“Did he mention why he was so dead set on getting it running again?” Evan asked.
“No, but I will say this: I wouldn’t call it frantic, but he was obsessed with that clock. Talked about it from time ta time, but I could always tell it was on his mind. Sometimes he’d go twenty minutes jest starin’ out at the lake while we fished, not sayin’ a thing, jest lookin’ at somethin’ I couldn’t see.”
I can go back.
Evan finished his beer, and saw that his hand trembled. Jacob seemed to notice it too.
“You okay, boyo?”
Evan set the empty can down on the desk. “Yes, I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
This was definitely the truth, what with armed men coming into the house at night and then disappearing without a trace. Evan sighed with the weight of the memory. It was still fresh in his mind, but with the bright lake beyond the window and the taste of beer on his tongue in Jacob’s snug office, it was far away—someone else’s problem.
“What do you think really happened out there?” Evan asked, nodding toward the island.
Jacob’s brow crinkled, and the darkness returned to his eyes. “I don’t know, boyo. No one but Dan, Maggie, and the good Lord do fer sure.”
“If you had to guess.”
Jacob fell silent for over a minute, and then turned and stood, looking out the window at the impressive view beyond. His voice floated back over his shoulder, disembodied and thin.
“I never knew a couple who loved one another as well as those two. Dan would’ve died fer Maggie, and she fer him. And maybe that’s jest what they did.”
Jacob turned back to Evan, and he saw a glaze of moisture on the older man’s eyes, like windows after a mist.
“All superstitions aside, you mark me words, boyo. Somethin’ right terrible happened on that island, and I thank God above I don’t know what it was.”
21
Evan almost drove straight to Selena’s office, but thought better of it and went grocery shopping instead.
It wouldn’t have done to show up at her business with beer on his breath, no matter what time of day it was, and noon was still a couple of hours away. He pottered around the grocery store like a much older man, forgetting why he went to an aisle, only to realize he was staring directly at what he needed.
After leaving the store, he drove to the hospital and waited in the car until Shaun’s appointments were over. He watched people come and go, watched them walk across the parking lot to their vehicles, some laughing, some somber. He wondered about their lives, who they were, whom they loved, why they were here. He’d done it many times before, especially when his dreams were still attainable and his life hadn’t been taken apart and rearranged into something unrecognizable. He remembered Elle telling him his people watching was a result of being a writer at heart. You want to know because you want to tell their stories, or make them up, she’d said. He had no interest in writing about other people now; he merely wondered if they’d suffered more or less than he had.
Inside the hospital his mood rose the moment Shaun came into view down the long, sterile hallway, this time guided by a heavyset therapist with blond hair and a permanent smile. The thought that Becky Tram would never walk down these halls again caused the strength to drain from his legs. She wouldn’t get married or have children because she was now lying on a cold metal tray somewhere in town, a mortician standing over her trying to figure out how to put her head back together.
Evan bit back the sick that tried to rise into his mouth and smiled as he picked Shaun up. The woman related the events of the therapy session and commented on how strong Shaun was. Evan smiled and nodded at the right times, then thanked her, feeling like a marionette with invisible strings.
Since it was almost tradition, they went to their café and sat outside after ordering a banana split. Evan hadn’t brought his laptop with him, and he didn’t miss it; anything to do with the clock brought up too many uncomfortable questions. Instead he focused on Shaun, who was watching a group of boys approaching on the sidewalk. They were maybe twelve or thirteen, and their laughter and talk seemed to flow from one to the other—boy-speak that most adults couldn’t understand. Evan gazed at his son.
Do you know that you’re different? Can you tell? Do you long to be free of your chair and constant fatigue? Do you have an inkling that there’s more to all of this?
The thoughts pulled a knot tight in his chest, and he had to look away. He noticed that the waitress bringing their banana split and coffee was struggling with the door leading onto the patio. Evan stood and walked over, opening it for her.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling.
“Here, I’ll take that for you.”
The waitress smiled again, giving him the ice cream and coffee cup. “Thanks, I just started, and I haven’t got the hang of carrying food through here without spilling it yet.”
She let out an endearing, nerdy honk of laughter as Evan took the food from her.
“No problem,” he said, as she disappeared back inside.
He heard the laughter of the boys on the sidewalk, along with sounds Shaun made when he was happy or excited. Turning, he saw the group of boys standing on the other side of the low, decorative fence that separated the café’s patio from the sidewalk, a few feet from where Shaun sat. The largest of the boys, who had a wild shock of black hair and a sunburned forehead, was pulling faces at Shaun, his tongue hanging out wildly as he rolled his eyes back in his head.
“Ahhhhh, does the retard like it?” the boy said, and screwed up his face while mimicking Shaun’s sounds. “Ahhhhhh!”