AFTERSHOCK

 

 

“Please, signor,” the corporal says in fairly decent English, shouting over the rising wind. “You are not permitted up there!”

I look down at him. “I’m well aware of that, but I’m all right. Really. Get back inside before you get hurt.”

The patterned stone floor of the Piazza San Marco beckons three hundred feet below as he clings to one of the belfry columns and leans out just far enough to make eye contact with me up here on the top ledge. His hat is off, but his black shirt identifies him as one of the local Carabinieri. Hopefully a couple of his fellows have a good grip on his belt. I can tell he’s used up most of his courage getting this far. He’s not ready to risk joining me up here. Can’t say I blame him. One little slip and he’s a goner. I’ve developed a talent for reading faces, especially eyes, and his wide black pupils tell me how much he wants to go on living.

I envy that.

Less than an hour ago I was just another Venice tourist. I strolled through the crowded plaza, scattering the pigeon horde like ashes until I reached the campanile entrance. I stood on line for the elevator like everyone else and paid my eight thousand lire for a ride to the top.

The Campanile di San Marco—by far the tallest structure in Venice, and one of the newest. The original collapsed shortly after the turn of the century but they replaced it almost immediately with this massive brick phallus the color of vodka sauce. Thoughtful of them to add an elevator to the new one. I would have hated climbing all those hundreds of steps to the top.

The belfry doubles as an observation deck: four column-bordered openings facing each point of the compass, screened with wire mesh to keep too-ardent photographers from tumbling out. The space was packed with tourists when I arrived—French, English, Swiss, Americans, even Italians. Briefly I treated myself to the view—the five scalloped cupolas of San Marco basilica almost directly below, the sienna mosaic of tiled roofs beyond, and the glittering, hungry Adriatic Sea encircling it all—but I didn’t linger. I had work to do.

The north side was the least crowded so I chose that for my exit. I pulled out a set of heavy wire clippers and began making myself a doorway in the mesh. I knew I wouldn’t get too far before somebody noticed and, sure enough, I soon heard cries of alarm behind me. A couple of guys tried to interfere but I bared my teeth and hissed at them in my best impression of a maniac until they backed off: Let the police handle the madman with the wire cutter.

I worked frantically and squeezed through onto the first ledge, then used the mesh to climb to the second. That was hairy—I damn near slipped off. Once there, I edged my way around until I found a sturdy wire running vertically along one of the corners. I used the cutters to remove a three-foot section and left it on the ledge. Then I continued on until I reached a large marble sculpture of a griffinlike creature set into the brick on the south side. I climbed its grooves and ridges to reach the third and highest ledge.

And so here I am, my back pressed against the green-tiled pinnacle as it angles to a point another thirty feet above me. The gold-plated statue of some cross-wielding saint—St. Mark, probably—pirouettes on the apex. A lightning rod juts above him.

And in the piazza below I see the gathering gawkers. They look like pigeons, while the pigeons scurrying around them look like ants. Beyond them, in the Grand Canale, black gondolas rock at their moorings like hearses after a mass murder.

The young national policeman pleads with me. “Come down. We can talk. Please do not jump.”

Almost sounds as if he really cares. “Don’t worry,” I say, tugging at the rope I’ve looped around the pinnacle and tied to my belt. “I’ve no intention of jumping.”

“Look!” He points southwest to the black clouds charging up the coast of the mainland. “A storm is coming!”

“I see it.” It’s a beauty.

“But you will be strike by lightning!”

“That’s why I’m here.”

The look in his eyes tells me he thought from the start I was crazy, but not this crazy. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t know what I’ve learned during the past few months.

 

The first lesson began thousands of miles away, on a stormy Tuesday evening in Memorial Hospital emergency room in Lakeland, Florida. I’d just arrived for the second shift and was idly listening to the staff chatter around me as I washed up.

“Oh, Christ!” said one of the nurses. “It’s her again. I don’t believe it.”

“Hey, you’re right!” said another. “Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice?”

“Twice, hell!” said a third voice I recognized as Kelly Rand’s, the department’s head nurse. “It’s this gal’s third.”

Curious, I dried off and stepped into the hallway. Lightning strike victims are no big deal around here, especially in the summer—but three times?

I saw Rand, apple-shaped and middle-aged, with hair a shade of red that does not exist in the human genome, and asked if I’d heard her right.

“Yessiree,” she said. She held up a little metal box with a slim aerial wavering from one end. “And look what she had with her.”

I took the box. Strike Zone™ Early Warning Lightning Alert ran in red letters across its face.

“I’d say she deserves a refund,” Rand said.

“How is she?”

“Been through X-ray and nothing’s broken. Small third-degree burn on her left heel. Dr. Ross took care of that. Still a little out of it, though.”

“Where’d they put her?”

“Six.”

Still holding the lightning detector, I stepped into cubicle six and found a slim blonde, her hair still damp and stringy from the rain, semiconscious on the gurney, an IV running into her right arm. A nurse’s aide was recording her vitals. I checked the chart when she was done.

Kim McCormick, age thirty-eight, found “disrobed and unconscious” under a tree bordering the ninth fairway at a local golf course. The personal info had been gleaned from a New Jersey driver’s license. No known local address.

A goateed EMS tech stuck his head into the cubicle. “She awake yet, Doc?”

I shook my head.

“All right, do me a favor, will you? When she comes to and asks about her golf clubs, tell her they was gone when we got there.”

“What?”

“Her clubs. We never saw them. I mean, she was on a golf course and sure as shit she’s gonna be saying we stole them. People are always accusing us of robbing them or something.”

“It says here she was naked when you found her.”

“Not completely. She had on, like, sneakers, a bra, and you know, pan ties, but that was it.” He winked and gave me a thumbs-up to let me know he’d liked what he’d seen.

“Where were her clothes?”

“Stuffed into some sort of gym bag beside her.” He pointed to a vinyl bag under the gurney. “There it is. Her clothes was in there. Gotta run. Just tell her about the clubs, okay?”

“It’s okay,” said a soft voice behind me. I turned and saw the victim looking our way. “I didn’t have any clubs.”

“Super,” the tech said. “You heard her.” And he was gone.

“How do you feel?” I said, approaching the gurney.

Kim McCormick gazed at me through cerulean irises, dreamy and half obscured by her heavy eyelids. Her smile revealed white, slightly crooked teeth.

“Wonderful.”

Clearly she was still not completely out of her post-strike daze.

“I hear this is the third time you’ve been struck. How in the—?”

She was shaking her head. “It’s the eighth.”

I grinned at the put-on. “Right.”

“S’true.”

My first thought was that she was either lying or crazy, but she didn’t seem to care if I believed her. And in those half-glazed eyes I saw a secret pain, a deep remorse, a hauntingly familiar loss. The same look I saw in my bathroom mirror every morning.

I held up her lightning detector. “If that’s true, you should find one of these that really works.”

“Oh, that works just fine.”

“Then why—?”

“It’s the only way I can be with my little boy.”

I tried to speak but couldn’t find a word to say. Stunned, I watched her roll over and go to sleep.

 

No way I could let her leave without learning what she’d meant by that, so I kept looking in on her during my shift, waiting for her to wake up. After suturing the twenty-centimeter gash a kid from the local supermarket had opened in his thigh when his box cutter slipped, I checked room six again and found it empty.

The desk told me she’d paid by credit card and taken off in a cab, lightning detector and all.

I spent the next week hunting her, starting with her Jersey address; I left messages on the answering machine there, but they were never returned. Finally, after badgering the various taxi companies in town, I tracked Kim McCormick to a Travelodge out on 98.

I sat in my car in the motel parking lot one afternoon, gathering courage to knock on her door, and wondering at this bizarre urge. I’m not the obsessive type, but I knew her words would haunt me until I’d learned what they meant.

It’s the only way I can be with my little boy.

