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She blushed slightly whenever she thought about it. Restless Nights could wait.

  Instead, she planned out the paper. She could probably get by on common knowledge and common sense. Counter’s class was bonehead history, and if she got the grammar and the dates right, he’d have to pass it.

  She would have to fudge the bibliography a bit—

  Rhett and Scarlett, two thirds of the feline population of the house, attacked Allison as soon as she let herself in. Scarlett butted her ankles and purred while Rhett jumped on a chair by the door, better to nose into Allison’s backpack as she unshouldered it. When Allison put the pack down, Rhett’s black form managed to disappear entirely into it, spilling books and notebook paper.

  Allison didn’t put down the history text that she’d clutched to her chest all the way home. The muse was upon her and, if she struck now, she might be able to crank out at least a rough draft of her paper before sunset. She might manage to have some of her weekend free.

  After a side trip to the kitchen to grab a box of Low Salt Wheat Thins, she went upstairs to the study.

  The study was half hers, half Mom’s. Allison had no idea what her mom used it for. There was a bookshelf and a filing cabinet on Mom’s side of the room, all of it a little too neat. Allison’s mom was an accountant, a profession that Allison found so boring that she rarely asked for any specifics. The bookshelf was filled with books as dry and impenetrable as Allison could imagine; economics, business, accounting, taxes, ugh.

  Opposing Mom’s neat half, was Allison’s part of the room. There was a tiny desk from Allison’s kindergarten days, still bearing multicolored Crayola scars. Piled on top of it were cardboard boxes of dog-eared paperbacks; westerns, romances, mysteries. Piled on top of them was a riot of lined paper and spiral bound notebooks. Piled on top of that was Meowrie Antoinette— Allison had been six when she’d named her— the matriarch the felines. Old tufts of white cat hair coated all of Allison’s homework.

  Allison gently petted Meowrie to let the cat know that she was there. Meowrie was older than Allison, nearly deaf, and blinded by milky cataracts. Meowrie made a half purr, a sort of catlike sigh, licked Allison’s thumb, and went back to sleep. Allison liberated her history notebook from the pile while trying to disturb the old cat as little as possible.

  Her mom’s souped-up HP sat alone on an austere table with only its peripherals for company. She cracked the notebook to the page where she had copied the assignment and set it down next to the keyboard. Allison flicked on the PC and began typing with one hand, digging in the Wheat Thins box with the other.

  ◆◆◆

  By seven-thirty Allison had managed to print out ten pages of airy but well-written essay that only needed a few footnotes and a bibliography to get past Mr. Counter’s requirements. It was the kind of thing that Allison suspected drove Mr. Counter nuts— a technically perfect vacuum of an essay.

  She shouldn’t have been so pleased with herself, but she smiled anyway. The way Mr. Counter graded, the paper rated a C as is. With a little polish, anything less than an A would mark an obvious personal vendetta on Mr. Counter’s part. It would count, in some twisted way, as a moral victory.

  Allison lay on her bed. Red-marked computer draft essay surrounded her. An unfinished gothic paperback lay open, face down next to her pillow. Across from the foot of the bed, a crotchety black-and-white TV nattered on, half-buried in stuffed animals. It was tuned to PBS and Tom Lehrer was going on about the latest difficulty around Taiwan. Allison wasn’t paying much attention to it.

  Instead, she was looking at the shoebox she had fished out of the closet. It rested on her lap, and inside it nestled a small stack of gaudy paperbacks that her mother would never approve of. Their covers bore no titles, only blurry photos of naked models in Victorian settings. The women were well endowed, and lounged amidst red velvet and white lace. Some models wore white gloves, some black. A few wore spiked heels. On two of the covers men were present, backs to the camera, muscular and equally nude. The titles on the spine were all The Passion of… something or other. Allison had read every one several times, and usually just the sight of the covers could bring a catch to her throat.

