Anderson stood up, brushed off his knees. “I think he’s fine.”
“You don’t know that!” Janie cried. “What if he has a concussion?”
“We’ll keep an eye out for symptoms. It’s not likely.”
“Really? How do you know?”
The question vibrated in the air between them. She doesn’t trust me, he thought. Makes sense. Why should she?
“Oh!” Another thud—this time it was the bag of groceries falling as Denise finally lost her grip on it, the pinball whirr of onions rolling across the floor. Denise stared from Noah to the mess on the floor, shaking her head. “I’m sorry—”
Noah struggled to sit. His face contorted. “Mama?”
“So sorry,” Denise repeated. Her knees seemed to buckle and Anderson was afraid for a moment that they were giving way, that she would fall, and the farce would be complete. Instead, she crouched down, collecting the papers, placing them neatly in a pile.
Janie gathered Noah in her arms. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go get a—glass of water, shall we?” She didn’t wait for his response; she stood up and walked out of the room.
“I didn’t mean … to hurt anyone.…” Denise was hoarse, stunned, gathering the flyers one by one.
“Mama,” the teenager said. “Leave them.”
“No, I’ve got to…”
“Leave the flyers be.”
“It’s not your fault,” Anderson said. “It’s mine.”
She looked up at him, but he couldn’t meet her eyes.
*
Ten minutes later, Anderson sat up straight on the couch and let the full force of the woman’s fury and confusion fall upon him. He knew he deserved it.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Maybe we should discuss this once you’ve recovered a bit more,” Anderson answered slowly. “From the shock.”
“Oh, I’ve recovered.” The Crawford woman stood over him. She didn’t seem entirely stable.
This simply proved that approaches always matter, Anderson thought. He should not have listened to Janie. He ought to have e-mailed the woman first. Given her some kind of warning.
She crossed her arms and he felt the rage building inside of her, revealing itself in her shaky voice and the flash of her eyes. “So let me get this straight. You think my son is—reincarnated somewhere inside that child? That’s what you think?”
“Ma’am, we try not to jump to…” He looked at her. Fuck it. “Yes. That’s what I think.”
“You people are out of your damn minds.”
“Ma’am. I’m sorry you—came to that conclusion.” He took a deep breath. He’d met resistance so many times. Why should it affect him so much now? He couldn’t find the clarity inside of himself to explain what he needed to explain. “If you can just take a moment and let me explain some of the things Noah’s been saying and you can either—agree with them or—”
“Some kind of crazy voodoo—”
“It’s not voodoo,” Janie said. She was standing in the doorway.
Anderson felt deeply relieved to see her there. “How’s Noah?”
“Okay. For now. He won’t talk to me. Charlie set him up in the kitchen watching cartoons on the computer.” Janie turned to Denise. “Look,” she said. “I know this all sounds crazy, and totally far-fetched … and the thing is, it is far-fetched, all of it, but maybe it’s also—” She glanced at Anderson, her eyes startled, flung open like a window. “It’s also true.”
Anderson was momentarily stricken with gratitude. Maybe it wasn’t all gone to shit, after all.
“Look, we don’t want to upset you. That’s the last thing we want,” Janie said nervously, and Denise laughed, a terrible sound.
“You can go ahead and believe whatever you like. That’s your prerogative. But please leave me and my family out of it.”
“Did Tommy have a lizard named Horntail?” Anderson asked suddenly.
Denise’s face was unreadable over her crossed arms. “So what if he did?”
“Noah remembers being a boy named Tommy who had a lizard named Horntail and a brother named Charlie. He gave multiple references to Harry Potter books, and likes the Nationals baseball team.” Anderson surprised himself with his newfound fluency with proper nouns, as if some other, intact part of his brain was retrieving the necessary information. This was some quirk of the aphasia, grist for someone’s research paper, only it wasn’t research, it was his life; it was this moment. “He talked about shooting a .54 caliber rifle.”
Denise twisted her lips into a thin smile. “Well, then, you see? We never had guns in our home. I didn’t even let the boys play with toy guns.”