‘Control this.’ Almost pleading with herself. ‘Don’t give in to it. The only way out is to stay calm, to think clearly.’ She breathed deeply and slowly just like Rebecca taught her in yoga class. She tried to picture herself in a different place. She concentrated on slowing the beating of her heart. She listened. There was no sound but the distant hum of what might be an air-conditioning system.
She looked around the room again, studying the details. It was a small room, windowless, maybe twelve feet square. The walls and ceiling were white. Both seemed to be covered with some sort of acoustic tile. Lucy supposed, hopefully, that the purpose of the tile was to soundproof the room. That might mean there was someone outside the room who wasn’t supposed to hear what was going on inside. Who wasn’t supposed to hear her if she screamed. There was a door. It looked solid and heavy. Possibly made of steel or some other metal. It had a silvered knob and a button lock. Above the knob was a dead bolt. She supposed it was bolted, but the opening in the door was too narrow to know for sure.
Then she became aware of another sound. Breathing that wasn’t her own. Slow shallow breathing from behind the bed. She held her own breath to listen. Yes, definitely breathing. She was afraid to say anything, afraid to move. In the end she began crying again. ‘Who are you?’ she sobbed. ‘What do you want from me?’
His face, the face from the Prom, came into view. He was holding a hypodermic. He rubbed her arm with an alcohol swab. ‘I’m sorry, Lucinda, but I’m not quite ready for you yet.’
He plunged her back into darkness.
5
Saturday. 4:30 A.M.
It was nearly dawn when McCabe, muddy, bruised, and hurting in more places than he cared to think about, turned into the parking area behind the large white Victorian on the Eastern Prom. He pulled the lovingly restored cherry red ’57 T-Bird into parking space number three. McCabe and Sandy had scrimped and saved to buy the car the first year they were married. He sat for a minute, nursing his pain, holding on to the wheel, not knowing why those days came to mind. Days of innocence long since lost. There was nothing he and Sandy loved more than cruising around Westhampton Beach on a summer Saturday with the top down. Guys making twenty times as much as the two of them put together – brokers, bond traders, network producers – would walk slowly around the parked car, gazing in admiration both at McCabe’s vintage T-Bird and at McCabe’s wife from every angle. He smiled bitterly at the memory. Michael McCabe, twenty-four years old. Hot shit extraordinaire. Hot car. Hot woman. Hot times.
Then the hot times came to an end. He always found it funny – painful but funny – that when Sandy finally ran off with one of those guys, it was the car she wanted to keep. Not the daughter they conceived on a blanket in the Westhampton dunes on a moonlit night one of those very same weekends. Knowing Sandy, she might have brought up custody of the car in court if her lawyer had let her. ‘Let’s see. I’ll trade you one forty-year-old classic convertible for one little girl. Even-up trade. No draft choices. No players to be named later. Well, fuck you, Sandy. I’ve got them both, and no, you can’t have them back.’
McCabe opened the driver’s side door and gingerly climbed out. It had stopped raining. He could see stars in the eastern sky over the bay and the first hints of red on the horizon. He climbed the three flights up to the three-bedroom condo he shared with Casey and, as often as possible, with Kyra.
Taking off his muddy shoes, he left them in the hall and went in. He opened the door to Casey’s room. He knelt by the side of her bed and watched her sleeping face. ‘Have I lied to you?’ he asked silently. ‘Have I encouraged you to believe there’s safety in a world that knows no safety?’ Of course he had, but it was a loving lie. Harsh truths would intrude soon enough. He could only hope they wouldn’t come in the brutal way they had for Katie Dubois. He brushed a strand of dark hair from over her eyes and gave her a kiss so soft he was sure it wouldn’t wake her.
Her lids flickered open, and her blue eyes, so like Sandy’s, looked up at him. She was bathed in the faint predawn light of an autumn morning. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You look really awful.’
‘It was kind of a rough night,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘I was sort of awake anyway. Are you okay?’
‘You should see the other guy,’ he smiled.
‘You were in a fight?’ She sat halfway up to get a better look at him.
‘No, I’m only kidding. Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.’
She looked out her window at the thin red line slowly widening in the eastern sky. ‘It pretty much is morning.’
‘There’s time for more sleep.’ He kissed her again. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to give him a hug, ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll get all muddy.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said, releasing him. ‘Kyra’s here. Jane went home.’
He smiled. ‘Good night, sweetie. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He went to his own bedroom.