Aftershock & Others (27 page)

“I saw someone,” I blurted.

She froze, staring at me, her eyes bright and wide. “Did you? Did you really? You saw Timmy? Didn’t I tell you!”

“It wasn’t your son.”

She frowned. “Then who?”

“Remember by the tree, just before we got hit, when you asked me if I had any children? I said no, because…because I don’t. At least not anymore. But I did.”

Kim stared, wide-eyed. “
Did
?”

“A beautiful, beautiful daughter, the most wonderful little girl in the world.”

“Oh, dear God! You too?”

My throat had thickened to the point where I could only nod.

She stumbled to the bed and sat next to me. The thin mattress sagged deeply under our combined weight.

“You’re sure it was her?”

Again I nodded.

“I didn’t see her. And you didn’t see Timmy?”

I shook my head, trying to remember. Finally I could speak.

“Only Beth.”

“How old was she?”

“Eight.”

“Timmy was only five. Was it…?” Her own throat seemed to clog as she placed her hand on my arm. “Did she have cancer too?”

“No.” The memory began to hammer against the walls of the cell where I’d bricked it up. “She was murdered. Right in front of me.” I held up my left arm to show her the seven-inch scar running up from the underside of my wrist. “This was all I got, but Beth died. And I couldn’t save her.”

Kim made a choking noise and I felt her fingers dig into my arm, her nails like claws.

“No!” Her voice was muffled because she’d jammed the damp towel over her mouth. “Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no! You poor…oh, God, how…?”

I heard a sound so full of pain it transfixed me for an instant until I realized it had come from me.

“No. I can’t. Please don’t ask. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

How could I talk about what I couldn’t even think about it? I knew if I freed those memories, even for a single moment, I’d never cage them again. They’d rampage through my being as they’d done before, devouring me alive from the inside.

I buried my face against Kim’s neck. She cradled me in her arms and rocked me like a baby.

“What about Timmy’s father?”
I said, biting into my Egg McMuffin. “Does he know about all this?”

After clinging to Kim for I don’t know how long, I’d finally pulled myself together. We were hungry, but my clothes were still wet. So she took my car and made a breakfast run to Mickey D’s. I sat on the bed, Kim took the room’s one upholstered chair. The coffee was warming my insides, the caffeine pulling me partway out of my funk, but I was still well below sea level.

“He doesn’t know Timmy exists. Literally. We never married. He’s a good man, very bright, but I dropped him when I learned I was pregnant.”

“I don’t follow.”

“He’d have wanted to marry me, or have some part in my baby’s life. I didn’t want that.” My expression must have registered how offensive I found that, because she quickly explained. “You’ve got to understand how I was then: a super career woman who could do it all, wanted it all, and strictly on her own terms. I went through the pregnancy by myself, took maternity leave at the last possible moment, figuring I’d deliver the child—I knew he was a boy by the third month—and set him up with a nanny while I jumped right back into the race. I saw myself spending a sufficient amount of quality time with him as I molded him to be a mover and a shaker, just like his mother.” She shook her head. “What a jerk.”

“And after the delivery?” I’d guessed the answer.

She beamed. “When they put that little bundle into my arms, everything changed. He was a miracle, by far the finest thing I’d ever done in my life. Once I got him home, I couldn’t stop holding him. And when I would finally put him into his bassinet, I’d pull up a chair and sit there looking at him…I’d put my pinkie against his palm and his little fingers would close around it, almost like a reflex, and that’s how I’d stay, just sitting and staring, listening to him breathe as he held my finger.”

I felt my throat tighten. I remembered watching Beth sleep when she was an infant, marveling at her pudgy cheeks, counting the tiny veins on the surfaces of her closed eyelids.

“You sound like a wonderful mother.”

“I was. That’s no brag. It’s just that it’s simply not my nature to do things halfway. Everything else in my life took a backseat to Timmy, I mean
way
back. It damn near killed me to end my maternity leave, but I arranged to do a lot of work from home. I wanted to be near him all the time.” She blinked a few times and sniffed. “I’m so glad I made the effort. Because he didn’t stay around very long.” She rubbed a hand across her face and looked at me with reddened eyes. “How long since Beth…?”

“Five years.” The longing welled up in me. “Sometimes I feel like I was talking to her just yesterday, other times it seems like she’s been gone forever.”

“But don’t you see?” Kim leaned forward. “She’s not gone. She’s still here.”

I shook my head. “I wish I could believe that.”

The lightning episode was becoming less and less real with each passing minute. Despite what I’d seen, I found myself increasingly reluctant to buy into this.

“But you saw her, didn’t you? You
knew
her. Isn’t seeing believing?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes believing is seeing.”

“But each of us saw our dead child. Can we
both
be crazy?”

