“Oh, dear,” the elderly woman said, “I’m so sorry. I know I had my checkbook with me and now it’s simply disappeared.”
“Listen, lady,” the woman behind Cait said, “we all have places to be. How about you step aside while you try to get your act together—not that you’ll be able to—so the rest of us,”—she raised her arms like Moses parting the Red Sea—“can pay for our stuff and get the hell out of here.”
The elderly woman was now almost in tears, flustered and confused. Cait turned and stared down the woman behind her, locking eyes until the woman turned away impatiently. Cait returned her gaze to Alice—that was the elderly woman’s name, the knowledge came to Cait without warning—and said gently, “Do you think you might have forgotten your checkbook at home?”
“I suppose I must have, but I can’t imagine how. I always prepare in advance for my trip to the grocery store. I place everything on the table in the morning while drinking my tea. I do it the same way every time to avoid this exact problem. Now, where could that checkbook be?” She began digging through her purse again.
Cait put an arm on her shoulder. “I’ll pay for your things.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t allow you to do that.”
“Of course you can,” she answered gently. “I’ll pay for your purchases and then this nice young woman behind the counter will give me a slip of paper. I’ll write my name and address on it, and when you get home and find your checkbook, you can mail me a check for the cost of your groceries. How does that sound?”
“Well, I don’t know…”
The woman behind Cait snorted impatiently and Alice said, “All right, yes, I think that would be fine. Thank you so much, young lady.”
Cait paid the cashier for both sets of groceries and then helped the woman load the bags into the trunk of her tiny car, glad to be out of the store. The incident had left a sour taste in her mouth and she felt badly for the old woman, who was obviously alone in the world. She wondered about her history. Was there a husband who had passed, leaving Alice to live out her final years alone? Were there children in the picture who visited once a week, bringing a much-needed break from the loneliness and isolation?
Cait considered the Flickers a normal part of her life. She had long ago stopped thinking of them as strange or unusual, but sometimes they were just so damned frustrating. The mental movies the Flickers provided were almost always incomplete, lacking any sense of context or cohesion—as in Alice’s case, where she learned just enough about the woman’s life to become curious—leaving her unhappy and upset.
Of course, she thought as she wheeled her bags to her car, I don’t know much more of my own history than I do of Alice’s. Someday that will change, she vowed.
Someday.
Cait loaded her groceries and drove slowly out of the lot. Over Tampa the clouds swirled, becoming thicker and blacker by the minute. A storm was coming, and by all appearances, it was going to be a bad one.
3
Thirty Years Ago
Everett, Massachusetts
Robert Ayers paced relentlessly, unwilling to leave his wife’s side but unable to stand still. Back and forth he walked, mopping Virginia’s sweaty brow, holding her hand, then marching to the bedroom door before turning on his heel and retracing his steps to her bed.
Shadows crept across the floor as the sun lowered in the late-afternoon sky, the hands on Robert’s watch moving simultaneously fast and slow. Virginia moaned and thrashed, screaming at the onset of a contraction, relaxing when the pain eased. Sweat poured down her face.
“This is insane,” Robert muttered. “She should be in a hospital. The days of giving birth at home ended decades ago. This is unsafe, especially if something goes wrong.”
On the other side of the bed stood a stranger dressed in grubby medical scrubs, a pair of latex gloves pulled over his hands. As far as Robert could discern, the man had done little but observe quietly as Virginia screamed and suffered. The man shot him a dark glance but said nothing.
“She should be in the hospital,” Robert repeated. He stopped pacing for a moment and leaned over, stroking his wife’s cheek gently with the backs of his fingers. Her eyes were closed and she didn’t seem to notice.
“Up to you,” the stranger said. “It’s your choice. Call an ambulance if you wish, but understand I get paid my full fee regardless of your decision.”
Robert Ayers glared at his guest. “You’re concerned about your fee? Jesus Christ, you’ll get your money, don’t worry about that.”
“Jesus Christ has nothing to do with this,” the stranger shot back, grinning darkly, revealing dual rows of yellowing teeth, irregular stumps thrusting at odd angles out of an unhealthy mouth. For what felt like the hundredth time, Roger wondered where in the hell his wife had found this man, this disgraced medical professional who had been stripped of his license to practice and now skulked about in the night, earning a living providing medical care deep in the shadows outside accepted society.
He called himself “Doctor Jones”—Robert hoped the man was better at doctoring than thinking up aliases—and when Robert had asked Virginia a few days ago where she had found him, she had been unable or unwilling to provide a satisfactory answer.
Locating and hiring “Doctor Jones” was just the latest example of the strange and frightening ability manifested by his wife on occasion. Robert had been completely unaware of her unusual gift until after they married. At times Robert thought “bizarre” would be a better description of Virginia’s ability to place herself inside the minds of other people, strangers she had never before met and would never see again.
It was creepy and unsettling.
