“Don’t look at me like that, Peter. I’m not insane. Sit down. Go ahead, sit. I’ll tell you what happened.” Peter cocked his head slightly, noncommittal, and found a vinyl-covered chair. He pulled it close to the bed.
“It happened forty years ago,” said Mrs. Fennell, turning her crab-apple head to face Peter. “I’d recently been diagnosed with diabetes. I was insulin dependent, but hadn’t yet realized how careful I had to be. My husband Kevin had gone shopping. I’d had my morning insulin injection, but hadn’t eaten yet. The phone rang. It was a woman I knew who nattered on endlessly, or so it seemed. I found myself sweating and getting a headache, but I didn’t want to say anything. I realized my heart was pounding and my arm was trembling and my vision was blurring. I was about to say something to the woman, to beg off and go gel something to eat when, all of a sudden, I collapsed. I was having an insulin reaction. Hypoglycemia.”
Although her face was impassive, deadened by strokes, her voice became increasingly animated. “Suddenly,” she said, “I found myself outside of my body. I could see myself as if from above, lying there on the kitchen floor. I kept rising higher and higher until everything sort of collapsed into a tunnel, a long, spiraling tunnel. And at the end of this tunnel, there was a beautiful, pure, bright white light. It was very bright, but it didn’t hurt at all to look at it. This feeling of calm, of peace, came over me. It was absolutely wonderful, an unconditional acceptance, a feeling of love. I found myself moving toward the light.”
Peter tilted his head. He didn’t know what to say Mrs. Fennell went on. “From out of the edges of the light a figure appeared. I didn’t recognize it at first but then suddenly I saw that it was me. Except it wasn’t me; it was someone who looked a lot like me, but wasn’t me. I’d been born a twin, but my twin sister Mary had died a few days after we were born. I realized that this was Mary, come to greet me. She floated closer and took my hand, and we drifted down the tunnel together, toward that light.
“And then I started seeing images from my life, as though they were on movie film, pictures of me and my parents, me and my husband, me at work, at play. And Mary and I were reviewing each of these scenes, where I’d done right and where I’d done wrong. There was no sense that I was being judged, but it seemed important that I understand everything, realize the effect my actions had on others. I saw myself playing in a schoolyard, and cheating on an exam, and working as a candy striper in a hospital, and oh so many other things, vividly, with unbelievable clarity. And all the while we were growing closer to that beautiful, beautiful light.
“Then, suddenly, it was over. I felt myself being pulled backward and downward. I didn’t want to let go of Mary’s hand — I’d lost her once, after all, had never really had the chance to know her — but my fingers slipped from hers and I drifted backward, away from the light, and then, suddenly, I was back in my body. I could tell there were other people there. Soon my eyes opened, and I saw a man in a uniform. A paramedic. He had a syringe in his hand. He’d given me an injection of glucagon. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ he was saying. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
“The woman I’d been talking to on the phone — her name was Mary, by coincidence — had finally realized that I’d fainted and had hung up and called for an ambulance. The paramedics had had to break down my front door. If they’d arrived a few minutes later, I’d have been gone for good.
“So, Peter, I know what death is like. And I don’t fear it. It changed my whole attitude toward life, that experience. I learned to see everything with perspective, take everything in stride. And although I know I’ve only got a few days left now, I’m not afraid. I know my Kevin will be waiting for me in that light. And Mary, too.”
Peter had listened intently to the whole thing. He’d heard of such stories before, of course, and had even read part of Moody’s famous book Life After Life when he’d been trapped at a relative’s cottage and the choice was that or a book on how sun signs supposedly affected your love life. He didn’t know what to make of such stories then, and was even more uncertain now.
“Did you tell any of your doctors here about this?” Peter asked.
Peggy Fennell snorted. “Those guys come through here like they’re marathon runners and my chart is the baton. Why in God’s name would I share my most intimate experiences with them?”
Peter nodded.
“Anyway,” said Mrs. Fennell, “that’s what death’s like, Peter.”
“I — ah, I’d—”
“You’d still like to do your experiment, though, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
Mrs. Fennell moved her head slightly, the closest thing to a nod she could manage. “Very well,” she said at last. “I trust you, Peter. You seem a good man, and I thank you for listening to me. Go get your equipment.”
It had been one hell of a week since Cathy had made her announcement. They weren’t talking much, and when they did talk, it was about things such as Peter’s experiment with the superEEG. Nothing personal, nothing directly related to them. Just safe topics to fill some of the long, melancholy silences.
Now, on Saturday afternoon, Peter sat on the living-room couch, reading. No electronic book this time, though: instead, he was reading an honest-to-goodness paperback.
Peter had only recently discovered Robert B. Parker’s old Spenser novels. There was something appealing about the absolute, unequivocal trust shared by Spenser and Hawk, and a wonderful honesty in the relationship between Spenser and Susan Silverman. Parker had never given Spenser a first name, but Peter thought his own — meaning “rock” — would have been a fine choice. Certainly, Spenser was more rock-stable than Peter Hobson was.
On the wall behind him was a framed print of an Alex Colville painting. Peter had originally thought Colville static, but, over the years, his work had grown on him, and he found this particular painting — a man sitting on a cottage porch, an old hound dog lying at his feet — very appealing. Peter had finally realized that the lack of movement in Colville’s art was designed to convey permanence: these are the things that last, these are the things that matter.
Peter still didn’t know what to make of it all, didn’t know what future he and Cathy might have. He realized he’d just read a funny scene — Spenser deflecting Quirk’s questions with a series of vintage quips, Hawk standing motionless nearby, a grin splitting his features — but it hadn’t amused Peter the way it should have. He slipped a bookmark into the paperback and set it down beside him.
Cathy came down the stairs. She was wearing her hair down and was dressed in snug blue jeans and a loose-fitting white blouse with the top two buttons undone — attire, Peter realized, that could be viewed as either sexy or neutrally practical. She clearly was as confused as Peter, carefully trying to send signals that hopefully would be correct regardless of what mood he was in. “May I join you?” she said, her voice a feather fluttering in a breeze.
Peter nodded.
The couch consisted of three large cushions. Peter was sitting on the leftmost. Cathy sat on the border between the middle one and the rightmost, again trying for both closeness and distance simultaneously.
They sat together for a long time, saying nothing.
Peter kept moving his head slowly back and forth. He felt warm. His eyes weren’t focusing properly. Not enough sleep, he guessed. But then, suddenly, he realized that he was about to start crying. He took a deep breath, trying to forestall it. He remembered the last time he’d really cried: he’d been twelve years old. He’d been ashamed then, thinking he was too old to cry, but he’d had a frightening shock from an electrical outlet. In the thirty intervening years, he’d maintained his stoic face no matter what, but now, welling up within him…