Текст книги "Revival"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

XII

Forbidden Books. My Maine Vacation. The Sad Story of Mary Fay. The Coming of the Storm.

About six weeks later I got an email from my old research partner.

To: Jamie

From: Bree

Subject: FYI

After you were at Jacobs’s place in upstate New York, you said in an email that he mentioned a book called

De Vermis Mysteriis

. The name stuck in my head, probably because I took just enough Latin in high school to know that’s

The Mysteries of the Worm

in plain English. I guess research into All Things Jacobs is a hard habit to break, because I looked into it. Without telling my husband, I should add, as he believes I have put All Things Jacobs behind me.

Anyway, this is pretty heavy stuff. According to the Catholic Church,

De Vermis Mysteriis

is one of half a dozen so-called Forbidden Books. Taken as a group, they are known as “grimoires.” The other five are

The Book of Apollonius

(he was a doctor at the time of Christ),

The Book of Albertus Magnus

(spells, talismans, speaking to the dead),

Lemegeton

and

Clavicula Salomonis

(supposedly written by King Solomon), and

The Grimoire of Picatrix

. That last one, along with

De Vermis Mysteriis

, was supposedly the basis of H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire, called

The Necronomicon

.

Editions are available of all the Forbidden Books EXCEPT FOR

De Vermis Mysteriis

. According to Wikipedia, secret emissaries of the Catholic Church (paging Dan Brown) had burned all but six or seven copies of

De Vermis

by the turn of the 20th century. (BTW, the Pope’s army now refuses to acknowledge such a book ever existed.) The others have dropped out of sight, and are presumed to be destroyed or held by private collectors.

Jamie, all the Forbidden Books deal with POWER, and how to obtain it by means that combine alchemy (which we now call “science”), mathematics, and certain nasty occult rituals. All of it is probably bullshit, but it makes me uneasy—you told me Jacobs has spent his life studying electrical phenomena, and based on his healing successes, I have to think he may have gotten hold of a power that’s pretty awesome. Which makes me think of the old proverb: “He who takes a tiger by the tail dare not let go.”

A couple of other things for you to think about.

One: Up until the mid-seventeenth century, Catholics known to be studying

potestas magnum universum

(the force that powers the universe) were liable to excommunication.

Two: Wikipedia claims—although without verifying references, I must add—that the couplet most people remember from Lovecraft’s fictional

Necronomicon

was stolen from a copy of

De Vermis

which Lovecraft had access to (he certainly never owned one, he was too poor to purchase such a rarity). This is the couplet: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die.” That gave me nightmares. I’m not kidding.

Sometimes you called Charles Daniel Jacobs “my old fifth business.” I hope you are done with him at last, Jamie. Once upon a time I would have laughed at all this, but once upon a time I thought miracle cures at revival meetings were bullshit.

Give me a call someday, would you? Let me know All Things Jacobs are behind you.

Affectionately, as always,

Bree

I printed this out and read it over twice. Then I googled De Vermis Mysteriis and found everything Bree had told me in her email, along with one thing she hadn’t. In an antiquarian book-blog called Dark Tomes of Magick & Spells, someone called Ludvig Prinn’s suppressed grimoire “the most dangerous book ever written.”

 • • •

I left my apartment, walked down the block, and bought a pack of cigarettes for the first time since a brief flirtation with tobacco in college. There was no smoking in my building, so I sat on my steps to light up. I coughed out the first drag, my head swimming, and I thought, These things would have killed Astrid, if not for Charlie’s intervention.

Yes. Charlie and his miracle cures. Charlie who had a tiger by the tail and didn’t want to let go.

Something happened, Astrid had said in my dream, speaking through a grin from which all her former sweetness had departed. Something happened, and Mother will be here soon.

Then, later, after Jacobs had shot his secret electricity into her head: There’s a door in the wall. The door is covered with ivy. The ivy is dead. She waits. And when Jacobs asked who Astrid was talking about: Not the one you want.

I can break my promise, I thought, casting the cigarette away. It wouldn’t be the first one.

True, but not this one. Not this promise.

I went back inside, crushing the pack of cigarettes and tossing it into the trash can beside the mailboxes. Upstairs, I called Bree’s cell, prepared to leave a message, but she answered. I thanked her for her email and told her I had no intention of ever seeing Charles Jacobs again. I told this lie without guilt or hesitation. Bree’s husband was right; she needed to be finished with All Things Jacobs. And when the time came to go back to Maine and fulfill my promise, I would lie to Hugh Yates for the same reason.

