Chapter 2 - THE LION WHO COULDN’T SLEEP
Lily Carter climbed onto the edge of my bed like she had been invited.
I stared at her.
She stared back.
Then she placed her damaged gray rabbit beside my pillow.
“You can borrow Bernard.”
“I don’t need Bernard.”
“He helps.”
“I’m thirty-eight years old.”
She considered that.
“Bernard doesn’t care.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead, I leaned back against the headboard.
“All right. You said you came to help. How?”
“A story.”
“A story.”
“Yes.”
I had employed neurologists, psychiatrists, sleep specialists, pain specialists, breathing specialists, and one Swiss doctor who charged me thirty thousand dollars to tell me my nervous system had forgotten how to feel safe.
Apparently all of them had overlooked a three-year-old in lion pajamas.
“Fine,” I said. “One story. Then I take you back to your mother.”
Lily crawled farther onto the bed.
“There was a lion.”
“Of course there was.”
“He had a big house.”
I glanced at her pajamas.
“Original.”
She ignored me.
“And everybody was scared of him because he went grrrr.”
Her attempt at roaring sounded like a congested kitten.
“But the lion wasn’t mean.”
“No?”
“No. He was sad.”
Something in my chest tightened.
Lily continued.
“The lion couldn’t sleep because every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the fire.”
My body went still.
She did not notice.
Three years earlier, there had been a fire.
Not in my house.
At the Moretti lake property outside Lake Geneva.
My wife, Isabella, had died before I reached her.
So had our unborn son.
I had arrived twelve minutes too late.
Twelve minutes had been enough to divide my life into before and after.
Nobody in the staff discussed it.
Nobody around me was stupid enough.
“Who told you about a fire?” I asked.
Lily shrugged.
“It’s a story.”
“Continue.”
“The lion tried blankets. And tea. And medicine.”
My fingers slowly curled against the sheet.
“And none of it worked?”
She shook her head.
“Because the fox didn’t want it to work.”
The rain seemed louder.
“What fox?”
“The smiling fox.”
“What did he do?”
“He came when the lion wasn’t looking.”
Lily picked up Bernard and made the rabbit tiptoe across my blanket.
“Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe.”
Despite myself, I watched.
“He put wake-up rain in the lion’s drink.”
I stopped breathing.
“Wake-up rain?”
“Little drops.”
She pinched her tiny fingers together.
“Drip. Drip.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Lily’s expression changed.
Not fear.
Confusion.
“Mama says stories aren’t lies.”
“I’m not accusing you of lying.”
“You made your scary face.”
I forced my jaw to relax.
“Sorry.”
She accepted the apology immediately.
Children had a mercy adults rarely deserved.
“Where did the little drops come from?”
“A shiny bottle.”
“What color?”
“Silver.”
A memory moved through my mind.
My brother Gabriel standing beside the breakfast cart two weeks earlier.
Gabriel laughing because I had poured myself a fourth coffee.
Gabriel saying, You’re going to kill yourself drinking that poison.
My younger brother had been saying versions of that for years.
I had never noticed how often he was near the cup.
“What happened to the lion?” I asked.
“The fox told the other animals the lion was getting crazy.”
My heartbeat changed.
“The fox said when the lion got too tired, everybody would need a new king.”
My eyes locked on hers.
“Lily.”
“Yes?”
“Where did you hear those words?”
She blinked.
“Downstairs.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Who said them?”
She frowned in concentration.
“I don’t know his name.”
“You’ve seen him before?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He has shiny shoes.”
Half the men in my life owned shiny shoes.
“And?”
“He smells like Grandpa Christmas.”
I stared at her.
“What does Grandpa Christmas smell like?”
“Trees.”
Cedar.
Gabriel wore a cedar-based cologne our father had worn for thirty years.
I felt something cold move through me.
Not panic.
Not yet.
Calculation.
“Was he alone?”
“There was another man.”
“What did the other man look like?”
“Old.”
“Everyone over twenty looks old to you.”
“He had glasses.”
That narrowed nothing.
“What did they say?”
Lily leaned closer as if sharing a secret.
“The glasses man said, ‘Too much is dangerous.’”
