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I think of what Dr. Harris told me earlier: how sleepwalkers can have entire conversations, sometimes, without even realizing. How their movements can seem so lifelike, so lucid.
“Keep your doors locked so you don’t wander outside.”
It had happened with Margaret before: sitting on the floor together, playing with dolls. Her not even realizing I was sleeping.
“What did we talk about?”
“Not much,” he says. “You introduced yourself the first time, then after that, we just nodded to each other, exchanged waves.”
“That can’t be right—”
“That’s why I was surprised to see you the other night,” he continues. “It’s been a while. Didn’t think you’d be coming back—not after everything that’s happened, anyway.”
I think back to the way he had looked at me before; his eyes blank, staring. So he had seen me after all. He had just been confused when I introduced myself, acting as if we were strangers. As if we had never met before.
“And when did this stop?” I ask. “Me walking by? When was the last time?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” he says, that chair creaking louder.
“Let’s pretend I don’t.”
“It’s been a year,” he says, nodding to himself. “Almost to the day, in fact.”
“A year,” I repeat. “And you’re sure about that?”
“Oh, I’m sure. March of last year.”
“And why are you so sure?” I ask, the ground beneath me starting to sway.
The man turns to look at me, finally, his cataracted eyes like two crystal balls and an amused look on his face, like we’re rehashing some kind of inside joke that I don’t understand. I suddenly have the distinct feeling that whatever this dance is between us is something we’ve done before. Something he very much enjoys.
“Because,” he says at last, a twitch of a smile appearing on his lips, “you had your kid with you that time.”
CHAPTER FORTY
I push myself back into my bedroom and slam the door with too much force. Roscoe perks up, confused, and I know I’m being loud enough to wake up Waylon, but right now, I don’t care.
Nothing matters anymore. Nothing matters but this.
The images are swirling around me like bathwater slowly circling its way down the drain: those dirty footprints on the carpet and the fingermarks beneath my ear; the open window and the smell of the marsh and that stuffed dinosaur covered in mud. It’s getting harder and harder to separate fact from the fiction; dream from reality. Then from now.
Margaret from Mason.
I hear a knock at my door, cautious and slow, and turn to the side. Waylon is in the hallway.
“Isabelle?” he calls. “Is everything okay? I thought I heard the door—”
I curse beneath my breath and consider staying quiet, letting him just wait for a while before being forced to walk away. I can feel him on the other side of the wall, hesitant. Five seconds go by, then ten, but I can still see his shadow beneath the door, unmoving. He knocks again.
“Isabelle,” he says, firmer now. “I know you’re awake.”
Roscoe jumps off the bed, walks over to the door and starts to scratch. I sigh, lean my head back, and take a few steps forward, steeling myself before I thrust it open.
“Hi,” I say. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Why were you outside?” He looks disheveled, his hair a nest of tangles and his eyes coated with sleep. There’s a strange intimacy to seeing people teetering on the edge of consciousness like this, knowing that they’re vulnerable. Like the first time a new partner unwittingly falls asleep in your bed and you lie next to them in the dark, watching the gentle rise and fall of their chest, the bare skin of their neck. Knowing that, in those precious moments, they are completely defenseless. Completely exposed. “It’s”—he glances around, looking for a clock, but unable to find one—“I don’t know, two in the morning?”
“I just had to get some air,” I say. “I’ve been shut in here all day.”
