I'll Be Waiting, page 7
What would have happened if I stayed? Knowing what I know now—that Anton was making conversation, that he wasn’t an asshole, that he’d noticed me.
What if I stayed, Anton?
If I’d stayed, would we have had twenty-two years together instead of three?
No, because what happened six months later would have ended it. I’d have been gone, my family whisking me to Toronto under a new name.
Any relationship Anton and I developed back then wouldn’t have survived what happened that spring. The séance. The aftermath. The trial.
Blood splashed through a forest clearing. The only sound the chirping of tree frogs.
“Janica.”
I jump out of my seat. I’ve been telling the story to Dr. Cirillo and the others, speaking on autopilot as I relive those memories. Now that name yanks me back, and it’s not the soft whisper I’d imagined at the séance with Leilani. It’s harsh, spat with a sneer.
“Nic?” Jin reaches to lay his hand on mine.
I blink hard and look around. Clearly no one here said my old name … or heard it.
Because it never happened. I imagined it because I’d been thinking of that old life, when I bore that name.
“Did something happen?” Dr. Cirillo asks.
I shake my head. “I was just … just thinking of how things might have been different if I’d stayed and talked to Anton. But we were sixteen, and my family moved again that spring—Dad got a job transfer to Toronto.” Because he requested it. “So maybe, if anything happened then, Anton wouldn’t have sought me out later. We’d have already had our shot.”
“He sounded sweet,” Shania says wistfully. “A cute, sweet math geek.” She sighs. “I need to find one of those.”
I smile at her. I could say something. Like that, if she wants to find someone, she needs to get out and look. Shania is a nurse who also works part-time as a personal support worker to pay off her student debt. That doesn’t leave much time for socializing, and her sister’s death seems to have made an already introverted young woman fold deeper into herself.
Shania may have found me through our grief therapy, but it’s become more than that. Friendship? Not in the traditional sense. I acutely feel our thirteen-year age difference.
Am I filling her big-sister void? Maybe, a little.
Am I okay with that?
I … I’m not sure. I’m fond of Shania, and she certainly isn’t thrusting me into that role. I balk at the idea because I have too much going on in my life to be anyone’s big sister. I’m very, very busy. With work and grieving, and more grieving.
It’s not that I don’t have time to be a big sister. It’s that I don’t have the bandwidth. And maybe I should find it, but I’m afraid of seeing Shania as a project to distract me from my grief.
I’m drifting again. I gather my thoughts like an armful of clothing I keep dropping, forever losing a sock or shirt on my way from the laundry.
“Anton was sweet,” I say. “I wish I’d kept talking to him, but if we could only have had a few months together, then I’m glad I waited. What we had later…” My throat tightens and my eyes tear up.
God how I love you, Anton.
“Shh, Nic,” a voice whispers. “It’s okay.”
I stiffen. The words come from a distance, as if from deep in the house, so soft that my ears wouldn’t have picked them up if I weren’t already halfway zoned out, lost in memories of Anton.
I glance over my shoulder, toward the door. The voice came from over there.
“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says.
I want to shake it off, but I keep staring over my shoulder. That snapped “Janica” was easy to dismiss. It hadn’t even sounded like anyone. But this had been Anton’s voice. Undeniably Anton’s voice.
I pull myself back. “I’m sorry. I thought I heard something.”
“Anton?” Dr. Cirillo says gently.
“I’m hearing what I want to hear, and if no one else does, then it’s just me.”
“What did you—?”
“I was imagining it,” I cut in, a little too sharply. “That happens sometimes at séances. It’s just wishful thinking.”
Dr. Cirillo meets my gaze. “You’re engaging in what I call blocking behavior. You’re worried about seeming foolish, right? Being the grieving widow who leaps on any curtain flutter as a sign that her husband is in the room.”
My face heats. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. At séances, people expect the grieving widow to be desperate—hell, it’s what the charlatans count on.
