You Will Know Me(32)

“It’s a hard time for everybody,” he said, and he seemed suddenly so far away on the bed, the warmth of his body gone, his voice so distant she could barely hear him.



Sometime in the night, she opened her eyes.

It was Drew standing in the doorway in his shark pj’s, the teeth that glowed.

“Mom, Devon won’t stop yelling.”

“What?” she asked, pulling the bedspread up over her bare legs, Eric deep in post-beer stupor. “You’re dreaming.”

All Drew’s dreams of Devon, Devon flying, jumping off the roof, riding his bike, sneaking into the garage and driving away in their cars like Batman. She’d meant to ask the doctor, or someone, about them. But then, drifting down the hallway, Drew leading the way, she heard it too.

From the closed door, Devon’s voice, a snarl of sounds, stutters, rasps.

“She’s just talking in her sleep,” Katie whispered. “Go back to bed.”

Tapping lightly on Devon’s door, she watched Drew slip back into his room, eyes still on her.

There was no answer, so she opened the door.

There was Devon, her comforter kicked off the bed, standing in the middle of the room, her head in her hands, red wrist blazing.

“Devon.” Katie rushed toward her. “Devon, wake up!”

Pulling her hands from her face, she stared at Katie, eyes burning.

“He was standing there,” she said, pointing to where Katie stood. “Mom, it was Ryan.”

“No,” Katie said, touching her arms, trying to soothe her. “You were dreaming.”

“He was right there, where you are,” she said, a soft moan. “He looked so sad, Mom.”

The skin on Katie’s shoulders quilled.

“You were having a dream,” she said, trying to hug her, but Devon’s elbows kept jabbing, her body twisting. “Usually it’s your brother with the crazy dreams.”

It took several minutes for Katie to calm her, to guide her back to the bed.

“Are you sure he wasn’t here?” Devon asked finally, voice softening, head sinking back into the center of her pillow.

“I’m sure, honey. Ryan’s gone. He’s not coming back.”

“I know. Is Dad sleeping?” she said, her hair tangled over her face, hiding her.

“What? Yes,” Katie said.

“Remember that song?”

“What?”

“At the tiki party last winter. The one you danced to. ‘She’s Electric.’”

“I danced to it?”

“And on the palm of her hand is a blister…” she sang, a soft, lisping purl, like when she was very small.

But no, Katie couldn’t remember it.

Still, she brushed her hand through Devon’s hair and Devon let out the smallest sigh, like an aah after seeing things had turned out okay after all.

“Mom,” she said dreamily. “Don’t be mad at Dad. I think he’s sad.”

“What?” Katie said.

“We’re all sad,” Devon said. “Aren’t we?”



Her hand pressed on Eric’s back, she tried to settle herself. He’d never woken up, and the only sound now was his breathing, hoarse and ragged. For a second she thought she saw his lashes lift, the white of one eye looking at her, but she was wrong.





Chapter Eight



“Mrs. Knox, it’s Nurse Patty.”

“Who?”

“Nurse Patty. From Carver Elementary.”

“What?”

Everything was moving slowly in her head, a night of bad dreams, of beetles boring through smoked glass, of swimming pools coated with beetle shells.

Devon, that nightmare. The way she was standing in the middle of her room, seeing ghosts.

Then the day had hurdled past. Eric had gone to work before dawn, leaving Katie with the school drop-off, a conference call with the printer, a design deadline at noon, four parents trying to reach Eric. Then, just before two o’clock, came the call from Nurse Patty saying Drew had a sore throat and needed to be picked up immediately.

Looking at him now in the rearview mirror, his lips waxy and head lolling, Katie decided to drive straight to Dr. Kemper, who jabbed a swab down there and confirmed what she already knew: strep.

“Mom,” Drew said in the car after, “I think Devon made me sick. I dreamed she put rocks in my mouth.”



The line at the pharmacy was long, a shouting man with a fistful of prescription bottles at the front and behind him a woman scrambling on the floor to recover her phone’s battery cover.

A jumble of feet, a woolly roll of dust floating from under a towering vitamin display, the woman dropped to her hands and knees as the cover spun away. Finally, she collapsed in cross-legged defeat on the floor.

That was when Katie noticed the gentle tilt of her jaw, the sleepy eyes, just like her son’s.

“Mrs. Beck—Helen,” Katie said, “are you okay?”

She looked up at Katie, nodded.

Katie helped her to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said, crinkling her prescription bag between nervous fingers. “I’m having a bad day.”

“Here,” Drew said, stepping forward, her sooty battery cover in his infected hands.