Exhausted, she fell back onto the pillows, and her breathing became a strangling sob. Janet, on her feet now, glanced frantically around the room, her eyes finally alighting on a small vial of pills on the dresser. She picked them up and read the label, but the complicated name of the drug meant nothing to her. She took them to the bed. "Laura? Laura, do you want one of these?"
For a long time Laura was silent, and Janet began to wonder if she'd fainted. Then, once more, her eyes opened, and she stared at the bottle. Finally she shook her head. "No." She hesitated, then reached out to Janet. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have said all those things. I must have sounded crazy. It was all just so terrible last night, Janet. It hurt so much, and I was so frightened and confused, and I knew they were killing the baby but I couldn't stop them. I couldn't stop them, Janet." Quietly, she began to cry. "I saw what happened," she repeated brokenly. "I saw it." Then her sobbing overcame her, and Janet took her in her arms, rocking her gently as if Laura herself were the baby she'd just lost.
Michael found Ryan behind the garage, desultorily stacking a pile of split logs. "Whatcha doing?"
Ryan glanced up, then stared openly at the scratches on Michael's face. "What happened to you?"
"I-I fell off my bike. Whatcha doing with the wood?"
"What's it look like? My dad says I have to get all this wood stacked by tonight. Wanta help?"
Michael shrugged, and picked up a piece of wood. Beneath it, something moved, and he immediately dropped the wood back on the pile. "Something's under there."
"Prob'ly a lizard," Ryan told him. "I caught three so far."
"How do you catch 'em?"
Ryan grinned. "Easy. You just hold real still, and pretty soon they think you're gone, so they come out to lie in the sun. Then you put your hand out real slowly, and sneak up behind them, and grab 'em. Wanta try it?"
"Sure."
Cheerfully abandoning work, Ryan picked a likely-looking spot and lowered himself onto a log, Michael taking up a position beside him. For a few minutes, the two of them sat silently.
"Can we talk?" Michael finally asked.
Ryan gave him a sidelong glance. "What about?"
"I mean, will the noise scare the lizards away?"
"Nah. They're deaf." Then: "How long'd the foaling take last night?"
"A long time," Michael bragged. "I didn't go to bed 'til real late." He hesitated, wanting to tell Ryan what had happened the night before, but Nathaniel's strange words still lingered in his mind: "Never tell them the truth. Tell them what they want to hear." But Nathaniel hadn't been talking about Ryan, had he?
Michael decided he had not: in his eleven-year-old mind, "them" meant "adults." It was grown-ups you had to keep secrets from, not other kids. "I-I think I saw Nathaniel last night."
Ryan turned to stare at him. "Nathaniel? The ghost?" His tone clearly betrayed his disbelief.
"I think so." Again Michael hesitated. Then: "If I tell you what happened, will you promise not to tell anyone? Anyone at all?"
Ryan regarded him with scorn. "What do you think I am? Besides, who'll I tell?"
"You can't tell anyone."
Ryan shrugged. "Okay. But what's the big deal? There's no such things as ghosts, so you couldn't have seen Nathaniel anyway."
"I didn't say I saw him," Michael argued. "I said I thought I saw him."
Were?" Ryan demanded.
"In-he was in a building."
"What building?"
"A-a barn," Michael hedged.
Ryan's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Whose barn?" he asked.
"None of your business," Michael said, but when Ryan turned away with an elaborate show of disdain, Michael retreated. "I don't know whose barn it was," he compromised. "But that's where I saw Nathaniel. At least I think I did."
Ryan's curiosity made him face Michael again. "Well, did you, or didn't you?"
"I don't know," Michael said, still not willing to commit himself to telling Ryan everything that had happened. "It was really weird. He-he wanted me to take him outside."
Suddenly something moved in the woodpile, and Ryan tensed, his eyes locked on a dark gap between two logs. Michael fell silent, and a few seconds later, the movement was repeated. Then, slowly, the pointed scaly nose of a small lizard appeared, its tongue darting out every few seconds.
"Don't move," Ryan warned. "If you move, it'll run away." There was a long silence as both boys concentrated on the lizard, while the wary reptile, as if sensing the danger, stayed where it was. "What do you mean, he wanted you to take him outside?" Ryan finally asked. "If he wanted to go outside, why didn't he just go?"
"How should I know? He said he couldn't. But then he-well, he just disappeared. I was talking to him, or sort of talking to him-"
"What do you mean, 'sort of'?" Ryan asked, turning his attention away from the lizard and focusing it fully on his cousin. "Did you talk to him or not?"
Michael wondered how to explain it. "He… he sort of talked to me without saying anything. It was like he was inside my head or something."
"That's crazy," Ryan declared. "People can't talk that way."
"I know," Michael agreed. "That's what I've been thinking about. Last night I was sure I saw him and talked to him, but now I'm not so sure. Do you think-" He broke off, suddenly sure he knew what Ryan would say if he finished the question.
"Think what?" Ryan pressed.
"Do you think I could have seen a ghost?" he asked, his eyes carefully on the woodpile and away from Ryan.
"There's no such thing as ghosts," Ryan repeated, but with a little less assurance than he'd had earlier.
"I know," Michael agreed. "And last night, I was sure he was real. But this morning, I'm not sure. It's weird."
"You're weird," Ryan replied. Suddenly he froze. "Wait a minute. Here comes one. Hold still."
Out of one of the gaps in the woodpile, a lizard appeared, moving slowly, almost as if it were under water. As Michael watched in fascination, its legs began to move, one by one. The tongue, flashing out every few seconds, seemed to be sensing the environment. Once, the lizard froze for a moment, and Michael was sure it was about to scurry back into the dark shelter from which it had come. But instead it started moving in a series of short darts, coming finally to rest on the top of a log, basking in the full sun. Its head was pointed away from the two boys. Michael felt Ryan stir.
"I'm gonna try for him," Ryan whispered. "Hold real still."
Moving as slowly as the lizard had, Ryan began bringing his hand forward, keeping it low down, out of the creature's line of sight. Each time the lizard tensed, Ryan froze, waiting until the lizard relaxed once more before resuming his furtive movements toward it. Finally, when he was only a few inches from the lizard, he made his move.
"Gotcha!" he crowed, cupping his hand over the wriggling animal. A second later, he grinned at Michael. "Wanta hold him?"
"Sure." Michael held out his hand, and Ryan carefully transferred the lizard from his fist to Michael's. For a few seconds it wriggled furiously against Michael's confining fingers, then lay still. Michael looked up at Ryan. "It stopped wiggling. Is it dead?"
"Naw. Open your hand real carefully, and take it in your fingers. Grab it right behind the front legs. If you grab it by the tail, it'll just take off, and grow another tail."
While Ryan supervised, Michael slid a finger into his still-closed fist, feeling around until he was sure he had the lizard trapped between his palm and the finger. Then he opened his fist, and picked up the little creature with two fingers. Its scaly back was the color of wood bark, and there were tiny claws at the end of each of its toes. But when he turned it over, its belly flashed an iridescent blue in the sunlight.