Second Sight (17 page)

“For us it was sixth-grade English class in 1950, the subject I taught for thirty years at Stockton Middle School. The kids were determined to bury midyear essays with a class picture near the construction site for the new gym going in. The equipment was already there. It was no big deal to ask them to drill another hole in the ground.

“Of course, the list grew of things they wanted to put into the jar: Raggedy Anns, Buck Rogers water pistols, Cootie, Silly Putty, things like that. We were going to use this humongous candy jar and seal the lid with wax, but the kids brought in so much stuff, we ended up needing two of them. Then we printed a declaration of intent and had it read into town council minutes requiring the governing body of Stockton to unearth the jars and share our history with the sixth-grade class of 2050.”

Everyone nodded, wondering where the story was going.

“Jack,” she said, “was sitting in his rocking chair the night I was sealing the jars. I had a pan on the stove to melt wax….” She stuck her tongue in the side of her mouth, remembering something from long ago. “And he did the strangest thing,” she said at last. “He got up and left the room, and when he came back was holding a green leather book, a writing book, like a journal. He asked me if he could put it in one of the jars.

“I didn’t say anything at first. I knew he made sketches of things he saw in the forest, he was quite a good artist, but I never knew him to keep a journal. Jack was spare with words, you understand, and there wasn’t a frivolous bone in his body. He never did anything just for fun.”

“So you put it in,” Betsy said, excited.

Carla nodded. “And I sealed it in front of him. Jack knew me well. He knew I’d never pry. I respected him, and I respected his judgment, everyone did.”

Sherry’s cell phone buzzed on her hip and she reached to silence it. “The jars won’t be opened for another forty-some years,” she said without missing a beat.

Carla shrugged. “That was the plan. Might have worked, if the cable company hadn’t come to Stockton. They managed to run their trencher right into them. I was retired by then, but the principal knew the story. The seal had broken on one of them and most of the contents were soaked and rotting. The other one’s up in my attic. Glass is cracked. I kept meaning to ask someone to put it in a decent can and bury it again, but people just don’t do things like that anymore. It hardly seemed worth the effort now.”

“Your husband’s journal?”

She smiled. “It was in the jar that survived. And out of respect I have been determined not to open it.”

No one spoke for a minute.

“May I ask a personal question, Carla?” Sherry asked.

“Sure.”

“Was your husband ill or depressed?”

Carla shook her head emphatically. “We had one doctor in town back in the day. Dick McKinley. He said Jack was the last person in the world he would expect to take his life.”

“And he would have known if there was anything seriously wrong with him.”

“They hunted together,” Carla said. “He would have known.”

“You know what I’m going to ask you?” Sherry leaned across the table in the old woman’s direction.

“You’d like to see the journal, I’m sure.” The eyes were alive again, piercing.

“I would promise to be discreet.”

“I’m sure you would, Miss Moore, and I’m inclined to say yes to you. Would you give me a little time, though? It’s not easy to explain, just a few days.”

“I understand perfectly.” Sherry held up a hand to stop her. “Have Betsy call me when you’re ready.”

Carla smiled and folded her hands in front of her.

Betsy stood. “I asked Mike to let us be for a while. You folks want drinks or menus?”

“Will you stay with us for lunch, Carla?” Brigham asked.

The old woman shook her head. “Nah. If you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting home now.”

“May I walk you?” Brigham got to his feet.

She waved him off. “Oh, heck no, I’m just half a block from home.”

Sherry got up as well. “It was very nice meeting you.”

Everyone shook hands and Betsy excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure,” Sherry said.

“The journal sounds interesting.”

“Can you believe she wouldn’t open it after all that happened?”

“That’s love.” Brigham looked at her.

Sherry avoided his eyes. “And the old security records. Someone must have wanted to erase everything about Monahan’s life.”

Brigham nodded. “I have a feeling if the army had found Monahan before this guy McCullough, you would never have had the opportunity to meet him in a Philadelphia hospital some fifty years later.”

“You think they would have killed him?” Sherry looked shocked.

“All I can say is, there was an emergency room full of witnesses that knew he survived. The only thing they could do by the time they found him was to make sure he never woke up or spoke again.”

“According to Betsy, they most certainly accomplished that.”

