Calling Back the Dead: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel by J.R. Erickson

Author:J.R. Erickson [Erickson, J.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

CORRIE

* * *

“HOW LONG HAVE you been out here?” Sarah asked when she found me sitting along the hardened shoreline.

I had put on one of Sammy’s huge and hideous Christmas sweaters over a pair of flannel pajama pants. My hair was knotted, and I knew my face was haggard from crying and the cold.

Once upon a time, I would have cared. I remembered considering how well I handled grief. After my mother’s death, I missed only three days of work, and I never once broke down at the office. I showed up every day with my slacks ironed and my stupid happy face because God forbid I made anyone uncomfortable.

“Isis stayed with my mom,” Sarah told me, although I hadn’t asked.

Later, I would lie in bed and cry for Sammy and hate myself for how I was failing our daughter, but right now, with the frigid wind blowing in from the lake, and the words from The Summoning rolling through my mind like a hurricane, nothing mattered,

I’d been sitting on the beach for two hours. My backside was numb, and the horizon had taken on a dreamy quality I quite liked. Out here life seemed less sharp, less real.

Sarah sat next to me and picked up a flat stone. She threw it at an angle toward the water. It didn’t skip, but plopped with a little splash.

“Sammy was the stone skipper,” she said. “We counted six skips one time.”

“He wanted to teach Isis. He tried a few times when we first moved in here, but every time he threw a rock, she cried and demanded he retrieve it. I remember him wading in, water to his crotch, trying to get one of those stupid rocks.”

Sarah laughed and threw a second stone. It dropped with a loud plunk.

“He was a great dad.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, unable to accept the word ‘was,’ as if he‘d never be a great dad again.

“I want to help, Corrie. I feel like Sammy’s up there watching us right now, saying ‘Come on Sarah, take care of my wife, help her through this,’ and I’m down here twiddling my thumbs and rocking back and forth on my heels. I don’t know what to do.”

I looked at her sideways and shook my head.

“No one can help me, Sarah. Not even me.”

“That’s not true. I refuse to believe that. You’ve got everything to live for, Corrie. Isis is just a baby, you have her whole life ahead of you. The only way she can know Sammy, truly know him the way you did, is through you.”

I listened and nodded and understood that Sarah, and likely everyone else, feared I would kill myself.

“I’m not planning to commit suicide,” I told her.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“But it’s what you’re thinking, right? I’m a mess and that means I’m a danger to myself. Who knows what I’ll do?”

“Is that how you feel?”

I laughed, but it sounded dry and humorless.

“Sure, sometimes. But I would never do that to Isis. My mom didn’t kill herself in the traditional sense, but she did it just the same.

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