The Meridians(50)

Lynette started to protest, but something in the man's face stopped her. Nothing threatening, she did not feel in any danger, but at the same time she felt sure just looking at him that he was not about to let her in the house holding any boxes or doing much of any work. And truth be told, she was exhausted, and she didn't want Kevin waking up alone, even for a moment.

So she turned and moved back to the truck. She reached for the driver's side door, then started as another hand reached out to open it. She spun around, expecting to see Scott, but instead saw another man, one who looked so much like Gil that it was clear the two must be brothers. "I'm Brad," said the man without preamble. "I hear there's a moving job needs doing."

She nodded, utterly speechless, and pointed at the back of the van. Brad moved off and grabbed some boxes, joining another man who had also pulled up in the intervening time, and both of them grabbed several boxes and moved quickly into the house, working as efficiently as ants on an anthill.

Where am I? she couldn't help but thinking, feeling as though she had taken a wrong turn and instead of going to Meridian had somehow found her way into a Norman Rockwell painting.

Scott was at her elbow the next moment, helping her into the truck and, as though he had again heard her thoughts, he said, "Welcome to Idaho." Then he closed the door, pantomimed to her that she should get some sleep, and moved with the other men to the back of the truck to keep moving her things into the house.

Lynette watched the men - it turned out that fourteen showed up, not just six - move things into her house for a time, but in spite of all her intentions she felt her eyes growing heavier and heavier, and then, at last, she could no longer fight what she was feeling.

She slept, and dreamed of a pair of light blue eyes, and a scarred face. But in the dream the scars seemed as natural as could be, and she hardly noticed them. She smiled in her sleep, and reached out to hold Kevin's hand without waking.





***





23.

***

Scott kept trembling.

Kevin. The boy's name was Kevin.

In the time since the mysterious notes had first appeared; the time since he had first heard the gray man utter Kevin's name, Scott had been on the lookout for someone - anyone - with that name. But not one person so named had come into his life.

Until now.

He put down the box he was carrying and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a piece of paper that he had been carrying with him for almost a month now, and it said little:





1292 McGlinchey

May 5, 1:30 am

be there





They were the four things that the old man - not the gray man, but the blue-eyed visitor with the devastating shoulder lock - had told him. An address, a date, and a time...and instructions to be at the address at that date and time

Scott almost hadn't followed the old man's instructions, almost hadn't bothered to come. He had gotten in the car and out of it again no fewer than half a dozen times before he finally drove the three or four miles from his house to this one, cursing himself for a fool each and every time.

But he did it.

Because of what the old man had said. About Scott no longer loving Amy. About Scott no longer being the kind of person she would love. It was almost more than he could bear, the thought that his wife would have turned a blind eye to him had he met her for the first time on the day he met the old man. And the reason it was so painful a thought was because he knew that the old man was right. He had turned into someone that Amy would not have been attracted to in the slightest.

So upon waking from whatever sedative the old man had given him - a light one, for he awoke in his own chair only about fifteen minutes later, still in first period - he had written down the date and time and address that were still bouncing around in his head like marbles in some kind of psychic pinball machine. He didn't know then if he was going to go or not, but he did know that something had to change. He could no longer live his life exclusively for the purpose of maintaining the memories of his wife and son, for in so doing he had lost in himself the very qualities that made them love him. He realized that he had turned his life into a mausoleum, a pyramid: into any of a number of tombs that were designed solely to honor the spirits of the dead, but in so doing transformed themselves into places where other humans were vaguely unwelcome to visit.

So Scott wrote the address, date, and time down...and then, after six or seven false starts, he came.

And met Lynette.

The edges of the paper in Scott's hands curled, for he clenched his hands unconsciously into fists upon thinking of the woman. She had affected him as no one else had -

(since Amy)

- in eight years, and more. Her eyes had appeared to him as almost luminous in the moonlight, as limpid pools in which he would not drown, but could instead come to drink, and be revitalized. Her smile - when she smiled, for she had been understandably nervous at his appearance - made him feel new inside, in a way that only one other woman had ever been able to accomplish.

And then there was Kevin.

The boy had been asleep when Scott finally drove up and saw the moving truck and got out to check the vehicle to see if he could surmise the reason that John Doe had wanted him here, now. But something about the sleeping boy had arrested him, had so utterly stopped him in his tracks that he was still standing there, motionless, staring at the boy when the child's mother had come out of her house and asked what he was doing and who he was.