Betsy returned to the table and Sherry got up to check her phone and to give Betsy and Garland some time together. She saw that she had missed a call, and she sighed when she saw the number.

“Troy Weir,” she whispered. “What in the hell am I supposed to do about you?”

“The transcripts aren’t all that interesting.” Weir handed an envelope to his stepfather, who glanced at it and then stuffed it into a leather sleeve at the side of his wheelchair.

They were on the Lancaster farm, and two young women in khaki slacks and uniform shirts were leading Thoroughbreds around a track. The horses were sleek, one chestnut, one black, and they cantered with knees high and hooves dropping in flawless repetition.

“It was interesting enough to give her sight again,” Case said with a rare smile. He looked up to see the young man’s reaction.

“You don’t believe that, I take it?”

“Does it matter?”

Weir shrugged. “That’s why she’s so hot on figuring out this guy Monahan. Dr. Salix writes that she’s convinced her contact with Monahan was responsible for restoring her sight.”

“Which he thinks is ridiculous too, I’m sure.”

“So is touching someone and seeing their last seconds of memory.”

Case wheeled his chairthrough the stables, reaching up and rubbing the velvet noses of his Thoroughbreds along the way. “If that’s what she does,” he said with a sigh. “Ever been to Las Vegas and watched a magic show? Anyhow, she can’t just disappear.”

“No”—Weir scratched the back of his neck—“that would definitely be noticed.”

Case cast him a glance. “So what’s your plan?”

“She was hospitalized two years ago for depression.”

Case turned to face the younger man. “She tried to kill herself?”

Weir shrugged. “Pills, I was told, although she denied it. She claimed the overdose was accidental.”

“Well, that makes it a little easier.”

“You want her to die?”

“I don’t care what happens to her as long as I don’t hear the name Thomas Monahan again.”

Weir nodded. “It may be too early to panic. I think she’ll drop the whole business once she gets used to her eyes. She’s vulnerable now. You can see it on her face. She’s overwhelmed by everything around her. She’s still getting used to the world.”

“What’s she up to now?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t home last night, said she was visiting a friend. I couldn’t come right out and ask her where she was.”

“Make her a priority until you’re satisfied this is over. Don’t let her out of your sight, and if you have to, push.”

Case watched one of the horses do a lap.

Then he turned toward his stepson. “You’re a smart man, Troy. I worried about you at first, I didn’t think you’d make it to the big league, but you figured out the kind of stuff that mattered in time. The stuff most men never get.”

He was talking about his favorite subject, Troy knew—Ed Case’s law of probability and response. Case believed that mankind was disadvantaged by an inherent—and unwarranted—
concern for fellow human beings. He thought that society was its own greatest obstacle to progress. That it wasn’t possible to properly evaluate an endeavor’s true potential and respond to it appropriately unless consideration of its detrimental impact on the human race was eliminated. This was why so few people became giants in the world and why everyone else was piling up behind the great wall of mediocrity.

If you wanted to know how deep the water was, you had to ride out into the middle of it. A young Colonel Custer once demonstrated that point to a humiliated General McClellan, who had been riding up and down the riverbank asking the question of everyone. Likewise, if you wanted to know how far you could go with stem cell transplants following high-dose chemotherapy, you needed to try it out on a human. Period. To have that ability was to have limitless potential. To retain it required keeping it veiled from a squeamish public.

“What’s your plan?”

“To show her something spectacular,” Troy said.

Case started moving again. “And then what, she’ll melt into your arms and tell you all her secrets?”

“Exactly,” the younger man said, wondering if his stepfather was really ignorant of his misuse of the MIRA technology.

“Well, be quick about it. This should never have happened in the first place. Monahan should have been incinerated by now.”

“It’s all being taken care of,” Weir assured him. “There is nothing more to learn in Stockton. There is nothing the government can tell them except what’s in his file, and that has been reduced to nothing.”

“And I’ll accept that for now, but the moment you sense different, I want it handled. I never want to hear anything about Monahan, Area 17 or Alpha Company again.”

“I’ll find out what this friend of hers is all about and where she stayed last night. I have a date with her tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good,” Case said. “In fact, very good.”

He stopped the wheelchair and spun to face Weir. “You did a fine job with that law-school kid in Springfield. I’ll see you are properly rewarded.”

