Recursion(28)

His younger self isn’t even watching Meghan as she moves toward the door. Only cares about the game, and he doesn’t know he just looked into his daughter’s eyes for the last time, that he could stop this from happening with a word.

He hears the front door open and slam shut.

Then she’s gone, walking away from her house, from him, to her death. And he’s sitting in a recliner watching a baseball game.

The pain of not being able to breathe has left him. He has no sense of floating in that warm water or of his heart lodged dormant in his chest. Nothing matters but this excruciating memory he is being forced to endure for reasons beyond his comprehension and the fact that his daughter has just left his house for the last— His left pinkie moves.

Or rather, he is aware of having moved it. Of the action being a result of his intention.

He tries again. The entire hand moves.

He extends one arm, then the other.

He blinks. Takes a breath.

He opens his mouth and makes a sound like a grunt—guttural and meaningless—but he made it.

What does this mean? Before, he was experiencing the memory as an observer scrolls through a read-only file. Like watching a movie. Now he can move and make sound and interact with his environment, and every second, he is feeling more in control of this body.

Reaching down, he lowers the recliner’s footrest. Then he’s standing, looking around this house he lived in more than a decade ago and marveling at how exquisitely real it is.

Moving across the living room, he stops in front of the mirror beside the front door and studies his reflection in the glass. His hair is thicker and back to the color of sand, devoid of the silver, which, over the last few years, has been claiming more and more real estate on his thinning head of hair.

His jawline is sharp. No sagging jowls. No puffy bags under his eyes or gin blossoms on the side of his nose, and he realizes he let his body go to absolute shit since Meghan’s death.

He looks at the door. The door his daughter just walked out of.

What the hell is happening? He was in a hotel in Manhattan, being killed in some kind of deprivation tank.

Is this real?

Is this happening?

It can’t be, and yet it feels exactly like living.

He opens the door and steps out into the autumn evening.

If this isn’t real, it’s torture of the worst possible kind. But what if what the man said to him was true? I’m about to give you the greatest gift of your life. The greatest gift a person could ever hope to receive.

Barry slams back into the moment. Those are questions for later. Right now, he is standing on the front porch of his house, listening to the leaves of the oak tree in his front yard twittering in a gentle breeze that also moves the rope swing. By all appearances, it is, impossibly, October 25, 2007, the night his daughter was killed in a hit-and-run. She never made it to Dairy Queen to meet up with her friends, which means this tragedy will happen in the next ten minutes.

And she already has a two-minute head start.

He isn’t wearing shoes, but he’s wasted enough time already.

Pulling the front door to the house closed, he steps down into the lawn, leaves crunching under his bare feet, and heads off into the night.





HELENA





June 20, 2009





Day 598


Someone is knocking at her door. Reaching out in the darkness, she turns on the lamp and climbs out of bed in pajama bottoms and a black tank top. The alarm clock on her desk shows 9:50 a.m.

As she moves through the living room and toward the door, hitting the button on the wall to raise the blackout curtains, she’s gripped by a powerful sense of déjà vu.

Slade is standing in the corridor in jeans and a hoodie, holding a bottle of Champagne, two glasses, and a DVD. First time she’s laid eyes on him in weeks.

He says, “Shit, I woke you.”

She squints at him under the glare of the light panels in the ceiling.

“Mind if I come in?” he asks.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Please, Helena.”

She takes a step back and lets him enter, following him down the short entryway, past the powder room, and into the main living space.

“What do you want?” she asks.

He takes a seat on the ottoman of an oversize chair, beside the windows that look out into a world of infinite sea.

He says, “They tell me you aren’t eating or exercising. That you haven’t spoken to anyone or gone outside in days.”

“Why won’t you let me talk to my parents? Why won’t you let me leave?”

“You aren’t well, Helena. You’re in no state of mind to protect the secrecy of this place.”

“I told you I wanted out. My mom’s in a facility. I don’t know how she’s doing. My dad hasn’t heard my voice in a month. I’m sure he’s worried—”

“I know you can’t see it right now, but I am saving you from yourself.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“You checked out because you disagreed with the direction I was taking this project. All I’ve been doing is giving you time to reconsider throwing everything away.”

“It was my project.”

“It’s my money.”

Her hands tremble. With fear. With rage.