The 100 Year Miracle (35 page)

“Did you take too much medicine? Did you forget you took it and take it again?” Juno was still speaking calmly. “I’m going to call Mom again, okay? And then maybe a doctor.”

Harry wrapped his hand around his son’s arm. “Listen to me,” Harry said. “The glow that they make, it’s the path of the spirits.” The more earnest Harry became the more frightened Juno’s face got. “Dr. Bell told me. She doesn’t believe it, but I’ve seen her. I’ve seen Becca. She came on the path, and now she’s here, and I don’t know if she can go back. I don’t … She’s angry. She’s angry, and I think she’s trying to trick people into following her.” Harry squeezed Juno’s arm as tightly as he could. “You have to help me protect everyone.”

Harry was looking into his son’s eyes, leaning forward and invading Juno’s space until Juno pulled his neck back, trying to get as much distance as he could while Harry was still gripping his arm harder and harder, hard enough to leave a handprint when Juno pried himself away.

Harry had to get out of bed. He pushed himself to the edge and reached for his cane.

“Dad, I think you should stay here. Get a little more rest until Mom comes home. I’m going to call her again. She’ll know what to do.”

Harry ignored him and used the cane for leverage, getting to his feet but not without struggle. He was weaker than he had been just the day before. His arm shook. It was hard to get his feet under himself, and it wasn’t until he was standing that he realized Juno had his arm around him, that it was Juno who had gotten him up.

“Dad?” Harry heard a waver in his son’s voice. “Dad, do you think maybe you’re having a stroke?”

Harry did not think that. He didn’t even make room for the possibility inside his mind. To do so would have meant worrying about himself, and Harry had given up worrying about himself. That was the one gift. He knew then that he was too far gone, and all that was left was to help the others.

“We have to lock all the doors and keep everyone inside,” Harry said, making for the hallway. “We have to keep the others safe.”

Juno followed behind him. “Okay, Dad. I’m going to do that. But you stay here.”

“I’m going to check the windows,” Harry said.

They were by the stairs. Juno reached for his father’s arm, and Harry leaned into his son as they started to descend. For Juno the climb was slow; for Harry it felt terrifyingly fast.

The doorbell rang, and Harry froze. “Do you think that’s her?”

“No, Dad. I don’t. I don’t know who it is. It’s late.”

“No,” Harry breathed, “you’re right. She doesn’t ring.”

They continued down and had just a quarter of the way to go. “When we get to the bottom,” Juno said, “I’m going to go answer the door.”

“We have to check the windows.”

“Right, and I’ll check the windows. You go in the library, and I’ll”—Juno fumbled for words—“report back.”

Harry nodded. “Where’s Tilda?” He knew Juno had mentioned her earlier, just recently, but he couldn’t fish out what he had said.

“I’m going to call her.”

“You have to tell her what’s happening. She’s going to be angry, but we have to tell her. Becca might set a trap.”

They made it to the bottom of the stairs. Juno didn’t bother stopping to look through the peephole but continued on, helping Harry to his study.

“Sure,” Juno said, “I’ll tell her.”

“She killed someone already. I saw her do it.”

“Becca killed someone?”

They were almost to the library.

Harry nodded, looking straight down the hall toward the sliding glass door and the glowing beach beyond it. It was sinister, that light. Harry didn’t know why he hadn’t seen the danger before. “At the symphony. She made me talk that woman off the balcony. I would never have—” He shook his head. “She tricked me.”

Harry could see his son thinking things that he did not say, things he was actively struggling to keep inside. Harry could see the thoughts, he could see them wiggling behind Juno’s lips.

“Okay, Dad. You just go in here and stay.”

The doorbell rang again.

“Be careful,” Harry said, “and come back when you’re done.”

Juno left the room and shut the door. Harry stood there in the center of the library, deciding. He didn’t turn a light on. He didn’t need to. His pupils, dilated beyond what should have been possible, had no need for artificial light. The little that came in through the naked window, the green shimmer of the Miracle, was enough for Harry to see anything he might need. He was thinking about that, drawing strength from the thought, when he heard the sound. It was a terrible scraping. Awful. Awful enough that Harry put his hands to his ears.

