“We do, Will.”
“And what truth do you hold?”
“That goodness exists here too. I choose to focus on that.”
“And what about your work? Aren’t you focusing on evil when you spend your time raising awareness of all the children who are harmed, taken, or murdered each year?”
“But not out of cynicism. Surely you can see that, Will. I do it out of a desire to bring attention to what needs to be changed. I can’t sit here and look at the world and see everyone as a potential criminal.”
“And you think that’s what I do?”
“Isn’t it?”
I had no answer.
“The work I do, Will, I guess I mean it for Lucy. Have you thought about what you could do for her, in honor of her?”
“Christ, Sophie. Don’t pull that guilt-trip bullshit on me.”
“It’s not bullshit, Will. It’s truth. She would hate this, you know.”
Again I looked out at the harbor, ignoring the group of teenagers, instead fixing my gaze on a sailboat as it tilted into the wind and curved around a buoy with ease and headed for the horizon.
“She would hate knowing she was the reason you’re drinking.” Her hand still rested on my knee, and she moved it an inch or two until it was on my thigh, spreading the warmth. “Or that you hit that reporter because of her.”
“Not because of her, Sophie. Never because of her. Because of what happened to her.”
“She would still hate it.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about that now, do we? She’ll never know.”
A spasm of pain crossed her face. “You’re a better person than this, Will. Can’t you be that person? If not for me, then for Lucy.”
“I might have been that person once, Soph, but this is the person I am now.”
She didn’t move, but I could feel her withdraw, pull into herself.
“Last month,” she said, “in Washington, I had a lot of time to think. I couldn’t stop thinking about the work Father Gervase came to see you about. The painting of the saints.”
“I told you, Soph. I’m not interested.”
“I think you should consider it, Will.”
“Why?”
“For Lucy. You could do it in honor of Lucy.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. What you’re saying is you won’t. You don’t want to.”
I didn’t bother to respond.
“Here’s the hard truth, Will. These past months have been beyond horrific. A nightmare. But we didn’t get to choose that. What we do get to choose is how we react. We get to determine how to make sense of something that’s fundamentally senseless. And we get to—and I don’t mean to sound righteous about this, Will—but we have an opportunity to make the world better. I know if Lucy had lived she would have made the world a finer place, and you know that too. She was robbed of that chance, but we can do it for her, Will. We can do it for her.”
Again, as I had in past months, I had the feeling that Sophie and I were in separate lifeboats, drifting farther and farther apart in our sea of grief.
“Lucy’s gone, and nothing we do will change that, Will. We can’t make that go away, and I don’t think the grief will ever go away. How could it? But at least we can choose to find meaning in it. I guess that’s what I was trying to say a minute ago. We can dedicate a part of our work to her. We can try to make the world a better place.”
“Yeah, well here’s a news flash for you, Sophie. The world isn’t a better place.”
On the beach, the students had begun to gather their coolers and the Frisbee and started heading toward their cars. The sailboat I saw earlier was a white speck on the horizon. I considered what it would be like to wade into the water, walk until I was waist deep and then swim, swim for that horizon, swim beyond the jetties and buoys, swim until exhaustion-weighted muscles and water claimed me. For a moment, the pull of the idea, the release it offered, the seductive possibility of it, shook me.
“Will?” Sophie shifted again on the bench. “I worry about you, Will.”
The white sail grew tinier. “No need.”
“Why not get away for a bit?” she said. “Take a break from everything. You know that Amy and Jim would love to have you visit them.”
I didn’t bother to respond.
“Or you could go somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Manhattan. You haven’t been there in a long time.”
“Ah, the geographic cure. Brilliant.”
“I’m just trying to help, Will.”
“I know.” Maybe her suggestion wasn’t such a bad idea. I tried to imagine being someplace where every day, everywhere I went and everything I saw wouldn’t hold reminders of Lucy. But even as this thought occurred, I knew the futility of it. Wherever I went, as long as I was alive, I carried it with me.
“Think about it, Will. You haven’t left since—well, since we lost Lucy.”
“We lost Lucy? You make it sound like we misplaced her. We didn’t lose her. She was taken from us.” I should have stopped there, but of course I didn’t. Looking back now I see how lost I was in my grief. “She was murdered.”
Her cheeks reddened as if I had slapped her, and she lifted her hand from my thigh. Her expression hardened, and I saw I had lost her. Again.
“Soph—”
“Forget it, Will. I can’t talk to you about this.”
“No, I’m sorry. Listen. You’re right. A change might be good. Let’s get out of here. Let’s drive up the shore, have dinner somewhere.” For one split moment, it almost seemed possible to slip back to our former selves, to a prior life that held spontaneous car rides along Route 1, exploring side roads, discovering restaurants and antique shops, stopping at small motels, checking in without luggage, driving toward a future that held more hope than despair. Hope that wouldn’t end in despair and more grief.
“I don’t think so, Will.” Her voice was flat, and her posture, when she rose, was defeated. “Not tonight.”