Once upon a time, two teenagers had fallen for each other, and hard, as only teenagers can. A few years later they made love in a ruined cabin while the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed—all very Victoria Holt. In the course of time, Charles Jacobs had saved them both from paying the ultimate price for their addictions. I owed him double. I’m sure you see that, and I could leave it there, but to do so would be to omit a much larger truth: I was also curious. God help me, I wanted to watch him lift the lid on Pandora’s box and peer inside.

 • • •

“This isn’t your lame-ass way of telling me you want to retire, is it?” Hugh tried to sound as if he was joking, but there was real apprehension in his eyes.

“Not at all. I just want a couple of months off. Maybe only six weeks, if I get bored. I need to reconnect with my family in Maine while I still can. I’m not getting any younger.”

I had no intention of going near my family in Maine. They were too close to Goat Mountain as it was.

“You’re a kid,” he said moodily. “Come this fall, I’m going to have a year for every trombone that led the big parade. Mookie pulling the pin this spring was bad enough. If you went for good, I’d probably have to close this place down.”

He heaved a sigh.

“I should have had kids, someone to take over when I’m gone, but does that sort of thing happen? Rarely. When you say you hope they’ll pick up the reins of the family business, they say ‘Sorry, Dad, me and that dope-smoking kid you hated me hanging out with in high school are going to California to make surfboards equipped with WiFi.’”

“Now that you’ve got that out of your system . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, go back to your roots, by all means. Play pat-a-cake with your little niece and help your brother rebuild his latest classic car. You know how summers are here.”

I certainly did: slower than dirt. Summer means full employment even for the shittiest bands, and when bands are playing live music in bars and at four dozen summerfests in Colorado and Utah, they don’t buy much recording time.

“George Damon will be in,” I said. “He’s come out of retirement in a big way.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said. “The only guy in Colorado who can make ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ sound like ‘God Bless America.’”

“Perhaps in the world. Hugh, you haven’t had any more of those prismatics, have you?”

He gave me a curious look. “No. What brought that on?”

I shrugged.

“I’m fine. Up a couple of times every night to squirt half a teacup of pee, but I guess that’s par for the course at my age. Although . . . you want to hear a funny thing? Only to me it’s more of a spooky thing.”

I wasn’t sure I did, but thought I ought to. It was early June. Jacobs hadn’t called yet, but he would. I knew he would.

“I’ve been having this recurring dream. In it I’m not here at Wolfjaw, I’m in Arvada, in the house where I grew up. Someone starts knocking on the door. Except it’s not just knocking, it’s pounding. I don’t want to answer it, because I know it’s my mother, and she’s dead. Pretty stupid, because she was alive and healthy as a horse back in the Arvada days, but I know it, just the same. I go down the hall, not wanting to, but my feet just keep moving—you know how dreams are. By then she’s really whamming on the door, beating on it with both fists, it sounds like, and I’m thinking of this horror story we had to read in English when I was in high school. I think it was called ‘August Heat.’”

Not “August Heat,” I thought. “The Monkey’s Paw.” That’s the one with the door-pounding in it.

“I reach for the knob, and then I wake up, all in a sweat. What do you make of that? My subconscious, trying to get me ready for the big exit scene?”

“Maybe,” I agreed, but my head had left the conversation. I was thinking about another door. A small one covered with dead ivy.

 • • •

Jacobs called on July first. I was in one of the studios, updating the Apple Pro software. When I heard his voice, I sat down in front of the control board and looked through the window into a soundproof rehearsal room that was empty except for a disassembled drumkit.

“The time has almost come for you to keep your promise,” he said. His voice was mushy, as if he’d been drinking, although I’d never seen him take anything stronger than black coffee.

“All right.” My voice was calm enough. Why not? It was the call I had been expecting. “When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow. The day after at the latest. I suspect you won’t want to stay with me at the resort, at least to start with—”

“You suspect right.”

“—but I’ll need you no more than an hour away. When I call, you come.”

That made me think of another spooky story, one titled “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”

“All right,” I said. “But Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“You get two months of my time, and that’s it. When Labor Day rolls around, we’re quits no matter what happens.”

Another pause, but I could hear his breathing. It sounded labored, making me think of how Astrid had sounded in her wheelchair. “That’s . . . acceptable.” Acsheptable.

“Are you okay?”

“Another stroke, I’m afraid.” Shtroke. “My speech isn’t as clear as it once was, but I assure you my mind is as clear as ever.”

