In the night room Page 0,82
more to it than you at first imagine. The streets are spotless, the shop windows shine, and the people say hello to strangers. The only problem in Willard, by which I also mean the drive to Willard, was Willy Patrick. She gobbled down three candy bars in a row—another Hershey’s bar, a Mounds bar, and an Oh Henry!—while all but holding up a finger to let me know I wasn’t getting off the hook this time. Then she tossed the wrappers into the seat well, took out a packet of M&M’s, and while peeling it open said, “Now talk to me, lover boy. No games and no kidding around.”
“I thought that Hershey’s bar at the gas station made you feel better,” I said.
“It did, but it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. Don’t worry about me getting sick, or anything. I need this gunk, and as soon as I finish these M&M’s, I’ll have had enough. For a while. And then I’ll start feeling light again, and after that, well, I guess, after that . . .”
Her eyes narrowed; she aimed a finger at my chest. “And after that I guess I’LL START TO DISAPPEAR! I GUESS PIECES OF ME WILL SUDDENLY BE TRANSPARENT!”
She rammed four or five M&M’s into her mouth and chewed them furiously. A trickle of chocolate drool slipped down the left side of her chin. She smeared it away while keeping her eyes fixed on mine. She swallowed. “I looked at you, and you knew about it. It shocked the hell out of me, but you weren’t even all that surprised. You’d seen it before. So I guess this BIG SECRET of yours turns out to be that I am DISAPPEARING, and now I need an explanation!”
I took a deep breath and hoped we would soon be driving into Willard. “I did see it once before. Back in Restitution, when you were shifting into the front seat. All of a sudden, I could see through the top part of your right hand. I’m pretty sure Mr. Davy saw the same thing a little bit earlier.”
“And you didn’t tell me? You decided you needed another secret?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” I said.
She shook her head in disgust. “I just realized something—you’re weak. That’s why you didn’t tell me. You were afraid.”
“It kind of took me by surprise,” I said.
“Me, too! Don’t you think I would have appreciated being told about something like that? ‘Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it looks like you’re turning into a window, because I just saw right through the top of your right hand’?”
Willy balled up the empty M&M’s packet and threw it into the back seat. “And do you know something? I still want lunch. This isn’t about hunger, it’s about staving off the lightness. It’s like putting gas in the car, that’s what it’s like. Except when I run out of gas, I won’t be there anymore.”
She stared into my eyes with a complicated mixture of fear, bravado, desperation, anger, and trust that filled me with the impossible desire to hold her forever and keep her safe from harm. “How did this happen to me?”
That was her real cry from the heart. Although she was by no means ready for the truth, I had no choice but to answer in a way faithful to her trust.
“Do you remember the bloodstains you had on your shirt when you showed up at my reading?”
“Of course.” Because the blood had been Tom Hartland’s, the question irritated her.
“And you remember what happened to them.”
“They disappeared.”
“Bloodstains don’t just disappear, Willy. Not even bloodstains that go through a downpour.”
“So first the bloodstains, then me? Is that it?” She gazed at me for a moment, thinking. “Are you saying that Giles and Roman Richard are going to start to disappear, too?”
That, at last, gave me an opening I could use. I could have kissed her hand. “Think about this, Willy: why did you ask about them?”
She frowned. “They followed me.”
“Through what? From what, to what?”
Her frown deepened, and her eyes burrowed into mine. She leaned toward me, trying to remember every detail of that strange passage. “Through that thunderstorm. I thought I . . . It sounds crazy. I thought I was flying through a tunnel. Because they were chasing me, they came through the tunnel, too. I guess that’s what happened.”
“And on this side of the tunnel, Willy, do things look the same as they did on the other?”
We