“Cassie would never go for it,” she said.
“Yes, she will. We already talked about it,” Cliff said. “I told Cassie I couldn’t stay in the house without you, that I wanted to go back to Maine. Cassie agreed, but she told me not to give up on finding you. And I hadn’t. But I was scared.”
Michelle wasn’t sure about the plan—or Cliff.
*****
On Mondays and Thursdays Michelle helped Darcy at the store. Michelle told her sister the same story she’d told Cliff and Cassie. She wondered if the knot would always tighten in her chest when she recounted the lie. Or would the story eventually feel like truth?
One afternoon Michelle was reading by the pool. Cassie stepped out onto the patio in her yellow bathing suit, a Coke can in one hand, the cordless phone in the other. “Mom, for you.”
Michelle didn’t want to answer any more questions. A reporter from the Atlanta Globe called several times a day wanting Michelle’s story. “People love to read about stories of survival,” the woman told Michelle. “It gives them hope.” Cliff handled most of the calls, dismissing them with promises of future interviews.
“They’ll forget about it by the end of the week, when the next big story breaks,” Cliff had assured her. She hoped he was right.
Michelle took the phone from Cassie. “Hello?”
The woman on the other end introduced herself as Lulu Martin. Michelle got up and went into the house, leaving Cassie on the patio. Michelle hurried into the dining room and sat in one of the chairs. Lulu said she was calling because of Pink Souder, explaining that she was his mother’s best friend.
“I know who you are,” Michelle said.
She could hear Lulu’s breathing, but the woman fell silent.
“Pink is in the hospital,” she finally told Michelle. “He had a nervous breakdown.”
Lulu asked Michelle to recount everything that happened so that maybe she could help Pink. Michelle told her every detail she could recall, from the moment Cliff went down the mountain in search of the light to the evening of the snowstorm; the faceless people, Pink showing up at the cabin with the sheriff, and about Pink seeing Cliff—who was supposed to be dead.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle said. “Mrs. Souder warned me, but I couldn’t stand to see him suffer that night. It was awful.”
Lulu assured her it wasn’t her fault. “If anybody’s to blame, it’s Mattie, Ida, and me. But there is nothing to be done about that now. I’m sorry you were involved.”
Lulu gave Michelle her phone number and told her to call if she needed to talk and apologized for any trouble it may have caused Michelle’s family.
“Is Pink going to be okay?” Michelle asked.
“He’s doing better . . . but he’s still confused. I’m picking him up from the hospital in the morning. He’s going to stay with me for a while. He has no family here anymore.”
“Lulu,” Michelle said, uncomfortable with what she was about to share with the old woman. “I don’t know how to tell you . . . you’re dead in Pink’s reality. He won’t . . .”
“We’ve already been through that,” she said. “It set off another episode for Pink, but he seems okay with it now . . . maybe because he knows they’ll release him from the hospital if he can accept it.”
After hanging up, Michelle stared at the floor, the events of the past week wheeling through her, a dizzying spin of emotions and images.
“Mom?” Cassie said.
Michelle turned to see Cassie standing in the doorway to the dining room. She didn’t know how long Cassie had been standing there, but her arms were folded across her chest as if she were cold and her eyes were caught beneath a swell of tears.
“Hey, baby, are you okay?” Michelle stood to hug her daughter.
“Is it true? What you told that woman on the phone?”
The buoyancy Michelle had felt a moment earlier relaying everything to Lulu flattened under a surge of humiliation. Her skin tingled.
Michelle hugged her closer. Cassie felt like clay in her arms, no bones in her body.
“I can’t explain it, Cassie,” Michelle said. “I only know what I think happened. Do you understand? I don’t know if any of it is true. That’s what scares me.”
Cassie held her tighter.
“Does Dad know?” Cassie asked.
“No.”
Chapter 42
A week later, amidst a maelstrom of fears, nightmares, and anxieties, Michelle called Cliff and told him she wanted to sell the cabin. She was having difficulty focusing—her dreams and memories shaping every waking thought. The energy of the cabin pulled at her constantly, a nagging and persistent thread running through each and every day. Even sleep provided no solace. Her dreams spewed up ghastly images of people shot through the head, or buried up to their neck in snow, or frozen to death. Or the reoccurring figure in black, its face hidden by the shadow of a large hood, coming toward her like death itself. She awoke crying out, sweating, afraid to drift back into sleep. Perhaps by severing all ties with their mountain retreat, she might orient herself back in her own existence.
Cliff agreed without hesitation to selling the cabin. He could not see going back up there either. “Too many ghosts,” he said. He’d meant it metaphorically, but for Michelle, the ghosts were real, always there.
“Michelle, I don’t want to push you . . . but . . . could we talk about us this weekend?”
Michelle was relieved Cliff hadn’t fought her when she’d suggested he find his own apartment for a while, but he brought up their marriage every time they spoke. “I need time, Cliff,” Michelle said. “It would be so helpful if you could just not bring it up for now.”
That night, the woman in the lavender gown came in Michelle’s dreams, her lips moving. Michelle strained to hear what she was saying, but there was no sound. Some nights a black panther stalked Michelle, moving ever closer, Michelle and the animal linked on some tangential plane of existence, revolving against a stationary landscape, changing, fading, aging. She woke up screaming.
“Mom,” Cassie said, shaking her. “It’s just a dream.”
Just a dream. Michelle trembled. She thought her eyes were open, but for a few seconds, even though she knew she was in bed, she could see only the panther. She looked at the clock. Three thirty-three in the morning. It was black outside. They sat quietly, Cassie with her arms around Michelle’s shoulders. Her breathing came back slowly, sinking into her lungs like something foreign, slipping deeper until rooted once again in her diaphragm, filling, emptying, a million near-deaths a day.