Part 39 (1/2)

Perry had that kind of stubbornness. Another word for it might have been faith. He believed in something, and he saw it. He would be, she knew, an academic. A scholar. A researcher. He would never be able to leave well enough alone, even when it would clearly be better to do so. She'd seen that about him during the very first sessions of the seminar, and already been reminded of herself at that age-how the other students would be headed off to the bars, but how she wanted, herself, to be bent over something dusty in some study room, inventing questions to answer.

Mira rested a hand on his shoulder as she took the exit toward campus. He didn't stir. She vowed to herself that she would talk to him seriously about his academic pursuits, soon. Degrees and programs and courses of study. Soon she'd have to wake him, but not now. Now her only job was to drive them safely to the next stop. Through the whiteout, as he slept on.

99.

Ellen Graham's kitchen clock echoed through the rooms of her house as they talked on for hours. In the morning, Ellen would begin to make phone calls-the State Police, the university administration, the FBI-to speak to officials, to lawyers, to journalists, to start her final crusade. But for now she seemed to want company, so Sh.e.l.ly stayed.

Ellen told her about her separation from her husband six months earlier. (”Some couples grow closer with this sort of trauma, they tell me, but most don't. We didn't.”) They talked on about their childhoods, their pasts. Sh.e.l.ly told Ellen about her brother-the flag-draped coffin-and then, without intending to, she told her about Jeremy.

Perhaps, Sh.e.l.ly realized even as the story was coming out of her mouth, she'd never intended to tell anyone at all.

Perhaps until this moment, telling it, it hadn't really happened.

But there was no taking it back now, or denying it, after Ellen's reaction: ”Oh, my sweet f.u.c.king Jesus Christ,” Ellen cried out, and when she leapt to her feet, her own cat, which had sat like a statue through the entire evening, came suddenly to life and ran from the room. Sh.e.l.ly looked at the place where it had been sitting, and felt she could almost see its permanent aura still glowing where it had been.

Ellen began to pace then, and then she went back to the buffet, took out the cigarette she'd tossed into it hours ago, lit it with a shaking match, and dragged on it as if she were trying to smoke it down to the filter all at once. Afterward, she said, ”I need a drink, Sh.e.l.ly. What would you like?”

Sh.e.l.ly never had a chance to answer. Ellen returned with a bottle of white wine and two gla.s.ses. She poured the wine. They drank in silence until Ellen said, ”Your life is in danger, Sh.e.l.ly.”

Sh.e.l.ly said nothing.

”You're not going back to your apartment, maybe ever, and certainly not tonight,” Ellen said.

”No,” Sh.e.l.ly said. ”Tonight I thought I'd find a Motel 6.”

”Of course you won't,” Ellen said. ”For one thing, look at the snow.” She nodded toward the tiny crack between the curtains in her front window. ”You can't drive in that. Plus you have nowhere to go.”

Sh.e.l.ly felt the tears coming in to her eyes. Nowhere to go. But also the kindness, again, and from someone who'd suffered things Sh.e.l.ly could not, herself, begin to imagine. Such a surplus of kindness. Had Sh.e.l.ly ever met anyone kinder?

”No,” Sh.e.l.ly said. ”I couldn't.”

”Yes. I'll make up the couch for you, sweetheart.”

Ellen poured more wine into Sh.e.l.ly's gla.s.s then, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She never mentioned Jeremy or Josie again-another bit of compa.s.sion for which Sh.e.l.ly was incredibly grateful.

Mostly they drank their wine in silence.

The wine was so pale it made the gla.s.ses-beautiful crystal goblets, surely another heirloom, or a wedding gift-look emptier than they had when they were actually empty.

100.

”My roommate and I have been calling you the Cookie Girl for so long it's hard for me to remember your actual name. And also, no offense, Deb, but you sort of don't seem like a 'Deb.' ”

Deb smiled. Craig liked that there was the tiniest gap between her two front teeth. It was the kind of thing most girls he'd known would have had four thousand dollars' worth of orthodontia work to fix, but it was cute on Deb. She said, ”So, what do I seem like?”

Craig shrugged apologetically and admitted, ”You seem like a Debbie?”

Her smile faded then, and she looked down into the mug of tea he'd made for her-or, really, that she'd made for herself after he'd nuked the water. When he couldn't find a tea bag, she'd gone to her own apartment and come back with two.

She said, ”I used to be Debbie. I changed to Deb when I came here. I thought it might make it a little harder to Google me. The whole story's there, of course, and my photograph right along with it. But Richards is a common name. 'Deb Richards' confuses it a bit, or so I was hoping. At least it would slow someone down.”

Craig grimaced. ”Sorry,” he said. He thought a minute and then said, ”Maybe I could call you Debbie, like, in private?”

”If you must,” she said. ”But can I call you Craigy then?”

”No,” Craig said. ”Sounds like a negative adjective.”

She took a sip of her tea, and then looked at him and said, ”You're really smart, Craig.”

”Thanks,” Craig said. ”But you also think I'm crazy.”

”No,” she said. ”I don't think you're crazy . . . exactly.”

They both laughed, but then she put the mug of tea on the floor and turned to him. She said, ”But I do think you've been through something terrible. Something crazy-making. I used to see him around, too, Craig. I mean, I saw him every time I closed my eyes, but I'd catch him out of the corner of my eye, too. Like, at the library. I'd be on one side of the shelves and there'd be someone on the other side, and, you know how you can get a little glimpse between the books sometimes? I'd get that glimpse. This happened more than once, and it was always him. So I quit going to the library in town. I made my mom drive me into the city. I mean, it's different with me. I didn't know him before I-”

She stopped before saying ”killed him,” but they both knew it was what she was going to say. They'd talked for hours. Never once had she called what had happened to her an ”accident,” but the one time she'd spoken the words killed him aloud, she'd had to run from the room to the bathroom, where Craig had heard the water running in the sink for a long time.

”So it was easy to think that every guy about that age, blond, skinny, was him. And every time I saw a guy on a bike. Even still.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Craig reached over and put his hand on her shoulder.

”I didn't really think it was him,” she went on. ”I didn't think he was haunting me or anything, but it was like what you described tonight. It would just happen. I'd think I'd seen him, and suddenly everything would be different. Like, the whole world. My whole life. In that second. Instead of being horrified, I was happy, and the universe was suddenly operating with these completely different laws, and-”

Craig said, ”I know.”

”And all the consequences, they were just nothing. It was like, for those two seconds, I was free, and-”

”I know,” Craig said. He was laughing now, despite himself, but she was shaking her head.

She said, ”Except that I'd be wrong. It wasn't him.”

Craig nodded. He took a sip of the tea. It was minty, green. It tasted to him like something a witch might have come up with to cure a broken heart or a bad case of hives. It tasted like a supernatural garden. He had always hated the herbal teas his mother tried to convince him to drink, but he loved this tea.

He inhaled, looked up from the mug, and said, ”Except, Debbie, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but this is different. I saw her. I truly saw her. This was Nicole.”