The Book of Blood and Shadow

by Robin Wasserman

  “Oh, there’s no question of that.”

  “And is it possible … I mean, is that the kind of thing someone could cause? Like, on purpose?”

  He didn’t seem surprised by the question. “Certainly excessive stress on the body or nervous system wouldn’t help matters. And certain medications can induce—” He frowned, like he’d said more than he’d intended. “We’re waiting on the scans, but I suspect he’s been having transient ischemic attacks—think of them as mini strokes—for some time now. Has he been acting oddly at all? Doing things, saying things that don’t make sense?”

  “I really don’t know him that well,” I admitted, and thought of the open safe, the missing archive. Was it possible that the police were right and he’d hidden the papers somewhere himself?

  “It’s good of you to sit with him, then,” the doctor said. “He’s going to need all the support he can get. Does he have any family?”

  Again, I had to admit I didn’t know. “How serious is this?” I said. “Is he going to get better?”

  The doctor finally met my eye. “The stroke affected his speech center. There are mobility issues, especially on his right side, and we don’t know yet whether his speaking problems are connected to that, or to a cognitive deficit. There are signs of aphasia, disorganized cognition.… It’s just too soon to tell.”

  “You mean you don’t know whether he can’t talk or can’t think.”

  “We’re monitoring the situation. Rehabilitation after a stroke is difficult, but people accomplish amazing things. That said, you should prepare yourself. He might never be the man he was before. You said he was a teacher?”

  “Professor,” I said, then realized the Hoff’s eyes were open, and pinned on me. “He’s a very respected professor. Brilliant. World-renowned.”

  The doctor tugged at his stupid earring. “Well. It’s nice to be able to leave a legacy behind, isn’t it?”

  “He’s not dead,” I said sharply.

  “No, of course not.” But we both knew what he meant. The brilliant, world-renowned phase of things was likely over. This is how it happens, I thought as the doctor slid the clipboard back into its holster and escaped. You don’t even realize you’re living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after. I smiled down at the Hoff, and the left side of his mouth smiled back. Did he understand what was happening? I suspected he did. But did he understand that this was it, that things would never go back to the way they were? That, I doubted. There was a chasm between knowing and believing, and if the Hoff had jumped it, he wouldn’t be smiling.

  “Don’t go,” the Hoff croaked, though I hadn’t moved.

  “I won’t,” I said. “And when I do, I’ll come back. I’ll visit.”

  He lurched upright and grabbed my wrist. His hand was a claw.

  “They’ll lie,” he slurred. “But don’t go!”

  “Okay,” I said, because it had worked the last time. “Okay, I won’t go.”

  “Promise.” Pwomiss, it came out. Like a little kid.

  “I promise.”

  He let go and sank back into the pillows, a wide, lopsided smile spreading across his face. Such a small thing, to make him so happy. But his whole life had gotten small, I realized. These tubes. These walls. This bed. No more manuscripts to decipher, no more mysteries to penetrate, no more ancient grudges to prosecute. And the only secret language he had to decode was his own.

  27

  “Please come,” I said into the phone, and he did, no questions asked, showed up at the house I’d never let anyone visit, took one look and folded me into a hug that felt like it could last forever if I needed it to.

  “Horrible?” Chris asked, still holding on.

  “Horrible.”

  He squeezed tighter. “Maybe you shouldn’t have gone.”

  “I had to.”

  “At least it’s over now.”

  It didn’t feel over.

  “I hate hospitals.” I pressed my face to his shoulder. It was the only way to wipe away the tears without letting go.

  “Because of …?”

  “No.” It was the closest we’d gotten to mentioning my brother in two years. “This isn’t about him.”

  But maybe it was, as much as anything was. And maybe that was why I’d called Chris, without thinking, without any conscious desire to choose him over Adriane, over Max, because I didn’t have to explain myself to him.

  “Okay,” he said. Then, “Not that my arms are getting tired or anything, but … how much longer is the hugging phase going to last?”

  “A little longer.”

  “Okay.”

  He held on until I was ready to let go.

  28

  “So this is the inner sanctum.” Chris grabbed my desk chair, straddling it backward. I took the bed, my knees pulled up to my chest. It was weird having him here, in my bedroom, playing with the elephant paperweight I’d gotten from a fourth-grade trip to the zoo. “I can see why you’ve kept it secret all these years.”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, truly, it’s shocking. Is that”—his eyes widened and his mouth formed a perfect O—“a desk calendar? And a piggy bank? What kind of crazy operation are you running here?”

  “Asshole.”

  He grinned. “You know how compliments embarrass me.”

  There was nothing shocking, or even memorable, about the bedroom, which hadn’t been redecorated in years and so still featured the pink walls and turquoise floor I’d chosen at age nine. The only thing hanging from the cheap cardboard paneling was a Red Sox pennant that I’d confiscated from Andy’s room before my parents had a chance to purge it, and a dolphin painting my mother had bought for my sixteenth birthday, because the last time she’d checked, I was a big fan. (The last time she’d checked, I had been eleven.) The furniture was a shiny wood laminate and had been constructed, piece by piece, by my hapless parents a decade before, which meant the bed wobbled, the desk drawers didn’t quite close, and both were chipped and scuffed in spots where my mother’s hammer—or her frustration—had gone astray. The crawl space beneath the desk, where Chris had dumped his backpack, was the perfect size for a twelve-year-old to curl up in and hide out. I was too big for it now.

