In the Blink of an Eye Page 3

  Suddenly weary, Julia leans her head against the high, upholstered back of the chair, her eyes closed.

  Then she feels it.

  Startled, she picks up her head, poised, listening.

  She isn’t alone in the house.

  There is nothing to hear. No rush of sound, no distorted snatch of a voice.

  Yet the presence is here, around her, tangible.

  Her eyes still closed, she concentrates, struggling to make contact.

  Who are you?

  Iris?

  Kristin?

  Who is it? Who’s here?

  The energy is gone as swiftly as it made itself known.

  Shaken, Julia rises from the chair and makes her way quickly down the stairs and out the front door, instinctively needing to get away—before it comes back.

  Chapter Two

  “HOW MUCH FURTHER, Daddy?”

  Paine glances at Dulcie, curled up in the backseat of the rental car, a braille storybook open on her lap. He notices that her pigtails are uneven. He’d tried to do them as her baby-sitter back home does, but a big loop of hair is sticking out near her ear.

  “Only a few miles now, I think,” Paine tells her as they leave behind the bustling stretch of Route 60 in Fredonia, a small college town perched in the southwesternmost corner of New York. This is where they got off the interstate, and even the unremarkable strip-mall sprawl is a welcome change from hundreds of miles of freeway driving.

  Only nobody calls it the “freeway” here in the East, Paine reminds himself. Yesterday, a service station attendant and a motel desk clerk corrected him about that. Here, it’s called the thruway.

  “Okay, tell me everything you see, Daddy.”

  He smiles at Dulcie’s familiar command—smiles at her innate bossiness, inherited from her mother, and at her insatiable thirst to know what’s going on around her.

  When she was younger, she was satisfied with broad descriptions: there’s a red barn or the sky is blue with a few white clouds. Now, at six, she wants him to paint verbal pictures that are as detailed as possible. How big is the barn? Does it have windows? How many windows? Are there horses and cows? How many clouds, Daddy? What are their shapes?

  When he isn’t with her, he finds himself noticing the most intricate aspects of ordinary things, just as he does when he’s being her eyes. Sometimes he catches himself scrutinizing strangers: subconsciously counting the rings on a woman’s fingers or noticing the color of the stripes in a man’s tie.

  “Daddy?”

  He smiles, clears his throat. “We’re heading south, and we just passed through what looks like the last busy intersection on the fast-food strip—Arby’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s.”

  “Wal-Mart, too?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Because there’s always a Wal-Mart. In every town we’ve stopped in, wherever that other stuff is, there’s a Wal-Mart”

  Nothing escapes Dulcie’s attention. Nothing. He smiles, thinking, as always, that she’s an incredible kid. So much like her mother.

  Oh, Kristin. If only you could see her. . .

  If only he could believe that she could, that her life didn’t end that traumatic day three years ago. That the essence of the woman he cherished still exists somewhere. That she’s with him and their daughter, and always will be.

  But that’s religious crap. Kristin never bought into it, and neither does he. As far as he’s concerned, when you’re dead, you’re dead. Gone. Buried. Forever.

  “Go on, Daddy.” In the rearview mirror, he sees Dulcie settling back, her face tilted toward the window as though she’s looking through it.

  He swallows the bitter grief swelling from his gut forcing an upbeat tone into his voice. “Now the road is two lanes instead of four, and it’s opening up more. I see hills ahead—we’re climbing. And there’s farmland—lots of corn, and it’s as high as an elephant’s eye.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind, Dulc.” He smiles faintly to himself.

  The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye. . .

  Lyrics from the song “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! Paine performed it in summer stock at Chautauqua a full decade ago when he first met Kristin. He played Curly. Kristin was Ado Annie.

  “Why am I always cast as the slut?” she only half jokingly asked the director at that point, having previously played Aldonza in Man of La Mancha and Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ, Superstar.

  “What else, Daddy?”

  Dulcie’s voice launches him back to the present.

  “There are grape vineyards”—he glances from left to right—“and produce stands and two-story frame houses. Some of them have barns.”

