"I,m going to get better at all this, I swear."
"Okay, listen to me. We were going to send the nurse up there with the shot, but if you like, I can contact this doctor in Santa Rosa and arrange for her to give it to you tomorrow morning, when you visit this boy. I could strike up a conversation with her, and if there is anything I know that would be of use to her, anything that I,m willing to share, that is, well, let,s just see what develops."
"Mom, that would be perfect. You are my peach of a mother. But does this mean it,s actually been twenty-eight days since that night?"
It seemed a century had passed; his life had been so completely altered. And it had only been twenty-eight days.
"Yes, Reuben, that,s when my beloved son, Reuben Golding, disappeared and you took his place."
"Mamma, I adore you. I will somehow in time answer all questions and solve all problems and bring harmony back to the world we share."
She laughed. "Now that does sound like my Baby Boy."
She rang off.
He was standing beside the car.
A strange feeling came over him, unpleasant but not terrible. He imagined a future, in a flash, in which he was sitting with his mother in front of the fire in the great room at Nideck Point and he was telling her everything. He imagined their speaking to one another in intimate tones, and that he shared this thing with her, and she welcomed it, and enfolded him with her expertise, her knowledge, her unique intuition.
There was no Dr. Akim Jaska in this little world, or anybody else. Just him and Grace. Grace knew, Grace understood, Grace would help him grasp what was happening to him, Grace would be there.
But that was impossible, rather like imagining angels over his bed in the dark at night, guarding him, with wings that arched to the rafters.
And when he imagined his mother in this tete-a-tete, she took on a sinister coloration that terrified him. There was a malevolent gleam in her eye in his mind, and her face was half in shadow.
He shuddered.
That could never be.
This was a secret thing, and could be shared perhaps with Felix Nideck, and always, and forever, as long as that might be, with Laura. But not with anyone else ... except perhaps that chipper, bright-eyed boy with the freckles and the grin who was upstairs now healing miraculously. Time to go home, home to Laura, home to Nideck Point. Never had it seemed so like a refuge.
He found Laura in the kitchen making a large salad. She said one of the things she did when she was worried was make a large salad.
She,d rinsed and dried the romaine lettuce with paper towels. She had a large square wooden bowl rubbed with oil and with freshly cut garlic. The smell of the garlic was tantalizing.
Now she broke the lettuce into crisp bite-sized pieces, and she tossed the pieces in olive oil till they were glistening. There was quite a pile of these bits of lettuce, glistening.
She gave the wooden spoons to Reuben and asked him to toss the lettuce slowly. Then she put the finely chopped green onions in and the herbs, taking out pinches of each herb - oregano, thyme, basil - and rubbing each pinch between her hands as she sprinkled it over the salad. The herbs clung perfectly to the glistening leaves. Then she added the wine vinegar and Reuben tossed more and then she served up this salad with sliced avocados and thin sliced tomatoes, and soft warm French bread from the oven, and they ate it together.
The sparkling water in the crystal glasses looked like champagne.
"Feel better?" he asked. He,d eaten the largest plate of salad he,d ever been served in his life.
She said yes. She was eating daintily, looking now and then at her freshly polished silver fork. She said she,d never seen silver like this old silver, so heavily and deeply carved.
He stared out the window at the oaks.
"What,s wrong?" she asked.
"What isn,t?" he asked. "Want to know something terrible? I,ve lost track completely of how many people I,ve killed. I have to get a pen and paper and make a count. I don,t know how many nights it,s been either, I mean how many nights I,ve been changing. I have to make a count of that. And I have to write, write in a secret diary, all the little things I,ve been noticing."
Strange thoughts were running through his mind. He knew he couldn,t continue this way. It was virtually impossible. He wondered what it would be like to be in a foreign land, a lawless land where there was evil to hunt in hills and valleys, where no one kept track of the number you killed or how many nights you did it. He thought of vast cities like Cairo and Bangkok and Bogota, and of vast countries with endless tracts of land and forest.
After a while, he said:
"That boy. Stuart. I think he,s going to make it. I mean he,s not going to die. Whatever else will happen I don,t know. I can,t know. If only I could talk to Felix. I,m putting too much hope on talking to Felix."
"He,ll come back," she said.
"I want to remain here tonight. I want to stay indoors. I don,t want the change to come. Or if it does, I want to be alone with it in the forest, the way I was in Muir Woods that night when I met you."
"I understand," she said. "And you,re afraid, afraid that you can,t control it. I mean that you won,t stay here alone with it."
"I never even tried," he said. "That,s shameful. I have to try. And I have to go back down to Santa Rosa in the morning."
It was already getting dark. The last rays of the western sun had vanished from the forest and the deep dark blue shadows were broadening and thickening. The rain came, light, shimmering beyond the panes.
After a while, he went into the library and called the Santa Rosa hospital. The nurse said Stuart was running a high fever, but was otherwise "holding his own."
He had a text from Grace. The final rabies shot had been set up with Dr. Angie Cutler, Stuart,s doctor, for tomorrow morning at ten o,clock.
The night had closed in around the house.
He stared at the large photograph of the gentlemen on the wall - at Felix, at Margon Sperver, at all of them, gathered there against the tropical forest. Were they all beasts like him? Did they all gather to hunt together, to exchange secrets? Or was Felix actually the only one?
I suspect Felix Nideck was betrayed.
What could that have meant? That Abel Nideck had somehow plotted his uncle,s demise, even somehow collected money for it, and kept this knowledge from his devoted daughter Marchent?
Vainly, Reuben searched the Internet for the living Felix Nideck, but could find nothing. But what if, in returning to Paris, Felix had reentered another identity, at which Reuben couldn,t even guess?
The evening news said that Stuart,s stepfather had been released on bail. Taciturn police admitted to reporters that he was "a person of interest," not a suspect in the case. Stuart,s mother was protesting that her husband was innocent.