On Thursday morning Terri finally whispered, “You’re talking to him in your sleep.” Martin looked up from his coffee.
“What?”
“You keep saying… things.” The kitchen suddenly seemed smaller.
Terri just turned her head slow, looking through the window. At nothing. “You need to talk to someone.”
“I don’t need a therapist.” Martin frowned.
She said it quietly. “Maybe you need a priest.”
He laughed, a surprised bark. Turning from the window, Terri went outside.
He ordered pizza. He answered emails. He sat on the deck with exactly two beers and watched the trees instead of the water. Thunder boomed. Martin sat up, heart against his ribs. It was raining. His boy was gone.
Next to him, Terri snored softly, drugged and distant. Rain ticked against the windows. The digital clock glowed 3:14.
Three weeks since the funeral. He guessed right about now it was time for dreams to start. Bedroom door was open a crack. Red sneaker in the opening. He blinked. Sneaker gone, door closed. Martin knew it was grief.
Terri never said otherwise, but Martin caught her staring sometimes. Wondering how a father loses a child in water shallow enough to stand in.
She left before a month had passed. Martin drank for the next two weeks. He called the office, making arrangements for someone to run his business while he took some time off.
Morning light poured through the cabin windows. Dry walls. Silent floorboards. Living at the lake house, Terri in the townhouse, nobody home in the burbs. Grilling on the deck. He never looked at the lake.
Terri would never stay here. But also would never sell. Probably return one last time before she dies. Martin cried. Red sneaker floating.
That night the power failed just after midnight. The cabin sank in darkness. No hum of the fridge. No lamps from neighboring houses through the trees. Just rain and wind.
It was the phone that woke Martin. Terri was leaving a voice message in the dark.
3:14
Terri sounds… thoughtful. Like, maybe reconsidering. Sympathetic. Hesitant. Possibly drinking. Ambien maybe. Pause.
“I think Detective Barnes may be on the way over there.”
She sounds like she wants to say I Love You. A breath or two.
Click.
Went the sound of Martin’s mind. He sat on the edge of the bed, chest tight. He heard it then. Like a wet cough.
From below.
He never went in the basement. The unfinished room always bothered his son.
Martin reached the doorway, somehow. The bulb downstairs flickered weakly. Cold mineral air breathed up the stairs. He could feel him. But not yet.
He closed the door and sat up.
Wait.
He was in the lake, sitting near the edge, facing the cabin. It watched him from the darkness. This is the view, he thought. They were right here. The first second he heard the phone. He’d looked at the house. Not his son.
By the time he looked back, Daryl was a red sneaker.
Inside, the phone began to ring again.
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