Dr. Cirillo continues, “If you—or anyone else—experiences something, I want you to share it, please, without qualifications or apologies. We accept that there will be misreadings, so to speak. Now, did the voice sound like Anton?”
I nod.
“Could you tell what it seemed to say?”
My throat closes, but I force the words out. “He said it’s okay. Which is trivial, but also what I’m hoping for and—” I take a deep breath. “That’s qualifying, isn’t it?”
He smiles. “It’ll take time to get used to this degree of openness, particularly after you’ve been taken advantage of so many times.”
“But Nic’s really good at seeing through the scams,” Shania says, and then shoots me an apologetic look. “I don’t mean to cut in, but you spot the snake oil before I do.”
“And Nicola recognizes that if she hears Anton, it could be wishful thinking,” Dr. Cirillo says. “With all those caveats in place, would you like to return to the welcoming? Or investigate the voice?”
“Return to the welcoming, please,” I say.
“All right. Jin? You knew Anton, didn’t you?”
Jin nods. “He got together with Nic not long after Libby introduced me to Keith. We joked that we joined the family together.”
“Would you feel comfortable sharing a memory?”
“Sure. First time we met?”
“Please, if that works.”
Jin gets comfortable in his chair. “It was the first time I met Nic, too. I knew about her. Actually, I knew about her before I knew about Keith. Libby would talk about going out with Nic, and I thought it was really cool that she’d stayed friends with her former sister-in-law. Then when I started dating Keith, he’d also talked about Nic. So I felt like I knew her already. Anton was just some guy she was seeing that both Libby and Keith really liked.”
Jin takes off his sweater and hangs it on the back of his chair. “So, that sets the stage. I’m going to dinner with my new boyfriend and his sister and her relatively new boyfriend. Last thing I want to be is late, right? So of course I was late. Got held up at work, and I’d texted Keith, but he hadn’t answered. I thought I’d pissed him off. Turned out he just didn’t see the text.”
Jin slants a look my way. “Typical, right?”
“It is,” I say.
“Anyway, I’m freaked out, and I get to the restaurant, back into a spot, throw open my door … and smack into the door of a guy climbing out of his car. My fault—his door was already open. Now there’s a nice crease in the door of his little Beemer, and I look like the pickup-driving asshole who throws open his door without looking. I apologize, say I’m late to meet my partner’s sister, can we exchange info and I’ll cover the damage. I’m babbling, flustered and very aware I’m getting later by the second. Then he says ‘Oh, you must be Jin. I’m Anton. Nic’s boyfriend.’ Great. First time meeting Keith’s sister, and I make a bad impression on her boyfriend—a literal impression in his car door. But he just laughs about us both being late and in such a hurry that our doors collided, and what’s the chance, right? Starts joking that we should make it a bigger story like someone sideswiped him on the highway and—” He stops short. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Go on,” I say with a reassuring smile. “I knew about the doors, but I’d like to hear the whole story.”
I’d like to hear it because it’s an angle Anton would never have given, where he’s the decent guy who tried to make a stranger feel better about an accident. It’s not that Anton didn’t want to be seen as a decent guy. Just that he’d never have taken credit. To him, it would sound like boasting.
I prompt, “Anton joked about pretending he’d been sideswiped on the highway.”
“And that I’d stopped to help him, which is why we were late.”
Even in his joking suggestion, Anton made someone else the hero. As much as I loved his humility, I love this even more—seeing him through the eyes of others.
Jin continues, “Of course, he just said our doors collided and joked about us both running late and being flustered. Then I met Nic, and she was everything Libby said, and I decided I wanted to be part of this family, and if I had to marry Keith, then that seemed a relatively small price to pay for it.”
Jin glances at me with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his misted eyes. “That was my first glimpse of Anton, and it showed me who he was. I never got to know him as well as I did Nic, but I always expected there’d be time for that.”
