Leaving Time(108)

I had spread a drop cloth on the floor while I was waiting for him. “It’s a monsoon out there,” Gideon huffed.

I stood up and began to unbutton his shirt. “Then we ought to get you out of these wet clothes,” I said.

“How long?” he asked.

“Twenty minutes,” I said. It was as long as I thought I could disappear and not be missed. To his credit, Gideon never complained and never tried to keep me. We moved inside the parameters of our fences. Even a little freedom was better than none.

I pressed up against him, resting my head on his chest. I closed my eyes as he kissed me, lifting me so that I could wrap my legs around him. Over his shoulder, through the sheer plastic that had never been replaced, I watched the rain stream down in sheets, a cleansing.

I don’t really know how long Grace was standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, watching us, holding her umbrella down so that it did no good at all to shield her from the storm.


The phone call had come from Jenna’s school. She was running a fever; she’d thrown up. Could someone come get her?

Grace would have gone herself. But she thought I’d want to know. She could not find me in the African barn, which was where I’d told her I was headed. She saw Gideon’s red umbrella. Maybe, she thought, he’d know where I was.

I sobbed. I apologized. I begged her to forgive Gideon, not to tell Thomas.

I gave Gideon back.

And I retreated into my research again, because I could not work with any of them. Nevvie would not speak to me. Grace couldn’t, without dissolving into tears. And Gideon knew better. I held my breath, expecting them to give Thomas their notice, any day. And then I realized they wouldn’t. Where else would the three of them find jobs taking care of elephants together? This was their home, maybe more than it ever had been mine.

I began to plan my escape. I’d read stories about parents who kidnapped their own children. Who dyed their hair and spirited them across borders with fake IDs and new names. Jenna was young enough to grow up with only the faintest memories of this life. And I, well, I could find something else to do.

I would never publish again. I couldn’t without risking being found by Thomas, who would then take Jenna away from me. But if anonymity kept us safe, wasn’t it worth it?

I went so far as to pack a duffel with Jenna’s clothing and mine, and to hold back a few dollars here and there, until I had a couple hundred tucked into the lining of my computer sleeve. That, I hoped, was enough to buy us a start on a new life.

On the morning that I intended to make our escape, I had run through the steps in my mind a thousand times.

I would dress Jenna in her favorite overalls, and her pink sneakers. I would feed her a waffle, her favorite, cut into sticks so that she could dip it in maple syrup. I would let her pick one stuffed animal to take in the car with her to school, like usual.

But we would not go to school. We would just pass the building and get on the highway, and be long gone before anyone thought to question it.

I had run through the steps in my mind a thousand times, but that was before Gideon burst into the cottage clutching a note in his hand, asking me if I’d seen Grace, his eyes begging for the answer to be yes.

She had written it by hand. She said by the time he found this, it would be too late. The note, I later found out, was waiting in the bathroom on the counter when Gideon woke up. It was weighed down with a cairn of stones, a small and perfect pyramid, maybe even the same kind that Grace had stuffed in her pockets before she lay herself down on the bottom of the Connecticut River, not two miles from the spot where her husband was fast asleep.





SERENITY




Poltergeist is one of those German words, like zeitgeist or schadenfreude, that everyone thinks they know but no one really understands. The translation is “noisy ghost,” and it’s legitimate; they are the loud bullies of the psychic world. They have a tendency to attach themselves to teenage girls who dabble in the occult or who have wild mood swings, both of which attract angry energy. I used to tell my clients that poltergeists are just plain pissed off. They’re often the ghosts of women who were wronged or men who were betrayed, people who never got a chance to fight back. That frustration manifests itself in biting or pinching the inhabitants of a house, cupboards banging or doors slamming, dishes whizzing across a room, and shutters opening and closing. In some cases, too, there is a connection to one of the elements: spontaneous winds that blow paintings off walls. Fires that break out on the carpets.

Or a deluge of water.

Virgil wipes his eyes with the tail of his shirt, trying to take this all in. “So you think we were just chased out of that house by a ghost.”

“A poltergeist,” I say. “But why split hairs?”

“And you think it’s Grace.”

“It makes sense. She drowned herself because her husband was cheating on her. If anyone’s going to come back and haunt as a water poltergeist, it would be her.”

Virgil nods, considering that. “Nevvie seemed to think her daughter was still alive.”

“Actually,” I point out, “Nevvie said her daughter would be back soon. She didn’t specify in what form.”

“Even if I wasn’t completely wiped out from pulling an all-nighter, this would be hard for me to wrap my head around,” Virgil admits. “I’m used to hard evidence.”