She sometimes thought it could be a little too comfortable here. Was she going to miss out on a lot if she didn’t go back to New York? But it wasn’t like she had done that much while she was there. It was always David this and David that. His friends, his company, his favorite gym, his favorite farmer’s market.
Ally had never been an equal in that relationship at all, but she had played right into the illusion that she was.
It would be just as well if she grew old here, even if she ended up solitary in a cabin on her family’s property. That could be quite lovely, with or without romance. And then, seconds later at most, she would think, When Stuart comes back, we’ll figure out what to do.
Stuart called her Thursday at 10. She had answered the phone as quickly as her fumbling thumbs would allow. “Hi!”
“Hey,” he had said, and she immediately knew something was wrong. He’s breaking up with me.. She kicked herself and reminded herself he wasn’t her boyfriend. And whose fault is that? “What’s up? Are you coming back today?”
She hadn’t heard from him since he had left. No matter how many times she had picked up the phone to check for new messages, she had not willed any into existence. “How’s your family?” she asked with trepidation. Could no news really be good news?
“They’re great!” His enthusiasm sounded feigned. “Really good people.”
“Okay.. That’s great.”
“But… uh. Some bad news.”
Ally’s heart sank. It’s your fault. You made this happen. “Oh?”
“Something came up back home” - the word sent a little dagger into her heart. Had she really been expecting him to call this home so quickly? Yes, she realized with a heaviness around her spirit, part of her had. “I won’t be able to come back today. I’m going to fly back home for a week or so, but I’ll be back really soon.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just… keep Scruffers, then?”
“Yeah, that’d be great. How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine. He’s found a few mice. My mom loves him.”
“Aww, that’s great. He’s found his niche. But look, don’t worry. I’ll return the rental car at the airport and everything, okay?”
“Sure,” she had answered, though that was the last thing on her mind. “See you soon.” Tell him you miss him. Tell him you hope he comes back sooner than next week…. Tell him anything. But nothing would come out.
“See you soon,” he had responded, and that was it.
The dream from the night before had lingered after lunch, and her dad had left the keys to the cottage for her to start arranging however she would like. She told her mother she was going to go work back there a while, and her mother had been wrapped up in documentation for the incoming applicants to the mothers in prisons program. She had barely looked up.
The cabin didn’t need much work. She thought she would need to order some equipment, and maybe some easy kid instruments for group lessons… but her dad had made a wonderful little hideaway. She looked out the window at the afternoon light, and it had matched her dream so vividly that she felt she had no choice.
She went for a walk, and sure enough, there was a halo of light at the end of the deer path. The light had a reddish sheen to it, which she almost intuitively took to mean “caution.” She walked as quietly as she could. For a long time, she had walked in a daydream-like stupor, remembering how many lovely, lazy afternoons she had spent among these trees. They truly had felt like another world, a refuge from all the unknowns in the world. There was a lot that had already been secluded and sheltered about her life, but she saw enough of what grown-ups dealt with, and what awful news came through online, to feel that need for a place of safety and surety that almost anyone does at puberty.
She didn’t hear anyone or anything as she approached, and suddenly a mid-sized hard top camper was looming in front of her, like an elephant she’d suddenly stumbled upon on safari.
Does dad have a camper? But why would it be back here?
Then she saw the man, who started walking toward her with a large knife. She knew there had been some back-and-forth, some conversation - but she wouldn’t remember a word of it. All she remembered was that he was leering at her, and there was something really frightening in the way he looked at her. She had panicked and run away at a full tilt. Even running as fast as she could in her new boots (the ones she had bought because they were the opposite of the stylish ones she wore in the attempt to fit in as a city girl; had bought because they were big and clunky and made her feel like a little girl), Ally was sure he was going to catch her, and she was in full panic when she heard him crash to the ground behind her.
She didn’t stop running until she got home. She told her mom everything she could, in a daze the whole time. After she had told her, she said, “Call the police. I need to be alone.”
She sat in her room until the police came to conduct a search of the woods and take her full report. She had stared at her boots, feeling betrayed - whether by the boots and their proclamation of girlhood innocence, or by the signs of destiny she was so very clumsily trying to follow, she wasn’t sure.
In her dream that night, Cath lectured her again, and Ally wasn’t in the mood - even asleep. They walked on the same golden-red path of autumn, but all of Ally’s sense of safety and security had fallen away. See? I told you you need him.
I don’t. I’m fine. I just won’t go out there again. I’m safe.
Dream-Cath had rolled her eyes. It’s not ALL about you. You have a purpose, and part of that mission is to protect people. You need to help that man heal. And you can’t do that alone.
Ally had prepared to argue again, but Cath had vanished.
***
Holly was shaken after the police left. She watched her daughter give an account of being chased by a man with a knife in the woods, feeling as if she had fallen into a horror movie. Allison was so steady and calm as she spoke, and even laughed a little. That didn’t really worry Holly, because she knew people reacted in a thousand different ways to traumatic events.
