Exit Light (30 page)

He felt her hand on his hair again. Soft touch of stroking fingers. How long had it been since anyone had comforted him in such a way? Since he’d allowed anyone close enough to touch him like that, or anyone had wanted to?

He shook. The world shook, too. Only Tovah stayed strong and steady, her touch more than a solace.

A salvation.

“I will shape you a haven,” she whispered. “Full of soft grass and flowers and nothing but beauty. Do you want it?”

“Yes,” he cried into the sand. “Oh, God. Yes. Please.”

Her voice was hoarse with grief. “Then here it is.”

“Martin?” Tovah blinked. She was drenched with sweat, her stump aching and eyes blurred. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth. She was kneeling beside him.

He wasn’t moving.

“Martin!” She shook him but got no response.

He was breathing, his eyes open, but Martin simply wasn’t there.

It was too much, all of it. The trip in the ambulance. The admission. The smell of antiseptic and despair.

“You should go home,” Ava told her. “This isn’t the place for you.”

And, though Tovah didn’t want to leave him, she knew Ava was right. Martin might wake up in an hour, or a day. Or never. But she could do nothing for him, because she’d been the one to do it to him.

At home, in bed, Tovah stared at the ceiling and waited for her eyes to close of their own accord. They didn’t. She wondered if she’d ever sleep again.

Tovah wanted to get back to the Ephemeros, to see Ben. To mourn Spider with him. To explore what they’d begun. Yet each time she closed her eyes, her body tensed with the memory of how it had felt to carry wings of glass and razors on her back. How the power had tasted.

What if she went back, only to find the haven hadn’t held? What if Edward had escaped, was wreaking more havoc? Didn’t she hold a certain responsibility to make sure he didn’t?

Morning sun greeted her before she knew it, and she got out of bed. Worked. Went to the gym. Came home, had dinner. Another day had passed and she sought her bed with anticipation and anxiety.

Something had really broken. She’d slept, dozing fitfully for a few minutes at a time. She even dreamed, or at least she thought she did when she woke with vague images shifting through her head. But she wasn’t lucid in her dreams. She didn’t shape. Her mind refused to stop working long enough to disconnect.

Could not, or didn’t want to. She’d been no better than Edward, in the end. She’d done the same things, found the power to unravel the dream world. She could be murderous and vindictive, and knowing it terrified her.

Go back to sleep.

Tovah didn’t want to go back to sleep. The life she’d led in dreams was no longer accessible to her. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. The Ephemeros had no future or past, only the present.

Tovah could no longer ignore the past and pretend there was no future. It was time to make her present part of both.

Ben had not always been in the Ephemeros every time she had, but he’d been there enough for her to be certain they lived within the same time zone. He slept at the same times she did. He’d probably be awake at the same times, too.

He’d given her a clue, if only she could think of it. What had he always been? A guide. A friend. A man who kissed mermaids and liked the sea, liked streams. Water.

A fisher.

Ben Fisher? Could it be that simple?

Tovah sat in front of her computer the way she’d done months ago, searching for information about Martin Goodfellow. It hurt to think of that now. This time her fingers flew over the keys and she typed in a different name, found as many possibilities.

The difference was, this time, she might actually take a chance and make something of them.

She found him on the Connex site, of all places. His profile picture showed him laughing, crinkles at the corners of his eyes she hadn’t ever seen in the Ephemeros. It was him, though. She had no Connex account, but could view his limited profile. Tovah stared, her cursor hovering over the letters of his name, underlined to show she could click on it for more information. His name. His hometown. And from there, she could find anything.

Tovah pushed away from the computer and turned her chair so she could no longer see the screen. She’d promised to find him, but that was dream talk. There was no reason to think finding Ben in the waking world could be a good idea. What they’d shared in the Ephemeros was…well, a dream.

Spider had told her dreams were real as anything else. Her friendship with Ben was real. So were her feelings. He’d kissed her there, held her in his arms. If she believed him there, she needed to believe he’d mean it in the waking world, too.

Or maybe not.

Tovah growled at herself and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Martin’s admonishment, “go to sleep,” haunted her. No matter how real the Ephemeros, it was still not the part of her life she could count on. She’d faltered there worse than ever in her waking life. She didn’t want to be like Henry, sleeping away his waking life in favor of hiding away in dreams.

