Bedtime Story (57 page)

We didn’t stay too long with Carol and Matthew after the boys began to look at each other. Carol and I watched in silence as, gradually, their faces lost what little animation they had temporarily claimed, returning to their previous slackness almost in unison. Matthew’s eyes had started to darken as David’s began to flicker, as his hands began to jerk.

When I looked away from the boys, Carol was staring at me.

“What just happened?” she asked, her voice rough, her eyes shining.

“I don’t know.”

“Matthew hasn’t … It’s been thirty years.” She paused. “You think this has something to do with that book,” she said, and for a moment she sounded like Jacqui. Not quite openly derisive, but dubious.

“I think so, yes.”

“So what are you going to do with this book, if you find it?”

It was the question I had been hoping that she wouldn’t ask; I didn’t have an answer that would satisfy her. “I’ll have to see,” I said haltingly. “If there’s anything in it that might reverse the effect that it had on Matthew and David.”

“Like a magic spell?” she asked.

When I didn’t say anything in response, she shook her head. “You know how ridiculous that makes you sound, don’t you?”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

“I bet.”

Standing up and edging past me to her son, she laid a hand on his forehead. “He looks warm,” she said.

I leaned away, giving her space.

“If this works …” she said after a moment, so quietly I assumed she was talking to Matthew.

When she didn’t continue, I said, “I’m sorry?”

“If this works,” she said, still looking away from me, “what do you think is going to happen? To David, I mean.”

The question stopped me. I had been blithely assuming that once the spell was broken David would return to normal. Hearing the question put so plainly, though, it occurred to me, for the first time, that David’s injuries might be permanent.

“I don’t know,” I said carefully.

David and I managed to not get too lost on the way back to the hotel, stopping at a drive-thru to pick up an early dinner.

“We’ll have a little picnic in the room,” I told David as I tucked the bag in at his feet, but I was keenly aware of how forced the lightness in my voice sounded: I kept seeing Carol’s face in my mind, the way the tiniest bit of hope, hope in something that she couldn’t even bring herself to believe in, had shattered almost three decades of positive thinking and coping.

Once we were in the room, I led David to the easy chair and sat him down. “We’re gonna need some extra towels,” I said as I picked up the hotel phone and pushed the button for housekeeping.

Once I had made the request, I took a large towel from the bathroom. “Ta-da!” I said as I snapped it open and let it fall to the carpet. I set the bag at its centre.

“Instant picnic,” I said to David as I guided him to a sitting position at the edge of the towel. I sat down across from him, close enough that I would be able to help him eat. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” I said, opening the bag and starting to pull food from it.

I was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“And that’ll be someone with the towels,” I said, continuing the conversation as I stood up. “Cause somebody I know is going to have a bath tonight.”

I crossed the room and opened the door, expecting to see a maid or someone from the desk. It never occurred to me to check the peephole.

Jacqui was standing in the doorway, keys in one hand, a look of cold curiosity on her face.

“So,” she said. “Do you want to tell me just what the hell you’re doing in Seattle?”

I could think of nothing else to say: “We’re having a picnic. Do you want to come in?”

The boat ran up the shallows with a grinding of wood on gravel. David climbed carefully over the bow, splashing as he stepped to the shore.

The captain hopped out of the boat and pulled it high onto the small beach by the guy line. He rubbed his hands against the front of his pants. His face was sweaty, and for the first time since David had known him, the captain was out of breath.

“That was farther than it looked,” he said, staring across the lake to where they had started out more than an hour before. “But then, distances over water are always deceptive, yes?”

David just nodded. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to participate in the captain’s sudden, and not-quite-convincing show of camaraderie; he truly had nothing to say.

The captain looked at him a moment, but turned away when he didn’t reply.

“I wish they had brought a bigger boat,” he said, scanning the forested slope that loomed just beyond the beach.

“Why?” David asked, finding a seat on a driftwood log partway up the beach.

“It would be nice to have my men here,” he said. “It would save us time searching.”

David nodded. He knew that he should get up, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Or speak.

“On the other hand …” the captain said, pointing toward the brush.

Farther up the beach, at the point where the gravel gave way to underbrush, David saw a small building. The stone walls, thick with ivy, blended into the forest. There was no hiding the door, though: it seemed to glow, even in the shade, the Sunstone symbol etched deep into the metal.

Tony Markus and Cat Took wasted no time in ordering drinks once they had been seated.

“I’m glad we were able to get a table,” Tony said, trying to fill the silence. “I didn’t know if I should call down for a reservation.”

“It’s pretty early,” she said. “It probably won’t get busy for another couple of hours.”

As she spoke, he watched the light from the candles play across her face. Her skin was so smooth, so clear, and she didn’t seem to be wearing any makeup whatsoever.

“So what did you do with your day in Portland?” she asked. “I see you went to Powell’s.” She gestured at the bag he had set on the edge of the table.

“I did,” he said, then stopped. He wouldn’t mention that the highlight of his day had been a lacklustre massage but a very happy ending from a girl named Angi. “Actually, I spent most of the day there, wandering the aisles, spending too much money.” He gestured toward the bag himself. Probably best to come across as a dedicated bibliophile, really show her how much a labour of love publishing was for him. Whatever story worked best.

