“My—family?” River said. “I don’t have a family.”
“Yes, River, you do.”
River faltered and then gripped his gun more tightly; his own mind was playing tricks on him. Sounds came to him again—the sounds of the bombs whistling, the earth exploding …
The laughter of a child.
His head was suddenly pounding.
Why did the horrid sounds of war combine with that of a child’s laughter?
He stood facing his friend. A friend who had apparently betrayed him to these men, and yet, these men didn’t seem to want to hurt him.
Still, Natal had been there. Then they had appeared. And she was no longer there.
“River, please, I beg you, listen,” Beluga said.
“I can’t listen to them, Beluga. Can’t you see? They’re after me; they’ve been after me. I can’t believe that you could have betrayed me to them.”
“I would never betray you, River. I love you.” Tears were falling down his cheeks.
“No, Beluga, no,” River said. “Natal—”
“There is no Natal, River.”
The world fell silent as it closed in on River. It made no sense. He’d seen her. He’d kissed her—
“There is!” he protested.
“No.”
“I drew you a picture of her!”
“You drew me a picture of—”
“Of what?” River demanded.
“Your wife.” The word was so soft. Beluga paused and stared at him with his face contorted in compassion. “Your wife, River. Your wife.”
“My wife?”
“Your dead wife, River. Your wife—Natal.”
The entire sky seemed to burst; the world began to crumble. Pain wracked him as if he were being torn limb from limb. River fell to his knees, the gun gripped tightly in his hands. He knew. He suddenly knew. They were telling the truth.
And truth was absolutely unbearable.
“River.”
He thought he could hear her—Natal. He thought he heard his name spoken in the soft sweet timbre of her voice.
He looked up, and there she was. And yet, she wasn’t. She was a shimmer of light in the trees and yet he could see her so clearly, hear her voice.
“River, don’t you remember?” she whispered to him. “We always dreamed about this. Adventure—backpacks in the jungle, in the wild, and blowing our money on a few nights at Carnaval, dancing into the night. It was our dream. But then Harbor was born so soon and it didn’t matter, our daughter was so beautiful and so sweet. River, my precious River.”
She was there, that shimmer of light, and yet so strong in his memory that he could have sworn that he actually felt her touch.
“River, remember, because to forget what is painful steals the mind.”
But I want to forget; I can live when I forget.
She seemed to hear his silent words, this woman he loved, this … illusion.
She continued to speak softly, and still, she was so real; the sound of her voice in his ears was what it had been always, rich and sweet and true.
Memories flooded his mind. River joining the military so that they could have a better life when he returned. Reading letters that Natal had written. Skyping with his daughter, who would laugh when she saw him over the computer screen. How happy she would be, and how much he loved that laughter. The battle in which he was injured and resulted in his being sent home …
The battle. He had lived it over and over in his dreams. The explosion of the bombs, the screams of the people, adults and little children, soldiers and civilians … He remembered trying to reach one of his buddies … the man’s legs had been blown off by a mine … he remembered … pain. His flesh burning, his ears ringing so loudly …
But now, there was Natal’s touch, fingers so gentle as she brushed his cheek.
“You survived—but Harbor and I did not.”
Her words were soft, like the breeze. They were filled with love—the love that he could never forget, never live without.
He reached out for her …
So damned real before the eyes of his mind.
But he knew that she wasn’t there. He lowered his head, wishing he could cry and scream and deny what had been there all along.
“River, man, please…”
He looked up. Theo was there now too. He held on to Beluga’s shoulder.
“River, drop the gun, my friend. Please, I beg you. Drop the gun, no one wants to hurt you, and you—you will never hurt me. You are not one to hurt others, my friend.” Theo tried to smile. “You are the good guy.”
Maybe that wasn’t true. River suddenly wanted to kill. He wanted to believe that he was at an arcade—that he could shoot them all like ducks on a track; if they were just gone—then their words would be the lie and not his dream.
“River,” Beluga said, “please, other people are coming. Right now … it’s just us. And these men.”
“These men … they’ve been following me,” he said to Theo and Beluga, still at such a loss.
“They’re here to help. I didn’t believe them at first,” Beluga said. “I called … I called your home. They are who they say they are.”
“Fine,” River said, turning to look at the man who had called himself Henley. “Who are you—who the hell are you?” River asked.
“I told you—I’m Henley,” the man said. “That’s Clayton by the base of the statue over there, and Maxwell by me. I’m a private investigator. River, you have a mother and a father who love you very much. You have a sister who is heartbroken.”
River winced. He felt as if he were ripped in two again.
Yes, he had a mother and a father. And they loved him. And his little sister was sweet and beautiful and wisecracking, but …
They didn’t know his pain. They couldn’t live his pain. They couldn’t understand that his soul was broken.
“River!” Theo said. “We love you, man. Beluga and me … you’ve been such a friend. You’ve kept my ugly mug from being trampled, you … we love you. Please, man, drop the gun. You don’t want to hurt people, but you can, and we all know it. Me and Beluga, no—never. But if you see these others as enemies … You gotta drop that gun completely. You must live, man, we need you.”