Pastor Danny, heal thyself, I thought, and not for the first time.

“Bit of news for you, Charlie. Robert Rivard is dead. The boy from Missouri? He hung himself.”

“I’m shorry to hear that.” He didn’t sound sorry, and didn’t waste time asking for details. “When you arrive, call me and tell me where you are. And remember, no more than an hour away.”

“Okay,” I said, and broke the connection.

I sat there in the unnaturally quiet studio for several minutes, looking at the framed album covers on the walls, then dialed Jenny Knowlton, in Rockland. She answered on the first ring.

“How’s our girl doing?” I asked.

“Fine. Putting on weight and walking a mile a day. She looks twenty years younger.”

“No aftereffects?”

“Nothing. No seizures, no sleepwalking, no amnesia. She doesn’t remember much about the time we spent at Goat Mountain, but I think that’s sort of a blessing, don’t you?”

“What about you, Jenny? Are you okay?”

“Fine, but I ought to go. We’re awfully busy at the hospital today. Thank God I’ve got vacation coming up.”

“You won’t go off somewhere and leave Astrid alone, will you? Because I don’t think that would be a good id—”

“No, no, certainly not!” There was something in her voice. Something nervous. “Jamie, I’ve got a page. I have to go.”

I sat in front of the darkened control panel. I looked at the album covers—actually CD covers these days, little things the size of postcards. I thought about a time not too long after I’d gotten my first car as a birthday present, that ’66 Ford Galaxie. Riding with Norm Irving. Him pestering me to put the pedal to the metal on the two-mile stretch of Route 9 we called the Harlow Straight. So we could see what she’d do, he said. At eighty, the front end began to shimmy, but I didn’t want to look like a wuss—at seventeen, not looking like a wuss is very important—so I kept my foot down. At eighty-five the shimmy smoothed out. At ninety, the Galaxie took on a dreamy, dangerous lightness as its contact with the road lessened, and I realized I’d reached the edge of control. Careful not to touch the brake—I knew from my father that could mean disaster at high speed—I let off the gas and the Galaxie began to slow.

I wished I could do that now.

 • • •

The Embassy Suites near the Jetport had seemed all right when I’d been there the night after Astrid’s miracle recovery, so I checked in again. It had crossed my mind to do my waiting at the Castle Rock Inn, but the chances of running into an old acquaintance—Norm Irving, for instance—were too great. If that happened, it would almost certainly get back to my brother Terry. He’d want to know why I was in Maine, and why I wasn’t staying with him. Those were questions I didn’t want to answer.

The time passed. On July Fourth, I watched the fireworks from Portland Promenade with several thousand other people, all of us ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the peonies and chrysanthemums and diadems exploded overhead and were doubled in Casco Bay, where they swayed on the waves. In the days that followed, I went to the zoo in York, the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, and the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point. I toured the Portland Museum of Art, where three generations of Wyeths were on view, and took in a matinee performance of The Buddy Holly Story at Ogunquit Playhouse—the lead singer/actor was good, but no Gary Busey. I ate “lobstah” until I never wanted to see another one. I took long walks along the rocky shore. Twice a week I visited Books-A-Million in the Maine Mall and bought paperbacks which I read in my room until I was sleepy. I took my cell with me everywhere, waiting for Jacobs to call, and the call didn’t come. On a couple of occasions I thought of calling him, and told myself I was out of my mind to even consider it. Why kick a sleeping dog?

The weather was picture-perfect, with low humidity, innocent skies, and temperatures in the low seventies, day after day. There were showers, usually at night. One evening I heard TV weatherman Joe Cupo call it “considerate rain.” He added that it was the most beautiful summer he’d seen in his thirty-five years of broadcasting.

The All-Star game was played in Minneapolis, the regular baseball season resumed, and as August approached, I began to hope that I might make it back to Colorado without ever seeing Charlie. It crossed my mind that he might have had a fourth stroke, this time a cataclysmic one, and I kept an eye on the obituary page in the Portland Press Herald. Not exactly hoping, but . . .

Fuck that, I was. I was hoping.

During the local news on July 25th, Joe Cupo regretfully informed me and the rest of his southern Maine viewing audience that all good things must end, and the heatwave currently baking the Midwest would be moving into New England over the weekend. Temperatures would be in the mid-nineties during the entire last week of July, and August didn’t look much better, at least to start with. “Check those air-conditioning units, folks,” Cupo advised. “They don’t call em the dog days for nothing.”