It did worry her that her daughter had had a traumatic event, right here at home. And so soon after returning… Holly wondered if it would scare Allison off. She had managed to live in a big city without getting mugged (as far as she knew) for more than a year, and then three days after coming home to the serene countryside… this.
She had tried to broach the topic with her daughter after the police left.
“Allison, would you like me to set up an appointment with someone in town, so you can talk this out?”
Allison had risen and walked to the windows. She was rolling out her shoulders. “Could you call me Ally, please, mom?”
Holly felt attacked. She thought Allison was a beautiful name. She had picked it out after months of combing through baby names. “It’s a little… childish, don’t you think?”
“No, mom, I don’t.” Her voice was flat and she was still gazing out the window. “I think Allison is a person I try to be, when I want to make everyone else happy. Ally is just… me.”
It was definitely concerning to hear her speak of herself in the third person, and like she had multiple personalities. She reminded herself, Everyone has different coping mechanisms.
“Okay, honey, if that’s what you want.”
“And I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m just tired. I think I’m going to take it easy for a while.” As she walked out of the kitchen, she said, “Don’t make me any dinner.”
And that was probably the most worrying thing she could have said.
***
Stuart wasn’t lying when he said he had to go back to the city for business. His partner did need extra hands for an event. The flu had gotten even worse in the weeks since he’d first been overwhelmed on a shift - the night he met Ally. That had been so long ago, but only 20 days.
He wasn’t coping well, on the whole. A stop at the ABC store after his family visit had yielded two bottles of whiskey and rum, when he couldn�
�t decide what he was in the mood for. He had felt disembodied when he called Ally, and when he talked to her, it was like listening to someone else say the words.
When he got back to the hotel, he grabbed a plastic cup and filled it half to the top with Coke and the rest with rum. When he took a long swallow, the warm feeling that coursed down his spine was the most embodied he had felt since he had sat with his brother and -
He shook his head. He couldn’t think about it. He didn’t want to think about it.
He wouldn’t think about it.
Instead, he thought of what a disaster it had been to come here. He had come thinking… what? That he was going to have a whirlwind romance with Ally and meet his family, and that all that had been missing in his life would fall into place.
Life just couldn’t be that easy, couldn’t it?
There had been moments in the last few days when it seemed like, yes, it could work. Showed what he knew. He couldn’t trust himself. Had his perceptions ever been correct when it came to matters of the heart?
No, not once.
He drank deeply and stared at the TV without really watching, until he transitioned from feeling disembodied to feeling pleasantly numb all the way to his toes.
The numbness helped when he couldn’t push down the repressed memories any longer.
He sat up with a queasy stomach, burped and waited for the queasiness to go away, but it wouldn’t. His memories weren’t images, but feelings. And he remembered the feeling of fear he had when he was in the hiding place, and the door cracked open.
Miles texted.
I’m sorry for bringing that up. I didn’t mean to. I hope you’ll consider coming back for dinner.
Stuart imagined being stared at with pity. He felt ashamed. Leaving town. Will try to connect next time I’m around.
He thought about adding, Thanks for the pie!, but even inebriated, he knew that was a ridiculous thing to say right now. When he hit send, he thought that was the end of it.
But one more message came through. Hope you’ll consider talking to a therapist. It helped me a lot.
Therapy. Stuart shuddered. As if there’s enough therapy in the world.
***
Brad watched his videos on loops, made plans, and blamed the girl.
Chapter 18
Ally wandered into the attic one day, and felt like she was returning to her childhood. She had that feeling a lot lately.
But she also felt like she was going through the motions of her life. At least this time, it was her life, not the life her partner wanted, or the one she thought she was supposed to live. She liked the idea of teaching music, and she was sure that once she was doing the work, some light would come back into her life.
She had visions, both in dream and daytime. She ignored them.
Well, she didn’t completely ignore them. She wrote them down in a small notebook with a dragonfly on the cover that she kept in her back pocket. As she wrote them down, she felt like she was saving them for later. It was progress, in a way. Ally had spent her life not even acknowledging that she had meaningful dreams. Now she could see them in black and white on paper, and begin to believe that this was a map to a life of meaning.
But acting on that map… It would take her a while to be brave enough to do that again.
The attic held very little. Her mother had emptied out the stacks of boxes, and reduced whatever was in them to fit in some tidy plastic boxes. She sat in a corner and closed her eyes, breathing in the dusty scent, hoping she wouldn’t get a headache. It was a cloudy day, but when she closed her eyes, she saw the attic on a sunny day, with a beam shining through the high small window, the stirred dust motes dancing in the line.
That was the day she had her first vision, or at least the first one she remembered. She didn’t know how old she was then, and she only vaguely remembered what she had seen… but she knew it involved the party that she went to later that day. And she knew that that was the party where she had first seen death (or, again, the first time she remembered).
