The next morning, Colin hired an online research firm to identify his mother’s maiden name and locate her burial place. If he had gained anything from the dream, it was a sense of having left this visit far too long.
The firm’s response did not make for easy reading, as they included the formal burial announcement, which stated that Brenda Everett was survived by her loving parents and three sisters. No mention of either her husband or her son.
He might as well never have been born.
The following week, as Colin cycled back from the pool, a single solitary thread of an idea wove its way into the early morning air. He spent the rest of that day and much of the night following along, seeing just how far he could take it. And the answer was, quite far indeed.
Nine days later, Colin drove the hour north on Highway 17 to Jacksonville. He was extremely reluctant to break from his work. He worried that the visit might erase his growing sense of having finally found what he had been looking for. The grand theory of everything, or at least the concept that might drive all of the various fragments together. But this was the anniversary of his mother’s death.
He parked at the boundary of the Mill Avenue Historic District and bought a bouquet from a neighborhood florist. The Everett family cemetery fronted onto Ward Avenue. The surrounding wrought iron fence had recently been painted, and an NC historic site placard explained that the family had settled its Jacksonville farm before the American Revolution. The quarter-acre property and its several dozen gravestones were sheltered by the two largest live oaks Colin had ever seen.
His mother’s name was carved into a polished slab of granite the color of a winter sky. Just the name and dates. No benediction, no regret.
Colin stood surrounded by birdsong and a soft rush of wind through the overhead branches and the murmur of traffic. He found himself wondering what toll this loss had taken on his father. He suspected Roger Eames had carried the slow-burning internal fire since his own childhood. The main difference now was, Roger Eames had a purpose that fit his character. In any case, his father had loved this woman, and together they had granted him the gift of life. Colin lay his bouquet upon the grave and stepped back.
After a time he walked back to where the car waited, leaving her surrounded by the family who had no interest in whether he lived, or who he was becoming. Colin was both sad and fractured. And glad he had come.
But as he started to drive away, an idea struck. Colin cut off the motor and drew up Google maps on his phone. The nearest ocean access to Rocky Mount was Atlantic Beach. Colin knew instinctively this was not where his father would have taken them. His clearest memory from those shared moments was how empty the shoreline was, how few people, how the only sounds were the waves and the gulls.
He walked back to the same florist and bought a second bouquet, then drove east. Colin took the Emerald Isle bridge, then turned south, past the Islander Hotel and the EmeraldIsle Country Club, and parked in the lot fronting a sign that read simply, ‘The Point’. He stripped off his shoes and socks and crossed the dunes, carrying the bouquet. The beach was almost empty, the sand soft and sparkling in the late afternoon sunlight. He stood there a long moment, surrounded by all that was no more. After a time, he lay the bouquet in the sand, on a spot he thought his mother might have loved.
CHAPTER40
The third week in October, Colin ordered Mateo to cover his position in the market. The stock had not yet reached its zenith. But he knew it was time to clear the decks. There was no room for anything else now.
Later that same day, he took down the octopus.
It had become such a fixture in his home and life, the act carried an emotional impact, like he was wrenching at something deep. Even so, the sheets and his myriad calculations needed to come down. Now that he knew what was required, all he could see there on the walls were the absent elements. The portions that had remained incomplete. The calculations that were still just a bit off. Misguided, because he had not been sure where he was going. Now that he knew, it was easier to work from the flow behind his eyes. The power was gathering and muscling into proper shape. As a result, his cardboard designs belonged to a different era. Even so, removing the hand drawn sheets, being careful not to let the tape scar the paint, left his chest feeling hollow.
When he was done, he called Tiana.
They spoke almost every day, one or the other calling, sometimes connecting for a video chat, but often preferring to focus exclusively on voices, on words. Soon as Tiana spoke, she was there with him. In the room, an amorphous bundle of energy and grace, surrounding him with the island’s spice. As if he listened to her voice and became partly transported the five thousand miles west. Away from the lingering doubts, the work that lay ahead, the day. He did not speak about what was happening. He had not yet told her anything. Mostly he listened. She was the one who needed a friend, an outlet, someone not chained to her room in Kailua, a neighborhood on Oahu that she both loved and loathed. She talked about her tutorials and the assignments that shaped her semester away. She talked about her parents and two older brothers, how their love and concern often threatened to stifle. How she was taking longer walks each day, and had started swimming again. Only by chance had he learned the family pool was a full twenty-five meters and framed by palms and blooming frangipani. Her family owned land, developed real estate, was all she had told him. Bored beyond reach by the mere mention. Or perhaps simply not wanting to allow that portion of her life to invade their space. Something he certainly understood. As he sat on the sofa and listened to her talk, staring at the tattered stack of posters on the table in front of him. Fifty-one pages in all.
Tiana ended their conversation the same way as always. “You’re still coming? You haven’t forgotten?”
“December the sixteenth. My flight is booked.”
“That’s years away. Come sooner.” When he did not respond, she pressed, “Come now.”
“I have classes too, remember?”
“Oh, pooh. You’re their golden boy. You can get away with murder, much less a few lost days.”
“More than a few.”
“You don’t miss me even a little bit.”
“You’re right. It’s not a little bit. It’s so much the numbers don’t exist.” He was smiling now, glad for the chance to look beyond the coming days. “And you know what happens when I arrive.”
“You hold me and don’t let go.”
“I have been appointed your examiner—”
“Oh. That.”
“And December the eighteenth, you sit down at your desk and I monitor you—”
“I love it when you talk nasty.”
