The Between (21 page)

He found Dede, Kaya, and Jamil playing Scrabble on the floor in the family room, a new favorite pastime since the children were restricted to the house. All three glanced up at him when he stood in the entranceway with his shotgun, but their attention returned quickly to the game. Jamil was arguing that he should be able to use the word
gonna,
and Dede and Kaya were holding fast. Although he was only eight, Jamil was an excellent speller; he wasn’t allowed many breaks. Hilton gazed at them and listened to their banter, realizing that the three of them were a complete entity without him. This is the way they would look if he weren’t here, and they would be all right. The thought was both sad and uplifting to him.

Silently, Hilton walked around their circle and closed the blinds across the sliding glass door. How many times had he told them someone could see them through the patio door if they left the light on inside and the blinds wide open?

“It’s still your go, Jamil. Try again,” Dede said in a too-cheerful voice, ignoring Hilton’s presence. He left them.

Hours later, after the children were in bed and Dede had closed herself up in her bedroom, Hilton returned to the family room, turned off the light, and sat in a white wicker chair to stare out at the patio through the glass. He watched the bright shimmering from the pool’s water waving across his lap, then grasped the gun tightly beside him and trained his eyes outside.

He could tell he would have trouble staying awake tonight. He hadn’t slept much at all the past four nights because he’d been so shaken by a dream after meeting Goode. His catnaps at work had been cut short, and coffee seared through his stomach when he tried to drink it. His stomach was so raw that even Cokes blistered his insides.

To occupy his mind, Hilton studied each plant and item of furniture on the patio and tried to remember when they first brought them home. That god-awful mock Greek statue had been from Dede’s father, so it stayed for sentimental reasons. The oversized raft floating in the pool was one of Jamil’s Christmas presents. The black Art Deco bar counter was from a garage sale on Old Cutler Road, Dede’s favorite scenic drive.

“Dad?”

Hilton jumped, clutching the gun, until his brain processed the voice as Kaya’s. She stood in the family room entrance in a robe, her hair mussed. “You know better than to walk up behind me like that. What are you doing up?” His voice was hard.

Kaya didn’t speak, shuffling into the room to sit on the floor at his feet. Up close, he could see her face in the odd patio light. She looked so young to him.

“Did you hear me? What time is it?”

“It’s almost midnight. I can’t sleep,” she said. She hadn’t gazed at him this closely, like a daughter, in a long time.

Her gaze melted his irritation. He relaxed in the chair. “What’s wrong? This maniac out there got you scared?”

She shook her head. “I had a weird dream.”

Hilton mumbled empathetically and sighed. “I hope you’re not having nightmares too.”

“Sort of. She was sitting right in my room with me, on my bed. She said I have to watch out for Ray Charles.”

“Who said that?”

“Antoinette,” Kaya said, pronouncing her name softly.

Ray Charles. Hilton straightened in the chair to try to see Kaya more clearly. She was looking up at him like a moonbeam. Everything in the room vanished except her face.

“What else did she say?”

“Lots of stuff. She just talked and talked. She said she had to look for me a long time because she found places where there’s no such thing as Kaya James. No such thing, she kept saying. She says I wasn’t supposed to be born.”

Unreality threatened to wash over Hilton and sweep his consciousness aside, but he anchored his thoughts on Kaya’s face and the sound of her whispered voice spoken without emotion. He ignored the familiar quickening in his chest.

“Did that scare you?” he asked her.

“A little, but she said other things to make me feel better.”

“Like?”

Kaya smiled as though telling a girlish secret, wrapping her arms around her bent knees on the floor. “Well, she said I’m going to grow up to be a famous doctor—as long as I look out for Ray Charles. Isn’t he that blind singer?”

“Maybe she said Charles Ray.”

Kaya’s mouth dropped open. “That’s right,” she gasped. “She said Charles Ray. How did you know?”

“Because Charles Ray is the name of the man who wants to hurt us,” Hilton said, matching her matter-of-fact tone. Although they had described him in detail, he and Dede hadn’t seen a reason to tell Kaya and Jamil the man’s name, but it seemed natural now. He told Kaya about how they found Charles Ray and how he’d seen him at the trailer park with his smile, his eyes. The disclosure affected Kaya, because she was quiet for some time. All traces of fun left her face, and she turned her gaze toward the patio’s glass door. She began to rub her arms as though she were cold. “Dad,” she started slowly, “do you think my dream was real?”

