Not a soul other than those who had already vanished from my life.
My decision made, I looked up at my ex-husband and gave him a glare that might have melted those brown eyes if only they were made of ice.
“You’d better plan on staying for dinner tonight.”
Chapter 16
A half-hour passed. Or had it been half the night? Only when I had nothing more to reveal did I realize that Michael hadn’t touched his beer. It occurred to me that I hadn’t touched mine either.
Michael’s face wasn’t pale. It had turned bed-sheet white.
We occupied the living room, him seated on the Providence College desk chair, me on the arm of the couch. Barely three feet separated us. He pressed open hands against his face, rubbed them up and down over stubble and white skin as though it better helped him absorb the truths about myself, Molly and a dead man named Joseph William Whalen. I knew then that he was trying to hide the fact that he was wiping away tears.
“You never told me,” he whispered. “All the years, months we were together. The three years we were married. You never said a single word about it.”
For an instant I thought he might try and hold me. Comfort me. But I was glad somehow when he didn’t. Instead he fisted his now warm bottle of beer, drank the whole thing down in one swift chug.
“What exactly do Franny’s paintings have to do with Whalen’s attack on you and your sister?”
I stood up from the armrest. I went to the paintings, repositioned them side by side against the bookcase so that they could be viewed together beneath the light from the stand-up lamp.
“At first I didn’t make the connection. It just seemed strange to me that I could clearly see the word ‘Listen’ in the center of the first canvas and other people-even Robyn-had to be coaxed into seeing it.”
“But the design is an abstract Pollack sort of thing.” He wiped his eyes again.
“Not abstract enough for me to see through the abstraction,” I explained.
Michael perked up his eyebrows. “In the same way a colorblind person can pick out certain words in a pattern that a person without colorblindness cannot,” he suggested. “Or vice-versa. Are you colorblind, Rebecca?”
I shook my head.
“Not that I’m aware of. But then I don’t think what’s happening has anything to do with colors and how they’re put together to make an image.”
“So what do you think?”
I swallowed a deep breath, exhaled it.
“I think Francis Scaramuzzi is trying to connect directly with my mind.”
Chapter 17
It was a bold statement, admittedly. And I’m not sure Michael knew how to react to it. He stood stone stiff, eyes wide open, unblinking. He’d gone silent.
“Let me get this straight. You think an autistic guy like Franny is trying to send you subliminal messages through his work.”
“Except there’s nothing sublime about them. I can read them just like I can read a stop sign. Even you can read them when pushed.”
“Let me ask you a question,” he jumped in. “When was the last time you had a conversation with Franny that lasted more than a few sentences?”
“That would be never.”
“But he has the ability to paint secret messages or at least words inside his design of his paintings.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Is Franny purposely putting words into those scenes? And if he is, how can he be sure I’ll recognize them?”
Michael cocked his head.
“Maybe it’s something he feels compelled to do. You know, like instinct.”
I grabbed my beer and, like Michael before me, took a very long drink. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I said, “This is what I believe: come Friday it’ll be thirty years since Molly and I were abducted. Maybe thirty years bears some larger significance than say, twenty-nine years for instance.”
“Why?”
“Because for weeks now I’ve been having these vivid dreams about Molly, Whalen, the attack in the woods, the events leading up to it.”
“Vivid dreams.” Michael nodded. I got the feeling I was losing him.
“Yes, vivid dreams. And I also think that somehow Franny, despite his autism, has somehow found a way to turn his emotional disconnectedness around. Whether he’s aware of it or not.”
“So what are you saying, Bec?”
“I guess what I’m saying is that Franny knows something I don’t. He’s somehow perceived something. The future maybe. Now the only way he can warn me about it is through these paintings.”
Michael shook his head.
“Franny has a sixth sense?” Yet another question.
“From what little I know about savants, I know that they use their brains differently than you and me. They’re able to tap far deeper into certain wells of talent and yet not at all in others. Thus his unusually gifted talent for painting, for creating images, for putting together colors.”
Retrieving his empty beer bottle, Michael went back into the kitchen. He got a Pepsi, popped the top, and came back out into the living room with it. The difference between the new Michael and the old Michael was that now he could stop drinking after one beer.
Scratching his head, he said, “How can you be sure about any of this, Bec? Sounds like science fiction to me. Isaac Asimov Magazine.”
I pointed to the first painting on the left. “Listen.”
“Only a few hours after he gave me this painting, I dreamed of a field with a thick wood on its far side. Molly was walking ahead of me, leading us into the woods that my father forbade us to enter.”
“That’s no dream,” Michael said. “That really happened.”
“I was woken up from that dream to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I also thought I heard a voice.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“It was his voice. I swear it was Whalen’s voice.”
“Do you remember Whalen’s voice?”
I shook my head.
“No. But I knew it belonged to him.”
“You must have been dreaming. He’s dead after all. Isn’t he?”
“Yeah, I was dreaming. But my eyes were open. I couldn’t move. I felt like I was glued to the bed.”
Now pointing his index finger at me to further stress his point, he said, “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t dreaming?”
“I agree. It’s not unusual to have your eyes open and be caught up in a dream state.”
“So who was calling you at that hour?”
“In the morning I checked the phone. There was no record of anyone having called.”
Michael smiled. But I knew he wasn’t happy about anything. “Then it all must have been a bad dream.”
“True, but…” My voice trailed off, as if it had a mind of its own.
“But what, Bec?”
“Then this afternoon Franny gives me another painting. This one matches precisely the scene of my dream-
