Rise: How a House Built a Family(26)

“Sorry, I’m not really awake. What time is it?” I pulled the phone away, relaxed my fingers when I saw how contorted they were from my grip, and then checked the clock. A flash of anger made me flush. I could have checked other clocks in the house if they were reliable, if Adam didn’t change them. Even with the phone away from my ear I could hear his sigh. He had important things to say and I damn well better turn off the useless prattle in my own head to hear them. Wandering minds were disrespectful. Unacceptable. “Sorry, I didn’t catch all of that. It’s two in the morning.”

“It’s two thirty-six, Cara. Two thirty-six A.M.” He enunciated the words carefully, anger creeping between the syllables.

“Yes, Adam, so it is. What about tomorrow?”

“We have to go somewhere. Probably far away. Somewhere noisy so we can talk. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Things are getting out of hand and it can’t be like this. I can’t be separated from the things that matter—from my family. You will always be my family. We’ll grow old together, just like we always said.”

The words were the right ones to say, but I could hear his fist thumping against a table or desk on every fifth word or so. Something metallic rattled after each thump, maybe a spoon. I yanked a fleece blanket off the ottoman and pulled it over me in a tent. Instantly, I felt better. Safe. Bulletproof.

“We haven’t made any decisions yet. We can talk at home. I can’t just leave the kids. Why aren’t you here now? Where did you go?” I held my breath, waiting for the storm.

“Remember when we decided the diving in Cancún didn’t measure up to Cozumel and took a day trip for a drift dive? Twenty-seven hours of taxi, bus, taxi, pedicab, ferry, taxi, dive boat.” He laughed, slow and real. “Rinse and repeat for the trip home. The dive was incredible, but you got so sick.”

It had been a really spectacular trip. Just the two of us to stay connected, to keep our love alive. And things hadn’t been so bad at home then. He had just started to look in the rearview mirror a little too often and fill one too many yellow legal pads with pages of dots and dashes. It was the leading edge of insanity, when things could still be explained away. He had been eccentric and charming rather than slap-ass nuts. The good old days.

“Is there any coast you haven’t puked off in a dive boat, a spot we’ve missed? Maybe you’d like to turn green down under?” He laughed again, his fist thumping faster and the spoon dancing in a jingle.

He laughed so hard that the laughter faded to little throat clicks before billowing back out in a full belly chuckle. “Do you remember the old man with the ponytail who fed you grapes? They’ll make you feel better, he says. But you puked them starboard before he had time to reach for the next handful. He was a persistent old hippie.”

No laughter this time, and I knew why. He was making connections and closing circles. That little man, sun-damaged enough to be a skin-cancer poster child, was now part of them, part of the conspiracy to trick him out of an invention worth millions. He was no longer merely the grape man, but an idea thief, one in a long line of spies who stretched back to Adam’s childhood.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” I said. “The kids are doing fine. We’re fine. Let’s leave things like they are for now. Come home and get some sleep. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not now.” I heard him drawing in a long breath, filling his lungs until they were near bursting, but I remembered to add, “And we’re not going anywhere tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to shut me out. You are my family. If we don’t stick together, we won’t be safe. None of you are safe, Cara. Not you, and not the kids. You could die! Is that what you want? Do you want to die, Cara?”

“We need some rest. It’s too late for either of us to think right now.” It was a lie. I was thinking, all right: crystal clear. I was thinking of what he could do to me, to the kids. How easy it would be for his mind to slip even further. I was thinking he had to get away from me for good. For better or worse—I’d promised, I knew I had, but not with my kids’ lives. I knew then that he had to go. Tomorrow, he had to go for good.

He fake-snored and then laughed. Even morphed and turned tinny by the cell phone, the sound terrified me. I hung up. My shaky finger jabbed hard against the phone, turning the ringer off. Radio silence.

His stories had always been tight and believable, with a long backstory and an enormous cast of characters too fantastically detailed to be made up. The first time I took him to see a psychiatrist it was to deal with the stress of his big deals, not because I didn’t believe they were real. Years later I would question whether dozens of situations, dozens of people, even entire families ever existed outside of Adam’s head.

Maybe if I could have pulled him through the door more than twice the shrink would have spotted inconsistencies, but Adam violently refused to go back or take any medication. The shrink and the meds were both part of a devious scheme, he said. The psychiatrist was another idea thief, just like the guys at work, like the bank teller, like our neighbors. I was playing along to keep my name off the enemies list, but that tactic had run its course. It was only a matter of time for me. There was nothing I could do to help him, and little I could do to help myself. I felt very small coming to terms with how big the thing was that had gone wrong with him. The half-moon was perfectly framed in the den window, and that made me angry. How dare the moon hang there so beautiful, as though someone hadn’t just shouted, Do you want to die, Cara? Not just any old someone, but the man who had promised so many things and meant it, and might have kept all his promises if only his mind had stuck around. I wrapped the fleece blanket snug and went back to my room, snuggling up to a pile of pillows and holding tight.