Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

voice is saying this to him, that it’s been speaking for some time, speaking all along. It’s the voice that he called Nemo, but it isn’t Nemo anymore. The voice has changed. And at this moment, above him in the trees, a scarlet flash and a male cardinal alights in the old cypress and starts to sing. Thrusting out his chest, he sings, full-throated, on a limb….

I was afraid…

I was afraid that if I freed them…

I was afraid that if I freed them, they might

leave….

Is this voice in Ransom’s mind, or is the cardinal singing human words? Ransom feels so strange, and he can’t tell.

And Shanté turns and says, “Come here.”

“What is that smell? It’s like…”

“Cloves,” she says.

“Yes, cloves and sour milk.”

She nods toward the grave. The nut has fallen, all four pieces, with the white meat up.

Ran scrapes mildew from the name: Percival DeLay. “She put her father in the pot?”

“Por su voluntad,” she says. “I’m certain he agreed.”

“But why? Why would he?”

“Ask him.”

“Me?”

“Ask,” she whispers. Shanté’s looking at him strangely now. She’s gripped his wrists.

Ran stares down at her hands, then up into her eyes, alarmed. “What are you saying?”

“It’s here, Ran.”

He blinks. “In me?”

“In you. It’s been here all along…. Now close your eyes and ask it what it wants.”

Ransom, for one moment, stares into her eyes, considering the abyss. Then fear strikes him like a viper, and he pulls away and lurches through the gate.

“This is bullshit,” he mutters as he heads across the lawn, and Ran feels nothing, absolutely nothing. Yet how long has it been since he felt right? Has it been since that first night?

“Bullshit…,” he tells himself, but Ran feels slightly woozy, slightly faint, and the odd thing is, he’s been walking for some time, yet he’s no closer to the house. It seems to be receding as he goes, and Ransom, as he stares at it, remembers that he’s on a journey. Something has been leading him, sowing clues along the way, and though this journey only started in the graveyard moments ago, it’s as if he’s been traveling the road for years. The journey is a book with many chapters, and each chapter was an adventure and a stage, and some of them were wonderful, some were sad. There are so many now that he’s forgotten most of them, but it doesn’t matter how many he’s forgotten, all that matters is the adventure he’s on now, and what will happen next. There’s some responsibility involved, and Ransom has the heavy sense he must not fail.

There are people on the porch, observing him. Who are they? It is…Is it Adelaide and Jarry? They’re posing for the photograph, which will be taken now…. They’re going to die, he thinks, and so am I…. But this isn’t his thought. Whose thought is it? Who am I? For a moment, he must struggle to remember, and Ransom sees that he will never reach them, never reach the house. He experiences a great fatigue. He looks for someplace to sit down. He turns and, just like that, Addie stands before him.

“Ransom.”

He shades his eyes to look at her. The sun is behind her now. Her silhouette is black against it, and the sun seems common somehow, like a steel disk, like a coin.

“Ran!” she says, and suddenly Adelaide is Claire. “We need to talk. I think it’s time.”

Oh, how he wishes she were someone else…. Or he was. “Can I say something first?”

Her frown concedes.

And Ran must make the effort now, must shake off the torpor that’s stolen over him, the urge to sleep. “I don’t know if it was yesterday or some other year, but you asked me why I’m here, Claire, and I knew the answer, and I want to say it now. I’m here because I love you. Because I always have, and because there was a time you loved me, too. Even if you don’t remember it, there was. And even if you don’t now, I’m here because I hope you will again. I want to be the husband you deserve and the father Hope and Charlie need. I’m here to try to be the man I always hoped I might become and never actually was. I hope it’s not too late, because I still believe we have a shot at happiness. I’m here for all those reasons, Claire, and because, along with all the rest, I believe if I could write a song like ‘Talking in My Sleep’ back then, knowing what I knew, then after everything we’ve been through, there’s no reason I can’t write an even better one today. And even if I’m wrong, I think it’s what I’m here to do. I’m going to keep on trying till I can’t try anymore or finally pull it off, Claire, something great, not great for Mitchell Pike, but great for Hope and Charlie Hill, great for you and me.”

Claire is silent for a moment, then says, “I hope you do it, Ran. I hope you get it all. I really do. For Hope and Charlie’s sake, and most of all, for you. But it won’t be for me, Ran. It won’t be with me.”

“Don’t say that…. You may feel that now, but you’ll feel differently.”

“How, Ran?” she asks. “Are you going to make me not love Cell, when I do? Are you going to make me fall in love with you again, when I don’t and can’t and don’t even want to? Ransom, sweetie, listen….”

“Oh,” he says, or “Ah,” not a spoken word, a groan, a sigh. He bends just slightly at the waist, as though he has been struck, or sledged, or shot. Ran can no longer breathe. His lungs cannot remember how. The soul is breath. You’ll breathe again after your death. “No,” he says, “no, Claire, please, wait, I…I can’t do this now. I can’t.”

He looks at her with anguish streaming from his eyes, and Claire takes his face between her hands.

“You have to, Ran.