“Soon then?” I held on to the fleeting glimpse of that other life.
“I don’t know, Will.”
“Soph—”
“I don’t know where we are heading, Will. I just need—time.”
“Right,” I said. End of conversation.
She bent over and pressed her lips against my cheek. “I love you,” she said. “Nothing will change that.”
I watched as she walked away, her footsteps in the sand forming a parallel line to the shoreline and the incoming tide. I followed her progress back toward the harbor, past the child constructing a castle and his two little sisters, now both of them making snow angels in the sand.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It made Rain furious the way everyone was acting like Lucy was some kind of angel.
She sat in the passenger’s seat, and the school yearbook that had triggered her anger almost glowed through the fabric of her backpack as if emitting some kind of radiation. If wishes came true, the book would disappear, evaporate into the ether. In fact, she would have thrown it away, but her mother the customs inspector would ask what happened to it and no doubt was waiting to take possession of it when they got home and would pore through the pages as if they contained a secret code to Rain’s behavior.
Her mother, completely clueless as usual, drove on toward Dr. Mallory’s. At the thought of the session ahead, Rain slid her hand over her outer thigh and pressed down on the latest cut. Her heart beat hard and loud in her chest. It would serve her mother right if she had a stroke or some kind of attack right here in the car. At least that would get her out of her appointment with Dr. Mallory. But no. No such luck. Not even one minute late, they turned into the shrink’s drive. As she made her escape, she grabbed the backpack from the floor.
“Why don’t you leave that with me, dear,” her mother said.
Rain pretended not to hear and, bag slung over her shoulder, walked toward the house for the torture appointment.<
br />
“Don’t forget,” her mother called after her. “Duane will pick you up after.”
Right. Like she should get on her knees in gratitude that Duane the Lame had agreed to give her a ride.
Dr. Mallory waited for her inside. “Hello, Rain. How was your week?”
Seriously? Seriously? Did the shrink really think she was going to walk in the door and just start spilling her guts? Well, good luck with that. “Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“I guess.”
“I was just about to pour myself a glass of tea. Can I get you one too?”
Rain wanted to refuse, but thirst stopped her. In fact, she was feeling light-headed.
“Sure. I guess.”
“I made some fresh this morning.” Instead of heading into her office, Dr. Mallory walked toward a door at the end of the hall and disappeared into a separate part of the house. Rain paused. Was she supposed to wait in the hall or what? Then Dr. Mallory called for her to come along, and so she followed the voice through the far doorway, walking past several packing cartons stacked in a hall and into another room, one that smelled of bacon and a hint of wood ash. It contained an oven, refrigerator, table, and sink, so it obviously was the kitchen, but it was unlike any Rain had ever seen. A huge fireplace dominated nearly an entire wall. The brick hearth was flanked by a wooden rocking chair on one side and an armchair upholstered in plaid on the other, the fabric so worn that the stuffing poked through in places. A dog bed in a green-and-blue plaid fabric that matched the chair was placed directly in front of the hearth. The wall adjacent to the fireplace contained shelves from floor to ceiling, each crammed with books. Piles of even more books were stacked on the floor. Rain had never seen so many books outside of the library. The extent of her parents’ book collection would fill one shelf.
“This was originally the living room, but years ago we converted it into the kitchen.” Dr. Mallory retrieved a container of iced tea from the refrigerator and took two tall tumblers down from an open shelf. “Do you take sugar?”
Rain nodded. “Why did you?”
“Why did we what?”
“Why did you switch rooms?”
“Well, it just made sense. My husband and I both liked to cook, and the original kitchen was tiny and dark, not a place you’d want to spend a lot of time in, so we decided to take this large room and turn it into the kitchen. One or two spoonfuls?”
“One.”
Dr. Mallory stirred in the sweetener. “So we took our old sitting room, a larger space with the fireplace, and turned it into this kitchen.” She handed the tea to Rain. “Here you go.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Switch rooms around like that.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought a kitchen had to stay a kitchen. I mean with the plumbing and everything.” The tea tasted faintly of mint and something citrus. Maybe orange.
“Oh, things can always be changed. That’s what Benji said.”
“Who’s Benji?”
“My husband. Benjamin.” She poured herself some tea, added sweetener. “He believed you could change almost anything. He’d say that the secret is first to get very clear on what you want, on what makes sense in your life, whether it’s a kitchen or a career, a garden or a relationship. Once you can visualize it, when you can see it plainly in your head, then you only have to put in the required time and effort to make it happen.”
Rain looked around the kitchen, tried to imagine her own parents turning a sitting room into a kitchen. “It must have been a lot of work.”
“Now that’s another thing Benji understood. How satisfying hard work can be. How rewarding in the end.” Dr. Mallory set her glass on the counter, crossed to one of the shelves, and reached for a framed photo that was braced against the books. She gazed at the image a moment, then handed it to Rain.
