The Meridians(46)

If she met me for the first time right now, would she love me? he asked himself. And knew the answer, and was ashamed.

The pressure on his arm and neck and back suddenly lessened and disappeared. "I'm guessing you're not going to try to hit me again," said the old man. "Of course, if I'm wrong, well, you kinda suck at fighting, so I guess I'm not too worried."

The old man moved away from Scott, and Scott slowly - and somewhat painfully - got back to his feet.

The old man was standing next to Scott's desk, arms crossed.

"So, you going to do what I asked you to do?" he said.

Scott didn't know what to say, but felt himself nodding.

"Good," said the old man. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, their clear blue gaze settled directly and deeply on Scott's face. "Remember to do it, Scott," he said. "And remember what we talked about today. I believe that Amy did love you, and I believe you could be the kind of person that she would love again, but not by hiding in here and living in your memories. Memories are too unreliable to hang your life on."

Then Scott felt woozy. He put a hand to his head and felt sweat beading across it. He stumbled, then fell to the floor. He looked up at the old man. "What...what did you...?" But he could not complete the sentence.

"Oh, I gave you a little something to help you calm down while I had you in that nifty arm lock. You didn't notice it because, well, you were hurting a bit so a little needle prick was hardly going to register."

Scott's legs went rubbery. His vision began to blur. But he saw enough to see the old man step forward and help him gently into a laying position. "Don't want you to fall and crack your head open," said the old man.

Then Scott's eyes closed, and he saw nothing else.

He heard something, though. Heard the old man say one more thing before darkness claimed him and he surrendered himself to oblivion.

"Don't forget what you're supposed to do," said the old man. "Don't forget where you're supposed to be."





***





21.

***

Lynette didn't like moving. She never had, and liked it much less when they were moving in order to avoid death at the hands of some strange gray ghost-man who had apparently targeted her and her son.

She had decided on moving the instant that the gray man disappeared. Though he seemed to have a strange attachment to - and hatred of - her son, what if he was more geographically bound than that? What if he was some kind of poltergheist? What if the strange man who had attacked them was bound to the apartment they lived in as much as to the boy she loved?

As soon as she had been reasonably certain that the man was not going to reappear in the elevator where he had left her and Kevin, she had rushed into the apartment to pack some of her and Kevin's things. She had thrown some clothes, their laptops, and a few other articles into some suitcases, then hustled them out of there as fast as she could. She was not going to be able to stay in a hotel forever, she knew, but she was darned if she was going to stay in that apartment for long after what they had just experienced. So she gave notice that she would be moving, and immediately began looking for somewhere else to move.

With her particular job, she could really move anywhere in the country, since mostly she worked at home and only rarely did a client insist on any kind of face-to-face interaction. Most of her work with her clients was done via the internet or over a phone and fax line, so she had her choice of places to live.

That first night, the night they stayed in the hotel - a small Marriott Inn that was only a few miles away from the apartment - she spent most of the night researching possible locations to live in, then decided on Boise, Idaho. The reason she decided on the small city in the middle of the barely-populated state was simple: it consistently rated in the top ten places to raise a family. She also logged into Autinet, a parental support group and news service for families with autistic children and, within minutes of posting questions about the place, discovered that there were several excellent autism treatment facilities and specialists in the Boise area. That clinched it. Lynette, the big city girl who had never left Los Angeles for more than a day or two in her life, was moving to Idaho.

But not to Boise. It turned out as soon as she started seriously looking into it that Boise was a place that was mostly inhabited, and had very few reasonably priced houses for sale. Meridian, on the other hand, had more than enough places to live in, and they were so inexpensive that she could afford a down payment on a house out of her savings and could even purchase one outright if she felt like dipping into the tidy insurance sum that Robbie had left for them.

She put a down payment on a two-bedroom house that she found using an online realtor, a nice-sounding man (she never met him but over the phone) named Tom who seemed to sincerely want to help her and Kevin find someplace suitable. She knew, of course, that that was his job - to sound concerned and sincere - and that he might in fact be no more interested in her than the average used car salesman. But in spite of this knowledge, she soon found herself enjoying his self-deprecating humor and folksy charm.

Tom made an offer for her on the house, and within only two weeks she had a house waiting for her in Meridian.

Packing was a shattering experience. Not only did packing mean she had to go back to the apartment where she and Kevin had been attacked and very nearly lost their lives, but Kevin resisted the idea of moving. He saw her packing items into the heavy-duty boxes she purchased at Staples, and immediately would either start screaming, or worse, would settle into a silence so stony and severe that it was as though she was living alone until he once more deigned to speak (or type) to her again.