River almost smiled at that. It was good to be needed. And good to be loved.
He looked at Beluga and Theo, standing arm in arm, both of them with tears running down their faces.
He forced a smile. “How’s Convict?”
“He’s good; he loves you too. He wants you to get well and come back to Brazil,” Beluga said.
They looked so funny—giant Beluga, scrawny little Theo. They were holding on to one another like mismatched twins cast adrift on a lifeboat.
River dropped the gun.
He could see it all now—see it as it had really happened. He hadn’t seen Natal that first morning; he had seen Maria in the room, picking up.
He hadn’t seen an article written by Natal—he had seen an article written by another woman—but Natal had loved to write, and so River had seen her face as that of the author.
Natal hadn’t been at the Laundromat—he had been there by himself. He had played with the children at the arcade by himself.
He’d been alone at the beach … except when he’d crawled on the boat and danced with those partying on it. Of course he had danced with others …
Because Natal had not really been there.
He had been alone at his picnics, in the jungle, at the deserted house …
He pressed his thumbs to his skull.
What had been real?
Anything? Was he capable at all of discerning reality from his fantasies?
Yes. They had forced him.
The man who had attacked him at the restroom had been real; his attacking Reed Amato’s house had been real—but he hadn’t been there because of Natal. He had gone … because he’d known the man had been a murderer.
He thought about walking through
the farmland, going to the club—dancing in the street.
He had gone to the park and he had plunged into the lake and slept, tired from swimming beneath the stars and the fireworks …
Dreaming of Natal.
Dreaming; just dreaming.
He cast his head back and screamed; it was a cry to the heavens, long and loud and piercing, filled with agony and anguish.
Natal.
He closed his eyes, and he saw her in memory then. His wife. His beautiful wife. The woman he had loved through high school, married when they’d barely graduated. So young—and yet so in love. And the love had stayed through trials and tribulations, through the birth of their daughter, through every decision they had made.
When he’d gone into the military … and been deployed.
Yes. They dreamed of Brazil. Then, when they talked, they had planned their trip. And before … while they’d lain awake at night in the little apartment they could afford when they’d first married, when the baby had been born, they’d talked about Rio and São Paolo and all the other wonders of the country they both longed to see …
Like Natal. Of course, they had longed to see Natal because Natal was her name.
God, yes, they had dreamed of Brazil.
Together.
Then he had come home in bandages, a limb shattered, his head bashed. But he had come home to the hospital … only not before the man had broken into his house. A man who killed for pleasure—a man the police had been seeking, but never caught. And while River had lain in that hospital bed, he’d broken into his house. A monster who had killed the people he loved most in the world, and left them lying in streams of blood.
River had served; he had met the guns and the bombs. It had been Natal and his precious little girl who had died.
The irony …
He had healed.
They had died.
And so, he had come here the minute after he had buried Natal and their beautiful child. He had run away from the truth. Sanity had, at times, tried to slip through to him. Mercifully, it had not often touched him. But there had been moments. Moments when he had heard sounds that didn’t exist. The laughter. The haunting laughter of a child. It had been his child. Killed along with Natal.
He sat there, shaking, too broken to sob.
Beluga came to him to draw him to his feet. “You need help, my friend. You need help. And your mother and your father—they want to see that you get that help. That you can be healed.”
Theo came too, followed by the men in the blue suits.
“You’ll heal, you’ll heal,” Theo promised.
“We’ll get you home,” Henley added, and the other men in blue nodded.
They weren’t police.
The police had never been after him.
Tio Amato had never been after him.
The men in the blue suits had him.
He wasn’t going to a Brazilian jail.
Worse.
He was doomed to the prison of reality.
EPILOGUE
“You brought him back to us—I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” Elizabeth Roulet told Ted Henley.
She stood with her daughter, April, outside the room at the Phoenix Rising Therapeutic Spa—a very fancy name for the facility to which they had brought River. His room had been prepared from the time Henley had called to say that he’d found River.
Elizabeth thought that she had finished crying. The last year had been so brutal that she wasn’t sure she could take anymore without imploding. First, there had been the news that River had been wounded—but at least he was coming home.
Then, while Natal and Harbor had been planning a party for River’s return, the man had broken in. The man the FBI finally had in custody—too late for Natal and Harbor.
She couldn’t bear to think about what had happened. She couldn’t bear to remember the policeman’s face when he’d come to deliver the news, the news she’d denied at first. Not her lovely daughter-in-law, and certainly not Harbor. Harbor was so young; she was pure energy and smiles. She made every day beautiful.
She would never forget her grandchild. And she would never forget the way her son had collapsed when he’d heard the news.
“He never stopped being brilliant at evasion,” Henley commented dryly, watching River through the window to his room. “He was impossible to find at first because he never used credit cards. I had to go on hearsay from other backpackers. Thank God you knew to look in Brazil.”
Of course she’d known. She’d listened to River and Natal talk about it time and again. They’d had their lives so well planned out. River liked the idea of the military—he’d receive training while he was enlisted, then go to school afterward, while Natal got her journalism degree. And, River had often said, looking at Elizabeth teasingly, Grammy would watch Harbor. Of course, she would watch Harbor. Her granddaughter was beautiful and sweet with the best laugh in the world.