  “Nice houses?”

  “Some are,” he says, looking around as he gently presses the brake. “Some of them have nice yards with wooden tubs of flowers and flags and picnic tables. But a few are kind of shabby, with rusty piles of junk everywhere.”

  “Why are we slowing down?”

  “Because there’s a semi in front of us that’s only going about thirty miles an hour, and I can’t see around it to pass on this slope.”

  He’s a cautious driver. Kristin wasn’t. Being in her passenger seat was like riding the Scrambler at the county fair when he was a kid. You just closed your eyes and held on for dear life while you were jerked this way and that with nonchalant Kristin at the wheel.

  She was so incredibly reckless on the road that he braced himself whenever she was late coming home from her late-night waitressing job in Santa Monica. Terrible images would run through his head: what it would be like to open the door to a somber-faced police officer who had come to tell him she’d been in a fatal wreck.

  How many times did he imagine the blow of losing her before it really happened?

  But when her time came, weeks after her twenty-sixth birthday, it wasn’t a car accident. That was as shocking for him to absorb as her death itself.

  He had never imagined her drowning.

  Even now, three years later, he can’t quite accept it. Whenever the unwelcome, horrific visions barge into his head—Kristin, panicking, arms thrashing, going under, opening her mouth to breathe, inhaling water, no air, water, water, suffocating—he shoves them away. The only way he can deal with what had happened is to focus on the big picture—Kristin is gone forever—and ignore the details.

  Details.

  Back to Dulcie.

  “There are trees all around us, on both sides of the road, Dulc,” he says, forcing his gaze to the blur of scenery as the truck in front of him picks up speed at the crest of the hill. He accelerates, glancing in the rearview mirror to see if there’s traffic behind him. Nothing. He’s not used to this kind of driving. Two-lane road, rural setting, no congestion . . . what a pleasure after so many years on the feverish L.A. freeways.

  He rises a bit in the seat to glimpse his own reflection in the mirror and barely recognizes the man there. His unruly dark hair needs a trim. His blue eyes are edged by a faint network of wrinkles that aren’t there from smiling. What Kristin used to call his “pretty boy” face is shadowed with under-eye trenches and sparse patches of stubble—he hasn’t bothered to shave in the ten days since he got the phone call about Iris’s death. Maybe he won’t shave until he goes home.

  Nah.

  Paine never could grow a beard. He tried when he landed the role of Tevye back in college. It came in laughably patchy, and after a few weeks, the director, Dr. Netzer, ordered him in front of the entire cast to shave it. Netzer wanted him to wear a fake beard but still smarting from the humiliation, Paine insisted on playing Tevye bare-faced. It wasn’t his finest performance.

  Dulcie’s voice interrupts his thoughts again. “What kind of trees are there, Daddy? Palm trees?”

  He smiles. She is truly a child of southern California, her sun-streaked long hair and golden skin testimony to long days at the beach. But those days are over for awhile.

 
; Dulcie’s been shivering ever since they left the blistering heartland heat and crossed into Pennsylvania earlier this morning.

  Though he was born and raised in California, Paine did spend that one summer at the conservatory theater at nearby Chautauqua, so he wasn’t necessarily expecting to be greeted in western New York with balmy temperatures and blue skies. Yet nor did he recall that late June in the eastern Great Lakes region can feel more like April, maybe March. The sky is weighted with dense gray clouds and the temperature can’t be above the mid-fifties.

  “Definitely no palm trees here,” he tells Dulcie. “There are maples, and oaks, and pines, and I don’t know what else—you know I’m not good at trees.”

  She grins. “You’re not good at flowers, either. Not like Margaret.”

  Margaret is the woman back in L.A. who baby-sits for Dulcie while he’s working one of his three jobs. In between auditions, he bartends for a Beverly Hills caterer, he takes classified ads for the L.A. Weekly, and he teaches a night class in television commercial acting at a community college. Oh, and once in a great while, he actually acts, too. Sometimes. Just in commercials and industrials. His greatest claim to fame is being Ben Affleck’s stand-in for a few weeks right after Dulcie was born.