He turns away, fingers drumming the table. When he looks back, he says, “Is that okay, as a memory? It’s a good one, but being a good one means it brings up…”
“The pain that he’s gone,” I murmur. “I still like hearing them and—”
Jin’s head swings left, and I stop short. He stares toward the living room before looking back at us.
“You didn’t hear that?” he says.
We all shake our heads.
“What was it, Jin?” Dr. Cirillo asks.
“I…” Jin’s gaze goes to me. “I thought I heard Anton. His laugh. But distant. Maybe just someone walking past outside?”
“That’s easy to check,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Let’s do that.”
* * *
We walk all the way to the lane, which ends at the house.
“No one’s out here,” Shania says. “And I doubt we’d have heard them anyway, with all the front windows shut. You said it was a laugh, Jin?”
“Anton’s laugh. It came from…”
Jin heads back inside to the breakfast nook, stands behind his chair, and shuts his eyes. Then he opens them and walks as if following an invisible trail. He ends up in the living room, near the sofa across from the fireplace.
“Over here,” he says. “Or this direction, at least. As if Anton were on the sofa, laughing at something.”
“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says. “Can you tell us where you think the earlier voice came from?”
This is exactly where it seemed to come from. This side of the room, on the sofa where Anton and I had curled up together every night, talking and … laughing.
“Could we be hearing echoes?” I say. Then I make a face. “Okay, that sounds even more far-fetched than ghosts. I was just thinking that Anton and I sat here a lot when we’d visit. Especially at night, with the fire going. Sharing a drink and talking and laughing.”
Dr. Cirillo rubs his short beard. “People talk about echoes. Sounds permeating a place. I’d call them memories, because they’re usually experienced by those who knew the deceased.”
“Like me.” I touch the back of the sofa. “Remembering that we used to sit here and talk, and then hearing him talking from here.”
“Only that doesn’t explain Jin’s experience,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Did you ever mention sitting here with Anton?”
Jin shakes his head. “She didn’t.”
“If Anton’s here, we should communicate, right?” Shania says. “Do a proper summoning?”
“No,” Dr. Cirillo says. “If Anton is here, he’ll stay, and it gives everyone—including Anton—time to settle in and relax for tomorrow.” He looks at me. “Is that all right, Nicola?”
“It is.”
EIGHT
I fall asleep faster than I ever imagined, especially since my sleep cycles have been dictated by pills for the last eight months. I go off them for a while, only to give up after a week of restless sleep endangers my deadlines.
After Anton died, I’d taken a month off work. That’s hard when I run my own business. It’s also hard when my staff are support workers hired through a co-op, which provides self-employed coders with a pool of people who handle the nontechnical parts of the business. That’s a huge help, but it also means I don’t have a dedicated PA who would understand what I’m going through, explain the situation to clients, and rearrange my deadlines. Nor do I have coders working under me whom I could off-load some of my work on. So a month was all I could take, which then meant I had a month of work to catch up on. Since then, I’ve reduced my workload, knowing that lack of decent sleep means I put in full days but only manage half the work.
Dr. Cirillo had asked us to forgo sleep aids. I was nervous about going cold turkey, so I’d weaned off them last week. Tonight I expected to be staring at the ceiling. Or curled up, hugging a tear-drenched pillow and wishing it was Anton, thinking of all the nights I’d rolled away from him—the man was a hot-water bottle when he slept—and wishing I’d cuddled close each and every night, no matter how warm it got.
Instead, I go to bed hugging a pillow, and my mind drifts to that semi-dream state where it becomes Anton, radiating imaginary heat, and I snuggle in and fall asleep … only to tumble back twenty-two years, part of my mind still spinning there from reliving that high-school memory at the welcoming séance.
When the dream starts, March break has just ended, and my family had enjoyed a few days in Vancouver, which was easy and safe travel for me. I’d spent the rest of the week studying. I was eyeing two of the country’s top software-engineering programs, which meant I needed to nudge my grades up.
