The Gates of Evangeline (4 page)

I know.

I try to understand.

Are you hiding?

She shakes her head, and I see that she has small, heart-shaped earrings. A headband with a pink flower made of ribbon.

I want to go home,
she says,
but I can't.

Is that your house?

That's Laci's house.
Hannah rises from the chair and joins me.
Laci's my friend from school. We're in the same class.

The dripping noise unnerves me. I glance back at the broken chair and see a puddle forming underneath, though it's not raining.
You went to see Laci after school?

She was home sick. I was bringing her the homework, but nobody opened the door. So I went back here where you can see her room.

It makes sense. I look at the upstairs windows of the house. In daylight, Hannah's friend could see us plainly, if she bothered to look down.

She was watching TV,
Hannah says.
I waved at her. To tell her about the homework.

Did you give it to her?

She shakes her head.
It's still in my bag.
She points to the tall diving board. For the first time, I notice a child's backpack at the bottom of the ladder. My skin begins to prickle.

She didn't see me,
Hannah explains,
so I climbed up on the high board to get taller.

The dripping sound accelerates, as if echoing my heartbeat. I look down and find myself standing in water. Is it me? Am I the one dripping?

Come on.
She takes a few steps back toward the shadows, expecting me to follow.

But something doesn't feel right. My hair. There's something in my hair. I touch my head, and a slimy trail of decomposing leaves trickles down.

Hannah?
The water at my feet is rising now, swelling to my knees, and I know that she's doing this somehow, taking me someplace I don't want to go.
What's happening?
I demand.
I want to leave. Make it stop.

She reaches for my arm, drawing me in deeper, and her fingers melt like ice when they meet my skin.

Shhh,
she whispers.
We're going swimming.

I
sit up in bed, both sweating and freezing, hands gripping my blankets. For the first time since Keegan's death, something has penetrated my grief: fear. I glance at the windows, the open door to my room, half expecting a face, a human-shaped shadow.

It's just a nightmare,
I tell myself.
A lot of people have them.

But the fear remains, churning in my stomach, crawling up my skin. Hannah Ramirez, just nine years old, missing since yesterday afternoon. I can't stop thinking about her, those icy fingers. Can't stop thinking about her mother, lying awake all night, desperate to know where her child is. At least I knew. There was never any wondering.

Maybe they found her
, I tell myself.
Maybe she's okay.

But something in me doesn't believe that. Something in me believes in that pool.

I move through the house, turning on light after light until my home is a model of wasteful energy consumption. What is wrong with me? What is happening to my brain? I'm seeing things I should not be seeing. Is it the pills? I stopped taking them days ago. Am I going through some bizarre form of withdrawal?

I'm not going to work today, not like this. I dash off an e-mail to let my coworkers know that I'll be out for a few more days, though in truth, I'm praying I never have to go back. Tomorrow I have my meeting with Isaac, a shot at something new. Today I will visit my grandmother.

I find her in her high-backed chair, frowning at the television, a crossword puzzle in her lap. When I enter the living room, she snatches the remote and turns off the TV.

“What are you watching?” I ask.

“Just the news.”

“So go ahead and watch it.”

“No, no,” she says. “I want to visit with you. Nothing good happens on the news.” She gestures to her crossword. “A five-letter word for junction. What do you think?”

This feels like a distraction, which only annoys me further. “Really, Grandma. You think I can't handle the news?”

She sighs. “Don't get upset. It was a sad story, that's all. A little girl. Not the sort of thing you need to be thinking about right now.”

“You mean the Hannah Ramirez story.”

“You already saw it, then.” She seems embarrassed by her attempt to protect me.

“I saw it last night.”

“Oh. Well, they found her this morning.” Her voice indicates the news is not good.

My stomach knots up. “Found her in the pool,” I say, and it's not even a question.

“Poor girl.” She toys with her pencil. “At least it was an accident, not some sick person . . .”

“It
was
a pool, right? Her friend's pool?”

She nods, and I feel dizzy. I sink down into the rocker, massaging my temples.

My grandmother misinterprets my reaction as empathy. “I'm sorry you saw that story. I suppose we could both do without the news for a while.”

I look up. This is not something I can keep to myself. “I didn't see it on TV,” I tell her softly. “I dreamed it.”

“Dreamed what?” She enters a word into her crossword, then checks off the clue.

“About Hannah. Where they found her.”

“You dreamed it last night?”

“Yeah.”

Grandma pencils in another word. “They didn't find her until this morning.”

“I know.”

She pauses. Regards me closely. “Charlotte, you told me you don't dream.”

“I didn't. But then I stopped taking sleeping pills.”

“And you dreamed about that missing girl? You dreamed she was in a pool?”

I nod and watch her reaction.

She stares at me for a long time, thinking. Splinters of light dance across her hands, and the daylight makes my words all the more ridiculous.

“Just say it,” I tell her. “You think I'm crazy.”

“No.” But she won't look at me now. Her eyes are on the crossword, the rows of empty boxes.

“It's okay.” I bite my lip. “I saw a dead girl. Talking to me. That is crazy.”

“No, honey, no. That's not what I'm thinking.”

“Then what?” My voice is rising. “This isn't the first weird dream, Grandma. I had another one, too, something that came true, and it's starting to scare me.”

She raises her head. Sets her puzzle down on the coffee table. “I don't think you're crazy,” she says. “I think you're like me.”

•   •   •

T
HE SUMMER BEFORE
I began high school, my father drove his car into a tree. The coroner estimated that his blood alcohol level at the time of death was .22, about three times the legal limit. If he hadn't died, he would've been in jail. That was when I went to live with my grandmother.

