The Home

THIRTY

Freeman peeked out the window. The kids were in gym class, and Freeman had faked a sprained ankle. He'd been sent to the rec room again, where he was supposed to rest and watch whatever uplifting program PBS was broadcasting. Instead, Dr. Phil was brow-beating a couple into a changing day in their lives. He turned down the sound on the television so the noise wouldn't distract him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellowed newspaper clipping. A tiny piece of it broke away as he unfolded it. The photograph had faded a little over the years, but it still had the power to reach off the page and squeeze Freeman's throat.

Dad's mug shot.

The headline above: "PSYCHIATRIST ARRESTED IN WIFE'S MURDER."

And then came the deck: "Mills Was Respected in Mental Health Circles."

Like all small-town papers, the Neuse River Tribune delivered sensationalism with a community touch. The article hinted at the gruesome nature of the crime with phrases such as "mutilated corpse" and "unsuspecting victim," but also included eyewitness testimony:

"Dr. Mills was the nicest man you ever met," said Doris Jenkins, who had lived next to the Millses for four years. "He was quiet and always waved hello. You never would have expected something like this."

Doris Jenkins, as Freeman recalled, had been an old witch who shook her broom at the kids whenever a stray football bounced into her roses. In her account to the press, she neglected to mention she'd never waved back. Now she was frozen in ink as the voice of authority. Whatever.

Freeman read the article all the way through, though he knew it by heart. His name was in the last paragraph. The poor kid who hadn't spoken since witnessing the terrible tragedy. The kid who was in an emergency foster placement until Social Services could figure out what to do with him.

The kid who grew up to be him.

Freeman carefully folded the article and returned it to his pocket. There had been other articles, page two follow-ups, and coverage of the trial before the DA pled Dad down because it was an election year and all the expert shrink witnesses were ready to declare Dad a basket case. But Dad had never again made the banner headline. That murder was the best the old bastard ever got.

Freeman closed his eyes and leaned against the mildewed sofa cushion. He could go to sleep here, with the sun dappled across his face from the window, nobody to bother him. Mercifully alone.

Something landed on his stomach.

He cocked an eye and saw Vicky standing over him. She wore brown today, a sweater that suggested two small shapes on her chest beneath it. Her skin was pale and vibrant, her eyes black. She nodded at the floor beside him.

A penny lay on the stained carpet.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

"How do you think?"

He tried a triptrap but he was on a definite downer. "Do you have to follow me every second of the day?"

"Can't help it." Vicky touched her head. "You got inside here, and now I can't get you out."

At least he was in her brain and not her heart. ESP he could understand because it made sense if you thought about electricity and radio waves and how the brain was just a bunch of wet wires. But that other stuff was way too freaky. It seemed bigger than the brain.

Freeman sat up with a fake groan. "What do you think they're doing to Starlene?"

"Can't you triptrap her?"

"I'm beat. Even a genius like me can't turn it on all the time."

"Depressed?"

Freeman put a hand over his pocket, where the clipping was safely hidden. "Yeah, a little."

"Memories are hell, aren't they?"

He looked at her. "You're not going to make me talk about it, are you?"

"I just want to help."

Freeman grabbed two fistfuls of ratty couch cushion and squeezed. He wasn't going to get mad. It wasn't her fault. She was like all the others, the shrinks, the cops, the social workers, the whole goddamned system, all of them wanting to help when they could have helped most by leaving him the hell alone.

He rolled to his feet and faced away from her. Through the rec room window, he could see the front fence. Dewy strands of barbed wire glistened in the sun. Beyond that stretched the mountains out and up, solid rock. If only he were on those gray peaks, above it all, where they couldn't get to him. Where he couldn't even get to himself. Like Clint in The Eiger Sanction.

"I don't want any help," he finally said.

"I figured that out the second I laid eyes on you."

"Then why are you bugging me?"

"Because we need each other if we're going to get out of this mess."

"We don't even know what the mess is."

"Dead people. It's about dead people."

"I hate dead people," Freeman said.

"You hate everybody."

"Come here and look."

"Don't change the subject. We were starting to get linked there."

"Yeah. And I don't want you triptrapping into my head without permission."

He pointed outside. The autumn sun had risen fully and capped the ridges in molten gold. Thin strands of clouds hung like silver monk's hair in the lavender sky. The tree-covered slopes were the colors of pumpkins and plums.

"It's beautiful," Vicky said.

"And, in case you hadn't noticed it's on the other side of the fence."

'Ten miles away."

"A million miles."

"What are you hiding from me, Freeman?"

"I'm not hiding anything."