After their marriage, Virginia had described her unusual talent to Robert to the best of her ability, begging his forgiveness for not telling him sooner but admitting she feared the knowledge might frighten him away. “And I can’t live without you,” she told him tearfully.
She described the moments of incredible insight—“brain movies,” she called them—that came upon her without warning, flashes of thoughts or mental pictures. They represented experiences other people were having, things they might be thinking or plans they might be making.
Suddenly, the strange, thought-provoking scenarios that had occurred over the course of their courtship—none momentous when considered on its own, but all quite disturbing when added together—all made sense. The empathetic connection Virginia seemed sometimes to share with random strangers, her inexplicable flashes of insight into lives and situations of which she should have no knowledge, all of it.
Initially he had been hurt and angry, even frightened. Then, after some time and reflection, Robert had decided it was far from the worst thing that could happen. Quite the opposite, actually, it was in some ways reassuring. Virginia wasn’t a freak, she was simply a young woman with an unusual, almost mystical ability; a gift she had not asked for and could not divest herself of even if she wanted to.
Hell, if you really thought about it, the gift was nothing more than a hypersensitivity to the needs of others. And that was a good thing.
That was what Robert told himself.
And he stayed with Virginia.
He assumed Virginia had used her gift to find “Dr. Jones.” He assumed she had experienced one of her strange “brain movies” when somewhere near him, maybe at the gas station or while in line at the bank, had uncovered his disgraced standing in the medical community in her mind and then had approached him to deliver her baby.
Virginia had adamantly refused to give birth in the hospital. Her fear of the place was something Robert did not quite understand—he found it illogical and senseless—but his wife would not be dissuaded from her insistence that the delivery occur at home.
Now, with the woman he loved suffering greatly, contractions wracking her body and “Dr. Jones” flippantly unconcerned, Robert began to feel the tug of panic in his gut. Virginia could die in childbirth; it was a very real possibility here in this non-s
terile bedroom equipped with only the most rudimentary medical equipment.
Or her baby could die.
Or, God forbid, both things could happen.
4
The tenement was ancient, probably over one hundred fifty years old. Its red brick construction had been worn down by decades of extreme Boston weather until it now sagged and buckled as if the act of defying gravity was becoming simply too much to bear.
The building had been condemned years ago, deemed unfit for human habitation and then ignored, never renovated but never demolished, either. Now it sat, hulking and silent, its interior stripped, everything of value removed, either legally by owners who had long-since disappeared, or illegally by everyone else. Smashed-out windows had been hastily boarded over with sheets of plywood, and the building’s exterior doors drooped in proportion with the rest of the structure. The entrances had been secured with locks that were broken off within days, likely within hours, of their installation and the tenement now formed a convenient gathering place for vagrants, drug dealers, users, and the occasional hooker performing a fifty-dollar quickie.
And one other man.
Milo Cain was the only resident of the top floor, having carved rudimentary living quarters out of the empty shell of one of the apartments. In one corner of what at some time in the past had been a living room, Milo had placed an air mattress, which represented a massive improvement over sleeping on the buckling floor. A ratty wool blanket lay over the mattress, one side eaten raggedly away by moths.
In the opposite corner, Milo had placed a Coleman cookstove, offering a way to heat coffee and soup and the occasional canned spaghetti dinner. There was no oven in the kitchen; that appliance had disappeared decades ago along with everything else of value.
Milo sat unmoving, butt on the floor, back against the wall. He stared across the room at nothing in particular. The electricity had been turned off years ago, and candles placed inside grimy old drinking glasses provided uneven lighting, splashing flickering shadows across the wall. A gigantic spider moved slowly and clumsily across the floor in front of Milo, its movements jerky and insectile. He barely noticed and didn’t care.
His head lolled, striking the wall behind him as he was assaulted by a series of vivid images, all different but uniformly dark and disturbing. In the first, a man dressed in a stained wife-beater undershirt screamed at a woman, consumed by a white-hot rage that Milo could feel but which was meaningless to him because the vision provided no context. It was simply a scene, picked up at random by his subconscious mind.
The next involved a drug deal going down somewhere near the tenement. Milo watched through his mind’s eye, floating high above the illicit meeting, silent and unseen. The participants were nervous, both sides tense and fearful of a double-cross and the potential for deadly violence.
That image seared itself into Milo’s brain in an instant, only to be replaced by another, and another. Finally the images came to an end—for now—disappearing as if with the flick of a switch, and Milo sagged against the wall, spent. How long the break would last he had no way of knowing. It might be a precious few minutes, or maybe even a couple of hours if he was extremely lucky, which most of the time he was not. The only thing he knew for certain was that before long the images would return and when they did, they would be uniformly dark and disturbing and exhausting.
But there was one silver lining. When the images returned, maybe they would provide him with information he could use for his own purposes; there was always that possibility.
In the meantime, he would rest while he could. Milo considered crawling to his air mattress and napping while he had the chance, but he was too fucking tired to move. The visions were so goddamned draining.
