No. I’ll keep it together. I won’t let that happen.
Which was probably what everyone in the world thought . . . until it happened to them and proved them wrong.
Please don’t let that happen. Please let me hand her off to Tim without a problem. After that, if I’m really, truly sick, and it wasn’t just that fucking doctor messing with my head, then I’ll give up the ghost. Just a little while longer . . .
As if summoned by his prayer, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out and saw the blocked caller ID.
“Thank God,” David breathed shakily into the phone.
“You guys okay?” Tim said. “You hanging in there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. Listen, here’s the deal. Remember the road trip from hell? The one we all took when we were kids?”
“You mean the cross-country trip in that camper?” David said. Tim’s father had rented a camper and the four of them had piled inside and toured the country for five weeks. They’d visited national parks, campgrounds, various cities, and other banal landmarks of interest only to David’s stepfather.
“Best left forgotten, I know,” said Tim, “but do you remember the Great Vomit Fest and Mystery Fire? The one at the campsite?”
“Jesus Christ. Of course I do.” To his own amazement, he felt a smile break out across his face.
“Perfect. Meet me there tomorrow night around nine. You should have plenty of time to get there if you leave early enough in the morning.”
“Tim, it’s not necessary for you to drive all that—”
“Quiet. Don’t talk about it. You just get your butt out there.”
“I will. Christ, Tim, thank you. You have no idea.”
“Not a problem. You sure you don’t need money?”
“I’m good.”
“And how are you feeling? You holding up? Are you able to drive?”
“Yes.”
“And Ellie?”
“She’s amazingly okay. She’s tough.”
“Okay, okay. Look, we’ll take care of it. In the meantime, stay off the cell phone. Those things are like hauling around a tracking device. Don’t use a GPS, either. Stick to old-fashioned road maps. And try to get some sleep.”
“I will. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me yet, bubba,” Tim said.
“Good night,” David said into the phone before realizing that his stepbrother had already hung up.
Fatigue crashed down on him. Suddenly, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. He crawled back onto the bed and switched off the lamp. He thought he could sleep for a thousand years, and imagined he was already dead. His eyelids stuttered closed. He yawned. Somewhere in the street, a car alarm blared then went silent, as though garroted. He wondered if it was real or if he was just imagining things.
After a time, he got up and gathered the Glock up from beneath the bed, where he’d wrapped it in his T-shirt. He released the magazine and racked the slide so the chambered round popped out. He stuck the gun back under the bed but hid the magazine on the shelf in the closet. In the event something terrible took hold of him in the night—in the event that Dr. Kapoor hadn’t been lying to him after all—he might not retain the memory of where he’d hidden the mag, the gun, or both. He hoped so, anyway.
That night, his sleep was restless and plagued by demons.
34
Six months earlier
The day after Sandy Udell launched himself from a second-story window of the humanities building, both David and Burt Langstrom were interviewed by a police detective named Watermere. They were interviewed separately, taking turns occupying the cramped, book-laden office adjacent to the teachers’ lounge, where the cloying, antiseptic smell of Watermere’s aftershave was more intimidating than the police detective himself. Watermere’s questions were benign and shallow little probes, and he appeared fatigued and overwhelmed by the details of it all. David described what had happened, up until the paramedics arrived on the scene.
Watermere was quick to flip his notebook closed. The whole thing seemed to David like a formality.
“He was sick,” David said. It wasn’t a question. And judging by the impassive look on Watermere’s stony face, he did not think he was passing along any new and vital information to the police detective.
“The Folly, sure,” Watermere said. His voice was rough and deeply resonant, as if he gargled with gravel instead of mouthwash in the mornings. “It’s every third call I get.”
“Are you—you’re serious? Every third call you get?”