Free Signs and Wonders by Alix Ohlin Page B

dully.
    “And then I guess we could make color photocopies of his passport picture and put them up around town with our hotel information. Maybe someone’s seen him.”
    “There are so many flyers up for plays during the festival,” Jason said. “People will think it’s part of that.”
    “There must be local TV channels,” she went on. “We’ll send a picture to them too.” She felt she was speaking to him across a vast, oceanic distance. He was silent, his whole face drooping.
    Finally he said, “Damn it. I’ve got to call Paulina. She’ll know what to do.”
    It was the first time he’d ever said anything like that about his first wife, at least in front of Judith, and she felt their future buckle beneath the weight of his words.
    The same kindly police officer as before told them there was no news and suggested they go back to the hotel to wait. When Judith raised the question of the local news, he shrugged as if to say they could do whatever they wanted to. So she and Jason called the local news station, spoke to a secretary, and dropped off a photo. Molly was quiet throughout all this, her face drawn and pinched. The streets swarmed with tourists, actors handing out handbills for plays, people dressed in kilts and togas and other costumes, a hive of activity that seemed more sinister with every passing moment. They returned to the Scott monument, and Jason and Molly walked around the crowd holding up pictures of Lucas and asking people if they’d seen him. It had been hours since either of them so much as looked at Judith.
    At the top of the monument, looking over the city, Judith thought that it had lost its fairy-tale charm and now was foreboding and sinister. In her mind she again saw Lucas’s pale face, the one in her dream, floating in space.
    But he’s not in space,
she thought suddenly.
He’s in water.
The water of Leith: the words came to her and she supposed she’d read them in the guidebook, though it wasn’t something they’d ever discussed going to. Muscling through the crowd, she tugged on Jason’s sleeve and saw, in a heartbreakingly clear second as he was turning around, that he hoped it was Lucas tugging at him, andthat when he realized it was her, he felt not just disappointment but hatred, because she’d extended a moment of hope and just as quickly extinguished it.
    “I’m going to look for him down by the water,” she said.
    “What water? Where?”
    “The water of Leith walkway.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “I don’t know. I just have a feeling, Jason. I can meet you back at the hotel.”
    “A
feeling
?” He tugged on her sleeve in turn but his touch wasn’t gentle and surely couldn’t be mistaken for a child’s. “What do you know? What aren’t you telling me?”
    “Jason,” she sighed. Next to him Molly was shrinking against his leg, as close as another limb. She was fading, this once-bright girl. How much more could she take? “I had a dream on the plane. I didn’t tell you about it. I saw Lucas in some water.”
    “You’re telling me
about a dream
?” Jason said, his face twisted, agonized. “Judith, my child’s missing and I don’t know where he is or how to find him and you’re telling me about some dream?”
    “I’m trying to help, Jason, I promise.”
    “I don’t see how rambling on about this is helpful at all.” Underneath this was everything he didn’t say: that she didn’t know what she was talking about, she didn’t know his children, that she was overstepping herself.
    Instinctively she backed away, as though he might strike her, a fear she could tell incensed him even more. “I’ll just meet you at the hotel later, okay?” she muttered, and quickly walked off, blinking tears from her eyes.
    ·    ·    ·
    By asking directions she was able to find her way to the water, a stream that wound, through various neighborhoods, to the harbor town of Leith. A little wooden sign attached to a stick—something she might, in