Still Waters (15 page)

Carefully, she backed away. Her breath was coming in little hitches. She reached the doorway, trying to get a grasp on her racing thoughts. Okay, he was sleepwalking and that was definitely creepy, but she’d just go back to bed and when she woke up, he’d be awake too. Everything would be fine then, and they’d laugh about all this.

“Where are you going?”

She jumped at the sound of his voice. It was pitched almost an octave deeper than his usual voice. The words were slow, deliberate. Hannah stared at Colin, her mouth dry. She licked her lips. Were you supposed to talk to sleepwalkers?

“Nowhere,” she whispered finally.

He gave no sign he’d heard her.

Hannah turned and fled down the hall, her feet pattering on the rough boards. She flew into the bedroom and collapsed on the edge of the unmade bed. Was he coming after her? Her eyes were wide and fixed on the empty doorway.

From down the hall, the floorboards creaked. Involuntarily, Hannah’s muscles tensed. Her fingers gripped the bedsheets, slowly clawing them into a ball. Footsteps in the hall, slow and
irregular, as if Colin was weaving back and forth as he walked. The footsteps approached, then stopped, then started again, but this time growing fainter, as if Colin were walking away.

Hannah sat on the bed for a long time, straining her ears for any sound from the house. But there was nothing. There was no clock in the room, so she tried to estimate how long since she’d last heard his footsteps. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Her feet were growing cold and in spite of her tension, she began to feel sleepy again.

Then she heard him coming down the hall, faster this time. Without thinking, Hannah slid under the sheets and pulled the blankets up just as Colin entered the room. She squeezed her eyes shut and feigned sleep, drawing slow regular breaths. She forced her hands to relax on the mattress.

She heard him come closer. Hannah waited to feel the bulk of his body pressing down the mattress beside her. But instead the footsteps just stopped. She kept her eyes closed. He smelled like lake mud and leaves.

There was silence. Hannah willed herself to keep her eyes closed. She couldn’t tell where he was. Then she heard the shift of cloth against cloth. He was standing by the bed. She had the strong sense he was watching her. A long moment stretched out. Then another. Still, he didn’t move.

Hannah opened her eyes slowly, as if she was just waking up. Colin was standing over her next to the bed, staring down at her. The moonlight showed the smears of dirt on his bare chest and shorts. His face was dark and intense. The skin on the back of
Hannah’s neck crawled. “Colin?” she whispered. “Where were you?”

“What are you doing in here?” His voice was harsh.

Hannah’s stomach contracted. “What?” she whispered. “I’m sleeping.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “Get up, Buggy.” He pulled the covers back roughly. Hannah’s breath caught as the cool air hit her skin.

“Who’s Buggy?” Her voice rose. “You’ve never called me that before. Colin, are you still sleepwalking?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. If he was sleepwalking again, she shouldn’t argue with him.

Carefully watching him, Hannah eased her legs over the side of the bed. “Okay, I’m up,” she said.

This answer seemed to satisfy him, and he turned and walked back toward the door. Clutching her pillow, Hannah trailed a safe distance behind. For a sleepwalker, he seemed to know exactly where he was going. He walked straight down the hall and turned back into the child’s room. Hannah followed.

Broken glass and splinters of wood lay all over the floor. Colin didn’t seem to care, even though his feet were bare and caked with mud. He walked straight to the bed against the far wall, pulled back the navy blue spread and climbed in. He turned his face to the wall and was still.

Hannah stood alone in the middle of the floor for a long time, the damp night air pouring through the broken window and creeping up her legs. Maybe she should lie down in the other
bed. It seemed like that’s what he was indicating. She turned back the spread on the other bed, and laying her pillow on top of the other, slid between the cold, musty-smelling sheets.
This was just a weird episode. This is Colin. Your boyfriend. He’s not even going to remember this in the morning. Go to sleep, and when you wake up, everything will be back to normal.
But even with these comforting thoughts rattling around her mind, it was a long time before Hannah could fall back asleep.