I'd visited my father's mother occasionally over the years, but I wasn't particularly close to her when she decided to take me in. I liked her because she never asked me to talk about my feelings and because she was honest, something the adults in my life had never been. “James is dead because he was a drunk,” she told me. “We can love him, but we don't have to forgive him.” Or, on the subject of my mother: “She was nineteen and stupid. I'm sorry you don't have a mother, but I'm glad you don't have
her
.”

Sometimes her plainspoken words have hurt me, but they are always true. For twenty-four years, I've respected my grandmother for giving me the facts as she knows them, for setting aside unpleasant emotions and carrying on, for allowing me my privacy. I always thought I was the one with secrets. It never occurred to me that she had her own.

I study my grandmother, her steely eyes and short, wavy hair. Though I'm green-eyed and much paler, our features are similar: oval face, sharp chin, high cheekbones. People say we look alike, and I suppose our personalities are similar, too. But that's not what she means now when she says that I am like her.

“Grandma,” I say, “do you have creepy dreams, too?”

“I used to.” She rises slowly to her feet. “I'd like something to drink. Can I get you anything?”

“No thanks.” My mind is not on liquid as I follow her into the little galley kitchen. “So . . . did they happen? The things you dreamed about?”

She pours some cider into a pot and turns on a burner. “They aren't dreams. It just seems that way in the beginning.” Grandma rummages through a cabinet, selecting ingredients. “Dreams move quickly, change suddenly. They don't make sense. I used to
see
things. Really see them.”

“What do you call them, then? Visions?”

“That sounds so hocus-pocus.” She stirs some brown sugar into the pot. “I always thought of them as—pictures. It didn't happen often, but when I saw pictures . . . well, I knew what was coming.”

“What did you see?”

She thinks it over. “The first one came after I married your grandfather. It was about my friend Alice.”

I've heard about Alice before, mainly that she was a tremendous flirt, and six different men proposed to her during the war. My grandmother wraps her spices up in cheesecloth, drops them in the pot, and tells me the story.

“Alice had been dating a soldier. He wanted to get married, she didn't. Well, they sent him off to Europe somewhere, and about two months later, Alice came to me, very worried. She was afraid that she was pregnant.”

“That was the picture you saw?” I ask.

“No,” my grandmother tells me, “that was real. The night after she told me, I saw a picture. A baby, a little transparent baby. It was Alice's. And it turned to blood. Then I saw Alice, wearing a blue dress soaked in blood. I asked if she was all right, and she laughed and spun around in her bloody dress.”

I lean against the worn Formica countertop, frowning. “That
is
creepy. Did she lose the baby?”

“The next time I saw her, she was wearing that blue dress. She took me aside, so happy. ‘Forget everything I said,' she told me. ‘I'm fine, there's no baby.'”

“So she was never even pregnant . . . ?” I suggest.

“I think she was.”

“But how do you know?” I want her to be wrong. I want these pictures—hers
and
mine—to mean nothing.

“I
don't
know,” Grandma admits, “but years later when Alice did get married, she tried to have a child. And she couldn't. She got pregnant four different times, but she always miscarried.”

The story leaves me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, perhaps I'm not so deranged, after all. On the other, the Hannah dream may only be the beginning. A whole parade of scary visions could be lurking in the ether, waiting for me to go to bed each night. It's an awful thought. “Do you still see things?”

“Not in many, many years.”

The cider is heating up now, steam rising from the pot. It smells like autumn, and suddenly I'm thirsty, an amazingly normal sensation. “What's the last one you had? Do you remember?”

She nods, suddenly mute.

She doesn't want to tell me.

“Someone who died?”

She nods again, and I hold my breath.

Maybe she knew and said nothing.

“Grandma,” I say sharply. “Who was it?”

But her answer is not what I expect. “Your father,” she says. “I saw your father.”

“What did you see?” We've talked about my father—her son—many times over the years, and she's never said a word about this.

“It was the night he died.” She runs her tongue over her dry lips. “I saw James standing by his car. The green one.”

I know the car she means. It smelled like vomit, from the days when I got motion sickness.

“It was dark, and the car was smashed against a tree.” She squints, as if the scene is laid out there in the tiny kitchen. “I was upset about the car at first. I thought he'd ask me for money. But he told me no, this was worse than just a totaled car. He kept saying ‘sorry.'”

“Sounds like Dad. ‘Sorry' was his favorite word.” Grandma seems to have forgotten about the cider, so I switch off the burner and let it cool. “That was it? He apologized for being a screw-up?”

“And he asked me for a favor.”

“Naturally.”

“I made a promise to your father and I'd like to think I've kept it.” Grandma fetches two mugs from the cabinet and hands me one. “I've taken care of you, haven't I?” There is a real question in her voice, a need for validation I've never heard before.

“That was your promise? That's why you took me?”

She meets my eyes. “He was thinking of you. He knew he'd let you down.”

I turn away. I rarely get upset with my grandmother, but the whole story sounds like some made-up tale to comfort the bereaved. Why tell it now, when I've moved past that particular loss?

“You would've taken me anyway, right?” I fix my gaze on the empty mug in my hands.

“Oh, Charlie. I don't know. Your mother's family was ready to take you. If I hadn't been convinced it was what James wanted . . .” She shrugs. “Your aunt was younger and more energetic. She had children your age. I really wrestled with the decision.”

“Aunt Suzie?” I grimace. “
That would've
been horrible.”

“Then I did the right thing.”

“Yeah,” I tell her, “you did.”

We don't mention my father or the dream-pictures again. For the next hour, we sit in the living room sipping Grandma's mulled cider. At some point I realize that Keegan's box of toys is gone. My grandmother must have donated them to the church. My chest tightens at this discovery. How did I fail to notice that before? How was I so oblivious? If I truly love my son, how could I ever think of anything else?

There is nothing more unnatural than losing your child. Not even talking to the dead.