Clearer in the Night (6 page)

“It’s sci-fi for sure, but it’s accessible,” he said. “Sorry, all high school teachers like to believe that everyone in the world reads as obsessively as we do.” A high school teacher, then? Good to know. He looked young for it, not much older than me, but maybe he knew what he wanted to do before he went to college. Unlike me, still holding down a couple of part-time jobs and relying on Mommy to pay my bills when I didn’t quite make ends meet.

“I read,” I said. “I love to read. I’ve just been more of an e-ink girl these past few years.” He made a face like he’d taken a sip of overbrewed Lapsang Souchong when he was expecting Earl Grey. “Not a fan, huh?”

He shrugged. “I’ve yet to understand how a bunch of pixels can replace the creak of the spine the first time you open a hardcover, or the weight of a book in your hands.”

“Alternatively,” I said, “when I want to pack up my library for storage, I drop a gadget that weighs less than a pound into my purse and presto! More than a thousand books packed.”

“That is a plus,” he said. His hand lifted like it was going to reach for mine, and my heartbeat fluttered, but his eyes flickered, and his hand settled back down into his lap. I almost huffed out my disappointment. I tried to chant “out of my league,” in time with my heartbeat, like a mantra. “So,” he said, in the same calm, level voice. “How long have you been able to read minds?”

I didn’t mean to hesitate. I meant to move smoothly to the confused laugh, but I hesitated, and the laugh didn’t play at all. I tried anyway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No point in playing around, Cait. I’ve barely said a word out loud since I came in the room. I’d heard rumors, but I had no idea you were this powerful.” He was smiling, still, that calm, easy smile. Not like he was talking about the single most dangerous thing that had ever been in my life. As if he were merely commenting on the weather, or the Red Sox game from the night before. And what rumors? And anyway—I wasn’t reading minds. I’d always been intuitive. That was what Mom called it. Good at guessing what someone was thinking, good at figuring out whether or not someone was telling the truth. But not reading people’s minds, hearing their thoughts. Images, like I’d caught from Liz earlier—that had never happened before. I wasn’t a freak. “I fell,” I said. “I hit my head. The doctors said I was fine, but maybe—I must be imagining things. Obviously.”

He did reach out and stroke the back of my hand, and I found myself smiling just a tad. “Or maybe the fall knocked loose whatever has been keeping you from realizing your full potential all these years. Or maybe something else has done that. What do you say we go get a cup of coffee and talk about it?”

“Another time, maybe,” I said. Not for me, not for me, not for me. “The past few days have been pretty extreme. I’d really like it all to settle down and maybe just go away?” God, why did my belly flip out every time I talked to anyone now? I pressed a hand into it, hard, wishing the gurgling and pulling would just stop already. He noticed that, but before he said anything, the door to my room opened again, and Mom came in. Eli was off the bed and extending his hand to her before she was all the way through the door. “Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “I’m Eli Wright. I believe you know my grandmother.”

Mom was thrown for just a moment, and then she laughed and pulled Eli into a big hug. “Of course, you’re Clara Dennis’ grandson. She mentioned that you were moving back to Vermont finally. But what brings you here, specifically? I didn’t think you and Caitlyn had ever met.”

“Eli was the one who found me, Mom,” I said. “In the woods. He came to make sure I was okay.”

For a second, I thought she was going to lose her mind and pinch his cheek or something. She kept her cool and just gave him another hug, although this one was so tight I could hear him wheezing. It felt awkward to be there, suddenly. Like I was trespassing on something very private. And then she moved away from him and took both my hands in hers. “I woke up, scared to death that it was all a dream,” she said. “I should have stayed here last night. Forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive,” I said. Because what else was there to say?

Eli cleared his throat and gave me a goofy little wave. “I’ll clear out of your way,” he said. “Cait, maybe you’ll take me up on that coffee sometime.”
It will get worse
, he thought.
If you don’t make an effort to learn to control it, the voices will get so loud that they’ll drive you mad.
And then he turned and left. On an up note, of course.

Mom watched him go with an appreciative smile. “You wouldn’t be ashamed to tell me that you were dating him. Nice guy, steady job—he teaches math at the high school, Mrs. Dennis told me. You’d be proud to tell me about a boy like him.”

I sighed. “Mom, Wes and I—”

She held up a hand to shut me up, which was fine, since I hadn’t known what I was going to say next. “I get it, Caitlyn, I really do. I was your age, once, and I didn’t tell my parents anything I didn’t flat out have to. And I regret that now. If I had talked to them—and paid attention to what they had to say to me—I could have saved myself some grief.”

“I know,” I said, to try and halt the guilt trip before it picked up steam. “And I was going to tell you, if things got serious. But we were just—”

“Playing,” she interjected. I nodded. Something I figured out a long time ago about lying was that it went a lot better if you let the other person tell as much of the story as possible. “It’s all fun and games until it’s not anymore. I just want you to be safe.”

Since she’d kept condoms in the house since I was sixteen years old, I figured she was talking about more than just sex. And, really, no worries about my heart. I’d lost enough for one whole lifetime, thanks very much. “I know, Mom. But Eli’s really just not my type.” I tried to sound loving, and not exasperated, and also not like I was lying through my teeth. I mean, he wasn’t my type, in that I couldn’t ever have a guy like him, not with what I’d done and what I’d continue to do, but she didn’t know any of that, and God willing, she never would. “Besides, you always said that if I didn’t make my own mistakes, I’d never learn anything.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Caitlyn Alice Murphy, don’t you dare use my own lectures against me. Now, the nurses told me they’re just waiting on discharge orders. You ready to blow this hot dog stand?”

