Blind Lake (42 page)

“Then I’m happy for you. So tell me, does presenting you with this gift entitle me to offer a word of advice along with it?”

“Anytime.”

“I won’t ask what you three have been through at Blind Lake, but I know it’s been especially tough for Tess. She used to be a little uncommunicative. It doesn’t look like that’s changed.”

“It hasn’t.”

“You know, Marguerite, you were exactly the same way. Thick as a brick when your interests weren’t engaged. I always had a hard time talking to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. All I’m saying is, it’s easy to let these things glide past. People can become almost invisible to each other. I love you and I know your mother loved you, but I don’t think we always
saw
you very clearly, if you know what I mean.”

“I know.”

“Don’t let that happen to Tess.”

Marguerite nodded.

“Now,” her father said. “Before we pack this thing up, you want to show me how it works?”

She found him 47 Ursa Majoris in the optical scope. An undistinguished star, no more than a point of light among many points of light, less bright than the fireflies blinking under the bushes at the back of the yard.

“That’s it, huh?”

“That’s it.”

“I guess you know it so well by now, it must feel like you’ve been there.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like.” She added, “I love you too, Daddy.”

“Thank you, Marguerite. Shouldn’t you be putting that girl of yours to bed?”

“Chris can take care of it. It might be nice to sit out here a while and talk.”

“It’s pretty chilly for August.”

“I don’t care.”

When at last she came back into the house she found Chris in the kitchen, mumbling over his pocket server, making notes for the new book. He had been working on it for weeks, sometimes feverishly. “Has Tess gone to bed?”

“She’s in her room reading.”

Marguerite went up to check.

The most disturbing thing about the events at Blind Lake, Marguerite thought, was that they implied a connection over immense distances through a medium not understood, a connection that had made it possible for her to touch (and be touched by) the Subject; the Subject, who had known, somehow, all along, that he was being watched.

Seeing changes the seen. Had Tess been watched in the same way? Had Marguerite? Would that bring them, then, at the end of some unimaginable pilgrimage, to one of those enigmatic places linked to the stars—in lieu of death, a plunge into the infinite?

Not yet, Marguerite thought. Maybe never. But certainly not yet.

She found Tess fully clothed, asleep on the bedspread with her book splayed open and her hair askew. Marguerite woke her gently and helped her into her nightgown.

By the time Tess was properly tucked into bed she was wide awake again. Marguerite said, “Do you want anything? A glass of water?”

“A story,” Tess said promptly.

“I don’t really know a whole lot of stories.”

“About
him
,” Tess said.

Who? Chris, Ray, her grandfather?

“The Subject,” Tess said. “All the things that happened to him.”

Marguerite was taken aback. This was the first time Tess had expressed an interest in the Subject. “You really want to know about all that?”

Tess nodded. She lay back and bumped her head against the pillow, about one beat per second, gently. Summer air moved the window blinds against the wooden sill.

Well. Where to begin? Marguerite tried to recall the pages she had written with Tess in mind. Pages she had written but never shared. Stories untold.

But she didn’t need pages.

“First of all,” Marguerite said, “you have to understand that he was a person. Not exactly like you and me, but not completely different. He lived in a city he loved very much, on a dry plain under a dusty sky, on a world not quite as big as this one.”

Long ago. Far away.