  Money has always been tight. Sometimes so tight that he can’t afford to pay Margaret. But she always understands. Her oldest son is an actor, too. He wasn’t always as successful as he is now, playing a supporting role in a new Broadway musical.

  He glances at Dulcie again in the rearview mirror and sees that her grin has given way to a wistful expression.

  “Thinking about Margaret?” he asks.

  “I miss her already. She was coming to New York, too. Why couldn’t she drive with us instead of flying?”

  “For one thing, she’s uncomfortable in the car because of her arthritis. And for another, she’s going to the opposite end of the state.”

  He’s explained this before, even showing her on the map—tiny Lily Dale in the lower left corner of New York State and sprawling New York City on the lower right—with more than four hundred miles in between them, according to the scale.

  He goes on patiently, “Margaret’s going to visit her son and her grandchildren for a few weeks. After the memorial service, and when we’re done taking care of Gram’s house, we’ll go back home and so will she.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.” He doesn’t intend to stay here longer than necessary, even though he doesn’t start teaching his class again until late in August, and the caterer and the L.A. Weekly are flexible about letting him take time off.

  “Knock, knock, Daddy.”

  He grins, glad to be off the subject. Dulcie is into knock, knocks lately. He’s heard all of hers a zillion times, but he always manages to react with hilarity. He’s an actor, after all. “Who’s there?”

  “Ach.”

  “Ach who?”

  “Gesundheit!”

  They laugh together.

  Then Dulcie asks, “What does ‘taking care of Gram’s house’ mean?”

  Paine purses his lips, glad she can’t see his face. “I’m not sure, Dulcie. Her lawyer says she’s left the place to you. But we can’t live there.”

  “I don’t want to.” She pauses. “Why can’t we?”

  He takes a deep breath. “It’s complicated.”

  He knows Dulcie has no memory of their last trip to Lily Dale, for her mother’s funeral. How can he explain to a six-year-old, without scaring the hell out of her, that this isn’t a regular town? Better not to try. At least, not now.

  “Hey, there’s a sign,” he says instead. “Lily Dale, Next Right. We’re almost there. Bet you’re ready to get out of this car.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looks over his shoulder at her and sees her lower lip trembling. “What’s wrong, Dulcie?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Dulc—”

  “I just want to go home, Daddy. Please.”

  “We will, Dulcie. Just as soon as we—”

  “I don’t want to be here. This is where Mommy died. And Gram, too. It’s a bad place, Daddy. Please. I’m scared.”

  With a sick feeling in his stomach, he pulls over to the shoulder and puts the car into park. Then he leans into the backseat and wraps his daughter in his arms.

  “It’ll be okay, Dulcie. Maybe being here will make you feel closer to Mommy. And to Gram. They didn’t just die here. They lived here.”

  She says nothing, her slender little body quaking in his embrace.

  “Listen, Dulcie, this is where Mommy spent her summers, growing up. She used to talk about how beautiful it is here.”

  That’s a stretch. Beautiful is not a word Kristin used to describe Lily Dale.

  Paine goes on, “You were too young to remember being here the last time.”

  He doesn’t remember much of that trip either. He was too paralyzed by sorrow to grasp anything. This visit is different. He truly liked Iris, but her sudden death hasn’t ripped his heart out or left a gaping hole in his life. This time, unlike last, he’s capable of coping.

  “We’ve got to do this, Dulcie,” he says quietly. “You and me, together. For Gram. And for Mommy.”

  She doesn’t reply. When he looks at her he sees that her jaw is set resolutely.

  He puts the car into drive again and pulls back onto the highway. Moments later, coming into the run-down farming town of Cassadaga, he makes a right-hand turn onto Dale Drive. There’s another sign.

  LILY DALE, 1 MILE.

  Okay. Almost there. Then everything will be better.

