Comparing the build and general outline of the Visitor to whoever chased me brought something else to the surface. Dad had said he thought he saw an old neighbor, George Nell, driving down the street after hearing the shot. But George was dead. I conjured up how the man had appeared in life, and it gave me pause because he physically resembled both the Visitor and Crane/DeMarco. It wasn’t a stretch to think Dad had seen one of the men and his memory had used George as a placeholder.
I doused the glass with another shot of bourbon and went into the living room, legs feeling more like they were attached to me with each step. Even if it had been the Visitor who’d chased me the night before, one fact remained unchanged: I definitely wasn’t dead. So what did that mean?
“That he’s a fan,” I said to the empty room, and a wild laugh crept up out of my throat. I put one hand over my mouth because I didn’t like the sound of it, but that only made me laugh harder. The guy had been a true-blue reader of my work, and my teeth were still in my head because of it. Goddamned hilarious. When the laughter finally faded to giggles, I swallowed the last of the bourbon and sat.
Really it came down to two things. One, did I believe the Visitor that HerringBone didn’t have Rachel and the boys? And two, was I going to do what he said and quit looking for her?
Maybe.
And no.
Everyone has a breaking point—I knew that. I also knew I hadn’t reached mine yet.
Not yet.
16
In the pale light coming around the curtains, I kissed the edge of her shoulder blade.
She slept on her stomach. I learned this after our third time together when she’d drifted off afterward. Bad habit, doctors would say. But how the valley of her spine looked in the light, the lines and shadows in the hollow of her lower back, I wouldn’t have her sleep any other way.
Her face was turned to one side, a lank of hair draped there. I tucked it behind her ear, and she shifted, opening her eyes. A smile.
Those minutes, before we had to return to the world, were the worst and the sweetest all at once.
I thought of things to say, everything I wanted to tell her. How I knew her favorite color was an emerald green called Ireland. How one side of her mouth always quirked when she was watching her kids play. How she rubbed the same spot behind her right ear whenever she was nervous or worried about something, which was a lot. How I wanted to take that worry away as much as I could, as much as she’d let me.
All this I’d wanted to say and hadn’t the last time we were together. Maybe if I had, things would be different. I didn’t know. Words are funny things. They’re warped mirrors of what we mean, and only once in a while do they reflect the truth. Maybe that’s our fault, and maybe we can’t help it. Maybe we do the best we can.
I thought about this as I sat at Dad’s table, with the misted air clinging to the windows, obscuring the outside world. I hadn’t slept. Hadn’t even tried. My mind was a hamster, my head the wheel. Round and round.
How far would this go? What would my life look like in six months? If I kept pushing, would I even have a life in six months? What Kel said the night before kept rushing up and receding like an insistent tide. How I could’ve been shot and left dead in the woods and she and Dad would’ve been left with questions. I didn’t want that, but what I wanted less was to find out Rachel and the boys were in some abandoned gravel pit or stuffed into a barrel somewhere. It happened. All the time. That the Loop was quiet and filled with retirees and young families didn’t mean squat.
“Anything new?” Dad asked. He was finishing his second cup of coffee and watching me from across the table. I suppose I’d been too quiet during breakfast.
“No. Not really,” I said, having decided the night before I wasn’t going to mention the Visitor to Dad or Kel. They were worried enough as it was. “You been locking your back door?”
“Sometimes. Why?”
“You should make it a habit.”
“We lived here forty years. Never had to worry about it before.”
“Yeah, and people weren’t getting killed up the street before.” My thoughts were of the Visitor, but the lock on my door hadn’t stopped him. Even so, some deterrence was better than none.
Dad grunted and folded the morning paper. “I didn’t say it the other day because I know you are, but I want you to be careful, Andy. Whatever happened, it’s still happening.”
“I know, and I am.” I started clearing the table and changed the subject. “Kel and the girls are coming over tomorrow for your birthday. Gonna grill ribs if that’s okay.”