Taking a deep breath, I made myself move. August heat and humidity gave me a wet slap as I stepped out and headed for her door. Nickel clouds hung low and a wind-driven Wal-Mart flyer wrapped itself around my leg like a horny mutt. I kicked it away.

She answered my knock almost immediately, but I could tell from her expression she didn’t know me. To tell the truth, with her hair dried and combed, and color in her cheeks, I barely recognized her. She wore dark blue shorts and a white LaCoste—sans bra, I noticed. I hadn’t appreciated before how attractive she was.

“Yes?”

“Ms. McCormick, I’m Dr. Glyer. We met at the emergency room after you were—”

“Oh, yes! I remember you now.” She gave me a crooked grin that I found utterly charming. “This a house call?”

“In a way.” I felt awkward standing on the threshold. “I was wondering about your foot.”

She stepped back into the room but didn’t ask me in. “Still hurts,” she said. I noticed the bandage on her left heel as she slipped her feet into a pair of backless shoes. “But I get around okay in clogs.”

I scanned the room. A laptop sat on the nightstand, screen-saver fish gliding across its screen. The bed was unmade, two Chinese food containers in the wastebasket, a Wendy’s bag next to the TV on the dresser. The Weather Channel was on, showing a map of Florida with a bright red rectangle superimposed on its midsection. The words SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING crawled along the bottom of the screen.

“Glad to hear it. Listen, I’d…I’d like to talk to you about what you said when you were in the ER.”

“Sorry?” she said, cocking her head toward me. “I didn’t catch that.”

I repeated.

“What did I say?” She said it absently as she hurried about the room, stuffing sundry items into her gym bag, one of which I recognized as her lightning detector.

“Something about being with your little boy.”

That got her. She stopped and looked at me. “I said that?”

I nodded. “‘It’s the only way I can be with my little boy,’ to be exact.”

She sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was still off my head from the shock, I guess. Forget it.”

“I can’t. It’s haunted me.”

She stepped closer, staring into my eyes. “Why should that haunt you?”

“Long story. That’s why I was wondering if we might sit down somewhere and—”

“Maybe some other time. I’m just on my way out.”

“Where? Maybe we can go together and talk on the way.”

“You can’t go where I’m going.” She slipped past me and closed the door behind her. She flashed me a bright, excited smile as she turned away. “I’m off to see my little boy.”

I watched her get into a white Mercedes Benz with Jersey plates. As she pulled away, I hurried to my car and followed. Her haste, the approaching storm, the lightning detector…I had a bad feeling about this.

I didn’t bother hanging back—I doubted she knew what kind of car I was driving, or would be checking for anyone following her. She turned off 98 onto a two-lane blacktop that ran straight as the proverbial arrow toward the western horizon. A lot of Florida roads are like that. Why? Because they can be. The state is basically a giant sandbar, flat as a flounder’s belly, and barely above sea level. Roads here don’t have to wind around hills and valleys, so they’re laid out as the shortest distance between two points.

Ahead the sky was growing rapidly more threatening, the gray clouds darkening; lightning flashed in their ecchymotic bellies.

The light had dimmed to late-dusk level by the time she turned off the blacktop and bounced northward along a sandy road. She stopped her car about fifty yards from a small rise where a majestic Nelson pine towered over the surrounding scrub. She got out with her gym bag in hand and hurried toward the tree in a limping trot. Wind whipped her shorts around her bare legs, twisted her hair across her face. A bolt of lightning cracked the sky far to my left, and thunder rumbled past a few seconds later. I gaped in disbelief as she pulled off her shirt and shorts, stuffed them into the bag, and seated herself on the far side of the trunk.

“She’s crazy!” I said aloud as I gunned the engine.

I pulled past her car and stopped as close to the tree as the road would allow. Amid more lightning and thunder, I jumped out and dashed up the rise.

“Kim!” I shouted. “This is insane! Get away from there!”

She started at the sound of my voice, looked up, and threw her free arm across her breasts. Her other hand gripped the lightning detector, its red warning light blinking madly.

“Leave me alone! I know what I’m doing!”

“You’ll be killed!” I picked up her gym bag and held it out to her. “Please! Get back in your car!”

Her face contorted with fury as she slapped the bag from my hand, then covered her breasts again. “Get out of here! You don’t understand and you’ll ruin everything!” Her voice rose to a scream. “Go away!”

I backed off, unsure of what to do. I debated grabbing her and wrestling her to safety, but did I have the right? As crazy as this seemed, Kim McCormick was a grown woman, and very determined to be here. A daylight-bright flash, followed instantaneously by a deafening crash of thunder and a torrent of cold rain decided it. I ducked back toward my car.

“Keep your windows closed!” I heard Kim shout behind me. “And don’t touch any metal!”

Drenched, I huddled on the front seat and did just that. The storm roared in with maniacal fury, lashing the car with gale-force winds and rain so heavy I felt as if I’d parked under a waterfall. I couldn’t see Kim—couldn’t even see the big Nelson pine. I hated the thought of her getting soaked and risking electrocution out there in the lightning-strobed darkness, but what could I do?

Mostly I resented feeling helpless. I fought the urge to throw the car into gear and leave Kim McCormick to her fate. I had to stay…needed to stay. I felt tenuously bound to this peculiar woman, by something unseen, un-spoken.

The lightning and thunder finally abated as the storm chugged off to the east. When the rain had eased to a steady downpour, I lowered the window and squinted at the pine, afraid of what I’d see.

Kim was still huddled against the trunk, looking miserable: hair a rattail tangle, knees drawn up, head down, but seemingly none the worse for the terrible risk she’d taken.

I stepped out and tried not to stare at her glistening, pale skin as I approached. She glanced up at me. The bright excitement of an hour ago had fled her eyes, leaving a hollow look. I reached into her bag and pulled out her shirt. I held it out to her.

“Now can we talk?”

 

Kim pointed to a pink scar that puckered her right palm. “This is from the first time I was hit.”

I’d followed her back to her motel, waited while she took a quick shower, then brought her here to Cajun Heat, my favorite restaurant. She’d seemed pretty down when we were seated, but a couple of Red Stripes and an appetizer of steamed spiced shrimp had perked her up some.

“That one was an accident,” she said. “I was visiting my sister in West Texas last year. She and her husband and I had been fishing on White River Lake when it started to get stormy. We came ashore and I was standing on the dock, helping unload the boat. It hadn’t even started raining yet, but somehow I took a direct hit.” She rubbed the scar. “I had a fishing rod in my hand, my palm against the reel. That’s all I remember. Karen and Bill were knocked off their feet but they told me later they saw me fly twenty feet through the air. I broke my forearm when I landed. My heart had stopped. They had to give me CPR.”

“You were lucky.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She stared at her palm with a rueful smile. Her wet hair was pulled back and fastened with an elastic band, making her look younger than her thirty-eight years. “Karen still jokes about how she thinks Bill was maybe a little too enthusiastic with the mouth-to-mouth.”

I said, “So the first strike was accidental. After what I saw today, I gather the next seven were anything but. Dare I ask why?”

Kim continued staring at her palm. “You already think I’m nuts. I don’t want you thinking I’m a complete psycho.”

“Try me.”

“Hmm?” She glanced up. “Sorry. I’m a little hard of hearing, especially when there’s background noise.”

“I said, Try me.”

She looked me in the eye, then let out a deep sigh. “Immediately after that first strike, I saw my son Timmy. I could see the lake and the dock and the boat, but they were faint and ghostly. I was standing right where I’d been when I got hit, but I could see my body sprawled behind me. Karen and Bill were running toward it, but slowly, like they were swimming through molasses, and they too looked faint, translucent. Timmy, though—he looked perfectly real and solid, but he was far away, hovering over the water, waving to me. He looked healthy, like he’d never been sick, but he was so far. He kept beckoning me closer but I couldn’t move. Then he faded away.”

The pieces fell into place, and there it was, staring me in the face. Somehow I’d sensed it. Now I knew.