“There’s something called shared delusion. I could be—”

“Damn it!” She catapulted from the chair. “I’m not going to let you do this!” She yanked my pants from atop the lampshade and threw them at my face. “You can’t take this from me! I won’t let you or anybody else tell me—”

I grabbed her wrist as she stormed past me. “Kim! I
want
to believe! Can’t you see there’s nothing in the world I want more? And that’s what worries me. I may want it too much.”

I pulled her into my arms and we stood there, clinging to each other in anguished silence. I could feel her hot breath on my bare shoulder. She lifted her face to me.

“Don’t fight it, Joe,” she said, her voice soft. “Go with it. Otherwise you’ll be denying yourself—”

I kissed her on the lips.

She drew back. I didn’t know where the impulse had come from, and it was a toss-up as to which of us was more surprised. We stared at each other for a few heartbeats, and then our lips were together again. We seemed to be trying to devour each other. She tugged at my towel, I pulled at her sun dress, she wore nothing beneath it, and we tumbled onto the unmade bed, skin to skin, rolling and climbing all over each other, frantic mouths and hands everywhere until we finally locked together, riding out a storm of our own making.

Afterward, we clung to
each other under the sheet. I stroked her back, feeling guilty because I knew it had been better for me than her.

“Sorry that was so quick. I’m out of practice.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she murmured, kissing my shoulder. “Maybe it’s all the shocks I’ve taken, but orgasms seem to be few and far between for me these days. I’m just glad to have someone I can feel close to. You don’t know how lonely it’s been, keeping this to myself, unable to share it. It’s wonderful to be able to talk about it with someone who understands.”

“I wish I did understand. Why is this happening?”

“Maybe all those volts alter the nervous system, change the brain’s modes of perception.”

“But I’ve never heard of anything like this. Why don’t other lightning strike victims mention seeing a dead loved one?”

“Maybe they
have
seen them and never mentioned it. You’re the only one I’ve told. But maybe it has to be someone who died during a storm. Did Beth—?”

“No,” I said quickly, not allowing the scene to take shape in my mind. “Perfect weather.”

“Then maybe it has to do with the fact that they both died as children, and they’re still attached to their parents. They hadn’t let go of us in life yet, and maybe that carries over into death.”

“Almost sounds as if they’re waiting for us.”

“Maybe they are.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop and Kim snuggled closer.

Later, when we went
back to pick up Kim’s car, we walked up to where the lightning had struck. The top of the Nelson pine was split and charred. As we stood under its branches, I relived the moment, seeing Beth again, reaching for her…

“I wish she’d been closer.”

“Yes.” Kim turned to me. “Isn’t it frustrating? When I took my second hit, up in Orlando, Timmy was closer than he’d been in Texas, and I thought he might move closer with each succeeding hit. But it hasn’t worked that way. He stays about fifty yards away.”

“Really? Beth seemed at least twice that.” I pointed to the marshy field. “She was way over there.”

Kim pointed north. “Timmy was that way.”

I swiveled back and forth between where I’d seen Beth, and where Kim had seen Timmy, and an idea began to take shape.

“Which way were you facing when you saw Timmy in Texas?”

She closed her eyes. “Let me think…the sun always rose over the end of the dock, so I guess I was facing northeast.”

“Good.” I took her shoulders and rotated her until she faced east. “Now, show me where Timmy was in relation to the end of the dock when he appeared in Texas.”

She pointed north.

“I’ll be damned,” I said and trotted down the slope.

“Where’re you going?”

I reached into my car and plucked the compass from my dashboard. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep I go out for long aimless drives and wind up God knows where. At those times it’s handy to know which direction you’re headed.

“All right,” I said when I returned. “This morning Timmy was that way—the compass says that’s a few degrees east of north. If you followed that line from here, it would run through New Jersey, wouldn’t it?”

She nodded, her brow furrowing. “Yes.”

“But in Texas—where in Texas?”

“White River Lake. West Texas.”

“Okay. You saw him in a northeast direction. Follow that line from West Texas and I’ll bet it takes you—”

“To Jersey!” She was squeezing my upper arm with both hands and jumping up and down like a little girl. “Oh, God! That’s where we lived! Timmy spent his whole life in Princeton!”

It’s also where he died, I thought.

“I think a trip to Princeton is in order, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, God, yes!” Her voice cranked up to light speed. “Do you think that’s where he is? Do you think he’s still at the house? Oh, dear God! Why didn’t I think of that?” She settled down and looked at me. “And what about Beth? You saw her…where?”

“East-northeast,” I said. I didn’t need the compass to figure that.

“Where does that line go? Orlando? Kissimmee? Did you live around there?”

I shook my head. “No. We lived in Tampa.”

“But that’s the opposite direction. What’s east-northeast from here?”

I stared at the horizon. “Italy.”