I’d made two good friends at school—Patrice and Heather—but both had gone south with their families for a little sun and sand, so I immersed myself in schoolwork, and by the time Monday comes, I’m dying to talk to anyone under the age of forty.
My bus drops me off at school just before first period, so I don’t get more than a “Hey!” from Patrice, shouted across the crowded hall. Neither of my friends are in my morning classes. We might all be considered geeks, but we’re different strains of the variety. I’m the computer geek, Heather is the art geek, and Patrice is all about drama, mostly the theatrical kind, but sometimes the personal kind, too.
Mom once called Patrice “high-strung.” I gave her shit for that. No one calls boys high-strung. They’re volatile or energetic. Mom accepted the criticism and apologized. I got what she meant, though. Patrice gives off an energy, and sometimes it’s raucous and exhilarating and other times, it feels like nervous tension.
Heather is the opposite, focused and even-tempered, always assessing a situation to see how it can be improved. I’d once made the mistake of joking that she had a coder’s personality—analytical and logical. I’d meant it as a compliment, but it stung because Heather gets a lot of feedback that her art is too perfect, too constrained. She longs for a little of Patrice’s drama or my recklessness.
When I find them at lunch, they’re at our usual table, sitting side by side, leaning together in rapt conversation. I slow. While they welcomed me into their friendship last term, I respect that they were best friends long before I came along.
Patrice sees me and perks up, waving me over with an expression that has me quickening my pace. Whatever they’re discussing, it’s something they’re eager to share. Gossip? Good news? Either promises a little excitement in a dull school day.
I slide in across the table and take out my water bottle and enzyme pills.
“Heather was telling me what she did on break,” Patrice says.
“You were in Cuba, right?” I say. “Did you do a lot of sightseeing?”
Heather makes a face. “No. I was hoping to see the art and the architecture, but we weren’t supposed to leave our resort except on guided trips, and when we took one, it was really uncomfortable, like we were rich tourists who needed to be guided past the areas where real people live.” She inhales. “I didn’t like it.”
At the time, I didn’t quite understand her point. I was a sheltered white girl from an upper-middle-class family. But even at that age, Heather would have seen and felt the economic disparity.
“Which is not what we were talking about,” Patrice prompts.
“Yes. So because we barely left the resort, I got to know a couple girls our age. Cousins. From Cambridge.”
“Massachusetts?” Patrice says.
Heather and I exchange a smile, like older siblings rolling their eyes at a younger one.
“It’s Cuba,” I say, and yep, that’s a little rude, but at sixteen, I could be insufferable. Okay, at thirty-eight I can also be insufferable, but as a teen I had an excuse.
“Oh, right,” Patrice says. “Duh.” Her tone suggests she doesn’t understand, but she’s not saying so. I won’t call her on it by explaining that Americans can’t visit Cuba. She can look it up later. The internet makes that a lot easier than it was when we were little and had to pull out an encyclopedia.
“Cambridge in England,” Heather says. “One night, they ask me to slip out and meet them for something fun. I’m thinking skinny-dipping. Maybe meeting up with some of the boys.”
“For skinny-dipping?” I waggle my brows.
Heather’s cheeks pink, and Patrice’s grin says she already knows what Heather did—and it’s good. I lean forward, ready for the big reveal. Was it skinny-dipping with boys? I’d totally do that. Hell, if that was on the table, I’d be trying to talk my parents into a Cuban vacation myself.
Let’s just say that at sixteen, my dating experience sorely underserved my curiosity. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a boyfriend. That seemed like a lot of work. But if I could go to a foreign country and have a safe hookup, I’d be writing my parents a thousand-word essay on why Cuba would be an important cultural experience for me. I am all about culture.
So when Heather leans in my way, I really am thinking something happened with a boy. Or maybe a girl. I’m never quite sure where Heather’s interests lie, or whether she’s decided, which is her business unless she wants to tell me. Either way, sex is sex, and if Heather got some, her glowing eyes tell me it was a positive experience, which is the important thing.