“When did he die?”

She blinked in surprise, then looked away. “Almost three years ago.” Her eyes brimmed with tears but none spilled over. “Two years, eleven months, two weeks, and three days, to be exact.”

“You had a very vivid hallucin—”

“No,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “He was there. You can’t appreciate how real he was if you didn’t see him. I’m a hardheaded realist, Doctor Glyer, and—”

“Call me Joe.”

“Okay. Fine. But let’s get something straight, Doctor Joe. I’m no New-Agey hollow-head into touchy-feely spirituality. I was an investment banker, and a damn good one—Wharton MBA, Salomon Brothers, the whole nine yards. I dealt with the reality of cold hard cash and down-and-dirty bottom lines every day. As far as the afterlife was concerned, I was right up there with the big-time skeptics. To me, life began when you were born, you lived out your years, then you died. That was it. Game over, no replay. But not anymore. This is real. I don’t know what happened, or how it happened, but for an all-too-brief time after that lightning strike, I saw Timmy, and he saw me, and that changed everything.” She closed her eyes. “I thought I was getting over losing him, but…”

No, I thought as her voice trailed off. You never get over it.

But I said nothing.

“Anyway, at first I tried to duplicate the effect by shocking myself with my house current, but that didn’t work. I concluded I’d need the millions of volts only lightning can provide to see. So I went back to Texas and hung around that dock during half a dozen storms but I couldn’t buy another hit.”

“Are you trying to die? Is that it?”

She tossed me a withering look. “I have a Ruger nine-millimeter automatic back at my motel room. When I want to die, I’ll use that. I am not suicidal.”

“Then what else do you call flirting with death like you did today? And you’ve been hit eight times? The fact that you’re still alive is amazing—you’ve had a fantastic run of luck, but you’ve got to know that sooner or later it’s going to run out.”

The waitress arrived then and we dropped into silence as she set steaming plates of jambalaya before us.

“You don’t know much about lightning, do you,” Kim said when we were alone again.

“I’ve treated my share of—”

“But do you know that it’s usually not fatal, that better than nine out of ten victims survive?”

Truthfully, I hadn’t known the survival rate was that high. “Well, you’re closing in on number ten.”

She shrugged. “Just a number. The first shock on that dock in Texas should have killed me. The usual bolt carries a current of ten thousand amps at a hundred million volts. Makes the electric chair look like a triple-A battery. Of course the charge only lasts a tiny fraction of a second, but that first one was enough to put me into cardiac arrest. If Karen and Bill hadn’t known CPR, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

She dug into her jambalaya and chewed for a few seconds.

“Good, isn’t it,” I said.

She nodded. “Delicious.”

But she said it with no great conviction, and I got the feeling that eating was something Kim McCormick did simply to keep from feeling hungry.

“But where was I? Oh, yes. After failing to get hit a second time in Texas, I started studying up on lightning. We still don’t understand it completely, but what we do know is fascinating. Do you realize that worldwide, every second of every minute of every day there are almost a thousand lightning flashes? Most are cloud to cloud or cloud to air. Only fifteen percent hit the ground. Those are the ones I’m interested in.”

This was the most animated I’d seen her. I leaned across the table, drawn by her enthusiasm.

“But you’re from Jersey. You were first struck in Texas. What are you doing here?”

“It’s where the lightning is. The National Weather service keeps track of lightning—something called flash density ratings. According to their records, Central Florida is the lightning capital of the country, maybe the world. You’ve got this broad strip of hot, low-lying land between two huge, cooler bodies of water. Take atmospheric instability due to wide temperature gradients, add tons of moisture, and voilà—thunderstorm alley.”

“Seems you’ve been pretty successful around here—if you can call getting hit by lightning success.”

She smiled. “I do. I started up around the Orlando area because of all the lakes. Being out in a boat during a storm is the best way to get hit, but I started thinking it was too risky, too easy to get knocked overboard and drown. Or take a direct hit from a positive giant.”

“A what?”

“A positive giant. They originate at the very top of the storm cell, maybe fifty thousand feet up, and they can strike thirty miles ahead of the storm. You’ve heard of people getting struck down by a so-called ‘bolt from the blue’? That’s a positive giant. I don’t want to get hit by one of those because they’re so much more powerful than a regular bolt. Almost always fatal.” She pointed her fork at me. “See? Told you I’m not suicidal.”

“I believe you, I believe you.”

“Good. Anyway, I settled on golf courses as my best bet. The landscapers take down a lot of the little trees but tend to leave the really big ones between the fairways.” She showed me a pink, half-dollar-size scar on her right elbow. “That’s an exit burn from the strike at Ventura Country Club.” She parted her hair to reveal a quarter-size scar on her right parietal scalp. “This one’s an entry at Hunter’s Creek Golf Club. I could show you more, but not in public. I’ve got other scars you can’t see. Like a mild seizure disorder, for instance—I take Dilantin for that. And I’ve lost some of my hearing.”

I was losing my appetite. This poor, deranged woman. “And did you see…?”

“Timmy?” She smiled. Her eyes fairly glowed. “Yes. Every single time.”

Kim McCormick was delusional. Had to be. And yet she was so convincing. But then that’s the power of a delusion.

But what if it wasn’t a delusion? What if she really…?

I couldn’t let myself go there.

“One of these times…”

“You’re right, I suppose. And I’m prepared for it. I’ve got a solid will: How I’m to be cremated, where my ashes will go, and a list of all the charities that’ll share my assets. But I stack the deck in my favor when I go out. That’s why I get under a tree. Odds are against taking a direct hit that way. You get a secondary jolt—a flash that jumps from the primary strike point—and so far that’s worked just fine for my purposes. Plus I keep low to the ground to reduce my chance of being thrown too far.”

“But why do you undress?”

“I figure wet skin attracts a charge better than wet fabric.”

I shook my head. “How long are you going to keep this up?”

“Until I get closer to him. He seems nearer here than he was in Texas, but he’s still too far away.”

“Too far for what?”

“I need to see his eyes, hear his voice, read his lips.”

“Why? What are you looking for?”

A lost look tinged with terrible sorrow fluttered across her features. Her voice was barely audible. “Forgiveness.”

I stared at her.

“Don’t ask,” she whispered before I could speak. “Subject closed.” She shook herself and gave me a forced smile. “Let’s talk about something else. Anything but the weather.”

 

I stand alone on a rotted wharf, engulfed in fog. The stagnant pond before me carries a vaguely septic stench. No sound, no movement. I wait. Soon I hear the creak of wood, the gentle lap of a polished hull gliding through still water. A dark shape appears, with the distinctive curved bow of a gondola. It noses toward me through the fog, but as it nears I notice something unusual about the hull. It’s classic glossy black, like all gondolas, but the seating area is closed over. I realize with a start that the hull is a coffin…a child’s coffin…and bright red blood is oozing from under the lid. I shout to the gondolier. He’s gaunt, the traditional striped shirt hanging loose on his bony frame. His face is hidden by his broad straw hat until he lifts his head and stares at me. I scream when I see the scar running across his left eye. He grins and begins poling his floating sarcophagus away, back into the fog. I jump into the foul water and swim after him, stroking frantically as I try to catch up. But the gondola is too fast and the fog swallows it again, leaving me alone and lost in the water. I swim in circles, my arms growing weaker and weaker…finally they refuse to respond, dangling limply at my sides as I slip beneath the surface…water rushes into my nose and throat, choking me…

 

I awoke gagging and shaking, dangling half on, half off my bed. It took me a long time to shake off the aftereffects of the nightmare. I hadn’t had one like that in years. I knew why it had returned tonight: my afternoon with Kim McCormick.

 

Over the next few days I realized that Kim had invaded my life. I kept thinking of her alone in that motel room, eating fast food, her eyes glued to the Weather Channel as she tracked the next storm, planned her next brush with death. The image haunted me at night, followed me through the day. I found myself keeping the Weather Channel on at home, and ducking off to check it out on the doctors lounge TV whenever I had a spare moment.

