“Who?”
The question spilled out of me before I could stop it, but Tom’s response gives me pause. That angle might be moot because Tom doesn’t know Doug Wiseman yet. Both Frank and Detective Mooney thought he came later. Even if they’re wrong and David Bishop is “punishing” his wife for having an affair, it’s still highly unlikely Tom knows Doug at this point in his life, even if his mother does.
“Never mind,” I say. “Just tell me what happens now.”
*
His father and mother talk some more in the kitchen. It sounds less fraught, and that eases Tom’s mind. He hears her walk up the stairs — her footfalls are as distinct as his father’s — and listens as she moves down the hallway to her bedroom and shuts the door. Now it’s just his father downstairs. Probably finishing up his meal.
His mother is going to bed and his father is eating a late dinner. All is right with the world.
Relieved, his mind wanders to school and some of the kids there, and then to Harry Potter and the story he’s reading.
With that, Tom drifts off to sleep.
For a little while.
His rest is disturbed when the side door to the house opens and closes.
It, too, is a distinctive sound he knows well. Has his mother gone out to smoke? Has his father left?
Tom checks the window: The car in the street remains parked there. Only now, it’s unoccupied. Something smolders on the snowy road, too small to see. A cigarette, maybe.
Nimbly, he hurries to his door. Before he even gets it open, a voice rises from the kitchen. His father.
“What are you doing? Are you fucking crazy?”
Tom freezes, thinking it’s him David is talking to. But it can’t be. His father can’t see him yet. And he’d never speak to Tom that way.
But from downstairs, there’s no response. Maybe just the rustle of a coat, the groan of the floor beneath solid weight.
“I’m calling the police,” David says.
Heart beating harder now, Tom pushes his door open farther and eases out to the stair landing. He starts down, mindful of the noise.
“I’m calling them,” David says. “I’m calling them right now. You better put it away. Hey — put it away!”
There’s a noise — a wet, smacking sound — like the sound made when his mother hits the chicken with a studded mallet, and his father cries out in pain. Tom freezes in place. He’s halfway down the stairs, listening as two people wrestle. Bursts of grunts. Feet scuff the linoleum in an obscene, aggressive dance. The sounds reverberate in the stairwell, past the clocks, up to Tom’s ears.
Bad fighting . . .
There’s another wet-smack sound and a soft noise, almost like a kitten’s mewl.
Something hits the floor.
A second later, Tom sees a bloody hammer tossed aside, hears it thump against the lower cabinets.
Then a figure, its back to Tom, runs for the side door.
*
I’ve temporarily forgotten everything else in my life. I’m leaning toward the bed, barely seated, straining toward Michael, who has drawn into an even tighter ball. The tears stream down his face sideways. His body shakes. I want to stop this, but I can’t. Not now. We’re too close.
“Michael . . . who was in the kitchen?”
*
Snowflakes not yet melted stand out in crisp white contrast on the person’s black jacket. Tom sees this as the person leaves. Slipping back out into the night, where more snow swirls in an updraft.
The moment is so shocking, so unfamiliar, that Tom doesn’t move. Can’t move. It’s as if he’s become disconnected from his body. There’s just the thinnest sense of existence, of being loosely tethered to reality.
Finally, after what seems like it could be either seconds or hours, Tom continues down the stairs, until his father comes into view.
And his mother, who cradles his father’s bloody head in his hands.
She looks up at Tom, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open in a frozen scream.
*
Michael is moaning on the bed. The sound has a different tone and pitch from his regression to Tom. This is distinctly feminine; the unsung howl of his mother.
“Tom,” I say quickly, sensing the danger, “it’s time to come back to the here and now. It’s time to return to our time. Where you are called Michael. Return to where I am. Where everything is safe and sound.”
“No,” he says sharply. His eyes stay scrunched tightly closed, though the tears have stopped. Determination resounds in his words. “I’m staying.”
“You can’t. You can’t stay there. It’s not even really a place or a time. You’re here, with me, Dr. Lindman. This is your rightful place. It’s time to wake up.”
“No.” It’s a softer protest now.
I try to pull him out of it. I tell him to focus on my voice. To let everything else fade away. He’s been suggestible up until now. “When I count backward from five, you’re going to—”
“No!” Michael bolts upright as he screams. The force of his voice tightens my defenses. A second later, he’s off the bed. His eyes are still closed, unseeing, but he’s flailing with his arms, as if fending off attackers.
As if he’s reenacting the fight in the kitchen.
He picks up the lamp from the bedside table.
As soon as I see what he’s about to do, I’m out of the chair. I take refuge in the doorway, watching.
Michael swings the lamp, yanking the cord from the wall. The room darkens. He breathes and grunts and swings. The lamp strikes the bed post, exploding the bulb with a terrific pop.
“Michael,” I say, from the door. “Michael, please stop . . .”
But he’s got to work it through.
I stay out of harm’s way as Michael destroys my daughter’s bedroom. Using the lamp as a bat, he clears the perfumes and bric-a-brac from the dresser. He hurls it at the white walls, leaving jagged scrape marks where it shatters. He beats at the bed and pillows until the down feathers fill the air. Finally, he runs out of energy. Panting and sobbing, he drops to his knees, head hanging. He collapses onto his side.
For one terrible moment, I’m sure I’m going to have two young men in my life who are persistently unconscious. But Michael rolls over onto his back.
Moaning, he then opens his eyes. Staring up at the ceiling, he says one sentence. It is a crisp utterance, sharp and clean with discovery.
“It wasn’t her.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I don’t know what to do first. Or who, if anyone, to call.
After a moment’s indecision, I start by getting Michael a glass of water from the upstairs bathroom. He’s still in Joni’s room. Both the space and the man in it are demolished. He sits on the edge of her bed, his hands on his knees, his head lowered. He’s covered in down feathers. They cloak the room, like snow.
“Here. Drink this.”
He takes the water from me but doesn’t look up. I wait while he drinks — greedily, in one go — and then carefully, I sit beside him.
“Okay,” I say softly. I need to speak to my husband. And with Joni. And to check on Sean. “Are you okay?”