Kathy nodded, swiping a thumb under one eye.
David reached out and quietly closed Ellie’s bedroom door. Then he nodded his head in the direction of the living room, where the TV was on with the volume turned low. Kathy followed him, her bare feet shushing along the floor. David suddenly felt exhausted, like he could shut his eyes and not open them for a month.
“I need a drink,” Kathy said, going through the living room and into the kitchen. “You want one?”
“All right,” he said, easing down onto the sofa. Anything to soothe his nerves. He glanced at the TV but had no interest in whatever was on.
Kathy returned with two glasses of white wine. She handed one to him.
“Come here,” he said, patting the cushion beside him.
Kathy sat. She took a sip of her wine, made a smacking sound with her lips, then leaned her head against David’s shoulder.
“How much did she actually see?” he asked after a while.
“I’m not exactly sure. Her teacher said she was right there when it happened.”
“Any word on the girl?”
“None yet,” Kathy said. “The last bit of news was that she was still in critical condition. They took her to Hopkins.” She glanced up at him, her breath warm and already smelling of wine. “It’s the same thing that happened to those students of yours, isn’t it?”
“They weren’t my students,” he said. “They just attended the college. I didn’t even know them.”
“But it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“I’m not a doctor, Kath.”
“It’s what happened to Deke, too.” It wasn’t a question this time. She was running through all the incidents in her head now, he could tell, replaying them as if their sum would now total the blueprint to some terrible plan unleashed.
David had thought about Deke every day since that night he’d found him wandering down Columbus Court in his underwear. It was impossible not to, since Deke’s house—or what remained of Deke’s house, following the fire—could be seen from their front windows. Two days after the fire, David had spoken with a police detective about the incident—he told the detective about finding Deke in his underwear in the middle of the street, and about ushering him back into his home. He spoke of the disruptive condition of the house, the strange, detached way Deke had been speaking, and about the massive amounts of blood he’d discovered in Deke’s bathroom. The detective, a pock-faced fellow in his late thirties, jotted down notes without the slightest inkling of emotion. When David had finished his story, the detective set down his notepad and asked if anyone else on Columbus Court had exhibited any strange behavior lately. David said no, and asked what that had to do with anything. The detective shrugged and commented that he had been getting a lot of reports concerning strange behavior lately. More than the usual stuff, he’d said. When David asked him to elaborate, the detective was reluctant. When David pushed the issue, the detective told him it was nothing and that he shouldn’t have brought it up. It hadn’t been until later that evening, after speaking with the detective, as he’d lain in bed staring at the darkened ceiling while Kathy snored gently beside him, that David’s mind had returned to the ice cream man. It occurred to him that no one on Columbus Court had ever learned exactly what had happened to Gary, the ice cream man. The police had taken him away, the Freez-E-Friend truck had been towed, and that had been the end of it. As if it had never happened.
David considered mentioning this to Kathy now, adding one more piece to the peculiar and morbid puzzle that she was now so obviously assembling in her head, but he ultimately decided against it. A young girl had fallen ill at Ellie’s school today, coughing up blood while staggering around the playground during recess as if lost, before collapsing on the ground in a series of convulsions. Ellie’s teacher had told Kathy that a handful of students, including their daughter, had witnessed the whole thing. He didn’t need to frighten Kathy any further, augmenting her fear with reminders of all the strange events that had been happening over the past nine months. As it was, he could feel her trembling against him now.
“Ellie’s teacher said Ellie wasn’t even that scared,” Kathy said. She was staring off into the distance. “In fact, she said Ellie even helped calm some of the other kids down.”
“Well, that’s a good sign,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.
In the kitchen, the telephone rang.
“Jesus,” he said, startled.
“I’m not in the mood,” Kathy sighed, not moving.
“I’ll get it.”