I guess my preoccupation became noticeable because Jay Ravener, head of the emergency department, pulled me aside and asked me if anything was wrong. Jay could never understand why a board-certified cardiologist like myself wanted to work as an emergency room doc. He was delighted to have access to someone with my training, but he was always telling me how much more money I could make as a staff cardiologist. Today, though, he was talking about enthusiasm, giving me a pep talk about how we were a team, and we all had to be players. He went on about how I hardly speak to anyone on good days, and lately I’d barely been here.

Probably true. No, undoubtedly true. I don’t particularly care for anyone on the staff, or in the whole damn state, for that matter. I don’t care to make chitchat. I come in, do my job—damn efficiently, too—and then I go home. I live alone. I read, watch TV, videos, go to the movies—all alone. I prefer it that way.

I know I’m depressed. But imagine what I’d be like without the forty milligrams of Prozac I take every day. I wasn’t always this way, but it’s my current reality, and that’s how I choose to deal with it.

Fuck you, Jay.

I said none of this, however. I merely nodded and made concurring noises, then let Jay move on, satisfied that he’d done his duty.

But the episode made me realize that Kim McCormick had upset the delicate equilibrium I’d established, and I’d have to do something about her.

Just as she had researched lightning, I decided to research Kim McCormick.

Her driver’s license had listed a Princeton address. I began calling the New Jersey medical centers in her area, looking for a patient named Timothy McCormick. When I struck out there, I moved to Philadelphia. I hit pay dirt at CHOP—Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Being a doctor made it possible. Physicians and medical records departments are pretty tight-lipped about patient information when it comes to lawyers, insurance companies, even relatives. But when it’s one doctor to another…

I asked Timothy McCormick’s attending to call me about him. After having me paged through the hospital switchboard, Richard Andrews, M.D., pediatric oncologist, knew he was talking to a fellow physician, and was ready to open up. I told him I was treating Kim McCormick for depression that I knew stemmed from the death of her child, but she would give me no details. Could he help?

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he told me in a staccato rattle. “Sad case. Osteosarcoma, started in his right femur. Pretty well advanced, mets to the lung and beyond by the time it was diagnosed. He deteriorated rapidly but we managed to stabilize him. Even though he was on respiratory assist, his mother wanted him home, in his own room. She was loaded and equipped a mini-intensive care unit at home with around-the-clock skilled nursing. What could we say? We let her take him.”

“And he died there, I gather?”

“Yeah. We thought we had all the bases covered. One thing we didn’t foresee was a power failure. Hospitals have backup generators, her house didn’t.”

I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. I didn’t have to imagine what awful moments those must have been, the horror of utter helplessness, of watching her child die before her eyes and not being able to do a thing about it. And the guilt afterward…oh, lord, the crushing weight of self-doubt and self-damnation would be enough to make anyone delusional.

I thanked Dr. Andrews, told him what a great help he’d been, and struggled through the late shift. Usually I can grab a nap after two a.m. Not this time. I sat up, staring at the Weather Channel, watching with growing unease as the radar tracked a violent storm moving this way from Tampa.

I called Kim McCormick’s motel room but she didn’t answer. Did she guess it was me and knew I’d try to convince her to stay in? Or was she already out?

As the clock crawled toward six a.m. I stood with keys in hand inside the glass door to the doctor’s parking lot and watched the western sky come alive with lightning, felt the door shiver in resonance with the growing thunder. So much lightning and it was still miles off. If Kim was out there…

If? Who was I kidding? Of course she was out there. And I couldn’t leave until my relief arrived. I prayed he’d show up early, but if anything, the storm would delay him.

Jerry Ross arrived at 6:05, just ahead of a pair of ambulances, and I dashed for my car. The storm was hitting its stride as I raced along 98. I turned onto what I thought was the right road, fishtailing as I gunned along, searching for that Nelson pine. I almost missed it in the downpour, and damn near ditched the car as I slammed on the brakes when I spotted it. I reversed to the access road and kicked up wet gravel as I headed for the tree.

The sight of her Mercedes offered some relief, and I let out a deep breath when I spotted the pale form huddled against the trunk. I barely knew this strange, troubled woman, and yet somehow she’d become very important to me.

I skidded to a stop and ran up the rise to where she sat, looking like a drowned rat. Halfway there the air around me flashed noon bright and the immediate crash of thunder nearly knocked me off my feet, but Kim remained unscathed.

“Not again!” she cried, not bothering to cover her breasts this time. She waved me off. “Get out of here!”

“You can’t keep doing this!”

I dropped to my knees beside her and tried not to stare. I couldn’t help but notice that they were very nice breasts, not too big, not too little, just right, with deep brown nipples, jutting in the chill rain.

“I can do anything I damn well please! Now go away!”

I’d been here only seconds but already my clothes were soaked through. I leaned closer, shouting over the deafening thunder.

“I know what happened—about Timmy, bringing him home, the power failure. But you can’t go on punishing yourself.”

She gave me a cold blue stare. “How do you—?”

“Doesn’t matter. I just know. Tell me—was there a storm when the power went off?”

She nodded, still staring. The red blinker on her lightning detector was going berserk.

“Don’t you see how it’s all tied together? It’s guilt and obsession. You need medication, Kim. I can help.”

“I’ve been on medication. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Tofranil, you name it. Nothing worked. I’m not imagining this, Doctor. Timmy is there. I can feel him.”

“Because you want him there!”

More lightning—so close I heard it sizzle.

“Damn you!” she gritted through clenched teeth during the ensuing thunderclap. I didn’t hear those words, but I could read her lips. She closed her eyes a second, as if counting to ten, then looked at me again. “Do you have any children?”

I didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“Well, if you did, you’d understand when I say you know them. I know Timmy, and I know he’s there. And since you’ve never had a child, then you can’t understand what it’s like to lose one.” Her eyes were filling, her voice trembling. “How you’ll do anything—risk everything—to have them back, even for an instant. So don’t tell me I need medication. I need my little boy!”

“But I do understand,” I said softly, feeling my own pain grow, wanting to stop myself before I went further but sensing it was already too late. “I—”

I stopped as my skin burst to life with a tingling, crawling sensation, and my body became a burning beehive with all its panicked residents trying to flee at once through the top of my head. I had a flash of Kim with strands of her wet hair standing out from her head and undulating like live snakes, and then I was at ground zero at Hiroshima…

…an instant whiteout and then the staticky blizzard wanes, leaving me kneeling by the tree, with Kim sprawled prone before me, flaming pine needles floating around like lazy fireflies, and a man tumbling ever so slowly down the slope to my right. With a start I realize he’s me, but the whole scene is translucent—I can see through the tree trunk. Everything is pale, drained of color, almost as if etched in glass, except…

…except for the tiny figure standing far across the marsh, a blotch of bright spring color in this polar landscape. A little girl, her dark brown hair divided into two ponytails tied with bright green ribbon, and she’s wearing a yellow dress, her favorite yellow dress…

…it’s Beth…oh, Christ, it can only be Beth…but she’s so far away.

A desperate cry of longing leaps to my lips as I reach for her, but I can make no sound, and the world fades to black, my Beth with it…

I sat up groggy and confused, my right shoulder alive with pain. I looked around. Lightning still flashed, thunder still bellowed, rain still gushed in torrents, but somehow the whole world seemed changed. What had happened just now? Could that have been my little Beth? Really Beth?

No. Not possible. And yet…

Kim’s still white form caught my eye. She lay by the trunk. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t go for it, so I crawled to her. She was still breathing. Thank God. Then she moaned and moved her legs. I tried to lift her but my muscles were jelly. So I cradled her in my arms, shielding her as best I could from the rain, and waited for my strength to return, my mind filled with wonder at what I had seen.

Could I believe it had been real? Did I dare?

