Sleep No More

“And her body lay in it.” Eve rolled up onto one elbow and propped her head on her hand. “Do you think that’s all a person is, Johnny? Has science jaded you so much? A woman is the sum of her flesh?”

“What else is there?”

“What about the soul? For lack of a better term. The spirit?”

“You’re telling me you’re the soul of Mallory Candler?”

Eve bit her lip again, as if seriously considering this question. “Maybe. I don’t really know what a soul is.”

“If you’re the soul of Mallory Candler, where is Eve Sumner’s soul?”

“Here. With me. Only …”

“What?”

“She’s sleeping.” Eve shrugged with childlike wonder. “Sort of.”

“Eve Sumner’s soul is sleeping?”

“That’s what I call it. I’m awake now. Most of the time, really. It’s something that’s taken me a long time to learn. Years.”

Three days ago, Waters could not have imagined having this conversation. “Is this craziness what you wanted to tell me?”

“Partly. But I knew it wouldn’t convince you. I really wanted to tell you a story.

“About what?”

“My murder.”

“Do you know something about Mallory’s murder?”

Another sad smile. “Mallory’s, mine, whatever. But she wasn’t murdered. A man tried to murder her. Tried and failed.”

“This is pointless, Ms. Sumner.”

“Is it? You’re still here.”

He wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t. And she knew it. He sat Indian-style on the grass a few feet away from her and said, “Talk.”

Eve sat up and gracefully folded her legs beneath her, exactly the way Mallory had two decades before. Her smile disappeared, replaced by a look of deep concentration. Waters was reminded of Annelise when she tried to recall details of the house they had lived in when she was a small child.

“It was summer,” Eve said. “We were living in downtown New Orleans. I’d driven across the river to the Dillard’s Department Store in Slidell. On my way back, my Camry broke down. I couldn’t believe it. That car was so reliable. This was nineteen ninety-two, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I wasn’t too worried, though. It was only nine-thirty, and I thought I could flag down a cop. I turned on my flashers, locked the doors, and started watching my rearview mirror. After forty-five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single patrol car. I hoped my husband would come looking for me, but I’m not exactly the punctual type, and I knew he wouldn’t really start worrying till at least eleven.

“I was a mile from City Park – the projects – and wearing a fairly skimpy outfit, so I didn’t want to get out and start flagging people. But I did. After about five minutes, a truck with a blue flashing light pulled in front of me. It had a camper thing on the back, but it looked official. Like one of those canine units, or maybe a fire department thing. Anyway, I was blocked by a concrete rail on one side and zooming traffic on the other. A man got out and waved, then called out and asked if I needed help. I asked if he had cell phone. He said he did, and I saw the little funny aerial sticking off his back windshield. He reached in and held out a phone on a cord, and I took a couple of steps forward. I knew it might not be the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t want to have to jog down into the projects if I could help it.

“When I got close enough to reach the phone, he sprayed me with something that burned my eyes. Mace, I guess. I wanted to run, but traffic was flying past and I couldn’t see where I was going. He hit me on the side of the head, and suddenly I was lifted and dropped onto metal. There was a roaring sound, and then … I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the dark. The truck was parked somewhere, with nothing but moonlight coming through the windows. I couldn’t hear any traffic – just woods sounds – and I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. My hands were tied behind me, and I was lying on them, so my arms were numb to the shoulders.

“I thought at first that I was alone. Then I heard quiet breathing in the dark, and I knew he was in there with me. Close. I felt something touch my leg – fingers, I think – and I realized I was naked from the waist down. He started talking to me. In the dark like that. A voice in the dark. He told me he had a knife, and he pressed the blade against my thigh. It was cold. He said he was going to free my hands, because he wanted me to use them, but if I fought, he would cut my throat. He rolled me halfway over and cut whatever was tying me. Before the circulation came back to my arms, he climbed on top of me and started—” Eve’s voice cracked and went silent, then returned. “Started to do what he wanted. It was terribly painful, and my arms were paralyzed, burning from the blood coming back into them. I could hardly see, and he was grunting and saying things I couldn’t understand – something about how beautiful I was – and I remember thinking then how strangers had been leering at me and saying suggestive things since I was thirteen, and I was so goddamn angry that I’d been stupid, that one of them was finally doing what they’d all dreamed of doing.

“Anyway, I was trying to keep my head together, to decide how best to survive. Just lie there and wait for it to be over? Or fight? I mean, it was already happening. And he was holding the knife in one hand, right at my throat. As it went on, he got more violent. It was like he couldn’t finish, and that was making him furious. He dropped the knife and put his arms around my throat and started choking me. I started to fight then, but he was so much stronger than I was. And suddenly … Johnny, suddenly I had this absolute flash of certainty that I was going to die there. Under him. In the dark. That this pathetic tragedy was going to be the last chapter of my life.”

Waters wanted to argue, but there was no denying the pain in Eve’s eyes and voice. Whatever else she might be, whatever ill intent she might ultimately have toward him, she was in this moment a woman in distress, remembering something that had actually happened to her.

Her voice dropped. “Then something very strange happened. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, the way people say it does. Memories flooded into my head, but they weren’t of my husband or my children. I saw us, Johnny.” She looked urgently at him, her eyes wet with tears. “I saw you. I had this sense of a life unlived, of the road we’d never taken together, and that now we never would. And I knew that if I was thinking of you in that moment, then I had always been right about us.”

Her words chilled him to the core, and still she went on.

“He was strangling me while he raped me, his eyes almost popping out of his head, and my vision started to go black. There was no white light or anything like that. No angels. Just awful blackness enveloping me from all sides. But suddenly in my heart, it was like this fire burst into life, this cold blue fire that screamed, ‘NO! I’M NOT GOING TO DIE! I CAN’T DIE! I’M NOT DONE!’ And then his hands loosened or slipped, because he was in the throes of finishing – I know that now – and suddenly …”

Eve’s mouth was open but no sound emerged. Her eyes had the glaze of someone who had stared for an hour at the sun.

“What happened?”

“Suddenly I wasn’t Mallory anymore. I was looking at Mallory. Looking at myself.”

He blinked in confusion. “What?”

“I was looking at my dead body, Johnny. I was … in him.”

Waters sat frozen, unable to break the spell her words had cast. If she was lying, she was either a first-rate actress or a delusional schizophrenic. As he stared, she rose onto her knees and hobbled to within two feet of him.

“You know I’m telling the truth,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Don’t you?”

He swallowed. “I think you believe what you’re saying. But I don’t understand. It’s crazy. And it doesn’t explain how you could be Mallory.”

She nodded. “I don’t want to think about that part right now. I’ve waited so long for this moment.” She reached out and touched his cheek, and a current of heat went through him. “Will you do me a favor, Johnny? One favor?”

“What?”

“Kiss me.”

He pulled back slightly.

“Just one kiss,” she said, sliding her finger down to his lips. “Where’s the harm in that?”

“Why kiss you?”

“If you kiss me, you’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“That it’s all true. That it’s me.”

He pulled her fingers away from his face. “I think you’ve suffered a terrible thing, Eve. But I’m not some fairy-tale prince. I can’t magically solve your problems for you.”

“Yes, you can. And I can solve yours.”

“I don’t have any.”