"What can I get you?" Nora asked me, and I wanted to answer a tranquilizer. But I restrained myself and asked for hot cider instead.
"And a glass of water," I added, figuring I should be doing all I could to keep my urine dilute.
"We don't know Carissa very well, but we like her brother and sister-in-law. And we think the world of her niece," Anne said.
"Whitney?"
"Whitney," she repeated. "Until she went off to college, she was our number-one baby-sitter. The boys love her."
"Colgate, right?"
"Yup. She was going to sit with them tonight, as a matter of fact, but then had to cancel."
"She hadn't planned on going back to school for another two weeks," Howard explained, "but apparently she changed her mind. She's going back tomorrow instead."
"Really?"
"Yup. Her aunt's driving her."
"Carissa?"
"Uh-huh. Whitney says they're leaving at the crack of dawn."
"Tomorrow? Carissa's leaving tomorrow?"
"Carissa and Whitney," he answered, emphasizing the younger woman's name.
"Oh," I said, aware that the sound had come out like an agonized grunt. Like I'd just been hit hard in the stomach. All I'd meant to say was, Oh, how nice, but somehow I'd never gotten as far as the second part. I was starting to feel sick once again, and it was coming on fast: a nor'easter blowing hard and swift into my stomach, the storm triggered by the realization that Carissa was going to flee. I was sure of it. This was not just arsenic-inspired paranoia, a poison-induced panic: This was the sort of incomprehensible but often life-saving intuition that's triggered by adrenaline, hormones, and fear.
Carissa was going to leave. She was going to drop off Whitney in upstate New York and then continue on to Toronto. Or Ottawa. And then get on an airplane and fly...
Anywhere.
Paris, maybe. Perhaps someplace she had found where there was no reciprocity with the U.S. No extradition.
"Leland?"
The timing was perfect. Colgate was far enough away that everyone would expect her to spend the night in New York and drive home the day after that. No one would expect her home until Sunday night. And so no one would expect to see her until Monday morning. New Year's Day.
By then she could have been flying for thirty-six hours. Since Saturday night. And one can fly far in a day and a half.
Quickly I sat down on the arm of the couch. This time I'm really going to puke, I thought. I'm about to be sick all over Paul and Nora's beautiful living-room furniture.
"Leland, you're getting pale! Do you want some water?" It was Howard's voice, and I knew the man was right beside me, leaning over me, but the fellow still sounded like he was talking to me through a pillow. I stared down at the carpet--Was that an Oriental rug I was about to ruin?--and tried to breathe in deeply and slowly.
"Get him some water," Anne said.
I put my head between my knees and reached for my feet. There was that tingling. There were those splinters.
"I'm fine," I mumbled. "I'm fine."
Somewhere nearby were a woman's feet in blue pumps, and I could sense Howard backing away. Then before me were a woman's shins and her dress, and I saw Nora putting my mug down on the coffee table and kneeling beside me.
"Leland, do you want us to call a doctor?" she asked, her lips almost in my ear.
"No, Nora, please don't. I just need a minute," I said quietly.
"Do you want to go upstairs and lie down? We'll entertain Abby."
I did, but I wasn't sure my feet would function. The tingling seemed so bad, it was like both of my feet had fallen asleep. And so I shook my head and tried to focus upon nothing but the argyle swirls on my socks.
"He really didn't look well when he arrived," Nora was saying to someone, and I imagined Paul nodding and adding, He hasn't looked well for days. You should have seen him the other night by the pay phone in town. In the storm. Looked awful. Just awful!
"Flu?" Paul asked his wife.
"Maybe," she said, and I saw her legs disappear as she stood, taking a step back to give me some air.
"It's going around. Apparently, half the doctors and nurses up at the hospital have it."
Oh, but I've been taking echinacea, I wanted to say. As a matter of fact, I've been taking echinacea with goldenseal. And I've been in the care of a homeopath. A wonderful homeopath. You all know her. So how could I possibly have come down with the flu?
"I'm sure school will be half-empty next week," Howard said.
"I was up visiting Eleanor Atkins this morning, and she's not doing well at all. Her spirits are failing, too."
"She must be eighty-five, eighty-six years old?"
"About that."
I breathed in through my nose, a stream of calm, steady breaths, and with as much relief as I'd ever felt in my life understood the nausea was starting to subside. I looked up and saw Anne smiling down at me with pity and love in her eyes--What a teacher she must be!--and Howard sipping his coffee cup of hot cider.
"How are you doing?" Anne asked.
"Better."
"I think the color's coming back to your cheeks," she said, and I tried to offer back a small smile.