 

Still somewhat dazed, I sat on Kim’s motel bed, a towel around my waist, my clothes draped over the lampshades to dry. When she’d come to, we staggered to my car and I drove us here.

The room looked exactly as before, except a Hardy’s bag had replaced the Wendy’s. Kim emerged from the bathroom wearing a flowered sundress, drying her hair with a towel. She was bouncing back faster than I was—practice, maybe. She looked pale but elated. I knew she must have seen her boy again.

I felt numb.

“Oh, God,” she said and leaned closer. “Look at that burn!”

I glanced at the large blister atop my left shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt as much as before.”

“Oh, Joe, I’m so sorry you caught that flash too. I feel terrible.”

“Don’t. Not as if you didn’t warn me.”

“Still…let me get some of the cream they gave me for my heel. I’ll make you—”

“I saw someone,” I blurted.

She froze, staring at me, her eyes bright and wide. “Did you? Did you really? You saw Timmy? Didn’t I tell you!”

“It wasn’t your son.”

She frowned. “Then who?”

“Remember by the tree, just before we got hit, when you asked me if I had any children? I said no, because…because I don’t. At least not anymore. But I did.”

Kim stared, wide-eyed. “Did?”

“A beautiful, beautiful daughter, the most wonderful little girl in the world.”

“Oh, dear God! You too?”

My throat had thickened to the point where I could only nod.

She stumbled to the bed and sat next to me. The thin mattress sagged deeply under our combined weight.

“You’re sure it was her?”

Again I nodded.

“I didn’t see her. And you didn’t see Timmy?”

I shook my head, trying to remember. Finally I could speak.

“Only Beth.”

“How old was she?”

“Eight.”

“Timmy was only five. Was it…?” Her own throat seemed to clog as she placed her hand on my arm. “Did she have cancer too?”

“No.” The memory began to hammer against the walls of the cell where I’d bricked it up. “She was murdered. Right in front of me.” I held up my left arm to show her the seven-inch scar running up from the underside of my wrist. “This was all I got, but Beth died. And I couldn’t save her.”

Kim made a choking noise and I felt her fingers dig into my arm, her nails like claws.

“No!” Her voice was muffled because she’d jammed the damp towel over her mouth. “Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no! You poor…oh, God, how…?”

I heard a sound so full of pain it transfixed me for an instant until I realized it had come from me.

“No. I can’t. Please don’t ask. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

How could I talk about what I couldn’t even think about it? I knew if I freed those memories, even for a single moment, I’d never cage them again. They’d rampage through my being as they’d done before, devouring me alive from the inside.

I buried my face against Kim’s neck. She cradled me in her arms and rocked me like a baby.

 

“What about Timmy’s father?” I said, biting into my Egg McMuffin. “Does he know about all this?”

After clinging to Kim for I don’t know how long, I’d finally pulled myself together. We were hungry, but my clothes were still wet. So she took my car and made a breakfast run to Mickey D’s. I sat on the bed, Kim took the room’s one upholstered chair. The coffee was warming my insides, the caffeine pulling me partway out of my funk, but I was still well below sea level.

“He doesn’t know Timmy exists. Literally. We never married. He’s a good man, very bright, but I dropped him when I learned I was pregnant.”

“I don’t follow.”

“He’d have wanted to marry me, or have some part in my baby’s life. I didn’t want that.” My expression must have registered how offensive I found that, because she quickly explained. “You’ve got to understand how I was then: a super career woman who could do it all, wanted it all, and strictly on her own terms. I went through the pregnancy by myself, took maternity leave at the last possible moment, figuring I’d deliver the child—I knew he was a boy by the third month—and set him up with a nanny while I jumped right back into the race. I saw myself spending a sufficient amount of quality time with him as I molded him to be a mover and a shaker, just like his mother.” She shook her head. “What a jerk.”

“And after the delivery?” I’d guessed the answer.

She beamed. “When they put that little bundle into my arms, everything changed. He was a miracle, by far the finest thing I’d ever done in my life. Once I got him home, I couldn’t stop holding him. And when I would finally put him into his bassinet, I’d pull up a chair and sit there looking at him…I’d put my pinkie against his palm and his little fingers would close around it, almost like a reflex, and that’s how I’d stay, just sitting and staring, listening to him breathe as he held my finger.”

I felt my throat tighten. I remembered watching Beth sleep when she was an infant, marveling at her pudgy cheeks, counting the tiny veins on the surfaces of her closed eyelids.

“You sound like a wonderful mother.”

“I was. That’s no brag. It’s just that it’s simply not my nature to do things halfway. Everything else in my life took a backseat to Timmy, I mean way back. It damn near killed me to end my maternity leave, but I arranged to do a lot of work from home. I wanted to be near him all the time.” She blinked a few times and sniffed. “I’m so glad I made the effort. Because he didn’t stay around very long.” She rubbed a hand across her face and looked at me with reddened eyes. “How long since Beth…?”

“Five years.” The longing welled up in me. “Sometimes I feel like I was talking to her just yesterday, other times it seems like she’s been gone forever.”

“But don’t you see?” Kim leaned forward. “She’s not gone. She’s still here.”

I shook my head. “I wish I could believe that.”

The lightning episode was becoming less and less real with each passing minute. Despite what I’d seen, I found myself increasingly reluctant to buy into this.

“But you saw her, didn’t you? You knew her. Isn’t seeing believing?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes believing is seeing.”

“But each of us saw our dead child. Can we both be crazy?”

“There’s something called shared delusion. I could be—”

“Damn it!” She catapulted from the chair. “I’m not going to let you do this!” She yanked my pants from atop the lampshade and threw them at my face. “You can’t take this from me! I won’t let you or anybody else tell me—”

I grabbed her wrist as she stormed past me. “Kim! I want to believe! Can’t you see there’s nothing in the world I want more? And that’s what worries me. I may want it too much.”

I pulled her into my arms and we stood there, clinging to each other in anguished silence. I could feel her hot breath on my bare shoulder. She lifted her face to me.

“Don’t fight it, Joe,” she said, her voice soft. “Go with it. Otherwise you’ll be denying yourself—”

I kissed her on the lips.

She drew back. I didn’t know where the impulse had come from, and it was a toss-up as to which of us was more surprised. We stared at each other for a few heartbeats, and then our lips were together again. We seemed to be trying to devour each other. She tugged at my towel, I pulled at her sun dress, she wore nothing beneath it, and we tumbled onto the unmade bed, skin to skin, rolling and climbing all over each other, frantic mouths and hands everywhere until we finally locked together, riding out a storm of our own making.

 

Afterward, we clung to each other under the sheet. I stroked her back, feeling guilty because I knew it had been better for me than her.

“Sorry that was so quick. I’m out of practice.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she murmured, kissing my shoulder. “Maybe it’s all the shocks I’ve taken, but orgasms seem to be few and far between for me these days. I’m just glad to have someone I can feel close to. You don’t know how lonely it’s been, keeping this to myself, unable to share it. It’s wonderful to be able to talk about it with someone who understands.”

“I wish I did understand. Why is this happening?”

“Maybe all those volts alter the nervous system, change the brain’s modes of perception.”

“But I’ve never heard of anything like this. Why don’t other lightning strike victims mention seeing a dead loved one?”

“Maybe they have seen them and never mentioned it. You’re the only one I’ve told. But maybe it has to be someone who died during a storm. Did Beth—?”

“No,” I said quickly, not allowing the scene to take shape in my mind. “Perfect weather.”

“Then maybe it has to do with the fact that they both died as children, and they’re still attached to their parents. They hadn’t let go of us in life yet, and maybe that carries over into death.”

“Almost sounds as if they’re waiting for us.”

“Maybe they are.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop and Kim snuggled closer.

 

Later, when we went back to pick up Kim’s car, we walked up to where the lightning had struck. The top of the Nelson pine was split and charred. As we stood under its branches, I relived the moment, seeing Beth again, reaching for her…

“I wish she’d been closer.”

