the lingering storm clouds. The prows and keels of the eastward-tacking thunderheads appeared to be filigreed with gold leaf, for they were uplighted by the luminous suburban sea above which they sailed.
In truth, the night transformed the glass into a black mirror, allowing Dusty to study Skeet’s colorless reflection in the pane. He expected to see his brother do something strange and revealing that he would not have done if he’d known he was being observed.
This was a curiously paranoid expectation, but it clung like a prickly bur, and Dusty could not shake it off. This odd day had brought him deep into a forest of suspicion that was formless and without object, though nonetheless disturbing.
Skeet was enjoying an early dinner: tomato-basil soup seasoned with chips of Parmesan, followed by rosemary-garlic chicken with roasted potatoes and asparagus. The meals at New Life were superior to ordinary hospital fare — though solid food came precut into bite-size pieces, because Skeet was on a suicide watch.
Sitting erect on the armchair, Valet watched Skeet with the interest of a born gourmand. He was a good dog, however, and though his dinner was overdue, he didn’t beg.
Around a mouthful of chicken, Skeet said, “Haven’t eaten like this in weeks. I guess nothing gives you an appetite like jumping off a roof.”
The kid was so thin that he appeared to have taken bulimia lessons from a supermodel. Considering how shrunken his stomach must be, it was difficult to believe that he had the capacity to pack away as much as he had already eaten.
Still pretending to be seeking portents in the clouds, Dusty said, “You seemed to fall asleep just because I told you to.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s a new leaf, bro. From now on I do everything you want.”
“Fat chance.”
“You’ll see.”
Dusty slipped his right hand into a pocket of his jeans and felt the folded pages from the notepad that he had found in Skeet’s kitchen. He considered asking about Dr. Yen Lo again, but intuition told him that this name, when spoken, might precipitate a second catatonic withdrawal followed by another frustrating, inscrutable dialogue similar to the one in which they had engaged earlier.
Instead, Dusty said, “Clear cascades.”
As revealed by his ghostly reflection in the window, Skeet did not even lift his gaze from his dinner. “What?”
“Into the waves scatter.”
Now Skeet looked up, but he said nothing.
“Blue pine needles,” Dusty said.
“Blue?”
Turning from the window, Dusty said, “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Pine needles are green.”
“Some are blue-green, I guess.”
Having cleaned his dinner plate, Skeet slid it aside in favor of a dessert cup containing fresh strawberries in clotted cream and brown sugar. “I think I’ve heard it somewhere.”
“I’m sure you have. Because I heard it from you.”
“From me?” Skeet seemed genuinely surprised. “When?”
“Earlier. When you were…out of it.”
After savoring a cream-slathered berry, Skeet said, “That’s weird. I’d hate to think the literary thing is in my genes.”
“Is it a riddle?” Dusty asked.
“Riddle? No. It’s a poem.”
“You write poetry?” Dusty asked with undisguised disbelief, aware of how assiduously Skeet avoided every aspect of the world that his father, the literature professor, inhabited.
“Not mine,” Skeet said, as like a little boy he licked cream from his dessert spoon. “I don’t know the poet’s name. Ancient Japanese. Haiku. I must have read it somewhere, and it just stuck.”
“Haiku,” Dusty said, trying and failing to find useful meaning in this new information.
Using his spoon as if it were a symphony conductor’s baton, Skeet emphasized the meter as he recited the poem:
Given structure and meter, the nine words no longer sounded like gibberish.
Dusty was reminded of an optical illusion that he had seen once in a magazine, many years ago. It was a pencil drawing of serried ranks of trees, pines and firs and spruces and alders, towering and dense and regimented, which had been titled
Similarly, new meaning arose from these nine words the moment that Dusty heard them read as haiku. The poet’s intent was evident: The “clear cascades” were gusts of wind stripping pine needles off trees and casting them into the sea. It was a pure, evocative, and poignant observation of nature, which on analysis would surely prove to have numerous metaphorical meanings pertinent to the human condition.
The poet’s intent, however, was not the sole meaning to be found in those three brief lines. There was another interpretation that had profound importance to Skeet when he was in his peculiar trance, but he now appeared to have forgotten all that. Previously, he’d called each line a
Dusty considered sitting on the edge of his brother’s bed and questioning him further. He was inhibited by the concern that under pressure Skeet might retreat into a semicatatonic state and might not easily wake the next time.
Besides, together they had been through a difficult day. Skeet, in spite of his nap and fortifying dinner, must be nearly as weary as Dusty, who felt clipped, ripped, and whipped.
Shovel.
Pick.
Hatchet.
Hammers, screwdrivers, saws, drills, pliers, wrenches, long steel nails by the fistful.
Although the kitchen was not yet entirely a safe place, and though other rooms of the house must be inspected and secured, as well, Martie couldn’t stop thinking about the garage, mentally cataloging the numerous instruments of torture and death that it contained.
At last, she was no longer able to maintain her resolve to stay out of the garage and to avoid the risk of being among its sharp temptations when Dusty eventually arrived. She opened the connecting door from the kitchen, fumbled for the light switch, and turned on the overhead fluorescent panels.
As Martie stepped across the threshold, her attention was first drawn to the Peg-Board on which were racked a collection of gardening tools that she had forgotten. Trowels. One pair of snips. A hand spade. Spring-action clippers with Teflon-coated blades. A battery-powered hedge trimmer.
A pruning hook.
Noisily, Skeet scraped the last traces of clotted cream and brown sugar from the dessert cup.
As though summoned by the clatter of spoon against china, a new private nurse arrived for the night shift: Jasmine Hernandez, petite, pretty, in her early thirties — with eyes the purple-black shade of plum skins,
