Things went downhill from there. Brice led me into his bunker and showed me his cork wall of newspaper articles that dated back to the 1947 Roswell crash cover-up. “And what about this?” He slapped his open palm on a black-and-white photo of a covered bridge, tacked to his corkboard. “In ’69, at least forty people saw a UFO in Massachusetts, and one family in their car saw lights coming out of the woods near this bridge. The next thing they know, they’re in a gigantic hangar with other people, in some otherworldly place, and then, like magic, they’re back in their car two hours later, sitting in different seats.”
Brice shared a few more alien-abduction stories. Then he turned and offered me a hit of LSD, which was when I decided it was time to leave.
I felt foolish during the two-hour drive home because I’d always considered myself to be a sensible person, but I didn’t feel that way when I returned to the condo, parked the car in the garage, and burst into tears over the steering wheel.
I sat in my car and dug through my purse for a tissue, then blew my nose, got out, and started walking toward the elevator.
A short while later, I was back in the condo, gazing numbly out the window at yet another sailboat leaving the marina, heading out to open water. As I watched it, I began to feel nauseous and needed to sit down until the feeling passed.
“I think I might be depressed,” I said to my mother later, when she called.
“You’re devastated over the loss of your husband, which is completely normal. You need grief counseling,” she suggested.
“Maybe,” I replied as I warmed a can of chicken noodle soup on the stove and wondered what Dean would think of that suggestion. Would he recommend it for me?
“I suppose you want to say I told you so,” I said to my mother.
“You mean about that crazy conspiracy theorist?” she replied. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want to say, but I won’t. I think you already know what you need to know.”
“That I shouldn’t go any further down this rabbit hole?” I replied, a little tersely.
“Exactly.”
I thought about it for a moment and let out a sigh. “But I’m desperate for an explanation. I can’t live forever in the dark, always wondering what happened to Dean, never getting any true closure.”
It was the first time I had been the one to use the word closure, but my experience with Brice had felt like a glass of cold water in the face.
“I know it hurts,” Mom said, “but eventually, you’re going to have to accept that Dean is gone. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
My whole body tensed. “I don’t want to accept anything until I see the crash investigation report from the NTSB. I don’t know how long that will take, but I’ll need to hear their official conclusion. And I’m going to do some more research on my own and look into missing planes in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” my mother said.
“Why not? If nothing else, it’ll give me something to focus on and keep my mind busy.”
“You could always come home to New York and live with me for a while,” she suggested. “Start fresh.”
That’s what Dean and I had wanted when we’d moved from New York to Miami four years earlier. A fresh start. It had certainly felt fresh for a while. At least until he agreed to fill in for another pilot who had the nerve to catch a stomach bug and miss a scheduled flight.
“I have to go,” I said, looking down at the soup in the pot.
As soon as I hung up, I bent forward, inhaled the scent of chicken in the broth, and felt nauseous again. Then I blinked a few times with disbelief.
Could it be? Was it possible?
Sucking in a breath, I dropped the spoon onto the counter and went to find my address book in a drawer in the bedroom. I pulled it out and flipped through the pages like a maniac, searching alphabetically for the right number. At last, I found it.
I hurried back to the kitchen and called my doctor. She knew my situation and agreed to see me within the hour.
I’d always imagined that the day I found out I was pregnant would be cause for celebration. Dean would pick me up and swing me around and tell me how happy he was. We would spend the rest of the day calling family and friends and delivering the happy news. Then we would snuggle in bed, just the two of us, where we could bask privately in the joy of our creation together. A baby. A beautiful child growing in my womb. We would talk about names for a boy or a girl and discuss the possibility of buying a house of our own instead of continuing to live in the condo my mother provided for us, rent-free.
But Dean was not here to share this special moment with me. I was alone, sitting in my doctor’s office, aware of her sympathetic expression as she delivered the results of my pregnancy test, as if it were something sad. It was, in a way. Maybe my doctor was simply reflecting my mood.
We discussed due dates, vitamin supplements, and morning sickness. Then she folded her hands on the desk. “I hope you can be happy about this.”
I nodded, responsibly. “I am happy. It’s what we always wanted.”
She regarded me with compassion. “Do you have someone you can talk to about this?”
“I have my mother,” I replied. “And my sister. And friends.”
“No, I mean . . . a professional.”
“A therapist?”
“Yes. They can be very helpful.”
I lowered my gaze and shook my head. “I don’t think so. But I’ll let you know if I change my mind. In the meantime, I’m just going to go home, watch Golden Girls, and eat a gallon of ice cream.”
She laughed, but I wasn’t joking. I think she knew it.
CHAPTER 7
MELANIE
New York, 1986
“Thank you for suggesting I talk to someone,” I said to Dr. Fielding as I walked with him out of the physics lab. “It’s really helped. I think I was just stuck, in more ways than one. Obviously, I was upset about my mom, but I also think I hit a wall with my research. I couldn’t seem to get past it, but Dr. Robinson has helped me with that too. I mean, he doesn’t know much about particle physics, but he lets me talk about my work, and it feels like brainstorming. I’ve had some really good ideas come to me on that sofa in his office.”
“That’s wonderful,” Dr. Fielding replied. “I’m champing at the bit to read your paper.”
“And I’m eager to get it finished. Who knows what might come of it?”
He pressed the elevator button. “How is the writing coming, by the way? Will you be ready on time to present it?”
“I think so,” I replied. “I’m almost halfway through the rough draft.”
“Excellent.” The elevator doors opened, and he stepped inside. “We’ll talk again next week.”
As soon as he was gone, I hurried back to the lab to collect my things, because I had a session with Dr. Robinson in less than an hour.
It had been six weeks since I had begun my treatment, and I couldn’t deny that I looked forward to our weekly sessions with a fervor I’d never felt before. Often, while I worked in the lab, I replayed our previous conversations in my mind and made a mental note of all the things I wanted to talk to him about—like discoveries I had made with my experiments or the unusual things that happened to pilots just before they disappeared, which always fascinated him.