Dreamland: A Novel (15 page)

Once we finished eating,
we wandered down the beach to the Don. The beachside restaurant was half full; I saw others taking in the evening from loungers at the poolside. Another couple was making their way from the hotel to the beach; lost in their own conversation, they walked past without seeming to notice us. Morgan stopped on the sand just steps from the deck and turned toward me. Staring at her, I thought again that I’d never seen anyone more beautiful.

“I guess this is it,” I said.

She seemed to study the hotel before turning back to me. “Thank you for today,” she said. “For everything.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “It was the best day I’ve had here.”

“Me, too,” she said, with such tenderness that what happened next seemed inevitable.

I closed the gap between us and tugged her gently toward me. I saw her eyes widen ever so slightly, and for an instant I wondered if I should stop. Though she’d kissed me twice, I think both of us knew this one would be different, that this kiss would carry
with it emotions that neither of us had anticipated until this very moment.

But I could no longer help myself, and tilting my head, I closed my eyes as our lips came together, softly at first, and then with even more passion. I felt her body press against mine, and when our tongues met, warmth surged like an underground current through me. Wrapping both arms around her, I heard her give a deep-throated purr, and her hand wound its way up into my hair.

As we kissed, my mind searched for answers, trying to grasp when and how it had happened. It might have been while we were in the kayaks or when I heard her sing or even while we had dinner together—but I suddenly understood that I’d fallen in love with this woman, a woman I’d met only days ago; already, though, I felt as if I’d known her forever.

When we separated, my feelings threatened to overflow, but I forced myself to remain quiet. We simply stared at each other until I finally let out a breath, not realizing that I’d been holding it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, Morgan,” I said, my voice almost hoarse.

“Good night, Colby,” she answered, studying my face as if committing it to memory, and minutes later, as I walked down the beach, I found myself reliving the kiss, certain that my life would never be the same.

Beverly couldn’t stop thinking
about cameras in the bus stations.

How could she have been so dumb? Hadn’t there been a zillion movies and television shows where the government used those cameras to catch spies and criminals? Oh, she knew electronic surveillance wasn’t quite as sophisticated as what Hollywood portrayed, but even local television news confirmed that cameras were everywhere these days. They were installed on street corners, in traffic lights, above the cash registers at small businesses. She’d remembered their presence when she took Tommie to the convenience store to get him something to eat, so why hadn’t she considered something even more obvious?

With shaking legs and racing mind, Beverly somehow made it to the table, and she was still sitting there when Tommie wandered into the kitchen. He plopped into his seat, wiping the sleep from his eyes. To steady her fraying nerves, she forced herself to rise. She poured him a bowl of cereal, added milk, and brought his breakfast to the table along with a spoon.

She flashed a quick smile, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was barely holding it together, then went to make his lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple, along with change for milk from the cafeteria. No Doritos or Fritos or Oreos or Nutter Butters, sadly, but right now it was all she could do to keep from glancing out the window, expecting to find Gary standing in the yard.

“I heard someone last night,” Tommie eventually said.

His words nearly made her jump. She tried to remember the last time he’d spoken first in the morning, without her having to coax it out of him. When his words finally registered, she felt another surge of anxiety.

“That was probably me,” she said. “I was up late cleaning the kitchen.”

“I heard someone
outside.
”

Water was dripping from the faucet, the
plink-plink-plink
steady and rhythmic, clashing with morning birdsong. An old truck puttered along the gravel road, and she saw an arm wave from the window before it vanished from sight. Mist rose from the fields as though a cloud had dropped from the sky.

“There was no one outside,” she said. “I would have heard them.”

“He was on the roof.”

A year ago, Tommie had begun having nightmares. She thought it had something to do with the television he watched, or maybe the book
Where the Wild Things Are.
In his early nightmares, he would awaken with cries, claiming that he was being chased by a monster. Sometimes the monster was like a dinosaur; other times it was a wild animal or a hooded figure of some sort. And always, always, Tommie swore that the monster was calling his name.

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“I was awake. I could hear the music from the kitchen.”

Had it been Gary, she told herself, he would have already been in the kitchen. Had it been Gary’s associates, they would have already loaded Tommie and her into the black SUV with tinted windows. Trying to keep her own worries in check, she found the hair wax and smoothed down Tommie’s cowlick, even though her hands were trembling ever so slightly.

“I’ll check after you go to school, but it was probably squirrels.”

“It called my name.”

Beverly closed her eyes, feeling a sigh of relief. It was definitely a dream, thank God. But the relief was short-lived, washed away by her earlier dread like a sandcastle in a rising tide.

“I was singing in the kitchen along with the radio. That’s probably what you heard.” Her voice sounded strangely tinny and distant to her ears.

