The Lake House

  “I’m still gonna break your neck,” Max muttered. “That’s a promise, you murdering bastard.”

  102

  MAX EXPLODED DOWN toward the wretched excuse for a human being, much less a doctor—but even as she did, she couldn’t help thinking about Oz. This was how he had died. Reckless and ego-driven.

  She knew better. She’d already seen how this movie ended. Badly. Horribly!

  So she waved off the other kids and shouted, “That’s an order! Getoutofhere!” And they split away from her like the good kids they were. That wasn’t the only reason. The fire in her voice scared them.

  Max continued on alone. A dive-bomber focused on a target.

  Kamikaze. Suicidal? Well, maybe. After all, she wanted to join Ozymandias more than anything.

  Dr. Kane saw her coming—and he waved her on. Yes, c’mon, Max. Let’s have a go at it. Let’s end this right here.

  He was reckless and ego-driven, too.

  Apparently unafraid of the heat-seeking missile roaring down the runway at him.

  I want to break his neck so badly, Max thought.

  And she’d promised Oz.

  But she pulled up hard and fast; she landed just a dozen yards or so from Ethan Kane. She was breathing fast. “So what happened to your great goddamn Resurrection? Is this it? Those pathetic men? What’s so special about them?”

  “They are indeed special!” Kane’s voice was a low growl into the wind. “They’re what’s needed to see us through this century. And now they’ll live for most of it, and the world will be a better place. It might even survive. I’ve seen to that. I did it. But more to the point, Max, I know a secret about you. It’s really juicy, want me to tell you?”

  “I don’t want anything from you!” Max shook her head and looked at the old white men near their company-expense planes. The so-called special ones. Some were in wheelchairs, some lay on gurneys, recuperating, but most were up and walking. They glared at her, as if they knew what she represented, the threat that she could be. “Kill her now!” one of them shouted and shook his fist over his head. “Get rid of her!”

  Max looked at Ethan Kane and shook her head. “They’re not the future,” she said. “It would be too awful.”

  She flapped her wings and flew straight at Ethan Kane again. She screamed at the top of her voice, “You killed Ozymandias!”

  Kane pulled out a gun, almost got it in shooting position, but he was an instant too late.

  Max went for his head, his precious head, and she hit it full force with an outstretched wing. She clotheslined the creepy bastard. Blasted him with all her speed and strength.

  He was still standing, and Max thought, That’s not right. That’s definitely wrong! She tried to figure out what had just happened. Couldn’t.

  And then Max saw something that seemed impossible. Kane’s head hung down sideways on one shoulder, as if his neck was broken. It was so weird. He was still talking.

  “You can’t stop this—or me,” Kane told her. “Do you understand? Do you get it, Maximum?”

  She hit him again. Maximum force.

  Finally, Kane crumpled to the ground. But he was still talking. “I’m not Ethan Kane, you little freak. I’m a clone. You can’t stop what’s going to happen. You can’t stop the future.”

  And with those words, the horrible creation, the clone of Dr. Kane, fell over dead.

  Max stared at the crumpled body in disbelief. “Talk about freaks,” she finally muttered.

  103

  A SILENT SCREAM was inside me.

  No, no, no!

  Turn the glorious stars back on. Turn them on! My God, the sun is so bright, so magnificent.

  Suddenly, overhead lights just about blinded me. Two or three nurses were patting and shaking me all over. An oxygen mask was rudely slapped on my face.

  Shit. I was still alive. I wasn’t on the stairway to heaven after all.

  I heard someone repeating my name, and when I turned my head, I saw none other than Kit. He gently put his hand in mine. Squeezed.

  I squeezed back. Yep, he was real.

  I realized that his head of beautiful blond hair was shaved. God, so was mine.

  “Waahhhhhhhhhh,” I said. “Your hair.”

  “I love you, too, Baldie,” Kit whispered. “Welcome back to the planet, Frannie.”

  “Oh, it’s good to be here.” Kind of, anyway. Except that my simulated-reality heaven had been such a trip.