Not only that, but she wasn’t sure she actually could get back there. Each night she went to sleep and each morning she woke with nothing but the most amorphous memories of having dreamed. At first she’d been relieved. Now she was beginning to worry she’d never shape again.

She spun her chair, facing the list again. Indecision pawed at her. There was no reason to believe that even if she found him it would be in any way practical to assume she could actually meet him. A phone number, an email address…she could send him a letter. But if she did discover where Ben lived in the waking world, she would have to contact him somehow.

Was she ready to do that? Take that step? Maybe she should dream again, first. Try one more time…

No.
No excuses. She lived here, in the waking world. Dreams were not enough to satisfy her. Not anymore.

She clicked.

“Oh my God.”

The words, said aloud, sounded like a stranger’s voice. Max pricked his ears at the sound and looked up at her, head cocked. Tovah stared at the computer monitor, not believing. She’d found a name and an address, a phone number.

Ben Fisher lived less than an hour away from her.

According to the address Tovah clutched in her hand, Ben lived in the red-brick Victorian with paint peeling around the windows and doors, a half-circle drive bisecting the scrubby side yard and a black iron fence spotted with rust blocking it from the sidewalk. It must have once been magnificent, and still stood out from its neighbors on either side. It should’ve been harder to find him, she thought. Too much coincidence, too much serendipity. Too much fate, maybe. And yet she knew all of this had happened for a reason. Ben’s ability to find her so easily in the Ephemeros had been something more than convenience. Their lives had been linked there…and now here, too. What seemed easy was really a very complicated matter made of many scattered pieces that had at last become a whole.

Tovah stood on the sidewalk, daring herself to go through the gate and knock on the front door.

What did she have to lose?

Nothing. Everything. Nothing.

She was on the front porch before she could stop herself. The bell didn’t seem to work and she was afraid to push it again in case it had and she hadn’t heard it. It might be a sign she should turn and go, but she stopped herself. She knocked, instead, anxiety knotting her insides like stockings tumbled in a dryer.

It took too long for the door to open. She almost fled before it did, had even turned to make her way down the uneven steps when it creaked open behind her. Tovah turned.

“Yes, can I help you?”

It wasn’t Ben’s face framed in the doorway. Too late, she realized she’d forgotten to make up a story. “I’m here to see Ben.”

That apparently was a good enough answer because the white-haired woman opened the door all the way. “Oh, certainly. Come in.”

It was too easy, the way finding his address had been too easy. Tovah, stepping into the narrow, dim hallway, sought automatically something to check herself against. A clock whose numbers didn’t shift. This was the waking world, surreal as the circumstances seemed. She wasn’t sure if this was a relief.

The woman gestured for Tovah to follow her up the thickly carpeted stairs. The carved, smooth banister could have used a dusting, but Tovah didn’t care what it looked like, only that it was a strong place for her to grab as she attempted the stairs. The woman in front of her glanced back but if Tovah’s limp alarmed her, she showed no sign.

At the top of the stairs another long hall lined with doors, all closed, greeted them. So did another steep set of stairs, but the woman didn’t pause. “These stairs are heck on my knees.” She puffed a little, taking the second set even slower than she had the first.

The third floor was more open, with fewer doors and big bright windows at the hall’s end. The woman, who didn’t seem to question Tovah’s presence at all, nudged open the last door on the left with her hip and stood aside for Tovah to enter.

Tovah breathed deep. For a moment the world wanted to tip, but she didn’t let it. She could control the waking world, too, at least a little. She could at least control herself. She would do this, even though her guts were trying to leap out through her throat and a giant fist had squeezed the air from her lungs. She needed to do this.

She entered the room with a smile on her face, ready to face him, no matter what.

Or not.

The bedroom needed to be large to hold the equipment, most of which she recognized without knowing what to call it. The hospital bed, the monitors, the steady swish-swush of breathing, though, she knew.

“Oh, honey…” The woman behind her grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. I thought you were a respite volunteer. The agency told me they were going to send someone new. I thought it was you.”

“No.” Tovah managed the single word though it took every effort.

