In the Night Season (31 page)

N
ORA WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HIM
tossing in the other room, mumbling his distress, having the nightmare again. Living it all over again. She had experienced a bad few minutes in the night herself. She willed herself to a sitting position on the bed, heard him wake, gasping. She waited a moment. Perhaps he would go back to sleep, or call her. She didn’t want to appear to be too watchful of him. A moment later, he got out of his bed and made his way to the hall. She put her robe on, being quiet. She saw him go by her door, and on, and she went there to look out. In another room, Henry was snoring.

Henry had decided, last evening, that Seattle no longer quite suited him. Her parents were coming home.

She had dreamed last night about Jack. Jack came to her in a blurry glow and asked if she wanted track lighting in the basement, whenever he got around to fixing it up as it should be. An absurd dream, and she had come awake with a start and lay trembling for an hour, while all the horrors of the winter played back. She wept, silently, and resisted the urge to get up and check the windows and doors. Shaw had told her that over time she would learn to believe in her own safety again; it was a normal reaction, this fear. It felt per
manent, the rest of her life. For a little while, she had been dependent on him, but she came to understand it as a function of her recovery. He was a good man whose life turned on regret, and she could offer him friendship—as his own young daughter and Eloise could offer him love. Nora had said as much to him during his last visit. They had been talking quietly about Jason and the aftershocks of sleeplessness and lethargy, the doctors, the medicines, and Shaw said to her, “I have to tell you, I lost a son not much younger than Jason eleven years ago.” He said this in an even, tight voice, not looking at her. “Something happened, that I—I should’ve avoided. You know?”

“Yes,” she said, deciding to let him take this where he wanted to.

“I hope you don’t mind my stopping by now and then.”

She said, “If I can learn to make friends with my fear, maybe you can learn to make friends with your regret. Those two girls love you.”

“I’d like to find some other line of work,” Shaw said.

Nora smiled at him. “I know exactly how you feel.”

Now she padded out into the hall, and here was Jason, with one hand on the cord that pulled the attic steps down. She hadn’t meant to, but she startled him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, hoping to deflect him from supposing that she had spied on him. “I was going down to the kitchen to make some warm milk.”

He was silent. His eyes shone.

“Jason?”

“I’m tired,” he said.

“Me too.”

“It’s not fair.”

“No,” she said. “I know.”

“I keep telling myself if I let it get me, they win.”

Her heart ached for him, but she kept still. It could do no good to talk at him now, while he was so bravely learning to express his own sense of what they had suffered.

“Maybe they win anyway,” he said.

Now she had to speak. “No. Travis Baker is in a wheelchair for
life. The other two are dead. They’ll never see the sun come up again.”

“They didn’t give a damn about the sun.”

“I know.”

Tears ran from his eyes, but he made no sound, nor did he take his eyes from her.

“Jason,” she said.

He pulled the steps down slowly. The wood protested; the hinge squeaked. She approached him, then stopped. With what was apparently an effort, he took the first step, gazing up into the dark.

She said, “Do you mind if I come, too?”

“If you want to, after I’m up there.”

She waited, as he made the climb in stages, a step at a time, hesitating on each one, twice making as if to turn around and come back. At the top, he looked down at her. “I feel sick.”

“Can you come down?”

He didn’t answer, but went on, and after a moment she followed. She found him crouched by the window overlooking the back field. The window was a pale square in the darkness. Signs of the searching she had done with Travis were still evident—displaced boxes, debris scattered about, insulation hanging from the walls. She would have to put all this back together; she would have to put everything back together. The thought of it sent a wave of lassitude through her. She wended her way through the debris to her son’s side and then remained quite still, waiting for him to speak.

“It isn’t ever going to go away, is it?”

“No,” she said. She would not lie. “I can’t believe it will. Not completely.”

“We can’t ever be like we were before.”

“No.”

He was quiet, looking out. The silence of the house took on an expectant quality, as though they were both listening for something.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“What will we do?” he said.

“Love each other as best we can, and go on.”

“Then they lose.”

“Yes,” she said, feeling the tears come.

Presently, he said, “I did it. I came up here and looked out.”

“What did you see?” she asked him.

“Nothing. The field.”

She knelt and put her arms around him. “Look again, sweetie,” she said. “See?” She indicated the faintly rose-colored horizon. “See it, darling?”

“Yes.”

“What do you see?”

“Dawn,” he said.