Her phone was ringing at the bottom of the lake. She could see it, a hundred feet down in the murky water, the little screen glowing like a jewel. She treaded water as it rang and rang, and she had to answer because it was Colin calling. Colin needed her help. Hannah dove deep, kicking as hard as she could, eyes fixed on the little blue screen, while the water pressed at her mouth and chest and played with her long hair. Kick harder, pull harder, her mind instructed, get it before Colin hangs up, before he disappears. But she couldn’t, it was too far and now the water was pressing even more insistently on her face, willing her to open her mouth as her lungs burned and screamed for air. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t make it, and she opened her mouth once and for all
—

She jolted awake suddenly. The window was in the wrong place, she thought, disoriented, before remembering what happened the night before. Across the room, Colin was an immovable hump under the blue blanket. In the living room, her cell phone was trilling over and over.

Silently, Hannah slipped from between the covers and scurried out to the living room. She grabbed the phone and cradled it to her chest before tiptoeing out onto the front porch. She glanced at the screen. Laurie. She clicked the phone open.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Hang on, okay?” She stepped off the front steps and crossed the yard to the edge of the woods, well away from the house.

“Okay, I’m here,” she said in a normal voice, leaning back against a big jack pine.

“How’s it going?”

“Are you at work?” Hannah eyed the house. All was still.

“Yeah,” her friend replied. “The guys are on break.” Her voice sounded echo-y.

“You sound like you’re at the bottom of a bucket.”

“Probably because I’m down here at the loading dock. The chemistry library is officially moved.” Laurie sighed. “So, come on, I need a mental escape. Are you having the ultimate romantic weekend? Have I told you how insanely jealous I am?”

Hannah laughed nervously. “Yeah … you have.” She paused a minute, wondering just how much to reveal. “Um … actually, things aren’t going that well.”

“What? What happened? Oh my God.” Laurie caught her breath. “You guys didn’t break up, did you? What happened?”

“No! Stop, nothing like that.” Hannah twisted around and started picking a big piece of bark off the tree. The mosquitoes had found her. One buzzed drill-like near her ear. “I got lost in the woods yesterday and he came and rescued me and afterward,
we were sitting on the couch, and I was really feeling like everything was right.” The words tumbled fast from her mouth. “Like I could see he could take care of me, and I thought that this might be the moment to tell him I loved him. It just felt so easy to say it all of a sudden, but before I could, this huge storm blew up and—” Hannah stopped abruptly, breathless. On the other end, Laurie waited.

“And then last night, Colin was having some … um, sleeping problems.” She could tell how weird that sounded as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

“
Sleeping
problems? What, was he snoring?”

“No, sleepwalking.” Hannah suddenly wished she’d never started talking about it. Just hearing the words aloud made the whole situation seem even more real. “It’s just—well, there was a storm, like I said,” she went on, reluctantly. “And a branch crashed through one of the windows and then later, I found him staring at a bunch of these old papers, and he started calling me ‘Buggy,’ and then he made us sleep in a different room—”

“Okay, calm down,” her friend soothed. “Just chill. Look, have you talked to him yet?”

Hannah took a deep breath and switched the phone to her other hand. She wiped her sweaty palm on the back of her leg. “Not yet. He’s still sleeping.”

“Well, just remember whom you’re dealing with here—your
boyfriend
,” Laurie went on.

“Right.” Hannah could feel her heart starting to slow. Laurie’s calm, ordinary voice spread like a balm over her jangled nerves.

“So, he’s having some kind of sleep problem. Maybe he’s stressed about leaving for Pratt. Maybe he’s stressed about leaving
you
. Whatever. Just have a good time and you’ll deal with it when you guys get back.”

“Yeah …” Hannah said slowly. She willed herself to believe what her friend was saying.

“You’re getting totally worked up over nothing.” Laurie’s voice grew tinnier.

“Are you walking? You’re fading out.”

“Yeah, the truck’s here, so I’ve got to go. But look, stop freaking and just have fun with your boy. This is the last time you two will have for awhile.”

“Yeah, okay,” Hannah mumbled. She felt almost calm now. “Bye.” She clicked the phone closed and stared over at the house. Everything was still. Only Pine House was watching her, big windows gazing back at her silently.