“Yes.” Kim turned to me. “Isn’t it frustrating? When I took my second hit, up in Orlando, Timmy was closer than he’d been in Texas, and I thought he might move closer with each succeeding hit. But it hasn’t worked that way. He stays about fifty yards away.”

“Really? Beth seemed at least twice that.” I pointed to the marshy field. “She was way over there.”

Kim pointed north. “Timmy was that way.”

I swiveled back and forth between where I’d seen Beth, and where Kim had seen Timmy, and an idea began to take shape.

“Which way were you facing when you saw Timmy in Texas?”

She closed her eyes. “Let me think…the sun always rose over the end of the dock, so I guess I was facing northeast.”

“Good.” I took her shoulders and rotated her until she faced east. “Now, show me where Timmy was in relation to the end of the dock when he appeared in Texas.”

She pointed north.

“I’ll be damned,” I said and trotted down the slope.

“Where’re you going?”

I reached into my car and plucked the compass from my dashboard. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep I go out for long aimless drives and wind up God knows where. At those times it’s handy to know which direction you’re headed.

“All right,” I said when I returned. “This morning Timmy was that way—the compass says that’s a few degrees east of north. If you followed that line from here, it would run through New Jersey, wouldn’t it?”

She nodded, her brow furrowing. “Yes.”

“But in Texas—where in Texas?”

“White River Lake. West Texas.”

“Okay. You saw him in a northeast direction. Follow that line from West Texas and I’ll bet it takes you—”

“To Jersey!” She was squeezing my upper arm with both hands and jumping up and down like a little girl. “Oh, God! That’s where we lived! Timmy spent his whole life in Princeton!”

It’s also where he died, I thought.

“I think a trip to Princeton is in order, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, God, yes!” Her voice cranked up to light speed. “Do you think that’s where he is? Do you think he’s still at the house? Oh, dear God! Why didn’t I think of that?” She settled down and looked at me. “And what about Beth? You saw her…where?”

“East-northeast,” I said. I didn’t need the compass to figure that.

“Where does that line go? Orlando? Kissimmee? Did you live around there?”

I shook my head. “No. We lived in Tampa.”

“But that’s the opposite direction. What’s east-northeast from here?”

I stared at the horizon. “Italy.”

 

A week later we were sitting in the uppermost part of Kim’s Princeton home waiting for an approaching storm to hit.

She had to have been earning big bucks as an investment banker to afford this place. A two-story Victorian—she said it was Second Empire style—with an octagonal tower set in the center of its mansard roof. One look at that tower and I knew it could be put to good use.

I found a Home Depot and bought four eight-foot sections of one-inch steel pipe, threaded at both ends, and three compatible couplers. I drilled a hole near the center of the tower roof and ran a length through; I coupled the second length to its lower end, and ran that through, and so on until Kim had a steel lightning target jutting twenty-odd feet above her tower.

The tower loft was unfurnished, so I’d carried up a couple of cushions from one of her sofas. We huddled side by side on those. The lower end of the steel pipe sat in a large galvanized bucket of water a few feet in front of us—the bucket was to catch the rain that would certainly leak through my amateur caulking job at the roof line, the water to reduce the risk of fire.

I heard the first distant mutter of thunder and rubbed my hands together. Despite the intense dry heat up here, they felt cold and damp.

“Scared?” Kim said

“Terrified.”

My first brush with lightning had been an accident. I hadn’t known what was coming. Now I did. I was shaking inside.

Kim smiled and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “So was I, at first. Knowing I’m going to see Timmy helps, but still…it’s the uncertainty that does it: Is it or isn’t it going to hit?”

“How about I just say I don’t believe in lightning? That’ll make me feel better.”

She laughed. “Hey, whatever works.” She sidled closer. “But I think I know a better way to take your mind off your worries.”

She began kissing me, on my eyes, my cheeks, my neck, my lips. And I began undoing the buttons on her blouse. We made love on the cushions in that hot stuffy tower, and were glazed with sweat when we finished.

A flash lit one of the eight slim windows that surrounded us, followed by a deep rumble.

“Almost here,” I whispered.

Kim nodded absently. She seemed distant. I knew our lovemaking had once again ended too quickly for her, and I felt bad. Over the past week I’d tried everything I knew to bring her through, but kept running into a wall I could not breach.

“I wish—” I began but she placed a finger against my lips.

“I have to tell you something. About Timmy. About the day he died.”

I knew it had been tough on her coming back here. I’d seen his room—it lay directly below this little tower. Like so many parents who’ve lost a child, she’d kept it just as he’d left it, with toys on the counters and drawings on the wall. I would have done that with Beth’s room, but my marriage fell apart soon after her death and the house was sold. Another child occupied Beth’s room now.

“You don’t—”

“Shush. Let me speak. I’ve got to tell you this. I’ve got to tell someone before…”

“Before what?”

“Before I explode. I brought Timmy home from the hospital to a room that was set up like the finest ICU. All his vital signs were monitored by telemetry, he had round-the-clock skilled nursing to give him his chemotherapy, monitor his IVs, draw blood for tests, adjust his respirator.”

“Why the respirator?” I couldn’t help it—the doctor in me wanted to know.

“The tumor had spread to his lungs—he couldn’t breathe without it. It’d also spread to many of his bones, even his skull. He was in terrible pain all the time. They radiated him, filled him with poisons that made him sicker, loaded him with dope to ease the pain, and kept telling me he had a fighting chance. He didn’t have a chance. I knew it, and that was why I’d brought him home, so he could be in his own room, and so I could have every minute with him. But worse, Timmy knew it too. I could see it in his eyes when they weren’t glazed with opiates. He was hanging by a thread but no one would let it break. He wanted to go.”

I closed my eyes, thinking, Oh, no. Don’t tell me this…I don’t want to hear this…

“It was the hardest decision of my life. More than anything else in the universe, I wanted my little boy to live, because every second of his life seemed a precious gift to me. But why was I delaying the inevitable? For him, or for me? Certainly not for him, because he was simply existing. He couldn’t read, couldn’t even watch TV, because if he wasn’t in agony, he was in the Demerol zone. That meant I was prolonging his agony for me, because I couldn’t let him go. I had to let him go. As his mother, I had to do what was right for him, not for me.”

“You don’t have to go on,” I said as she paused. “I can guess the rest.”

Kim showed me a small, bitter smile. “No, I don’t think you can.” She let out a deep shuddering sigh and bit her upper lip. “So one day, as a thunderstorm came through, I dosed a glass of orange juice with some ipecac and gave it to Timmy’s nurse. Ten minutes later, while she was in the bathroom heaving up her lunch, I sneaked down to the basement and threw the main breaker for the house. Then I rushed back up to the second floor to be with Timmy as he slipped away. But he wasn’t slipping away. He was writhing in the bed, spasming, fighting for air. I…I was horrified, I felt as if my blood had turned to ice. I thought he’d go gently. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I couldn’t bear it.”

Tears began to stream down her face. The storm was growing around us but I was barely aware. I was focused on Kim.

“I remember screaming and running back down to the basement, almost killing myself on the way, and resetting the breaker. Then I raced back upstairs. But when I reached him, it was too late. My Timmy was gone, and I hadn’t been there. He died alone. Alone! Because of me! I killed him!”

And now she was sobbing, deep wracking sounds from the pit of her soul. I took her in my arms and held her tight against me. She virtually radiated pain. At last I understood what was fueling the engine of this mad compulsion. What an appalling burden to carry.

“It’s all right, Kim,” I whispered. “What you saw were muscle spasms, all involuntary. You did the right thing, a brave thing.”

“Was it right?” she blurted through her sobs. “I know it wasn’t brave—I mean, I lost my nerve and changed my mind—but was it right? Did Timmy really want to go, or was it me just thinking he did? Was his suffering too much for him to bear, or too much for me? That’s what I’ve got to know. That’s why I have to see him close up and hear what he’s trying to say. If I can do that, just once, I swear I’ll stop all this and run for a basement every time I hear a storm coming.”