  We were in the Dream Room, the same ward I had seen through the glass wall. A day before? Whenever. There were still about half a dozen patients in headgear, wired up to flickering overhead monitors and a lot of other expensive equipment: cardiac monitors, respirators, arterial lines.

  But no Dr. Ethan Kane, goddamn him to hell! No ninety-four-year-old Harold Hauer!

  I heard a loud ruckus, a stampede of hurrying footsteps out in the hallway.

  Then I saw the kids! I quickly counted noses. Max and Wendy and Ic and Matthew and little Peter swarmed around my bed, their faces pushed up against mine. They were cooing, and it had to be the sweetest sound in the world.

  “Hello, Mama,” said Wendy, and I almost lost it right there.

  Then I did lose it. Big-time. I sobbed and sobbed and tried to hold all five of them at once, and nearly succeeded. Then I took things a little slower. One darling face at a time.

  Max was smudged with soot, and dried blood caked one leg of her blue jeans, but she had a luminous smile. She hugged me and I hugged her back. It was just about the best hugging ever.

  “We made it,” I finally said.

  “Not everybody,” Max said, and shook her head. I knew she was talking about Ozymandias. “But I did get Ethan Kane. He’s dead, Frannie. He won’t hurt us again. I knocked his head off.”

  I put my hand to Max’s tangled hair and, as I did, I saw that I wore a plastic bracelet.

  There was one very creepy word written on the plastic in fat black letters.

  DONOR.

  104

  SOMETHING VERY BAD happened next.

  Something unthinkable, and also scary as hell—or scarier—as if there was anything unusual in that, as if I ought to be surprised.

  Nothing was written by the press about Resurrection, or the powerful men who had obviously been involved. Not one word in a major newspaper or magazine. It was as if it had never happened. As if we hadn’t seen what we’d seen. As if we’d made it all up.

  I’m not real big on conspiracy theories or paranoia—at least I wasn’t until I saw what was happening.

  Not one word.

  Some of you might say, “That’s unbelievable!” All I can say is, where have you been lately? And get your head out of the sand. Truth is not at a premium these days. Haven’t you noticed?

  Not one word.

  Dr. Ethan Kane-Harold Hauer believed he had changed the world for the rest of the century—but no one in the press seemed to notice or care, or maybe believe that monstrous things had happened.

  Just as they had failed to notice the importance of biotechnology in the years leading up to now. That biotechnology is our future. A done deal. Written in stone by someone, and not anyone you or I know.

  Crazy things happened after I was set free, too. The men whom we saw with our own eyes at the Hospital denied they were there, and seemed to have alibis, every one of them. What we had seen on the lower floor at the Hospital—gutted corpses, fetuses in bottles, incredible high-tech machinery—was all gone by the time law enforcement agencies went inside to look. The body of Ethan Kane-Harold Hauer was gone.

  Or so they said.

  So they said.

  Finally, and maybe most disturbing of all, the body of Ozymandias had disappeared as well.

  The only stories—the only ones—were the hoked-up ones in the sensationalist tabloids. Now what the hell did that say about the current state of the world? And besides, stories in the tabloids guaranteed that nobody would believe what had happened, what we had seen.

  An
other month passed and nothing too terribly, earthshakingly insane, rambunctious, chaotic, or particularly dangerous happened. There was still no exposure about the Hospital or what had happened there. Kit and I went back to Denver. One more time—with feeling—we had decided to fight for custody of the children.

  The five who had survived.

  We vowed to keep them safe.

  And the children promised to do the same for us.

  We solemnly promised—we made pinky swears—that we would get to the Lake House again at least one more time.

  105

  IT WAS ONLY a “hearing,” but Judge Dwyer had promised us he would review his previous decision, and our lawyer was holding him to his word. So were the children.

  On a scale of one to ten, the local media hullabaloo was nudging a hundred, and Bannock Street was crowded beyond belief, certainly beyond capacity. Everyone wanted a piece of this story. To hell with Resurrection, and whatever else Ethan Kane had done at Liberty General Hospital. The public couldn’t get enough of the bird kids.

