Recursion(35)

He was just reunited with his dead child.

He saw her, heard her voice, held her.

Now he’s somehow back in his old bedroom with Julia, and it’s too much to take.

A terrifying thought creeps in—What if this is just a psychotic break?

What if it all goes away?

What if I lose Meghan again?

Hyperventilating—

What if—

“Barry, you OK?”

Quit thinking.

Breathe.

“Yeah.”

Just breathe.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Go to sleep.

Don’t dream.

And see if all of this still exists in the morning.



* * *





He is woken early by light coming through the blinds. Finds himself lying beside Julia, still wearing his clothes from last night. He climbs out of bed without disturbing her and pads down the hallway to Meghan’s room. The door is closed. He cracks it open, peers inside. His daughter sleeps under a mound of blankets, and it is quiet enough in the house at this hour for him to hear her breathing.

She is alive. She is safe. She is right there.

He and Julia should be in a state of grief and shock, just getting back to their house after spending all night in the morgue. The image of Meghan’s body on the slab—her crushed-in torso covered in a black bruise—has never left him, although his memory of it has taken on the same haunted complexion as the other false memories.

But there she is, and here he is, feeling more at home in this body with every passing second. That clipped line of memories of his other life is receding, as if he’s just woken from the longest, most horrific nightmare. An eleven-year-long nightmare.

That’s exactly what it is, he thinks—a nightmare. Because this is feeling more and more like his reality now.

He slips into Meghan’s room and stands next to the bed, watching her sleep. Bearing witness to the formation of the universe couldn’t fill him with a more profound sense of wonder and joy and overwhelming gratitude at whatever force remade the world for Meghan and for him.

But a cold terror is also breathing down his neck at the thought that this might be a delusion.

A piece of inexplicable perfection waiting to be snatched away.



* * *





He wanders through the house like a ghost through a past life, rediscovering spaces and objects all but lost in his memory. The alcove in the living room where every Christmas they put up the tree. The small table by the front door where he stashed his personal effects. A coffee mug he favored. The roll-top desk in the guestroom where he paid the bills. The chair in the living room where every Sunday he read the Washington Post and New York Times cover to cover.

It is a museum of memories.

His heart is beating faster than normal, keeping time with a low-level headache behind his eyes. He wants a cigarette. Not psychologically—he finally quit five years ago after numerous failed attempts—but apparently his thirty-nine-year-old body physically needs a nicotine bump.

He goes into the kitchen and fills a glass with water from the tap. Stands at the sink, watching the early light brushstroke the backyard into being.

Opening the cabinet to the right of the sink, he pulls out the coffee he used to drink. He brews a pot and loads what he can of yesterday’s dishes into the dishwasher, then sets to work completing the task that was his for the duration of their marriage—washing the remaining dishes by hand in the sink.

When he finishes, the cigarettes are still calling to him. He goes to the table by the front door and grabs the carton of Camels and throws them in the garbage bin outside. Then he sits on the porch drinking his coffee in the cold, hoping his head will clear and wondering if the man responsible for sending him here is watching him right now. Perhaps from some higher plane of existence? From beyond time? The fear returns. Will he be suddenly ripped out of this moment and thrown back into his old life? Or is this permanent?

He tamps down the rising panic. Tells himself he didn’t imagine FMS and the future. This is far too elaborate, even for his detective’s mind, to have dreamed up.

This is real.

This is now.

This is.

Meghan is alive, and nothing will ever take her away from him again.

He says aloud, the closest thing to a prayer he’s ever made, “If you can hear me right now, please don’t take me away from this. I will do anything.”

There is no response in the dawn silence.

He takes another sip of coffee and watches the sunlight stream through the branches of the oak tree, striking the frosted grass, which begins to steam.





HELENA





July 5, 2009





Day 613


As she descends the stairwell toward the superstructure’s third level, her parents—Mom especially—are on her mind.

Last night, she dreamed of her mother’s voice.

The subtle Western twang.

The lilting softness.

They were sitting in a field adjacent to the old farmhouse where she grew up. A fall day. The air crisp and everything tinged with the golden light of late afternoon as the sun slipped behind the mountains. Dorothy was young, her hair still auburn and blowing in the wind. Even though her lips weren’t moving, her voice was clear and strong. Helena can’t remember a word she said, only the feeling her mother’s voice conjured inside of her—pure and unconditional love coupled with the bite of an intense nostalgia that made her heart ache.