“Four o’clock Thursday,” Franklin said. “I’ll bring one hundred thousand wherever you want. Now I’ll see you to the front door.”
He led our visitor across the lawn and up the garden path toward the house, as nonchalant as if Captain wasn’t the kind of man who would stab him in the back. When they’d gone far enough to reassure Rafael, the dog descended the pavilion steps and raced toward Loretta and me. Suddenly crows strutted through the grass, pecking for lunch. Birds began singing in the trees. I didn’t know for sure exactly what to make of all that—although I had an idea.
Loretta pulled me against her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Better with him gone.”
“Captain doesn’t scare me. Not him. But ...”
“What is it, Addie?”
“I saw that farmhouse in dreams.”
“Dreams plural?”
“Yes. In one of them, I saw the boy riding a terrified and screaming horse in the moonlight. I believe he bit it on the neck.”
“Bit the horse?”
“Yes. All this was at a distance. I can’t say what he looked like, except that he was strange.”
“Your dreams are not just dreams.”
“Some are more. I used to deny it.”
“Do you know where this farm was?”
“No. But in another dream, it was on the empty dance floor of the Palomar. And there were praying mantises.”
“Mantises?”
“As big as people. Everyone on the dining terrace was a mantis. And a mantis came out of the farmhouse there on the dance floor.”
“The boy?”
“I guess it represented him. He’s not a mantis, but the mind shapes dreams in metaphors.”
“The subconscious.”
“It’s a strange animal, the subcon. The mantis that came out of the house made its way to this cradle.”
“Cradle?”
“With a baby. A human baby. The mantis lifted it out of the cradle to eat it.”
“I don’t think I could handle your dreams.”
“They’re never boring. I woke up before it devoured the baby. I don’t think I could let my subcon show me something like that.”
With Rafael keeping us company, we walked toward the house, into which Franklin and Captain disappeared.
“So,” I said, “whatever the boy is, he’s real. Subconscious foresight, intuition, clairvoyance—whatever you want to call it—I’ve learned to trust what it’s trying to tell me even though the messages need interpretation.” We walked in silence for a moment. As we were passing the dolphin fountain, I said, “You’re going through all this because of me.”
“Not you, sweetheart. Not you at all. Because of Farnam.”
“If not for me, Captain would never have been in your life.”
