by Seth Patrick
He was dragged back, held standing as the rage subsided. Everything was draining from the world around him. Light, colour and sound faded to nothing. But before it did, he caught the eye of Graham Wood, stunned and inches away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jonah heard in his own voice, but certain it wasn’t him speaking. ‘It was him, Dad. He did it. He killed me.’ Then black.
7
‘You been to the States before?’
Annabel Harker frowned and cursed to herself. She’d been looking out of the airplane window, watching engineers do their thing and the luggage loaders come and go. The last thing she wanted was conversation.
It was the early flight from London Heathrow, due in to Washington’s Dulles International at around 1 p.m.; with the five-hour time difference, her body would make it six in the evening. She had hoped to settle into her flight routine: soak up the peace, try to get a little work done, and avoid dozing. That way, when her dad picked her up at Dulles they would still have plenty of time when they got home before she’d collapse into her old bed, under the fading Leonardo DiCaprio poster.
So far, though, she’d had no peace at all.
She switched her frown to a fixed smile before turning around. The man in the next-but-one seat was in his late forties and not wearing it well. He’d started gabbing the moment he’d taken his aisle seat in Annabel’s row. She had the window seat; the middle one was empty.
Each time he’d started talking, Annabel had responded as curtly as she could, hoping he’d get the hint, but if he kept on like this she knew she’d have to be firmer. That was always a problem: she’d inherited a trait for politeness from her mother, one that, as a journalist, she often wanted to rid herself of. She’d also inherited her mother’s tall good looks, though, which invited attention from exactly the kind of assholes who would only fuck off when literally told to.
‘Born and raised there,’ she replied. ‘Only left when I was eighteen.’
‘How come you don’t have an accent? That can’t have been long ago!’
Annabel winced at the line. ‘Seven years,’ she told him.
‘See, now that I know, I can hear it in your voice here and there. How long did it take you to lose the accent?’
‘Not long,’ Annabel said. She faked a yawn and closed her eyes, pretending to be trying to sleep. The man fell silent at last.
Losing her accent had taken about a week, truth told. Annabel had left her parents’ home, headed for University College, London, and had soon found herself speaking like her mother. After all, her mother hadn’t lost her own gentle English accent, and Annabel had grown up with it. Was it any surprise she’d found herself adopting it so quickly, and so naturally? It had snapped back to her Virginia accent the moment she’d gone home that first time, only to return as soon as she was in England again. Within a year, it was fixed in place, and different enough from her mom’s to be her own.
Now that she was going back, she knew her voice would become Americanized for a while. She’d get teased about it at work, but she didn’t mind. She tried to sound as American as she could with her father, worried that her voice reminded him too much of her mother’s, and that every word from her mouth would make him feel the loss that much more. She knew it wasn’t just her accent that could be a reminder – though her hair was her father’s dark brown rather than her mother’s strawberry blonde, facially she resembled her mother most of all.
She was always wary, coming back. She loved him so much, and every year she found it harder to leave him to his grief, but every year he was adamant – he wanted to be left alone to get on with it. Yet the first few days were inevitably uneasy; him coming out of his shell, and her gradually forgiving him for what she saw as selfishness.
It had been twelve days since she had spoken to him directly; ten since she had received an email, replying to her confirmation of flight times. ‘Thanks Annie xxx,’ he had written, and that was the last she had heard. Even the previous conversation had been short, just enough to establish in Annabel’s mind that her father was over the worst of his annual depression and looking forward to her arrival. They’d spoken about his latest novel and the problems he’d been having with it, the discussion vague as he didn’t like to reveal much about works in progress. He’d mentioned he had been working on some nonfiction, promising her more details when she came.
That morning, she’d called him nine times throughout the day, before setting off for the airport. She made her last call an hour before the flight, and like the others it was intercepted by the answering machine with its short greeting.
Not taking her calls meant he wasn’t as over it as she’d thought; each attempt made her irritation with him grow.
* * *
When she arrived in Dulles, it was one-fifteen in the afternoon, local time, but the flight had exhausted her.
As she waited for her bags, she took her phone out of her pocket and switched it on, looking to see if it would connect successfully to the local network. It did, and she immediately called her father’s cell phone number, getting an automated message telling her his phone was switched off. She tried his home number and got the same message she’d heard so often before: ‘Hi, this is Daniel, please leave your message.’
‘Hi, it’s Annabel, I’ve landed. Pick up the phone, Dad.’ Nothing. ‘Come on … Dad?’ Then, cold: ‘You’d better be on your way.’ She hung up and sighed.
Bags collected, she took an empty seat in the meeting area in Arrivals, buying a Coke to give herself a jolt of sugar and caffeine.
Over the next half hour, she called her father’s number five more times. Five more variations of ‘Hi, it’s Annabel, I’ve landed. Pick up.’
She waited thirty more minutes, then made another call, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. ‘Dad, I’m getting a car and coming there. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’
Tired and aching, she made herself focus. The moment-to-moment tasks distracted her from her annoyance as she set off to hire a car, but the distractions were short-lived. All too soon, she was familiar with the small left-hand-drive Renault. All too soon, she was on US 29, sure of her route. The journey to her father’s home outside Charlottesville would take two hours or so of mundane driving, and she had run out of ways to distract herself.
