Fade

She looks at her hands. Flexes her fingers. Sees them, their wrinkly knuckles and short fingernails. The way they bend and straighten. And then she looks around the room.

Takes off her glasses.

Thinks hard and knows the answer already. The dreams, the headaches, Miss Stubin’s gnarled hands and blind eyes. Janie’s own failing eyesight. Janie knew.

Knew it for a while now.

She just didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to believe it.

Maybe Cabel knows already, she thinks. His stupid eye charts. Maybe that’s really why he needs a break. He knows she’s falling apart. And he can’t handle one more problem with Janie.

Janie is so stunned she cannot cry anymore.

She grabs her car keys and rushes to the door before she remembers.

Miss Stubin killed three people in a car crash because of a dream.

Janie looks at Ethel through the window, and then slowly she falls down to the floor, sobbing as her world comes to an end.

She doesn’t get up.

No.

Not that night.

March 25, 2006, 8:37 a.m.

Janie is still on the floor in the living room, near the front door. Her mother steps over her once, twice, unalarmed, disappearing again into the dark recesses of her bedroom. She’s seen Janie asleep on the floor before.

Janie doesn’t move when there is a knock on the door. A second knock, more urgent, does nothing to her.

And then words.

“Don’t make me break open the door, Hannagan.” Janie lifts her head. Squints at the door handle. “It’s not locked,” she says dully, although she tries to be respectful.

And Captain is there, in Janie’s living room, and somehow, in the small house, she looks so much bigger to Janie.

“What’s going on, Janie?” Captain asks, alarm growing on her face as she sees Janie on the floor.

Janie shakes her head and says in a thin, bewildered voice, “I think I’m dying, sir.”

Janie sits up. She can feel the carpet pattern indented deep in her cheek.

It feels like Cabel’s nubbly burns. “I was going to go see you yesterday,” she says, looking at the keys on the floor next to her. “I was going out the door, and then it all hit me. The driving. And the everything. And I just…” She shakes her head. “I’m going blind, sir.

Just like Miss Stubin.”

Captain stands, quiet. Waits patiently for Janie to explain. Holds her hand out to Janie. Pulls her up, and embraces her. “Talk to me,” Captain says gently.

And Janie, who ran out of tears hours ago, makes new ones and cries on Captain’s shoulder, telling her everything about the contents of the green notebook. Letting Captain read it herself. Captain squeezes Janie tightly when the sobs come again.

After a while Janie is quiet. She looks around for something to use to wipe Captain’s coat, and there is nothing. There is always nothing at Janie’s house.

“Did you call into school for your absence yet?”

“Shit.”

“No problem. I’ll do it now. Does your mother go by Mrs. Hannagan?

I don’t want the office staff to know that I know you.” Janie shakes her head. “No, not ‘Mrs.,’” she says. “Just go with Dorothea Hannagan.” When Captain hangs up the phone, Janie says,

“How did you know to come?”

She scowls. “Cabel called me. Said you didn’t show up at school, wondered if I’d heard from you. I guess he tried calling your cell phone.”

So I have to disappear in order to get him to call me. Janie doesn’t say anything. She wants, with all her heart, to ask Captain why Cabel won’t speak to her. But Janie knows better than to do that. So all she says is, “That was thoughtful.”

And then she thinks for a moment. “Did you suspect this? Did Miss Stubin tell you any of this?”

“I knew something was bothering you after you called me a few weeks ago, but I didn’t know what. Miss Stubin was a very private person, Janie. She didn’t speak much about herself, and I didn’t ask. It wasn’t my place.”

“Do you think Cabel knows?”

“Have you thought about asking him?”

Janie glances up to read her face. Bites her quivering lip to still it.

“We’re not exactly on speaking terms right now.” Captain sighs. “I gathered that.” Carefully she says, “Cabel has his own demons, and if he doesn’t get on with killing them soon, I’m going to kick his ass. He’s having trouble dealing with some things right now.”

Janie shakes her head. “I don’t understand.” Captain is silent. “Maybe you should ask him. Tell him what you’re going through too.”

“Why? So that when I tell him I’m going to be a blind cripple, he’ll never want to come near me again?”

Captain smiles ruefully. “I can’t predict the future, Janie. But I doubt a few physical ailments would turn him off, if you know what I mean.

But nobody says you have to tell him, either.” She pauses. “You look like you could use some breakfast. Let’s go for a ride, Janie,” she says.

Janie looks down at herself, rumpled in her clothes from yesterday.

“Sure, why not,” she says. She takes a few minutes to brush through her hair, and she looks in the mirror. Looks at her eyes.

Captain takes Janie to Ann Arbor. They stop for breakfast at Angelo’s, where Captain apparently knows everybody in the place, including Victor, the short-order cook. Victor himself delivers a feast to their table. Janie, not having eaten since lunch the day before, wolfs down the meal gratefully.