“Sometimes. Still an arousal disorder.”
“A pediatric sleep disorder,” Paige said. “Super common.”
“I am guessing you found that expression on whatever website or in whatever book gave you that ten times number.”
“It was very informative.”
I took a last drag on the bowl and tipped the ashes onto the dessert plate I had brought upstairs to my room expressly for this purpose. Then I went to my bed and sat down. I patted the mattress, encouraging my sister to join me. I was actually a little surprised when Paige did. “You’ve studied probabilities in math, right? You know what probability means?”
“It means likelihood,” she said. “Odds, right?”
“Right. It’s when we try and get a sense of how likely it is—how probable it is—that something is going to happen. And here’s why it matters: even if my arousal disorder was only a pediatric problem, it means that I inherited sleepwalking from Mom. And if I did, the probability falls that you did—or you will. And then there is this: Have you ever had an incident? No. Never.”
She looked at me. “That’s not true.”
“Seriously? When? I think Mom or Dad would have told me.”
“Well, you think wrong. I told Mom. I don’t know if she told Dad.”
I tried to clear my head and focus. “Tell me what happened,” I said.
“One night in August—about a week before Mom disappeared—I think I went downstairs.”
“You think?”
“My swim bag wasn’t where I’d left it.”
“Maybe you forgot where you put it.”
“It was on the floor in the den by the TV set. I always leave it by the front door so I don’t forget it.” Paige was as meticulous about her swim bag—always packing a dry towel, a dry suit, and her goggles—as she was her ski gear. Sometimes her wet towel wound up in the back of the car on the way home if it was warm out, because she would walk from the pool to the car in her suit, wearing the towel like a skirt. But before leaving the house, she always double-checked that she had what she needed in that bag.
“So one time you just put it down in the den by mistake,” I said. “Or maybe Mom or Dad moved it.”
“Also, it was unpacked.”
“Unpacked?”
“Everything was on the rug.”
“What did Mom say?”
“She said I was worried for nothing. She said I just forgot to pack it. And even if I had gotten up in the middle of the night, she said it was probably a one-time thing.”
“Okay, then. It sounds like the odds you were sleepwalking are pretty slim.”
She took a deep breath: “But then this happened: last week, I woke up in the barn.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I was in Mom’s car.”
“At night?”
“Uh-huh. The middle of the night. And I don’t remember walking out to the barn or getting inside. I don’t remember getting behind the wheel. But there I was.”
“You’re sure?”
“Gee. Did I wake up in my bed or outside in the barn? Hard to be sure,” she said sarcastically. “Of course I’m sure.”
Paige had been one of those kids who’d always loved to sit on our mother’s or father’s lap and steer the car as a little girl. Now, though she was still a few years from even a learner’s permit, our parents would let her back in and out of the barn. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell Dad?”
“I didn’t want to worry Dad. He’s kind of a mess. And I’m telling you now.”
I thought about this. “Well, thank you.”
“I mean, I guess I should have made a bigger deal about the swim bag in August. But we were all freaking out because Dad was about to go to that conference. You know, his first big trip leaving Mom. I didn’t want to ruin everything and prevent him from going. I guess Mom didn’t either.”
I understood completely, and I didn’t want her to become any more alarmed than she already was. “I get it,” I said. “At some point we should probably let Dad know. I really don’t think it’s a big deal, so you shouldn’t either. But let’s find a moment in the next couple of days when you or I can tell him.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Then she sat back against my headboard and folded her arms across her chest. “So what do you think of your odds and probabilities now?” she asked me.
“I think you worry too much,” I told her, smiling.
The image on the TV screen was still frozen where I had paused the cassette. The magician had just returned the second dove to the cage on the table beside him. For a long second we both stared at it. The magician had tattoos of the sun and a crescent moon on his neck.