They drove to Nora's mother's house in Bellhaven, two hours south, and arrived at nine AM to find her already up and apparently unsurprised, in the way that mothers of a certain type are never quite surprised by their children appearing on the doorstep."All of you," she said. "Come in."David was quiet in the car. The particular kind of quiet that Nora recognized as processing — he was a man who went inward when something disrupted his model of how things worked, and the model was clearly undergoing significant revision.At her mother's kitchen table, with the children eating toast in the next room, he said: "I don't know why I went up there.""It called to you.""I heard—" He stopped. "I thought I heard someone up there. I thought someone was in trouble. I couldn't just—""I know." She put her hand over his. It was the same gesture she'd made that night in bed, three weeks ago, when she told him everything. "Eleanor's husband said the same thing. Word for word."He looked at her hands. "That's not reassuring.""No.""He recovered though.""He did. Eighteen months."David looked out the kitchen window at her mother's garden, bare in December. "I was up there for maybe two minutes. Does it — is it proportional?""I don't know.""Do you feel—" She studied his face. Looking for the flatness Eleanor had described. The ironed-out quality. "Do you feel different?""I feel stupid," he said. "I feel like I did the exact thing you told me not to do and walked straight into the exact scenario you described and I don't—" His voice caught, just slightly. "I don't know why. I heard someone up there and I just — went.""You came down when I called you.""I almost didn't." He said it very quietly.She looked at him."There was a moment," he said, "at the top of the stairs. Where it felt—" He stopped. Tried again. "Where there was something very heavy. Like a hand on my shoulder. Not literally, but like that. Pressing. Down. And a voice. Not words, just — direction. Stay. And then your voice, saying my name. And it was—" He exhaled. "It was very close. Which one I listened to."They sat with that for a moment."Your name pulled me out," he said.She thought about Eleanor's husband, who had not come back so easily. Who had spent eighteen months in the slow process of returning to himself.She thought about the index card in her pocket.
You will want to. It will give you reasons. Don't.The reason it had given David was someone in trouble. Someone needing help. It had learned him the same way it had been learning Lily — accurately, specifically, using the right bait for the right person.It was intelligent.That was perhaps the most frightening thing."We're not going back," she said."No," he agreed."We'll find somewhere to stay. The house can—""We're not going back," he said again, firmer this time. Like saying it twice was how you made something true.She picked up her phone and called Janet Pryor.
