This went on for a little while. I felt both frantic and detached. It was as if, far up in some ivory tower in my mind, somebody else was feverishly planning what I should say next. Whoever it was did a poor job of it, because eventually I realized I was listening to a hollow dial tone. I hung up the phone and looked at it. Then I went back to my room and lay down on my bed.
Ten minutes before lights-out, I started awake from a light sleep, gasping. I had been in the woods again, Fritz ahead of me. The sky overhead was afire with sunset. Someone was chasing me in the dream, but when I turned around, I saw only Abby, walking away from me toward the lions, just as ahead of me Fritz turned a corner and vanished behind a screen of trees. “Abby,” I had called out, but as I had turned around and taken a step toward her, the ground had opened beneath me and I had fallen into an abyss, waking up just before I was swallowed whole.
I jumped out of bed and went to the hall phone, which was thankfully free, and dialed Saint Margaret’s. After an interminable two minutes, Abby had come to the phone. “Hello?” she said, her voice far away.
“Abby,” I said. “Listen to me, okay? I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier, I don’t know why I didn’t. And I’m sorry about earlier, on the phone, I—”
“Matthias?”
“And I want to make it work, seriously. I mean, I’ll be at UVA, but we can visit, I can take a bus up to New York, or you can come to Charlottesville—”
“Matthias,” she said again, and I stopped at the sound in her voice. “I’m not going to Juilliard.”
“You—what? You mean, they didn’t . . . You didn’t get—”
“I deferred,” she said, her voice still far away but determined. “I can’t go away to school now. Not like this. Mother is—she’s bad, Matthias. She’s really bad.” Abby started crying softly, almost as if she were hiccupping into the phone. “I can’t leave her, too,” she managed.
“Shhh,” I said, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. I can help. If you stay at home, I can help. I can come over from school—it’s no big deal. Whatever you need, Abby. You want me to come over and cook breakfast, I can do that. Okay? Whatever you want. Fresh fruit. Hot chocolate. Big stacks of pancakes.”
There was another hiccup on the line. It sounded like she was laughing a little. “I hate pancakes,” she said.
“Who hates pancakes?” I said. “You seriously hate pancakes? Okay, no pancakes.”
She said something as I was talking. “What?” I said. “I couldn’t hear you. I’m sorry. What?”
“I said,” she managed, with a teary sigh, “that I love you, too.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard. Say it again.”
“Ha.”
“I’m serious. Say it again. Please.”
“It.” I swore I could hear her smiling.
“Fine. Pancakes for you, then. Every stinking day I’m driving over there and making you eat pancakes.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “I love you, okay?”
I held the receiver, my eyes closed. “It’s more than okay.”
And it was, for a time. That summer, I went to Fairfax twice to see Abby. My parents offered to put me up in a nearby hotel, but Wat Davenport, who had by now become a sort of majordomo of the Davenport household, handling much of their day-to-day business, wouldn’t hear of it and had me stay in a guest room, which was down the hall from Abby and next to Fritz’s old room. Mrs. Davenport remained cloistered in her bedroom both times I was there. Mr. Davenport seemed to be living out of his office, which was fine by me—the memory of his rage as he screamed in my face was still raw.
This left Wat to chaperone me and Abby. He made excellent dinners for us, risottos and steak au poivre and a chicken stir-fry in ponzu sauce that was to die for. He even gave us each a glass of wine with dinner. “Don’t drive anywhere tonight,” he would say, lifting an eyebrow at me.
On both of those visits, Abby and I didn’t go anywhere much, didn’t even talk much, really. We were simply content to be in the other’s presence. We hugged a lot, or we sat pressed next to each other on the couch as if trying to permanently affix ourselves to each other, create an indelible mark. When we did talk, we were tentative, exploring neutral topics—books we had read, movies, music. We did not talk about college, or her parents, or Fritz. And yet they all hung about us like ghosts, refusing to leave the premises.
Near the end of my first visit, Abby was downstairs, making popcorn, while I was changing out of my swimsuit. When I dressed and stepped into the hallway, I found myself looking at the door to Fritz’s room, as solid and closed as it had been all week. I hesitated, glanced down the empty hallway, and then crossed to his door. After another moment of hesitation, I placed my hand on the doorknob.