Brian Freeman - Thief River Falls

And since then — nothing. Since then, she’d lived a different life. She’d disappeared into a world she’d created. She’d lived out the story of Thief River Falls.

Lisa clamped her eyes shut. The afterimage of Harlan’s face shone in her head like a photograph. Her son, alive, standing in front of her, the way he never would again. Her son, saying goodbye.

She opened her eyes.

Harlan was gone. She was alone. She’d been alone for two days.

“No,” she wailed, drawing out the word in all its finality.

The book was done. Purdue was back inside its pages. All that remained was her grief, which was a wide, deep canyon, sinking so far down she couldn’t see the bottom. The only thing she could think to do was jump. She cared about nothing, least of all herself. Harlan was gone, and she had no purpose left in life. There was no one to save anymore. No one to rescue.

This was the Dark Star in full eclipse.

Lisa walked toward the church doors in a daze. She still had the rifle in her arms. She wrenched open the doors and was immediately bathed in the glow of spotlights. She was at the center of a whirlwind. Dozens of police cars. Dozens of people. Dozens of guns pointed at her.

And one man standing in the snow, apart from all the others. She held up a hand and squinted into the bright lights, trying to see who it was. Then she knew.

Noah.

“Lis, put down the gun,” he said.

She was paralyzed. There was a hush over the scene, chaos freezing into complete silence. No one spoke. No one moved. The snow had stopped falling, and even the wind held its breath.

“Lis, it’s me. It’s Noah. I know about Harlan. Laurel told me everything. I know your heart is broken. I know your whole world is broken. But we’ll get through it. We’ll put everything back together. You and me, like when we were kids. Just put down the gun.”

Noah.

Noah, who’d run away. Noah, who’d left her alone. Noah, who’d abandoned her. She hated him. She hated her brother. Most of all, she hated that she could see herself reflecting in his eyes. It was like staring into a wretched mirror of all her own weaknesses.

Lisa raised the AR-15 and pointed it at her brother’s chest. All she had to do was pull the trigger.

Noah screamed at the police. “Nobody shoot, nobody shoot, hold your fire, do not hurt her!”

And then to his sister: “It’s okay, Lis. You want to shoot me? Shoot me. I ran out on you. Both of you. I wasn’t there for you or for Harlan. But I’m here now.”

Noah.

Noah, who’d grown up in the bed next to hers. Noah, who could read her mind and whose thoughts she could hear when she lay awake at night. She’d never admitted it to him. She’d never told him he was right. He was always with her. Noah, who’d introduced her to Danny. Noah, who’d been with her in the delivery room when Harlan was born.

Noah.

“If you’d stayed, you’d be dead, too,” Lisa murmured.

“What?”

“Last year. You were going to kill yourself.”

“I didn’t think you knew that.”

“I felt it,” Lisa said. “I felt you put the gun in your mouth. I thought, I’m going to come home and find your body on the floor. I knew it. Instead, I came home and you were gone. I was glad, Noah. I was glad you ran away. I hated you for it, but I didn’t want you to die like the others.”

“I’m home, Lis. I’ll never run away again.”

He walked toward her through the snow. She watched him come. He climbed the wooden steps of the church and stood there with the barrel of her gun jabbing into his stomach. Gently, not rushing, he reached for her hand and peeled away her finger from the trigger and took the rifle from her. She let it go. She let everything go. He put the gun down next to him where it would harm no one, and as he did, she could hear the silence break into the thunder of footsteps as people ran toward them, the eruption of cheers, the blessings to God. Noah put his arms around her and held on, and she put her arms around him, at first stiffly, then as tightly as she’d ever held anyone in her life.

They stood there together like that for a long, long time.

Far away, from the railroad tracks behind the church, she heard a mournful whistle and felt the earth tremble as a train lumbered toward the heart of town on its way to Canada. And then, when the whistle went away, there was only silence.

Sunlight streamed through the window into the hospital room, which was brightly colored by bouquets of flowers. They’d come from around the world. So had cards, e-mails, and messages online. Thousands of strangers had sent prayers and condolences to her. It was easy to forget sometimes that a book went out into the world and touched people’s lives, and Lisa was overwhelmed by the many readers who had reached back to her in the past week. They were like her family.

She sat patiently as Laurel checked her blood pressure and her pulse and listened to the beat of her heart. Everything was normal. She was on antianxiety medication and would be for a while, but the psychosis had receded. She was back in the real world, dealing with the loss of her son. There was a hole in her heart that would never be filled, but she had learned something in these days that she’d never understood before. She wasn’t alone.

“It’s odd,” Lisa murmured. “I almost miss them.”

“Who?” Laurel asked.

“All the characters from Thief River Falls . People like Mrs. Lancaster. Tom Doggett. Even a terrible person like Liam. They’re all back in the book, but for a little while, they were real to me. They were alive. They’d been in my head for years, and suddenly they were actually there in front of me.”

“It’s a strange kind of gift.”

“Everything got mixed up in ways I don’t understand. The real world and my fantasies.”

“How so?”

“Well, Fiona Farrell was just a character in the book. She doesn’t exist. And yet in my head, she was Danny’s sister, even though Danny was an only child. I don’t know why my mind put it together like that.”

Laurel smiled. “I guess you can probably thank Denis for that. He was a part of both worlds. He’s real, but you put him in your book, too. So your brain blended reality and delusion.”

“I guess so.” Lisa was quiet, and then she added, “I kept seeing white.”

Laurel’s brow crinkled with puzzlement. “What?”

“Everything my head made up had something white in it. That was what made it different from the things that were really there. After a while, it seemed like everything became white as I went deeper and deeper. I wonder why.”

Laurel tugged on the shoulder of her coat. “Lab coats would be my guess. Masks. I suspect that to your brain, white became the color of doctors. You began to associate white with the hospital. This is where you lost Harlan. Everything your mind invented was taking you right back here.”

“The brain is a scary thing.”

“It can be.”

Lisa calmed herself with a slow breath. “Did you tell Curtis I was sorry for whacking him?”

“I did,” Laurel replied with a grin. “He’s fine now. I think he actually enjoyed being a bad guy. You may have to write him into your next book.”

“I can do that.”

“Me, too, in fact. I wouldn’t mind seeing the name Laurel March in one of your novels.”

“Okay, but no villains for you,” Lisa said. “Maybe a slinky, sexy spy or something like that.”

“Deal.”

Laurel squeezed her shoulder. She headed for the doorway of the hospital room, and as she left, she had to make way for Noah, who was burdened down with more flowers and a bag stuffed with cards. Noah gave Lisa a smile, and she could see Madeleine in the curl of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes. And her father. And their brothers. And Harlan. Everyone who was gone was really still here.