since those first few days, and he was actually able to talk now, though his speech was still somewhat unclear.
But he wasn't well, and despite Audra's cheery promises, Miles knew he never would be again. This was the best he was ever going to be. Most likely, he would have a series of increasingly debilitating strokes over the next year or two before all of the shocks to his system finally wore his body out completely.
Miles examined his face in the bathroom mirror as he took a piss. He looked tired and haggard. Granted, it was after midnight, but the toll taken on his appearance was not one of sleep deprivation. It was stress, pure and simple. He found himself wondering if he would have to set his alarm from now on in order to check on his dad in the middle of the night. Maybe he'd even have to wake up and give his father some sort of medication at strange ungodly hours. No matter what, he had the feeling he wouldn't be getting a full night's sleep from now on.
It would have been easier if Bob had died instantly.
He felt guilty for even having such a thought, selfish for putting his own concerns above the well-being of his father, but this late at night he was incapable of lying to himself, and he had to admit that he dreaded the prospect of taking care of an invalid. He flushed the toilet, walked back down the hall to the bedroom.
He figured he'd lay awake all night, tossing and mming unable to stop the flood of negative scenarios in his brain, but he was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.
In the second before he succumbed, he thought he heard the whispers again.
He thought he heard his father's name.
Miles was awakened by the alarm, and he followed his Usual routine: showering and shaving before going out to the kitchen and making his breakfast.
His plan was to work in the morning and take the after noon off. He'd been taking a lot of time off lately, and while the agency was pretty lenient and understanding, he felt guilty. Of course, he had never used a sick day in all the time he'd worked there, so these absences were long overdue; but he felt bad about it nonetheless.
It was cold and foggy out, and as he ate a breakfast of toast and coffee and watched the morning news, the traffic reporter identified accidents and Sig alerts on the 5, 10, and 710 freeways. He decided to take surface streets to the of rice and he ate more quickly than usual, wanting to give himself an extra fifteen minutes.
The car was covered with condensation, and he threw the briefcase in the car and washed the vehicle's windows off with the hose. In Anaheim, where he'd grown up, foggy mornings had always smelled of stewed tomatoes from the Hunt factory in adjacent Fullerton. Although ordinarily there was no odor, fog seemed to draw out the scent and disperse it. Now, even after all these years, every time he saw fog and did not smell tomatoes, he could not help thinking that there was something wrong.
Everyone else must have seen the same traffic report he had because the streets were crowded, and even with the lead time he was nearly twenty minutes late for work.
Hal chided him for showing up at all. 'I used to think you were just a workaholic. Now I know you're a souless automaton. What kind of lunatic would come into the office on the day his dad was being released from the hospital after having a major stroke?'
'Me,' Miles told him.
'that's sad, bud. That's really sad.
The truth was, he should have stayed home. He had a lot of things to do here, but he got none of them done. He found it nearly impossible to concentrate on anything work related and he ended up staring out the window at the fog.
Hal left the office for an hour or so, and while he was
gone, Naomi came over to tell him that no one would care if he took off.
Miles gave her a grateful smile. 'I'm fine.'
She shook her head, rushing quickly back to her desk to answer a ringing phone. 'Stubborn,' she said. 'You are so stubborn. When Hal returned, Miles was again staring absently out at the fog.
'You still here. he said. 'I thought Naomi was going to tell you to go home.'
'She did.
Hal snorted. 'Fypical.'
Miles examined the pencil he was twirling in his fingers. 'Do you believe in the supernatural?'
Though he did not look over at Hal, he could feel the bearded man's scowl. 'What are you talking about? You mean, like ghosts and demons and crap?'
'Yeah.' He continued to look at the pencil. 'You've been in this business a long time. Haven't you ever come across something you didn't understand or couldn't explain?' 'Why? What happened?'
'Nothing. I'm just wondering.'
'You're not just wondering. What is it?'
Miles put the pencil down, looked over at his friend. 'All right, it's my dad. Ever since he had that stroke he's been... different.'
'Well, of course--'
'No, it's not that. It's something else. It's like. I don't know.
Sometimes it just seems like he's a different person. He looks like my dad and he sounds like my dad, but every once in a while we'll be talking and something will change. I don't know how to put it any better than that. Something shifts. It's nothing concrete, nothing specific, but I just feel something.'
'Sounds like you're the one with the problem, not him.'
Miles sighed. 'Maybe so. maybe so. Last night I could have sworn I heard voices in the house. Whispering voices. And they were saying my dad's name.'
'Voices like what? Like ghosts?
Miles shrugged. 'I guess.'
'You are going off the deep end.'
'I'm probably just afraid of my dad coming home. It was all right, him being in the hospital. That's where you're supposed to be if you're sick. But now he'll be home, where he used to be when he was well, and he'll still be sick. I think I'm just freaked about those two worlds colliding.' 'that why you're here today?' 'Probably.'
'You know, I used to wonder what would happen if my wife got a brain tumor.'
Miles smiled wryly. 'You've always been a barrel of fun.' 'I'm serious. What if she lived but it changed her personality, made her into a completely different person? Would I still love her?'
'A shallow barrel of fun.'
'No. Because I'm not sure if I love her personality, the person I know, the person she is now, or if I love some nebulous spirit that is her true essence, something unique that would still be there even if her personality did a complete one-eighty. You know what I mean? It's a question of faith, I guess. Do I think she's just a sum of her experiences and genetics and the chemicals that determine her behavior, and it's that surface woman I love, or do I think she has a soul? Is it that soul I love? Do you see what I'm getting at?' Miles nodded, sighed. 'I'm afraid I do.'
Hal walked over, clapped on the back. 'Dont we, bud. You can hack it I just wish I didn't have to.'
Hal headed off to the break room, and Miles leaned back in his chair, staring up at the acoustic tiled ceiling. He had
not admitted it to himself until he'd said it; but there was something different about his dad these days, something that try as he might he could not attribute to the stroke.
The phone on his desk rang, and Miles picked it 'Hello?'
'Mr. Huerdeen?' It was Marina Lg- was.
'I told you, Miles.'
'I need you to come over to my father's house,' she said. 'Now.'
There was an urgency in her voice he hadn't heard before, a tightness that sounded like barely controlled panic. 'What is it?' he asked, though he knew she was not going to answer.
'I don't want to talk over the phone.'
