Free Midnight Voices by John Saul Page A

age as Rebecca despite the two years difference in their ages, led the younger girl off to indulge in one of those whispering and giggling sessions that Lenore had always understood perfectly but that he had always found totally mystifying. They’d instantly become best friends, and from that point on Rebecca had spent almost as much time in Anthony’s apartment as in the Albions’, her eyes sparkling with laughter.
    But then, after Samantha and the boys had gone and Lenore had—
    He cut the thought short, pushing it away with an almost physical force, driving it back into that far corner of his mind where so much of his past dwelt, hidden in the darkest reaches of his consciousness.
    Better to think about Rebecca, though every day she seemed more and more like the lonely waif who’d first clung to Alicia’s hand, her eyes constantly growing a little larger, and a little emptier.
    It had been Rebecca whom Anthony had first thought of on Saturday, when he’d met the girl in the park who’d been sitting on the bench with her mother, watching her brother play baseball. A perfect playmate for Rebecca. A year younger, perhaps, but closer in age than Rebecca and Samantha had been.
    And the woman—
    Anthony put the thought out of his mind. It was too early to start thinking about that again. And yet something deep inside him had responded to the woman in the park, even though they’d hardly spoken. He searched his memory, and found the name.
    Evans.
    Caroline Evans.
    Conjuring up an image of her, he suddenly felt better, and even the large rooms of his spacious apartment suddenly didn’t feel quite so empty. Quickly cleaning up the dishes from his breakfast of cold cereal and coffee, he gathered up the clutter of the Sunday
Times
, straightened it out and folded it neatly for recycling, then left the apartment.
    “Lovely morning, Mr. Fleming,” Rodney observed as he came out of the elevator into the lobby.
    “That it is,” Anthony agreed, pausing just long enough to entrust yesterday’s newspaper to Rodney. “Put this in the recycling bin for me, will you?”
    “Yes, sir,” Rodney replied. “And have a good morning.”
    For the first time in months, Anthony felt a genuine smile come over his face. “Do you know, I think I very well might!”

    From the window of her room on the seventh floor, Rebecca Mayhew watched Anthony Fleming leave the building, and wished she could go with him.
    She couldn’t, of course; she knew that. She still wasn’t feeling very good, and this morning Aunt Alicia had told her to stay in bed. But the sunlight pouring in through her window had been irresistible, and she’d finally crept out of bed to the chair by the window. She was spending more and more of her time in that chair, looking out into the park. During the winter, it had been wonderful—with the trees bare of leaves she’d been able to see everything that was happening. Skaters whizzing around on Rollerblades, weaving in and out of the walkers and the joggers. And down to the south, she could see the baseball diamonds, where there were always half a dozen games going at one time.
    A long time ago, when she’d first come to live with Alicia and Max, she used to go to the park with Samantha and her twin brothers. Then Samantha had started getting sick, and after a while she and Sam stopped going to the park and spent most of their time in Sam’s room. Finally Sam had had to go to the hospital, and Aunt Alicia had been so afraid she’d catch whatever it was that Sam had that she wouldn’t let Rebecca go visit her. “Plenty of time when Samantha comes home,” Alicia had told her. But Sam hadn’t come home.
    Now Rebecca was alone, and even though Dr. Humphries said she was going to be fine, Rebecca wasn’t so sure. Except that this morning, as she gazed out into the spring sunshine and watched the birds building nests in the trees across the street, she’d had a feeling that maybe, finally, she really was going to