Doctor Sleep

could seek her out, maybe try to discover more, but what would he say to the parents? Hi, you don’t know me, but I know your daughter, she visits my room sometimes and we’ve gotten to be pretty good pals ?
    Dan didn’t think they’d sic the county sheriff on him, but he wouldn’t blame them if they did, and given his checkered past, he had no urge to find out. Better to let Tony be her long-distancefriend, if that was what was really going on. Tony might be invisible, but at least he was more or less age-appropriate.
    Later, he could replace the names and room numbers that belonged on his blackboard. For now he picked the stub of chalk out of the ledge and wrote: Tony and I wish you a happy summer day, Abra! Your OTHER friend, Dan.
    He studied this for a moment, nodded, and went to the window.A beautiful late summer afternoon, and still his day off. He decided to go for a walk and try to get the troubling conversation with Casey out of his mind. Yes, he supposed Deenie’s apartment in Wilmington had been his bottom, but if keeping to himself what had happened there hadn’t stopped him from piling up ten years of sobriety, he didn’t see why keeping it to himself should stop him fromgetting another ten. Or twenty. And why think about years anyway, when the AA motto was one day at a time?
    Wilmington was a long time ago. That part of his life was done.
    He locked his room when he left, as he always did, but a lock wouldn’t keep the mysterious Abra out if she wanted to visit. When he came back, there might be another message from her on the blackboard.
    Maybe we can become pen pals.
    Sure, and maybe a cabal of Victoria’s Secret lingerie models would crack the secret of hydrogen fusion.
    Grinning, Dan went out.
    5
    The Anniston Public Library was having its annual summer book sale, and when Abra asked to go, Lucy was delighted to put aside her afternoon chores and walk down to Main Street with her daughter. Card tables loaded with various donated volumes had beenset up on the lawn, and while Lucy browsed the paperback table ($1 EACH, 6 FOR $5, YOU PICK ’EM), looking for Jodi Picoults she hadn’t read, Abra checked out the selections on the tables marked YOUNG ADULTS. She was still a long way from adulthood of even the youngest sort, but she was a voracious (and precocious) reader with a particular love of fantasy and science fiction. Her favorite t-shirt hada huge, complicated machine on the front above the declaration STEAMPUNK RULES.
    Just as Lucy was deciding she’d have to settle for an old DeanKoontz and a slightly newer Lisa Gardner, Abra came running over to her. She was smiling. “Mom! Mommy! His name is Dan!”
    “Whose name is Dan, sweetheart?”
    “Tony’s father! He told me to have a happy summer day!”
    Lucy looked around, almost expecting tosee a strange man with a boy Abra’s age in tow. There were plenty of strangers—it was summer, after all—but no pairs like that.
    Abra saw what she was doing and giggled. “Oh, he’s not here.”
    “Then where is he?”
    “I don’t know, exactly. But close.”
    “Well . . . I guess that’s good, hon.”
    Lucy had just enough time to tousle her daughter’s hair before Abra ran back to renew her hunt for rocketeers,time travelers, and sorcerers. Lucy stood watching her, her own choices hanging forgotten in her hand. Tell David about this when he called from Boston, or not? She thought not.
    Weird radio, that was all.
    Better to let it pass.
    6
    Dan decided to pop into Java Express, buy a couple of coffees, and take one to Billy Freeman over in Teenytown. Although Dan’s employment by the Frazier MunicipalDepartment had been extremely short, the two men had remained friendly over the last ten years. Part of that was having Casey in common—Billy’s boss, Dan’s sponsor—but mostly it was simple liking. Dan enjoyed Billy’s no-bullshit attitude.
    He also enjoyed driving The Helen Rivington . Probably that inner-child thing again; he was sure a psychiatrist would say so. Billy was usually willing to turnover the controls, and during the summer season he often did so with relief. Between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, the Riv made the ten-mile loop out to Cloud Gap and back ten times a day, and Billy wasn’t getting any younger.
    As he crossed the lawn to Cranmore Avenue, Dan spied Fred Carling sitting on a shady bench in the walkway between Rivington House proper and Rivington Two. The orderlywho had once left a set of