Velocity

her what the strange message said, but now he read it to her just in case her murmured words had referred to it.
    When he finished, she did not react. He spoke her name without effect.
    Sitting on the stool once more, he plucked the little notebook from the nightstand. With the small pen, he recorded her seven words and the date that she had spoken them.
    He had a notebook for each year of her unnatural sleep. Although each contained only a hundred three-by-four-inch pages, none had been filled, as she did not speak on every—or even most—visits.
    I want to know what it says
    After dating that unusually complete statement, he flipped pages, looking back through the notebook, reading not the dates but just some of her words. LAMBS COULD NOT FORGIVE BEEF-FACED BOYS MY INFANT TONGUE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS TOMBSTONE PAPA, POTATOES, POULTRY, PRUNES, PRISM SEASON OF DARKNESS IT SWELLS FORWARD ONE GREAT HEAVE ALL FLASHES AWAY TWENTY-THREE, TWENTY-THREE
    In her words, Billy could find neither coherence nor a clue to any.
    From time to time through the weeks, the months, she smiled faintly. Twice in his experience she had laughed softly.
    On other occasions, however, her whispered words disturbed him, sometimes chilled him. TORN, BRUISED, PANTING, BLEEDING GORE AND FIRE HATCHETS, KNIVES, BAYONETS RED IN THEIR EYES, THEIR FRENZIED EYES
    These dismaying utterances were not delivered in a tone of distress. They came in the same uninflected murmur with which she spoke less troubling words.
    Nevertheless, they concerned Billy. He worried that at the bottom of her coma, she occupied a dark and fearsome place, that she felt trapped and threatened, and alone.
    Now her brow furrowed and she spoke again, “The sea…”
    When he wrote this down, she gave him more: “What it is…”
    The stillness in the room grew more profound, as if countless fathoms of thickening atmosphere pressed all currents from the air, so that her soft voice carried to Billy.
    To her lips, her right hand rose as though to feel the texture of her words. “What it is that it keeps on saying.”
    This was the most coherent she had been, in coma, and seldom had she said as much in a single visit.
    “Barbara?”
    “I want to know what it says… the sea.”
    She lowered her hand to her breast. The furrows faded from her brow. Her eyes, which as she spoke had roved beneath their lids, grew fixed once more.
    Pen poised over paper, Billy waited, but Barbara matched the silence of the room. And the silence deepened, and the stillness, until he felt that he must go or meet a fate similar to that of a prehistoric fly preserved in amber.
    She would lie in this hush for hours or for days, or forever.
    He kissed her but not on the mouth. That would feel like a violation. Her cheek was soft and cool against his lips.
    Three years, ten months, four days, she had been in this coma, into which she had fallen only a month after accepting an engagement ring from Billy.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    Billy did not have the isolation that Lanny enjoyed, but he lived on an acre shrouded by alders and deodar cedars, along a lane with few residences.
    He didn’t know his neighbors. He might not have known them even if they had lived closer. He was grateful for their disinterest.
    The original owner of the house and the architect had evidently negotiated each other into a hybrid structure, half bungalow, half upscale cabin. The lines were those of a bungalow. The cedar siding, silvered by the weather, belonged on a cabin, as did the front porch with rough-hewn posts supporting the roof.
    Unlike most bipolar houses, this one appeared cozy. Diamond-pane, beveled-glass windows—pure bungalow—looked bejeweled when the lights were on. In daylight the leaping-deer weather vane on the roof turned with lazy grace even in turbulent scrambles of wind.
    The detached garage, which also contained his woodworking shop, stood behind the house.
    After Billy parked the Explorer and closed the big door behind it, as he walked across the backyard toward the house, an owl hooted from its perch on the ridge line of the garage roof.
    No other owls answered. But Billy thought he heard mice squeak, and he could almost feel them shivering in the shrubbery, yearning for the tall grass beyond the yard.
    His mind felt swampy, his thoughts muddy. He paused and took a deep breath, savoring air redolent of the fragrant bark and needles of the deodars. The astringent scent cleared his head.
    Clarity proved