“No! I’ll take care of this! Just give me a few hours, and when you get back, everything will be fine.”
Kate started to protest again, then changed her mind. After the last five years, she knew the last thing her mother needed during one of her father’s binges was an argument from her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go. But I’ll call before I come back, and if he’s not gone, I won’t come home.”
“You won’t even leave!” Alan Lewis suddenly roared. “You take one step out of this house, young lady, and you’ll regret it!”
Kate ignored him, and walked out into the patio, letting the screen door slam behind her. A moment later she slammed the patio gate as well, and hurried away down the street, her hands clenched into fists as she tried to control her churning emotions.
In the kitchen, Alan Lewis glared drunkenly at his wife. “Well, this is a fine fuckin’ mess you’ve made,” he muttered. “A man’s wife shouldn’t turn his little girl against him.”
“I didn’t,” Marty hissed. “And she’s not against you. She loves you very much, except when you get like this. And so do I.”
“If you loved me—”
“Stop it, Alan!” Marty’s voice rose to a shout. “Just stop it! None of this is my fault, and none of it is Kate’s. It’s your fault, Alan! Do you hear me? Your fault!” She stormed out of the kitchen and upstairs to the bedroom her husband had never appeared in last night, shutting the door behind her and locking it.
She had to get control of herself. Right now, shouting at him would accomplish nothing. She had to calm herself down and deal with the situation.
He’d be upstairs in a minute, pounding on the door and alternately begging her forgiveness and threatening her. And she’d have to get through it all once more, and try to talk him into letting her drive him to the hospital in Palo Alto to check himself into the alcoholism unit. Or, if worse came to worst, call them herself, and have them come for Alan with an ambulance. That, though, had only happened once, and she prayed it wouldn’t happen again.
She went into the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. Any second now, he’d be at the door, and the argument would begin. Only this time, it wouldn’t be about Kate. Kate, at least, would be out of it. Now it would be the drinking again.
Five minutes went by, and nothing happened.
Finally Marty opened the bedroom door and stepped out to the landing at the top of the stairs. From below, there was only silence. “Alan?” she called.
There was no answer.
She started down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to call her husband once more. When there was still no answer, she headed for the kitchen. Perhaps he’d passed out.
The kitchen was empty.
Oh, God, Marty groaned to herself. Now what? She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot she always kept hot on the stove in the hopes that Alan would choose it over alcohol, and tried to figure out what to do.
At least he hadn’t taken his car. If he had, she’d have heard him pulling out of the garage. Still, she checked the garage anyway. Both cars were still there.
Maybe she should call the police. No. If he’d taken his car, she would have, but as long as he was on foot, he couldn’t hurt anyone. In fact, one of the La Paloma police would probably pick him up within the hour anyway.
Would they bring him home, or take him to the hospital? Or maybe even to jail?
Marty decided she didn’t really care. Yesterday, last night, and this morning had been just too exhausting. It was time for Alan to clean up his own messes. She’d call no one, and do nothing about finding him, at least until this evening. Then, if he still wasn’t home, she’d start looking.
Her decision made, she began cleaning up the kitchen, starting with Alan’s liquor. She drained the half tumbler of bourbon into the sink, then began taking the bottles off the cupboard shelf.
One by one, she emptied them, too, into the drain, and threw the bottles in the trash basket by the back door.
Thirty minutes later, when the kitchen was spotless, she started on the rest of the house.
Alex wandered through the village, doing his best to follow Raymond Torres’s instructions to keep his eyes open and his mind clear. But so far, nothing had happened. The village seemed familiar now, and everything seemed to be in the right place, and surrounded by the right things. After an hour, he stopped in a complex of little shops that specialized in the expensive items that so intrigued the computer people in town.
In one window there was a small glass sphere that seemed to have nothing in it but water. Then, when he looked closer, he realized that there were tiny shrimp swimming in the water, and a little bit of seaweed. It was, according to the card next to it, a fully balanced and self-contained ecosystem that would live on in the sealed globe for years, needing only light to survive. He watched it for a few minutes, fascinated, and then a thought came into his head.
It’s like my brain. Sealed up, with no way to get at what’s inside. A moment later he turned away and continued up La Paloma Drive until he came to the Square.
He stopped to gaze at the giant oak, and found himself wondering if he’d ever climbed the tree, or carved his initials in its trunk, or tied a swing to its lower branches. But if he had, the memories were gone now.
And then, very slowly, things began to change. His eyes fixed on the base of the tree, and everything around him seemed to fade away, almost as if the coastal fog had drifted down from the hillsides and swallowed up everything except himself and the tree.
Once again, as at the mission in San Francisco, images began to come into his mind, and something he had only vaguely remembered when he came home from the Institute was suddenly clearly visible.
There was a rope hanging from the lowest limb of the tree, and at the end of the rope, a body hung.
Whose body?
Around the body, men on horseback were laughing.
And then a sudden pain lashed through his brain, and the whispering began, as it had begun in the cemetery at the mission in San Francisco.
The words were in Spanish, but he understood them clearly.
“They take our land and our homes. They take our lives. Venganza … venganza …”
The words droned on and on in his mind, and then, finally, Alex turned away from the ancient oak.
Standing a few yards away, staring at him, was María Torres. His eyes met hers, and then she turned and began walking toward the tiny plaza a few blocks away.
As the strange mists gathered closer around him, Alex followed the old woman.
The plaza had changed, but as Alex sat on a rough-hewn bench, María Torres whispering beside him in the Spanish he now clearly understood, it seemed to him that the plaza had always looked this way.
The mission church stood forty yards away, its whitewashed walls glistening brightly in the sunlight. Brown-cassocked priests, their feet clad in sandals, made their way in and out of the sanctuary, and in the shade of the building, three Indians lounged on the ground.
Set at right angles to the church, the little mission school stood with its doors and windows open to the fresh air, and in the schoolyard five children were playing while a black-habited nun looked on, her hands modestly concealed under the voluminous material of her sleeves.
On the other side of the plaza there was a small store, its wood construction in odd contrast to the substantial adobe of the mission buildings. As Alex watched, a woman came out, and though she looked directly at him, seemed not to see him.
He began to listen as María whispered to him of the church and of the brightly painted images of the saints that lined its walls.