Ink and Bone(60)

*

Claire, who was not hot to begin with, had put on twenty since the kids and never bothered to take it off. Claire, who was a stay-at-home mom in spite of having a law degree, a searing, rip-you-to-shreds intelligence, and a knowledge of world events that shamed even Wolf, now seemed to care only about the kids—bedtime routines and the dangers of overscheduling and too much soy, or whatever was the hot parenting topic of the moment. Claire didn’t even always take care of her roots. And still Blake looked at her like she was a Suicide Girls pinup. Wolf didn’t get it.

“Hey, man,” said Wolf, sliding in beside him.

College football roared on the television above them. Wolf was so out of it that he didn’t even know who was playing. People cheering on the screen, happy faces, girls in hats and scarves. Who were those people with no f*cking problems? Wolf hated them all in some nebulous, disinterested way.

“Hey, buddy,” said Blake with a worried frown, his default expression for Wolf these days. “How’s everything?”

“You know,” said Wolf. He didn’t even bother trying to put on an act for his old friend. He put on one for everyone else, not just because it made him feel better but because it made everyone else feel better, too. People didn’t want to look into the face of grief; it was too terrifying.

“Yeah,” Blake said, patting Wolf hard on the shoulder. “I know.”

Blake folded up his paper and took off his glasses, put them in the pocket of his handmade Italian shirt. “How’s Merri holding up?”

Wolf told him about the psychic Merri had hired, how she’d gone up to The Hollows for a while. The bartender brought Wolf a Corona with lime, gave him a nod.

“Is she—?”

“Losing it again?” said Wolf. He shook his head. “She seems okay.”

When Merri went off the deep end a few months after Abbey disappeared, the psychotic break had hit like the strike of a baseball bat. One minute she was okay, on the phone with the detective who had been working Abbey’s case. Wolf wasn’t sure what the man had said, but whatever it was, it was too much for Merri. She just snapped. She put the phone down.

“What?” he asked her. They were back in the apartment, picking up some things to take back to The Hollows. Jackson, thankfully, was recovering at Wolf’s parents’ place in the West Village.

Merri had put her head in her arms, and when she lifted her face to him, she looked as glazed and blissful as a Hari Krishna.

“Merri?” For a second, his own heart had lifted. Had they found her? Was this nightmare over?

“Do you see them?” she’d asked. Her smile wide and beautiful; she looked so much like she had when they’d first met.

“Who?” he asked.

“The angels,” she said. “They’re all around us.”

“Merri,” he said, his heart dropping, growing cold.

“They’re everywhere,” she said, looking above him, starting to cry. “They’re taking care of Abbey.”

He’d called Merri’s therapist and rushed her to the office, Merri dazed and pliant. She was committed at NYU Hospital within a few hours, and she’d stayed there for more than a week before snapping out of it as quickly as she’d succumbed.

“Her psyche, overwhelmed by the events of the last few months, did what it needed to do to survive,” her doctor explained. “It gave her a little vacation.”

As frightening as the episode had been, Wolf envied her.

“Shouldn’t you be up there with her?” Blake asked now.

“She doesn’t want me, man,” he said. Wolf put his forehead in his palm. “Who can blame her?”

“Maybe she doesn’t know she wants you,” said Blake. “Maybe you need to be there for her so that she can remember what it’s like not to be alone. Look, bad shit has happened, the worst things possible. But I think you two can find your way back to each other.”

Blake was a hopeless romantic, a depraved optimist. There was no problem, in his view, that could not be solved by love.

“What about Jackson?” Wolf asked. “The kid’s a wreck. I can’t leave him. And I can’t take him back up there.”

“We’ll take him,” said Blake. “The girls love him. We’ll make it fun for him, like a sleepover.”

Wolf nodded, as if considering. Even Blake, who was so close to them, so well meaning, just didn’t get it. There were no “fun sleepovers” in Jackson’s immediate future. He’d been shot by a man who’d abducted his sister, almost bled to death while he thought he was watching his father bleed to death. He was shattered, glued back together, and barely holding on to the pieces of himself. It was true of all of them. Other people, even close friends and family, their lives were moving forward, as they should. But Wolf, Merri, and Jackson were still back in those woods while Abbey was being dragged away. That sick feeling of helpless rage was an echo in his psyche. How could he ever forget those moments, watching her while nothing in his mind or spirit could make his body do what it needed to do? He still regularly dreamed about it, woke up in a sweat, searching for their faces. But he’d never seen them, the men who took Abbey. Without his glasses or contacts, they were just dark, nebulous forms. He looked down at his hand. The beer bottle was empty. He lifted it to the bartender for another.