‘Shit, Annie,’ she said aloud. In the past seven years, she’d only had to do this once before. Three years back, when she’d been going home full of excitement, having landed a job as a junior writer for Metro, the free London daily paper. That time, she’d found him drunk, not expecting her for two more days, embarrassed at losing track of the date; she’d screamed at him, all her frustration and fear coming out like knives. It had taken most of her visit before things had been repaired. The prospect of going through that again didn’t appeal.
A truck, pulling into her lane without warning, roused her from her thoughts. She jabbed at the horn, holding it down as she pulled around.
The highway wasn’t busy. She kept pace with the faster cars and reached Charlottesville without encountering significant traffic.
The journey was a strange mix of the unknown and the familiar. She always insisted that he pick her up when she visited. It gave them a chance to begin to catch up in the car, and forced him to sober up and get out of the house, probably for longer than he’d managed in total in the previous few months.
‘Nearly home,’ she said. Strange, she thought, how it’s always ‘home’ when I’m this close to it.
Her parents had bought the house when her father’s book The First Reviver gave them more money than they’d ever had before. It was at the south edge of Shenandoah National Park, which her mother loved; she’d found the house and fallen for it instantly. Annabel, fifteen then, loved it too. An old place set on twelve acres of woodland, plenty of character, and one thing in particular that had sold her father on it. Privacy.
The house was isolated, the nearest neighbouring building a farmhouse a half-hour walk away that had
been sold four years before; her father had claimed, with a curious pride, that he’d still not met the new owners.
Out of Charlottesville now. Another turning, and the small road was enclosed in an arch of foliage, tree branches and huge bushes shaped by the passage of trucks that she hoped she wouldn’t encounter coming the other way. She drove under the arch in the patches of sunlight, resenting her anger more because without it, she knew, she would have loved this drive.
The private lane leading to the house appeared, and she turned the car. As the house became visible between the old oaks that lined the way, her chest tightened, taking her by surprise. For the whole journey, it had been annoyance she had felt, turning to anger. But now, suddenly, there was something else. Something that her anger had masked, too strong now for her to ignore.
Fear.
No, she thought. Not you. Not now.
She parked quickly, ran to the door and rang the bell. She waited for a count of ten, then rang again. She called out. She ran to the rear, glancing in windows. Nothing.
The spare key was under a large planter near the back door. She returned to the front and let herself in.
‘Dad?’ she called. Half-hearted. ‘Dad?’ There was no sound. Leaving the front door wide open, she opened the living room door, bracing herself, suddenly aware that among her fears, there was one that was lucid and specific – that she would find him here, motionless and cold and alone. The living room was empty. Kitchen next. Washed dishes and empty wine bottles in the drainer by the sink. She opened the fridge. Some salad leaves in a bowl had turned. The milk was tainted. The smell of sour milk gave her another thought. She had not noticed a smell when she came into the house. The thought – just having that thought – made her feel sick.
Move on, she told herself, and went first to the dining room and then the play room with its pool table and the giant television on which she and her father would contest whatever video games she could convince him to play.
Upstairs, then. Her old room, with its comforting barrage of colour and eleven-year-old posters. Two spare bedrooms. Both empty. The bathroom, as with the rooms in use downstairs, was untidy. The whole house could have used a sweeping and vacuuming, layers of dust everywhere she looked.
The door to her parents’ bedroom. She steeled herself for it, grabbed the handle and pushed. The bed was unmade. A deep laundry basket in the corner was overflowing. There was nobody here – sleeping or otherwise. ‘So where the hell are you?’ she said.
The last room upstairs was her father’s office. His computer would be inside. Daniel Harker didn’t own a laptop, preferring to be chained to an office rather than make everywhere his workplace. Annabel understood the reasoning. For her, leaving the office didn’t mean leaving work. Her job was with her wherever she went. It usually struck her as liberating, but she would admit there were times when it was simply oppressive.
Annabel hoped to be able to find all his contacts there, and then she could start calling around, just as soon as she was sure she hadn’t missed something obvious – a note, perhaps, pinned up or fallen to the floor. Perhaps his emails would reveal something.
She went into the office and bent under the plain pine desk his monitor and keyboard sat on, finger poised to switch on the machine. She froze, confused for a moment. The computer wasn’t there, just unplugged leads and indentations on the carpet.
She noticed the state of the desk, uncharacteristically empty – computer monitor, lamp and a desk tidy. Then she noticed behind the desk, where her father had a cork board, normally covered in scraps of paper – notes for his work. Apart from a scattering of map pins, the board was bare.
She checked drawers. Several reams of unopened printer paper in one. The others empty. His desk had been cleared out. The fear in her chest was limbering up and turning toward panic. Something was wrong. Part of her had known it for hours.
Call the police, she told herself, but the thought felt like giving in to the fear. Call someone else first. Someone he knows. They’ll have an idea where he might be.
