Yes you can go outside, I said.
And he was gone. Out the door. He tore down the hill in the backyard, slipped through the bushes and was out of sight into the Paulson’s yard. The trees along the property line were being thrashed by the wind. When I’d stepped out earlier, the wind drowned out all other sound, creating a false silence.
She was still in the house. Downstairs. Always too quiet to sense. Like a Stealth bomber, equipped with the latest in radar evasion technology. A ghost calling this world her’s. I walked downstairs and found her reading in the kitchen. Sitting on the bench at the breakfast table. Everything still. No music. No TV.
What are you reading.
She held up the book so I could see the cover, A Wrinkle In Time. The refrigerator clicked on and began to hum.
I’ll be upstairs if you need anything, okay.
I went up to the little room connected to our bedroom, the annex I call it sometimes. Or the salon. The study. The den. The lounge. The office. The library. There was one bookshelf, one chair with a footstool. A small table next to the chair. A small desk.
A rug was in the middle of the floor. I sat down on it in the lotus position and began to meditate. She was an awful long ways away now. How far is it. Miles lose meaning after a certain point. As does time.
The wind roared outside. I imagined my boy getting carried away by it. Over the leafless bushes and trees. Over the ocean. Maybe he’d find his mother, I thought.
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