Doctor Sleep: A Novel

guess I still do.”
    “You and most kids,” Billy said. “You love your folks and hope for the best. What else can you do? Come on, Dan. If we’re gonna do this, we have to go.”
    Half an hour later, Boulder was behind them and they were climbing into the Rockies.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    GHOSTIE PEOPLE
    1
    Although sunset was approaching—in New Hampshire, at least—Abra was still on the back stoop, looking down at the river. Hoppy was sitting nearby, on the lid of the composter. Lucy and David came out and sat on either side of her. John Dalton watched them from the kitchen, holding a cold cup of coffee. His black bag was on the counter, but there was nothing in it he could use this evening.
    “You should come in and have some supper,” Lucy said, knowing that Abra wouldn’t—probably couldn’t—until this was over. But you clung to the known. Because everything looked normal, and because the danger was over a thousand miles away, that was easier for her than for her daughter. Although Abra’s complexion had previously been clear—as unblemished as when she was an infant—she now had nests of acne around the wings of her nose and an ugly cluster of pimples on her chin. Just hormones kicking in, heralding the onset of true adolescence: so Lucy would have liked to believe, because that was normal. But stress caused acne, too. Then there was the pallor of her daughter’s skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked almost as ill as Dan did when Lucy had last seen him, climbing with painful slowness into Mr. Freeman’s pickup truck.
    “Can’t eat now, Mom. No time. I probably couldn’t keep it down, anyway.”
    “How soon before this happens, Abby?” David asked.
    She looked at neither of them. She looked fixedly down at the river, but Lucy knew she wasn’t really looking at that, either. She was far away, in a place where none of them could help her. “Not long. You should each give me a kiss and then go inside.”
    “But—” Lucy began, then saw David shake his head at her. Only once, but very firmly. She sighed, took one of Abra’s hands (how cold it was), and planted a kiss on her left cheek. David put one on her right.
    Lucy: “Remember what Dan said. If things go wrong—”
    “You should go in now, guys. When it starts, I’m going to take Hoppy and put him in my lap. When you see that, you can’t interrupt me. Not for anything . You could get Uncle Dan killed, and maybe Billy, too. I might fall over, like in a faint, but it won’t be a faint, so don’t move me and don’t let Dr. John move me, either. Just let me be until it’s over. I think Dan knows a place where we can be together.”
    David said, “I don’t understand how this can possibly work. That woman, Rose, will see there’s no little girl—”
    “You need to go in now, ” Abra said.
    They did as she said. Lucy looked pleadingly at John; he could only shrug and shake his head. The three of them stood at the kitchen window, arms around one another, looking out at the little girl sitting on the stoop with her arms clasped around her knees. There was no danger to be seen; all was placid. But when Lucy saw Abra—her little girl—reach for Hoppy and take the old stuffed rabbit on her lap, she groaned. John squeezed her shoulder. David tightened the arm around her waist, and she gripped his hand with panicky tightness.
    Please let my daughter be all right. If something has to happen . . . something bad . . . let it happen to the half brother I never knew. Not to her.
    “It’ll be okay,” Dave said.
    She nodded. “Of course it will. Of course it will.”
    They watched the girl on the stoop. Lucy understood that if she did call to Abra, she wouldn’t answer. Abra was gone.
    2
    Billy and Dan reached the turnoff to the True’s Colorado base of operations at twenty to four, Mountain Time, which put them comfortably ahead of schedule. There was a wooden ranch-style arch over the paved road with WELCOME TO THE BLUEBELL CAMPGROUND! STAY AWHILE, PARTNER! carved into it. The sign beside the road was a lot less welcoming: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE .
    Billy drove past without slowing, but his eyes were busy. “Don’t see nobody. Not even on the lawns, although I suppose they coulda stashed someone in that welcome-hut doohickey. Jesus, Danny, you look just awful.”
    “Lucky for me the Mr. America competition isn’t until later this year,” Dan said. “One mile up, maybe a little less. The sign says Scenic