Tommie glanced up at her, looking suddenly older than his years and younger at the same time. “Maybe,” he finally said, and she decided to change the subject.

“If you want, you can bring a friend over after school.”

“I don’t have any friends here.”

“You will,” she said. “I’m sure there are lots of nice kids in your class. Maybe you’ll get to know them better on field day. You said that’s coming up, right?”

He shrugged, and with that, he grew silent as he finished his cereal. Afterward, he tipped the bowl up, drinking the milk. Beverly thought again that she should eat as soon as she got him off to school, since she hadn’t had much the day before. She felt like she could write a book for people who wanted to lose weight; she’d call it
The Too-Broke-to-Eat Diet.

She loaded Tommie’s lunch into his backpack, then walked with him out to the stump by the road. They took a seat, waiting.

“If you want to catch more tadpoles later, I’ll try to find an old jar we could use,” she offered. “You might not be able to bring them for show-and-tell, but you could bring them back to the house for a while if you want.”

Tommie studied the ground. “I don’t want to die, Mom,” he said.

Beverly blinked. “What did you say?”

He turned toward her, his forehead wrinkled. “I said I don’t want them to die, Mom.”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly thinking about cameras and nightmares and too little sleep and not enough food, and in the rising heat of the morning, it was hard to keep all her thoughts straight. She needed to do better. She needed to make sure that Tommie felt safe.

The yellow bus, squeaking and groaning, came to a stop; the door squealed as it opened. Tommie rose and climbed into the bus without looking back, without even saying goodbye.

Cameras.

The word kept ricocheting around her mind like a pachinko ball. She needed a distraction—anything to settle her nerves—but her hands weren’t steady enough to start painting just yet. Instead, she went upstairs to Tommie’s room. Though he’d had a nightmare, she’d told her son that she would check to make sure, and that’s what good mothers did. His window was set into an alcove, making it impossible to see if anyone could even reach the roof. She examined the ceiling and lay down in Tommie’s bed. Tried to imagine where the sounds might have been, if there were any sounds, but pretending to be Tommie didn’t help.

She went outside, backing away from the house to get adequate perspective. Tommie’s room was on the side, and a single glance confirmed that the steep pitch of the roof made it even more unlikely that anyone could have been walking around up there. But one of the oak trees had a branch that stretched over part of the roof, making it essentially a squirrel highway. If there
was wind, the branch might even scrape the shingles, and she tried to remember whether there’d been any wind last night.

The only thing that was certain was that no one had been on the roof; no one had whispered Tommie’s name. She’d known that already; nonetheless, she was glad she’d made herself sure of it. Just as she was now sure that there’d been cameras in the bus stations. They’d probably been required since 9/11, now that she thought about it, and Gary, she knew, had the power to access all of them.

Though her mind felt even more swimmy than it had over the last couple of days, she forced herself to think. Back inside, she took a seat at the table and rubbed her temples, pressing hard with her fingers.

Gary would no doubt demand to see footage from the local bus station for Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and maybe even Monday morning. He would sit with his face close to the computer screen, fast-forwarding at times, watching carefully,
searching.
Even if he didn’t recognize her right away, he would undoubtedly recognize his son. It might take him hours or days, but she knew with certainty that Gary would eventually figure out exactly which bus they’d taken on their escape from town.

And then? Unless there were cameras on the buses—which she doubted—he would have no idea where she’d gotten off. At that point he’d probably try to speak to the drivers, but would the second driver remember where they’d disembarked? Unlikely, which meant that Gary’s next step would be to check the cameras at other bus stations along the route. And again, in time he would probably recognize Tommie. Then he’d keep repeating the process, like a wolf with his nose to the ground while hunting prey, getting closer and closer, zeroing in. He might even find a video of her at the convenience store.

But after that?

The trail would come to an end, because she and Tommie had hitched a ride with a woman in a station wagon. The woman who knew enough not to ask questions.

Could he find the woman? And the carpet salesman who smelled of Old Spice?

Doubtful.

But could there have been other cameras on the highway? Like traffic cameras? Cameras that recorded license plates?

Possibly.

Even if she assumed the absolute worst, the
impossible
worst—that Gary, somehow, had tracked her to this town—what then? He might check the motel, might go to the diner, might even speak with the waitress, but the trail would grow even colder after that. The waitress hadn’t known she wanted to find a place to live, and aside from the owner of the house, no one knew they were in town at all. For all Gary knew, she had caught yet another ride with someone else, heading in an entirely different direction.

Gary might be dogged and intelligent and able to leverage the power of federal and state governments to a point that would scare even the bravest ordinary citizen, but he wasn’t God.

“I am safe,” she said in her most convincing voice. “There is no way he can find me.”