Fourteen Days(53)

“I know when you’re lying. So tell me the truth,” she demanded. “You’ve already said that it’s got something to do with this missing woman. So tell me—what really happened?”

He hesitated, still with his eyes cast down to the floor like a guilty child.

“Come on, you can tell me. I won’t get mad. I promise.”

Richard knew that she would, but he said it anyway. “I went to see Carl Jones.”

“Who’s Carl Jones?” Then her jaw dropped as she plainly remembered exactly who Carl Jones was. “Please tell me you didn’t visit this woman’s grieving husband.”

His silence spoke volumes.

“Jesus Christ, Rich, what’s the matter with you?”

He turned to her, this time looking her straight in the eyes. “I had to, all right. He needed to know the truth.”

“Needed to know what? That his wife is now a bloody ghost in our house? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Richard angrily stood up. “Look, if it was you who was missing, then I’d want to know.”

She shook her head in astonishment. “I can’t believe you could do something so stupid. That poor man.” She rubbed her face with a palm and sighed. “So what happened then? Where did the mud come from?”

Richard started to pace nervously up and down the room, then stopped. “He sort of attacked me.”

Nicky’s face filled with horror. “Attacked you?”

Nodding, he began pacing again. “With a baseball bat.”

“A baseball bat? Oh this gets better and better. You’re lucky he didn’t call the police.”

He didn’t reply.

“Please tell me he didn’t call the police,” she asked, apprehension lacing her voice.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Well, at least that’s something. You could have been killed. Did he hurt you?”

He stopped pacing. “No, I’m fine. I got away. And you’re right—I shouldn’t have gone to see him. It was mistake. A big mistake. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could have tried not going,” she sarcastically replied. “That man has lost someone close to him, and you go to his house and tell him something like that.”

Richard had run out of things to say. Thought after thought flooded his head as he gazed into his wife’s disappointed eyes. Was she right in what she said? Had it all been a coincidence? What if he had seen the same poster elsewhere? And what if he had crushed an innocent man’s hopes of finding the woman he loved alive with one ill-advised visit?

Had he lost his mind in less than two weeks?

Shaking her head and sighing loudly, Nicky left the bedroom.

“Where are you going now?” he asked, his voice filled with shame and deflation.

“Going for a bath.” She disappeared into the bathroom. “Alone.”

Richard sat on the bed, disillusioned. Suddenly, his predicament seemed less and less clear.

But he had been so certain of her existence. He had seen her sitting on this very spot, looking at him through those eyes. Those tearful eyes. Eyes he could never erase from his memory. And he had felt terror. Terror he had never before experienced.

What if he was losing his grip on reality? How would he even know? Surely all unhinged human beings believed in their hallucinations, believed with all their hearts in the world that surrounded them, the world of visions that consumed them. What if he was just another unhinged man? Perhaps his hectic job and his collapse at the office—what if they all contributed to seeing the woman in the white dress? What if this was all just a vivid dream, while he was sprawled out on the floor of his office? What if Leah was still standing over him, trying desperately to wake him? Or perhaps he was still at the hospital, and Christina Long was merely one of the nurses tending to him as he lay in his hospital bed, hooked up to a monitor, trying to break free from a coma, with Nicky standing over him, pleading with him to come back to her. Back home.

After several minutes, he lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. Don’t be so stupid—you’re not nuts, he thought. You know what you saw in the kitchen; you didn’t imagine the smoke detectors all going off at the same time. Even Nicky saw the fridge and freezer doors open, and the TV come on by itself. You’re not some lunatic. There is a ghost in your house. And you did see her poster today for the first time. There’s nothing wrong with your mind.