"Mrs. Hutchinson?"

"Yes."

"I'm calling about Amanda Hutchinson," the woman said. Julie placed the voice: it was Gigi Kaufman, the social worker with the owl eyegla.s.ses. "I'm afraid something tragic has happened."

Julie held her breath, waiting.

"She died late last night. It was...well, she left a note. For you. Once the certificate is signed and everything has been put in order, we'll send it on to you."

Chapter Sixteen.

1.

A week later, after she got home, she checked the mail. Bills, mainly, for Comcast cable, and Sprint, and there was some invitation to a Health Care Forum in Montclair, and then a letter, with the name Kaufman on the return address.

She opened it up. It was a photocopy of the note that Amanda Hutchinson had written the night she had killed herself.

"Dear Wife Number Two Julie Hutchinson, If you're reading this, it's because my plan to somehow jump out of this body worked. It's the warm fuzzies. They f.u.c.ked my brain up too much. They made me think different. They made me remember things wrong. Say things I don't always mean.

You knew Hut. But you didn't know him. You thought he loved you. But I knew he didn't. It was all because of the hand. Five fingers, all separate, but they are all part of the hand. You can put your hand down a garbage disposal and turn it on, and it can tear into you and make your blood spurt up out of the sink. But when you pull your arm out, the hand is still there. Do you understand?

You will see Hut. He will haunt you. He haunts me. Even in the warm fuzzies I see him. He has come back now and he will never let you or your daughter alone. Do you understand? Do I make myself clear? Don't hate the one who killed him. Sometimes, death is not the worst thing.

It's not that you can ever bury someone. Julie, there is no death. There is no death.

I am going to try to die. If I don't, you'll never see this note. If I do, you'll read it. Consider this my warning to you.

Worse than seeing Hut, Julie. You may see the other ones, too. The fingers. They may be all around you, grasping. Because from you, something has come out. I knew when you visited me. Something is inside you and it's coming out, and they want that. It's something they can't have because of who they are. They are not dreams, Julie. They are real.

We kill our children so they can wake up, only they wake up somewhere else. And they shouldn't wake up. I should've killed Matt the night I tried to. I wish I had. He was already dead to me.

If I wake up from this, you'll know. But if I don't, thank G.o.d.

Love, Amanda, Wife Number One."

2.

Julie put the note down, folding it over. She had the urge to throw it out. It seemed obscene-insane and evil in a way she had never thought the written word could be. She felt a lump in her throat, thinking about Matt's mother. And now, how she was going to tell Matt. She had to do it.

She knew that if she didn't do it now, she'd lose her courage.

She found him at the kitchen table, with a microwaveable macaroni and cheese snack bowl. A carton of Jersey Farms Milk next to his half-empty gla.s.s, and a jar of Ovaltine beside it.

She sat down next him.

"Yeah?" he asked, looking at her suspiciously.

"Matt, I've got some bad news." She felt her eyes tearing up.

"It's my mom," he said. "I know." He took up a forkful of mac and cheese, slipping it between his lips. "They called here earlier."

"I want you to know-" she began.

"f.u.c.k it," he said. "She's been dead for years as far as I'm concerned. She tried to kill me. That's something you don't forget. She tried to set me on fire, Julie. She poured gasoline all over my body and tried to light me up. Do you think I'll ever forget that? Or how I was crying and asking her not to do it, and she just kept telling me I was from the Devil and needed to go to h.e.l.l. Do you think I care if she finally died?"

Julie couldn't control herself. She reached out and slapped him on the cheek as hard as she could. It knocked him back slightly. "It's your mother mother," she said.

Her red handprint on his face. It remained too long. Seconds pa.s.sed. He stared at her, his mouth a small o.

"I hate you, Julie. I hate you. Hate you. Hate you," he spat. And then he began weeping, his shoulders heaving, and she drew close and held him tight, and no matter how he struggled, she wouldn't let go. She whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and finally, he stopped crying and kissed her on the cheek and told her he prayed every night that she would be his mother but was afraid that she'd leave him now that his dad was dead.

"You're my son," Julie whispered. "You and Livy are my children. Don't ever be afraid that I'll leave you."

3.

Julie got in the Camry and just drove off. She knew she shouldn't leave Livy and Matt home like that. She knew that she should turn around, ten minutes into the drive, and go back home. What if something happened? Something unexpected? What if there was a gas leak? What if she'd forgotten to turn off the stove? What if...

Didn't matter. Drive. Just drive. Drive and be free. She sped along the winding roads of Rellingford, down into the darkness alongside the lake, taking the curves too fast, unconcerned about pedestrians (though the street was empty), windows down, her hair blowing back, feeling as if she were sixteen again, sixteen and free of every obligation, every weight, every care. She sped along the winding roads of Rellingford, down into the darkness alongside the lake, taking the curves too fast, unconcerned about pedestrians (though the street was empty), windows down, her hair blowing back, feeling as if she were sixteen again, sixteen and free of every obligation, every weight, every care.

