TEN
I headed upstairs to my office, yanking off my wet jacket as I went and shaking the worst of the water out of my hair. I thought I should make sure I didn’t have mail or messages pending, but what was waiting for me was Olivia Sterling.
She was plopped on the creaking wooden floor of my historic building right outside my office door, doing split stretches, but she bounced up as she caught sight of me, wincing slightly as she put her weight back on her feet. “Ms. Blaine, I’m so sorry—I should have called, I know, and I was going to, but I had the chance and I just dropped in. I was going to leave soon, but I thought I could wait just another minute and—”
She was so preoccupied by her story that she didn’t seem to notice I was wet. I put my free hand up between us to stem the fast flow of her words. “It’s all right, Olivia. You don’t have to excuse your presence and you don’t have to tell me everything in five seconds or less. Slow down.”
She caught her breath, nodding and sending her long blond ponytail bobbing and swaying, leaving trails of color and mist on my Grey vision. “You asked me to call, but I couldn’t,” she said. “I got one of my dad’s scribbling pads, but the reason I didn’t wait is that he did something really, really bizarre today and it freaked my mom out. I had to call the nursing assistant to come and help with my dad and then Mom was still freaking, so the nurse said she’d stay for a while to calm her down, so I snuck out with both pads.”
“Both pads?” I asked as I unlocked my office door and waved her inside.
She nodded again, still seeming breathless in her excitement, and scooped a large shoulder bag up from the floor. She followed me into my office, saying, “Yeah. I picked up some of the more recent ones to bring you, but the thing Dad did today was on a new one, so I wanted to bring that, too, and I had to be kind of sneaky to get it and then leave most of the others so I could get out without anyone noticing I had them. I didn’t want Mom to freak out more and you really need to see this.”
She started digging in her bag, looking down, and stumbled into the client chair, stubbing a toe. She winced again.
“Why don’t you sit down first?” I suggested as I hung my dripping jacket on the coatrack. “Then I can see what you’ve brought without you falling over.” I turned on the heater, which rattled as it started up.
Olivia slid into the chair and put her bag on her lap, then dug back into it. She pulled out two pads of lined yellow paper—one dog-eared and the other still crisp and sharp-edged except for the top few pages, which were bent and creased. She held out both of the pads to me. “This time, I think Dad is writing to us—or to my mom at least. We used to think he was when this started, but then we figured out that he wasn’t and most of what he wrote was just crazy stuff, but this is not like that. Here.”
I took the pads and sat down so I could study them under the stronger light from my desk lamp rather than the diffused room light. I had to hold them at an angle so my hair wouldn’t drip on them while I read. I counted myself lucky that my shirt was only damp and might dry before I had to head out again.
The first two pages of the newest pad were the same mad scribbling I’d seen at the Sterling house, but the third page, written crosswise, read, “Mary. We die by inches in the noisy dark. If not soon, I will not come b . . .”
I looked up from the page into Olivia’s face. Her eyebrows were high and her eyes wide as she bit her lip, trying not to pant. “My mom went crazy when she read it. That’s her name—Mary. And the writing is Dad’s, not like most of the other writing. He wrote it with his right hand. All the other stuff he did with his left.” She watched me for a moment, waiting for my response.
I was stunned and it took a few seconds to figure out what I wanted to say to her. “You’re certain the writing is your father’s?”
“I saw him do it,” she replied.
“No. I meant to ask if you checked the writing against a sample to be certain. You said the rest of the writing on these pads isn’t like his. How are you sure of it?”
“I know what my dad’s writing looks like! But yeah, I did check, because it’s been a while and I . . . was trying to calm Mom down, but it only made her worse.” She hung her head. “He’s trying to talk to us and it’s just making things worse!” She began crying, her ponytail flopping over her face as her shoulders shook with the spasms of her weeping.
I came around my desk and tried to soothe her, but I’m clumsy and self-conscious with kids of any age and I wasn’t quite sure what I should do and what I shouldn’t.
Olivia threw herself against my chest, flinging her arms around me and squeezing hard enough to shorten my breath, wailing her turmoil. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair! He’s dying and there’s nothing I can do!”
She had me trapped, so I put my arms around her waist and let her hold on and cry. I felt her warm tears soaking through my shirt and figured it was just one of those things—I wasn’t destined to be dry today. “Olivia,” I whispered. “Olivia, there’s still hope. Don’t cry. Dying isn’t dead. Not yet. We’ll find a way to help your dad. I promise.”
I knew I’d regret it, but I had to say it, even if it ruined me.
“Real promise?” she asked, snuffling against me.
“Real promise. He broke through long enough to leave a note for your mother—and you. He’s just like you and your mom—stronger than he looks. I will find a way. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
She loosened her grip and leaned back to look up at me. Her face was red, swollen, and streaked with tears and snot—she looked frightful, but she wasn’t crying now. “Me? How can I help you more than I did? I don’t understand.”
“You brought me this note. I’ll read the rest of the pages. I know they have clues, but I may need to ask you questions or I might need you to do something to help your dad.”
She looked hopeful, then wary. “Like, what kind of thing?”
“I don’t know yet. Nothing gross or inappropriate. Probably nothing big—it’s almost always something that seems trivial that turns out to be the key.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. I’m making my best guess, but I have done this kind of thing before.”
She let me go and sat back in the chair, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. “You have?”
“Once or twice.”
She stared at me, biting her lip again, and probably trying to decide if I was crazy or not. She started to nod, making up her mind, but squeaked when a sharp little tune squealed from her bag. She dug frantically and found her cell phone. She glanced at it and moaned. “Oh no! I have to go!”
“Do you need a lift?” I asked as she scrambled around, getting up and heading for the door.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “No. I can manage. I have a friend downstairs. . . . I—do you really promise . . . ?”
I nodded. “I do.”
She gave me a trembling smile before she turned and bolted out my door. I could hear her running down the stairs until her footsteps died away. I hoped I wasn’t going to disappoint her—it sounded as if Kevin Sterling was fading, as if he were already a ghost himself. I doubted Julianne and the mysterious Jordan Delamar were any better off. I had to find Delamar and the thing that linked all three patients soon or none of them would ever wake up.
In spite of my discomfort in my damp state, I threw myself at the notebooks and Stymak’s recordings for hours, until I was dizzy and exhausted from fighting my Grey vision and beating my brain against the apparent nonsense of the sounds and the words. I was drier, but no wiser. I gathered up what I had and took it home, hoping I’d find my lover there, teasing the ferret and ready to show off. . . .
Still no Quinton when I got to the condo, nor later that night, and no reply to messages. I was frustrated and starting to worry and only the thought that James Purlis wouldn’t have been shadowing me if he already had his son’s forcibly bought attention gave me any solace. I hadn’t considered how much time Quinton and I spent together these days. We hadn’t for the first two years we knew each other. Even after becoming lovers, we were more often apart than together, since neither of us was comfortable changing our lives to that extent. But since