  The books were a secret embarrassment. Mostly because Allison didn’t want to admit that a rather tame sextet of mid-seventies drugstore erotica could get her legs rubbing together like that.

  However, at the moment, she was concentrating on another embarrassment she kept in the shoebox. In her hands were the last of the hundred-and-two pages of Restless Nights, her novel.

  It had been calling to her all afternoon, and she’d finally given in. She was a fast reader, and she had managed to read through the draft— cry at the really awful parts— and reach the end all in half an hour. And here, the last five pages, she had slowed her reading to a crawl.

  Mr. Lehrer droned in the background.

  She felt her face flush as she closed on the scene where Randolph and Melissa finally met, after their years of separation. Randolph had managed to escape the Nazi prison camp, but not the false rumors of his treason. Melissa had survived the deaths of her father and her brother to become the chaste caretaker of the family home.

  Allison might hate parts of the story, parts that were wooden and clumsy now, but every page, every single word, had been an arrow pointing to this reunion. She had written these last five pages in a white heat. A heat that wasn’t entirely literary.

  In one way it was so wrong, the book was supposed to be a dance, weaving Melissa and Randolph together. Melissa was chaste and virginal. Randolph was gruff and still had to prove himself not to be the traitor he was believed to be. It was 1944, and pre-marital sex was a naughty thing.

  However, the second that Allison had written them into the same room, the two of them had slammed together like opposing poles of a magnet. Allison had written through nearly to the end of the scene, and it was so hot and explicit that it scared her.

  Every time she reached the end, she found her pulse racing and wondered at herself. I wrote that?

  She was still frozen to the page, picturing Randolph’s hands exploring Melissa’s body, when she heard her mother’s car arrive in the driveway.

  Allison dove, stuffing her manuscript back into the shoebox. She slipped on a throw rug and had to catch herself on the dresser opposite the foot of her bed. An avalanche of stuffed animals buried the News Hour as she bent and stuffed the box under the debris cluttering the bottom of her closet.

  She shut the closet before she heard the door open downstairs. Allison slumped, her back holding the closet door closed, as if her manuscript might escape. She was still flushed and a little warm.

  Realizing how silly she must’ve looked made her flush that much hotter.

  A smiling Babs Bunny sat on top of the mound of animals Allison had dislodged, winner of king of the mountain. “Stop laughing at me,” Allison said to the stuffed pink rabbit.

  Allison started to replace the dislodged multitudes as, below her, she heard her mom say, “Allie?”

  “In my room, Mom.”

  She heard her mother climb the steps and willed herself calm. She felt as if her lascivious thoughts were visible on the surface of her skin.

  Her mom peeked in the door, and upon seeing Allison, pushed the door the rest of the way open. “What happened?” she asked, waving a hand at the scattered animals.

  Allison gaped for a moment, frozen at the question. Then she managed to regain her bearings. Pasting on a smile, she waved her stuffed bunny toward the dresser. “A revolt. Babs went over the wall and suddenly I had a mass escape on my hands.”

  Mom smiled. The contrast made Allison realize just how tired Mom looked. She took Babs from Allison and gave the stuffed rabbit a mock serious look. “A troublemaker, eh? Perhaps she should be put in solitary.” The humor sounded forced.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  “Oh?” She looked a little surprised at the question. “No, I’m fine, just a tough day at work, that’s all. What’re you do
ing home so early on a Friday? Not feeling under the weather again, are you?”

  Allison hated the phrase “under the weather.” As far as she was concerned, anyone who wasn’t in a plane flying above cloud-cover was “under the weather.”

  “No, Mom.” Allison tried to keep the sigh out of her voice. “I just wanted to get some homework out of the way before the weekend.” She waved absently at the bed where her history essay was laid out like a reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg in computer paper.

  Mom stepped over to the bed, as if Allison’s wave was an invitation.

