wrapped the bird in foil and bath towels and loaded it and the other products of his frenzied labor into the trunk of his car. He drove the entire meal to the Mission. They were grateful for it, and more grateful when he rolled up his sleeves and spent the rest of his afternoon and evening ladling out gravy and washing dishes.
He slept that night, too exhausted to dream, and for that he was grateful.
It had been his mistake entirely to stay so close to his father. The state hospital where they had moved him after the grant money ran out loomed over Cole's week like a beckoning shadow.
He had quickly found a job taking baby pictures at a local department store. He had a knack for cajoling smiles from even the most obstreperous toddler. Workdays, his life was not unpleasant, except for the headaches that blurred his vision so badly sometimes he could not focus the camera.
But on Sundays, every Sunday, he made the duty visit to Duncan and sat silent to his silence or, alternately, conversed in his one-sided way about inconsequential matters, politics, and sports. Cole mused about whether his words clattered through his father's muddled mind like echoes down a canyon, or if they were more like water balloons bursting against a brick wall.
He wondered too if he, himself, ever passed any of his lost, blank days like this, rock-like, impenetrable. The unsettling image would send him rushing home to sort through the proof that he didn't: the photographs of fresh-faced but unfamiliar girls in his portfolio, some candid, some posed, sometimes scrawled with brief love notes to Nicky from Cynthia or Laura or Beth. Their smiles both comforted and disturbed him. He half-wished he could remember them but felt an odd sort of relief that he could not.
Where were they now, all those girls, and all their love? If he knew that answer, if anyone knew that answer, would he be locked in the room next to Duncan?
When Cole woke on the day after Thanksgiving he knew he had to flee the lingering odors of his frenetic cooking. By eight, he had dressed and grabbed a couple doughnuts and a coffee to go at the shop on the corner and had set out with his cameras for Lake Michigan. He drove right into the storm.
Just outside of Holland, his car hit a patch of ice and slid off the road into a gully. If it hadn't been for the scabbed-over cut and bruised lump on his forehead, he would have blamed his lost hours on his madness. He woke disoriented and so numbed with cold that he knew if he did not get warmed soon he was in danger of freezing to death.
The door on his side was jammed, so he had to push his way out of the other side, sinking in a slushy puddle to his knees. He had been too long away from Michigan winters to remember to stock the back seat with blankets and a change of warm clothes. Or maybe he should blame Nicholas for that oversight. It was his car.
Cursing his other self, he threw his camera gear into the trunk and struggled out of the gully to the road. It was silent and white for as far in both directions as he could see. The driving snow at his back, he trudged in what he thought was the way toward Holland, trying to calculate how many miles he had covered before the accident.
Step after step, he pushed on for nearly an hour, though the reasons why he should bother were fast sliding away through the ice that clotted his brain. His third fall jogged the last of them free from their hold on him, and he did not get up. The snow made a blanket over everything and soon it would cover him as well, a nice, warm blanket he could sleep under forever. Dying wasn't so bad. Somehow he knew it wouldn't be.
Then Nicholas took over.
Nicholas
Nicholas heard the bus lumber around the corner and his shoulders sagged in disappointment. She would be gone soon and he wouldn't see her again for two days. It was unfair that the bus would come early on a Friday, robbing him of the few golden moments of his life these days. He watched her rise from the bench and straighten her skirt and pull up one drooping knee sock.
"Goodbye, Sweetheart," he whispered to her in his mind, "Take care." Replacing the