Every Waking Moment Read Online Free Page B

toward them.
    “Mrs. Ardeth,” Treha whispered. A pause. A stroke of the hand. She rubbed the woman’s wrist as her head continued its movement. And then came a loosening of the muscles in the woman’s arms and color moving through the pallor. Scales falling.
    “My name is Treha,” she said.
    She let the words hang between them and leaned forward, closer, to see the woman’s eyes, to see the storm that would release the rain.

    “What is she doing?” the son-in-law said, his voice reflected by the glass wall with towering trees. Treha stared, eerily transfixed, as if preparing an experiment or to read the woman’s fortune. “And why is she shaking her head like that?”
    “She has a condition called nystagmus,” Miriam said. “It’s involuntary. She can’t help it. She compensates by moving her head so the room doesn’t spin.”
    The old woman’s daughter glanced at the fireplace, the picture frames and blown glass and snow globes arranged on the mantel. She crossed her arms.
    Miriam stood transfixed by the girl. “Treha has a gift.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “An ability to . . . connect. I’m not sure what else to call it.”
    “She stared at the floor the whole time she was in the room,” the man said. “I’d hardly call that a gift.”
    “She’s unusual. I’ll admit that.”
    “She looks like she can’t even take care of herself. How can she possibly take care of others?”
    “I don’t like her,” the daughter said.
    “Treha is a very private person, as you can tell. I know more about her than most, but I still only know a little.”
    “What is she doing?” the daughter said. “Is she massaging her? Some kind of physical therapy?”
    Miriam turned. “You and I think of communication as words and nonverbal signals. Stimulus given and received. But your mother is a labyrinth. A closed system. She’s unable to break through the walls in her mind, and the longer she stays closed, the thicker the walls get.”
    “So you’re saying she’ll never come back to us? You haven’t even evaluated her.”
    “I asked Treha to speak with your mother because she has keys to the locks. I’ve never seen anything like her.”
    “She’s saying something,” the woman said. “What is she saying?”
    “Don’t go inside yet. Let her work.”
    “I don’t like this.”
    The husband stepped beside his wife and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We should leave.”
    “Give her just a moment,” Miriam said.
    “What if she upsets Mother? She gets uncomfortable in strange places. She’ll never forgive me.”
    Miriam faced the glass. “I’ll have Treha stop if you’d like.”
    The daughter wrung her hands and narrowed her gaze. “Yes, that’s what I want. I want my mother out of there and I don’t want her   —”
    “Wait,” the man said. “Honey, look.”

CHAPTER 4
    DEVIN STARED out the window of the Bank of America office and watched the vintage Chevrolet Impala pull in. He placed it in the early 1960s. Rounded top. Whitewall tires. Sweeping lines and contours. Then it headed into a space outside the window and he noticed the double headlights and the wide grille. It nearly took his breath away. A 1959. He had seen pictures of his grandfather driving that exact model. Clark Gable mustache and white starched shirt and skinny tie. If he closed his eyes, he could watch it pull into the driveway and imagine his own father as a boy standing at the door, waiting.
    Devin glanced at the newspaper on top of the magazines strategically spread across the waiting room table. On the front page were stories about an oil spill and the money being doled out by the company. A deadly virus had spread through several communities in the Midwest, but doctors were hopeful that it was now contained. And a lawsuit against a big pharma company was finally going to trial with doubts about whether a company like Phutura would ever lose. Lawyers, it seemed, were the only ones assured of making any real money