CHAPTER 34.

"Olivia, you're soaked through," Beth says. "Come in."

"Sorry to stop by unannounced," Olivia says, hoping to sound casual. She doesn't pull it off. Her voice sounds wired, tight, too high.

"That's okay, come in."

Olivia steps inside. She's in a mudroom-gray-tiled floor, a braided green-and-blue rug, girls' shoes and boots arranged in a tidy row under a long wooden bench, coats hung on hooks on the wall. The house is warm. It smells like cookies.

Beth hesitates before shutting the front door, looking out at the empty road. She appears distracted, shaken even. Maybe now isn't a good time.

There is no other time.

"I have your book," says Olivia, clutching the box she holds tight to her chest, protecting what's inside like it's a precious gift, a sacred offering, a beloved baby.

"Oh, great!" Beth's face lights up. "Let me take your coat. Come into the living room, and we can sit by the fire."

Beth hangs Olivia's drenched coat on an empty hook. Olivia removes her shoes and follows Beth into the living room.

"Sorry about the mess."

Olivia looks around the room, her senses heightened, raw and wide-open, trying to take in every possible detail. White walls, cream-colored Roman shades on the windows, a faded blue area rug on the hardwood floor, a modest TV set inside a white wall unit, all cabinets closed, firewood piled high in an iron trolley, a candle and a small, white gift box on the coffee table, two brown couches facing each other opposite a traditional brick fireplace, a single framed photograph taken by Olivia of Beth and her daughters sitting at the center of the mantel, leaning against the wall, flanked by a large sh.e.l.l on one side and a starfish on the other. A blue plastic laundry basket full of unfolded clothes sits on the floor next to one of the couches, but otherwise, the room is immaculate.

Olivia sits on the couch opposite Beth.

"There's one of your photos," Beth says, smiling and pointing to the mantel. "We have eight more framed in the hallway upstairs. We love them. I'll show you before you go."

"Sure. Glad you like them," says Olivia, trying to sound breezy, not knowing how much longer she can maintain normal, polite chitchat.

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"Uh, okay. Whatever you're having," she says, noting the blue mug in Beth's hands, a.s.suming it's coffee.

But caffeine is the last thing she needs right now. When she starting reading Beth's ma.n.u.script last night, she began underlining and marking up words and phrases that reminded her of Anthony in red pen. She smiled as she read those first few pages, admiring Beth's depiction of a boy with autism, so similar to Anthony. She marveled at the coincidence, that Beth's book was about a subject so close to Olivia's heart. She applauded Beth's choice to tell the story from the boy's point of view, in his voice.

By the third chapter, the words she read and the voice she heard began to feel uncanny, surreal, impossible. Her hands trembled, and her heart pounded. Goose b.u.mps spread across her skin and stayed there. She switched to a highlighter, highlighting whole pa.s.sages she felt could only be about Anthony and no one else. By the time she reached Chapter 4, she was highlighting every word of every sentence on every page.

She devoured the words, finishing the book just after midnight, breathless, stunned, her heart racing, tears streaming down her face. She sat still for a long while, staring at the last page, crying and smiling, believing and disbelieving.

Finally, she turned over the last page, gathered the rest of the ma.n.u.script, and held the pages in her lap, feeling the weight of it, believing. These words written by Beth are Anthony's words. The voice of this boy is the voice of my voiceless son. The boy in this book is Anthony.

She went back to the beginning and read it straight through twice more. She's been up all night, and yet she's never been more awake, every cell in her being on high alert, wide-eyed, plump full of adrenaline, ripe to the point of bursting.

"This is hot cocoa," Beth says, then hesitates. "And, don't judge me, a little vodka."

"Okay."

"Yeah?" Beth smiles and darts into the kitchen.

Olivia removes Beth's ma.n.u.script from the box and holds the pages on her lap, trying to contain what she feels for just a bit longer, imagining that she might actually explode into a million b.l.o.o.d.y pieces of flesh and bone if she doesn't soon say what she came here to say. She listens to the sounds of a microwave cooking and Beth opening and closing cabinets in her kitchen. Any minute now. Her head buzzes, and her stomach is dizzy, like what an actor must feel before going onstage on opening night, or maybe like what a death row prisoner must feel on the day of execution, but like neither of these really. She hears the microwave beep. Beth returns with another blue mug and an eager smile.

"I can't believe you're here with my book. I'm so nervous."

She places the mug on the coffee table in front of Olivia, then sits, attentive and leaning forward, like a good student.

"Your book." Olivia's voice catches. Her heart is slamming against her chest like a fist pounding on a locked door, demanding to be let out. "Your book," she tries again. "How did you write this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This story. This is my son's story."

"Oh?" Beth raises her eyebrows and tilts her head, not understanding but not yet alarmed.

"My son's name is Anthony, and he had autism."

"Oh my G.o.d." Beth lowers her mug, floored. "That's unbelievable."

"Yeah."

"That's an amazing coincidence. I had no idea."

"No. Not a coincidence. You didn't just write a story about an autistic boy named Anthony. You wrote about my Anthony."

Beth knots her eyebrows and says nothing.

"The details. You knew everything. Barney, his rocks, the Three Little Pigs. He died when he was eight, almost two years ago."

"Oh my G.o.d, Olivia, I'm so sorry."

