The Dream Thief

 

 

I
n all of my
years of indentured service as a dream runner, the Will Alderson assignment topped the charts as my worst job ever.

I owed him. He'd suffered a lot in the last ten years, much of it at my hands, and the last thing in the world I wanted to do was cause him more pain. There was no way Will could know how dangerous a designer dream could be, or what it was likely to cost him. Bad enough that he'd ordered one at all, but the fact that I'd been tasked with delivering his poison was wrong on every possible level.

The Merchant owned my soul and sooner or later she'd force me to comply, but I had a small, irrational hope that Will would come to his senses if I could buy us both some time. So instead of following orders I fled the scene, knowing that the price for my disobedience would be steep.

The pain hit before my motorcycle rounded the first curve. Just a warning at first, nothing more than a headache with attitude. If past experience meant anything, I figured I could hold out for an hour, two if I was lucky. In the meantime, I might as well double the misery and find out exactly what my mother's lawyer wanted with me.

Fallstone and Noland, Attorneys at Law, was located just off Main and 4
^th
Ave. It was a single-story stand alone business, sided with cedar. When I opened the door a wind chime announced my arrival.

The waiting area was all set up with comfy chairs and reading material, even a Keurig and a selection of coffee choices, but I had no intention of waiting. Getting past the receptionist would be challenge number one, but I figured I could take her, easy. She looked like the spokesperson for the Hire a Summer Student program, much more interested in her smart phone than running interference for her boss.

"I need to see Jenny Noland," I said, clomping right up to the desk in my motorcycle boots and leathers, helmet swinging from one hand. I kept my sunglasses on. "Now would be good."

"Oh, is she expecting you?" And then the blue eyes widened and her mouth fell open over perfect little white teeth. "Wait—you're Jesse Davison, aren't you?"

Now that threw me way off balance. I wanted to ask how she knew, but instead I just shrugged, keeping my face noncommittal. "Maybe. Can I see Ms. Noland?"

"Absolutely. She's been expecting you. Follow me."

All senses on high alert, head pounding with every step, I followed the child down a wood paneled hallway. When she opened a door at the end and gestured me in, I hesitated, looking things over.

Jenny Noland was all about living large. I estimated her weight at 300 pounds, which was likely conservative, and she carried it with pride. Her flowing dress was a garden of giant red and yellow flowers, and she paired it with earrings that dangled to her shoulders and a necklace made of raw unpolished chunks of some sort of green stone—jade, maybe. No squeezing into too-small chairs for Jenny; her office chair was custom designed to accommodate her with ease behind a bastion of a desk.

"Jesse, at last we meet." Her voice was a throaty contralto that thrummed inside my head like a plucked string on a cello. "Well, are you going to come in?"

I did, leaving the door cracked behind me and turning a chair around so I could keep the back of it between us. Jenny clasped her hands loosely on the desk in front of her, the expanse of which held nothing but a vase of red roses, and looked me over with the sort of scrutiny a police officer might give a suspect.

"You look like her," she said at last.

"I look like my dad."

"Your features may be his, but your expressions are your mother's and they shape you."

Three petals had fallen onto the gleaming surface of that desk, crimson as drops of blood. Rose perfume invaded my olfactory system, triggering memories I wanted nothing to do with.

"That I wouldn't know. I haven't seen her since I was ten. Listen, Jenny—this is not a social call for me. I didn't know my mother so I'm not grieving her death and I have zero interest in discussing her life and times. You sent me a letter that you wanted to meet with me. I'll sign whatever I need to sign, and then I have other things that need to be done."

For a long moment she looked at me, her face giving nothing away. "Perhaps I was wrong; you really don't resemble her at all." Reaching into a drawer she drew out a folder, opened it, and turned it around to face me. "Sign where the tabs indicate, please."

All I wanted was to be out of that office. Away from the cloying scent of roses, away from this woman who seemed to hold my mother in some regard. The pain had reached the stage where it felt like a metal band clamped around my brain, and the words I was trying to read swam before my eyes. I needed time to think, but if I didn't hurry up I was going to be incapacitated before I'd found out what I needed to know.

Jenny handed me the pen. I'd already started signing when a thought that had been nagging at me all day shook loose from the muddle in my head and came clear.

 I stopped mid signature and laid down the pen. "How did you find me?"

"It's not so difficult to track somebody down when you need them, Jesse."

 "That's not an answer."

It was also a lie. I'd been gone for ten years and got around a fair bit during that time, taking care to stay off the grid as much as possible. A determined PI could find anybody, I suppose, given enough time and connections, but an attorney needed a damn good reason to persist to that extent.

"It's all the answer you're going to get. Now—were you going to sign the papers? Or do you need me to go through them with you?"

"Just give me a minute." Pain or no pain, this time I was going to read before I signed.

I squinted my eyes to make the words hold still, and waded in. The legal language was convoluted and misdirecting, but beneath all that the gist of things seemed pretty straightforward. My mother was leaving me everything she owned. This included the house and property, as I'd already been told. And also any bank accounts, possessions, or debts.

