Jessica has been having those dreams again, her subconscious whispered. Your baby girl had another nightmare. She let herself drift back to the events of a few nights before. She had shot upright in bed, Jessie’s scream echoing around in her head, but David had been already gone, the spot beside her still warm from his body. Like he knew it was coming. She remembered the look on his face when he returned twenty minutes later. Jes- sie’s hauntingly accurate dreams would scare anyone a little, she reasoned, especially a parent. Maybe that was what had been bothering him today. It made sense, she supposed. Jessie’s dreams had been less frequent in New York, it was true, but that last one had been a doozy.

One of her good friend’s husbands was an intern at a nearby hospital, and Helen had asked him once for an informal opinion of night terrors in children. He suggested that they try a psychiatrist, but that more than likely Jessie would “grow out of it.” Helen had resented his comments and suggestion for psychiatric help (if her mother couldn’t help her, then what could some stranger do?), but embraced the idea that the dreams were just a phase; perhaps they would fade away like pictures in an old album. And for a while they had.

The next challenge, she supposed, would be making sure Jessica had a chance at a normal life. There was (according to Mike Olmstead) a one-room schoolhouse in St. Boudin, some sort of throwback to the turn of the century with thirty or so kids in grades one through six all mixed in together. Jessie would learn French as well as English if she attended there, and that would be good. She was going to start school next year; it was just a question of where. Helen supposed she could tutor her at home, but what about friends and a normal social life? What happened to a young child who never had to adjust to kids her own age?

Social retardation, Helen thought with a half-smile. Is that good or bad? And the one-room schoolhouse; the chances of getting a good education out of there, not just learning a different language but getting the new math, practicing the arts, things like that, were pretty slim.