Chapter 77

HE HAD A SMILE on his round face.

I didn’t know whether to attribute the smile to the pie he’d just eaten inside the hospital cafeteria or to the painting he was about to give me.

The final painting.

As he picked it up and brought it to my bed, I felt my heart beat. In my head, flashes of images. Faces. Michael. Molly. Whalen.

Like the other four before it, this image took my breath away. Unlike the others, however, it did not frighten me. What this image represented was the end of something.

It was an almost exact representation of Molly and me. We were sitting by the stream in the woods, still dressed in our cut off jeans and t-shirts. Molly was washing me with the stream water, washing my hair, touching me with the cold, clean water and her gentle hand. It had been only moments since Whalen had attempted to do terrible things to us and failed. But now he was gone and Molly was being strong. Strong enough for the both of us. Molly was washing me in the stream. It was a baptismal ceremony; Molly making all things new again.

I laid my head back on the bed, into the soft pillow. I wanted to cry. For Molly, for Michael, for Franny, for everyone. But I felt that I couldn’t possibly cry another tear.

This painting was the end of something.

Somehow I was happy about that. Happy and sad at the same time.

“What’s its title Franny?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“’Touch’,” he said softly.

Maybe there were no more tears to shed, but I felt myself choking up. I felt my heart and my lungs and all my organs twist inside out.

“You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “All those years ago in the woods. You saw what happened to Molly and me. You must have seen it all through a basement window.”

He stood by the bed in his baggy jeans and yellow suspenders and he began to cry. He cried for the both of us. It was all too true. Franny had witnessed the attacks and couldn’t find a way to express what he’d seen. He couldn’t communicate it until now; this very week. Like me, like Molly, Franny had been carrying the burden for nearly his entire life.

He must have known that Whalen had been freed. He must have used his special extrasensory gifts to intuit Whalen’s intent—the intent to come after me. Franny sensed the danger and he tried to warn me through his art, his special language. In a word, he tried to save my life even before it required saving.