Eleanor (58 page)

He sets the note aside and stares down into the box.
 

Outside, a gust of wind batters the garage door, slinging rain against it in a wave. He stares at the windows in the garage door, startled by how dark it is. The wind is strong—how had he failed to notice it before?—and the garage door seems to bend inward the tiniest bit.

He gets up and presses a button on the wall, and the door starts to slide upward. He can see it clearly now—the door
is
bending, bending so much that it slips the chain and jams. There are two or three feet of space between the door and the concrete floor, and rain whips through the gap like a firehose, surprising him. He presses the button again, but the door groans and doesn’t budge.
 

Wind roars through the gap, and the box of house parts inches backward, just a little. The paper note catches the gust and lifts into the air, and Paul reaches for it. He misses, and for a moment the paper seems to hang in the air, and his heart nearly stops.

The words on the paper are not his own.
 

The words are Eleanor’s, penned in her careful, precise hand.

Time is a river, and it flows in a circle. I love you.

Tears spring to his eyes, and he flails about, snatching at the note, and then by some miracle he grabs it out of the air, and he turns it over and holds it up, and Eleanor’s words are not there at all, the writing is his, and all it says is
Don’t go
.
 

But she did go.
 

“Where?” he cries, and kicks the cardboard box. It splits open like a sack of groceries, spilling tiny broken balsa twigs and green tree stems on the floor. “
Where did you go?”

The wind sweeps through the model parts, scattering building materials and glue and pipe cleaners and cellophane around. There are four tiny figures in the box that he had forgotten about—a grown man and woman, and two smaller figures whose hair he had delicately painted red—and the wind lifts them from the pile and into the air, and he stares at them as they seem to hover, just like the note.
 

And he hears it then, in the strange quiet of that moment.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

“Aggie,” he whispers, and he runs.
 

She is dead when he enters the room. The hospice nurse is not here today, and the respirator beside the bed is still, and the little machine on the wheeled cart blinks red lights and beeps in a single unwavering pitch.
 

Paul stands at the foot of the bed, the bed he once slept in, the same bed where his daughters were conceived a thousand lifetimes ago, and stares at the small, frail body of his wife. Agnes is curled into a ball, and her arms are wrapped around her pillow, and to his amazement, her lips are curled up in the slightest smile.
 

He forgets the years in that moment. The accusations and the blame and the bottles and the fights. He forgets the torment of it all, forgets even about his daughters, just for a second, and steps out of his shoes and climbs onto the bed. He lies down beside Agnes, not touching her, and just looks at her, taking her in. Her eyes are open but unfocused, her cheeks rose-colored, the way they haven’t been in so long. Her hair is splayed across the pillow in a cloud, like a mermaid’s in a gentle current.
 

He puts his palm on her cheek, the first time he has touched her tenderly in years. The warmth is fading from her skin. He can feel it going. He thinks that some of it might enter him, that she will carry on, a part of him.
 

He traces his fingertips over her skin and moves a wisp of hair away from her eyes. She stares through him. He can see himself in the dark of her eyes. He gently touches her eyes closed, and it is as if she is sleeping beside him, the way she once did. For the briefest moment he remembers his wife the way she was, the memories swimming up from the deep, turning colors in the air, uncovered for the first time in a decade. He remembers when she smiled at him, when she whispered with him in this very room as the light faded, her voice growing thick with sleep, but the words still coming.
 

I wish I could hear your voice again
, Paul thinks.
I wish we could go back.

The room grows dim, and outside the wind swells and roars like a dragon curling around the house, and as the world pulls itself apart around them, Paul dips his head forward and softly kisses Agnes’s forehead. He rests his head against hers, and breathes in, her scent alive and fresh for the first time in so very long.
 

He doesn’t wonder what he will do next.

He lies there, in the dark, as her heat dissipates.

He is the last of his family. He has lost them all. He has been losing them for fifteen years.
 