My blood turned to ice.
“And the fox?”
“He said, ‘Not enough to hurt him. Just enough to keep him awake.’”
For three years, doctors had studied my blood.
But never when I told them to.
Always through Dr. Antonelli.
Our family physician.
The man who had treated me since I was sixteen.
The man who personally reviewed every test.
The man who had repeatedly insisted my insomnia was trauma.
Maybe it had started that way.
Maybe it had not stayed that way.
“What else?”
“The fox said, ‘He’s almost there.’”
“Almost where?”
Lily shrugged.
“He said when the lion breaks, the family will pick him.”
I looked toward my cold coffee.
For the first time in three years, I was afraid of the cup.
Lily yawned.
A huge yawn that made her eyes water.
“You’re tired,” I said.
“You are too.”
“I’m always tired.”
“Then lie down.”
“No.”
She gave me the same expression I had seen Sophia use when one of the kitchen staff attempted to argue about a stained tablecloth.
Apparently stubbornness was hereditary.
“You promised a story,” she said.
“You told me one.”
“No. That was the beginning.”
“There’s more?”
“The bunny saves him.”
I looked at Bernard.
“Of course he does.”
Lily crawled toward my pillows and patted one.
“Lie down.”
I should have called security.
I should have called Sophia.
I should have ordered the house sealed and Gabriel located.
Instead, for reasons I would never be able to explain, I lay down.
Not because I expected sleep.
Because Lily looked at me as though failure had never occurred to her.
She tucked Bernard beside my shoulder.
Then she started another story.
This one involved a lion, a rabbit, a castle, a pancake restaurant, and what appeared to be a serious misunderstanding involving a purple cow.
I listened.
At some point my eyes closed.
I knew they had closed because I opened them again.
And the clock said 12:47.
For several seconds, I did not understand.
Then I sat upright so violently the blanket fell away.
12:47.
My clock had read 12:14 when Lily entered.
I looked beside me.
She was asleep.
Curled against the pillow.
One hand rested on Bernard.
The other had somehow wrapped around my index finger.
I stared at our joined hands.
Thirty-three minutes.
Maybe I had only been asleep twenty.
Maybe fifteen.
I did not care.
I had slept.
For the first time in three years, I had fallen asleep without medication.
Without alcohol.
Without collapsing from exhaustion.
My bedroom door flew open.
Sophia Carter stood there wearing a robe over her nightclothes.
Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders.
Two security men were behind her.
Her face was white with terror.
“Lily.”
She rushed to the bed.
I lifted one hand.
“Quiet.”
Sophia froze.
Her daughter did not wake.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I woke up and she was gone. I thought…”
Her voice broke.
“She’s fine.”
Sophia reached for Lily.
Then she saw my face.
“What happened?”
I looked at the child sleeping beside me.
Then at the cold coffee.
“Your daughter told me a story.”
Sophia swallowed.
“What kind of story?”
“One about a fox.”
Every trace of color disappeared from her face.
That was when I understood.
Sophia knew something.
“Sophia.”
She looked toward the guards.
I did too.
“Leave us.”
They disappeared immediately.
The door closed.
Sophia stood motionless.
I kept my voice low.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No.”
It was a bad lie.
“Sophia.”
Her eyes filled.
Not with guilt.
Fear.
“Please,” she whispered.
“Please what?”
“Don’t ask me in this room.”
I looked around my own bedroom.
Then I understood something else.
“You think the room is being listened to.”
She did not answer.
She did not need to.
I carefully freed my hand from Lily’s fingers and stood.
Sophia picked up her daughter.
Lily barely stirred.
At the doorway, Sophia turned toward me.
“There’s something you need to see.”
“What?”
“Not here.”
“When?”
She looked at the clock.
“Before breakfast.”
“Why?”
Her eyes met mine.
“Because whoever has been doing this thinks you’ll drink from that coffee cup again in six hours.”
I looked back at the cup.
Then at Sophia.
For the first time in three years, exhaustion stopped feeling like my enemy.
It became camouflage.
May you like
And whoever had spent three years waiting for Dante Moretti to break was about to learn something very important.
I was finally awake.
