“This was just dropped off for you, Alan.”
“Thanks.”
He takes the envelope she is holding out and begins to tear it open. Inside, he finds a single piece of expensive paper, and when he unfolds it he sees a short message there, written elegantly by hand in black ink.
You have committed blasphemy, and it will be corrected.
—Edward
Hobbes stares down at the message for a few seconds, a trickle of ice in his chest. That dryness in his throat again too. But, of course, there is no water at hand here to save him.
Marie notices his discomfort.
“You okay, Alan?”
He forces a smile.
“Yes. It’s just another complaint.”
There have been several of those over the years—students, perhaps overly sensitive, who have handled certain aspects of the course material badly—and his usual practice has been to reach out to those he feels he can help while disregarding the others. But he folds this particular piece of paper and hands it back to Marie.
“Can you make a note of this one and keep it on file, please?”
“Of course.”
Hobbes heads off down the corridor. When he reaches his office, he closes the door quickly and then leans his back against it, closing his eyes. The window across from him is bright, and he can see the map of red blood vessels in his eyelids and feel his heart beating hard against his chest.
You have committed blasphemy, and it will be corrected.
His brother’s words have landed. Hobbes truly believes what he told his students at the end of his lecture—that if he were God, he would neither want nor expect blind obedience from his children—and yet there is something in Edward’s note that has conjured up a sense of dread inside him.
It is that notion of correction.
Because while he has made sure to keep his influence upon the world small, he has still undoubtedly made changes. He has gone against what was written. And because of this, there have been moments when he has experienced a sensation of being off-balance, as though he is attempting to steer a ship listing on a turbulent sea, and all the old timber around him is creaking and straining in an attempt to correct its course.
As though perhaps he has misjudged what is expected of him.
Deus scripsit.
Three sharp raps at his back.
Hobbes jumps slightly and steps away from the door, his heart beating faster as he then turns to face it. For a moment, he’s convinced it must be Edward on the other side.…
But when he opens it, Charlotte almost bursts into the room.
His wife has her arms around him so quickly that Hobbes barely has time to register his confusion—she should be at home when he arrives back an hour or so from now—but he returns the embrace, grateful to see her. A part of him realizes he needed to after receiving Edward’s message. Because there is a different version of this day—a worse one, in a more badly painted universe—where the woman who has become the love of his life is already dead by his brother’s hand.
“This is a lovely surprise.” He steps back a little while keeping his hands on her upper arms. “But aren’t you supposed—”
“I just couldn’t wait.”
She smiles then, staring at him with those eyes that captured him the first moment he saw her. Good God, there is so much vitality to her, he thinks. She is so exceptional—so vivid—that he can almost feel her body fizzing with warmth and energy beneath his hands.
And yet as she puts her hands over his own and leans in to kiss him, that sensation of the world creaking around him is stronger than ever.
“We’re going to have a baby,” she whispers in his ear.
Twenty-one
Katie remembered how it had felt to wake up the day after her father died.
His death had been sudden and peaceful: a good death in many ways. He and her mother had both been home, her father reading in the armchair in the front room while her mother bustled about the apartment. They had been talking only minutes earlier. And then her mother had walked back through to the front room and found her husband unresponsive. He was still sitting just as she’d left him, with a book splayed open on the arm of the chair beside him, as though he’d put it down carefully there before deciding to take a nap. She called Katie while she waited for the ambulance, and even then, she still wasn’t sure if he was just sleeping and if she might be bothering everyone for nothing.
That afternoon and evening had been too busy for Katie to take it in properly and for the grief to hit. It was a state she took to bed with her. When she had woken up the next day, there had been a moment when everything was normal. She was in her bed with Sam asleep beside her, and the morning light in the room was exactly as it always was. There had even been a few seconds spent drifting. But then her mind began prodding her. Something was different. Something was wrong. And then she remembered. The knowledge that her father was gone arrived as a horrible clench inside her chest, and it felt like the world suddenly upended around her. This was not how it was meant to be. Rather than emerging from a nightmare, she had somehow woken up in one instead.
She experienced a similar sensation when she woke up the morning after seeing the face at the kitchen window. The night’s sleep had brought a degree of peace that remained for a few seconds before it was replaced by the nagging sensation that something was wrong. Then she remembered what had happened, and a feeling of dread ran through her and snapped her awake.
Someone had been watching the house.
She rolled over quickly.
Sam was there, lying with his back to her. She assumed he was asleep. Not a care in the world, she thought. She slipped quietly out from beneath the sheets. In the hallway, she leaned around Siena’s door and saw that she was still asleep too. The whole house felt silent and safe. And yet a thrum of fear was running through her.
Because it wasn’t.
Katie padded softly downstairs and made herself coffee.
Then she stood by the back window, staring out at the bedraggled garden.
The police had arrived quickly last night. Two officers—both male—had turned up within twenty minutes of her call, listened to her, and seemed to take the matter seriously. One had stayed with her in the kitchen, taking notes, while the other investigated the garden, a flashlight beam moving here and there in the rain, occasionally settling on something and pausing before moving on.
Her mother had insisted she not talk to the police about her brother, and she decided to leave him out of it for now. Regardless, they had been interested in the car that had been spotted at Siena’s day care and said they’d follow up on that, which was something. There had been a sense of relief that her concerns weren’t just being dismissed.
And then Sam had arrived home.
There had been relief at that too—at first. Obviously, he was surprised to find her in the kitchen, rocking a dozing Siena and talking to two uniformed police officers, but the fact he was back meant she wasn’t going to be alone when they left. She explained what had happened, and the two officers repeated some of the things they’d said to her. But then something strange happened. Sam didn’t appear as worried as he should have been. He nodded here and there, a serious expression on his face, but he didn’t say much, and he didn’t seem particularly alarmed either. When he saw the shattered wineglass, his gaze lingered on it for longer than she liked.