"Don't lie. There's dark water beneath the bridge."

"I told you I didn't want your help, and I don't want to talk about it. Now stay out of my head."

"Why did you try to kill yourself?"

"I thought you already knew everything."

"It's something to do with your parents, isn't it?"

Freeman spat a laugh. "Sure, blame it on the parents. Are you studying to be a shrink or something?"

"I say that because my parents wanted me to disappear. My dad was too busy for children, and Mom was too busy trying to please Dad. He was out of work a lot, I think because he drank too much. One day I was eating breakfast, a bowl of corn flakes, and Dad was reading the newspaper. Mom gave him a cup of coffee and went back into the kitchen.

"Dad said something about a job market, and what did I know, I was only five years old. I said, 'Daddy, if you need a job, why don't you just go down to the job market and buy one?' He slammed his coffee cup on the table and looked at me.

" 'You're just another goddamned mouth to feed,' he said to me. He didn't yell it or anything, just said it like he was asking me to please pass the butter. Mom hurried in from the kitchen, wringing a dish rag.

" 'What's all this ruckus about?' she said. Dad looked past me and said, 'Make her disappear.' Mom didn't understand, then Dad threw me cup against the wall and said, 'Make the little bitch go back where she came from.' He got up from the table and left the apartment. Mom looked at me like it was my fault Daddy was mad. My stomach started hurting and I ran to the bathroom and threw up. The corn flakes scraped my throat on the way out. But I felt better, leaning against the toilet, and I thought I could make everything okay if I could only disappear."

Freeman continued staring out the window, feeling like a priest stuck in a confessional booth, wondering how priests handled all the heavy crap that got dumped on them.

"I barely ate any lunch that day, two bites from a bologna sandwich," Vicky continued. "I threw that up, too. Maybe if I got small enough, Daddy wouldn't notice me and then Mom would be happy. But Daddy never came back. And Mom blamed me. I've spent the rest of my life trying to make myself invisible."

A squirrel skittered along a branch in a tree outside, jumped to the next tree, and got lost in the leaves. Freeman exhaled. His breath tasted like old coins. He couldn't help it, his eyes were drawn to hers.

He knew the pain in her eyes. He'd seen it in the mirror enough times. Maybe he didn't have the market cornered on self-pity and hurt. Maybe he wasn't the only one in the world who was all alone.

He touched her shoulder. Her skin was warm. A frown played against the bones of her face. She brushed her blond hair behind one ear, the unconscious gesture that tickled Freeman's guts.

"So now you know my secrets," she whispered.

"I don't think so," he said. "I believe that's the first time you've ever lied to me."

Her eyes widened. "I swear it's all true."

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. The act felt weird. Natural. "No, not the part about you wanting to disappear. I mean the part about me knowing your secrets. I'll bet you got plenty."

Her lips parted, Freeman was suddenly triptrapping, no, she was triptrapping him, and then they were triptrapping together, and she was almost into the part of his head where that long-ago night lived, tucked away in its dusty trunk, chained and double bolted and he was pushing her thoughts away, and still they came on, into him, through his skin, through his Wood, touching his heart, and he found that his arms were around her, pulling her close, those mysterious curves pressed against him, and their lips drew so close that he could feel me wind from her breath.

Behind Vicky, the door to the rec room opened, and Freeman froze, his face inches from Vicky's. She smelled of shampoo and meadows and sunshine.

Isaac poked his head through the door. "What are you guys up to?"

Freeman released Vicky and stepped away from her. "Nothing. She had something in her eye."

Vicky looked at Freeman and grinned. "Gym over?" she said to Isaac.

"Some of the kids said Starlene Rogers went into Thirteen," Isaac said. "Kracowski's giving her the treatment."

"No way," Freeman said. "Nobody's mat dumb, even a grownup."

"I wonder if she saw the deadscape," Vicky said "You guys and your deadscape," Isaac said. "You're nutballs, did you know that?"

"So they keep telling us," Freeman said. "Let's go see what happened to Starlene."

"Wait," Isaac said. He stooped and picked up the penny from the floor. "Look what I found. Tail's up."

"That means bad luck," Vicky said.

"Is there any other kind?" Isaac said.

Allen came in, frowning, as if they were up to something sneaky just because no grownup had been supervising them. A bell rang in the hallway.

"You kids better hurry on to class," Allen said, disappointment in his voice. Probably wished he'd caught them smoking or something.

They walked past him, Isaac flipping the penny in the air. Freeman wondered now many more pennies Vicky had stashed away in her pockets and if he had enough thoughts for each of them.