The words parted, ink flying from the page, sailing up around me as the blank hole on the page collapsed in on itself, pulling me with it. A flash of white, as if I’d fallen through the book itself. I hit the ground, my hands outstretched, grass beneath my fingers.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I expected to see the meadow again. Instead, I stared at a chimera head. I lifted my head. I was sitting outside the park behind the diner.

“Please. Please, just listen.”

A woman leaned on the park railing. She wasn’t more than fifty but looked older, wearing a shapeless housedress, her hair streaked with gray, the style as formless as her outfit. A white-haired couple was walking past the park. Though they had their backs to me, I only needed to see their stance to recognize them. Ida and Walter. They were dressed smartly in a style only found in vintage shops these days. The seventies would be my guess, and a glance down the walkway, at a huge boat of a car passing along Main, seemed to confirm it.

Ida and Walter turned to the woman.

“You can help him,” the woman said. “I know you can.”

Ida’s voice was kind but firm. “No, dear. There’s nothing—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” the woman cut in quickly. “I’ll say it was a miracle from God. I won’t even know what you do. I’ll walk away and leave him with you.”

Ida moved to the fence, her hands resting on the woman’s. “You are mistaken. Whatever you think you know—”

“Nothing. I know nothing. But I sense . . . I can tell . . . You’re special. You can fix him. Please.”

“Special? Perhaps. But can you imagine that if we knew how to heal a child, we would not readily do it?”

“Can you do anything? If he could just walk. Please. With a limp or with a cane. My grandson has no other impairment—no mental or physical defect. If you could just ease his—”

“We cannot,” Ida said. “Or we would.”

The woman staggered back, her face crumpling, and I saw a boy in the swing, one of those meant for infants, though he was at least five. His rail-thin legs were bare and I could see the white of a diaper. Our eyes met, and the ground opened again, and I tumbled through.

I saw others as I fell. Other children. Other times. Other places. A toddler with half-formed arms. A teenage girl on crutches. A young boy with some form of hydrocephalus. And then, again, I hit the ground. Only it wasn’t grass this time, but rough-hewn wood. I faced a small window without glass. The wall looked odd—like wood lattice, the spaces between filled with a clay-like substance. Wattle and daub. The phrase jumped from the back of my mind.