Addison attempted to elicit more information from Hector, but once he’d uttered those two little words, he fell back into a dazed stupor. Nothing Addison did or said could shake him out of it. She slipped out a side door and met Luke at the car, their chosen rendezvous point.
“She murdered? What do you suppose that means?” Luke asked.
“Who knows—at his point, it could mean everything or it could mean nothing. Hector was completely out of it. I’m surprised he said anything.”
“So you don’t believe he was trying to tell you something?”
Addison drew a long breath. “I’m not sure.”
“What if he knew something? Something he couldn’t prove.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe he was trying to tell you Roxanne was murdered by a woman.”
“Or maybe he was saying she was murdered. He said she, paused, then said murdered. A man stole the dress, not a woman.”
“What about Marjorie? You still going to see her tomorrow?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t like it. You know nothing about her, and you don’t owe her anything.”
It was the first time she’d ever heard him raise his voice. It was lower, deeper; he wasn’t exactly yelling, but he managed to get his message across all the same.
“My father said she knows things about me. Maybe she can tell me why I see things. I have to find out.”
“You said yourself, he never really knew her. It could be a trap. I don’t care how old she is.”
She looked at him, knowing he might be right. But it was something she had to do.
***
That night Addison had a dream. She was back on the wooded path she’d been on the day before. This time, she wasn’t on her bike, and she wasn’t walking. She wasn’t even on the ground. She was high up in a tree, so high she didn’t know how she got there. She felt light and airy, weightless. The branch she sat on was thin, too small to hold her. So why wasn’t she falling?
She looked around. What she saw shocked her. Even though it was dark, she had a strange kind of binocular vision. It was similar to her own, but different. She could turn her head, but her eyes didn’t move in their sockets. On the ground below her, she saw a person lying on the ground. A woman. She wasn’t moving. Not at first.
A few minutes passed. The woman began to tremble like she’d been left out in the cold. Only it wasn’t cold. Addison felt warm inside. The woman’s eyes flashed open. She looked around. She looked up. She looked at Addison. She was Addison.
It isn’t possible. How can I be in the tree and on the ground at the same time?
She stared at the mirror image of herself in disbelief.
What’s happening?
The Addison on the ground tried to sit up, a feat she didn’t conquer at first. She pressed one hand against the ground, forcing herself to a sitting position. She took the same hand and rubbed her arm. The same arm that was bandaged later that day. She braced against the tree and tried to stand. It didn’t work. Frustrated, she pressed both hands flat on the ground. And that’s when the Addison in the tree saw something she couldn’t believe: a bright light. The area surrounding her counterpart on the ground lit up like a full moon on a clear night.