The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [163]
“So you think he was possessed, too?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He gave her a gentle smile. “I don’t know.” He looked down at their hands, knotted together. “When we moved out here, after he left rehab, I worried about him spending so much time alone down in the gazebo. At first I just talked about moving it back where it belonged—keeping to myself that it would be easier to keep an eye on him if it was closer to the house. He was all for it. Eventually, I finally asked him why he enjoyed it so much. Was it all the memories or the view or whatever? He said it made him feel quiet inside.” He looked at her. “That’s what you said. Before you fainted, you said it made you feel quiet inside, like when you hear my voice.”
“It does.” She nodded. “You do.”
Moved and pleased, he smiled. After a moment he looked away to retrieve his thoughts. “Oliver asked if I thought it was possible that Mom might be reaching out to him there. He said sometimes he had that feeling—not in a creepy, scary way, just sort of a caring, watching-over-him way—but trusting his own emotions wasn’t something he was real good at yet, not with any certainty. Like I’d know anything about things like that,” he said, glancing at her again. “But I’d vowed I’d never blow him off again, so I suggested we both look into it, together. It was . . .” He broke off, searching for the right word. “Great. On so many levels. We went together and talked to priests and rabbis and ministers, a Buddhist monk and a couple of philosophy professors. A psychic. Anyone we thought of, we talked to. But best of all, we talked to each other. All the time. And not just about this. Everything. Girls. Cars. The company. Going back to school eventually. Video games. You name it. I loved it. I—” He stopped abruptly and glanced away, frowning.
“What?”
“I thought I was getting to know him again. He was getting to know me. Trust me.” He looked back at her. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what went wrong. And I know . . . I know I shouldn’t wish this on someone I care about, but there’s a part of me that hopes you are possessed, that it’s Oliver, and . . .” He blew out a breath. “Why won’t he talk to me? Why won’t he let me in?”
She didn’t know any more than he did. Not for sure. But this kettle of fish had been brewing on her front burner for a long time, and it was finally showing signs of a boil....
“I think I might have a theory on that.”
NINE
“What if . . .” She couldn’t believe she was going to say it out loud; couldn’t even look him in the eye as if she were serious. “What if the gazebo is their heaven?”
She held her breath, and when he didn’t speak, she peeked at him—he was patiently waiting for more.
“What if those few minutes, there in the gazebo with a small Oliver and you at thirteen, on your way fishing, is their perfect, heavenlike moment, the one they wouldn’t mind spending eternity in?” He was still listening. “What if they won’t let you join them because it isn’t your time, you’re not dead yet? And Oliver can’t talk to you directly because . . . well, it isn’t part of that scene? I mean, he can talk to me because I’m not a part of it. I’m looking in from the other side.” Now he was thinking about it and she got bolder. “What if you couldn’t hear what Oliver was saying to me in the dream because you were on the wrong side of the gazebo? What if you were on my side with me?”
That was one step too far, he looked up frowning and confused—she’d lost him.
“I tried to get to you. I wanted to. But I couldn’t even drop my fishing gear. I had no control.”
“No, I know. In a dream you don’t, you can’t control it. Not in ordinary dreams.”
“Ordinary dreams.”
She nodded. “The kind we generate on our own, from our own subconscious, that neither one of us has had in several months.” She watched dawn break in his eyes. “Oliver’s been controlling our dreams. Mine