Indigo(8)

“There’s a sizable sum in insurance money coming to you,” he says. “I’ll stay in the city for a few days and help you through the process. Matt would have wanted that.”

Matt would have wanted to not be dead, Nora thinks.

The tears come again as she thinks of her father down there in that hole in the world, eight feet from her mother but an eternity away.

As they reach the parking lot and her uncle Theo guides her toward his Mercedes, the short, thin man is waiting beneath a tree. The smoke from his cigarette curls up in the still air, and it looks as if it comes from the barrel of a gun. Uncle Theo is opening the car door, and as Nora crunches across the gravel toward the tree, he calls after her. She ignores him.

The man smiles as she approaches. He leans back against the tree, taking a long drag on his cigarette. Its end crackles and glows.

“Who are you?” Nora’s voice breaks because she hasn’t said anything since the burial, and tears are still stuck in her throat.

“My name doesn’t matter.” The man drops the cigarette and crushes it out on the grass. It seems like such an improper gesture in this place of somberness and death. “What I have to say does.”

“I don’t know you.” Nora is nineteen and confident, fit and strong and fast, but now she’s afraid. Perhaps this fear is a new thing that will stick with her, now that her mother and father are gone.

“Nor will you. But you’ll know my words, and heed them. You were meant for more than this, Nora. I’m sorry for your grief, but it is also your freedom. There are places you must go. Things you must learn. Hide from the glare, take to the shadows. Find your path.”

Her uncle calls her. Nora glances back and waves, and when she turns again, the man is walking away.

“Where? Learn what?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” the man says without turning around. As he strides off, he lights another cigarette.

Nora does not follow. She trudges back toward the Mercedes and her uncle. He seems angry, and as she approaches, he berates her for wasting time. “There’s a wake. We should be there first to welcome people. Hurry, Nora.”

Her hand burns. She holds it before her, fingers splayed, and her fingernails have grown dark. Black. Something leaks from beneath them, like black ink except more ethereal—

Wait a minute. It wasn’t like that.

Uncle Theo’s eyes go wide with fear, his mouth drops open—

That didn’t happen.

She reaches for him. He cringes back against the car, reaching for his phone as it begins to ring—

No, no, not like this at all. I got into the car and went home, waited for the life insurance payout, traveled the world and went to Nepal, hid from the glare, took to the shadows, never saw Uncle Theo again—

Nora jerked upright on her sofa. Shadows retreated like startled creatures, darkness faded, and weak light filtered into her apartment from outside. On the coffee table, her phone was ringing.

One of the cats hissed somewhere out of sight, and the light of the waxing moon touched her skin.

“Fucking hell.” Nora snatched up the phone. Her heart galloped, and her back and armpits were damp with sweat. Sam Loh’s image grinned at her from the screen. She answered, and his voice had never been so welcome.

“Hey, sexy.”

“Sam. You … startled me.” She glanced at the digital clock on her DVD player. “It’s after two in the morning.”

“The news cycle’s twenty-four hours.”

“Bastard. Okay, what’s up?” She always liked hearing from Sam. In the time they’d worked at NYChronicle together—sometimes in the same vehicle, on the same story, for days on end—a pressure had built between them that had no real avenue for release. They’d found that release in many sessions of great sex. Eventually they’d said they loved each other, though Nora had never been sure.

Then Sam had left. He’d fallen out with Rajitha over his handling of the kidnapped-woman story. His focus had been more on the weird rumors of Indigo rather than the gritty truth, and their editor had questioned his commitment to serious journalism. He in turn had questioned her commitment to the truth, and it had blown up into a furious confrontation, an argument that took place in the paper’s main office at a time when most people were at their desks. Voices had been raised, names called. Rajitha had been left with no recourse but to fire Sam. Luckily, he saved her the trouble by resigning on the spot.

Such events inspired by Nora’s secret life should have made her relationship with Sam complex and troublesome, but they had since become the best of friends. Her stated belief in his Indigo story had endeared her to him more than ever, and his childlike fascination with the character pleased her.

Of course, she could never tell him the truth.

“Got a tidbit I thought I should throw your way,” he said.

“A tidbit?”

“A curious coincidence. Maybe. Call it a favor.”

Nora frowned and ran her hand through her hair. Her dream lingered, its dregs echoing even as she sat here in her silent apartment. The cats slept. She heard one of them snoring softly from somewhere out of sight, and she wondered what their dreams were like.

“At two a.m.?”

She could hear his cheeky smile through the phone when he said, “It’s not the first favor I’ve given you this time of night.” She wished he’d facetimed her instead.