She was a smart woman, though. Instead of coming to my side, she stayed right where she was, in her chair. She studied the floor until I was done.
“I hated to hurt her,” I said. It was hard to speak. “Until now, I’d forgotten about that part of it, you know. Now that I remember, I remember how much I hated to hurt her…” I wanted to say more-a lot more, but that was all I could get out just then.
“I know you did,” said Margaret. “And she’ll know too one day. But for now, it’s better she have a broken heart than a son who can’t stand up for what’s right when the time comes.”
I nodded. I opened my mouth. I was about to talk again when I felt a terrible pain-as if a fist had grabbed me on the inside and twisted my stomach. I gritted my teeth and doubled over.
“Oh, no!”
Margaret was out of her chair and at the bed in a moment. She took the tray away and set it aside. She sat down next to me.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
I clutched at my stomach. For a minute I couldn’t answer. “I have these attacks… memory attacks, I call them. They gave me the antidote for the amnesia medicine. It’s bringing back my memory, but it makes me…” I grunted with pain. “It makes me sick.”
She put her hand on my forehead. Her palm felt cool against my hot skin. “Can you fight it? Keep it off. I don’t think your body can take much more punishment right now.”
I closed my eyes, trying to will the pain down. As I did, scenes flashed through my mind. I couldn’t tell if they were memories or dreams or even memories of dreams. I seemed to be traveling through that dark maze again. It was like a scene from a first-person-shooter video game. The trellis walls with their thorny vines came at me and went past.
Then I was back in the little room again. I opened my eyes.
“You okay?” said Margaret.
I nodded. The pain in my stomach was beginning to subside. “I think it’s going away,” I said. “For now.”
“All right,” Margaret said. “I want you to lie down again. I want you to get some rest.”
“I think I’m all right.”
“I don’t care what you think. Lie down,” she said quietly. “Go on now. Do as I say.”
I let her gently push me down onto the bed again. I watched her face as she pulled the covers up around me. My eyes were already sinking shut…
I woke up suddenly. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. All I knew was I had the powerful sense that something very important had just happened.
I lay in the bed, very still, listening. I could hear the television playing in the next room. There was the sort of silly music and funny voices that usually go along with cartoons. I could hear Larry speaking to his mother-not his words, but the tone of his voice. I could hear the low, warm tones of his mother answering. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing wrong in the house.
What was it, then? Something had happened while I was asleep. I felt a twinge in my stomach and it started to come back to me: more dreams… or more memories…
Yes. I remembered. I had been back in the garden. Back in the maze. The maze of my memory. I had been in that central square. I had seen the figure there again in the darkness. Suddenly, a light had flashed on. Suddenly, I was not in the maze, not at all. I was in a small white room somewhere, cluttered with shelves and files, brightly lit-so bright that, after the shadows of the garden, I was nearly blind. I was squinting so hard I couldn’t even see the man standing right there in front of me.
Protecting my eyes from the bright light, I turned away. There, behind me, were the twisting corridors of the maze again. While I stood there, watching them, a wild thing happened. The maze began to bloom. The stark, thorny branches that covered the maze’s trellises suddenly burst into flower everywhere. Rich, bloodred flowers blossoming all up and down the maze’s corridors while I stood and stared and then…
Then, all at once, I came awake fully. I understood. I had to get to Margaret. I had to tell her.
I sat up. I felt cool, good. My fever was gone. The food and the rest had made me much stronger. I stood- and for a moment, I was nearly knocked over by dizziness. But I grabbed hold of the back of the chair and kept myself on my feet. I waited there until the dizziness passed. After a moment I was fine-strong enough to keep moving.
I went to the door. I rested against the frame. There was a hall, with the kitchen door on the left wall and the living room on the right. It was a short hall, but just then, it seemed to me like a long way to travel.
“Margaret,” I called. But my voice was weak, and the sound of the television must’ve drowned it out. She didn’t answer.
I began to move down the hall, bracing myself against one wall, then staggering to the other side and bracing myself there. Images from my dream-or my memory- or whatever it was-flashed on the screen of my mind again. The maze. The white room. The bloodred flowers blooming on the trellises.
I reached the living room doorway. I leaned against it. Margaret was sitting on the sofa with her arm around her son. They had their backs to me. They were watching a DVD. A cartoon movie about fish. Sport lay curled up on the rug, right beside the sofa.
I blinked hard. I looked around me. I could see that night had fallen. There was only darkness at the windows. In that darkness, or over it, like a transparent image, I could still see the trellises blooming in the maze, the thorny bushes bursting with bloodred roses.
“Margaret,” I said.
She heard me this time. So did Larry. Startled, they both looked over their shoulders. Sport lifted his head to look at me.
Margaret jumped to her feet and came to me where I stood.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said.
“I remember.”
“Quiet now. You have to lie down.”
“I can’t. I remember. I remember who it was. My contact after Waterman left. The one who arranged for Milton One to come to me in my jail cell.”
“Calm down. Calm down. I don’t understand you.”
“He was the one who whispered in my ear that I should find Waterman. He was the one who unlocked my handcuffs.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
I looked at her tired, kind, and peaceful face. I could see her through the images of my dream that kept flashing before me. The dark maze. The white room. The blooming roses.
“I am making sense,” I told her. “I finally remember. It was Rose. He’s my contact. It was Detective Rose.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They’re Here Margaret helped me to a chair. I sank into it. I shivered, feeling cold wearing only my boxers and T-shirt. Sport sat beside me and sniffed at me with concern.
“Let me get your clothes,” Margaret said.
She left me there. I hugged myself for warmth. The dog watched me eagerly. I looked up and saw Larry watching me eagerly too, staring at me over the back of the sofa with wide, worried eyes. I tried to wink and smile at him, to reassure him.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”
He sank down a little behind the couch, but his eyes continued to peer at me over the top of it. The dog lay down at my feet.
A moment later Margaret came back carrying the rest of my clothing: the jeans, the sweatshirt, the fleece, the socks, all freshly washed and folded. I talked while I put the clothes on.
“I had a dream…,” I told her. “Only it was more than a dream. You know? It was like a memory only with symbols standing in for things, if you see what I’m saying.”
“I see,” said Margaret. “Go ahead.”
“I was in this maze… I think that was supposed to represent my memory… and all along the walls of the maze, there were these vines with thorns on them. I didn’t realize what they were at first, but then, in the dream, they blossomed and I saw they were rosebushes. And there was this guy at the center of the maze who talked to me, who helped me. He was my ally. Only I couldn’t see his face. He was like the vines: I didn’t know who he was. But when the vines blossomed…”