“Lie down,” I said. They did.
THE NEXT THING I knew I was drowning in the bathtub.
I wanted to breathe, but I couldn’t because I was underwater, on my back staring at the misshapen, shifting bathroom ceiling. I tried to break the surface, but it was as if I was chained to the bottom.
But I wasn’t chained. I didn’t see it before, but someone was holding me underwater. I couldn’t quite make out the face, but I knew it was a man and he was pushing down on me with huge hands, trying to make me inhale. Talking to me, saying something I couldn’t quite make out from beneath the water. The bridge of my nose burned and everything went gray, so I knew I wouldn’t be conscious for much longer. Death was coming for me.
I’VE HAD THIS recurring dream for as long as I can remember. It made sense I’d dream it the night my dad died. I always wake up from it gasping for air, like I’ve actually been held underwater. As I surface from sleep, I can feel the heavy water sliding off me, down the hollows of my face. My eyes sting and my lungs can’t expand enough to take in the oxygen I need, although I’m in no true danger. It was only a dream. But even as the nightmare fades, the irresistible force of the dream tugs on my every cell, dragging me downward into a spiral that will never end, circling the drain for all eternity.
Drowning. This is my biggest fear. You’d think it would be fire, since that’s what killed my mom when I was three. But it’s water. I can’t take baths, only showers. I can’t even stopper the kitchen sink and fill it, because I feel that weight bearing down on me, pushing my face toward the water, an irresistible compulsion to submerge my head.
The TV was still on when I woke up. Deirdre was questioning a suspect in the dingy interview room at Precinct 51 in New York City.
Stiff didn’t even begin to describe how my body felt. I stretched and then led the dogs through the kitchen and out the back door. According to the oven clock, it was after nine A.M. I needed to get ready for work.
Since I’d slept in my clothes, all I needed to do was get my stuff together. I used the bathroom, washed my face and combed my hair. Then I made my lunch, put Dad’s iPhone in my pocket and strapped the shotgun across my back. After locking up the house, I walked the quarter mile to the Niobe County dump.
Inside my little guard shack where I took five dollars from -people to dump stuff, I kept a photograph album someone had dumped a -couple of years before.
The photos I liked best were of the kids in snow forts and at backyard barbecues and Little League baseball games. None of the pictures were labeled, so I named the kids myself. There was Justin, the oldest, and the middle sister Madison, and the youngest boy Aidan.
Since I never got to see many little kids or babies out at the dump, I loved to study the faces of those three little blond kids squinting at the camera, holding up fish they just caught or riding a tire swing with sprinklers running in the background.
Dad never knew about my album, which I paged through nearly every workday. I had every image memorized so I could close my eyes and tell myself the story of that family without even looking.
Why would someone throw away a photo album? I’d have given anything to have pictures of me as a baby, to have even one photo of my mother. All that stuff burned up with her in Detroit.
As I sat on my stool in the booth that morning, looking out over the mountain range of trash, it dawned on me that I could take the photo album back to the house now. I could go somewhere besides my house and the dump if I could get someone to teach me to drive. Maybe I’d go into Saw Pole and eat at the diner and then visit the stores. Maybe I’d go to Salina. Maybe I’d go to New York.
Now that Dad was gone, I could do anything I wanted.
Chapter 3
Thursday
I ANSWERED THE phone before I was totally awake.
“Dekker?”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“You know I wouldn’t be calling you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
I sat up. “Chad?” I must still have been asleep, because there was no way the lead singer from my ex--band would be calling me, not after how things had ended five months ago.
“Here’s the deal. We’re going to give you one last chance, and we wouldn’t do it if we weren’t absolutely desperate. I want you to acknowledge that.”
“Okay,” I said, cautious. I lit a cigarette. Oma would be pissed, but these were special circumstances. No way I could take this call without tar and nicotine.
“Tell me you acknowledge what I said.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the eye roll out of my voice. “I acknowledge.”
“Acknowledge what?”
“That you wouldn’t be calling if you weren’t desperate. Right. Go on. What were you saying about a second chance?”