The rising sun was sending brilliant rays of pink and gold through the trees, but by some trick of the light, the surface of the lake was as opaque as a sheet of metal. Hannah thought of her dream, of diving deep down in that heavy water, and she shivered.

Stop. Stop it.
She had to go inside anyway. The mosquitoes were attacking with a vengeance now. Hannah threw down the piece of bark she’d been twiddling in her fingers and started back toward the house. Laurie was right. She needed to stop freaking out. Colin was just having trouble sleeping. He
was
probably stressed out about Pratt. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe when they got back, he’d
go get something from the doctor. Ambien or something.

Holding this thought firmly in the front of her mind, Hannah mounted the porch steps. What she really needed now was some breakfast. Eggs and toast. They could do the toast over the gas flame on a fork. And maybe some of that jelly she’d seen shoved to the back of one of the cabinets.

In the kitchen, she lifted a cast-iron frying pan from its hook on the wall and gingerly lit the flame on the front burner, then cracked in four eggs from the bowl on the counter. The early morning sun streamed through the window at her back, throwing flickering shadows onto the stove and pan. She stirred the thick, lemon-colored yolks until they broke and blended with the clear white. Behind her, the silence of the house spread like water. She could feel it pressing at her back.

Snap out of it, Hannah
. Everything was going to be fine. It was all perfectly normal—there had been a storm, and that branch had come through the window. And then it was just a coincidence that Colin had that bout of sleepwalking. But really, it could happen to anyone. Hadn’t it happened to David sometime last year? Hannah scraped the pan more firmly with the old spoon.

The floor creaked behind her. “What are you doing?” Colin said.

Hannah whirled around. He stood in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt over his shorts now, his hair matted to one side of his head. The mud on his feet was dry, flaking off on the floor. But his eyes at least looked awake.

“Making eggs,” she said, gesturing at the frying pan.

There was a silence, so still Hannah could hear a chickadee chirping outside on the porch.

“You know I hate eggs,” Colin finally said softly.

Hannah blinked. “You do?” She paused. “We had eggs yesterday, though.”

“I don’t remember that.” His voice was soft but cold, as if he was containing an explosion. “We always have oatmeal.”

Hannah stared at him and swallowed. She heard the audible click in her throat. “Okay, um, what’s going on? You’re acting really weird. We’ve never had oatmeal.”

He didn’t even blink, just raised one eyebrow coolly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you lying again?” He turned and stalked into the living room. “Just make the goddamn oatmeal, will you?” he shot back over his shoulder.

Hannah stood frozen by the stove, the eggy spoon still in one hand. Her throat was tight. He’d never, ever sworn at her before. Never even raised his voice. She could feel tears building in her eyes. Was this some remnant from his sleepwalking?

The slap of the screen door started her out of her daze. She laid the spoon down on the stove and crossed into the living room. The back door was open.

She shoved open the screen. Colin was standing down on the beach, at the side of the lake. Feet scrunching on the gravel, Hannah pushed through the dank brown reeds. Her feet sunk into the mud as a rotted-fish smell rose up around her. Colin was leaning over the old rowboat, both hands on
the edge, staring over the side into the empty interior.

“Colin …,” she started. Her voice shook, and she steadied it. “What is going on?”

Colin turned around. His eyes were wide and clear. “What do you mean?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.

“Do you remember anything that happened last night?” Hannah asked.

He shook his head. “What happened?”

Hannah threw her hands out at her sides. “You were acting completely bizarre, like you were sleepwalking. You were staggering around with this blank stare; you went outside; you made us sleep in the other room. Didn’t you wonder where you were when you woke up this morning?”

Colin’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “I was in our bed this morning, same as always.”

“Colin, you weren’t—” Hannah started to say and then stopped. Maybe he’d sleepwalked back to their bedroom after she’d left.

“And just now, in the kitchen,” she went on. “You’re acting totally mean. Why are you getting so mad about nothing?”

Colin just stared at her. Then he reached out and patted her shoulder. “Han, honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you sure it wasn’t
you
sleepwalking last night?” He turned, his sneakers making a sucking sound in the mud, and pushed past her, heading back toward Pine House. “Isn’t it a nice morning?”