Jacobs called that evening. “Sunday,” he said. “I’ll expect you no later than nine in the morning.”

I told him I’d be there.

 • • •

Joe Cupo was right about the heat. It moved in Saturday afternoon, and when I got into my rental car at seven thirty on Sunday morning, the air was already thick. The roads were empty, and I made good time to Goat Mountain. On my way up to the main gate, I noticed that the spur leading to Skytop was open again, the stout wooden gate pulled back.

Sam the security guard was waiting for me, but no longer in uniform. He was sitting on the dropped tailgate of a Tacoma pickup, dressed in jeans and eating a bagel. He put it carefully on a napkin when I pulled up, and strolled over to my car.

“Hello there, Mr. Morton. You’re early.”

“No traffic,” I said.

“Yeah, in summer this is the best time of day to travel. The Massholes’ll be out in force later, headed for the beaches.” He looked at the sky, where blue was already fading to hazy white. “Let em bake and work on their skin cancer. I plan to be home, watching the Sox and soaking up the AC.”

“Shift over soon?”

“No more shifts here for any of us,” he said. “Once I call Mr. Jacobs and tell him you’re on your way, that’s it. Job over.”

“Well, enjoy the rest of the summer.” I stuck out my hand.

He shook it. “Any idea what he’s up to? I can keep a secret; I’m bonded, you know.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

He gave me a wink as if to say we both knew better, then waved me on. Before I went around the first curve, I watched in the rearview mirror as he grabbed his bagel, slammed the Tacoma’s tailgate shut, and got in behind the wheel.

That’s it. Job over.

I wished I could say the same.

 • • •

Jacobs came slowly and carefully down the porch steps to meet me. In his left hand was a cane. The twist of his mouth was more severe than ever. I saw a single car in the parking lot, and it was one I recognized: a trim little Subaru Outback. On the back deck was a sticker reading SAVE ONE LIFE, YOU’RE A HERO. SAVE A THOUSAND AND YOU’RE A NURSE. My heart sank.

“Jamie! Wonderful to see you!” See came out she. He offered the hand not holding the cane. It was obviously an effort, but I ignored it.

“If Astrid is here, she leaves, and leaves this minute,” I said. “If you think I’m bluffing, just try me.”

“Calm yourself, Jamie. Astrid is a hundred and thirty miles from here, continuing her recovery in her cozy little nest just north of Rockland. Her friend Jenny has kindly agreed to aid me while I complete my work.”

“I somehow doubt that kindness had much to do with it. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Come inside. It’s hot out here already. You can move your car to the parking lot later.”

He was slow going up the steps even with the cane, and I had to steady him when he tottered. The arm I grasped was hardly more than a bone. By the time we got to the top, he was gasping.

“I need to rest a minute,” he said, and sank into one of the Shaker-style rockers that lined the porch.

I sat on the rail and regarded him.

“Where’s Rudy? I thought he was your nurse.”

Jacobs favored me with his peculiar smile, now more one-sided than ever. “Shortly after my session with Miss Soderberg in the East Room, both Rudy and Norma tendered their resignations. You just can’t get good help these days, Jamie. Present company excepted, of course.”

“So you hired Knowlton.”

“I did, and believe me, I traded up. She’s forgotten more about nursing than Rudy Kelly ever knew. Give me a hand, would you?”

I helped him to his feet, and we went inside to where it was cool.

“There’s juice and breakfast pastries in the kitchen. Help yourself to whatever you want, and join me in the main parlor.”

I skipped the pastries but poured myself a small glass of OJ from a carafe in the huge refrigerator. When I put it back, I inventoried the supplies and saw enough for ten days or so. Two weeks if they were stretched. Was that how long we were going to be here, or would either Jenny Knowlton or myself be making a grocery run to Yarmouth, which was probably the closest town with a supermarket?

The guard service was finished. Jacobs had replaced the nurse—which didn’t completely surprise me, given Jacobs’s own increasingly iffy condition—but not the housekeeper, which meant (among other things) that Jenny must also have been cooking his meals and, perhaps, changing his bed. It was just the three of us, or so I thought then.

We turned out to be a quartet.

 • • •

The main parlor was all glass on the north side, giving a view of Longmeadow and Skytop. I couldn’t see the cabin, but I could glimpse that iron pole jutting up toward the hazy sky. Looking at it, things finally began to come together in my mind . . . but slowly, even then, and Jacobs held back the one vital piece that would have made the picture crystal clear. You might say I should have seen it anyway, all the pieces were there, but I was a guitar player, not a detective, and when it came to deductive reasoning, I was never the fastest greyhound on the track.

