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Then Malachi actually brought up an interesting point. “If she was looking for your mother,” he said slowly, “and she’s a ghost, how come she didn’t know your mother’s dead?”
I considered my conversation with Gary a day or two before, and had nothing better to offer Malachi than a quick rehash. “I guess it’s just because not everyone sticks around. Maybe my mom passed on, and Rachel stayed. I don’t know. But with the old sanitarium gone now, I can’t imagine that she’d remain there. ”
At least I hoped not. It seemed too weird and miserable a fate to walk the same grounds for eternity, hunting for someone long gone who won’t return.
The thoughts rambling around in Malachi’s head came wandering out his mouth. “But if my mother’s dead, when did she die? Why didn’t I hear about it? Aunt Eliza said she ran off with a cult when I was a kid, but Mother used to
send me stuff sometimes, every now and again. For the first few years, anyway. ”
“Then what?” I asked. “Did it all stop at once, or did the contact taper off?”
He thought about it, then kind of shrugged. “Hard to say. It was always sporadic; sometimes she’d write or call more often than others. I remember once she sent me three letters and a package within a month…but then she’d go for a year or so and I wouldn’t hear from her. ”
“So…” I started a sentence but lost the thought before I got too far. I was trying to think in too many different directions at once.
After a protracted delay on my part, he said, “So?”
“So we’re going to the airport. ” I said it out loud in time to notice that I was about to miss the exit. Thank God it was late, and there wasn’t much traffic. I cut across two lanes and dashed up the ramp onto the proper strip of highway.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I was thinking, I mean, I was hoping that I could stay up here for a few days or something. Not with you,” he added quickly. “At a hotel room someplace. I only want to look around and see if I can’t find Mother, if that was her out there. ”
“I told you, Pine Breeze is gone. ”
“I know. I believe you. But you don’t know if it was her, or if she’s still there. You’re only guessing, and I really need to know. What if it is her? What if she’s stuck there and she doesn’t know she can leave? I could tell her, maybe. Maybe she’d recognize me. Maybe I could talk to her. ”
I don’t know why it irked and surprised me that he’d be stubborn about it. It’s all anyone wants—from me or from the universe, or from fate, or whatever they want to call it. Everybody wants a second chance to say their piece to someone who’s beyond hearing it.
“Give me one day,” he begged, turning in the seat to raise one leg up beneath himself as he shifted his torso to face me. “Twenty-four hours. All I want to do is run up there to the ruins—that’s all I came here to do. ”
“There aren’t any ruins. There’s nothing. And if that was all you wanted, why did you go out to the Bend?”
“A couple of reasons. ” He crossed his arms.
“Well, now is the time to discuss them,” I said. “Because you’ve got another five minutes or so before we get to the airport; and if you don’t convince me by then, you’re completely out of luck. ”
“I went back to the Bend because I couldn’t find Pine Breeze when I went looking for it, and you wouldn’t talk to me. Kitty grew up around here. I thought she’d help me find it. ”
“Ah, so you’re back to blaming me for this. ”
“No, I’m not. Sheesh! Why do you always think everyone’s blaming you for everything? I didn’t want to go out there by myself, that’s all, and I don’t know anyone else up here. I thought Kitty would be a good choice, because she can see ghosts—or she says she can, anyway. ”
“This is the woman who killed her sister’s kids?”
“Uh-huh. She’s really nice once you get to know her. ”
“I’m sure. ”
“Well she is. And she’s not under very heavy security there. I thought I could spring her for a night and then sneak her back in, or something. It wouldn’t be too hard, probably. Or it wouldn’t have been, anyway, if they hadn’t moved her since I was there. It took me almost an hour to find her. They moved her over to solitary. ”
“How come?”
“How should I know? I’ve been in Florida for the last year, remember? That’s just what I found out when I got there. She wasn’t in her old room, so I had to go looking for her. ”
He shook his head and peered anxiously out the window as an airplane swooped down low, loud and blinking over the road, coming in for a landing. “She’s never been a problem patient. But the file I found in records storage said she’d started making a big fuss, saying over and over again that he was there. She called him the Hairy Man, and I think that’s who we saw today. She’s not that kind of crazy. She saw him too, and he scared her. ”