Nora scurried over to me. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to go upstairs for a few minutes?"
"I think I'm going to be okay."
"You're positive?"
"I'm positive. Maybe it was something I ate at lunch."
"Well, my feelings won't be hurt if you don't touch a thing tonight."
I stretched my legs, hoping the tingling had disappeared enough that I could stand, and stifled a yawn. I had no idea what nausea and yawning had to do with each other, but I'd noticed in the last few days that they seemed to be somehow related.
"I don't think it's possible to sit down at your table and not eat everything," I said. "But I'll be careful. I won't overdo it."
"Let's make it an early evening, and get you and Abby home soon," Nora said. "I think dinner's ready and I can start serving. Paul, can you help me?"
"Let me lend a hand, too," Anne said, and suddenly, I realized, I was left alone with Howard.
"That was quite a scare you gave us," he said.
"Sorry about that."
"Don't be sorry. It happens."
"It does."
"I guess you didn't know she was leaving." Howard's face was a blank, completely unreadable.
"Guess not."
He wasn't smiling or frowning; there certainly wasn't a hint of judgment. But it was a signal between us that he knew. Everyone knew. Not everything, not by a long shot. But something.
"How long have you known her?" he asked.
"Not long."
"You two have plans for tomorrow?"
"Not really," I said, rising slowly from the arm of the couch. "Well. I should probably go find my daughter."
He nodded. Poor Leland, I imagined him thinking. Wrong woman. Wrong time.
Chapter 20.
Number 93
Anything shameful that has precipitated the disease...the physician should try to uncover.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
Organon of Medicine, 1842
.
I decided during dinner that I would go and see her that night. Anne was playing on the floor with my daughter, and Nora was bringing out coffee and pie, and the plan grew real in my mind: I would stay at the Woodsons' until Abby had fallen into a deep sleep, and then I would bundle her up and carry her to the truck, and together we would drive into the village. Abby, I knew, would sleep through it all.
It was almost nine-thirty before Abby curled up on Paul and Nora's living-room couch and nodded off, and so it was well past ten before I went to the truck to turn on the heater. It was ten-thirty before I had said my good-byes and sat Abby upon my lap--a rag doll without a spine that bobbed, eyes closed, as I pulled the sleeves of her coat over her arms and slipped her feet into her snow boots--and thanked Nora and Paul one last time.
Someho
w, it was nearing eleven o'clock by the time I lifted my sleeping daughter from her booster seat and carried her to Carissa's front door.
Though it was late, I'd parked my truck at the rear of her driveway, partway into a snowdrift that marked the beginning of her backyard: You could see the truck from the street if you bothered to look, but you'd have to crane your head and stare.
When I got to the front door, I paused for a moment before ringing the bell. I had expected she'd still be awake, packing, but there were no lights on. My plan did not include waking her up.
No matter, not now. And so I rang the bell and waited, and then rang it once more. I was beginning to fear that she had somehow convinced Whitney to leave that very night, when she pulled open the door.
It had only been two and a half days since I last saw her, but she looked as if she'd been battling illness for months. For a moment I thought it was merely the fact that I had woken her: Her hair had been puffed out by her pillows as she'd slept, and she had wrapped a tired-looking shawl around her nightgown. But there was more to it than that. There were dark bags under her eyes, and that round, girlish face had grown thin. She looked pale.
She motioned me inside without flipping on the hall light, and then lifted my little girl from my arms.
"God, she's out like a light," she whispered as she carried her into the living room and unzipped her coat. For a moment I watched from the hallway, trying to decide whether I should take off my boots. I wondered if I gazed into the kitchen or the dining room--my eyes straining in the dark--whether I would see suitcases.
When she returned to the hallway, she took my hands in hers and told me they were ice-cold. "Have you ever tried gloves?" she asked.
"They're in the truck. I thought the truck was warm."
Her face was a drowsy mask. I kissed her lightly on the lips, and she pulled me to the stairs. As we sat down she said, "You need to take better care of yourself."
"I know."
"You have Abby to think of."
"And you," I said.
She was sitting a step below me, and she rested her head on my leg. I realized I still had my overcoat on.
"I'm glad you're here," she murmured.
"Me, too."
"Someone will see your truck, you know."
"I'm parked in the back."
"Still..."
"I know."
"I'll be gone tomorrow," she said.
"I heard."
"How?"
"I saw Howard and Anne Lansing tonight. It was a little dinner party. Whitney was supposed to baby-sit for them."
"I'm not coming back until Sunday," she said.