“Where is Jenny?” I asked. Jacobs had taken the sofa; I sat down opposite him in a wingback chair that tried to swallow me whole.

“Occupied.”

“With what?”

“None of your beeswax now, although it will be shortly.” He leaned forward with his hands clasped on the head of the cane, looking like a predatory bird. One that would soon be too old to fly. “You have questions. I understand that better than you think, Jamie—I know that inquisitiveness is a large part of what brought you here. You will have answers in time, but probably not today.”

“When?”

“Hard to tell, but soon. In the meantime, you will cook our meals and come if I ring.”

He showed me a white box—not so different in appearance from the one I’d used that day in the East Room, except this one had a button instead of a slide switch, and an embossed trade name: Notiflex. He pushed the button and chimes went off, echoing from all the large downstairs rooms.

“I won’t need you to help me go to the toilet—that I can still do myself—but I’ll need you standing by when I’m in the shower, I’m afraid. In case I slip. There’s a prescription gel you’ll rub into my back, hips, and thighs twice a day. Oh, and you’ll have to bring many of my meals to my suite of rooms. Not because I’m lazy, or because I want to turn you into my personal butler, but because I tire easily and need to conserve my strength. I have one more thing to do. It’s a large thing, a vitally important thing, and when the time comes, I must be strong enough to do it.”

“Happy to make and serve the meals, Charlie, but as far as the nursing part goes, I assumed Jenny Knowlton would be the one to—”

“She’s occupied, as I told you, so you must take over her . . . why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was remembering the day I met you. I was only six, but it’s a clear memory. I made a mountain in the dirt—”

“So you did. It’s a clear memory for me, too.”

“—and I was playing with my soldiers. A shadow fell over me. I looked up and it was you. What I was thinking is that your shadow has been over me for my whole life. What I ought to do is drive away from here right now and get out from under it.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. I won’t. But I’ll tell you something. I also remember the man you were—how you got right down on your knees with me and joined in the game. I remember your smile. When you smile now, all I see is a sneer. When you talk now, all I hear is orders: do this, do that, and I’ll tell you why later. What became of you, Charlie?”

He struggled up from the sofa, and when I moved to help, he waved me away. “If you have to ask that, a smart boy grew up to be a stupid man. At least when I lost my wife and son, I didn’t turn to drugs.”

“You had your secret electricity. That was your drug.”

“Thank you for that valuable insight, but since this discussion has no point, let’s end it, shall we? Several of the rooms on the second floor are made up. I’m sure you’ll find one to your taste. I’d like an egg salad sandwich for lunch, a glass of skim milk, and an oatmeal-raisin cookie. The roughage is good for my bowels, I’m told.”

“Charlie—”

“No more,” he said, hobbling toward the elevator. “Soon you’ll know everything. In the meantime, keep your bourgeois judgments to yourself. Lunch at noon. Bring it to the Cooper Suite.”

He left me there, for the time being too stunned to say a word.

 • • •

Three days went by.

They were broiling hot outside, the horizon blurred by a constant haze of humidity. Inside, the resort was cool and comfortable. I made our meals, and although he joined me downstairs for dinner on the second night, he took all the rest in his suite. I heard the TV blaring loudly when I brought them, suggesting that his hearing had also gone downhill. He seemed especially fond of the Weather Channel. When I knocked, he always turned it off before telling me to come in.

Those days were my introduction to practical nursing. He was still able to undress and start the water for his morning shower himself—he had an invalid’s shower-chair to sit on while he soaped and rinsed. I sat on his bed, waiting for him to call. When he did, I turned off the water, helped him out, and dried him off. His body was a wasted remnant of what it had been in his days as a Methodist minister, and his later ones as a carny agent. His hips stuck out like the bones of a plucked Thanksgiving turkey; every rib cast a shadow; his buttocks were little more than biscuits. Thanks to the stroke, everything slumped to the right when I helped him back to his bed.

I rubbed him down with Voltaren Gel for his aches and pains, then fetched his pills, which were in a plastic case with almost as many compartments as there are keys on a piano. By the time he’d gotten them all down, the Voltaren had had a chance to work, and he could dress himself—except for the sock on his right foot. That I had to put on myself, but I always waited until he’d hauled on his boxers. I had no interest in being eye-to-eye with his elderly schlong.

