She couldn’t wait for the second bus to arrive. So long as they were moving, she was all right. She was carried forward, leaving her thoughts behind her like a tangle of clothes on the shore.
Anderson had given her a sheaf of papers. She had them rolled up in her purse, a rubber-banded scroll. A news story about a little boy who drowned in Ashview, Virginia. The boy had drowned in his own pool. The pool boy had forgotten to latch the sliding doors to the backyard, and the mother had gone soon afterward to the basement to do the laundry, leaving her eight-year-old on his own watching television in the living room. A simple mistake, with terrible consequences.
Tommy Moran: a stranger’s child.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at the pages. She had the blank side facing out. The clean slate that Noah apparently wasn’t given.
Tommy Moran, Tommy Moran.
“Look at the facts,” Anderson had said on his second visit. They were sitting, again, in the kitchen. It was evening; Noah was asleep. Anderson seemed composed, but there was no mistaking the zeal in his eyes. He pulled the papers from his briefcase and placed them in front of her. “There are strong similarities.”
She skimmed the page on top: a list of comments Noah had made and similarities between Noah and Tommy. Words leaped out at her. Ashview. Obsession with reptiles. A fan of the Nationals. A red house. Drowning.
And where was Noah’s well-being in all this?
She set the page aside.
“How did you get this information?”
“Some of it is…” He gestured vaguely. “On the computer. Also, I’ve been in touch with the mother. She confirmed that her house was red and her other son is named Charles.”
“You talked to Tommy Moran’s mother?” She realized she was shouting and tried to contain her voice. She didn’t want to wake up Noah. “Why didn’t you ask me first?”
Anderson seemed unperturbed. “I wanted to make sure the case was solid. We e-mailed. I told her about my work, about the similarities.…”
“And she responded to this?”
He nodded.
“So—if I say yes—then what?”
“Then we take Noah to the home and find out if he can identify members of the previous personality’s family, favorite places … that sort of thing. We take him around, see what he recognizes.”
She considered everything he was telling her. The logical end of the road she’d embarked on.
She had heard stories of mothers who had worked tirelessly and reversed many of the symptoms of autism in their children; mothers who learned how to build ramps for disabled daughters, who taught themselves sign language to reach deaf sons. But when did you stop, when it was your child?
She knew the answer already. There was no stopping.
She got right to the point. “And this process will heal my son?”
“It might help him, yes. It often has a beneficial effect upon the child.”
“And if I don’t do this?”
He shrugged. His voice was restrained, but there was tension in it. “Then that’s your choice. And the case is closed.”
“And Noah will forget all about this?”
“It isn’t uncommon for a child to forget by five or six.”
“Noah is only four.”
His eyes glinted. “Yes.”
“I don’t know if I can make it a year or two.”
He faced her stoically across the kitchen table. She’d met him twice now, had shared intense hours in the same room with him, and she still didn’t trust him. She couldn’t figure out if the light in his eyes was that of a genius or a crackpot. There was something stilted and hesitant about the way he talked to her, something that remained hidden, though it might simply have been the reticent nature of a scientist.… Still, he was good with Noah, gentle and patient, as if he cared about him, and he was a psychiatrist, and had handled many similar cases. Could she rely on that?
She felt again the current of fear that had been flowing inside of her for months now, like a river beneath a thin layer of ice. She heard it rushing through her dreams. When she woke up, she remembered nothing but the sickness of the feeling; she lay in bed and felt the power of it pulling at her and thought: my son is unhappy, and I can’t help him.
“You still plan to write about this?”
He sat back in his chair and regarded her. He spoke so slowly it was maddening. She wanted to shake him. “I am interested in documenting the case. Yes.”
“The case, the case. The case is a child, Jerry. Noah is a child.”
He stood up, a flash of aggravation crossing his face. “I know that. You think I don’t know that? I’m a psychiatrist—”
“But not a parent.”