“Sounds good. Nice to meet you,” Wilt said, moving down the hall.
Hughes placed his hand on the door’s handle and Clare took a step back. “Can I have a second?” she asked. “Before . . .” She motioned toward the room.
“Sure. I’ll wander down the hall a ways but if you need anything just call for me. I won’t be far.”
Hughes ambled away and Clare stood facing the door. She reached out to grasp the handle, her heart continuing its hurried rhythm. The floor felt as unsteady as a trampoline.
Steeling herself, Clare touched the handle. It was cold, and for a moment the present began to lapse into the past again. She counted the beats of her heart until everything felt solid once more, then opened the door and stepped into the room.
Chapter Thirteen
A single bed in the center of the room bathed in fluorescent light.
Clare kept one hand on the door handle, partially to retain a quick exit, mostly to steady herself. A woman occupied the bed. Her hair was snarled but clean. The neck and sleeves of the gown she wore exposed pale skin, almost translucent in the harsh light. Clare took in the shape of her face, the set of the eyes slowly tracking toward her, how her lips parted before she spoke.
“You’re here,” the woman said. Her voice was pitted, probably from disuse. She reached out and began to cry, delicate sobs wracking her.
Despite herself, Clare moved forward, brow furrowed so tightly her head began to ache. She looked down at the woman’s hand, stretching toward her as if she were drowning and Clare stood on dry land. “It’s me,” the woman said between hitches of emotion.
“I . . .” Clare glanced at the outstretched hand again and slowly took it. Her skin was warm, incongruent with her complexion. The woman gripped her fingers tightly. Part of her wanted to back out of the room and run away down the hall. Out of this hospital and town. Forget she’d ever been here. But another part wouldn’t allow it. She was locked there, robbed of volition by the familiarity the woman gave off like heat. Clare locked eyes with her. They stayed that way for seconds, years. She felt something struggling to break free in her chest as her vision swam with tears.
She drew her hand away. Took a step back. “I’m sorry, I just . . .”
“It’s me. Shanna. It’s me.”
At any second she expected the entire scene to come apart at its seams, a dream shredding to reveal the waking world beneath. But it remained intact, refracted by tears.
“I knew you’d come,” the woman whispered.
Clare tried to release some of the tumult taking place inside her, but couldn’t. A knot had formed deep in her chest and kept anything more than a few stuttered breaths from escaping.
A soft knock came from the doorway and Clare turned to see Hughes standing there. “Sorry, is everything okay?”
“It’s—” Clare began, but her voice broke as she looked at the woman again. All at once it was too much.
Clare moved past Hughes out of the room as the woman called out to her.
The hallway stretched into darkness that rushed up to meet her. She bit the inside of her mouth hard enough to draw blood and her vision cleared slightly. She had to get out of here. Away from the smell of disinfectant mixed with the odor of life succumbing to death. She made it to the elevators before Hughes caught up with her.
“Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It’s—I have to go.”
“What did she say?”
Clare punched the elevator button repeatedly. “She knew me. As soon as I walked in the door.”
“We didn’t tell her you were coming.” The doors opened and she stepped inside, quickly hitting the ground floor button. Hughes kept the doors from closing with one arm. “Do you recognize her?”
She stared at the floor. “I don’t know.” When Hughes didn’t move she looked up at him. “I have to go.”
He nodded after a second’s pause. “I’ll give you a call in the morning.”
The doors closed as he stepped away and she rode down, hurrying out of the lift on the ground floor.
Outside, the night had cooled into a fall crispness. Clare half walked, half ran to the rental and pulled her bag open in the backseat. She dug to the bottom and came up with a pill bottle, dry swallowing a Xanax she kept only for emergencies before settling into the driver’s seat and speeding out of the parking lot.
Town scrolled by in succession with her thoughts. She only noticed she’d left Sheen’s city limits when the streetlights faded and night took over completely, closing in like water in a miles-deep ocean trench. A frontage road appeared to the right and she pulled onto it, putting the car in park.
She gazed out the windshield at the cracked blacktop illuminated in the car’s headlights, seeing nothing. We didn’t tell her you were coming, Hughes had said. And yet the woman in the bed had known her the second she walked in. Could’ve been part of the ruse, she thought, beginning to drum the steering wheel while counting each beat of her fingers. Maybe this woman had tracked her down somehow, seen current pictures from one of her lectures.
So what was that feeling when you saw her lying in the hospital bed? The voice in her head let the question hang. Clare replayed the moment over and over, trying to recreate it perfectly. Her initial reaction was undeniable.
Recognition.
The woman looked familiar. More than that, she looked how Clare had imagined Shanna if she’d lived. The simpleness and vulnerability Shanna had exuded when she was a child hung about the woman in the same way. Even the few minutes Clare had spent with her was enough to recognize it.
Every rational cell in her body raged against the notion. It wasn’t possible. Wasn’t logical or sane to think her sister was alive. That she’d been in the same room with her, touched her hand.
The pill was doing its job. Already she felt a sense of calm beginning to round off the edges of her panic. The urge to flee lessened and she put the car into gear again, turning back in the direction of town.
As she drove, searching for a decent hotel to spend the night, the cries of the woman claiming to be Shanna came back to her. She’d heard her clearly while fleeing the room but only now did they sink in, their meaning gaining weight exponentially.
Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me again.
Chapter Fourteen
The hotel was called the River Wood Inn, its kitschy nature name synonymous with so many other establishments in the northern Midwest.
Clare paid for two nights at the front desk beside a yawning fireplace and climbed one set of dual staircases sweeping to the second floor from the lobby.
Room 206. Clean bathroom. Full-length mirror across from the queen bed, and heavy drapes over windows looking down on an undeveloped lot behind the building. She sent a text to Eric letting him know she was settling in for the night and took a long shower, letting the hot water work on the tightness between her shoulder blades. Fifteen minutes later she lay in the bed’s embrace, too much space to either side of her. The mini bar called out from the corner of the room but she ignored it. She wanted clean, uninterrupted sleep tonight. A clear head for what might come in the morning.
Her phone buzzed. Eric returning her text.