He could not imagine what had caused such a noise. Nothing in the room had changed. Nothing had moved. He was alone, and if he was alone inside, that meant Becca was out there. He should not have left Juno alone. Harry clomped with his cane to the door, moving as quickly as he could. He reached up, turned the handle, and pushed. The door moved three inches and stopped. Harry pushed harder then closed the door and opened it again. The wood banged into something.

Harry put his face to the crack and looked out. The console table, the one that had sat for years in the hallway, was pushed in front of the library door.

Through the crack, he could hear voices coming from the front of the house. It was Juno’s voice first. Annoyed. Unhappy. And then another man. Harry couldn’t put his finger on the voice, but it wasn’t a stranger. It was getting harder to hold thoughts in his head, leaving him with the slippery sense that there had been a time, a recent time, when he would have been clearer about things. Harry tried to listen, to pick out words. He squinted with the effort, as though his vision and his hearing were related in ways you wouldn’t expect.

“It’s the middle of the damn night,” Harry heard Juno say.

The other man spoke. “This is an emergency.”

A memory floated by Harry. He was outside on the beach. The voice was there, a tattoo, but by the time Harry had it, most of it was gone. It was like turning on the radio and catching only the last few bars of a song. He shook his head. He had gotten distracted and missed part of the conversation. His son was speaking again.

“What kind of doctor? I mean, could you take care of a person if you really had to?”

The other man replied, but his voice was harder to hold on to, harder for Harry to catch and then to work over in his mind so that the sounds fitted themselves into words and the words into ideas that Harry could understand.

And then it was gone, replaced by Juno’s voice, which was not pleased. “I’ll take you up.”

It got quiet. Quiet enough that Harry’s ears were filled with the sound of the surf outside. It was louder than usual. There had been a storm. Harry thought that it was louder because of the storm, but then he wasn’t so certain. It only took two heartbeats not to be so certain. What had happened to the voices? Harry clenched. Had she done something to them?

He looked down at the three inches of table he could see in front of the door. The top was heavy marble. It had taken two men to lift that table into place. Juno might as well have thrown a bolt closed, Harry thought. But there was nothing for it, and so he opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he had closed, and with all the strength he had left, he started to push.

*   *   *

Flat on her stomach, Tilda looked like she was hugging the carcass of some monster fish. Years of swimming laps at the Y had gotten her to the boat before hypothermia stole away her muscle control. She’d clamored onto the hull, getting all of herself out of the water. The boat had turned completely turtle. The centerboard had sheared off and floated away, but the body of the boat with the outrigger still attached was buoyant. And so she lay out there, her arms and legs outstretched for grip and balance. Her cheek rested on the painted wood while she stared into the darkness.

The waves had been terrible. They had been scary and nauseating. Tilda thought maybe she had thrown up a little, which seems like the sort of thing you wouldn’t have doubt about, but clinging to the bottom of an overturned boat in the middle of a storm makes a lot of things unclear. The rain was hardly noticeable. Tilda was wet everywhere it was possible to be wet, and the sound of the deluge hitting the hull was drowned out by the crash and the hiss of the ocean, which behaved like a foul-tempered creature awakened before its time.

Tilda held on as best she could with her wet, splayed limbs suckered to the boat like a starfish. She breathed through the rolling of her stomach, which was moving sympathetically with the waves that lifted up the wreck and dropped it between sets. She got a little happy when her limbs started to shake. She hadn’t shivered since she’d gone into the water, and she knew that was not a good sign. It was like her body had given up any hope of being able to warm itself, but as the shivers started in her arms and worked their way down, it seemed her life force was having second thoughts. Perhaps it had given up the ghost just a little too early. But more than anything, Tilda tried not to think at all.

With no way to keep time, she couldn’t be sure when it was. Dark. Well past dinner. She wondered if Harry had eaten, if he was at the house or if Juno had called 911 when she didn’t come home. She wondered if either of them was frightened. She was frightened.

