Sky above, sky below, and a question for a man adrift: Could the golden birthmark below Maddison’s navel have been a tattoo?
No. He vividly recalled the texture of it under his finger and tongue. It was not perfectly flat but slightly raised, as had been Emily’s. Tattoos had no dimension. This spot hadn’t been prickled into her skin with needles and ink. It had been real, hers since she had entered the world.
She was either Emily, incredibly untouched by time, and for whatever reason could not reveal her true identity to him, or she was in some way an avatar of Emily, embodying her mind and spirit. He had no clue how such an avatar could exist. His ever-spinning imagination couldn’t produce even a fragile thread of explanation. In either case, Emily or avatar, it was a matter of magic, in which he did not believe. And in either case, she was essentially Emily.
I’m a needy creature, Davey. I need to be loved every day, every hour. I know so well the loneliness of being unloved. Until you, I’ve been starved for love all my life.
Surely not.
But I have. Starved. And now I can’t get my fill. Until you, life was . . . a horror.
Horror? For a girl with your mind, your heart, your charm? How could that ever be?
Loneliness, enduring fear, a sense that society has gone mad and I’m falling, falling through the madness of it. That’s horror enough for me.
In memory, he could hear the haunting quality of her voice, which grew more marked in the last two sentences and which he did not believe she could have faked. She had lived through something horrific, and her heart and mind were scarred by it.
I feel safe here. Only here. With you. I feel so safe. Tell me it’s forever.
If Maddison had only him, it was equally the case that he had only her. She was his to save, and in the saving of her, he might save himself.
Doubt had no place in a true love knot, and suspicion could not untie it.
A great egret, snow-white with long black legs and a wingspan of at least four feet, issued as if out of nowhere and flew low across the lake, seeming luminous, otherworldly, and its reflection in the water was a doubling of the miracle of its sudden appearance, so that David’s heart was lifted.
He was about to get up from the bench when his phone rang. It was Josefa Alvarez, who took care of Calista Carlino. She was at a hospital and in tears. “Calie’s had a stroke. Please come, come quickly, David, she’s dying.”
| 54 |
When David arrived at the hospital’s intensive-care unit, Emily’s mother had already passed. Weeping, Josefa Alvarez held fast to him for consolation.
He couldn’t tell if the small room was warm or not, for cold radiated outward from his marrow. He wasn’t able to stop trembling. White ceiling and walls, white floor, white bedsheets, white fluorescent light: It was a room in an ice palace.
Deep in grief, Josefa went home while David remained at Calista’s bedside, waiting for the attending physician who, he’d been promised, would shortly speak with him.
The lady lay as though sleeping, her mouth and eyes closed. Although she was pale, death had not lined her face or left her with a tortured expression. She was still lovely and appeared to be in perfect health, though she would not ever open her eyes or speak to break this last of all silences.
David gripped the bed railing to steady himself. His legs were weak. He recalled what Maddison said about feeling as though society had gone mad, as if she were in free fall through all the madness. After the events of the past six days, especially after the bizarre experience in the Ockland residence with the venomous Linette, David was filled with foreboding, with the conviction that he was on the verge of a long fall into an abyss.
He blamed himself for failing Calista just as he had failed Emily. On the one hand, this sense of guilt was irrational. On the other hand . . . he knew why perhaps he should feel at fault, though he was afraid to consider the issue too closely. Not here, not yet.
A nurse entered the room and expressed her condolences as she gently drew the sheet over Calista’s face.
Pushing a gurney, an orderly followed close behind the nurse.
“Where are you taking her?”
“Down to the holding room in the basement. Whatever mortician you make arrangements with can assume custody of the body there.”
David wanted to slow things down, take time to accommodate himself to this terrible turn of events, to get his mind around how his life had changed, take time to catch his breath. Calista’s death had been so sudden, and now the haste with which she was being moved to the hospital morgue seemed to dishonor her.
As the nurse opened the door for the orderly with his gurney, Dr. Theodore Goshen entered. He was dressed in green scrubs. Fiftyish, with a thickening waist and thinning blond hair, he had the weary look of a man who’d seen more death than he had bargained for when the romance of the healer’s profession had long ago lured him into medical school.