Page 51 of Nine Lives

“Well, I’m not sure that I was a very nice child, really. At least according to your grandmother.” Meg moved a piece of chicken onto her fork and put it in her mouth.

“But you can’t remember anything specific?”

“We had a neighbor, I think their last names were Landry, and the little boy was probably about three years younger than me, and he’d come over every day to see if I wanted to play with him. Which I didn’t, of course. At first, I would tell my mother to say I wasn’t there, but then I started going to the door myself when he’d ring the bell, and telling him to meet me down at the park in five minutes. And I just wouldn’t go. The sad thing was, he kept coming back.”

Caroline had heard this story before as an example of her mother’s childhood cruelty. “The FBI didn’t ask you about anyone named Landry, did they?”

“Oh, no. The only name that was vaguely familiar to me was Jack Radebaugh but then I realized that he’s an author of some book I think your father bought. No, Holly, no chicken for you. Maybe after we clean up.” The dog had woken up.

They would normally have taken a walk after lunch, especially with the weather so nice, but it seemed unnecessarily risky, so they made coffee and sat outside on the stone patio. They talked about Grey’s Anatomy, Meg’s favorite show, and they talked about Julius, of course, who had been in a motorcycle accident in Mongolia of all places, and was staying there, recuperating, for now. Dark clouds had moved into the sky, and Caroline’s fingertips had turned white, but her mother didn’t seem to notice. There was a pause in conversation, and Caroline was about to stand up and move them both inside, when her mother said, “I did have a terrible dream when I was a kid, and it’s something I’ve never really stopped thinking about it.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Caroline said.

“It’ll sound silly, I know, but it was so vivid, and I can still see it. I think sometimes I still dream about it, like the way I still keep dreaming that I’ve forgotten my locker combination at school.”

“What was the dream?”

“I am probably around ten or eleven years old, and I’ve run away from home with a bunch of other kids. My friends, I guess, although I can’t really remember who they were. But we’ve all run away, and, somehow, we’ve managed to steal a great big boat and we’re sailing across the ocean. It has two masts and a sail, and it’s a wooden boat, like an old pirate ship, I guess you’d say. And there’s a plank, of course. And what I remember most from the dream is that we all decide that one of us—one of the kids—has to walk the plank. I’m worried it’s going to be me, but we choose another little girl, and we tie her up, and tell her that she has to walk off the end of the plank or we’ll all die.”

A gust of wind whipped her mother’s scarf up across her mouth for a moment, and she pulled it away to keep talking.

“That’s it. That’s the dream.”

“So the girl walked off the plank?”

“Yes. We tied her up and she was crying but she went into the ocean and didn’t come back up. It was awful. It makes me sick just to think of it now.”

“You don’t remember names?”

“From the dream?” Meg said. “No. They were just other kids, like me.”

“I wonder what it means.”

Meg stood, and so did Caroline. Together they walked through the sliding doors into the warm house. “Does it always have to mean something?” Meg said. “It was just a scary dream. Kids have scary dreams.”

8

Friday, October 14, 6:09 p.m.

Jack got back to his house in West Hartford at dusk, and went from room to room turning lamps on. He’d driven up from Summit, New Jersey, where he’d had lunch with his attorney, then visited his wife very briefly, standing in their front yard, where she handed him the papers he’d asked for.

“You look thin,” she’d said. He’d thanked her and she told him it wasn’t a compliment.

Later, driving on the parkway under a densely clouded sky, he wished he’d said, “This is me in the winter of my life.” That phrase—the winter of my life—had been rattling around in his mind for a while. It was still in his mind now that he was back in his childhood home in Hartford, turning on lamps and pulling curtains. He was only going to be here for one night, so he went to the refrigerator to see if there was the possibility of scrounging something for dinner or if he should go out. But looking at the withered vegetables, some ancient cheese, and half a dozen eggs that might be past their sell-by date, he realized he wasn’t hungry, just jumpy. He pulled on his jacket and went outside to take a walk.

He didn’t go far, just doing a loop of the nearby residential streets. It was an interesting time to take a walk, not fully dark out yet, but with lights on in the houses, and people going about their business, curtains still open. He saw a woman pouring herself a glass of wine in her kitchen, a man on a fancy stationary bike that came with its own television screen, kids watching cartoons, and even saw a young couple in a long embrace in front of a wall-sized television showing the news. Back in his own neighborhood he glanced toward his neighbors’ house, wondering if Margaret and her awful husband—Eric was his name—were in. Without thinking about it, he found himself skirting along his own driveway, immediately next to their house, then standing in the black shadow of a high hedge with a view into the well-lighted solarium at the back of their house.

It was empty, but there was a glass of water on the coffee table in front of the sofa, along with a hardcover book that was splayed open facedown. Jack waited, and Margaret appeared, carrying a glass of red wine, and sitting back down on the sofa. She pushed her long hair back off her forehead, and swung one leg underneath her, leaning back against an armrest. He thought she’d pick up her book again, but she just sat there, holding her wine, not sipping at it, and staring out into the darkness. For a terrible moment he thought she was looking at him, but her eyes were off to the side a little, and besides, it was far too dark outside to see anything.

The awful thing about loneliness, Jack thought, not for the first time, is that it isn’t always cured by other people. That was his experience, anyway. Spending time in the company of other people, even people he loved, made him feel lonelier than he did when he was by himself. He’d felt this way almost his entire life, since his sister had died, really, all those years ago, and since his parents had never recovered from that loss.

He heard the sound of a car, then flinched as headlights briefly illuminated him. Eric was home, turning into the drive, then quickly dousing his lights. Jack wondered if he had been spotted. He didn’t think so, but stood as still as possible in the dark shadow of the hedge, trying to figure out what he would say if he was caught.

Margaret must have heard the car as well, turning her head in that direction. She had a long, elegant neck and something about the way she was posed, head turned, glass of wine in hand, made her seem like a classical painting. She put the wine down, and took a deep breath, and Jack saw everything in her face. Sadness, wariness, and maybe a touch of genuine love. She got up and went to meet her husband, and Jack took the opportunity to walk to his own side door.

Before reentering his house, he heard Eric’s loud voice, as he was met at the door.

“Looks like your boyfriend’s back in town,” he said, and it took Jack a moment to realize he was talking about him.

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