She went downstairs and grabbed the phone handset from its cradle. It was flashing: messages. The absurd thought hit her that one might be from her father. She studied the handset to see how to play the messages back, terrified of deleting them, but at last she managed to start them playing.
There were fourteen calls. They were all from her. She paced as she listened to each one, hearing her own voice, first when it was untroubled, then as it changed, getting more and more annoyed, then angry.
There was nothing new here.
She swore and slammed the handset onto the kitchen table, horror-struck as it skittered across and fell off the other side, hitting the floor. It cracked apart and spilled its battery pack. Hand over mouth, she got on her knees and picked it up. It was still functional. Damaged, but functional. She sympathized.
Annabel felt her strength drain. She placed the sorry handset on the table and sat heavily on one of the four wooden chairs. She was light-headed. Allowing herself a moment, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She felt in free fall, adrenaline making everything spin and shake – ground, hands, thoughts. She reached for the phone again, then set it back down as if it were hot. Calling the police would crystallize everything, make it real.
Where was he?
Another thought struck her: his car. Leaving the phone on the table, she ran out the front door. She had no key for the locked double garage, but around the side was a window, hemmed in by hawthorn and holly bushes. She shimmied along the narrow gap, ignoring the scratches she was suffering, until she reached the window. Inside under a sheet was her mom’s one extravagance, a red Porsche Boxster, which her dad had kept even though he didn’t drive it. He always opted for Sensible Cars, but there was a space beside the Porsche where her father’s Volvo should have been.
Images hit her of the car, tangled and burning. Come on, she told herself. She had her mother’s strengths, she didn’t fall apart. Wherever you went, she thought, whatever made you want to get away. Just be safe. Be safe so I can shout at you, and call you a selfish old bastard, and you can hug me and tell me you’re sorry. Be safe so I can forgive you.
Back inside the house, it took four minutes for her to settle herself. When the threat of tears had gone for the time being, she realized how thirsty she was. She went to the kitchen and took a glass from the pile of clean dishes in the drainer. As she was filling the glass she saw something and froze.
On the window ledge in front of the sink, between a dying pot of basil and a Christmas cactus, was her father’s wedding ring. He had taken it off to wash those dishes and hadn’t put it back on.
He wouldn’t have left without that. He had lost it once, the year after her mother died. Its loss, although brief, had devastated him. It had finally turned up in the money tray of his car. Since then he removed it only when he washed up or showered.
He wouldn’t have left it here. Annabel picked it up, her fingers shaking. He wouldn’t have left it, no matter where he’d gone.
‘Oh Christ. Daddy? Where are you?’ she said, and then tears overwhelmed her.
8
‘Hey,’ said a voice. ‘Good to see you awake.’
Jonah looked to his right, confused, wondering where he was. The voice was that of a female nurse, who was smiling at him. He looked around – a private hospital room, movement visible between the half-closed slats of the blinds on the room’s one large window, past the foot of his bed. He had a strong feeling of déjà vu but couldn’t place it. He’d last been in hospital when he’d had his breakdown, but it wasn’t that.
The nurse took the chart hanging from his bed and wrote something in it. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, without looking up.
Jonah started to speak, then had to clear his throat. ‘I’m not sure.’ He groped for some context: any recent memory, anything at all, and the only image that came to mind was of a beach and blue sky. ‘What happened? I don’t remember why I’m here.’
<
br /> The nurse gave him a kind look and avoided the question. ‘I’ll get Dr Connelly to come and speak to you as soon as he can. You hungry?’
Jonah had a flash of himself being sick in a stranger’s toilet. ‘No,’ he said, trying to hold the memory, unpleasant as it was. Hold it, extend it. Work out what had gone on.
The nurse nodded and replaced the chart. ‘Well, buzz if you need anything.’
She left, and Jonah tried to sit up. As he did, a tug on his arm made him notice the drip they’d hooked him up to. With a sudden shock, he realized they’d catheterized him as well.
He thought, hard; piecemeal, the Nikki Wood case came back to him. Incomplete, but enough for him to understand he was in trouble. He felt himself shrivel inside when he recalled attacking the man he’d seen. What the hell had made him do that?
Remnants. It had been remnants, leaving him confused. There was something else, something important, but the specifics evaded him.
‘Shit,’ he said. First, the delusion and hallucinations at Alice Decker’s revival. Now, a simple case of remnants and a flash of paranoia had led him to assault a member of the public. Sam would certainly ground him until he could be given an all-clear.
He sighed.
The feeling of déjà vu he’d had on waking hit him again, and he struggled to understand why. Then it came: he’d woken alone in a private hospital room after his mother’s death, fourteen years old, traumatized from the accident and utterly disoriented. The first person he’d seen that time had been his stepfather, walking in and bringing it all back, drenching Jonah in horror and panic.
The memory made him shiver. Not good times; not good times at all. For an instant he expected his stepfather to walk through the door again, that cold face torn between duty and revulsion, with the reserved anger that Jonah had spent four subsequent years living with.
The day after he’d woken that time, he had been visited by another man. Jonah had found himself liking him instantly; the first kind face he had seen since he’d woken, the first eyes that had met his without disapproval or fear.