A weight rises from him, and he feels as if he might float away. The blanket lifts into the air soundlessly, and blackness seeps into the room as the window breaks, and the curtains billow up to the ceiling, and the great storm consumes the Witt house as Paul descends calmly into a restful sleep.

Reset
.

The rowboat is lashed to the pier beside the beach. By all rights it should not be—as best Jack can imagine, Eleanor must have left it on the shore of the island. He thinks back to the last time he saw her. She’d saved his life, somehow brought him home. And then she had left him again, left him forever. He remembers the last thing he said to her, and wishes he had been thinking clearly enough to say so much more.

Wait
, he had said.
 

I love you, don’t go
, he should have said. Would have said.
 

But she had taken his bicycle and disappeared.
 

Maybe not forever.
 

He has dreamed of her since her last disappearance. Dreamed that she has climbed into his room through the window, the rain at her heels, spattering his face and waking him. Dreamed that she slides into his bed and turns her back to him, dreams that he holds her, and tells her he won’t ever let go.
 

Dreams are all he has now.
 

He unties the bristly rope and climbs down into the boat. The old oars are gone, replaced with new ones. Plastic ones, or some kind of polycarbonate thing. Maybe someone found the boat on the island and brought it back. Maybe Eleanor didn’t pull it far enough ashore, and it slipped out with the rising sea, and some fisherman recognized it and towed it home.

He never told a soul that Eleanor had taken it out that last day. Never told them that she’d rescued him from the cold sea. The news headlines had tapered off, and now only the occasional reminder appeared in the form of a new
MISSING
poster tacked to a street post. The red-haired girl was yesterday’s news now.
 

It is raining. It always seems to be raining now, but today’s rain is peculiar. Today’s rain is—what?
 

It is like pieces of her.
 

He does not know what he expects to find on the island. The rational voice in his skull warns him off.
You’ll only find a body, if anything
, that voice says to him.
She’ll be washed up and decaying on the rocks. Do you really want to remember her that way?

But part of him believes everything that she told him, crazy as it may have sounded. Part of him knows he will find only the abandoned shore of the island, the lonely cliff, the empty waters below.
 

And that is what he finds.

He pulls the boat ashore, tugging it as far up the rocks as he can. The rain falls harder now, and the ocean is gray and hard, and the sky is falling black against the horizon. He doesn’t want to lose the boat.
 

You won’t need it again
.
 

The skeptical voice inside him is silent. The other voice—the one that believes everything Eleanor said—whispers to him gently.
 

It can wash away. You won’t need it.

He climbs the path, the last mortal earth that Eleanor’s feet would have touched. He takes his shoes off, clenches his toes against the grit and sand. He wants to feel every last thing that she did. He pulls his shirt over his head. The rain comes down hard, creating faint red welts where it hits his bare skin.
 

When he crests the last rise, he stops and exhales in awe.
 

The sky is a void. Utterly black, with misty, cottony edges that twist against the dying daylight.
 

The rain is warm. The wind leans into him, and he almost staggers off the path.
 

She was here
, the quiet voice says inside.
 

“I know,” Jack whispers back.
 

He sits on the edge of the cliff, bare feet and shoulders, and watches the black storm consume the sea. He knows exactly what he is seeing. Whatever Eleanor disappeared for, whatever she went to do, she has done. He knows then, with complete certainty, that the girl he loves is no more. She has
become
. Become something different, something changed, something essential. The storm is here to signal her victory.

Jack takes a long, deep, slow breath, and closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, the storm is at his feet, the sea below resisting and thrashing against the relentless black.
 

Jack stares into its depths, wondering if Eleanor is on the other side, looking back at him.
 

“I love you,” he says, and the storm advances. “I always have.”

Reset.

Eleanor sits in the breakfast nook and watches the rain fall.

The tree that her husband and daughter planted two summers ago bends sideways in the wind. If the storm gets much worse, the little tree will be uprooted by the stiff gale. The house is buffeted by it, rain lashing against the windows. The glass in the back door rattles. The attic groans like a ghost.
 

She imagines what Hob will say when he comes downstairs.
 

No swimming today
.