  I wasn’t embarrassed by the small, bare room, or the rest of the house, which could have fit into the east wing of the Moores’ mansion. It was the collision of worlds I’d hoped to avoid. Nothing here was untainted with memories of Andy, with guilt and death and grief, with empty spaces no one wanted to fill. And maybe that was another reason it was Chris I’d called, because with Chris the collision had already happened. The danger had passed.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  A pause, not an awkward one, but heading in that direction. I realized it had been a long time since Chris and I had hung out alone together. There was a space between us that hadn’t been there before, and part of me knew this was Max, and it was as it should be, but most of me was sorry.

  He broke the silence. “Excellent. Talking is highly overrated. I suggest video games. Or poker. Funny cat videos?” He paused when he saw I wasn’t cracking a smile. “Or we could just sit here and stare at each other really intensely until one of us manages to melt the other one’s brain.” He narrowed his eyes to slits.

  “I didn’t ask you to cheer me up.”

  His brow furrowed in mock concentration.

  “I just wanted company.”

  He held his breath, cheeks blown out like a puffer fish, eyes still lasered at mine.

  “This is not going to work.”

  His nose began twitching, just slightly at first, then wildly, like that of a rabbit on crack, until his head ricocheted back with an explosive sneeze.

  I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. And if there had been any distance between us, it was gone.

  “Admit it,” he said. “You can’t resist my charms.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I admit it, will
you stop blowing snot all over my desk? It’s called a tissue.”

  “Ah, she’s neat-freaking. Must mean she’s feeling better.”

  “Who are you talking to, nutcase? The hidden camera?”

  “Always give the audience what they want,” he said. “That’s my motto. It’s what makes me so lovable.”

  “Lovable? More like—”

  “Ah, ah, ah.” He held up a hand to silence me. “Think before you speak. Remember, words can hurt.”

  “Because you’re so sensitive?”

  “You know me, I’m like a little girl.”

  “An insult to little girls everywhere.”

  “Again with the compliments! See, now I know you’re feeling better. Admit it.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed.

  “And what do we say when our most brilliant and cherished friend turns our frown upside down?”

  I sighed. “We say thank you. Loser.” But he knew I meant it.

  “Anytime.” And I knew he did, too.

  He stayed for the rest of the afternoon, but we didn’t talk about the Hoff, or the maybe/maybe-not break-in at the church, or anything else that particularly mattered. He regaled me with the adventures we would all have together on our Paris trip in a few weeks, and as usual, I let him believe I’d find a way to be there, stuffing my face and splashing in the Seine alongside everyone else. He whined about the way Adriane kept blowing off their dates for student-council meetings, lacrosse practice, and the various obligations that had accompanied a recent, inexplicable embrace of her heretofore nonexistent responsible side. I complained about Max going into attack mode whenever he got frustrated, snapping angrily at whoever happened to be around, usually me, and then apologizing five seconds later with such limpid puppy-dog eyes it was tempting to pat him on the head and give him a treat.

  We still fit together, and that, more than anything, made it all okay. I resolved not to let so much time pass before we did this again. Max wasn’t a replacement for Chris; I needed them both.

  “You know, if this were a movie,” Chris said, “we’d probably decide to ditch those ungrateful fools and start making out.”

  “And if this were a movie, there would probably be a really awkward moment after you put that out there.”

  “The air charged with sexual tension.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Sparks flying.”

  “Tongues twisting, lips smacking—”

  “Ugh, are you trying to make me puke?” he asked, laughing.

  I batted my eyelashes at him. “You really know how to flatter a girl, don’t you?”

  “Like you weren’t thinking it.”

  “I was going to say vomit,” I said. “It’s more ladylike.”

  “No one says vomit. Not even ladies.”

  “Really? I, a lady, will now use the term in a sentence: The idea of making out with you makes me want to vomit. Also to gag, regurgitate, expectorate, and hurl.”

  He puckered up and blew me a loud kiss, raspberry-style. “Love you, too.”

  He said it to me all the time, and to Adriane nearly every time they met or parted or hung up the phone. I’d even heard him say it to Max one night, after a few too many beers. They were easy words for him. I almost never said it back.

  “I did something I shouldn’t have,” I said.

  “Doubt that. You’re not the type.”

  Instead of arguing with him, I handed him Elizabeth’s letter. His eyes widened, for real this time.

  “I took it,” I said.

  “I can see that.”

  “I stole it.”

  “Right.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  He placed the letter on the desk, gently. “You know how much this thing is worth?”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m guessing a lot.”

  “Tens of thousands, probably,” I said. “I did some research.”

