loss, more than anything, was books. You pulled way into yourself, read
al!
the time, and I think you used fantasy as sort of a painkiller.”
She handed Holly the license and library card, and said to her; “Jim was
an awfully bright boy. He could get totally into a book, it became real
for him.”
Yeah, Holly thought, did it ever.
“When he first came to town and I heard he’d never been to a real school
before, been educated by his parents, I thought that was just terrible,
even if they did have to travel all the time with that nightclub act of
theirs” Holly recalled the gallery of photographs on Jim’s study walls
in Laguna Niguel: Miami, Atlantic City, New York, London, Chicago, Las
Vegas. . .
“-but they’d actually done a pretty fine job. At least they’d turned
him into a booklover, and that served him well later.” She turned to
Jim. “I suppose you haven’t asked your grandpa about Lena’s death
because you figure it might upset him to talk about it. But I think
he’s not as fragile as you imagine, and he’d know more about it than
anyone, of course.” Mrs.
Glynn addressed Holly again: “Is something wrong, dear?”
Holly realized she was standing with the blue library card in her hand,
statue-still, like one of those waiting-to-be-reanimated people in the
worlds within the books upon the shelves within these rooms. For a
moment she could not respond to the woman’s question.
Jim looked too stunned to pick up the ball this time. His grandfather
was alive somewhere. But where?
“No,” Holly said, “nothing’s wrong. I just realized how late it’s
getting-” A shatter of static, a vision: her severed head screaming, her
severed hands crawling like spiders across a floor, her decapitated body
writhing and twisting in agony; she was dismembered but not dead,
impossibly alive, in a thrall of horror beyond endurance Holly cleared
her throat, blinked at Mrs. Glynn, who was staring at her curiously.
“Uh, yeah, quite late. And we’re supposed to go see Henry before lunch.
It’s already ten. I’ve never met him.” She was babbling now, couldn’t
stop. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
Unless he really did die over four years ago, like Jim had told her, in
which case she wasn’t looking forward to it at all. But Mrs. Glynn did
not appear to be a spiritualist who would blithely suggest conjuring up
the dead for a little chat.
“He’s a nice man,” Eloise Glynn said. “I know he must’ve hated having
to move off the farm after his stroke, but he can be thankful it didn’t
leave him worse than he is. My mother, God rest her soul, had a stroke,
left her unable to walk, talk, blind in one eye, and so confused she
couldn’t always recognize her own children. At least poor Henry has his
wits about him, as I understand it. He can talk, and I hear he’s the
leader of the wheelchair pack over there at Fair Haven.”
“Yes,” Jim said, sounding as wooden as a talking post, “that’s what I
hear.”
“Fair Haven’s such a nice place,” Mrs. Glynn said, “it’s good of you to
keep him there, Jim. It’s not a snakepit like so many nursing homes
these days.”
The Yellow Pages at a public phone booth provided an address for Fair
Haven on the edge of Solvang. Holly drove south and west across the
valley.
“I remember he had a stroke,” Jim said. “I was in the hospital with
him, came up from Orange County, he was in the intensive-care unit. I
hadn’t. . . hadn’t seen him in thirteen years or more.”
Holly was surprised by that, and her look generated a hot wave of shame
that withered Jim. “You hadn’t seen your own grandfather in thirteen
years?”
“There was a reason. . . .”
“What?”
He stared at the road ahead for a while, then let out a guttural sound
of frustration and disgust. “I don’t know. There was a reason, but I
can’t remember it. Anyway, I came back when he had his stroke, when he
was dying in the hospital. And I remember him dead, damn it.”