Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

…and left the bigger bottle behind on the kitchen counter.

He went out through the screen door and crossed the lawn to the gazebo and walked up the steps and she watched him come, soaking wet, one leg dangling as she pushed the swing back and forth in a lazy tilt.

He said, “Honey, when did you drink all this?”

“This morning.” She stuck her tongue out at him and then gave him a dreamy smile and looked up at the curved ceiling. “Not enough, though. Can’t sleep. Just want to sleep. Too tired.”

He saw the logs floating in the lake behind her and he knew they weren’t logs, but he looked away, looked back at his wife.

“Why are you tired?”

She shrugged, flopping her hands out by her side. “Tired of all this. So tired. Just want to go home.”

“You are home.”

She pointed at the ceiling. “Home-home,” she said.

Teddy looked out at those logs again, turning gently in the water.

“Where’s Rachel?”

“School.”

“She’s too young for school, honey.”

“Not my school,” his wife said and showed him her teeth.

And Teddy screamed. He screamed so loudly that Dolores fell out of the swing and he jumped over her and jumped over the railing at the back of the gazebo and ran screaming, screaming no, screaming God, screaming please, screaming not my babies, screaming Jesus, screaming oh oh oh.

And he plunged into the water. He stumbled and fell forward on his face and went under and the water covered him like oil and he swam forward and forward and came up in the center of them. The three logs. His babies.

Edward and Daniel were facedown, but Rachel was on her back, her eyes open and looking up at the sky, her mother’s desolation imprinted in her pupils, her gaze searching the clouds.

He carried them out one by one and lay them on the shore. He was careful with them. He held them firmly but gently. He could feel their bones. He caressed their cheeks. He caressed their shoulders and their rib cages and their legs and their feet. He kissed them many times.

He dropped to his knees and vomited until his chest burned and his stomach was stripped.

He went back and crossed their arms over their chests, and he noticed that Daniel and Rachel had rope burns on their wrists, and he knew that Edward had been the first to die. The other two had waited, hearing it, knowing she’d be coming back for them.

He kissed each of his children again on both cheeks and their foreheads and he closed Rachel’s eyes.

Had they kicked in her arms as she carried them to the water? Had they screamed? Or had they gone soft and moaning, resigned to it?

He saw his wife in her violet dress the night he’d met her and saw the look in her face that first moment of seeing her, that look he’d fallen in love with. He’d thought it had just been the dress, her insecurity about wearing such a fine dress in a fine club. But that wasn’t it. It was terror, barely suppressed, and it was always there. It was terror of the outside—of trains, of bombs, of rattling streetcars and jackhammers and dark avenues and Russians and submarines and taverns filled with angry men, oceans filled with sharks, Asians carrying red books in one hand and rifles in the other.

She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim.

Teddy left his children and sat on the gazebo floor for a long time, watching her sway, and the worst of it all was how much he loved her. If he could sacrifice his own mind to restore hers, he would. Sell his limbs? Fine. She had been all the love he’d ever known for so long. She had been what carried him through the war, through this awful world. He loved her more than his life, more than his soul.

But he’d failed her. Failed his children. Failed the lives they’d all built together because he’d refused to see Dolores, really see her, see that her insanity was not her fault, not something she could control, not some proof of moral weakness or lack of fortitude.

He’d refused to see it because if she actually were his true love, his immortal other self, then what did that say about his brain, his sanity, his moral weakness?

And so, he’d hidden from it, hidden from her. He’d left her alone, his one love, and let her mind consume itself.

He watched her sway. Oh, Christ, how he loved her.

Loved her (and it shamed him deeply), more than his sons.

But more than Rachel?

Maybe not. Maybe not.

He saw Rachel in her mother’s arms as her mother carried her to the water. Saw his daughter’s eyes go wide as she descended into the lake.

He looked at his wife, still seeing his daughter, and thought: You cruel, cruel, insane bitch .

Teddy sat on the floor of the gazebo and wept. He wasn’t sure for how long. He wept and he saw Dolores on the stoop as he brought her flowers and Dolores looking back over her shoulder at him on their honeymoon and Dolores in her violet dress and pregnant with Edward and removing one of her eyelashes from his cheek as she pulled away from his kiss and curled in his arms as she gave his hand a peck and laughing and smiling her Sunday-morning smiles and staring at him as the rest of her face broke around those big eyes and she looked so scared and so alone, always, always, some part of her, so alone…

He stood and his knees shook.

He took a seat beside his wife and she said, “You’re my good man.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

“You are.” She took his hand. “You love me. I know that. I know you’re not perfect.”

What had they thought—Daniel and Rachel—when they woke to their mother tying rope around their wrists? As they looked into her eyes?

“Oh, Christ .”

“I do. But you’re mine. And you try.”

“Oh, baby,” he said, “please don’t say any more.”

And Edward. Edward would have run. She would have had to chase him through the house.

She was bright now, happy. She said, “Let’s put them in the kitchen.”

“What?”

She climbed atop him, straddled him, and hugged him to her damp body. “Let’s sit them at the table, Andrew.” She kissed his eyelids.

He held her to him, crushing her body against his, and he wept into her shoulder.

She said, “They’ll be our living dolls. We’ll dry them off.”

“ What ?” His voice muffled in his shoulder.

“We’ll change their clothes.” She whispered it in his ear.

He couldn’t see her in a box, a white rubber box with a small viewing window in the door.

“We’ll let them sleep in our bed tonight.”

“Please stop talking.”

“Just the one night.”

“Please.”

“And then tomorrow we can take them on a picnic.”

“If you ever loved me…” Teddy could see them lying on the shore.

“I always loved you, baby.”

“If you ever loved me, please stop talking,” Teddy said.

He wanted to go to his children, to bring them alive, to take them away from here, away from her.

Dolores placed her hand on his gun.

He clamped his hand over hers.

“I need you to love me,” she said. “I need you to free me.”

She pulled at his gun, but he removed her hand. He looked in her eyes. They were so bright they hurt. They were not the eyes of a human. A dog maybe. A wolf, possibly.

After the war, after Dachau, he’d swore he would never kill again unless he had no choice. Unless the other man’s gun was already pointed at him. Only then.

He couldn’t take one more death. He couldn’t.

She tugged at his gun, her eyes growing even brighter, and he removed her hand again.