“Thank you.” Weir removed his rimless glasses to clean them. “It was fun.”

Sherry was more nervous than she could recall ever being. She’d had two or three one-night flings in her past, but never one that had been born of circumstances so insubstantial. There didn’t seem to be anything between her and this man but a chance meeting of a few hours and a physical attraction. He was fun to be with, yes. She wouldn’t deny that, but something told her that nothing more would have happened between her and Troy but for the fact that she had seen him with her own two eyes. And, yes, she knew that eyes can only see, they have no ear for duplicity, no sieve for filtering out mistakes of intent. That any wife or husband or altarboy could be fooled by what looked like the sincerest of smiles and the kindest of eyes. She didn’t have any gift more special than anyone else’s, no innate way to recognize subterfuge in another human being. And yet she had always sensed and been told that her gift of second sight conferred on her an uncanny sense of intuition. Did she still have it?

Then there was Brian Metcalf. Perhaps all this worry over Troy Weir was because she felt guilty about Brian. Something
was holding her back, preventing her from having an innocent and guilt-free relationship with Troy. What did she owe Brian to cause such consternation? They might have been serious, but they weren’t engaged. There were no vows expressed. Of course, you knew when you were dating someone more seriously. You knew when faithfulness and a belief in someone else’s loyalty were implied.

No, it wasn’t the right thing to do to see Troy. Not if she allowed more to come of it than friendship. Not if she had thoughts of spending her life with Brian.

But a lot of things weren’t right in life. How often did you end up holding a canister of radioactive cesium that could turn healthy cells into cancer? How often did you have to see loved ones torn away by a violent world? Brian was halfway around the world at this minute, and who knew if he was coming home? Nothing was certain in this world. It was pompous to plan for anything beyond the moment.

Sherry had never before been exposed to a level playing field. Didn’t she deserve to find out what life was like? Wasn’t spontaneity an element of happiness? Brigham himself had called her a wallflower. He’d once said she was God’s little masterpiece trapped on the canvas. Brigham didn’t do drama, and she could never imagine where he’d found those words, but during those dark months, after her best friend was murdered and preceding her spiral into depression, he had wanted her to get out of the house, to talk to someone, a therapist, her neurologist, hairdresser, client, stranger, anyone.

And now she was doing just that.

She heard a car in the drive and took a last look in the mirror. Then she set the alarm code and walked to the open door of a wine-colored Porsche. The top was down and she lowered herself into the leather seat.

“Nice car for a biologist who can barely afford his rent!”

“I had a small windfall last year. An aunt died in Oregon,
quite unexpectedly. I should have invested, but what the hell. I’m impulsive at times.”

There were clouds in the sky and she marveled at their shapes. Clouds remained one of the few memories she’d retained from before her accident—clouds and ocean and sand and a smiling woman who smothered her in piles of rich dark hair. She wished she had a mother to talk to about all this, about life and men and happiness.

“Did you come straight to Case and Kimble from school or did you work somewhere else?” she asked.

“I bounced around schools for a while,” he said cagily.

“And you last went to…I’m sorry, I forgot if you told me.”

“George Mason.”

“I have a friend on the Fairfax County police department. What years were you there?”

“Am I being grilled?” Troy laughed.

“No”—Sherry smiled and shook her head innocently—“just making conversation.”

She asked where they were going, but he told her it was a surprise. They were city bound, however, the theater or a museum perhaps. She hadn’t told him anything about herself yet. He would have been astounded to know she had grown up in the Halley House Orphanage that he had been reading about lately and that she’d had the use of her eyes for only three weeks; astounded to know she couldn’t read a word of English and that she supported herself by interpreting the last memories of dead people.

“You get around pretty good for being new to the area.”

“I have an instinctive sense of direction.” He smiled and tapped the dash. “I studied the PCM earlier too.”

“PCM?”

“Porsche Communication Management.” He laughed. “It’s a map, GPS technology, you know?”

Sherry laughed back, nodding, deciding to back off the questions for a while.

Suddenly they were following ramp signs to Camden, and Sherry wondered what in the world they could possibly find in New Jersey, until he parked outside the aquarium.

And she felt at that moment as if a ghost had laid a hand on her shoulder.

“This okay with you?” he asked.