What if I stayed, Anton?
If I’d stayed, would we have had twenty-two years together instead of three?
No, because what happened six months later would have ended it. I’d have been gone, my family whisking me to Toronto under a new name.
Any relationship Anton and I developed back then wouldn’t have survived what happened that spring. The séance. The aftermath. The trial.
Blood splashed through a forest clearing. The only sound the chirping of tree frogs.
“Janica.”
I jump out of my seat. I’ve been telling the story to Dr. Cirillo and the others, speaking on autopilot as I relive those memories. Now that name yanks me back, and it’s not the soft whisper I’d imagined at the séance with Leilani. It’s harsh, spat with a sneer.
“Nic?” Jin reaches to lay his hand on mine.
I blink hard and look around. Clearly no one here said my old name … or heard it.
Because it never happened. I imagined it because I’d been thinking of that old life, when I bore that name.
“Did something happen?” Dr. Cirillo asks.
I shake my head. “I was just … just thinking of how things might have been different if I’d stayed and talked to Anton. But we were sixteen, and my family moved again that spring—Dad got a job transfer to Toronto.” Because he requested it. “So maybe, if anything happened then, Anton wouldn’t have sought me out later. We’d have already had our shot.”
“He sounded sweet,” Shania says wistfully. “A cute, sweet math geek.” She sighs. “I need to find one of those.”
I smile at her. I could say something. Like that, if she wants to find someone, she needs to get out and look. Shania is a nurse who also works part-time as a personal support worker to pay off her student debt. That doesn’t leave much time for socializing, and her sister’s death seems to have made an already introverted young woman fold deeper into herself.
Shania may have found me through our grief therapy, but it’s become more than that. Friendship? Not in the traditional sense. I acutely feel our thirteen-year age difference.
Am I filling her big-sister void? Maybe, a little.
Am I okay with that?
I … I’m not sure. I’m fond of Shania, and she certainly isn’t thrusting me into that role. I balk at the idea because I have too much going on in my life to be anyone’s big sister. I’m very, very busy. With work and grieving, and more grieving.
It’s not that I don’t have time to be a big sister. It’s that I don’t have the bandwidth. And maybe I should find it, but I’m afraid of seeing Shania as a project to distract me from my grief.
I’m drifting again. I gather my thoughts like an armful of clothing I keep dropping, forever losing a sock or shirt on my way from the laundry.
“Anton was sweet,” I say. “I wish I’d kept talking to him, but if we could only have had a few months together, then I’m glad I waited. What we had later…” My throat tightens and my eyes tear up.
God how I love you, Anton.
“Shh, Nic,” a voice whispers. “It’s okay.”
I stiffen. The words come from a distance, as if from deep in the house, so soft that my ears wouldn’t have picked them up if I weren’t already halfway zoned out, lost in memories of Anton.
I glance over my shoulder, toward the door. The voice came from over there.
“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says.
I want to shake it off, but I keep staring over my shoulder. That snapped “Janica” was easy to dismiss. It hadn’t even sounded like anyone. But this had been Anton’s voice. Undeniably Anton’s voice.
I pull myself back. “I’m sorry. I thought I heard something.”
“Anton?” Dr. Cirillo says gently.
“I’m hearing what I want to hear, and if no one else does, then it’s just me.”
“What did you—?”
“I was imagining it,” I cut in, a little too sharply. “That happens sometimes at séances. It’s just wishful thinking.”
Dr. Cirillo meets my gaze. “You’re engaging in what I call blocking behavior. You’re worried about seeming foolish, right? Being the grieving widow who leaps on any curtain flutter as a sign that her husband is in the room.”
My face heats. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. At séances, people expect the grieving widow to be desperate—hell, it’s what the charlatans count on.
