Dreamland(43)

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“I was awake. I could hear the music from the kitchen.”

Had it been Gary, she told herself, he would have already been in the kitchen. Had it been Gary’s associates, they would have already loaded Tommie and her into the black SUV with tinted windows. Trying to keep her own worries in check, she found the hair wax and smoothed down Tommie’s cowlick, even though her hands were trembling ever so slightly.

“I’ll check after you go to school, but it was probably squirrels.”

“It called my name.”

Beverly closed her eyes, feeling a sigh of relief. It was definitely a dream, thank God. But the relief was short-lived, washed away by her earlier dread like a sandcastle in a rising tide.

“I was singing in the kitchen along with the radio. That’s probably what you heard.” Her voice sounded strangely tinny and distant to her ears.

Tommie glanced up at her, looking suddenly older than his years and younger at the same time. “Maybe,” he finally said, and she decided to change the subject.

“If you want, you can bring a friend over after school.”

“I don’t have any friends here.”

“You will,” she said. “I’m sure there are lots of nice kids in your class. Maybe you’ll get to know them better on field day. You said that’s coming up, right?”

He shrugged, and with that, he grew silent as he finished his cereal. Afterward, he tipped the bowl up, drinking the milk. Beverly thought again that she should eat as soon as she got him off to school, since she hadn’t had much the day before. She felt like she could write a book for people who wanted to lose weight; she’d call it The Too-Broke-to-Eat Diet.

She loaded Tommie’s lunch into his backpack, then walked with him out to the stump by the road. They took a seat, waiting.

“If you want to catch more tadpoles later, I’ll try to find an old jar we could use,” she offered. “You might not be able to bring them for show-and-tell, but you could bring them back to the house for a while if you want.”

Tommie studied the ground. “I don’t want to die, Mom,” he said.

Beverly blinked. “What did you say?”

He turned toward her, his forehead wrinkled. “I said I don’t want them to die, Mom.”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly thinking about cameras and nightmares and too little sleep and not enough food, and in the rising heat of the morning, it was hard to keep all her thoughts straight. She needed to do better. She needed to make sure that Tommie felt safe.

The yellow bus, squeaking and groaning, came to a stop; the door squealed as it opened. Tommie rose and climbed into the bus without looking back, without even saying goodbye.





Cameras.

The word kept ricocheting around her mind like a pachinko ball. She needed a distraction—anything to settle her nerves—but her hands weren’t steady enough to start painting just yet. Instead, she went upstairs to Tommie’s room. Though he’d had a nightmare, she’d told her son that she would check to make sure, and that’s what good mothers did. His window was set into an alcove, making it impossible to see if anyone could even reach the roof. She examined the ceiling and lay down in Tommie’s bed. Tried to imagine where the sounds might have been, if there were any sounds, but pretending to be Tommie didn’t help.

She went outside, backing away from the house to get adequate perspective. Tommie’s room was on the side, and a single glance confirmed that the steep pitch of the roof made it even more unlikely that anyone could have been walking around up there. But one of the oak trees had a branch that stretched over part of the roof, making it essentially a squirrel highway. If there was wind, the branch might even scrape the shingles, and she tried to remember whether there’d been any wind last night.

The only thing that was certain was that no one had been on the roof; no one had whispered Tommie’s name. She’d known that already; nonetheless, she was glad she’d made herself sure of it. Just as she was now sure that there’d been cameras in the bus stations. They’d probably been required since 9/11, now that she thought about it, and Gary, she knew, had the power to access all of them.

Though her mind felt even more swimmy than it had over the last couple of days, she forced herself to think. Back inside, she took a seat at the table and rubbed her temples, pressing hard with her fingers.

Gary would no doubt demand to see footage from the local bus station for Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and maybe even Monday morning. He would sit with his face close to the computer screen, fast-forwarding at times, watching carefully, searching. Even if he didn’t recognize her right away, he would undoubtedly recognize his son. It might take him hours or days, but she knew with certainty that Gary would eventually figure out exactly which bus they’d taken on their escape from town.

And then? Unless there were cameras on the buses—which she doubted—he would have no idea where she’d gotten off. At that point he’d probably try to speak to the drivers, but would the second driver remember where they’d disembarked? Unlikely, which meant that Gary’s next step would be to check the cameras at other bus stations along the route. And again, in time he would probably recognize Tommie. Then he’d keep repeating the process, like a wolf with his nose to the ground while hunting prey, getting closer and closer, zeroing in. He might even find a video of her at the convenience store.