  Chris rarely got serious, and when he did, he was like a different person, stiffer and older. Even his voice got deeper, offering a glimpse of some future Chris, all grown up with a law degree, two kids, and three-piece suits. “Please tell me you didn’t steal this with some insane idea that you could sell it.”

  “Of course not!”

  “So then …?”

  “It was private,” I said.

  “You can tell me,” he said.

  “No, I mean, the letter was private.” I knew how it sounded. “It didn’t belong to anyone but her.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I know that.”

  We were both silent. I could see him working the problem, trying to find the words to convince me to give it back. He didn’t need to bother.

  “It’s all that’s left,” I said. “Now that the archive’s gone. He needs it.” I didn’t say that the Hoff probably had no idea the rest were missing, and even if he did, it wouldn’t make much difference anymore. That wasn’t the point.

  “Okay,” he said. “So you put it back.”

  “That’s the problem—back where? What am I supposed to do, just go to the cops and tell them I found it under a desk somewhere? Or give it to the Hoff? He probably wouldn’t even understand—” I swallowed hard and forced myself to deal. “If he was aware enough to know what was going on, he’d want to know why I had it. People might think I was the one who stole everything else, and attacked him, and—”

  Chris sat down beside me. “Breathe,” he said, and with his hand rubbing smooth circles on my back, I could.

  “No one attacked him,” Chris said. “And no one stole anything.”

  He sounded so certain. In Chris’s world, things like that just didn’t happen, and I liked to think the sheer force of his belief in the general benevolence of the universe would, at least in his case, make it true. “He probably took the archive back to his house for some reason. Maybe he thought we were after it. He was paranoid. You know that.”

  “So what am I supposed to do with this?” I said, feeling—irrationally but firmly—that if I’d just left the letter where it was, the Hoff would have been fine.

  “Let me take it,” Chris said. “I’ll turn it in to the history department. Say it got mixed up with some of my stuff or something.”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “No one’s going to get in trouble,” he said, again so infuriatingly, wonderfully sure. “It’s just an old letter. No big deal. Say it.”

  “No big deal.”

  His smile was back. “You scared me there, for a second,” he said. “The look on your face, I thought you’d done something really bad, like root for the Yankees.”

  “Never.” Now I could smile, too. Everything felt lighter.

  No big deal.

  “Prepare yourself for a massively brilliant idea,” he said before leaving. “Movie night tomorrow. The four of us. Like we used to.”

  I could have reminded him why we’d stopped movie night in the first place: Max and Adriane could barely make it through the previews without thrown popcorn, loud cursing, and occasional tears. Adriane may have started out as the biggest proponent of me and Max becoming an official, convenient-for-double-dating, romantically inclined us, but her cheerleading days were long gone. Buyer’s remorse, she claimed, and chose to ignore me when I pointed out she wasn’t the customer.

  “My parents are out of town,” he said when I didn’t answer. “So forget the crappy dorm TV. I’m talking big screen, HD, free food, the works.”

  “Caramel popcorn?”

  He knew he had me. “All you can eat.”

  “I have to check with Max.”

  “Tell him it’s mandatory.” He gave me a quick hug, then tapped the pocket of his backpack that contained Elizabeth’s letter. “Now promise me you’re not going to worry about this anymore. And that next time I see you, you’ll be smiling.”

  For the second time that day, I promised.

  29

  “I’ve never been to your house,” Max said on the phon
e that night, after unenthusiastically agreeing to the double date.

  I was lying in bed with the lights out. Some nights we fell asleep that way, listening to each other breathe.

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. Hanging out. What’s the difference?”

  “You tell me,” he said.

  “He was here, we hung out, end of story. What, are you jealous?”

  “No.” It wasn’t very convincing.

  So this was what it meant to have a jealous boyfriend. It didn’t feel as flattering as I’d expected. It felt like he was lying on top of me and I couldn’t breathe.

  It wasn’t like him. “What’s going on with you?”

  His voice was sullen. “Nothing. I’ve just been sitting around the dorm all day, wondering where you were.”

  “I was at the hospital,” I snapped.

  “I know that!” His voice softened. “I’m sorry. I am. I’ve been worried. And then you were upset, and you called Chris and not me—”

  “Who said I was upset?”

  “I know you,” he said. “Of course you’re upset. Seeing him, it must have been …” He waited for me to fill in the blank. I didn’t. “I’m just worried about you.”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “Nora. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Chris is my best friend,” I reminded him. “You’re not allowed to be jealous of him.”

  “I’m not. I swear. But something’s going on with you. I can hear it in your voice.”

  There was something comforting about that. The idea that anyone knew me so well—that anyone cared enough to pay attention.

  “But I shouldn’t have pushed,” he added. “It’s your business.”

  So I told him everything. About the visit to the hospital, and about the stolen letter—why I’d taken it, why I needed to give it back. “I should have just told you.”

  “Yeah. But you didn’t. What were you even thinking, stealing it in the first place?”

  It wasn’t exactly the response I’d hoped for. “I told you, I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I’m giving it back. It’s no big deal.”