Had been, she reminded herself.
Elizabeth looked now at her son. He seemed all right; he was lying back, hands folded behind his head, watching television and smiling now and then. When she had feared that she’d lost him … she’d almost booked a room here for herself. But she’d had April to think about; April, who was just eighteen now and not yet in college.
Her husband’s voice brought her back to the present. “Think he’ll make it? Think he’ll get better?”
Henley shuffled his feet a little uncomfortably. “I—I went to find him, Robert. I’m not qualified to really judge anyone.”
“Yes, but you followed him. You watched his movements.”
Henley spoke carefully. “I know that he was going about with the use of his full faculties—except that he often believed that Natal was with him. To him, there was no real past except for the war. His Natal in Brazil was a beautiful stranger. She filled a void, perhaps. And maybe the concept of her helped him; I almost had him one night when a Brazilian drug lord’s man went after him—for the money in his pack, I imagine. River held his own and sent the man to the hospital—and on to jail. What he did at the drug lord’s house, I’m not sure.”
“He killed someone?” Robert asked painfully. “War taught him just to—kill? Or was it because of what happened to Natal—our Natal, the real Natal?”
The PI shook his head. “No, he didn’t kill anyone. He did manage something no one else had; you have to think of it this way. Oddly enough, he did a lot of good.”
Dr. Freeman, the psychiatrist working on River’s case, appeared down the hall.
“Can we see him yet?” April called anxiously. It was the first time she’d spoken since seeing her brother again. Mostly she’d only stared at him, shaking a little.
The psychiatrist walked toward them. “Yes, just greet him and be loving and honest. Don’t bring up the past—unless he does. And even then, keep your answers honest and caring. Don’t make him feel badly in any way for having left. Remember, nothing he has done was done to hurt you in any way.”
“Is there hope?” Robert asked again. “Did the head injury cause this?”
“We believe that all of his physical injuries have healed,” Dr. Freeman replied. “What has to happen now is a healing of the mind.” He looked at April. “You can go in now.”
The family didn’t need to be told twice. April raced in ahead of her parents. River rose when the door opened.
“Short-stuff!” he cried. She rushed into his open arms.
“River,” Robert said, his voice tremulous.
Soon the four of them were mashed together in one big hug.
Laughing and trying not to cry, Elizabeth broke away first. April hopped up on the side of River’s bed.
“How’s the food?” she asked.
“Dreadful. Can you bring me stuff?”
“Of course,” Elizabeth murmured.
“And how do you feel?” Robert asked.
“Good. I’ve slept a lot. They give you stuff for that,” he said, laughing. “But, hey, slee
p is good, right?”
“Yeah,” April agreed. “They never let me sleep enough.”
“Yeah, but you’re starting college, right?”
She shrugged. “Well, I gotta graduate first.”
“You can sleep late all summer,” Elizabeth said, touching River’s hair. She knew that she shouldn’t cling to him, but it was hard not to touch him, to make sure he was real and there and no longer lost. “How’s this place besides the food?”
“It’s cool. I’ve got the TV with all the cable channels. I have a table there for drawing—and my sketchpad and my pencils … I’ve got what I need.”
“Well, when you need anything else, you let us know,” Robert said gruffly.
“I will, Dad, thanks.”
Elizabeth felt herself breathe a little easier. He was talking with April, answering his father.
Smiling.
They were there for a while, talking all about the little things, like April’s friends he hadn’t seen in a while, about Igloo, the family cat, a fat white Persian. They talked, and they were together, and it was good.
At last, Dr. Freeman walked in.
“Time for today, family. You can come again tomorrow.”
Elizabeth swallowed and nodded. They went through another round of hugs. She had a difficult time letting her son go and went back to hug and kiss him three times before Robert took her hand.
They had to leave slowly. They’d been warned.
Henley had waited for them to come out. Elizabeth was grateful for his presence. She and Robert had determined that they’d sell everything they owned, if needed, to hire someone to head up the search for River. They were lucky to have found Henley.
“So Rio—a city of millions. You found him mainly through other backpackers?” Robert asked.
Henley nodded. “His was an unusual case. He’d cleaned out his bank accounts, as you know. And I couldn’t trace his movement by plane because he got himself on a boat going over. When I tried Rio, though, I immediately believed that you had to be right—I found a story in a student journal about an American drifter wearing army fatigues. The girl who wrote it had been there studying post-traumatic stress disorder and at some point, River had talked to her. Even when I knew I was on the right track, it was tough to find River. He always did all right financially because he apparently had a knack at the track. And you have to remember, he’s had some of the best survival training to be found anywhere. He knows how to blend in with the environment, slip around anything—and over any wall. I’m sure that’s all a result of his military training. When I did see him at first, I figured I had to try to learn something about why he had come and what he was feeling and thinking. His behavior could be odd—I realized I couldn’t just walk up and say, ‘Hey, let’s go home. Your family is worried sick.’ I don’t believe he remembered when I first saw him that he had a family.”
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