Tilda was thinking these things when she noticed that the rain had lightened and the waves had calmed. She had not marked the moment when the worst of the storm had passed over her. She only noticed after the fact that it was so. She was disappointed by that. She had been so busy not thinking, just like the clingy starfish she had become, that milestones were passing without her knowledge.

Perhaps she would not be so afraid, she thought, if she shared Harry’s faith. If she believed that there was some other place where she would go and once there would see Becca again, then perhaps this all wouldn’t be so bad. But Tilda had never been a person of faith, and lying there in the middle of the sea had not changed that. She did not believe her daughter waited for her. She did not believe she would ever see her again no matter how much she wished it, and she did. She did wish it. But wishing and believing were different. Believing would have been the only reason to give up, to let herself slip down. It was her nonbelief that kept her focused. Tilda was not giving up. She said that to herself. She said it very clearly. She was not giving up.

It wouldn’t do to simply cling. She needed to think. She needed to be an agent of her own rescue even though moving sounded terrifying. What if she ended up in the water again, unable to save herself a second time? She was exhausted. Her limbs were like lead from the swimming and the clinging and the cold. She tried wiggling her fingers. It felt like they moved. She was too nervous to lift up her head to check, but she was fairly certain they had moved.

With paralysis ruled out, Tilda got thirsty. Very thirsty. The kind of thirsty that drives otherwise rational people to try sipping saltwater. Tilda told herself not to think about that. Instead she thought about how hungry she was. She’d eaten almost nothing—nothing but a few handfuls of trail mix and one bite of fried chicken—all day. She got a little angry with herself over that. How could she have been so neglectful?

Tilda’s eyes were closed. She noticed then that they were, but once more the milestone had passed without her marking it. She knew, no matter how tired she was, she should not sleep.

40.

The Last Day of the Miracle

Rachel, who was down on her knees, tried to ignore it, but the pounding was relentless. It was the pounding of a cop or a landlord, someone who was making it clear that they expected to be let in. She was far too busy to deal with whoever it was, but the knocking was unbearable. She cupped her hands over her ears and rocked. She couldn’t think like this. She couldn’t work. And she was angry, so very angry.

With a grunt, she pushed up to her feet. “What?” she demanded.

“Open the door.”

John.

Her heart rate shot up. Panic. Sweat. No. No, she told herself. Breathe. She would not feel this. She would not be afraid. He could not do anything. She knew too much. She knew it all. It was hers, and he could not have it.

“Go away,” she yelled.

“Open the door, or I will tear it down.”

His voice was even, solid. It had form that entered the room and sat on the floor next to her, touching her.

“You have ten seconds,” John said.

She believed him. The question was whether the door would hold. Probably it would not. She needed to take control of the situation. She needed a second option. She spun on her heel and spotted the box cutter lying on the floor near the bookcase. She picked it up and held it behind her back before opening the door. She allowed only a crack, just enough to stick her head out, but John was taller than she was. He could see over her head and into the room, right past her even as she stood on her tiptoes and tried to expand herself like a porcupine extending its quills.

The bed was stripped of everything but the fitted sheet. Some of the bedding was on the floor at her feet. Some of it had been dragged around to other parts of the room. Tubes and cords ran to and from the tanks. Grow lights hung over everything, and the pumps and fans were whirring. She had cardboard boxes all over the floor, along with canisters and other containers that she was preparing to pack. Small appliances sat on the rug with more cords running from them. Everything she had brought with her, shoes and jackets, shirts and jeans, were strewn across the room, and the rugs had been tracked with mud; although Rachel couldn’t remember doing it.

She tried to keep her temper in check and her voice businesslike. “I’m working. Go away.”

“How much have you taken?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me how much. When did you start?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

This conversation had already taken too much time. Rachel tried to shut the door, but John shoved his hand in, gripping the edge and pushing back. Rachel dropped the civility. She grimaced and shoved, but his hand didn’t move. The door didn’t move. John was just standing there looking down at her like a grown man looks at a child pushing on his legs.