“Dreams can’t be real, at least I don’t believe they can. My grandmother, Nana, used to say she had dreams that came true, but I don’t know. You probably heard us talking about Charles Ray Goode and incorporated him in your dream.” Hilton didn’t even believe himself as he spoke, but the words sounded reassuring.

“What’s a tea cell?” Kaya asked suddenly.

“Why?”

“Because Antoinette said I’m going to discover a way to make people more tea cells. She said she wouldn’t have died if somebody knew how to do that.”

The feeling of submersion came again, and Hilton could no longer ignore the powerful beating of his heart. He tried to make his voice sound steady for Kaya. “I know that people with the HIV virus are worried about their T cells. It has something to do with the immune system. Kaya, what else did Antoinette tell you?”

Kaya exhaled, looking thoughtful as she searched her memory. “It’s all fuzzy now. She talked a lot.”

“Just try,” he said.

“I remember she kept talking about doorways. She said she couldn’t find me in all of the doorways. She said stuff about you, too. She said you’re going to doorways you’re not supposed to, and that’s why I wasn’t supposed to be born. Jamil either.”

do you think you can keep dying forever?

“I don’t know what that means.”

Kaya snapped her fingers: “Oh, I remember something weird she said now. She said one time you went through a doorway, and you woke up and saw something in your closet.”

“What did I see?”

“She said you saw your jacket in your closet,” Kaya said, remembering clearly. “A gray jacket. And then you knew the truth. What truth?”

Hilton began to blink suddenly, and he realized he was near tears as he heard the shadows of his tryst with Danitra from the mouth of his daughter. He’d run out of rationalizations and explanations now, and he’d known for some time that they no longer applied to any portion of his life. The room felt frozen in time.

“I don’t know, honey,” he said in a helpless voice. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to know. I really don’t.”

“Antoinette told me to tell you to rest.”

“She did?”

Kaya nodded. “Uh huh. She said everything will be all right if you just rest and stop fighting. She promised, Daddy.”

Daddy. For the first time, Hilton saw the raw pain in Kaya’s face as she gazed at him. Of course she must miss her daddy, the daddy she knew only a short time ago. How could she understand what was happening to him when he didn’t understand himself?

“Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” Kaya’s voice was tight.

Hilton swallowed hard and wiped his dry lips. “I don’t have an answer for that, hon,” he said. “Was that in your dream?”

Kaya shook her head. “No. That’s from when I’m awake.”

He struggled to find a way to explain it all to her. “Funny things happen when people are under strain, Kaya. It doesn’t mean your mom and I don’t love each other. We’re all having a hard time now. That’s why sometimes I get upset. Your mom, too.”

“Don’t you think Antoinette is right and it’ll be better if you get some rest? She said if you stop fighting, you’ll be able to sleep from now on. Forever, she said.”

stop fighting, hilton. it’s wrong to fight.

“I will,” Hilton said, reaching to smooth Kaya’s hair back. “I promise, when I can, I will.”

“Cross your heart?” Kaya asked.

Hilton opened his mouth but couldn’t bring himself to utter the vow that lighted naturally on his tongue: hope to die.

The glowing hand on the wall clock was creeping past 3:20
A.M.,
and Hilton still sat in the wicker chair in front of the patio door.
He scans the patio once more and decides to stretch out, take a look at the front of the house and check on Charlie. When he stands, he sees a man with a shotgun blocking the doorway in the darkness. He is Hilton’s height and size.

“Get out of my way,” Hilton says to him.

The man folds his arms across his chest, still holding the gun. “Not this time,” the man says in Hilton’s own voice.

Another voice speaks up from the pass-through kitchen counter, where a man is munching on potato chips. “You’ve run out of doorways,” the eating man says. He, too, is a Hilton figure, the one with the horribly mangled face. His flesh looks scorched.

“Sleeping on the job,” scolds the Hilton figure with the gun. Hilton glances behind him and sees himself asleep in the wicker chair, his gun leaning on the wall in front of him. His chin is resting against his chest. Hilton can’t move to shake himself.

“Forget it,” says the mangled Hilton figure, reaching for another handful of potato chips. “It’s too late now. He’s here.”

