"Didn't you see the blood, Daddy?" Nathan cried, his father's soothing words only seeming to cause him more anxiety.
The question gave Thomas a start, but he pushed aside the memory of what he had thought he'd seen in the shadows moments earlier. There was nothing in Nathan's room but Nathan, and the phantoms always created by a night-light and a little boy's imagination. And the pain of a part-time family.
"There was no blood, Nathan," he insisted. "Whatever you dreamed, it was only a nightmare. Not real. You know that, buddy. You're a big boy. Now, tell Daddy about your dream, and I'll show you that it wasn't real."
Nathan stared at him doubtfully for a moment, sniffling. Then his eyes wandered around the room as he remembered the dream, and the wailing began again.
"They came after me, Daddy," Nathan cried. "They came after me, wanted to take me while I was asleep. But Crabapple stopped them, Dad. He stopped them from getting to me . . . and they killed him!"
A terrible feeling of dread began to roil in Thomas Randall's belly. It reminded him, in the kind of awkward observational moment that had become familiar to him over the years, of the feeling he would get when he knew without a doubt that he was going to be sick, and just as surely knew he could do nothing to prevent it.
"Nobody could kill Crabapple, Nathan," Thomas insisted, tilting his head to look his son in the eye. "Crabapple isn't real. I'm sorry to say it, but he isn't. He's just in your imagination, and I've a feeling you know that already, don't you? He's no more real than the characters I created for Strangewood."
"No!" Nathan shouted, getting angry now. "Crabapple saved me and they killed him, Daddy! I saw them. They killed Crabapple!"
"I don't . . . who's they, Nathan?" Thomas asked, finally, though he suspected he knew the answer. "Who killed Crabapple?"
Nathan froze and stared at Thomas. The terror was gone, replaced by grief and shock. All too real emotions for a flesh and blood child to feel over the dreamworld murder of an imaginary friend.
"Nathan?" Thomas prodded, his heart already aching.
"It was them, Dad," Nathan whispered, a chilly calm having descended over the boy. "They were after me. They wanted to take me away, from you, and from Mom. Mostly from you, though, I think. But Crabapple . . .
"It was Feathertop and Grumbler," the boy said, and then the tears returned, and Nathan buried his face in his father's shoulder once more, and cried until he fell back to sleep.
All that time, Thomas didn't say another word. There was no more comfort he could summon, so stunned was he by his son's nightmares. He'd had no idea that the divorce had affected Nathan as profoundly as it obviously had. So much so, that his nightmares now consisted of what he must perceive as his father's imaginary friends slaying his own. But what was worse was Nathan's insistence that the creatures of Strangewood had been after him, had wanted to do harm to him.
For several minutes he could only sit and stare at his beautiful son and stroke his hair, overwrought by the horrible things his divorce had done to Nathan's imagination.
It seemed clear that Nathan's nightmares and daydreams had something very specific to do with some kind of resentment against Thomas. The vulnerable part of Thomas Randall didn't really want to hear what Dr. Morrissey had to say. But he was a father, and whatever it took, he wanted to secure the health and happiness of his only child.
Thomas lay Nathan back down in his bed and kissed the boy's forehead. He pulled the spread over his son and walked back across the hall to his own room without even glancing down to see if the green feather was still there.
It took a long while before Thomas was able to get back to sleep. Even then, he rested fitfully, with nightmares of his own, all of which he had forgotten mere seconds after rising with the dawn on Sunday morning.
CHAPTER 3
It felt like cheating. That was the bitch of it. No matter how many times Emily told herself that Thomas wasn't her husband anymore, it still felt like cheating.
The early morning sun slashed across the bed, a world of light and shadow where she curled under a burgundy cotton sheet. Her legs were warm in the sun, her left foot jutting out from the covers. But her upper body, her face burrowed into her two thick pillows, was pleasantly cool in the shadow that was all that remained of the dark.
All that remained, except for Joe Hayes, the man she'd accepted into her bed last night. Into the bed where she and Thomas had conceived their only child, had made the baby boy they both loved so much.
It felt like cheating.
Emily kept her eyes closed for a time, long minutes after she'd come fully awake. She didn't want to know, didn't want to think. She enjoyed the cool morning breeze on her face, the warmth on her legs, and the mere sensation of a presence next to her in bed. The weight of a man there.
Finally, Emily turned, sheets rustling, and was relieved to see that Joe was still sleeping. She watched him, the rise and fall of his chest, the benevolent expression on his face, an innocence that belied the power men had to crush a woman's soul without a single malicious intention. That was the worst thing about them, Emily thought. So often, they wreaked havoc, left destruction in their wake, all with only the best of intentions. They just didn't think the same way.
Well, maybe there were more similarities than Emily liked to admit. After all, she'd ended up in bed with him. Joe was kind and sincere, intelligent and funny; maybe a little arrogant, but she liked that in small doses. Those things had been what convinced her that last night was the night to consummate their budding relationship. But what attracted her to him in the first place? What made her flirt with him that night the girls from work dragged her out to "meet men?"
He was really good looking, and he didn't seem to know it.
And, yes, he was fully seven years her junior, and there was something intoxicatingly unattainable about a man his age. Well, at least he'd seemed unattainable the night they'd met. Apparently not.
Suddenly overwhelmed by her attraction to him, Emily leaned forward, the sheet slipping down to reveal her nakedness — and when was the last time she'd slept naked? — and kissed Joe hard on the mouth. His eyes flickered open instantly and he was returning her kiss seemingly before he was fully awake. His arms came up and encircled her and she moved on top of him in a languorous crawl. His body tensed a moment, a physical query as to her motivations. But it wasn't sex she wanted just then; it was intimacy.
She found it, and was delighted that Joe was able to give it so well. He kissed her passionately, fingers twirling in her hair as her breasts pressed against his chest. Then the kiss ended, and the lovers pressed noses and grins together, and then parted, Emily almost falling away from him onto the bed.
Suddenly, and happily, it didn't feel like cheating anymore. It felt like the best decision she'd made in a long, long time.
"Good morning," Joe said huskily, sleep still in his voice.
"Yeah," Emily agreed. "It is. Although if you'd gotten up before me and made breakfast, it would have been even better."
"Do I look like a houseboy to you?" he asked with a smirk.