  Of course, neither could Kit and I.

  We hurriedly made our way to Courtroom 19. Kit wore a navy blue jacket, white dress shirt, gray wool pants. He looked good—a hint of Tom Cruise cockiness, a dash of Harrison Ford slyness, something kind of neat like that.

  I had on a forest green sweater dress and high black boots, and hoped that I looked like an adult—a hint of J. C. Penney, a dash of Dillard.

  Kit and I had both grown half an inch of brand-new hair, giving us a “prisoner of war” look that our lawyer said “couldn’t hurt.”

  We exchanged falsely cheerful hellos with Jeffrey, our faithful legal pit bull, then found two seats on the left side of the oak-paneled courtroom.

  Our old antagonist, Catherine Fitzgibbons, dressed in serious black, was going over her notes across the aisle. The bitch of the Rockies looked ready for us.

  Soon the children would arrive. With their “other” families, their biological ones. Also expected was the mother of Ozymandias, who would testify against Kit and me.

  This was the hearing’s second day, actually. The first day had been intense, to say the least. Catherine Fitzgibbons, speaking for the parents, had ranted, stabbed the air, and laced her arguments with hurtful accusations aimed at Kit and me. She had her shining moment when she spun on her well-turned heel, pointed at us, and shouted, “Judge, if those two hadn’t kidnapped Oz, he would be alive today!”

  Jeffrey Kussof shot out of his seat. “I object, Your Honor, on the grounds that opposing counsel is out of her mind! And she’s also dead wrong. Was she there?”

  “Sustained,” said the judge. “And both of you cut it out!”

  Meanwhile, I had looked over at the kids and saw tears streaming down Max’s cheeks. I knew she couldn’t take this arguing about Ozymandias much longer. It was so cruel, so heartless and wrong. But that was our legal system, wasn’t it? Anything goes. The end of civility, manners, maybe even civilization.

  Then Jeffrey Kussof delivered our argument with great fire and resolve and, I thought, intelligence and wisdom. He told the judge that the parents were laboring under the erroneous notion that their kids were “normal,” when they clearly were not. The kids were unique and had unique needs, and the parents hadn’t been able to fulfill those needs. Wasn’t it true that armed men attacked Max and Matthew Marshall in their own home? And what had Terry and Art been able to do? Nothing. They slept through it.

  On that second morning, I glanced up at the large oak-framed schoolhouse clock on the southern wall of the courtroom. In about five minutes, the judge would speak, or so we’d been told. What would Judge Dwyer say? Could the ruling possibly go our way? I doubted it. But we had to take our shot.

  The atmosphere was heating up and getting ready to boil over. Every time the doors opened, more people poured in.

  Suddenly the kids, along with their lawyers and parents, filed into the room for the second day. As always, Max, Matthew, Ic, Peter, and Wendy were magnificent to behold. They were also the best kids in the whole wide world and deserved better than this public fiasco.

  “Frannie! Kit! Hey, hey,” they called and waved to us. “We love you guys. We miss you.”

  “We love you, too,” I called. “Hugs and kisses!” Long live sentimentalism.

  “Hello, Mama,” Wendy cooed. She was my baby, my sweetheart of sweethearts, my little girl.

  I shot a grin and a thumbs-up as they climbed, jumped, and flew into their seats. Then a solemn hush fell over the court.

  The bailiff took his place beside the bench and called the room to order: “All rise.”

  The judge entered from his chambers, and I swear he looked older than he had just yesterday. His wispy gray hair was flying everywhere and his aged face seemed about ready to cave in.

  “Hear ye, hear ye, the court is now in session, the Honorable Judge James Randolph Dwyer presiding.”

  The judge dropped onto his chair. “Please be seated,” he said. “Please.”

  The room became so still, it was as if all the sound in the world had been turned off. It almost seemed a trick of nature. Judge Dwyer’s voice was the only one that mattered. I could just about tell from the look on his face that he’d already made his decision. I prayed to whoever was listening that it was the right one for everyone involved.