“He’s been here for some time.”

“Just let it all be over. It’s not as hard as you think.”

“Everybody has to let go sometime.”

Hilton clasps his hands together in front of his face to implore them. “Leave Dede alone.”

“Of course. Dede belongs here.”

“And Kay a and Jamil?”

Neither Hilton figure answers. The armed one standing in the doorway hangs his head, exhaling a deep breath that circles the air until it lingers beneath Hilton’s nostrils with the scent of the dead. Its coolness allures Hilton, makes him sleepy.

“What about Kaya and Jamil?” Hilton asks, his energy fading.

“What’s done is done is done,” says the Hilton figure from the counter. “It’s time for all of us to rest.”

Hilton sees a movement on the patio, which is clouded in a green early-morning fog. Kaya and Jamil are out there, clasping the hands of a lanky girl in a hospital gown. Their backs are facing them, and they are walking toward the swimming pool, where steam is rising from the glowing green water. The tall girl turns around to smile at Hilton over her shoulder. Antoinette.

“No!” Hilton screams, breaking free from the death spell. He pounds on the glass door, shouting their names with all of his resolve. His voice shreds the air and time in countless hidden worlds.

A low, focused barking outside awoke Hilton. He jumped from his chair and reached for his gun, but it was no longer against the wall where he’d left it. He felt a stifling panic until he spotted the gun’s glimmer at the family room entrance, lying across the floor. He paused for a split second before running to grab it. Who had moved his gun? He glanced up at the clock. It wasn’t quite 3:15. The dead of night, and Charlie was barking at someone.

It must be him.

The only light on in the house was in the hallway between the family room and living room, and Hilton switched it off. He knew every nuance of his home’s floor plan from his weeks of sleepless sentry duty, so he stole his way from room to room to glance out of the windows at the rustling hedges and serene sidewalks. Charlie’s barking was less tentative now, and he could hear him yanking hard against the chain. Hilton could go outside and let Charlie loose, he realized, but he thought better of it.

No. That would only chase him away. He didn’t want that.

Back in the family room, Hilton flicked off the patios green floodlights with the switch next to the sliding glass door. He ran his hand across the gun’s barrel until he felt the chamber, and he cycled the first shotgun plug into place behind the gun’s hammer with a loud, heavy clacking that echoed throughout the room. Hilton’s heart was leaping in circles, but his hands were steady. Painstakingly, he unlocked the glass door and gently eased it open on its track until he felt the night air on the patio. The backyard was cast in light from the solar lamp, but the patio itself was hidden in darkness. He heard the pool’s water lapping gently, unseen. Hilton padded across the tiles to the pool’s edge and walked around it until he’d reached the corner closest to the yard and the shed. He poised the gun against the screen to shoot.

Hilton heard a sound from the fence that could be a cat or a squirrel, and his gun’s nozzle snapped toward the spot in an instant as his breathing grew heavier. The son of a bitch was really here. Right outside of his property. Walking right into a twelve-gauge, just like that.

“Come on out, you prick,” Hilton whispered. Nervous perspiration dripped into his right eyelid, but he sealed it shut and didn’t move despite the painful sting. He waited.

There. A crunch on the gravel from his neighbor’s yard, fifteen yards from his shed, thirty yards from where Hilton stood. Charlie’s barking grew louder, more frenzied. Charlie knew, too, even from the front yard. Maybe Charlie could smell him in the air. A whipping breeze shimmied through the leaves overhead.

“Come on,” Hilton breathed.

Hilton heard feet whistling through his neighbor’s grass. He was running along the fence, hidden behind the hedges. Goddammit. Why was he running? Hilton followed the sound with the shotgun, straining to see anything, any glimpse that could serve as a target. His prayer was answered when he saw a flash of pale skin; maybe his neck, maybe his arm or his face.

Hilton squeezed the trigger and the gun pumped, its nozzle exploding and the butt kicking his chin so hard that he took two steps back. Glass shattered in the darkness. Hilton cycled and fired twice more, ripping the screen apart with singed gaps, tracking the hidden flesh he’d seen. He was breathing in gasps by now, but he stood perfectly still. Waiting. For one perfect second he heard silence, and he dared to believe he’d hit his mark.