She parked near the gap in the woods that was the beach. She first took off her shoes in the car, and walked barefoot out onto the gra.s.sy dirt patches that became fine sand, and then, her bare feet felt the welcome chill of the lake as she waded in. Across the lake, the lights of houses. The richer people of Rellingford lived on that side of the lake, with houses that cost a fortune. It was like seeing a string of pearls along the throat of night.

She unb.u.t.toned her shirt, and took it off, and then unzipped her dress, slipping out of it, getting it wet in the process.

Then, her bra, and finally, her underwear.

She tossed them back to the sh.o.r.e.

The mugginess of the evening clung to her naked form. She felt alive in a way she hadn't in months. She stepped forward into the water.

Another step.

Another.

She put out of her mind the snapping turtles and the freshwater eels and snakes and any of what Livy would call the squirmies, and went further into the water until she was up to her neck. It was so dark that she felt as if there were no separation between the water and the woods and the sky, and she dipped her head beneath the surface of the water.

Coolness.

Up again, to breathe, to gasp.

The lights across the water.

The dark sky above, but now, she saw the faint p.r.i.c.kles of stars, and as she kept watch on the sky, they seemed to come out by the hundreds and thousands.

It had been years since she'd looked up at the stars. Years, even, since she'd gotten into the lake that was less than a quarter mile from her house.

Years since she'd felt young.

And she remembered: She and Hut had been talking divorce. Well, she had been-he had ignored her. He had told her she needed therapy. He had told her that she needed to start taking anti-depressants. He had told her she needed to quit the job at the ER and be a better mother.

They had been fighting.

The last three years had felt like h.e.l.l to her, but she'd put up with it, for Livy. For Livy and Matt both, and for the shred of memory of love she still carried.

Somehow, it had all been wiped away in the murder.

Somehow, her mind had changed the bad memories to good.

Somehow, she'd turned Hut into a saint after his death.

He was a difficult, complex man, perhaps. And she'd loved him as much as she could, until he had turned mean, and cold, and unfeeling.

And the day she saw him strike his own son, she had been planning on how to leave him and somehow get Matt away from him.

All pushed aside, blocked, when he'd been murdered.

And the touch of one man had opened it, like an old Christmas present at the back of a closet, forgotten, hidden, pushed aside, and then, drawn out into the light of day, its wrapper torn back. Michael Diamond. He was bulls.h.i.t. But he knew things. How had he known? How had he been able to know about Amanda Hutchinson's death?

She walked back to sh.o.r.e, dressed, and hurried back to her car.

At home, in bed, she stayed up later, reading Diamond's book, The Life Beyond. The Life Beyond.

4.

She had an eleven a.m. with Eleanor Swanson, who wanted to meet at Julie's house. "My office is being redecorated by the group."

"The group?"

"The Seven Arts Medical a.s.sociation. Every five years they decide they need a different look, redo the offices, and suddenly, I'm paying more in rent."

"Oh," Julie smiled, and set a cup of coffee down on the table in front of her.

"Thank you, dear," Eleanor said. "I'm glad we could meet here. I'd have suggested my house, but it's a mess right now."

"It's nice to do this here," Julie said. They talked a bit about the heat and vacations, and then Julie said, "I have to talk to you about these s.e.xual dreams."

"Still going on?"

"They've intensified, Eleanor. I mean, they're full of perversions and things that I'd never do."

"Hut's in them?"

"Sometimes it's Hut. Sometimes, not."

"Well, what's disturbing about them?"

"It's like I close my eyes. And suddenly, they just begin. It's a rollercoaster."

Eleanor nodded. "Maybe you need a little something to help you sleep."

"I've tried sleeping pills. I have a prescription. But it doesn't take them away."

"I'm not much of a conventional therapist. I'm no good at just sitting and listening. If I think I can help, I'll try and bring my insights to this. You're in your mid-thirties, you lost your husband. By your own account, you had a less-than-satisfactory s.e.x life with him. Now, I think your subconscious is making up for lost time. Sure, there might be disturbing or-as you put it-perverted elements to the dreams. But all of us have them. All of us have pent-up fantasies that now and then become unleashed in our dream life. Women peak after thirty. You're right on schedule. Part of this is, you're h.o.r.n.y. The way all adult human beings get, particularly when they're lonely."

"But, it's not as if I enjoy them."

"Don't you?"

Julie stared at her. "They're horrible. Some of them."

"But you've told me all along they're erotic."

"Yes, but...there are things in them..."

"What things?"

Julie hesitated. She crossed one leg over the other, leaning back in her chair. She looked up at the ceiling. "There's a kind of cruelty to them. There's a meanness. In them, Hut is dead. I mean, dead. A corpse. His eyes are...well, they're not human. And there's a woman- with red hair-who...who..."

"Ah," Eleanor said. "You've been holding out on me."

"I couldn't say it before. I just couldn't."