What she saw looming over the neatly trimmed hedges wasn't an English Department building but the smooth brick and bright glass of a twenty-first-century madhouse, the sort of clean, well-lighted place where her husband might well have finished up if something, some spore the doctors in Bowling Green had eventually elected to call pneumonia (no one wanted to put Unknown causes on the death certificate of a man whose demise would be reported on the front page of the New York Times), had not finished him first.
On this side of the hedge was an oak tree; Lisey had parked so that the BMW would be in its shade, although - yes - she could see clouds massing in the west, so maybe Deputy Joe Alston was right about those afternoon thunderstorms. The tree would make a perfectly lovely marker if it had been the only one, but it wasn't. There was a whole row of them along the hedge, to Lisey they all looked the same...and what the smuck did it matter, anyway?
She started for the path to the main building, but something inside - a voice that didn't seem like any of the variations of her own mental voice - nagged her back, insisting that she look at her car and its place in the parking lot again. She wondered if something wanted her to move the BMW to a different spot. If so, it wasn't making its wants known very clearly. Lisey settled for a walk-around instead, as her father had told her you should always do before setting out on a long trip. Only then you were looking for uneven tirewear, a bust' taillight, a sagging muffler, things of that sort. Now she didn't know what she was looking for.
Maybe I'm just putting off seeing her. Maybe that's all it is. But it wasn't. It was more. And it was important.
She observed her license plate - 5761RD, with that stupid loon - and a very faded bumper-sticker, a joke gift from Jodi. It read JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, THAT IS
WHY I DON'T DRIVE SLOW. Nothing else.
Not good enough, that voice nagged, and then she spied something interesting in the far corner of the parking lot, almost beneath the hedge. An empty green bottle. A beer bottle, she was almost sure. Either the maintenance crew had missed it or hadn't gotten to it yet. Lisey hurried over and picked it up, getting a certain sour agricultural whiff from the neck of the thing. On the label, slightly faded, was a snarling canine. According to the label, this bottle had once held Nordic Wolf Premium Beer. Lisey brought the bottle back to her car and set it on the pavement directly beneath the loon on her license plate. Cream-colored BMW, not good enough.
Cream-colored BMW sitting in the shadow of an oak tree, still not good enough. Cream-colored BMW sitting in the shadow of an oak tree with an empty Nordic Wolf beer bottle under Maine Loon license plate 5761RD and slightly to the left of the joke bumper-sticker...good enough.
Just barely.
And why?
Lisey didn't give a sweet smuck.
She hurried for the main building.
7
There was no trouble getting in to see Amanda, even though afternoon visiting hours did not officially commence until two, which was still half an hour away. Thanks to Dr. Hugh Alberness - and Scott, of course - Lisey was something of a star at Greenlawn. Ten minutes after giving her name at the main desk (dwarfed by a gigantic New Age-y mural of children with linked hands staring raptly up into the night sky), Lisey was sitting with her sister on the little patio outside Amanda's room, sipping lackluster punch from a Dixie cup and watching a game of croquet on the rolling back lawn for which the place had no doubt been named. Somewhere out of sight, a power-mower blatted monotonously. The duty-nurse had asked Amanda if she wouldn't also like a cup of
"bug-juice," and took Amanda's silence for consent. It now sat untouched beside her on the table while Amanda, dressed in a mint-green pajama set and with a matching ribbon in her freshly washed hair, looked blankly off into the distance - not at the croquet players, Lisey thought, but through them. Her hands were clasped in her lap, but Lisey could see the ugly cut that looped around the left one, and the gleam of fresh salve. Lisey had tried three different conversation-openers and Amanda had uttered not so much as a single word in response. Which, according to the nurse, was par for the course. Amanda was currently incommunicado, not taking messages, out to lunch, on vacation, visiting the asteroid belt. All her life she had been troublesome, but this was a new high, even for her.
And Lisey, who was expecting company in her husband's study only six hours from now, didn't have time for it. She took a sip of her largely flavorless drink, wished for a Coke - verboten here because of the caffeine - and set it aside. She looked around to make sure they were alone, then leaned forward and plucked Amanda's hands out of her lap, trying not to wince at the slimy feel of the salve and the lumpy lines of the healing slashes just beneath. If it hurt Amanda to be held so, she didn't show it. Her face remained a smooth blank, as if she were sleeping with her eyes open.
"Amanda," Lisey said. She tried to make eye-contact with her sister, but it was impossible. "Amanda, listen to me, now. You wanted to help me clean up what Scott left behind, and I need you to help me do that. I need your help."
No answer.