  “They can’t take these kids away from us again,” I whispered against Kit’s cheek. “They can’t, can they?”

  Then Kit turned and looked me in the eye. His gaze was absolutely steely. “We’re going to be a family again. I promise you, Frances Jane.”

  106

  THERE HAD BEEN several times in the past few weeks when I’d involuntarily called up the images of my simulated-reality dream. Apparently, new neural pathways had been burned into my brain by that incredible vision of the earth, and sometimes remembering the awe-inspiring perspective from outer space was the only way I could find a center of calm.

  I called upon it now as Judge Dwyer cast his heavy gray eyes around his courtroom. He caught my eye and, oh my God, the great man smiled.

  “Ladies and gentleman, and children,” the judge said in his deep, resonant voice. “This has been the hardest case I’ve ever adjudicated, and all of you know why.

  “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, ‘One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human beings.’ Harold Hauer thought he could destroy and manipulate human life with criminal impunity. A while back, other scientists right here in Colorado apparently believed the same thing. Now, I’ve been charged with deciding the fate of these delightful children.

  “All of the parties, Agent Brennan and Dr. O’Neill, the natural parents, and especially the children, have exhibited extraordinary and unparalleled courage.

  “I want to reward this courage equitably, to make everyone happy. And that, of course, is impossible.”

  There was a rolling rumble from the gallery as people turned to one another to mutter their predictions.

  Judge Dwyer loudly banged his gavel, calling out, “Order. Please.”

  In the chastened silence that followed, he continued. “The laws of the State of Colorado are clear. The best interest of the children is paramount. The law also usually falls on the side of the parents. The parents of these children may not be prepared for what the future holds for Max, Matthew, Icarus, Peter, and Wendy—but is anyone? I honestly don’t know the answer to that. In any event, the parents of these children have demonstrated parental excellence. I asked myself over and over, how could I deprive them or their children of familial bonds? . . .”

  I edged myself into Kit’s shoulder and felt as if I was going to cry. My heart was breaking. It seemed clear to me what Judge Dwyer would say next. I tried to prepare myself, but I just couldn’t. Not again.

  The judge continued. “While I deliberated, I remembered something that Max had said to me at
the time of the first hearing. She said, ‘I know you’re a good guy, but you’ve made a mistake. You’re only human, right. And that’s the problem, Judge, we’re not.’”

  I had pulled my face out of the crook of Kit’s shoulder. I had also inched up toward the edge of my seat.

  Judge Dwyer stopped for a breath, and then went on. “Well, I am only human. Maybe no one but the five of you kids can truly understand that you are a flock and that you need to be together. And that Frannie and Kit are mama and papa for you. . . . I don’t know if I completely understand it, Max . . . but that’s what I believe.

  “And so, that is the judgment of this court—the children will go with Frannie and Kit. You’re a flock again. You’re also a family. Be a great flock, and a great family. I’m pretty sure you will be.”

  The courtroom erupted in noise, which was mostly applause, and then the kids were all over Kit and me.

  “We’re a flock and a family!” Peter yelled for all to hear. “Victory lap!”

  And then the amazing kids flew once, twice, three times around the room.

  Epilogue

  THE LAKE HOUSE

  107

  AND SO, the seven of us finally went home. Isn’t that something?

  The Lake House was where we had gone with the kids after we helped them escape from the dreaded School. It was secluded, high on a picture-postcard mountainside overlooking our own private lake. I won’t tell you where it is exactly. It’s safer that way. Leave it at this: the kids love it, and so do Kit and I. My mother used to always say that there are two important things you can give to your children—one is roots, and the other is wings. I agree with that wholeheartedly. That was my plan. Roots and wings.

  Then one afternoon I was toasting marshmallows in the fireplace with Wendy as feathery flakes of snow drifted across the sky. Kit and the boys were watching a couple of college football teams trash each other on the fifty-one-inch Sony. They were cheering for “the Buffaloes,” whoever the Buffaloes were. Probably the University of Colorado.