Page 3 of Gone Tonight
Late at night is when I think about James the most. When I can’t sleep, even though the time my shift will start is drawing closer. I try to imagine what James is doing at that exact same moment, nearly a hundred miles away.
I always come to the same conclusion: He’s lying in bed in the darkness, just like me.
I wonder if he’s thinking about me, too.
A heavy crack erupts beside me, the noise exploding through the air.
I leap to my feet, twisting toward the sound.
“Sorry.” The teenager who dropped a stack of hardback books onto the table next to me shrugs.
“You need to be more careful!” My voice is loud and harsh. Heads swivel in my direction.
I’m no longer invisible.
Which means I need to leave the library as fast as I can.
CHAPTER THREECATHERINE
The doctor rises from a chair behind his desk as we enter his office. I’m not sure what I expected, but it isn’t this: a small, sterile room with mud-dull carpet and a schoolhouse-style clock hung on the beige wall. But the diplomas displayed on his bookshelf are from good schools, and I’ve checked him out. He’s the best neurologist around.
He walks around his desk, not avoiding our eyes but not smiling either. I can’t read a verdict in his expression. He’s good at navigating this fraught moment, but then he must have a lot of practice.
“I’m Alan Chen,” he introduces himself.
“Nice to meet you,” my mother replies. “I’m Ruth Sterling, and this”—she touches my shoulder—“is my daughter, Catherine.”
I step forward to shake his hand as his eyes widen in surprise behind his glasses.
Now our roles have shifted and I’m the one who has had practice navigating this uncomfortable moment. Dr. Chen urges us to sit down and offers us water, but all the while I can see him doing the mental math.
My mother has a few silver strands glittering like tinsel in her chocolate-brown hair and slightly crimped skin around her big hazel eyes. She looks her age—forty-two. I look older than my twenty-fouryears, and I’m told I act it, too. That’s probably because smiling isn’t a reflex for me the way it’s expected to be for young women.
Dr. Chen recovers quicker than most. By the time he is back in his chair, opening the chart on his desk, his expression is inscrutable again.
He jumps right in: “Ruth, can you tell me about some of the symptoms you’re experiencing?”
I’m certain that information is already documented in his folder in the pages of paperwork my mother filled out, along with the results of the blood test from her primary physician that ruled out possibilities like a vitamin B12 deficiency and Lyme disease.
“At first it was little things.” The material of my mother’s slacks rustles as she crosses her legs. “Dumb stuff that happens to everyone. It just started happening more often to me. Like I couldn’t remember the word I wanted. Forgot to unplug the iron. That kind of thing.”
“And you noticed an increase in these sorts of events how long ago?” Dr. Chen prompts.
The silence stretches out. A red button on the doctor’s desk phone begins to flash, but he ignores it. A strange current is humming through the air. It feels electric.
I’m about to break in with the answer—a month ago—when my mom opens her mouth and beats me to it.
“Maybe four months ago.” Her voice is almost a whisper.
I suck in a quick breath and whip my head to the side to look at her. Her expression is calm, but her hands are restless. She’s toying with the delicate topaz ring she always wears, spinning it in circles around her finger.
Dr. Chen jots a note on one of the papers in his file. “And it’s getting worse?”
My mother nods.
I pull my iPhone out of my purse and call up my list.
5/07: Put sunglasses in kitchen drawer.
