Eve - Iris Johansen [77]
She froze in shock.
“You don’t believe me. How could you? Okay, I dreamed about a little girl, red curly hair, hazel eyes. She was a toddler in the first dream. Happy, smiling … It made me feel … I don’t know. But I could hold on to her. I didn’t drift away. She saved me.”
“How … often did you have that dream?” she asked unevenly.
“Every night, I think. Sometimes I didn’t know whether it was night or day. I’d just close my eyes, and she’d be there. She seemed to get older … and she’d talk to me.”
“About what?”
He shook his head. “Just things. Once she was starting school and was excited. Sometimes she’d sing me songs that she’d learned. One song she liked a lot. Something about all the pretty little horses. Other times she’d just sit and smile at me. I think she knew when I was too bad off to talk to her.”
“All the Pretty Little Horses”? How often had Eve sung that song to Bonnie? Dear God, she had sung it to her the night before Bonnie was taken. She asked unsteadily, “And she told you her name was Bonnie?”
“No, after a while I just knew.” He paused. “Just as I knew she was a part of you. And of me.”
“Are you lying to me, John?” Her voice was shaking. “If you are, may you burn in hell.”
“I was burning in hell. I knew I was going crazy. The only thing that kept me sane was that little kid who sang and smiled and never once asked me one question about where I was or what was happening to me. Because she knew that I could never answer her.”
She closed her eyes to keep back the tears. “When did the dreams stop?”
“About a month after I reached Tokyo. I was still in the hospital fighting fever and raving with delusions. Then she wasn’t there any longer. I tried to tell myself that she was just part of the craziness. But I knew she was real. I’d heard of weird stuff happening in wartime. Wives visiting husbands at the front, telling them things … stuff like that. Astral projection they call it. But it wasn’t like that. She was there, she was real. She was … mine. I got scared. I had to make sure that she wasn’t a delusion, too. Because that would mean that I was truly insane. After they released me, I went back to Atlanta. You’d moved from the old housing development to a house on Morningside.”
“Yes, I wanted Bonnie out of the projects.”
“It was a pretty house, old, but pink geraniums were hanging from the front porch. I stayed across the street and watched until she came home from school. She was wearing a gold plaid top and jeans and some kind of sparkly fairy barrette to hold back her hair. You came out to the bus stop to meet her, and you took her hand. You smiled down at her, and I knew that you both were going to be all right. You were going to college, your mother was straightened out, and you loved that kid. You were going to have everything you ever wanted. You certainly didn’t need me. I was sick and half-crazy, and I’d have been more of a burden than the child I’d given you.”
“No, I didn’t need you,” she said unevenly. “But I wouldn’t have sent you away.”
“Pity?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have taken it. Besides, I had a place to go. Queen and his buddies had a dozen jobs waiting for me overseas.” He added bitterly, “I was in demand. So I left Atlanta and didn’t come back to the U.S. for over three years. You know what happened during those three years. She was kidnapped about a month after I saw her and I didn’t even know until I’d returned to the country. Do you know how often I’ve wished that I’d gone up to you that day at Morningside? Maybe I could have done something, stopped it.”
Eve could feel his pain, deep, ragged, vibrating in the darkness. “She disappeared right before our eyes,” Eve said unsteadily. “One minute she was there, the next she was gone. Lost in the crowd at that park. Could you have done more than Sandra or me?”
“I don’t know. Life’s funny. Sometimes you move a piece, and everything changes. It’s a question that has haunted me.”
“It haunts all of us. It took me a long time, but now I accept that it’s the man who killed her who is to blame,