And I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I’m busy now.”
Sam looked at his brother carefully for the first time since pulling into the lot. “What’s up?” he asked. “You look like shit.”
“Do I?”
“You’ve got black circles around your eyes.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Nick admitted.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s been a long day.”
Sam turned the key in the ignition, smothering the purr of the BMW’s powerful engine. “It’s not money you’re worrying about, is it?”
“No.” Nick was impatient. “It’s nothing. Really. And I do have to go, Sam.”
Ignoring Nick’s anxiety, Sam stood up out of his new car. He gave his brother a quick hug, then leaned back on the hood. He glanced down at his watch—the same stainless-steel Citizen quartz that his parents had bought him as a high school graduation gift. “Take a minute, Nick. Tell me what’s going on. If you need a loan, just tell me. I’m doing okay now, and you know I’d do anything for you.”
Nick was overcome with a welter of emotions. Stress from being kept against his will, when Sara was waiting for him. Gratitude at Sam’s generosity. And then a sudden resentment he didn’t understand. “It’s always money with you,” he muttered. “That’s your answer for everything. So long as you’ve got it, you’re good. Without it, your life’s a mess.”
“What the hell would you say something like that for?”
It took Nick a few seconds to realize that Sam was simply looking at him. He had to battle the sense that his brother was in his face, grabbing him by the wrists, pinning him backward against something hard and sharp. The sensation seemed to fly away from him with the same frustrating elusiveness that a dream will escape upon waking.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to calm himself. The words tripped off his tongue. “I didn’t mean that. I know how generous you are.”
Nick did know precisely how generous Sam was. He knew that he was forever in his older brother’s debt. After their parents died—in a car accident, when Nick was seventeen years old—the two brothers had sold the house in Wisconsin and liquidated most of the family’s assets. The entire fortune hadn’t amounted to much—less than $55,000 each. Sam had saved his half of the inheritance. He had consulted a financial advisor, but opted just to bank it conservatively into a savings account bearing a few percent interest. After finishing his last year of high school with barely a C average, Nick, on the other hand, had blazed through his share.
Looking back, Nick wasn’t sure where the money had gone. He had disappeared for nearly eighteen months. Most of that time, Nick spent backpacking in Asia and then South America. Finally, he ended up on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, shacked up with a Dutch girl, surfing, smoking pot, sleeping until noon—paying for both their expenses when he could barely afford his own.
Nick woke up one day by himself, flat broke, not a thing to his name except his digital camera and a silver chain he had worn as a talisman since he was a kid. He didn’t have two dimes to scratch together. He knew, though, that his brother had decided to attend the University of Washington a couple of years before, and, hitchhiking and working where he could for his meals, he began heading north to Seattle to find him.
One of things Nick had learned was how to get around without money. The roadways were buzzing with people in motion. He hitched rides in the back of trucks, often with migrant workers heading north looking for work. On one long stretch of highway, he even tied himself to the undercarriage of a big rig. He walked when there was no other alternative. Once back across the border in the United States, he jumped trains like the original hobos.
Nick traversed Central America on the Pan-American Highway, all the way from Nicaragua through Mexico, without incident. Then, walking down a side street in downtown El Paso, Texas, after midnight, looking for a hostel, he was jumped by two men. Nick knew that he was being followed. The streets were so empty, however, that he had nowhere to run. He ignored the first man when he called out after him. The second man, though, caught up to him before Nick understood the danger.
Nick didn’t have much the two men could steal, only a couple of dollars in his pocket. The two men took what they could. They tore the chain from his neck and pried the camera from his fingers. Then—though there was nothing to be gained by it—they beat him up pretty badly. Nick spent the next few nights on the street, forced for the first time in his life to beg. By the time he found himself on Sam’s doorstep, his hair was so long that Sam barely recognized him, and his lips were so cracked he couldn’t speak.
In the year and a half that he had been gone, Nick hadn’t contacted Sam once. Not knowing whether his brother was dead or alive, Sam had grieved for a time, then made his peace. Nevertheless, without once asking his brother what had happened to him or to his share of their parents’ small bequest, Sam had spent what remained of his savings to put Nick through college.
“I know you’re only thinking about me,” Nick said. He felt Sam’s eyes on his face, examining him. His hands felt cold. He opened and closed his fists, trying to feel his fingertips.
Sam’s face resolved itself into a grudging smile. “Don’t worry about it, bro’.”
“I’m just tired,” Nick apologized. “I keep waking up at the same time every night. I keep having this dream—the same dream every night.”
“What is it? What’s going on?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What’s the dream about?”
“It’s about you, Sam.”
An odd look passed across his brother’s face. A look of recognition, Nick thought later, not of surprise. As though his brother had caught glimpse of a ghost, but one that he was expecting to see.
“It’s about the lake,” Sam said. “Isn’t it? You’re dreaming about the day we went skating on the lake.”
“Tell me what happened that day.”
Sam’s lips pressed together.
“I remember being on the ice with you,” Nick said. “And I remember the ice breaking. You went into the water. You disappeared for thirty seconds, maybe more. I was scared to death. I skated to the edge of the hole, where the ice was broken. I remember lying down on the ice—the ice bending underneath me. The water was so cold, I didn’t think you were going to make it.” Nick was trying to hang on to the memory. “The thing is, I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Stop it,” Sam said.
“It’s just like that in my dream. I’m reaching into the water, looking for you. It’s so cold my hands are freezing, turning blue. But in my dream, there’s blood. The water turns red.”
“I’m telling you, stop it,” Sam said sharply.
“You climbed out of the water. That’s what you told me. I lay down and put my hands in the