“You’re a friend?” The woman patted her arm. “This is the first time you’ve seen him?”

Speech escaped her. Tovah nodded. She found a chair beneath her suddenly and sank into it without a word.

The woman moved to the bed and tucked the covers more firmly around Ben. And it was Ben, Tovah could see that clearly. A thinner, paler Ben with his hair cropped close to his skull and a curving white scar there to show the reason why.

She couldn’t breathe. Tovah looked at her watch once, then again, willing the numbers to blur and shift. Praying this was a dream. All but demanding it, really, but the numbers were bastards and refused to move.

She drew in a deep, sobbing breath. The woman looked over at her, face drawn with sympathy. “He’s not in any pain, sweetie.”

Tovah shook her head. “How long has he been like this?”

The woman gave her an odd look. “I’ve only been coming for about six months, but I think he’s been with hospice for close to eight.”

She looked at the figure on the bed. “He’s a fighter.”

She looked again at Tovah. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Tovah.” The chair had arms, which meant she didn’t have to struggle quite so hard to stand. “He can hear me.”

The hospice worker paused before nodding. “We think so. Research has shown coma patients can hear on a subliminal level. And it’s good for those around him to feel like they’re able to be heard.”

Tovah wanted to shake, to tremble. She wanted to make the world unravel. She knew now how Edward had felt and why he’d done what he had. If she could split herself to forget she’d ever come here, she thought she might have tried. On feet steady only by long habit, she moved toward the bed.

“Ben,” she said. “Oh, Ben.”

The woman gave her another odd look. “Would you like some time with him alone?”

Tovah nodded, not looking at her. “Please.”

“I’ll just be downstairs.”

Tovah didn’t know if that was supposed to be a comfort or a warning. She waited until the woman had left the room before reaching for Ben’s hand. His skin was cool, the fingers limp. She pressed it between her own.

He made no reaction. She’d expected one, hoping against reason, but she couldn’t shape here. No matter how much she wanted his eyes to open at the sound of her voice, it wasn’t going to happen.

He’d always been in the Ephemeros when she was. The way Spider had been. She should have known there was a reason like this.

“I promised to find you, and I did. But you should have told me, Ben,” she whispered. “I’d have—”

She’d have what, exactly? Understood? Would knowing about his condition have changed anything? Tovah bit off the rest of her words and swallowed them, not caring if they scratched her throat on the way down. She didn’t have anything to say to Ben, whether he could hear her or not.

She had spent too many hours sitting by a silent bedside, hoping for someone she cared about to wake. She couldn’t do it again. She didn’t want to.

Ridiculous anger, selfish and irrepressible, flared in her. “You should have told me.”

She’d come here to see if they could make things work in the waking world. If what they’d found together in the Ephemeros could translate into something solid. Into something real.

It was easy to promise he’d always be there for her when he knew he had no other choice.

“Can I help you?”

Tovah turned to face the woman moving through the doorway toward her. She wore her pale hair fixed off her face with a wide ribbon of black velvet. It matched her neat white blouse and black ankle-length skirt, but it didn’t flatter her. She looked like Alice out of Wonderland, with her porcelain skin lined from stress at the corners of her pale blue eyes.

“Are you the new respite volunteer?” The woman came closer, holding out her hand.

Tovah couldn’t refuse to take it, even as she shook her head. The woman’s hand was cold. “No. I’m…a friend.”

Stupid, she realized. Ben had family who would know she was lying. She had to get out of here. “I’m sorry, I’ll just go.”

“A friend of Ben’s?” The woman’s head tilted slightly. “From—?”

“College.” Tovah bit her tongue to keep from wincing. “We were friends in college. I just learned about his…”

Had it been an accident? Or illness? The woman didn’t seem to mind the trailing off of Tovah’s comment.

She shook Tovah’s hand firmly. “I’m Lauren.”

“Tovah Connelly. I was very sorry to learn about Ben.” This was no lie, and the shake of her voice proved it.

Lauren eyed her and then nodded. Whatever tears she’d shed, they’d been long put away into privacy. She moved to the bed, tucking in blankets and smoothing her hand over Ben’s forehead. “Thank you.”

Tovah watched. And then she knew. This woman was Ben’s wife.