As if on cue, a blast of thunder shook the little tower and I became aware again of the storm. Rain slashed the windows and the darkened sky was alive with flashes. I stared at the steel pole a few feet before me and wanted to run. I could feel my heart hammering against my ribs. This was insane, truly insane. But I forced myself to sit tight and think about something else.

“It all makes sense now,” I said.

“What?”

“Why we’re seeing Beth and Timmy…they didn’t give up their lives—life was taken from them.”

Kim bunched a fist against her mouth. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

“Through love in Timmy’s case,” I said quickly. I cupped my hand behind her neck and kissed her forehead. “But not in Beth’s.”

Kim opened her eyes. “Can’t you tell me about it? Please?”

She’d shared her darkest secret with me, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. I was about to refuse her when a deafening blast of thunder stopped me. I was dancing with death in this tower. What if I didn’t survive? Kim should know. Suddenly I wanted her to know.

I closed my eyes and opened the gates, allowing the pent-up past to flow free. A mélange of sights, smells, sounds eddied around me, carrying me back five years…

I steeled myself and began: “It was the first time in years I’d allowed myself more than a week away from my practice. Twelve whole days in Italy. We were all so excited…”

 

Angela was first generation Italian-American and the three of us trooped to the Old Country to visit her grandparents—Beth’s great-grandparents. While Angela stayed in Positano, yakking in Italian to all her relatives, Beth and I dashed off for a quick, two-day jaunt to Venice. Yes, it’s an overpriced tourist trap. Yes, it’s the Italian equivalent of Disney World. But there’s not another place in the world like it, and since the city is supposedly sinking at the rate of two and a half inches per decade, I wanted Beth to experience it without a snorkel.

From the day she was born, Beth and I shared something special. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone or anything more than that little baby. When I was home, I’d feed her; when I wasn’t on call, I’d get up with her at night. Most parents love their kids, but Beth and I bonded. We were soul mates. She was only eight, but I felt as if I’d known her all my life.

I wanted her to be rich in spirit and experience, so I never passed up a chance to show her the wonders of the world, the natural and the manmade. Venice was a little of both. We did all the touristy stuff—a gondola ride past Marco Polo’s and Casanova’s houses, shopping on the Rialto Bridge, eating gelato, crossing the Bridge of Sighs from the Doge’s palace into the prison; we took boats to see the glassblowers on Murano and the lace makers on Burano, snagged a table at Harry’s Bar where I treated her to a Shirley Temple while I tried a Bellini. But no matter where we went or what we did, Beth kept dragging me back to Piazza San Marco so she could feed the pigeons. She was bonkers for those pigeons.

Vendors wheel little carts through the piazza, selling packets of birdseed, two thousand lire a pop. Beth must have gone through a dozen packets during our two-day stay. Pigeons have been called rats with feathers, and that may not be far off, but these have got to be the fattest, tamest feathered rats in the world. Sprinkle a little seed into your palm, hold it out, and they’ll flutter up to perch on your hand and arm to eat it. Beth loved to stand with handfuls stretched out to both sides. The birds would bunch at her feet, engulf her arms, and even perch on her head, transforming her into a giggling mass of feathers.

I wasn’t crazy about her being that close to so many birds—thoughts of the avian-born diseases like psittacosis that I’d studied in med school kept darting through my head—so I tried to limit her contact. But she got such a kick out of them, how many times could I say no? I even went so far as to let her talk me into doing her two-handed feeding trick. Soon, holding my breath within a sea of fluttering wings, I was inundated with feathers. I couldn’t see Beth but I could hear her distinctive belly laugh. When I finally shook off the pigeons, I found her red-faced and doubled over with laughter.

What can be better than making a child laugh? The pigeons grossed me out, but so what? I grabbed more seed and did it again.

Finally it was time to leave Venice. The only flight we could book to Naples left Marco Polo at six thirty the next morning, and the first public waterbus of the day would make a number of stops along the way and get us to the airport with only a few minutes to spare. Since I didn’t want to risk missing the flight, I had the hotel concierge arrange for a private water taxi. It would pick us up at five a.m. at a little dock just a hundred feet from our hotel.

At ten of five, Beth and I were standing by our luggage at the end of Calle Larga San Marco. The tide was out and the canal smelled pretty rank. Even at this hour it was warm enough for short sleeves. I was taken with the silence of the city, the haunted emptiness of the dark streets: Venice on the cusp of a new day, when the last revelers had called it quits, and the earliest risers were just starting their morning coffee.

Beth was her usual bossy little self. As soon as she’d learned to string words together, she began giving directions like a sergeant major. She had no qualms about telling us what to wear, or what to buy in the supermarket or a department store, or setting up seating arrangements—“You sit there, Mommy, and Daddy, you sit there, and I’ll sit right here in the middle.” We called her “the Boss.” And here in Venice, without her mother around, Boss Beth took charge of me. I loved to humor her.

“Put the suitcases right there, Daddy. Yours on the inside and mine on the outside so that when the boat gets here we can put them right on. Now you stand right over here by me.”

I did exactly as she told me. She wanted me close and I was glad to comply. Her voice trailed off after that and I could see her glancing around uneasily. I wasn’t fully comfortable myself, but I talked about seeing Mommy in a few hours to take her mind off our isolation.

And then finally we heard it—the sputtering gurgle of an approaching taxi acquei. The driver, painfully thin, a cigarette drooping from his lips, pulled into the dock—little more than a concrete step-down—and asked in bad English if we were the ones going to the airport. We were, and as I handed him our two suitcases, I noticed the heavy droop of his left eyelid. My first thought was Bell’s palsy, but then I noticed the scar that parted his eyebrow and ridged the lid below it.

I also noticed that he wasn’t one to make contact with his good eye, and that his taxi didn’t look to be in the best shape. A warning bell sounded in my head—not a full-scale alarm, just a troubled chime—but I knew if I went looking now for another taxi, we’d almost certainly miss the plane.

If only I’d heeded my instincts.

Beth and I sat together in the narrow, low-ceilinged cabin amidships as the driver wound his way into the wider, better-lit Grand Canal where we were the only craft moving. We followed that for a while, then turned off into a narrower passage. After numerous twists and turns I was completely disoriented. Somewhere along the way the canal-front homes had been replaced by warehouses. My apprehension was rising, and when the engine began to sputter, it soared.

As the taxi bumped against the side of the canal, the driver stuck his head into the cabin and managed to convey that he was having motor trouble and needed us to come up front so he could open the engine hatch.

I emerged to find him standing in front of me with his arm raised. I saw something flash dimly in his hand as he swung it at me, and I managed to get my left arm up in time to deflect it. I felt a blade slice deep into my forearm and I cried out with the pain as I fell to the side. Beth started screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” but that was all she managed before her voice died in a choking gurgle. I didn’t know what he’d done to Beth, I just knew he’d hurt her and no way in hell was he going to hurt her again. Bloody arm and all, I launched myself at him with an animal roar. He was light and thin, and not in good shape. I took him by surprise and drove him back against the boat’s console. Hard. He grunted and I swear I heard ribs crack. In blind fury I pinned him there and kept ramming my right forearm against his face and neck and kneeing him in the groin until he went limp, then I threw him to the deck and jumped on him a few times, driving my heels into his back to make sure he wouldn’t be getting up.

Then I leaped to Beth and found her drenched in blood and just about gone. He’d slit her throat! Oh Lord, oh God, to keep her from screaming he’d cut my little girl open, severing one of her carotid arteries in the process. The wound gaped dark and wet, blood was everywhere. Whimpering like a lost, frightened child, I felt around in the wound and found the feebly pumping carotid stump, tried to squeeze it shut but it was too late, too late. Her mouth was slack, her eyes wide and staring. I was losing her, my Beth was dying and I couldn’t do a thing to save her. I started shouting for help, I screamed until my throat was raw and my voice reduced to a ragged hiss, but the only replies were my own cries echoing off the warehouse walls.

