Forty
Neither Paul nor Anna said a word until they were out of the prison and back in the car. Once the doors were closed they let out a collective breath, as though they hadn’t taken one for the last couple of hours.
Anna turned to Paul and asked, “How are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m a little shaky,” he said, “but yeah, I’m okay. How about you?”
“I’m fine.” She found herself smiling, almost against her will. “It was actually kind of exhilarating. Creepy, but exhilarating.”
“Is creepy a psychological term?”
She laughed. “Pretty much.”
“I don’t feel . . . scared of him anymore.”
“You made that pretty clear.”
Paul was quiet for a moment as Anna started the engine and steered the car out of the prison parking lot. “I almost, for a second there, I almost felt sorry for him. When he was talking about how we all have this devil hiding inside us. I thought that almost made sense, in a way.”
“Or else it was just an excuse,” Anna said. “Listen, I want to apologize for something in there. When you said I’d come to the same conclusion as you had about the source of those notes, I wasn’t exactly supportive.”
“I noticed.”
“I should have said something.”
“Maybe I’m the one who should apologize. I presumed when I shouldn’t have.”
She hesitated. “I don’t think Hoffman was convinced those letters were actually written by Catherine and Jill, that two dead women are speaking to you through that typewriter.” Another pause. “I’m having a hard time with that, too.”
“You aren’t willing to consider that there might—just might—be forces at work in the world that are beyond our understanding? You think it’s impossible that something like this could happen? Because, for me, I’ve pretty much exhausted all other options.”
Anna kept staring ahead through the windshield. “It’ll be almost dark by the time we get home.”
“Isn’t that what you call avoidance?”
She glanced his way for a second. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Twelve years ago, well, going back even further, my mother was not well. It was a long decline. Life’s so unfair that way, you know? Sometimes I think it would be so much better if we went just like that.” She took a hand off the wheel and snapped her fingers. “None of this lingering. It can be so hard on everyone.”
“Sure,” Paul said.
“This is something I’ve never told anyone. Not my father, not any of my friends, not my ex-husband, although we’d split by this time.”
Paul nodded. “Okay.”
They were back on the main road, picking up speed.
“It was a Tuesday night, just after three in the morning.” She stopped, breathed in through her nose, steeling herself. “I was sound asleep. And I heard my mother speak to me. As clearly as you talking to me now. She said, and I’ll never forget this, she said, ‘It’s time to come and say good-bye.’ I woke up, and I could still hear her in my head, saying that. I looked at the clock, and it was eleven minutes after three. I don’t want to make too much of this, but my mother was born on the eleventh of March.”
Paul nodded slowly.
“She was in a hospital chronic care wing at the time. I knew it was irrational, I knew she couldn’t actually speak to me like that, but I felt I had to go to the hospital. I threw on some clothes and drove there as quickly as I could and I went to her room.”
The car went over a bump and the golf clubs in the back rattled like old bones.
Paul realized he was barely breathing. “What happened?”
“She was awake. She was looking at the door. It was like she was waiting for me to arrive. She smiled and reached out a hand.”
Anna put her own hand to her mouth. Paul could see a tear running down her cheek. She needed a moment before she could continue.
“It was so small. Her hand. Just skin and bone. I took it, and she said to me, I swear, she said, ‘I’m glad you got my message.’ I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.” She glanced with moist eyes at her passenger. “Pretty nuts, right?”
Paul slowly shook his head. “No. It’s not nuts at all.”
“And I sat with her, and twenty minutes later, she was gone.”
Paul didn’t know what to say.
“I called my father, woke him up, told him a lie, that the hospital had called me. That Mom had passed away. I told him I was on my way.” She sniffed. “I couldn’t tell him the truth.”
“No,” Paul said, understanding.
“How could I explain that I was there? How could I tell him that she’d gotten in touch with me, and not him? Why didn’t she somehow contact my father, too?”
“Maybe she tried,” Paul said. “He just didn’t hear her.”
Anna hit the blinker and steered the car over to the shoulder. Once it had stopped, she put it in park.
“I need a second,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She allowed the tears to come. She pointed to the glove compartment. Paul opened it, spotted a shallow box of tissues. He pulled out half a dozen and handed them to Anna.
“God, this is so embarrassing,” she said as she dabbed her eyes, then blew her nose. She dropped her hands into her lap. “Not to mention unprofessional. I’m the one who’s supposed to be keeping it together.”
“It’s okay.”
I can touch her. It’s okay.
Paul reached over and placed a hand on hers. Gently, he said, “By not telling your father, that tells me you believe what happened was real.”
She looked at him. “Even if I didn’t believe it, even if it really was only a dream, and a complete coincidence that I got to the hospital just in time, I couldn’t tell my father because he might believe it. And think how hurt he would feel. So I could never tell him.”
She took her hand out from under Paul’s, placed it on top of his, and squeezed. “It’s haunted me all these years. It truly has. It was good to finally tell someone.”
Paul fought the urge to put an arm around her. He wanted to do it more than anything.
“So,” she said, freeing his hand, putting the car back in drive, and checking her mirror to see whether it was safe to pull back onto the road, “I guess the bottom line is, yes, the jury is still out, but I can’t tell you that what’s been happening to you isn’t really happening. I just don’t know.”
“I understand,” he said.
God, I just want to hold her.
But they were back on the road now, Anna pushing down hard on the accelerator. A few miles later, she said, “I think this trip did you some good. If your only takeaway is that Kenneth Hoffman is no longer the boogeyman you’d built him up in your dreams to be, then it was worth it.”
“I suppose. And I got to show him those notes. Maybe . . . maybe I was hoping he’d think they were real. If he had, I’d be able to think, okay, I’m not the only one who’s starting to believe in the unbelievable.”
“I think they rattled him,” Anna said. “Although I’m not sure which troubled him more. The notes, or the fact you’d come into possession of what might be his typewriter.”
Paul’s phone rang. He dug it out of his jacket, saw the caller’s name, and frowned.
“What does she want?” he said, more to himself than Anna.
“Who is it?” Anna asked.
Paul put the phone to his ear. “Hailey, is everything okay? Is Josh—what . . . Charlotte came to your office and what . . . yes, I have had a hard time, but . . . I know Josh has a key. Why would she . . . okay, okay . . . okay. Thanks for telling me . . . okay . . . good-bye.”
He held the phone, made no effort to put it back into his jacket.
“That was weird,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“What’s happened?”
“Charlotte said she was going to see her mother but she went to see Hailey, supposedly because she was worried about me, and wanted to get Hailey’s take. But then there was something about Josh’s key, and . . .”
“What is it, Paul?”
He shook his head, as if that might make things come clear. “Something I’ll have to talk to Charlotte about when I get home.”
Anna decided not to push it. “Okay.”