When she was gone, I knew, I would try not to think of her. But I would. I would think of her all the time. The more, in fact, that I tried not to think about her, the more I would find reasons to recall what her body lotion had smelled like. Or the way she would toy with her eyeglasses. Or sit in her chair with her feet curled beneath her.
And then, suddenly, I'd stop. There would be times when I'd recall her, moments when she would return to me. There would be images and events that would bring her back as an almost tangible presence. But I would stop consciously reminiscing. Obsessing.
This was, after all, exactly what had happened after Elizabeth died. At some point after the first anniversary of the accident, I began going whole mornings or afternoons without once recalling the woman I know for a fact I had loved. It is possible that if I had not had photos of her by my bed, I might have gone a whole day now and then.
"Really? Sunday?"
"It's a long drive," she said.
"But you're getting an early start."
"Still. It's a haul."
I wanted to tell her not to go, but I wanted to make sure I could say it without desperation or panic in my voice. I wanted to be sure my voice wouldn't break.
"This is awful sudden," I said simply.
"It is. I don't honestly know whether it was my idea or Whitney's. We were talking about when she should leave, and one of us just decided that we might as well go now."
All this time her head was against my leg. I stroked her hair and asked, "Will you really be back on Sunday?"
She was quiet, and I saw her shoulders rise in either a sigh or a shrug. I couldn't tell.
"Promise me you will," I said.
"No."
The syllable was long but airy. In my head I heard myself whisper, Please.
"Where will you go?" I asked.
"You know I'm going to Colgate. Hamilton, New York."
"And then?" I ran the tips of my fingers in circles along her temple, occasionally sliding them gently behind her ear. When she didn't answer, I asked again.
"I don't know," she murmured.
"Home to Bartlett," I said.
She rested one of her hands on my knee and allowed herself a tiny purr. "That sounds nice," she said, as if she were imagining fresh strawberries in December: impossible, but nice to conceive.
"I went to the hospital today. I saw Richard."
"Tell me about it," she said.
And so I told her about my visit, and that I thought the worst would soon be over for Jennifer. Her husband would die, and she would begin to heal. I told Carissa that Jennifer seemed to have a wonderful family and that the children would be fine.
"And Jennifer?"
One moment she was cupping my knee in her hand, and the next I could scarcely feel her fingers at all. "Jennifer will be okay. She will. And she no longer blames you, you know. Not at all."
"She's being kind."
"She's being realistic. Honest. She understands it wasn't your fault."
"I don't believe that."
"That Jennifer doesn't blame you?"
"That it wasn't my fault...."
"No, Carissa, it wasn't. It just wasn't. If you feel that way, it's because of me. It's because I had us doctor the notes, it's because--"
"Us?" she said, sitting up and pulling away from me. "You didn't tell him to eat cashews! You didn't give him the idea that his drugs were an antidote to his cure!"
"No. But I--"
"Leland. No. Please stop." She stood up and shuffled toward the living room, and gazed in at my daughter on the couch. She watched her for a long moment and then returned to the hallway. She pulled her shawl tightly around her and leaned against the front door.
"I'd tell your lawyer friends in your office everything if you didn't have Abby," she said. "I really would. I'd tell them everything."
"Would that make you feel better?"
"Except for what would happen to Abby? I think so. This afternoon I thought I might allow myself one more lie: I'd tell them about the notes, and what I said in the store. But I wouldn't tell them you had anything to do with it. I'd say doctoring the notes was all my idea, and I did it all by myself. But that would still put you in a horrible place."
"I'd come forward."
"I know that. You're not the type who could watch me go it alone."
"No. I couldn't."
She smiled at me and shook her head. "What will you do tomorrow? After I've gone?"
"Oh, maybe I'll look at a map on the computer. Maybe I'll follow your trip. I'll tell myself you'll be back on Sunday, because that's what you've told everyone else. Maybe on New Year's Day, Abby and I will get in the truck and we'll drive into the village. I'll insist we drive down your street, so I can be reassured by the sight of your car."
"And if it's not there?"
I stood up and went to her, and pulled her against me. We rocked each other, and I imagined I was on a small boat: The waves were comforting and small, and we were together.
"Can you spend the night?" she asked, her voice so quiet that for a second I didn't understand what she'd said.
"I can."
"Abby will be okay in a bed she doesn't know?"
"I'll be sure to get up before her."
Outside a dog barked, and I wondered if at that very moment someone was walking down Carissa's street an
d noting a strange truck in her driveway.
No, not strange. That's a truck like Leland Fowler's. Maybe it is Leland Fowler's.
"I should tell you," I said, "that I'm sick."