He was standing in the middle of the living room when the doorbell rang. It was well after midnight. If it was a reporter, Gary would attack and kill him. It was as simple as that. To violate this time and place? He would tear the interloper apart.
He whipped open the door...and then all at once the pent-up mania went out of him.
A girl stood barefoot on the welcome mat. His Emma.
Gary Gilbarton's face crumpled in disbelief, and he slipped to his knees in front of her. Her face showed no reaction, no emotion. Gary reached out to his daughter-then hesitated. Would she pop like a soap bubble and disappear again forever?
He touched her arm, gripping her thin biceps. The fabric of her dress. She was real. She was there. He grasped her and pulled her to him, hugging her, wrapping her up in his arms.
He pulled back and looked at her again, pushing the stringy hair off her freckled face. How could this be? He looked around outside, scanning his misty front yard to see who had brought her.
No car in the driveway, no sound of an automobile engine pulling away.
Was she alone? Where was her mother?
"Emma," he said.
Gary got to his feet and led her inside, closing the front door, switching on the light. Em looked dazed. She wore the dress her mother had bought her for the trip, that made her look so grown up as she twirled around when she'd first tried it on for him. There was dirt on one sleeve-and perhaps blood. Gary spun her around, looking her over and finding more blood on her bare feet-no shoes?-and dirt all over, and scrapes on her palms and bruises on her neck.
"What happened, Em?" he asked her, holding her face in his palms. "How did you...?"
The wave of relief struck him again, nearly knocking him over, and he grasped her tight. He picked her up and carried her over to the sofa, sitting her there. She was traumatized, and oddly passive. So unlike his smiling, headstrong Emma.
He felt her face, the way her mother always did when Emma acted strangely, and it was hot. So hot that her skin felt sticky, and she was terribly pale, nearly translucent. He saw veins beneath the surface, prominent red veins he had never seen before.
The blue in her eyes seemed to have faded. A head wound, probably. She was in shock.
Thoughts of hospitals ran through his head, but he wasn't letting her out of this house now, never again.
"You're home now, Em," he said. "You're going to be fine."
He took her hand and tugged on it to get her to stand, leading her into the kitchen. Food. He installed her in her chair at the table, watching her from the counter as he toasted two chocolate chip waffles, her favorite. She sat there with her hands at her sides, watching him, not staring exactly, but not alive to the room either. No silly stories, no school-day chatter.
The toaster jumped and he slathered the waffles with butter and syrup and set the plate down in front of her. He sat in his seat to watch. The third chair, Mommy's place, was still empty. Maybe the doorbell would ring again...
"Eat," he told her. She hadn't picked up her fork yet. He cut off a corner of the stack and held it before her mouth. She did not open it.
"No?" he said. He showed her himself, putting the waffles in his mouth, chewing. He tried her again, but her response was the same. A tear slipped from Gary's eye and rolled down his cheek. He knew by now that something was terribly wrong with his daughter. But he shoved all that aside.
She was here now, she was back.
"Come."
He walked her upstairs to her bedroom. Gary entered first, Emma stopping inside the doorway. Her eyes looked on the room with something akin to recognition, but more like distant memory. Like the eyes of an old woman returned miraculously to the bedroom of her youth.
"You need sleep," he said, rummaging through her chest of drawers for pajamas.
She remained by the door, her hands at her sides.
Gary turned with the pajamas in his hand. "Do you want me to change you?"
He got down on his knees and lifted off her dress, and his very modest preteen daughter offered no protest. Gary found more scratches, and a big bruise on her chest. Her feet were filthy, the crevices of her toes crusted with blood. Her flesh hot to the touch.
No hospital. He was never letting her out of his sight again.
He ran a cool bath and sat her in it. He knelt by the edge and gently worked a soapy facecloth over her abrasions, and she did not even squirm. He shampooed and conditioned her dirty, flat hair.
She looked at him with her dark eyes but there was no rapport. She was in some sort of trance. Shock. Trauma.
He could make her better.
He dressed her in her pajamas, taking the big comb from the straw basket in the corner and combing her blond hair down straight. The comb snagged in her hair and she did not flinch or utter a complaint.
I am hallucinating her, Gary thought. I have lost my bearings on reality.
And then, still combing her hair: I don't goddamn care.
He flipped back her sheets and quilted comforter and laid his daughter down in her bed, just as he used to when she was still a toddler. He pulled the covers up around her neck, tucking her in, Emma lying still and sleeplike but with her black eyes wide open.
Gary hesitated before leaning over to kiss her still-hot forehead. She was little more than a ghost of his daughter. A ghost whose presence he welcomed. A ghost he could love.
He wet her brow with his grateful tears. "Good night," he said, to no response. Emma lay still in the pinkish spray of her night-light, staring at the ceiling now. Not acknowledging him. Not closing her eyes. Not waiting for sleep. Waiting...for something else.
Gary walked down the hallway to his bedroom. He changed and climbed into bed alone. He did not sleep either. He was waiting also, though he didn't know what for.
Not until he heard it.
A soft creak on the threshold of his bedroom. He rolled his head and saw Emma's silhouette. His daughter standing there. She came to him, out of the shadows, a small figure in the night-darkened room. She paused near his bed, opening her mouth wide, as though for a gusty yawn.
His Emma had returned to him. That was all that mattered.
Zack had trouble sleeping. It was true what everyone said: he was very much like his father. Obviously too young to have an ulcer, but already with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was an intense boy, an earnest boy, and he suffered for it.
He had always been that way, Eph had told him. He would stare back from the crib with a little grimace of worry, his intense dark eyes always making contact. And his little worried expression made Eph laugh-for he reminded him of himself so much-the worried baby in the crib.
For the last few years, Zack had felt the burden of the separation, divorce, and custody battle. It took some time to convince himself that all that was happening was not his fault. Still, his heart knew better: knew that somehow, if he dug deep enough, all the anger would connect with him. Years of angry whispers behind his back...the echoes of arguments late at night...being awakened by the muffled pounding on walls...It had all taken its toll. And Zack was now, at the ripe old age of eleven, an insomniac.