"Do you hear the sound of his voice?"

"Sorry?"

"Does he speak to you in words?" Olivia clears her throat and blinks back tears. What she wouldn't give to hear the sound of Anthony talking.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me."

"I don't know how else to say this. Your book isn't fiction. This is my son's voice," Olivia says, lifting the pages.

Beth tentatively explores Olivia's face, like she's waiting for her to explain the punch line to a joke she doesn't quite get.

Olivia stares at her, waiting for her response. Olivia tunes in to the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, the wood popping and hissing in the fireplace. She's aware of her own eyelashes each time she blinks and water from her wet hair dripping down her neck and back.

"Look, I'm really so sorry about your son, but I didn't-"

"How did you write this?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"How do you know about autism? Do you know anyone else who has it?"

"No. But I've read about it-"

"You couldn't know this from just reading what's out there."

"And I've observed kids who have it. Even before I ever read anything, I think I've always been tuned in to the kids who have it."

"This is my son," Olivia says, raising the pages up off her lap.

"I'm sorry, Olivia. I didn't realize you had an autistic son named Anthony. I had no idea I'd be asking you to read something that's so personal. It's amazing that he reminds you so much of your own boy."

"This is my son's voice. I know I sound like I'm some desperate, grief-stricken mother who wants to believe someone is in contact with my dead son. But I'm not crazy. This is my Anthony," Olivia says, flipping the pages.

Beth's eyes widen as she notices all the red and pink ink on the sheets of paper.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what to say," says Beth.

"I know. I know I've freaked you out. Believe me, I'm freaked out, too. But there's no other way to explain this."

"It's a coincidence."

"It's not. This is my son," says Olivia, rubbing the top page with the palm of her hand. Her hand is shaking.

"Look, I'm sorry, I really am. But I didn't hear any voices. The book was inspired by a short story I'd written years ago about a boy I'd once seen creating a line of rocks at the beach. And then recently I read some books on autism that somehow seemed to fit the boy in my short story and the boy on the beach, and I combined them all into this character. Honestly."

A boy creating a line of rocks at the beach. Olivia used to take Anthony here, to Nantucket, to Fat Ladies and Miacomet Beaches, when he was little. The boy Beth remembers is Anthony. Olivia's sure of it. An electric chill runs through her.

"I don't know how or why, but my son gave you his story. It didn't come from you. It came through you."

Beth stares at Olivia in disbelief and says nothing. Olivia holds on tight to the pages on her lap. She can't leave this living-room couch without somehow convincing Beth. She exhales and regroups.

"Let me start over. I love your book. I do. It's beautiful and compelling and so real."

A smile breaks through Beth's guard, a small ray of light peeking through a pinhole in a concrete wall.

"But you didn't quite finish it. Where you ended the story, that's not the ending."

Beth's smile vanishes, but she's listening.

"We need to know what Anthony thinks about his time here, about his life and his autism. What does he believe was his life's purpose? This is the big, unanswered question in your novel. What did his life mean to him?"

Olivia's voice leaves her. She feels as if she needs the answer to this question more than she needs the air in this room. She's been asking this question, praying for an answer, for so long, and sitting in front of her is an ordinary but now completely spooked woman, a neighbor she barely knows, who somehow, for some reason, has access to the answer. Access to Anthony.

"Even if you think I'm completely nuts, please listen to me here. Go back to your story and write a little bit more. Trust me. You haven't gotten the right ending yet."

Beth still looks a little freaked, but she's listening. She nods.

"I'll think about it."

Olivia searches Beth's eyes. This is as far as she can push.

"Thank you. I can't thank you enough. And trust me, you'll see. You'll know you have the real ending once you write it."

Beth chews the nail of her index finger and stares at her book on Olivia's lap. "You really believe what I wrote came from your son?"

"I know it did."

Olivia's eyes are brown. This book is Anthony. It's not similar to him or based on him. It doesn't remind her of him. It is him.

As Olivia stands up to leave, she notices Beth aiming with her eyes to pry the pages of her ma.n.u.script from Olivia's hands. Oh my G.o.d, she can't leave Anthony's words here. She can't.

"Can I please take this copy with me?"

Beth hesitates. She looks bewildered and exhausted.

"Okay."

"Thank you. I can't thank you enough for writing this. You've let me know my son in ways I was never able to know him."

Olivia slides the ma.n.u.script back into the box, and Beth walks her to the front door. Olivia looks Beth in the eye, making sure Beth really sees her, then embraces her in a hug.

"Thank you."

Beth nods and whispers, "You're welcome."

Olivia retrieves her still-soaked shoes and coat, says a reluctant good-bye, and leaves. As soon as she steps outside, the wind whips her hood off her head. She runs across the lawn to her Jeep but pauses before opening the door. She tips her head back, giving her face to the enormous gray sky, to the wind and the rain, and prays.

Anthony, I know it's you. Please, tell her more. Give me just a little bit more.

She stands in the road, exposed to the wind, vulnerable to the rain, to heaven, to G.o.d. She can't imagine why Anthony would choose to communicate through Beth and not her. But he did. She believes. She more than believes. She knows. This is Anthony, and the unwritten ending to Beth's novel is the answer to Olivia's prayers.

CHAPTER 35.