  After all, it’s been an endless trip. They left home a full week ago today, Thursday. His old Honda has 125,000 miles on it already, so he splurged on a car rental. Maybe he’ll trade in this midsize sedan for a truck to drive back—if Iris’s house has anything worth bringing with them. From what he vaguely remembers, he doubts it. Iris was a self-proclaimed pack rat and she loved old things.

  Paine doesn’t love old things, and the last thing he needs is to cart a load of junk cross-country. But you never know. Maybe there are valuable antiques. Or maybe Dulcie will want to keep some of it. She’s just a kid, but it’s technically her inheritance—her last link to Kristin and Iris.

  He recalls a conversation he and Iris once had, about the estate she inherited when Anson died. There wasn’t as much money as she expected. Apparently, he’d made some poor investments in the years since he’d become a successful medium, and there was far more debt than Iris realized. When she settled his affairs, in the end, all that was left was the house—and the insubstantial royalty money from his books, which still comes trickling in twice a year.

  Iris told Paine that it was no big deal, really. That she certainly didn’t marry Anson for his money in the first place—not that he had much then, either. She told Paine that she and Anson fell madly in love at a time when he was coming out of a bitter first marriage, and she was lonely and beginning to wonder if she would ever find Mr. Right. She also mentioned that she didn’t regret marrying Anson, but hinted that their early years together were rocky.

  “But we stayed together,” Iris said contentedly. “That’s what you do when you’re married. We made it to the end—until death did us part.”

  Now everything they had belongs to Dulcie. It isn’t a fortune, but it will help. That’s for sure. Paine intends to put the money from the royalties and the house sale away for Dulcie, for college. He’s always wondered how he’ll afford to send her.

  Thank you, Iris, he says silently.

  The road winds past a few small houses. Then tiny Cassadaga Lake appears on the left, its gray, choppy waters lapping at the grassy shore mere yards from the road.

  That’s where Kristin drowned.

  Kristin, who couldn’t swim.

  Kristin, who lived recklessly in a lot of ways, but knew her limits and feared the water.

  So what the hell was she doing alone in a rowboat in the middle of the nig
ht without a life jacket?

  He’ll never know.

  The first time he was here, he was too shocked by her death to speculate about the circumstances. But over the past three years, as his grief ebbed, he’s spent more time wondering.

  Now, as he glances out at the water, full-blown doubt and confusion threaten to take hold. He fends off the troubling thoughts that assail him, needing to get through one thing at a time.

  One death at a time.

  And for now, it’s Iris.

  Grimly, he keeps going, grateful for Dulcie’s silence.

  They pass a quaint country restaurant called Lazzaroni’s Lakeside on the right and, on the left, a sprawling white clapboard building with long porches and a sign that reads LEOLYN HOTEL.

  Directly opposite, the road widens abruptly at the entrance gate to the village.

  He slows the car, recalling the staggering pain of his last journey to Lily Dale.

  “Are we there, Daddy?”

  “Yes.” His voice is hoarse.

  Oh, Kristin. What happened to you here?

  “What do you see, Daddy?”

  He clears his throat. “A little white gatehouse, with a boy inside.”

  “A little kid?” She sounds surprised, so hopeful that he wonders if there will be kids here, kids she can play with. Kids who will be kind to a motherless little blind girl.

  “Actually, he’s a teenager, Dulcie.”

  “Oh.” Then, “What’s he doing?”

  “Remember I told you this is a private community? So you have to pass through the gate to get in and out. His job is to let us in.”

  “What else do you see?”

  He doesn’t want to tell her. Not yet.

  He just stares at the sign that reads welcome to lily DALE, LARGEST CENTER IN THE WORLD FOR THE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

  “RUPERT!”

  Nan’s voice, urgent, is stronger than it has been for days, blasting over the small white receiver on the rolltop desk in front of him. The baby monitor is Pilar’s idea. Their former neighbor had bought it to use when her young grandchildren visited her, but suggested that Rupert borrow it now that Nan is virtually confined to her bed. This way, he’s never out of earshot if she needs him—and she does need him, more and more frequently.