Instead, he bent down, head hanging between his spread knees, and closed his eyes. God, he was tired. Maybe he would just lie down on his side right there on the floor and nap.
Then the visions exploded into his brain, beginning anew. Milo Cain’s head snapped up, smashing against the wall, and once again he stared off into space, lost and dazed.
5
Cait sipped her wine, enjoying the last of the pot roast dinner and reveling in the nearly continuous stream of compliments being lobbed her way by her boyfriend. Kevin Dalton was not a hard guy to please when it came to food, but Cait wasn’t about to let that minor detail lessen her appreciation of the moment.
Both worked long hours in the hopes of building their careers, Cait as a real estate attorney and Kevin as a Tampa police officer. But their long-standing tradition was a home-cooked meal every Thursday night, and tonight it had been Cait’s turn to cook. She had purchased everything she needed at the Super-K and then spent the next couple hours peeling potatoes and carrots, tossing a salad and cooking the roast, before Kevin’s arrival.
“I gotta tell ya,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied sigh, “this might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
Cait smiled. “Like I’ve never heard that before. I think it may have had more to do with the fact that all you had to eat today was half a cheese sandwich for lunch.”
“Duly stipulated. Whew, that was quite the vigorous cross-examination, counselor. You’re really getting this lawyer thing down.”
Cait laughed and shook her head. “I do real estate law, remember? We don’t cross-examine people.”
“That’s a shame,” Kevin answered, “because you’d be really good at it. Anyway, I’ll admit it, I was beyond hungry. But I’m still not backing off my testimony. Everything was delicious. I’m stuffed.” He patted his belly and grinned.
“If you unbuckle your belt and unsnap the top button of your jeans, you’re out of here. And you better have saved a little room for dessert and coffee.”
“Note to self,” Kevin replied. “No belt unbuckling. At least not until later.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and Cait laughed. “And as far as dessert is concerned, I’ve never passed it up yet, and I’m not about to start now. What’s on the menu?”
“Nothing. At least, for now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I’m withholding dessert—it’s your favorite, by the way, homemade strawberry shortcake—until I get what I want.”
“Ooh, kinky,” Kevin said, nodding in appreciation. “If it involves a seductive striptease and grapes being hand-fed to me by a certain sexy young woman, count me in.”
“You wish. It involves you letting me in on this big surprise you claimed to have in store for me. No dessert, of the food or sexual kind, until you spill the beans.”
“Wow, that’s cold. Lawyering’s changing you, sweetheart.” Kevin’s eyes narrowed and Cait smacked him on the arm with a laugh.
“Come on,” she said. “Give it up.”
“All right, all right, I can’t take any more. You’ve worn me down.”
“Was there ever any doubt I would?”
“Good point. Okay, you know how you always say you’d like to learn more about your past—the identity of your birth parents, where they live, why they gave you up for adoption, all of that?”
“Sure. I just don’t know where to begin. I have no idea where I was born, no idea what my parents’ names might be, no clue what agency may have handled the adoption. There’s nothing to go on.”
“Exactly,” Kevin said. “There’s nothing for you to go on. But a professional could probably handle the job.”
“Maybe,” Cait answered. “But I don’t have the money to hire a professional, you know that.”
“You don’t have to hire a professional.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I already did.”
“Uh, Kevin, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“You don’t have the money for that, either.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. It just so happens I’ve been saving up for a while, waiting to surprise you. I have enough cash put aside to at least get started, so I went out y
esterday and hired an investigator.”
Cait paused at the kitchen sink where she had been rinsing dishes. She stared at Kevin, saying nothing.
“Well?” he prompted.
“Well, what?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Surprised would be an understatement.”
Kevin frowned. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be excited.”
Cait rinsed her hands under the warm water and dried them on a towel. “It’s not that I’m not happy, I am. I guess I just never really thought I would have the opportunity to discover my heritage. It’s going to take a little while to get used to the idea that I might be able to learn something after all these years.”
“Well,” Kevin said, “the guy has a great reputation and all of his references check out. But he told me not to get my hopes up, that it’s a long shot at best. He may not be able to find out anything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cait said, hanging the dishtowel on a rack. She walked across the kitchen and sat in Kevin’s lap.
“It doesn’t?”
“No. What matters is that you cared enough to do such a thoughtful thing for me. That was really, really sweet. It’s just one more reason why I love you.” She put her arms around his neck and nibbled his ear. “Now, about that dessert. Still hungry?”
“I’m suddenly ravenous.”
The strawberry shortcake went uneaten.
6
Thirty years ago
Everett, Massachusetts
Virginia moaned and thrashed as another contraction struck and Robert’s panic bubbled closer to the surface. He decided he could no longer stand the agony of inaction. He had to do something. He just had to. He mopped his wife’s forehead with the cool cloth—Christ, she was sweating so much!—and caressed her cheek. Her eyes remained closed.
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