One of her cousins was surrounded by light, and she was wearing a red dress. Those two things had seemed equal at the time. She remembered thinking how strange it was that it wasn’t the birthday girl surrounded by light. Two hours later, Ally had watched as the girl’s body had been dragged from the pool, and she watched the light leave the girl’s body, vanishing in a cloud, dispersing into the air.
Ally opened her eyes. She tried to reframe the memory with what she knew now. If it had been destiny, what could she have done, as a child? Certainly she couldn’t have saved her from drowning. She couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5. But she had dreamt of the party, so perhaps it had been her own destiny to be there? What could the possible benefit be for a child to watch another child die?
She felt like she was constantly being encouraged - by what, she couldn’t even begin to think - to really embrace death. But it had been a terrible thing, to see that girl limp, to watch life leave her. It had been awful to see the red dress she had envied, soaked and heavy, encasing the child like a shroud. How could a child be expected to see that and be okay with it?
But… But…
There had been something beautiful about the day, too, hadn’t there? It was a study in contrasts: life and death, gifts and loss. She hadn’t actually been that upset on the way back, even as she watched her mother wipe away tears as she drove them home, focusing more intently on the road than usual.
She remembered something now that she hadn’t thought of in years. She had seen her mother crying and said, “It’s okay, mommy. It’s not sad.”
“It’s pretty sad, baby. It’s okay to be sad.”
“But I’m not. She’s not.” She had been thinking, The girl isn’t sad. She was light and now the light was somewhere else. But light couldn’t be sad. As a young child, it had seemed obvious, but she didn’t know how to say it to her mother in so many words.
But then she was sad that her words had made her mother pull over, and cry hard over the steering wheel. “You’re right, baby,” she had eventually sad, patting her daughter’s cheek softly. “She isn’t sad anymore.”
No, that’s not what I meant.
She hadn’t been sad on the day, Ally realized. She had understood something on the day that her mother hadn’t. It wasn’t that the girl wasn’t sad anymore. She hadn’t been sad, and Ally was trying to say, death isn’t sad. But she hadn’t known how to say it, and as the days passed, the way everyone reacted told her that death was sad, and wrong, and should never happen to a child.
And so she had come to believe that, instead.
Ally looked up at the window, where only a weak light cast an ambient glow.
“Huh.”
***
Stuart stopped having dreams and visions altogether for a few days, and only then did he realize how often he had been given signs and ignored them - almost constantly, every day. His attempt to drown out any feelings with alcohol worked (almost worth flying with a terrible hangover), and the silence and peace was gratifying enough that he started carrying a flask around with him to stay just numb enough.
Of course, he knew this wasn’t an adequate long-term solution, but for the time being, he didn’t care. And not caring was all he wanted.
He managed to spend more time learning about the business he now owned, even mildly intoxicated. (His partner was on cocaine half the time, so he either didn’t notice Stuart’s state or didn’t care.) Instead of waiting tables himself through the shortage, he worked his contacts from many years in the food industry and hired a healthy (for the time being) staff to help them get through the next few weeks. Even if half of them fell prey to the flu, they would have enough to staff their scheduled events.
It turned out he had a knack for human resources, he thought one day as he finished scanning an I-9 form. He would have to tell Ally, the next time they talked.
This thought came to him the Tuesday after he had left her back in her hometown, and he real
ized with a shock that they hadn’t spoken since then. He had done such a good job of hiding from his feelings that he hadn’t even wanted to talk to her. He had almost forgotten how smitten he had been with her. How smitten he was, he corrected himself.
What did this mean, then? Had they broken up? You can’t break up with someone who isn’t your girlfriend, he reminded himself. But Jesus… you’ve totally ghosted her.
Shit.
He flew out of the office, a closet-sized space that primarily provided them a mailing address. Almost all of their documents were stored digitally, and they had client meetings on site whenever possible, or took them out to lunch if they were big tickets. (Weddings always got taken out to lunch, then the venue. His business partner was damn charming, and that was a major part of his business plan. Stuart thought he might learn a thing or two about charm from him.)
When he arrived at the street level, he leaned against the wall. Where had he thought he was going? There was no amount of running that would bring him closer to Ally, or erase the days that he hadn’t called her, or even texted her. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t call her while drunk, even a little drunk.
Still, he took a sip out of his flask. He would call her tonight. And he’d go visit this weekend. It would make sense to stop drinking now, take a shower, have some coffee and water… think about what the hell to say to make things right with her.
Instead, he finished off the flask.
***
Catherine had managed to follow the signs to the Caribbean, which she had to say, hadn’t been her destined path nearly enough. But it had been a well-earned vacation. Her kids -which was how she thought of the ones she had been “assigned” to mentor - had been running her ragged the last few weeks. Four days away with nary a vision or lucid dream in sight had been just what the doctor ordered.
On Friday afternoon, she sat by a sparkling ocean, daiquiri in hand, and said out loud, “Okay, I’ve had enough vacation. Where next?”
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