CHAPTER FORTY
Dryden had expected Eversman to be a hard sell. Harder than Marnie had been. Harder than he himself had been, when Claire had first shown him the machine. He and Marnie had both encountered it only after witnessing things that would have been impossible without it. The trailer in the desert, in his own case; the predicted earthquake, in Marnie’s. Events that demanded an outsized explanation, and laid the foundation for believing the machine was real. It was different with Eversman, just as it had been different with Cal Brennan: There had been no such impossible experience.
They made the most of the earthquake, the coverage of which was now getting much of CNN’s airtime. There was a video clip running every few minutes, in which one of the workers from the construction site spoke of the stranger with the fake bomb threat—the man who had saved them all. The chyron text at the bottom of the screen read: SURVIVOR: “HOW DID HE KNOW?” Between that evidence and the machine itself, open and running on the big granite island in Eversman’s kitchen, they at least seemed to have the man’s full attention. That the news was coming from an FBI agent probably helped.
He listened as they explained the system. He paced, and sometimes sat, while they showed him the e-mails and the newspaper articles: his election, his murders.
When they’d finished, Eversman turned away from the island. He crossed the dining area to a huge set of sliding doors overlooking the rear yard. The grounds rolled away to the brick wall at the back, and the dense evergreens of the Carmel Highlands beyond. In the living room, CNN was now muted.
“Fenway,” Eversman said, almost to himself.
Marnie glanced at Dryden, then returned her gaze to Eversman.
The man turned from the glass doors and came back to the island. He picked up the printed article that detailed his election night victory. His speech to the crowd at Fenway Park in November 2024.
“FDR gave his final campaign speech there,” Eversman said. “Not a lot of people know that, but I read about it somewhere, years ago.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes drifting over the page in his hands. Then: “I bet almost every president we’ve ever had spent his life dreaming about that job before he got it. Even the ones that seemed humble. I bet they pictured what kind of carpet they’d put down in the Oval Office, years before they ever ran. What color drapes they’d hang.”
He let the printout fall to the granite slab.
“I’ve had the thought of running for president in my head since my early thirties,” he said. “For the record, I’d go with beige carpet with dark blue stars around the edges, and blue and white drapes. And I’ve known for probably ten years that if I ever really did it, I’d make my victory speech at Fenway Park. I’ve pictured it every time I’ve watched a Sox home game on TV.”
Somewhere else in the giant house, Dryden heard a phone ringing. He heard a small dog barking in response to it. Heard a woman answer the call, too far away for her words to be discernible.
“A thing like that,” Eversman said, “I guess you can’t stop yourself from thinking about it, even if you know it makes you an egomaniacal prick. What you can stop yourself from doing is ever talking about it. And I have. I’ve never mentioned the Fenway thing to another soul, and I’ve never written it down anywhere. So either this is real, or else you know someone who can read minds.”
Dryden made no reply to that.
“So you believe it,” Marnie said.
His eyes still on the printout, Eversman nodded slowly. Then he looked up, his gaze going back and forth between the two of them.
“Who else have you shown this to?” he asked.
“No one who’s still alive,” Dryden said. “Right now, you’re it.”
Eversman seemed about to say something more when footsteps came clicking down the hallway that led into the dining area. A woman, maybe his wife, came to the stone arch at the hallway’s end.
“Someone from corporate on the phone,” she said.
“I’ll have to get back to them,” Eversman said.
“It sounds important.”
Eversman exhaled softly, then looked at Dryden and Marnie again. “It’ll just be a minute.”
“It’s fine,” Dryden said.
Eversman followed the woman back down the hall, leaving the two of them alone at the island.
“Did I look that mindfucked when you told me about all this?” Marnie asked.
Dryden nodded. “I’m sure I did too, when Claire told me.”
For a while, neither spoke. Dryden could hear Eversman down the hall, talking, his words dulled out to nothing by the distance.
Dryden looked at his watch. 5:40. Twenty minutes to go before the chopper would arrive to pick him up in a high school parking lot five minutes’ drive from here.
“Do you love her?” Marnie asked.
Dryden looked up. “What?”
“Claire.”