  Mom attempted to involve herself with Allison’s schoolwork. However, lately, Allison had come to the cynical realization that her mother really didn’t pay all that much attention. She thought her mom really did try, but the details seemed to slip her attention. Otherwise Mom would’ve realized just how many days Allison had cut to sit in the bathroom and down Midol and Advil like M&M’s.

  Allison watched her mother leaf through pages of her history report, when she was struck by a horrid realization. The page Mom was currently reading was not part of her history report. It was a page from Restless Nights. It must have fallen out of the shoebox in her dive for the closet.

  Mom arched an eyebrow and asked, “What’s this? Not your homework?”

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. Allison just couldn’t get her mouth to work. What could she say? Some bandit broke in and planted blatant pornography in her history report?

  Mom was smiling at her and Allison felt her face turn beet red.

  “Come on. Tell me.”

  “It’s— ah— something I wrote.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “A-a— novel I worked on over the summer. The page— it— ah— got mixed in by accident.”

  “A whole novel?” Mom looked at the page again. Allison wished she could see what her mother was reading. Oh please don’t let it be Melissa’s trembling breasts or Randolph’s manhood, anything but that.

  “Ab-b-bout a hundred pages.”

  She set the page down and looked at Allison. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was embarrassed.”

  “Well, don’t be.” Mom seemed to finally recognize Allison’s discomfort. She bent down and kissed Allison’s forehead.

  “Wha?”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be reading unfinished work, should I?”

  “I— uh— well—”

  “I won’t stifle you. I don’t want to see any more of it. Not until you finish it, of course.”

  Allison just nodded, lamely.

  “Good. I’m going down to fix myself some dinner. Want anything?”

  “No.”

  When her mother nodded and left, Allison rushed to the bed and grabbed the paper.

  It was page number seven.

  Allison’s sigh of relief was choked short when a small jab of pain lanced her forehead. Just then, the animals she’d replaced on the bureau collapsed on to the floor again, Babs in the lead.

  The pain vanished as quickly as it had come.

  FOUR

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Saturday October 23, 1999

  02:35 AM

  The phone woke Allison from another nightmare. Mr. Counter had been passing out papers. When she tuned over her paper, it was the love scene from Restless Nights. Mr. Counter had covered the scene with illegible red corrections. Across the top he’d scrawled a great big “F” and the comment “do over.”

  The phone rang again.

  She turned, half asleep, and startled a cat. Rhett jumped out of bed right across the front of her face, waking her fully.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  It’s nearly three in the morning, she thought, simultaneously irritated at the caller and remembering the last call that’d roused her in the middle of the night.

  From downstairs she faintly heard Mom yelling, “—call here again!”

  Something in Mom’s voice frightened Allison. It was the same tone she’d heard in the previous call. The call that had might have been about her.

  Hating herself for doing it, Allison gently lifted the receiver on her extension so she could hear both ends of the conversation. As she held it away from the sound of her breathing she heard a strained, slightly familiar, male voice say, “I deserve the chance to talk to her, Carol.” The sound came through a lot of interference, as if the man was speaking on a cheap cordless phone or from really long distance.

  “You have the nerve to say you deserve anything? After all this? Good bye, John.”

  Allison had never heard her mother sound like this, and a tiny voice was screaming at her to hang up, that she didn’t want to hear any more…

  However, the male voice started to register. It had just been such a long time since she’d heard it. The dimly familiar voice, in connection with the name, froze her so that she couldn’t even breathe.

  Her father’s name had been John.

  She was listening to her father’s voice.

  “Don’t you under— Damn it, tell her! You owe me nothing, but you owe her.”

  “Don’t tell me how to treat my daughter.”

  “If they’re looking, they can find out about the doctor’s appointments.”

  Allison could hear tears and near panic in her mother’s voice. “Those were nothing, nothing! It was the stress of school. The doctor said that himself. It didn’t mean anything. It cleared up right after the last visit—”

  “Did the doctor know the other possibility?”

