“There’s no one in there. No water in the tub. The room’s exactly as it should be. All my wife’s shampoos in ten neat rows. Line of books above the john. A green plastic whale full of little kiddy toys for bathtime. Everything’s fine. But then I hear this tiny click.
“I walk back out into the hallway, and one of the doors ahead falls open, just a bit. I reach for the handle, but suddenly I don’t want to open it. The door’s ajar enough that I can see through into my daughter’s bedroom, a patch of carpet and a slice of wall. And I see a shadow fall across it, but this time it’s too big for a child, and I hear the crib rustle as if someone has pulled aside the bedspread and climbed in, curled up into the space, and I don’t understand how I know this, but I know that person is naked and she’s waiting for me—but it’s only when I start to push the door open that I realize it’s going to be Donna lying in the bed.”
He stopped abruptly. “And by then it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
He shook his head, as if either I should know already or he just couldn’t say. “And since then I can’t get her out of my head. I have that dream every couple weeks, sometimes more. Each time the door gets a little wider before I wake up. And I know that if it’s ever wide enough for me to see her face, then I won’t wake up. That I’ll step in and she’ll be lying there smiling and the door will close and I’ll never get out again.”
I wasn’t sure what I could say. “We’re getting older,” I tried eventually. “Today’s too muddy and confusing, and so you retreat to when it all seemed simpler, even if it actually wasn’t.”
He let out a short, harsh laugh. “What she did wasn’t simple.”
“I know, but…”
“There’s something else. The dream kept coming back. I was exhausted, couldn’t focus at work.”
“Did you talk to anyone about it?”
“Not really. I never told my wife about it. I was so over the whole thing by the time we met. And…you know, when something’s really in your head, if you tell someone else about it and they don’t get it, don’t understand its weight, you feel even worse for opening your mouth and blabbing your dark secret. So…”
He stopped again. Outside the window a police car went by, siren blaring. I imagined the dealer and his clients scattering like frightened mice, to return within minutes.
“But, so…anyway,” Gary said. “How well do you remember Donna?”
“A little. I knew her some. She wasn’t unattractive. Plus, you know, she died.”
He nodded. “All the time I was in therapy at college, I was barely able to recall what she looked like at all. But after I started having the dreams, I could remember her in every detail.”
“That’s because—”
“Just shut up, Jack, and let me speak. So one Saturday afternoon I’m in the park with Bethany. My daughter. Just turned two. I’m pushing her around on one of those trike things, you know, a handle up out the back so they don’t have to pedal. And I’m very tired because of work and not sleeping, and it’s gotten real cloudy and is clearly going to rain, and I’ve basically had enough. I tell her it’s time to go home. She turns and looks up at me, and that’s when I see it.”
“Saw what?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. She was mighty pissed, because she wanted to keep going around the park, but that wasn’t it. Not just that. There was something else coming out of them at me. Out of her eyes.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
He shrugged. “Over the next few days…Well, kids change week to week, even day by day. You know that. She’s at that age. But…”
“But what, Gary?”
“A few weeks later, we’re all having breakfast, the standard chaos, and my wife leans forward and peers at Bethany’s face. ‘How did she get that?’ she says. I have no clue what she’s talking about. She points to the side of Bethany’s eye. And there’s this little ding there. Like a little curve, a scar. I say I have no idea, didn’t happen on my watch. Megan says it certainly didn’t happen on hers. It escalates. And all the time while we’re ‘discussing’ this, Bethany is watching me. I see this…look in her eyes again, and suddenly I know I’ve seen that mark somewhere before. I had to just leave the table. Immediately. I got up and left the house with Megan still glaring at me, pissed as hell. And as I’m driving to work, I finally get it.”
His voice was dry now. “I think about these dreams I’ve been having for months, and how I know there must be some point to them. How they’ve got to be trying to tell me something. And bang—this thought hits me. It hit me so hard I have to stop the car. Where I’d seen that scar before. On whose face, in my dreams. Donna.”
I was staring at him now. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”
“Of course I’m not. But you must have had times like this when you were a cop, when you thought, Yes, that’s what happened, or Yes, he’s the guy, and you’re only saying what some part of you has already known for days or weeks. Then, when you finally get it, it’s like everything drops into place, and you know you’re right.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling. But sometimes it just means you’ve got it so wrong that you’ve stopped making sense to anyone other than yourself.”
Fisher wasn’t listening to me, though. “For a second I actually wondered if she’d come back,” he said quietly. “Donna. To get a lot closer to me this time.”
I just sat there staring at him.
“I know how stupid it sounds,” he said. “Worse than stupid. But why the dreams, Jack?”
“Because…Look. Did you ever sleep with Donna?”
“Jack, I really didn’t notice that she existed. That was the point. That was what I felt so bad about, that there was someone who had thought so much about me and I barely registered she took up space on Planet Earth.”
“Here’s what I think,” I said. “Donna is dead and gone everywhere except in your head. You still think what happened is your fault. But the truth is, you can’t do anything about other people. Everybody’s a pod person in the end. There’s the person you know and the person you don’t—the one who was around before you met them, who does stuff when you’re not there, who will persist and do further things after you’re gone. The person you do know becomes almost an extension of your own mind, your own self. So it’s the one you don’t know that’s truly them.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I guess that’s right.”
I nodded, pursing my lips like a sage eighteen-year-old, and for a moment it was as if the walls had shaded away and the two of us sat in chairs by the side of a deserted running track, as if all our friends had gone on to other things and left us far behind, and we would be left sitting there for all time.
I think we talked some more, but not much, and at some stage I fell asleep. I woke to the sound of ringing. I jerked my head up to see Fisher crashed out in the other chair, the red lights of the bedside clock saying 3:18.
The ringing sound was my phone. I fumbled it out.
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“Is this Jack Whalen?”
“Who is this?”
There was a pause. “My name is Bill Anderson.”
chapter
TWENTY-FIVE
Finally Shepherd called Rose back. He had more freedom than most, but there was such a thing as pushing it too far. He hoped she’d get it over with on the phone, but she insisted on meeting him face-to-face. She had wanted to do it in the old town, near the Square, but he said no. He’d never liked it there. The air was too rich. It felt crowded even when no one was around.