Dr. Cirillo continues, “If you—or anyone else—experiences something, I want you to share it, please, without qualifications or apologies. We accept that there will be misreadings, so to speak. Now, did the voice sound like Anton?”
I nod.
“Could you tell what it seemed to say?”
My throat closes, but I force the words out. “He said it’s okay. Which is trivial, but also what I’m hoping for and—” I take a deep breath. “That’s qualifying, isn’t it?”
He smiles. “It’ll take time to get used to this degree of openness, particularly after you’ve been taken advantage of so many times.”
“But Nic’s really good at seeing through the scams,” Shania says, and then shoots me an apologetic look. “I don’t mean to cut in, but you spot the snake oil before I do.”
“And Nicola recognizes that if she hears Anton, it could be wishful thinking,” Dr. Cirillo says. “With all those caveats in place, would you like to return to the welcoming? Or investigate the voice?”
“Return to the welcoming, please,” I say.
“All right. Jin? You knew Anton, didn’t you?”
Jin nods. “He got together with Nic not long after Libby introduced me to Keith. We joked that we joined the family together.”
“Would you feel comfortable sharing a memory?”
“Sure. First time we met?”
“Please, if that works.”
Jin gets comfortable in his chair. “It was the first time I met Nic, too. I knew about her. Actually, I knew about her before I knew about Keith. Libby would talk about going out with Nic, and I thought it was really cool that she’d stayed friends with her former sister-in-law. Then when I started dating Keith, he’d also talked about Nic. So I felt like I knew her already. Anton was just some guy she was seeing that both Libby and Keith really liked.”
Jin takes off his sweater and hangs it on the back of his chair. “So, that sets the stage. I’m going to dinner with my new boyfriend and his sister and her relatively new boyfriend. Last thing I want to be is late, right? So of course I was late. Got held up at work, and I’d texted Keith, but he hadn’t answered. I thought I’d pissed him off. Turned out he just didn’t see the text.”
Jin slants a look my way. “Typical, right?”
“It is,” I say.
“Anyway, I’m freaked out, and I get to the restaurant, back into a spot, throw open my door … and smack into the door of a guy climbing out of his car. My fault—his door was already open. Now there’s a nice crease in the door of his little Beemer, and I look like the pickup-driving asshole who throws open his door without looking. I apologize, say I’m late to meet my partner’s sister, can we exchange info and I’ll cover the damage. I’m babbling, flustered and very aware I’m getting later by the second. Then he says ‘Oh, you must be Jin. I’m Anton. Nic’s boyfriend.’ Great. First time meeting Keith’s sister, and I make a bad impression on her boyfriend—a literal impression in his car door. But he just laughs about us both being late and in such a hurry that our doors collided, and what’s the chance, right? Starts joking that we should make it a bigger story like someone sideswiped him on the highway and—” He stops short. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Go on,” I say with a reassuring smile. “I knew about the doors, but I’d like to hear the whole story.”
I’d like to hear it because it’s an angle Anton would never have given, where he’s the decent guy who tried to make a stranger feel better about an accident. It’s not that Anton didn’t want to be seen as a decent guy. Just that he’d never have taken credit. To him, it would sound like boasting.
I prompt, “Anton joked about pretending he’d been sideswiped on the highway.”
“And that I’d stopped to help him, which is why we were late.”
Even in his joking suggestion, Anton made someone else the hero. As much as I loved his humility, I love this even more—seeing him through the eyes of others.
Jin continues, “Of course, he just said our doors collided and joked about us both running late and being flustered. Then I met Nic, and she was everything Libby said, and I decided I wanted to be part of this family, and if I had to marry Keith, then that seemed a relatively small price to pay for it.”
Jin glances at me with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his misted eyes. “That was my first glimpse of Anton, and it showed me who he was. I never got to know him as well as I did Nic, but I always expected there’d be time for that.”
