I think about the woman who came into the shop with her autistic daughter. I wish I could talk to that mother again. If I could, I would be more gracious. I would smile kindly and welcome her to my store. I would then go about my business and not stare at her child.
Perhaps I would have been smarter about how I set up that silly, wobbly display of books. But if not, and if the child still knocked it down—well, then, as the mother made her hasty retreat, I would not ask rude questions. Instead, I would hand her a complimentary copy of Ship of Fools. And as I did so, I would look in that mother’s eyes, and without words, I would try to let her know that I understood.
I turn and go inside. The bell over the door jingles as I enter. Frieda looks up at me, a wordless smile twitching around her lips. The phonograph is turning silently, softly, its stack of records completed. Frieda swivels on her stool, selects a new stack, and places the records on the phonograph’s stem. The first disc drops onto the turntable; the needle moves into position. Patsy Cline’s voice fills the bookstore.
If you got leavin’ on your mind . . . Tell me now, get it over . . .
I shake my head. This song doesn’t exist yet. In the other world, in the Italian restaurant we went to with his clients, Lars told me that Patsy Cline had just released it.
And that happened in February. Which is three months from now.
“Patsy Cline is going to die, you know,” I tell Frieda, my voice surprisingly even. I feel like I am listening to myself from a space a few feet away.
“It will happen in just a few months’ time,” I go on. “She’s going to die in a plane crash.”
Frieda nods, as if I’m telling her something she already knows.
“But she’ll release this song as a single first,” I say, crossing the room.
Serenely—how can I be so calm?—I turn toward our stacks of best-seller fiction. My eyes go straight to the new Salinger anthology. Next to it, I see The King’s Persons by Joanne Greenberg, the local author I’d made a mental note to learn more about, the day I browsed Frieda’s big bookstore in the other world.
These books are not yet in print. They cannot be found in any stores. Yet here they are, in our little bookstore.
I run my hand over the Salinger; was this the book that Frieda placed my fingers on, just the other day, when she was trying to assure me that this world is real? I shake my head again, trying to clear my thoughts. Perhaps it was; it seems like it could have been.
I can’t remember.
And then I think about the things that have happened in the last few weeks, things that seemed merely pleasant or convenient at the time. My peaceful, quiet mornings at home and here in the shop. Reading my mother’s lovely, lyrical postcards. Stumbling across Lars’s obituary so randomly, yet so easily. Running into Kevin—his misery proving that I had done the right thing in delivering him an ultimatum all those years ago. The odd, out-of-nowhere free drinks that Frieda and I received at the Stadium Inn the other night.
And finally, my parents—conveniently, pleasantly—getting on the right airplane. One that did not go down in the Pacific during a storm.
Don’t leave me here, in a world . . . Filled with dreams that might have been . . . Hurt me now, get it over . . . I may learn to love again . . .
I look at Frieda. She stares knowingly at me. She seems to be waiting for me to speak.
“Sister,” I say to her, and then I say no more.
Chapter 31
I awake with a gasp. Lars and I are still entwined, exactly as we were when I fell asleep in the green bedroom.
Lars opens his eyes. “Are you all right?”
I am shaking, and I take a deep breath to calm myself. Slowly, I say, “This . . . is . . . it.” Rubbing my eyes, I look around. “This is the real world. Isn’t it, Lars?”
“Katharyn.” He pulls me close and whispers in my ear, “This is the real world.”
I move my head so I can look into his eyes. “How can that be? How could that other world have felt so real, and not be real?”
He pulls back from me and tilts his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know, love.”
I think about all the times in the past few weeks when I went into the world where I’m Kitty. Often I believed I was sleeping in this world. I believed that I had to go to sleep here to get back home, to wake up where I thought I belonged.
But—with the exception of last night’s episode, which felt like a dream and clearly was a dream—all of those other times, I was not sleeping. I know this now. I was right here, making up stories in my head, stories that helped me cope. I was here—and yet, I wasn’t here. I must have been completely absent to those around me.
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry,” I tell Lars. “I am so sorry.”
He wraps his arms around me again. “It’s okay. I understand. It’s okay.”
Tears form at the corners of my eyes. “I don’t know if I can bear it,” I say. “I don’t know if I can be the person you think I am. I don’t know if I can be here—truly be here, the way I ought to be, if this is real.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and in my head I can see myself as Kitty—but she is only a make-believe image, that person.
“You can,” Lars tells me. “You can be here, and you will be here.” He runs a hand through my hair, and I open my eyes to look at him. “I want you here,” he says. “Everyone—we all want you here.” He swallows hard. “We need you, Katharyn.”
I look into his beautiful eyes. They need me, I think. They need me here.
“All right,” I say slowly. “I’ll try.”
He smiles and kisses me deeply.
When we break apart, I turn my head. “Look outside,” I say, pointing through the panes of the sliding glass door. The sky is strikingly blue and cloud-free; the sun is almost blinding in its brightness, reflecting off the snow on the lawn. “Such a fine new layer of snow on everything.”
He stands up and walks to the doorway. “Beautiful,” he agrees. “But Missy and Mitch will be disappointed. There’s not enough snow to cancel school.”
I am actually a bit disappointed myself. A day with all three children at home sounds quite pleasant.
I rise from the bed and swing my feet to the floor. As I do so, I notice a hardback book on my nightstand.
“Lars,” I say, picking up the book and rotating it, so the cover is faceup. “Have I been reading this?”
He turns from the doorway and walks over to me. “You have,” he confirms, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the book. “You said it was haunting your dreams.”
I smile, tracing my fingers over the book’s cover, the shadowed images, the flame-colored, wavy typeface rising in a ghoulish shape to spell out the book’s title: Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury.
“Indeed,” I say to Lars. “It’s haunting indeed.”