That stopped me. "Wait a minute. What debts?"

Jenny's eyes behind her half glasses gleamed with an emotion I couldn't read. "It's standard legal language in these cases."

"And I'm asking a standard legal question. She had debts?"

"Not debts, as such. Projects in need of completion, you might say."

"And if she wills her projects to me they are legally mine? As in, I'm obligated to take care of them?"

"True, I'm afraid."

I leaped to my feet, the chair skittering away from me on the hardwood floor. "That's total bullshit! What happens if I don't sign?"

"The signature is a formality, really. You inherit whether you want it or not. You can always sell or confer on somebody else."

"Fine. I confer this—project—to somebody else."

"Jesse, I recognize that all of this must be difficult for you—"

"Look—I need to go now. I'm not signing anything until I have time to think."

"Fine. But I am obligated to give you this. You can do whatever you wish with it."

 She reached into a different drawer and held out a small key. It was plain and ordinary, too small to be a house or a car key. The silver on the wards had worn a little with use.

"What is it?"

"Safe deposit box. Go to the Credit Union and ask for Bev. She's expecting you."

"What's in there, Jenny? Part of this 'project'?"

"I have no idea. She didn't confide in me. How old were you when she left town?"

"Ten."

"Right. Well—she showed up here last winter. Said she wouldn't be long and it wasn't worth it to evict the renters. She moved into an apartment—"

My head now felt like a giant hand had reached in through my skull and was squeezing my brain in a death grip. I was running out of time. "Listen—I really don't care. I don't care what happened to her, and don't need to hear about her last known movements. I came home because I care about the house and the land. That's it. So I'll go see what she has in her hidey-hole. And I'll be in touch, okay?" I blundered out of there, half blind, with the key in my pocket and a copy of the will in a manila envelope.

One long main street runs the length of town. Swallowing down nausea, I drove past the mall, such as it is, and the feed store, stopped briefly at a stoplight, and proceeded into town proper. I passed a Bank of America and the new Starbucks, which I resented. There had been a small coffee shop on that corner all my life, a little shabby but its own individual place, at least. The drugstore was a Walgreens and this too jolted me with a sense of disappointment. When I was a kid it was an independently owned and family run business, but progress had caught up even to Williamsville.

I turned right on 2
^nd
Ave, across from the Safeway, and pulled over into a tree-shaded parking space right in front of Western Co-op. Still feeling the ghost vibration from the bike, I sat in silence for a minute, rubbing my forehead and turning the little key over and over in my fingers.

My cell phone went off, and by now I wasn't finding the shark music amusing anymore. "Hey," I said, deliberately rude.

"Due to delay, your customer has changed location."

"Please listen—"

"You will find him at Alderson's Forestry Products. Now."

And then silence. I knew damned well that there was no escape for me this side of death, and that the pain would ease the instant I set out looking for Will. But I was sitting right outside the bank, with the little key squeezed in my fist.

In the years since my mother ran off I'd told myself all sorts of stories about her. She'd been abducted by aliens. She'd run off with a movie star. A serial killer had stolen her away and buried her body somewhere in the national forest. These were the early versions. As I got older and thought about things, it was easy to see that she'd just left. She didn't love me enough to stay, or even to say goodbye.

And now, all these years later, I sat holding a little silver key in my hand, wondering exactly what she might have left me.

Will's dream, and my relief from pain, could wait a few more minutes.

As I walked into the bank I tried to hold myself in check. High expectations only meant deeper disappointment. What did people use a safety deposit box for, anyway?
Jewelry
, I told myself.
Coins. Photos of her lover. Something she hadn't wanted my dad to see
. A flood of annoyance washed through me that she'd dragged me into this little game.

Biting back the pain, I breezed through the door like I had every right to be there. Small, for a bank. Two teller windows. A couple of chairs to sit in if you had to wait. Toys for kids. Only one office, where a woman sat behind a computer, simultaneously talking into a Bluetooth and typing.

There was no line so I proceeded directly to the first open teller. Nobody I recognized, although the girl was about my age. Her nametag declared her to be Stacie, and she disliked me at first glance.

"Can I help you?"

Her tone grated on nerves already raw and I had no patience, but I sucked it up. I had no time for a scene.

"I need to talk to Bev."

"She's busy."

"She's also expecting me."

Stacie initiated a stare down, and I smiled at her, not saying another word. I left my sunglasses on and just stood there, waiting. It only took a minute. 

"Oh, all right then."

She tapped across the lobby on heels that were ridiculous for a woman on her feet all day. I followed her to the single office. The woman on the phone looked up and smiled, giving me a little wave to indicate that she'd be available in a minute, and Stacie traipsed back to her post without another word.

"Jesse Davison. How long has it been?" Bev was clad in a sensible skirt and blouse, and wore just enough makeup to look professional. She was a square built woman with bulldog jowls, but her smile was genuine and a lovely thing to behold. Getting up from behind the desk she crossed the room and took my hand, earning my eternal gratitude by not wasting time on small talk.

"Do you have the key?"

I held it out to her and she nodded. "Very well then. Come with me."