He turns away, fingers drumming the table. When he looks back, he says, “Is that okay, as a memory? It’s a good one, but being a good one means it brings up…”
“The pain that he’s gone,” I murmur. “I still like hearing them and—”
Jin’s head swings left, and I stop short. He stares toward the living room before looking back at us.
“You didn’t hear that?” he says.
We all shake our heads.
“What was it, Jin?” Dr. Cirillo asks.
“I…” Jin’s gaze goes to me. “I thought I heard Anton. His laugh. But distant. Maybe just someone walking past outside?”
“That’s easy to check,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Let’s do that.”
* * *
We walk all the way to the lane, which ends at the house.
“No one’s out here,” Shania says. “And I doubt we’d have heard them anyway, with all the front windows shut. You said it was a laugh, Jin?”
“Anton’s laugh. It came from…”
Jin heads back inside to the breakfast nook, stands behind his chair, and shuts his eyes. Then he opens them and walks as if following an invisible trail. He ends up in the living room, near the sofa across from the fireplace.
“Over here,” he says. “Or this direction, at least. As if Anton were on the sofa, laughing at something.”
“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says. “Can you tell us where you think the earlier voice came from?”
This is exactly where it seemed to come from. This side of the room, on the sofa where Anton and I had curled up together every night, talking and … laughing.
“Could we be hearing echoes?” I say. Then I make a face. “Okay, that sounds even more far-fetched than ghosts. I was just thinking that Anton and I sat here a lot when we’d visit. Especially at night, with the fire going. Sharing a drink and talking and laughing.”
Dr. Cirillo rubs his short beard. “People talk about echoes. Sounds permeating a place. I’d call them memories, because they’re usually experienced by those who knew the deceased.”
“Like me.” I touch the back of the sofa. “Remembering that we used to sit here and talk, and then hearing him talking from here.”
“Only that doesn’t explain Jin’s experience,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Did you ever mention sitting here with Anton?”
Jin shakes his head. “She didn’t.”
“If Anton’s here, we should communicate, right?” Shania says. “Do a proper summoning?”
“No,” Dr. Cirillo says. “If Anton is here, he’ll stay, and it gives everyone—including Anton—time to settle in and relax for tomorrow.” He looks at me. “Is that all right, Nicola?”
“It is.”
EIGHT
I fall asleep faster than I ever imagined, especially since my sleep cycles have been dictated by pills for the last eight months. I go off them for a while, only to give up after a week of restless sleep endangers my deadlines.
After Anton died, I’d taken a month off work. That’s hard when I run my own business. It’s also hard when my staff are support workers hired through a co-op, which provides self-employed coders with a pool of people who handle the nontechnical parts of the business. That’s a huge help, but it also means I don’t have a dedicated PA who would understand what I’m going through, explain the situation to clients, and rearrange my deadlines. Nor do I have coders working under me whom I could off-load some of my work on. So a month was all I could take, which then meant I had a month of work to catch up on. Since then, I’ve reduced my workload, knowing that lack of decent sleep means I put in full days but only manage half the work.
Dr. Cirillo had asked us to forgo sleep aids. I was nervous about going cold turkey, so I’d weaned off them last week. Tonight I expected to be staring at the ceiling. Or curled up, hugging a tear-drenched pillow and wishing it was Anton, thinking of all the nights I’d rolled away from him—the man was a hot-water bottle when he slept—and wishing I’d cuddled close each and every night, no matter how warm it got.
Instead, I go to bed hugging a pillow, and my mind drifts to that semi-dream state where it becomes Anton, radiating imaginary heat, and I snuggle in and fall asleep … only to tumble back twenty-two years, part of my mind still spinning there from reliving that high-school memory at the welcoming séance.
When the dream starts, March break has just ended, and my family had enjoyed a few days in Vancouver, which was easy and safe travel for me. I’d spent the rest of the week studying. I was eyeing two of the country’s top software-engineering programs, which meant I needed to nudge my grades up.
