The Homing

Caroline Evans's dream was not a nightmare, and as it began evaporating into the morning light, she tried to cling to it, wanting nothing more than to retreat into the warm, sweet bliss of sleep where the joy and rapture of the dream and the reality of her life were one and the same. Even now she could feel Brad's arms around her, feel his warm breath on her cheek, feel his gentle fingers caressing her skin. But none of the sensations were as sharp and perfect as they had been a few moments ago, and her moana moan that had begun in anticipation of ecstasy but which had already devolved into nothing more than an expression of pain and frustrationdrove the last vestiges of the dream from her consciousness. The arms that a moment ago had held her in comfort were suddenly a constricting tangle of sheets, and the heat of his breath on her cheek faded into nothing more than the weak warmth of a few rays of sunlight that had managed to penetrate the blinds covering the bedroom window. Only the fingers touching her back were real, but they were not those of her husband leading her into a morning of slow lovemaking, but of her eleven-year-old son prodding her to get out of bed. "It's almost nine," Ryan complained. "I'm gonna be late for practice!" Caroline rolled over, the image of her husband rising in her memory as she gazed at her son. So alike. The same soft brown eyes, the same unruly shock of brown hair, the same perfectly chiseled features, though Ryan's had not quite emerged from the softness of boyhood into the perfectly defined angles and planes that had always made every-one men and women alikelook twice whenever Brad entered a room. Had the person who killed him looked twice? Had he looked even once? Had he even cared? Probably notall he'd want-ed was Brad's wallet and watch, and he'd gone about it in the most efficient method possible, coming up behind Brad, slipping an arm around his neck, and then using his other hand to shove Brad's head hard to the left, ripping vertebrae apart and crushing his spinal cord. Maybe she shouldn't have gone to the morgue that day, shouldn't have looked at Brad's body lying on the cold metal of the drawer, shouldn't have let herself see death in his face. Caroline shuddered at the memory, struggling to banish it. But she could never rid herself of that last image she had of her husband, an image that would remain seared in her memory until the day she died. There were plenty of other people who could have identified him at the morgue. Any one of the partners in his law firm could have done it, or any of their friends. But she had insisted on going herself, certain that it was a mistake, that it hadn't been Brad at all who'd been mugged in the park. A terrible cold seized her as the memory of that evening last fall came over her. When Brad had gone out for his run around part of the lake and through the Ramble she'd worried that it was too dark. But he'd insisted that a good run might help him get over the jumpiness that had come over him in the last couple of weeks. She'd been helping Laurie with her math homework and barely responded to Brad's quick kiss before he'd headed out. Hardly even nodded an acknowledgment of what turned out to be his last words: "Love you." Love you. The words kept echoing through her mind six hours later when she'd gazed numbly down at the face that was so utterly expressionless as to be almosJohn Saul is the author of 'The Homing', published 1994 under ISBN 9780449908631 and ISBN 0449908631.