“So what did you buy?”

“Actually,” he said, grateful for the opening. “This isn’t something I bought at Powell’s. This—” He passed her the bag. “Is why I flew out here.” She hesitated, holding the bag in her hands. “Go ahead, open it.”

He was almost shaking with anticipation as she slid the book out.
The symbols on the cover caught the light of the candles, seemed to glow.

It took a moment for it to register, but her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “Oh,” she said, glancing at him, then at the book, then back at him.

“I believe,” he said smugly, “that this is your grandfather’s last book. And, if all goes well, the centrepiece of our plans to get his work the attention it so richly deserves.” Always a place for a little genuflecting.

“But where …?”

“I found it a while ago,” he said.

“This is wonderful,” she said, holding the book before her like some sort of holy object.

He smiled. “Well, I hope we can see to it that it brings as much joy to other readers as it has brought to you.” God, sometimes the words that came out of his mouth made him sick. Why couldn’t he just say, “Sign on the line and we’ll all make a lot of money”? Wouldn’t that be easier?

“Oh, Tony.” She jumped up from the table and before he knew it she was kissing his face, her arms around his neck. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this, for my grandfather. He’d be so happy.”

After cleaning up the take-out containers, I sat down in the easy chair, listening to the faint sounds of splashing and Jacqui’s soft voice through the wall, trying not to envision the conversation that awaited on the far side of David’s bedtime ritual.

When she’d gotten him settled in bed, she asked, “Where’s the book?” The words looked like they filled her mouth with poison.

I picked up the papers from the desk and extended them toward her.

“Don’t you want to?” she asked.

“I’m going downstairs for a bit.” I grabbed my jacket from the back of the desk chair and got out of the room as quickly as I could.

On the corner outside the hotel, my hands were shaking so bad it took me a second try to get my cigarette fully lit. The sidewalks were crowded: it was Friday night. People were going out for dinner, or to a movie, families and friends and people on dates.

For a moment, I considered running. I probably had everything I needed in my pockets: notebook, cell phone, cigarettes. Keys. I could just go down to the parkade and be gone, back on the I–5 headed south before she even knew it.

I stepped back to let a large group pass on the sidewalk, a wall of laughter and scrubbed skin, aftershave and perfume, then butted out my cigarette under my heel and walked slowly back into the hotel, steeling myself.

When I got to the room, Jacqui was sitting in the desk chair, holding my notebook in her lap. She had turned off the bedside lamp closest to David so the room was dim, with only pools of faint light.

“So is this it?” she said, holding up my notebook. “Is this where I’m going to find out what’s going through your head? What could possibly drive a man to kidnap his own son and flee the country?”

“I told you,” I said quietly, sitting on the end of the bed near David’s feet.

“But what about this?” she asked, gesturing at the hotel room around her. “Why are you here, Chris? Of all places?”

“I told you about Matthew Corvin. He wrote his name in the book in 1976. Well, I met him today. Sort of. I met his mother. Because Matthew has been catatonic since 1976. Thirty years. He collapsed reading
that
book. God, Jacqui, can’t you see—”

She was shaking her head. I doubt she was even hearing what I was saying.

“I know what you’re thinking. Trust me—I thought it too. For a long time. But … dammit, watching David, watching him be fed and taken to the bathroom and put to bed like he’s an infant … If there’s any chance that any of this is real, I can’t ignore it. I have to do something.”

“Chris—”

“I can get it back, Jacqui,” I said, raising my voice. “I know where it is. I can get it back—borrow it long enough that Nora and Sarah can try to figure out what to do. That’s what I’m doing here. The book’s in Oregon, on the coast. I can get it back.”

She had looked away, setting my notebook on the desk next to my laptop, maintaining an air of deliberate control.

“I have to do something.”

“Including kidnapping your own son,” she said slowly. “How did you get across the border?”

“I told the guard that you were already down here,” I said. “For work. I said that we were meeting you.”

“That easy,” she muttered.

“How did you find us so quickly?”

“Bank card,” she said. “I looked it up online. You took some money out in Bellingham last night, and we always stay here when we come down to Seattle, so I thought I’d try here first.” She shrugged. “Christopher Knox. Two nights. You’re going to have to try harder if you don’t want people to find you.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “I’m not running. I just have to—”

She cut me off with a wry smile.

“Did you know that this”—she looked at the bed, at the notebook on the desk—“is the most involved you’ve ever been in David’s life?”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I’m there for him every day.”

She laughed a little uncomfortably. “In a way,” she said, picking up the notebook again, “this kind of gives me hope. I mean, aside from it being completely crazy.”

I smiled warily.

She picked the keys up from the desk. “I’m gonna go down and grab my bag out of the car. Dale’s car,” she added. “He lent it to me.” She stopped. “Is that okay? If I bring my stuff up here? I don’t want to presume.”

Tony Markus made a show of ordering the most expensive bottle of champagne the restaurant carried. “To celebrate,” he told Cat, who was still aglow with the discovery of her grandfather’s last book.