I’d made two good friends at school—Patrice and Heather—but both had gone south with their families for a little sun and sand, so I immersed myself in schoolwork, and by the time Monday comes, I’m dying to talk to anyone under the age of forty.
My bus drops me off at school just before first period, so I don’t get more than a “Hey!” from Patrice, shouted across the crowded hall. Neither of my friends are in my morning classes. We might all be considered geeks, but we’re different strains of the variety. I’m the computer geek, Heather is the art geek, and Patrice is all about drama, mostly the theatrical kind, but sometimes the personal kind, too.
Mom once called Patrice “high-strung.” I gave her shit for that. No one calls boys high-strung. They’re volatile or energetic. Mom accepted the criticism and apologized. I got what she meant, though. Patrice gives off an energy, and sometimes it’s raucous and exhilarating and other times, it feels like nervous tension.
Heather is the opposite, focused and even-tempered, always assessing a situation to see how it can be improved. I’d once made the mistake of joking that she had a coder’s personality—analytical and logical. I’d meant it as a compliment, but it stung because Heather gets a lot of feedback that her art is too perfect, too constrained. She longs for a little of Patrice’s drama or my recklessness.
When I find them at lunch, they’re at our usual table, sitting side by side, leaning together in rapt conversation. I slow. While they welcomed me into their friendship last term, I respect that they were best friends long before I came along.
Patrice sees me and perks up, waving me over with an expression that has me quickening my pace. Whatever they’re discussing, it’s something they’re eager to share. Gossip? Good news? Either promises a little excitement in a dull school day.
I slide in across the table and take out my water bottle and enzyme pills.
“Heather was telling me what she did on break,” Patrice says.
“You were in Cuba, right?” I say. “Did you do a lot of sightseeing?”
Heather makes a face. “No. I was hoping to see the art and the architecture, but we weren’t supposed to leave our resort except on guided trips, and when we took one, it was really uncomfortable, like we were rich tourists who needed to be guided past the areas where real people live.” She inhales. “I didn’t like it.”
At the time, I didn’t quite understand her point. I was a sheltered white girl from an upper-middle-class family. But even at that age, Heather would have seen and felt the economic disparity.
“Which is not what we were talking about,” Patrice prompts.
“Yes. So because we barely left the resort, I got to know a couple girls our age. Cousins. From Cambridge.”
“Massachusetts?” Patrice says.
Heather and I exchange a smile, like older siblings rolling their eyes at a younger one.
“It’s Cuba,” I say, and yep, that’s a little rude, but at sixteen, I could be insufferable. Okay, at thirty-eight I can also be insufferable, but as a teen I had an excuse.
“Oh, right,” Patrice says. “Duh.” Her tone suggests she doesn’t understand, but she’s not saying so. I won’t call her on it by explaining that Americans can’t visit Cuba. She can look it up later. The internet makes that a lot easier than it was when we were little and had to pull out an encyclopedia.
“Cambridge in England,” Heather says. “One night, they ask me to slip out and meet them for something fun. I’m thinking skinny-dipping. Maybe meeting up with some of the boys.”
“For skinny-dipping?” I waggle my brows.
Heather’s cheeks pink, and Patrice’s grin says she already knows what Heather did—and it’s good. I lean forward, ready for the big reveal. Was it skinny-dipping with boys? I’d totally do that. Hell, if that was on the table, I’d be trying to talk my parents into a Cuban vacation myself.
Let’s just say that at sixteen, my dating experience sorely underserved my curiosity. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a boyfriend. That seemed like a lot of work. But if I could go to a foreign country and have a safe hookup, I’d be writing my parents a thousand-word essay on why Cuba would be an important cultural experience for me. I am all about culture.
So when Heather leans in my way, I really am thinking something happened with a boy. Or maybe a girl. I’m never quite sure where Heather’s interests lie, or whether she’s decided, which is her business unless she wants to tell me. Either way, sex is sex, and if Heather got some, her glowing eyes tell me it was a positive experience, which is the important thing.