And then the blood stopped pulsing against my fingers and I knew her little heart had stopped. CPR was no use because she had no blood left inside, it was all out here, soaking the deck and the two of us.

I held her and wept, rocking her back and forth, pleading with God to give her back to me. But instead of Beth stirring, the driver moved, groaning in pain from his broken bones. In a haze of rage as red as the sun just beginning to crawl over the horizon, I rose and began kicking and stomping him, reveling in the wonderful crunch of his bones beneath my soles. I shattered his limbs and hands and feet, crushed his rib cage, pulped the back of his skull, and I relished every blow. When I was satisfied he was dead, I returned to Beth. I cradled her in my arms and sobbed until the first warehouse workers arrived and found us.

 

Kim clutched both my hands; tears streamed down her cheeks. Her mouth moved as she tried to speak, but she made no sound.

“The rest is something of a blur. An official inquiry into the incident—two people were dead, so I couldn’t blame the Venice authorities for that—revealed that the killer had overheard the hotel arranging our water-taxi ride. He borrowed a friend’s boat and beat the scheduled taxi to the pickup spot. The court determined that he was going to kill us, steal whatever valuables we’d bought or brought, and dump our bodies in the Adriatic. They suspected that we weren’t his first victims.

“I was released, but then came the nightmare of red tape trying to return Beth’s body to the States. Finally we brought her home and buried her, but my life was changed forever by then. The world was never the same without Beth. Neither was my marriage. Angela never said so, but I know she secretly blamed me for Beth’s death. So did I. Angela and I split a year later. She couldn’t live with me. Who could blame her? I could barely live with myself. Still can’t.”

“But you’re not to blame.”

“I had a chance to back off before we stepped onto that water taxi, but I didn’t take it. And Beth paid for it.”

We sat in silence then, each mired in our pools of private guilt. Gradually I realized that the flashes outside were less frequent, the thunder not quite so loud.

“I think it’s passed us by,” I said.

Kim glanced around, frowning in disappointment. “Damn. We’ll have to wait for another storm. That could be next week or next month around here.” She pointed to the steel pole. “Oh, look. It’s wet.”

Fine rivulets of water were coursing down the surface of the steel.

“So much for my caulking skills. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”

Kim got on her knees and leaned forward to touch the wet surface and—

—the tower seemed to explode. I had an instant’s impression of a deafening buzz accompanied by a rainbow shower of sparks within a wall of blazing light; boiling water exploded from the galvanized bucket as multiple arcs of blue-white energy converged from the pole onto Kim’s outstretched arm. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream while her body arched like a bow and shuddered violently, and then a searing bolt flashed from her opposite shoulder into me…

…the whiteout fades, as do the walls of the tower, leaving ghostly translucent afterimages, and I know which way to turn. I spot the tiny figure immediately, still in her yellow dress, standing so far away, suspended above the treetops. Beth! I call her name but there is no sound in this place. I try to move toward her but I’m frozen in space. I need to be closer, I need to see her throat…and then her hand goes to her mouth, and her eyes widen as she points to me. What? What’s the matter?

I realize she’s pointing behind me. I turn and see Kim’s ghostly figure on the floor…so still…too still…

I came to and crawled to Kim. Her right arm was a smoking ruin, charred to the elbow, and she wasn’t breathing. Panicked, I struggled upright and kneeled over her. I forced my rubbery arms to pound my fists on her chest to jolt her heart back to life—once, twice—then I started CPR, compressing her sternum and blowing into her mouth, five thrusts, one breath…five thrusts, one breath…

“Come on, Kim!” I shouted. I was so slick with sweat that my hands kept slipping off her chest. “Breathe! You can do it! Breathe, damn it!”

I saw her eyelids flutter. Her blue irises had lost their luster, but I sensed an exquisite joy in their depths as they fixed on me for a beseeching instant…the tiniest shake of her head, and then she was gone again.

I realized what she’d just tried to tell me: Don’t…please don’t.

But it wasn’t in me to kneel here and watch the life seep out of her. I lurched again into CPR but she resisted my best efforts to bring her back. Finally, I stopped. Her skin was cooling beneath my palms. Kim was gone.

I stared at her pale, peaceful face. What was happening in that other place? Had she found her Timmy and the forgiveness she craved? Was she with him now and preferring to stay there?

I felt an explosive pressure building in my chest, mostly grief, but part envy. I let out an agonized groan and gathered her into my arms. I ached for her bright eyes, her crooked-toothed smile.

“Poor lost Kim,” I whispered, stroking her limp hair. “I hope to God you found what you were looking for.”

Just as with Beth, I held Kim until her body was cold.

Finally, I let her go. I dressed her as best I could, and stretched her out on the cushions. I called the emergency squad, then drove my car to the corner and waited until I saw them wheel her body out to the ambulance. Then I headed for the airport.

I hated abandoning her to the medical examiner, but I knew the police would want to question me. They’d want to know what the hell we were doing up in that tower during a storm. They might even take me into custody. I couldn’t allow that.

I had someplace to go.

 

I arrived in Marco Polo Airport without luggage. The terminal snuggles up to the water, and the boats wait right outside the arrival terminal. I bought a ticket for the waterbus—I could barely look at the smaller, speedier water taxis—and spent the two-and-a-half mile trip across the Laguna Véneta fighting off the past.

I did pretty well leaving the dock and walking into the Piazza San Marco. I hurried through the teeming crowds, past the flooded basilica on the right—a Byzantine toad squatting in a tiny pond—and the campanile towering to my left. I almost lost it when I saw a little girl feeding the pigeons, but I managed to hold on.

I found a hotel in the San Polo district, bought a change of clothes, and holed up in my room, watching the TV, waiting for news of a storm.

 

And now the storm is here. From my perch atop the Campanile di San Marco I see it boiling across the Laguna Véneta, spearing the Lido with bolts of blue-white energy, and taking dead aim for my position. The piazza below is empty now, the gawkers chased by the thunder, rain, and lightning—especially the lightning. Even the brave young Carabinieri has discovered the proper relationship between discretion and valor and ducked back inside.

And me: I’ve cut the ground wire from the lightning rod above me. I’m roped to the tower to keep from falling. And I’m drenched with rain.

I’m ready.

Physically, at least. Mentally, I’m still not completely sure. I’ve seen Beth twice now. I should believe, I want to believe…but do I want it so desperately that I’ve tapped into Kim’s delusion system and made it my own?

I’m hoping this will be my last time. If I can see Beth up close, see her throat, know that her wound has healed in this place where she waits, it will go a long way toward healing a wound of my own.

Suddenly I feel it—the tingle in my skin as the charge builds in the air around me—and then a deafening ZZZT! as the bolt strikes the ungrounded rod above the statue of St. Mark. Millions of volts slam into me, violently jerking my body…

…and then I’m in that other place, that other state…I look around frantically for a splotch of yellow and I almost cry out when I see Beth floating next to me. She’s here, smiling, radiant, and so close I can almost touch her. I choke with relief as I see her throat—it’s healed, the terrible grinning wound gone without a trace, as if it never happened.

I smile at her but she responds with a look of terror. She points down and I turn to see my body tumbling from the tower. The safety rope has broken and I’m drifting earthward like a feather.

I’m going to die.

Strangely, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. Not in this place.

Then in the distance I see two other figures approaching, and as they near I recognize Kim, and she’s leading a beaming towheaded boy toward Beth and me.

A burst of unimaginable joy engulfs me. This is so wonderful…almost too wonderful to be real. And there lies my greatest fear. Are they all—Beth, Kim, Timmy—really here? Or merely manifestations of my consuming need for this to be real?

I look down and see my slowly falling body nearing the pavement.Very soon I will know.