The Fall of Never(72)

“That happened…” he tried again. Then: “I was just a kid. So long ago. I never…I couldn’t tell anyone about that and I was scared, I…I didn’t know what…” He paused, gaining control of his thoughts. “I haven’t thought of that in forever,” he managed finally. “I…I’d forgotten…”

Nellie offered a weak smile. “You may forget the past, but the past don’t forget you. It clings.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, you…see things, know things…but what about my son? Nellie, you may not remember, but I need to know what’s going on. I need to know why you said what you said.”

“I tried,” she said. Her pale face appeared to regress into the shadows of the apartment. “I felt nothing.”

“Felt nothing?”

“I searched your mind, Doctor, your soul. I dipped in for as long as I could, for as deep as I could, but there was nothing there.”

“How can that be? Nellie, you knew about my son back at the hospital. You even called me Carlito. My wife calls me that. How did you know that?”

“There aren’t definitive answers for everything, I’m afraid. Sometimes I just pick up things—there and then gone, like an old ham radio scooping up signals from Japan. Sometimes I remember them. Sometimes I don’t.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, that can’t be it. There’s got to be more to it, got to be some way…”

“I know of no other way.”

“How is it you see inside my head yet you can also see things that haven’t happened yet, can see my son?”

“It all comes from the same place,” she said. “Everything’s connected in some way. I don’t fully understand it—I don’t think anyone does, really, nor are they supposed to—but I know that’s just the way it is. Your memories and thoughts and emotions are what I am able to read. Also, your future. Sometimes.”

“How?”

“Because to some degree, we all know our future. There is a predestination mapped out for all of us. It’s there at birth. We know who we are, who we will become, and when we will die. We also know this about those closest to us.”

“You picked up my son through me?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Your son is you,” she said. “You are the closest thing to your son, you are made up of the same elements. There is only one other person who is closer.”

“Marie.” And he’d known this; somehow, deep within the recesses of his own confused brain, he’d known this all along. Perhaps Marie felt it even stronger than he did, she just didn’t have the confirmation of someone telling her the outcome, telling her the truth. Marie didn’t have Nellie Worthridge’s verification.

“Your wife,” Nellie said.

“So what more can we do? What is it? Tell me. Anything.”

“You don’t have it in you because you don’t have your son’s soul in you. Your wife does.”

And like a flash he pictured Marie stretched out in the faded blue recliner in the living room, the dull glow of the television set washing over her soft features in the dark, the almost timid swell of her pregnancy perched on her lap like a child with her favorite toy. The image was so clear, so lucid, that he was suddenly confident that he was actually seeing his wife, seeing her as she was right at that moment, despite the impossibility of such certainty.

The world is full of impossibilities, he thought then. The world is apparently teeming with them. And they’re all very, very real.

“You can do this with Marie?” he said. “You can—what is it? Get inside her memories like that?”

“The truth,” the old woman corrected. “I can get inside the truth of a person.”

“And find out things…”

“Sometimes I can find out things. But there are no promises, you understand. There are things simply beyond the control of us mortals.”

“But sometimes—”

“You have hope,” she said. “And that’s good.”

“We have to help my son.”

“We can try. Your wife is…?”

“Is what?”

“She knows your feelings? Your concerns?”

He hadn’t thought of that. “No,” he said.

“Then you will tell her.”

He started. Considered. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to say. And does it even make sense to have her worry?”

“You’ve been worrying by yourself for too long,” Nellie said.

You’re talking almost perfect now, Nellie, he thought. And I bet you can move your left arm right now, too, if you wanted. Sure, why not? You know things you have no right knowing, so why couldn’t you move things you have no right moving? Why be bothered by limitations when all you have to do is will yourself to do it?

Mendes said, “I have.”

“Yes. Your wife may be able to tell me things you cannot.”

“Yes.”

“She may not know it. But her connection to your son is stronger. I need to see her. You need to bring her to me. That’s the only way.”

“I’ll figure out a way,” he said.