  The only answer was long-distance static on the line.

  “Carol? There’s always been the chance.”

  Allison’s mother made a noise it sounded like a sob.

  “If she is a teek, they’ll—”

  “Leave us alone!” The yell made Allison drop the phone in shock. It bounced off the bed and landed on the floor. Even so, Allison still heard her mother yelling. It came through the tinny speaker of the phone and it also came, muffled, through the floor of her room. “Those people are crazy. Stone’s crazy. I don’t believe in any of this, none of it. And I won’t have my daughter believing it. You’re insane, John. They’re insane. I’ll go to court this time, publicly, if you call me again. I don’t care who gets pulled in. And if you come near my daughter I swear to God I’ll kill you!”

  She could hear the phone slam downstairs. She tried to get the receiver before her dad hung up, but by the time she’d gotten to the phone, she only heard a dial tone.

  Allison gently replaced the receiver. She felt dirty for listening in, but her confusion felt worse. She had just heard an argument about her and she didn’t understand any of it.

  Worst was the awful thing that ate at Allison’s heart as she tried to sleep—

  Mom had always told her that her father was dead.

  08:05 AM

  Saturday morning was rotten.

  The temperature had dipped below freezing during the night and now strained to get over forty. The sky had turned an ugly slate gray, and all the tree colors had faded into a uniform mud-brown that fit Allison’s mood perfectly.

  Allison couldn’t remember the last time she’d been awake this early on a Saturday. It had probably been back when she spent her mornings watching cartoons.

  She hadn’t woken early. She’d never managed to get back to sleep. By the time she glanced at the clock and it read six-thirty, she’d given up, showered, and got herself breakfast. All along, Allison felt on the verge of a migraine, but the headache never materialized.

  At least the fresh air helped push away that prospect.

  Now she kicked her way through the leaves in the gutter, past mostly silent houses. She winded her way toward the library. It would open at nine, so she did her best to take a twisted route to eat up time. She’d left at seven-thirty, as soon as she got her hair dry. She wanted to slip out of the house before her mother woke up.

  Allison still didn’t know what she would say when she finally talked to Mom. Would she mention the overheard c
onversation at all? Would she simply ask about her father? Would she tell her mother the fact that the headaches had not ended with the last doctor’s visit, and— in fact— had persisted nearly six weeks beyond, and were only now fading?

  “Tell her!” her father had said to Mom.

  Tell me what? Allison thought. Tell me that he was still alive? That was the obvious interpretation, but the way her father—

  She amazed herself by how calmly she was taking that. Her father. She was thinking about him as if he’d only been gone for the weekend.

  But the way John had spoken made Allison doubt that he simply wanted to divulge the fact of his existence.

  When Allison turned back on to a main street, she sat down in a bus shelter across from a closed deli and opened up her backpack. A sheet of frost on the seat chilled a strip of flesh through the seat of her jeans. She ignored it.

  She pulled out a spiral notebook— her Trigonometry homework, notably sparse— and flipped open to a blank page. She fished out a pencil and tried to transcribe the conversation from memory:

  Mom: “How dare you call me here.”

  She erased that. It irritated her that she was already confusing the two calls. She rethought what she’d heard last night. What was the first thing she’d heard?

  Allison replaced her first line with:

  Mom: “Calling here again.”

  Allison decided she should have done this immediately after she had heard the phone call. It was very hard to get the words down from memory.

  She decided Mom’s first line was close enough. She wrote:

  Dad:

  Allison erased that as soon as she wrote it. She didn’t know that yet. Until she had some sort of confirmation it was probably saner to assume that Mom’s late night caller was some other person named John. It was a common name.

  John: “I deserve the chance to talk to her.”

  She thought for a while and couldn’t remember Mom’s next words exactly. She wrote down:

  Mom: “You have some nerve. Good bye, John.”

  The “good bye,” that she was sure of. Now, what did he say?