How could he know, she wondered? How could he have imagined it was so important on the list of things she had ever seen or done? The last time she was here it was with her old friend John Payne. She remembered him holding her hand, reaching out, fingers entwined, as he laid it upon the back of a dolphin.

For two hours she tried to recall Payne’s descriptions of all the fish and creatures as they walked by the tanks. But when they left the aquarium this time it wasn’t Payne’s hand she was holding. It was Troy Weir’s. He had given her the gift of actually seeing an old and wonderful memory.

“Now where?” she said.

“Lobster Claw at the wharf?” Troy asked. “They have a great lobster salad sandwich.”

“I don’t think I could eat something I just saw walking around in a tank,” Sherry said glumly.

“How about the Tuscan Grill?”

“You even know about Philadelphia culinary?”

“I looked up restaurants on the Internet to impress you. The ratings were good at both.”

Sherry nodded. “Yeah, okay,” she said, half smiling.

Troy punched buttons on his PCM and cracked his window an inch. He was losing her, he thought. He would need to give her some encouragement, synthetic or otherwise, and soon.

They found a table off to themselves. Sherry watched people come and go as Troy went to the restroom.

She thought about Brian Metcalf and decided she should return his messages soon. It wasn’t certain he could be reached,
but it was possible to leave a message where he could retrieve it. Troy Weir aside, she wanted to tell him about the miracle in Nazareth Hospital. She wanted to tell him she could see. Who knew, maybe next week, after the gamma ray test, she would have even better news to tell. Better news for the two of them?

Sherry stared into her iced tea and realized that she was having the first positive thought since leaving New Mexico. Maybe Brigham had been right all along. Maybe she’d just needed time to get through the stress of all that had been going on around her. Maybe the dazzle of being able to see had clouded her mind and her judgment.

After dinner they parked at Weir’s apartment house on Society Hill and walked the three blocks to the Dark Horse Tavern. By dusk they were back on the sidewalk, weaving slightly, linked arm in arm.

The apartment was contemporary. She expected no less and guessed correctly that a designer had decorated it.

She couldn’t say she had a plan. She just sat there and listened to music, drank wine, and tried with all her senses to summon her inner voice.

There was no cause to stop him when he kissed her. She had walked into his apartment under her own power. She had never suggested there was a significant other. She had allowed him to take her hand at the aquarium and she had held his arm on the way home. His hands moved, first around her neck, around her ears, lifting her hair and kissing the back of her neck. He pulled her into him. She felt his fingers brush across her back and the strap of her bra. He pulled her gently into him, managed to push his knee between her thighs as he rolled her toward him.

It was good, not great; wanted, not needed. But how long had it been? Oh, there was Brian. She had certainly slept with Brian. But Brian came with strings, like John Payne had come
with strings. She could have loved either of them. She could have been happy with either one and for the rest of her life. Except that she had no control over the rest of her life. She was damaged goods, she thought. She could only bring someone pain.

Wow, that wine had hit her hard!

“Ladies’ room?” she asked, and he gave her directions. She had to be careful not to stumble as she turned down the hall.

She looked at herself in the mirror and threw handfuls of water on her face. She used a towel to dry it and saw the slightest stain of blood that she traced to her nose. Her nose must have been bleeding, she realized, and she wiped it with a tissue and rinsed the blood from the towel. How odd.

She took a deep breath and then made her way back to the living room.

Perhaps she had held herself to too high a standard. Troy seemed like a wonderful young man. A couple of drinks, a few laughs, a little love, and they could go on their way. No harm, no foul. Right?

His fingers found her stomach where he’d separated the buttons. Deft hand was inside and flat across her ribs, thumb prying up the underwire of her bra. His lips moved down her neck, her throat; she felt his tongue flicker across the top of her breast.

“Troy.”

“Yes,” he whispered, thumb slipping up on her breast.

“No.”

He retracted the thumb from under her bra.

“Not yet,” she said, kissing the side of his neck. “Just not yet.”

He nodded, his forehead damp, and turned to her with a smile. “You tell me when,” he said politely. “I want it to be right.”

“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s way late and I should really get home.”

“I’ll get the car,” he said, rising.

“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll take a cab. You’re already home.”

“I don’t mind.”

“But I do,” she said kissing him on the lips. “We’ll do it again.”

“Promise.”

She nodded drunkenly. “Promise.”