I laughed, and didn’t correct her poor use of idiom. This was the closest we’d come to real family time in more than a decade. I’d better enjoy it while it lasted. “More than you know,” I said.

“I assume that Shannon will be home for the next few days?” Mom asked, picking at nonexistent lint on her sleeve. In the nineties, she had rocked the sweater set; since I’d moved out, she’d apparently transitioned to this blouse-and-scarf thing that was sweeping the nation.

“Mostly,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t talked to her, but she’s working on her papers, and I think she can do that at the apartment as well as at the library.”

There was a brief moment when her face collapsed in on itself, and the world went dark, and all hope fled the universe. And then she was smiling and cheerful. “Of course. It makes total sense. You should be with your friends. Unless it’s an inconvenience for her.”

Us Murphy women, constitutionally incapable of just saying what how we feel, or what we want. “Of course,” I said. “I mean, I thought about staying with you for a few days, but I know how busy you are, with church and work…”

“It’d be no trouble at all,” Mom said, her eyes sparkling again. “I have some personal time saved up, and Ally can take my appointments for the rest of the week, and we could, I don’t know, get mani-pedis or something. We could go antiquing. You used to love that.” Yeah, when I was thirteen, and convinced that the path to happiness lay in finding as many old-looking books as possible, for the future library I’d have in my future mansion. When mani-pedis seemed grown up and luxurious, not some sort of obligation that I had to society. Things had changed, but how furious could I really be with her not knowing what I had never allowed her to know?

“Are you sure I won’t be a bother?” There was a note of want in my voice, a stir of butterflies in my belly. She’d grabbed onto my hand and was squeezing it until I felt my bones grinding together. But I didn’t make her stop. I gripped back.

“As if you could be,” she said.

Oh, I could be. Even I knew that. I could be an absolute bother, but I wouldn’t be. I would make this work. Because she was looking me right in my eyes, and she was smiling, and she barely smelled like whiskey at all this morning, hardly even a little bit.

We had to sign a million forms before they’d let us go. Discharge care and come-back-ifs and promises of payment if the insurance didn’t come through for some reason. I got dressed in the clean jeans and t-shirt that Shannon had tucked into the backpack, along with my eBook and my phone. Nothing makes a person more human than clean underwear. Well, a hot shower, hot coffee, and then clean underwear. I’d take what I had. We waited an hour for someone to come with a wheelchair, and then gave up and signed more things so that I could just walk out on my own steam.

It was weird. I felt sore and tired, but strong and steady. The churning and twisting started up in my gut again, and I thought of mentioning it, but they seemed sure I’d just had some viral thing that was clearing out now. I’d probably end up with a rough evening in the bathroom, and then I’d be fine. They’d already checked for damage to my head, so it’s not like I had a concussion or something to worry about. The thought of spending another night here made everything feel a thousand times worse. I didn’t care how bad I felt; I needed to escape this place. I needed to be anywhere else. Even Mom’s house would be an improvement.

Mom held tight to my arm through the hallways, to the elevator, to the parking garage, and to her car. I thought she might try to keep holding me up while she drove, but she seemed to decide, after a moment’s consideration, that she should use both hands for that task. I leaned my head back against the headrest and let my eyes fall closed. I was wide awake, and so tired at the same time. As we drove up out of the underground parking structure, I flinched away from the sun for a moment, then blinked my eyes clear. And saw Wes leaning against a tree, watching the clouds. Only his face tracked along with our car. Had he been waiting here? Why hadn’t he come in? Hadn’t he wanted to see me again?

I didn’t do relationships, I’d never really done relationships, but there was something about the way he smiled that made me curl up inside myself and grin like an idiot. That made me remember dancing with him, and more than dancing, and thinking—maybe that would be worth trying again. The end had been pretty awful, but maybe that was because of where I was that night. It had been a dark night, for all the moon had been out. A dark night of the spirit, wasn’t that what they called it? Something like that.

We had unfinished business, him and I. That was all it had to be. We’d finish what we’d started and then we’d see. I was twenty-two. Maybe it was time to see if there was something to this relationship thing. After all, most of the world seemed to groove on it. Maybe they all knew something I didn’t.

How was I going to get in touch with him, though? Unless…I pulled my eyes open one more time, and reached down into my backpack, pulling my phone out. I flipped through the contacts while Mom made a you-kids-and-your-gadgets throat clearing sound, and sure enough. Wesley, and a number. At least he wanted to hear from me again. That was something.

The drive from the hospital to our house was about ten minutes, depending on traffic. Mom drove like a grandma, instead of her usual bat-out-of-hell methods, so I had a couple of extra minutes to luxuriate in the odd, uncomfortable silence that stretched between us. She kept opening her mouth to say something, then tapping her wedding ring on the steering wheel and not speaking. It was wearying, to say the least. What would she do if I just screamed? Shouted, “Say it already!” Probably nothing good. She’d turn her withering look on me, and remind me that ladies don’t use that tone of voice, or something else awful. So I stared out the window and watched the business of downtown fade away into the rural streets of old, converted Victorians, mixed with newer saltboxes and raised ranches. Many of the Victorians had been bought by the college, and converted to dorms or frats, or purchased by realtors for office space. Not on our street, though. On our street, they were still all family owned. Mom was very clear about that, to anyone who ever asked. Not that anyone cared, except for her, and the people she chose to spend time with.