, his fingers long and white and bony.
I moved around to the far side of the bed, where the curtain gave me cover from the hallway. There was a chair near the head of the bed, and when I sat down, I was able to make myself even more invisible to anyone passing by the room.
I studied Clayton Sloan’s face, searching for something there that I was unable to find when I looked at Enid Sloan’s. Something about his nose, perhaps, a trace of cleft in his chin. I reached out and gently touched the man’s exposed arm, and he made a slight snorting noise.
“Clayton,” I whispered.
He sniffed, wiggled his nose about unconsciously.
“Clayton,” I whispered again, rubbing his leathery skin softly back and forth. Inside his elbow a tube ran into his arm. An IV drip of some kind.
His eyes fluttered open, and he sniffed again. He saw me, blinked hard a couple of times, let his eyes adjust and focus.
“Wha…”
“Clayton Bigge?” I said.
That not only brought his eyes into focus, but made him turn his head more sharply. The fleshy folds of his neck bunched together. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“Your son-in-law,” I said.
41
As he swallowed I watched his Adam’s apple bob along the length of his throat. “My what?” he said.
“Your son-in-law,” I said. “I’m Cynthia’s husband.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I could see how dry his mouth was. “Would you like a drink of water?” I asked quietly. He nodded. There was a pitcher and glass next to the bed, and I poured him some water. There was a straw on the table, and I put it to his lips, holding the glass for him.
“I can do it,” he said, grasping the glass and sipping from the straw. He took the glass with more strength than I expected. He licked his lips, handed the glass back to me.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“After ten,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you. You were sleeping pretty good there.”
“No harm,” he said. “They’re always waking you up here anyway, all times of the day and night.”
He took a deep breath through his nostrils, let the air out slowly. “So,” he said. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“I think you do,” I said. “You’re Clayton Bigge.”
Another deep breath. Then, “I’m Clayton Sloan.”
“I believe you are,” I said. “But I think you’re also Clayton Bigge, who was married to Patricia Bigge, who had a son named Todd and a daughter named Cynthia, and you lived in Milford, Connecticut, until one night in 1983, when something very terrible happened.”
He looked away from me and stared at the curtain. He made a fist with the hand lying at his side, opened his fingers, clenched again.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.
Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”
“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”
“Two families?” I said.
I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…
Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”
“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”
“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.
“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”
“Todd?” I said.
“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”
“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”
“What?”
“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”
Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen… I’m so tired.”
I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.
“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”