“All right,” he’d say when the sock was pulled up to his scrawny shin. “I’ll do the rest myself. Thank you, Jamie.”

He always said thank you, and the TV always went on as soon as the door was closed.

Those were long, long days. The resort’s pool had been drained, and it was far too hot to walk the grounds. There was a health club, though, and when I wasn’t reading (there was a shitpoke excuse for a library, mostly stocked with Erle Stanley Gardner, Louis L’Amour, and old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books), I exercised in solitary, air-conditioned splendor. I jogged miles on the treadmill, pedaled miles on the stationary bicycle, stepped on the StairMaster, curled hand weights.

The only station the TV in my quarters got was Channel 8 out of Poland Spring, and the reception was lousy, producing a picture too fuzzy to watch. The same was true of the wall-size job in the Sunset Lounge. I guessed there was a satellite dish somewhere, but only Charlie Jacobs was hooked up to it. I thought of asking if he would share, then didn’t. He might have said yes, and I’d taken everything from him that I intended to. Charlie’s gifts came with a pricetag.

All that exercise, and still I slept like shit. My old nightmare, gone for years, returned: dead family members sitting around the dining room table in the home place, and a moldy birthday cake that gave birth to huge insects.

 • • •

I woke shortly after 5 AM on the morning of July 30th, thinking I’d heard something downstairs. I decided it was the remnant of my dream, lay back down, and closed my eyes. I was just drifting off when it came again: a subdued clatter that sounded like kitchen pots.

I got up, stepped into a pair of jeans, and hurried downstairs. The kitchen was empty, but I glimpsed someone through the window, descending the back steps on the side of the loading dock. When I got out there, Jenny Knowlton was slipping behind the wheel of a golf cart with GOAT MOUNTAIN RESORT decaled on the side. On the seat beside her was a bowl with four eggs in it.

“Jenny! Wait!”

She started, then saw it was me and smiled. I was willing to give her an A for effort, but that smile really wasn’t up to much. She looked ten years older than when I’d last seen her, and the dark circles under her eyes suggested I wasn’t the only one having sleep problems. She’d stopped dyeing her hair, and there were at least two inches of gray below the glossy black.

“I woke you, didn’t I? Sorry, but it’s your own fault. The dish drainer’s full of pots and pans, and I hit it with my elbow. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to use the dishwasher?”

The answer to that was no, because we never had one. What my mother taught me was that it’s easier to let stuff air-dry, as long as there’s not too much. But kitchen cleanup wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came for eggs.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

She looked away. “I can’t tell you. I made a promise. In fact, I signed a contract.” She laughed without humor. “I doubt if it would stand up in court, but I intend to honor it, just the same. I owe a debt, the same as you. Besides, you’ll know soon enough.”

“I want to know now.”

“I have to go, Jamie. He doesn’t want us talking. If he found out, he’d be mad. I just wanted a few eggs. If I ever have to look at another bowl of Cheerios or Frosted Flakes, I’ll scream.”

“Unless your car’s got a dead battery, you could have gone to Food City in Yarmouth and picked up all the eggs you wanted.”

“I’m not to leave until it’s over. You, either. Don’t ask me anything else. I have to keep my promise.”

“For Astrid.”

“Well . . . he’s paying me a great deal of money for a little bit of nursing, enough to retire on, but mostly for Astrid, yes.”

“Who’s watching out for her while you’re here? Somebody better be. I don’t know what Charlie’s told you, but there really are aftereffects from some of his treatments, and they can be—”

“She’s well cared for, you don’t need to worry about that. We have . . . good friends in the community.”

This time her smile was stronger, more natural, and at least one thing came clear to me.

“You’re lovers, aren’t you? You and Astrid?”

“Partners. Not long after Maine legalized gay marriage, we set a date to make it official. Then she got sick. That’s all I can tell you. I’m going now. I can’t be away for long. I left you plenty of eggs, don’t worry.”

“Why can’t you be away for long?”

She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “I have to go.”

“Were you already here when we talked on the phone?”

“No . . . but I knew I would be.”

I watched her trundle back down the hill, the golf cart’s wheels making tracks in the diamond dew. Those gems wouldn’t last long; the day had barely begun, and it was already hot enough to pop sweat on my arms and forehead. She disappeared into the trees. I knew that if I walked down there, I’d find a path. And if I followed the path, I’d come to a cabin. The one where I’d lain breast to breast and hip to hip with Astrid Soderberg in another life.