ten minutes both of them were fast asleep.
“James!”
The cry sliced through sleep and into his dream, waking him.
“James!” It came again.
He sat up groggily, opening his eyes. There was an edge of annoyance or desperation in his friend’s voice that indicated Robbie had been trying to wake him up for a while, and he had the sense that the other boy had been calling his name for some time.
James leaned over the side of the bed. “What is it?” he whispered.
“I want to go home.” It sounded as though Robbie was about to cry.
James squinted over at the clock Ms. Hitchens had given him last year for reading more books than any other student in the class. The multicolored numbers indicated that it was two thirty. “It’s the middle of the night!” James said.
Robbie did start to cry. “I want to go home!”
James felt scared. He had never seen his friend like this before and didn’t know what he was supposed to do or how to react.
But he was scared for another reason as well.
He was suddenly sure that Robbie had had a nightmare about the basement.
It was not something he would ask about, for the simple reason that he didn’t want to know, but the possibility frightened him, and he imagined his friend dreaming about the dirty man standing in the corner, grinning.
Maybe if they ignored the problem, it would go away. “Just go back to sleep,” James said. He felt sure that if they could just make it to morning, everything would be all right.
“I can’t!” Robbie cried.
There was a knock at the door, and James’s dad gently pushed it open. “Everything all right in here?”
“We’re fine,” James offered quickly.
“I want to go home,” Robbie said, sniffling.
His dad turned on the light, and the room was suddenly filled with a brilliant glare that, coming after the darkness, caused James to squint. “What’s the matter?” his dad asked kindly.
“I want to go home,” Robbie repeated.
The look on his father’s face told James that his dad thought the boy was probably just homesick. That was a possibility—but Robbie had stayed overnight at their old house before and nothing like this had happened.
“I have an idea.” His dad left for a moment and came back with a cordless phone, which he handed to Robbie. “Here. Let’s call your parents.”
Nodding assent, Robbie took the phone. In the silence, James could hear the beeping of the numbers as his friend dialed, and then several rings before a faint voice answered.
“Dad? I want to come home.” Robbie was no longer crying, but his voice still quavered with emotion. There was a pause. “I know.” Robbie sniffed into the phone. “Yeah.” There was a long silence. James could hear the faint chipmunk chatter of his friend’s dad on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Robbie said finally. “Okay. I will.” He handed the phone back. “Here. My dad wants to talk to you.”
“Kent?” James’s dad moved into the doorway and lowered his voice so the two boys couldn’t hear the conversation.
James looked at his friend quizzically. “So?”
“My dad said I have to stay.” Robbie sounded resigned but no longer frightened. He’d not only stopped crying, but the panicked edge was off his voice.
James couldn’t help himself. “Why do you want to go home?”
Robbie shook his head, not willing to answer.
But he didn’t say anything, and seconds later his dad came in, cheery smile in place, and told them both to go to sleep, waiting until Robbie was back in his sleeping bag, and James was in his bed and under the covers, before turning off the light. “Good night,” he said. “See you in the morning.”
“Night, Dad,” James said.
“Good night, Mr. Perry.”
James heard his dad’s footsteps retreat down the hall. He almost asked Robbie if the reason he wanted to go home was because he was homesick … or because he was afraid of something. But once again, he didn’t. Instead, he lay there silently, staring upward into the gloom.
Thinking about the basement.
And the dirty grinning man in the corner.
Four
Claire looked up at the clock. It was just after ten. She was supposed to meet her sister, Diane, and their friend Janet for lunch at noon, but this morning’s only client had canceled, and she had nothing to do for the next two hours. She considered calling and rescheduling the lunch for eleven—it would be easier to get a seat at the earlier time—but both Diane and Janet were at work, and she wasn’t sure they’d be able to get off. She settled for e-mailing them, and received two quick replies, informing her that neither could meet any earlier.
Claire shook her head as she read the e-mails. She had learned to read and write before the advent of the online age and still felt out of place in the e e cummings world of the Internet, where nothing was capitalized, periods were known as
At least her sister had spelled everything correctly.
Sighing, she leaned back in her chair. Shouldn’t more people be suing one another during a recession? When times were tough, weren’t people supposed to look for easy money and big payouts? The business of law didn’t really work that way, but that was the common perception, and she was a little surprised herself to find just how untrue it was. Right now, all she had on her plate were a couple of divorces, a dog bite case and a property-line dispute. She was meeting with the client disputing the property line this afternoon. The paperwork was pretty well finished on the other three cases, so there wasn’t anything for her to do until she met with those clients later in the week.
Claire glanced out the window, where David Molina was carrying out a metal rack of paperbacks and putting it next to the door of his bookstore. She contemplated routing the office phone to her cell and just going home for the next hour, but the woman bitten by the dog had been a walk-in, and she couldn’t take a chance that she might miss someone else coming in off the street. She needed the business.
On a whim, she e-mailed Liz Hamamoto, the only person from her old Los Angeles firm with whom she still kept in touch. She hadn’t spoken or written to Liz since they’d decided to move, and she made up for that by writing a long multipage message describing the new house in detail, as well as their reasons for moving, and providing Liz with her new address.
Now David was adding new paperbacks to the rack.
She was glad they’d bought the house. Just being able to walk to and from work made a huge difference, and she felt more a part of Jardine now than she had even as a child. Over the past few weeks, she’d actually made the acquaintance of some of the newer business owners, people whose establishments she’d driven by in the past and scarcely noticed. Downtown felt more like a community to her now rather than just a work destination, and if nothing else, their new home had helped integrate her more fully into the professional life of the town, which she hoped would pay dividends in increased business down the road.
The phone rang, a woman with questions about sexual harassment, and while discussing it would have counted as a consultation back in Los Angeles—and would have required Claire to meet with the woman in person
