Free The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli Page B

chance to be born. He’d spent years trying to forget her face, tamping those memories down inside him, but now she appeared before him quite clearly, her voice almost breezy as she spoke his name.
    He was back in the house he grew up in. The lawn had been mowed, the edging along the grass done with precision, the hedges perfectly trimmed, the tops as straight as if they’d been laid out with a ruler. Either it was high aesthetic or his father had a touch of OCD.
    At the kitchen table, his mother sat calling to him, as if he was in another room. He stepped closer but she couldn’t seem to see him. He noted the way she wore her hair in looping ringlets, a slight reddish tint to it, the same as he got in his beard when he let it grow out. Her lips were full, almost as full as Lila’s. Her belly just a tiny bulge.
    He waited to see himself, as a boy, come running by, but it didn’t happen. The dead little kid was in a chair at the other end of the table. Weird to see it and still not know if it was a boy or a girl. It stared at him with its mouth moving, indecipherable sounds emerging and growing louder until he thought he could almost make them out. He moved closer and closer, and the kid leaned forward and spit in his face.
             
    “I dreamed of my mother again last night,” Chase told her.
    “I thought you might be,” Lila said. “The way you twisted in your sleep. I held you and rubbed your chest lightly and you quieted down some after a time.”
    She’d been raised on mountain folklore, backwoods myths, and gospel tent revivals. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never be able to lose the superstitious streak that had been spiked into her from childhood. When he spoke of his dreams her face grew very intense and she spooked him a little with how seriously she took them.
    “What did your mama tell you?” she asked.
    “Nothing. She just kept saying my name.”
    Lila nodded, like spirits did this on occasion. He wondered if he should go fire a few rounds into the woods, maybe it would ease his mind a bit. Lila studied him for a moment, her features folding along all the contours of worry. It made his guts tighten, and she laid a hand against the side of his face.
    “The dead will find a way to you. They’ll make you listen.”
             
    It took about four years in Mississippi before he started to lose his cool. He’d done pretty well, all things considered.
    They were at a picnic on a lake, all the kids running around down by the shore, skimming rocks and chasing turtles. Molly Mae and Judge Kelton had three little ones by now and were working on a fourth, the old man getting healthier by the year while Molly looked ready to throw herself under a truck.
    Chase tried to keep his mind on the conversations circling him, but the accent still threw him off and he laughed inappropriately on occasion. He was never going to get a handle on it.
    He knew he’d been getting a little distant and didn’t know how to bring himself back.
    Lila came over and sat on his lap. “You want to head home to the East Coast, don’t you.”
    “Yes.”
    He knew she wanted to leave this place, maybe even more than he did, just to get away from the constant reminder of her family asking about when they were going to have children.
    “You think I’ll like it there?” she asked.
    “It’ll take some adjustment, but yeah, I think you will.”
    “We going to live in Manhattan? I’m not sure I could get used to a big city like that.”
    “You could, but I think we’ll be better off out on Long Island. Get a little house.”
    “I suppose police work would be a little more action-packed.”
    It made him tense up. He hadn’t thought for a minute she’d want to stay a cop in New York.
    “I don’t think that’s an especially good idea,” he said.
    Her voice grew heavy as she whispered into his ear. “You think those bad New York crews are going to take advantage of my poor countrified ways?”
    “You