Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [33]
When she reached the plateau with its clearing, she glanced about. It was just land. It was just nature. There was no sign that someone had been murdered there.
No marker.
“Goodbye, Hut,” she said out loud. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry we couldn’t die together someday when we were old and ready for it. I’ll take care of Matt and Livy and make sure they never forget their father. I know I never will.”
And then, she walked back down the path to the car.
5
“You look good,” Mel said as they jogged the perimeter road along the lake.
“It’s all the dirty dreams,” Julie said, huffing and puffing as she tried to forget the slight pain in her left shin.
“That usually does it for me.”
“I dreamed the other night that three strange men were just licking my toes. I felt kind of dirty, but I woke up laughing.”
“That’s so filthy it sounds almost clean,” Mel laughed. “They call that a shrimp job.”
“What?”
“Toe sucking.”
“Shiver me timbers,” Julie said. “I’ll never order a shrimp cocktail again. I never had dreams like this before. It’s a little disturbing.” They came to a stop when they reached the small strip of brown beach at the lakefront along the dip in the road.
Mel lit up a cigarette. “Better toe-licking dreams than the kind where you’re falling off a cliff, sez me.”
Julie chuckled, catching her breath, trying not to remember the bad parts of the dreams. “I had one dream where…well, I kid you not, I was watching a man having sex with a woman, and when he, well, you know, when it got down there, three uncircumcised penises came out of her…between her legs.”
“Oh my God,” Mel said. “That is the single most perverted thing I’ve ever heard. No wonder you see a therapist. And the best part is they’re uncircumcised.” Mel sucked back on the cigarette, and then exhaled a smoky laugh. “I never have dirty dreams. I wish I did.”
Julie decided not to tell her sister that the man in the dream was Hut, and the woman was some red-haired young woman she’d never before seen except in a video of Matt’s. Instead, she said, “God, this is the first day I’ve really smelled how good summer is. I can smell jasmine and honeysuckle. And the lake. Even it stinks good. I haven’t noticed much of anything in weeks.”
“You’re getting back to life,” Mel said. “That’s great. I was getting a little worried. Now, tell me another dirty dream.”
6
By the middle of June, she had received the first life insurance check, and it had a lot of zeros after the three. She hated looking at that check, but she needed the money and thought how wonderful Hut had been to get such a major policy even when she had argued against it. She cried thinking about this, and felt guilty for not being a good enough wife, and that ate up a large chunk of a day. The check took care of some immediate problems, including paying off most of the mortgage, and since she felt the kids should have her for the summer, she called in some favors and got a few months leave—until at least the end of September—so that she wouldn’t be in the ER. She hadn’t really accomplished much in her few days back at work since Hut’s death anyway—they’d put her behind a desk and everyone had just watched her like she was the living dead. Livy still had nightmares about seeing someone in her room, and Eleanor told Julie it was perfectly normal for a little girl to have dreams like that after losing her father. “I bet you’ve had some nightmares, too,” Eleanor said in one of their therapy sessions.
In July, in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, in her therapist’s office, Julie leaned back, sinking into the cushy chair.
Eleanor had that look of God on her face. Julie thought of it as “God,” because Eleanor projected a calming presence that made Julie want to open up about everything. She was a beautiful, radiant woman—overweight, but her girth only added to the Mother Earth aspect of her personality. She had once told Eleanor that she reminded her of her mother—a younger version of