Sometimes I still wonder.
When it’s just me and I’m not doing anything, I wonder.
Those questions and those memories and those pictures that I’ve tried to bury start to suddenly spring out of the well like that dead girl with the long hair in The Ring.
It usually starts with thinking of Jocelyn.
It’s been over eight months since the New Year’s nightmare that I saw. And as long as those months might seem, I also know how incredibly short and sharp they are. I don’t want to picture Jocelyn, but I still can. Sometimes she seems forgotten about, but then sometimes, for some reason, I’ll think of her.
All the warnings, all the whispers, all the omens, all the strange things.
All boiling down to what? That I’m related to some guy?
So what?
I mean really—so freaking what?
There is still more to this story, but I don’t know what. I still want to know. I need to know. But I also desperately want to be able to be alone and not think about all this.
I’m at the cabin watching television on the evening of the same day Kelsey asked me to be her partner, when there is a pounding on the door.
The mountain man with his dog!
I look up and see Lily at the window.
She pounds at the door again, so I get up quickly and open it.
She almost literally falls into my arms, shaking uncontrollably and crying.
“What? What’s going on—Lily, what?”
I try to move to see her face, but she doesn’t let me. She hugs me with a fierce hold and I just stay there, arms wrapped around her, her sweet smell covering me, her soft skin against mine.
“I’m scared, Chris—I’m really scared.”
When I finally see her face, she looks tired and different. The beautiful confident aura is gone. Her face resembles a concrete sidewalk that’s starting to crack.
“Lily—what happened?”
“Are you alone?”
“I’m always alone,” I say.
“Can I just stay here for a while? And just—just not talk? Is that okay?”
I want to ask more questions, but I force myself not to. Instead, I just nod. She grabs my hand and leads me to the couch. She sits down and curls up in a ball, then rests against my chest and arm after I sit next to her.
This is becoming a habit, a nice one that I could get used to.
I’m able to keep my mouth shut and my questions to myself. For the moment. Because right now, Lily is in my arms, for some reason, and all those doubts and questions that I had before she came are gone.
Before she leaves, once the sun has long since disappeared and the cabin has grown dark except for the one light on in the family room, Lily asks me a question out of the blue. She still has refused to tell me what’s going on and has asked me not to ask about it. So her question seems even more mysterious than usual.
“What if you don’t do what they tell you to do?”
For a minute I’m not even sure who she’s talking about. Who’s telling who to do what? But she knows about Staunch and Marsh. It’s just—am I really doing what they want me to?
“I don’t get the question.”
“What if—I don’t know. You said everything was going to be fine. What did you mean by that?”
“My mom is going away soon. To some rehab or something. For at least a week or two.”
“And that’s why things are fine?”
I nod.
“And why’s that?”
“Because …” I don’t want to tell her the obvious.
“Let’s leave.”
“I can’t—I already told you.”
“But do you know any more about all the stuff going on?”
I know a little, but not enough. Not enough to make sense of any of it. I shake my head.
“With your mom gone—we can just leave.”
“But what about your family—your mother?”
“Chris—listen,” Lily says.
She stares at me for a moment. We’re standing by the doorway, and I’m waiting for an answer or a statement or something.
She moves and kisses me.
Suddenly I forget about the conversation and kiss her back. We lean against the doorway and block whoever might try opening it.
When she breaks away minutes later, she leaves me literally gasping for air.
There are no more questions, no more answers, no more solutions.
She just makes sure I have her full gaze and then she tells me with a seductive look, “Dream about me.”
I’m left on my own, still finding it quite hard to breathe.