Even in the photograph, Rain could see the man was tall. Tall and handsome, with a slender build and white hair. He wore cream-colored pleated pants and a matching V-neck sweater and held an old-fashioned brimmed hat in one hand. Rain couldn’t imagine why he’d married the dwarf shrink. Something about the photograph stirred a meanness in her. “He’s very tall. He looks like some old movie star,” she said. She waited a beat, then added, “Oh, sorry. I mean that about calling him old.”
“Oh, no need to apologize. He was old when that photo was taken. Just a month before he passed.” She took back the frame and returned it to the shelf. “You know, Rain, you must never apologize for speaking a truth.”
Good luck with that. In her experience, telling the truth led to nothing but trouble.
“It’s how we speak a truth that is important. That and the intention behind it.”
“The intention?”
“Yes. Whether we mean to hurt another with our words. Honesty requires a measure of kindness with it.”
Rain’s cheeks warmed.
“I wish he could have met you,” Dr. Mallory continued. “He would have liked you.”
Right. I’m so sure. She knew better than to trust compliments.
“He would have, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, for openers, you’re smart. And feisty. Those are qualities he admired. And he’d like the way you question authority.”
“Yeah, well, a lot of people don’t think that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, it may make things tough right now, Rain, but in the long run, it will serve you well. Now let’s get you some more tea, and we’ll head into the office and talk about how I may be able to help you.”
Help. The cut on Rain’s thigh burned at the word.
They sat in the same seats they had chosen last time. Today there were peppermints in the copper bowl. The green vase held white peonies. As soon as Rain settled in the chair, the old spaniel stirred from beneath the desk and crossed to settle at Rain’s feet.
“He likes you,” Dr. Mallory said.
Again Rain felt the meanness rise in her. She looked around for a place to put her glass.
“Oh, just set it on the table,” Dr. Mallory said with no fuss about coasters or making water marks. She placed her own glass on the table by her side. “I guess school must end pretty soon.”
“Yeah. We have two more weeks and then we get out.”
“And what are your plans for the vacation?”
“Plans? Like what?”
“What are you going to do? Do you go to summer camp?”
Camp. Seriously. Just shoot me now. “No.”
“What do you usually do?”
Rain thought of the summer stretching out in front of her: hanging at the mall, sunning at the beach, endless arguments at home, her mother nagging her to help out around the house. It all seemed hugely pointless.
“Nothing much. Just hang out, I guess.”
“If you could do absolutely anything, what would it be?”
“Anything?”
“Yes. If you had a magic wand and could do anything, go anywhere this summer, what would it be?”
“Well, that’s a stupid question.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t go anywhere or do anything, so why think about it? It’s a colossal waste of time.”
Dr. Mallory reached for the candy bowl and offered it to Rain, who refused. “Daydreaming. Imagining. These are never a waste of time. It’s the rich territory that holds our deepest longings that can guide us to our daimon.”
“Our what?”
“Our daimon. It’s a word from the Greeks. It means our soul’s purpose. Our destiny. The expression of our gifts.”
Rain’s heart began to beat hard again.
“What do you want to do after high school? Beyond this town?”
“I don’t think about stuff like that.”
“Really? You seem like a person who would have a lot of dreams.”
She and Lucy used to talk about
a future, even imagined adventures they would take together. Once they had talked about going on a car trip around the country. Maybe to the Southwest. Lucy was the only one she had told the story about the tribe of Apache women hiding in the cave, their tears turning to stone. She had told Lucy about the different kinds of rocks. They found special ones and exchanged them, called them their Lucky Strike stones. Once Lucy’s parents had taken them on a day trip to Mount Tom, and when they were hiking they had found a shiny black stone. When she showed it to her grandfather, he’d told her it looked like babingtonite, which wasn’t really a stone. It was a mineral. And then he’d told her the difference between them. He’d also told her she and Lucy had happened to find the one mineral that was the official mineral of Massachusetts, and what were the odds of that. She still had the babingtonite, and it was the luckiest of all her Lucky Strike stones, even if it was really a mineral. They’d talked, too, of taking a trip to Europe after they graduated. “We can get a Eurail pass,” Lucy had said. “And stay at hostels.” As if Rain would ever be allowed to do that.
“Rain?”
“What?”
“What would you like to do with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you could be anything at all, what would it be? Just tell me the first three things that come to mind.”
Rain smirked. “The pope.” Geologist.
“Interesting.” Dr. Mallory reached for one of the red-striped candies and unwrapped it. “Close your eyes, Rain.”
Rain stared, open-eyed.
“Just for a minute. Good. Okay, think back to when you were ten. The ten-year-old Rain is lying on the ground staring at the sky. The grass is soft and your entire body feels supported. It’s warm; there is a little breeze, and it feels like a soft hand on your cheek. It is quiet. You are happy.”
In spite of her reluctance, Rain felt herself grow quiet, dreamy.
“You are imagining the future. You see your adult self.”
The spaniel snored. The clock on the bookshelf ticked off the minutes.
Rain opened her eyes. “This is bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Because just because we want something doesn’t mean we can get it or be it.”
The Halo Effect: A Novel Page 15
