Chapter 57
I opened the door and the dimness of my home’s atmosphere, filled with familiar smells, enveloped me.
“Do you trust John?”, Jack asked
“I still have to decide”, I said.
I looked around, it felt good to be home again.
“I wish I didn’t have to pack now, that we could be here for another day or two…”, I said
Jack shrugged and smiled, looking at me with sparks on warm eagerness in his eyes.
“It’s now or never, so let’s get your stuff packed and ready for tomorrow”, he said
“You are excited to go”, I said, stopping to observe him, my eyes fixed on his
He shrugged again, hiding a smile
“Why are you shy to tell me?”
“I am not shy”
“Ehm…let’s go pack”, I said, still looking at him, my lips bent in a mischievous smile now, ready to poke him again and free the flow of images he had in his mind, about Milan, and Italy and this trip, and let him rub me with the excitement of discovery the days at the hospital had denuded me of.
I grabbed his hand and rushed up the steps, but when I was almost upstairs my head spun, and I had to stop, heart beating fast, pearls of sweat on my forehead, holding on to the handrail.
“Hey…”, Jack said in a worried tone, wrapping an arm around my waist. My vision had gone black, and I let my body lean on him. After a moment the image of the room came back to me, bleached and flaky, and I smiled, trying to reassure him, feeling waves of cold and heat at each movement I made.
“I am fine, I just got dizzy for a moment…”
“Why don’t you sit on the bed for a while”, Jack said, walking me to my room, his arm still around my waist
“Nah, I am fine now, let’s pack!”, I said, with the rush of high following pain or physical discomfort
I’ve never been a careful packer, I throw in the luggage what occurs to my mind in less than half an hour, no matter where I am going and for how long. After all if I forget something I can either buy it or go without it. Apart from the documents and the money for the food and the hotel rooms nothing else is strictly necessary.
“Done”, I said after a record time of 15 minutes
“Are you sure?”, Jack said, tilting his head and arching his brows
“Yep. Do you want to go to the lake?”
“To the lake?!”, Jack exclaimed, and then burst out laughing. “Why would we be going to the lake now after you just got out of the hospital and almost fainted less than half an hour ago?”
“I don’t know…”, I said, and I really didn’t, but I felt the irrational urge to go, all of a sudden.
The picture of a dead body floating on the water flashed through my mind, and then a girl, the sweetness of her smile, and her eyes looking at me. I closed mine and shivered
“What is happening?”
“The girl drowned in the lake…who was she? Do you know what she looked like?”
“Why? All I read was a column on the paper…and her picture was black and white, poorly printed”, Jack frowned
I walked to my studio and turned on the PC, punched in the password with febrile fingers. Jack followed me with a puzzled expression
“What are doing?”
“I want to find the column of the paper online and see a picture of the girl. She was Mirth’s babysitter, Mirth told me about it that one time I met her at the lake”
“Mirth?”
“The detective’s daughter, remember? I told you I had met her at the lake and she had said about how her nanny had died in the lake, drowned”
“Now I remember…so what about this girl?”
“I had a flash of a girl’s face, and of a drowned body…”
Jack’s frown deepened on his forehead, and he bugged his eyes, still not understanding what was going on in my mind. I didn’t either as a matter of fact, all I knew was that my senses were alert, protended towards this girl I had never met.
“Do you remember where you found the article?”, I asked
Jack kneeled besides me and ran few searches, while I sat on the edge of the chair, neck craned towards the screen, holding my breath.
“Here”, he said at least
Tragedy at Hepburn Lake
On Monday night 23 years old Julie Larson was found drowned at Hepburn Lake. It was Mirth Morrison, a 10 years old kid, to make the dramatic discovery. Mirth walked out alone to the lake after waiting for Julie Larson, who was babysitting the kid during the evenings, and found Julie’s body floating on the water, face down.
Julie Larson was a brilliant college student, apparently in good health, with no drug abuse or alcohol problems. Although the causes of the death still have to be ascertained, it is likely that a sudden illness caught her while she was swimming, resulting in the lethal accident.
The short description was followed by a picture. A girl, warm eyes and a sweet smile, light brown hair hastily gathered in a pony-tail. I looked at the familiar face I had never met but imagined, touched the screen seeking an impossible physical contact and wondered “Why?”, out loud. Why did I know her, and why had she died…it was impossible to imagine the youth of those features gone, swollen by the crystalline water of the lake, swallowed by the earth.
“What are you wondering?”, Jack asked after a moment
“I feel like I know her, do you see what I mean? Why? I never met her…can you see the strange pattern in the events? I go to the lake and meet Mirth one night, she tells me about this girl to whom I know I am connected. I know it in an irrational and intuitive way. Why did I picture her face now, coming out of the hospital? And your girlfriend? Her name is Julie too…”
“You are imagining too many things”, Jack said, but there was a broken note in his words, a doubt he wanted to hush, a wound he did not want to re-open.
“Can we go to the lake?”, I said, turning my face up to Jack.
I seldom saw him from this angle, and it felt reassuring to be looking up at him from below, it filled me with a sense of protection and sheltering warmth. Jack looked back at me for a moment, then he twitched his brows in an expression I had never received from him before, of indulgent tenderness, like the one a mother could have for her kid.
“Sure Iris, but we are going to swim close to the shore, if at all”
“Absolutely”, I smiled, suddenly happy, shoved by the intensity of alternating moods and sensations, feeling extremely alive.