Never Come Back

Chapter Eighteen

Since I didn’t have a lock and not even much of a front door, and since someone seemed to think my home was a ripe hunting ground for whatever they were looking for—drugs or something else I couldn’t even imagine—I needed someplace to sleep. A call to Dan would provide the easiest solution. I knew he’d be only too happy to open his door—and his bed—to me. But easy didn’t always mean simple. And I worried about leading him on too much, making his life as well as mine more complicated.

So I called Paul and asked if I could spend the night in his spare bedroom. He readily agreed, and it was only when I showed up on his doorstep and saw him again, still looking tired and hangdog, that I wished I hadn’t bothered him. The stress of my mother’s death hung from him like heavy chains. I felt as if I’d just added a couple more links.

But I felt safe in his house. I locked the bedroom door when I went to bed and woke up every hour on the hour thinking someone was smashing the window to pieces and coming into the house after me. And once I woke up because I heard someone yelling from the other room. It was Paul, in the grip of some nightmare. I jumped up and went to his bedroom door, knocking lightly. When I called his name, he stopped yelling, but didn’t say anything else.

I stood there in the darkness, feeling very much like a lost and scared child. Two hours passed before I was able to fall back asleep.

Paul, the perpetual early riser, sat at the breakfast table when I walked into the kitchen the next morning. He looked showered and shaved, and some of the color and vitality seemed to have returned to his cheeks. He smiled when he saw me and pointed to fresh bagels and a dish of fruit.

“I have cereal and oatmeal if you want it,” he said. “And there’s coffee made.”

“Thank you.”

The bagel and coffee brought me back to life. I needed it. My eyes were raw and aching from a lack of sound sleep. My landlord was supposed to have the new lock—a dead bolt—installed early in the day. I hoped so, so I could take a nap later—if I could manage to sleep in my apartment again.

“Sleep okay?” Paul asked, although I suspected he knew the answer.

“Could have been worse,” I said. “How about you?”

“Not too bad,” he said.

I told him about his nightmare, and how I’d gone to his door and knocked until he stopped yelling. He listened to my story, his smile turning wry.

When I was finished, he looked more shaken than I would have predicted, and I wished I hadn’t told him. He said, “I’ve had quite a few of those dreams since… you know. I think in all of them your mom needs my help, and I can’t give it to her. Sometimes we’re kids in the dreams. It’s weird. The dreams are disturbing, but I almost like having them.”

“Because she’s alive again,” I said. “Even just in your head.”

Paul stood up and started doing the dishes. He didn’t say anything else and didn’t need to. We understood each other.

Paul promised to see Ronnie early that day. Not only did I have a stack of student essays to grade, which had been sitting in my briefcase since before Mom died, but I also woke up to two messages on my phone. One was Detective Richland asking me to call him back. I assumed the two officers who’d responded to the break-in at my apartment had told him about it, and he wanted to get the straight story himself.

The other call was from Mom’s attorney, Frank Allison. He too wanted me to call him back about, as he put it, a matter concerning my mother’s estate.

Estate, I thought to myself. Such an expansive word for describing the worldly possessions of someone who didn’t have that much. I thought Detective Richland’s call would be more complicated, so I called the attorney first. I hadn’t heard from my landlord about the lock. I opted to head to a local coffee shop and grade my papers there. I was on my way, cautiously driving with one hand on the wheel and holding the phone with the other, when I was connected with Mr. Allison.

“Ms. Hampton?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to touch base with you about filing your mother’s will.”

I skirted the edge of downtown and headed north toward campus and the Grunge, my preferred coffee and grading hideaway.

“I know I have to do that,” I said. “Everything’s been crazy.”

“Oh, no, no,” he said. “I’m not calling to put pressure on you.” His voice practically boomed through the phone, his tone somewhere between commanding and jolly. “I just wanted to let you know about a phone call I received.”

“Okay,” I said as I slowed to allow pedestrians to pass in front of me. Classes were changing. It was close to nine, and the intersections around campus swelled with students. Traffic backed up at every crosswalk and corner.

Mr. Allison continued. “Someone called, a woman, asking about Leslie Hampton’s will. At first I thought it was going to be you. Your mother named you executrix, after all. But it turns out it was someone asking if the will had been filed yet. Apparently this person thought she might be named in there and wanted to know if she could do anything to speed the process along. I guess she needs the money.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“She didn’t leave a name. All I could tell her was that the will hadn’t been filed for probate yet. You know, there’s no time limit on such things. But you may want to tell your relatives that you haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

He didn’t say why, but I understood. He didn’t want to have a bunch of relatives calling to ask him if their ships had come in.

But there was something about the whole thing I didn’t understand: who was this woman who thought she would be named in my mother’s will?