“Clever because Hennessy’s clever and because I take a daily vitamin.”
“Whatever.” Matthew sounded disappointed.
“I don’t think your brother dreamt himself an idiot brother,” she said. But somehow this made her think about how she was missing the memories of Jay. She’d always thought of herself as identical to Hennessy, apart from the dreaming, but it was obvious that she wasn’t. She didn’t think Ronan had dreamt his brother to be an idiot, but perhaps he had dreamt him to be lovable. Perhaps Hennessy had dreamt Jordan without those memories on purpose.
“Oh, there you are!” Sherry said. She held the hand of the little girl Matthew had waved at earlier. The suspicious nanny stood in the hallway behind her, holding the baby from the stroller.
“Sorry to wander,” Jordan said.
“I had to pee,” Matthew said with a little laugh, and because he was Matthew, Sherry laughed with him. Jordan didn’t think he was as guileless as he feared; it was a solid deception.
“And while looking for the bathroom I saw this couch,” Jordan said, gesturing to the chaise Matthew was on. “And I just think it’s even more what we’re looking for. The lighting through this window will do so much work for us. You have a great eye.”
Sherry lit up. “I bought that couch last year! I thought it was special. I’m so glad.”
They’d gotten away with it.
Jordan and Matthew busied themselves. Matthew retrieved the garment bag from the other room and made such a noise of surprise at the massive period dresses inside when he opened it that Sherry and her daughter both laughed at him. Jordan posed the daughter and began to take reference shots, and as she did, Matthew told Sherry jokes. Eventually Matthew got Sherry so cheery that Jordan persuaded her to try on the other period dress and posed her together with her daughter on the chaise. The single portrait became a double, which increased the price by a third and also made it more interesting by far.
She and Matthew were actually a pretty good team, she thought, as they accepted the deposit from Sherry and retreated from the church.
On the sidewalk, Jordan folded over some of the bills to Matthew.
“Is this pity money?” Matthew said suspiciously.
“What does that mean?”
“I dunno, to make me feel like I was a grown-up.”
“You did a job; I’m paying you for the job. Don’t get a complex. I know that’s what Lynch brothers seem to do, but try to avoid it.”
He sighed. “Thanks, then. For back there, too.”
The dreaminess. She’d forgotten how bad the episodes could be, how quickly they could come on. She’d forgotten how she’d been in the middle of one when Declan realized she was a dream. She’d forgotten why she had understood why it would drive him away. No one wanted to be the only man left awake.
Ordinarily a dreamy episode would have defeated Jordan’s mood for the rest of the day, but she found her mood was still as light as it had been before. This was why she was here in Boston. This was why she was searching underneath the beds of strangers. This was why she had bought yet another ticket to the Gardner. She was finding a sweetmetal. She was getting a sweetmetal. She was staying awake. She was staying awake long enough to become great.
Ronan Lynch still remembered the best dream he’d ever had. It was an old dream now, two years old. Maybe a little less. In the divide of before his father’s death and after, it was After. It was also After his mother’s death. It was Before Harvard. Before Bryde.
By the time this one showed up, Ronan had a pretty long list of good dreams. Most of them were from Before, and most of them, like many good dreams, were wish fulfillment. There were the usual valuable-possession dreams: opening a bedroom door to discover that the mattress had been replaced by a very expensive trendy sound system. There were dreams of impossible abilities: flying, speeding, long jumps, one-two punches that knocked intruders clear into next year. Sex dreams ranked well, depending on the players involved (they could just as easily slide into nightmare territory). Places of unreal beauty often made the list—rocky green islands, clear blue lakes, flower-busy fields.
And of course there were the ones where he had his family back.
“What would you do if you accidentally brought your mother back?” Adam had asked one evening before he’d left for Harvard. “If you woke up with another Aurora, would you keep her?”
“I’m not in the mood for word problems,” Ronan had replied.
“You’ve thought about it, surely.”
Of course he had. The ethics of replacing his father were clear enough—copying a real person was no bueno—but Aurora had already been a dream, which made the waters murkier. He wouldn’t have been content with a dreamt copy, but Matthew might be. Could he end Matthew’s grieving with another mother? Spare Declan the effort of raising Matthew by providing another mother? Did it do a disservice to his real mother’s memory, even if she was already a dream? What if he did it wrong? What if he brought back a copy identical except for one fatal flaw? An Aurora with a disinterest in loving Matthew. An Aurora who didn’t age. An Aurora who aged too fast. An Aurora with a desire to eat human flesh. What then, what then?
“I hadn’t,” Ronan lied. He didn’t lie, especially to Adam, but he wanted the conversation to be over.
“What if you brought another me back? What would you do with the extra Adam?” Adam asked, curious. Unbothered. He wasn’t squeamish and, in any case, it was just a thought exercise to him. His dreams weren’t going to cough up another Ronan.
But Ronan’s dreams might. He’d lost sleep over this question, wondering if he truly had it in him to kill an unwanted dreamt human. He’d learned to kill in his dreams, of course. The second he realized he didn’t have enough control to prevent unwanted manifestation, he took down everyone in sight, and he’d accordingly woken with his share of corpses. But killing a dream after he’d woken? Killing them once they were real? That felt like a dangerous line to cross.
“It’s not going to happen,” Ronan had said, “so it doesn’t matter.”
“I think you ought to assume it’s going to happen at some point and make a plan,” Adam said.
“It’s not going to happen,” Ronan repeated.
But the threat had lodged inside him, and now dreams had to be unpopulated to land on the very good dream list. He could risk no more Matthews. No Auroras. Not even any little Opals, who was slightly more creature than human. It was too weighty.
So, the best dream. This was what happened in the best dream. Ronan was in a car. It was a beautiful car. Beautiful in appearance—long, gleaming hood, glistening black wheels, glaring headlights with teeth-bared matte grill—and also in sound—engine heaving with power, exhaust growling with urgency. Every detail Ronan could see was art. Metal and wood, bone and vines. It was one of those dream objects that didn’t entirely make sense according to waking-world rules.
The car was already in motion when the dream began. Ronan was driving it. He could see himself in the rearview mirror. He was older, this Ronan in the mirror, his jaw was more squared and stubbled. He wore something leather and cool.
He didn’t know where he was coming from; the dream wasn’t interested in that. The dream was interested in where the car was going, and this was where the car was going: through a chain-link fence. Across cardboard boxes and plastic containers and toys. Over another little car in the middle of the asphalt, tires disintegrating the other car’s rear window as it went. It drove through a sign for a mattress store. Flattened an inflatable snowman in front of another store. Clipped a billboard, sending it all crashing down behind it.