Leapfrog Press

      Fredonia, New York

      Among the Dead and Dreaming © 2016 by Samuel Ligon

      All rights reserved under International and

      Pan-American Copyright Conventions

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without

      the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Published in 2016 in the United States by

      Leapfrog Press LLC

      PO Box 505

      Fredonia, NY 14063

      www.leapfrogpress.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      Distributed in the United States by

      Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

      St. Paul, Minnesota 55114

      www.cbsd.com

      Author photo by Heather Malcolm

      First Edition

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Ligon, Samuel, author.

      Title: Among the dead and dreaming / Samuel Ligon.

      Description: First edition. | Fredonia, NY : Leapfrog Press, 2016. | St.

      Paul, Minnesota : Distributed in the United States by Consortium Book

      Sales and Distribution

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015041419 (print) | LCCN 2015044192 (ebook) | ISBN

      9781935248781 (softcover) | ISBN 9781935248798 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Single mothers--Fiction. | Man-woman relationships--Fiction.

      | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION /

      Psychological. | FICTION / Romance / Gothic. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense

      fiction.

      Classification: LCC PS3612.I35 A83 2016 (print) | LCC PS3612.I35 (ebook) |

      DDC 813/.6--dc23

      LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041419

      For My Mother and Father

      Fish die belly upward and rise to the surface.

      It’s their way of falling.

      —André Gide

      What falls away is always. And is near.

      —Theodore Roethke, The Waking

      1

      Cynthia

      The rain was more like mist, soft against your skin the way the air is down by the ocean, so beautiful and calm, even from the back of Kyle’s motorcycle. I wanted to go faster and faster through it, my eyes closed tight and the water running off my face. It was just me and Kyle, or me and the ocean, me and the rain, or not me at all, just Kyle, the ocean, the rain, until we hit something and I was weightless, flying, the anticipation of landing lifting me into this bright, raw awareness. Nothing had been settled. Nothing ever would be settled. Nothing was supposed to be settled. And nothing was supposed to be accomplished, either, except the baby in my belly, the beautiful baby I wrapped myself around as we flew. Mark didn’t know about her—I’d only been certain a few weeks myself—but I sometimes thought she might save us. I didn’t know her name yet, not for sure. I just thought, baby, baby, baby, the one good thing I was going to do with myself, the one good thing I’d have. And then I did know her name for sure—Isabelle. My sweet baby Isabelle. Those moments we were in the air seemed like they might go on forever.

      Kyle

      The sky was pale green between purple clouds until the fog moved in and made everything gauzy. You could hardly tell the sand from the sky, and the ocean wasn’t visible at all, just a rumble out in the soup somewhere. We ate our dinner and wrapped ourselves in a blanket, and even though she had Mark and I had Nikki, I didn’t really have Nikki, not the way I wanted to have her, and Cynthia and Mark were unraveling again. So we’d come to the beach without them. We’d known each other for years, me and Cynthia. We’d known each other forever. When the fog turned to drizzle, we got back on the bike and headed home, Cynthia against me shouting, “Come on, faster!” One minute we’re grounded in this gauzy, white mist, the next minute we’re weightless, up, coming down, but I’m thinking okay, until I realize she’s gone, out in the fog somewhere. Except she’s not gone. I can hear her voice, “Come on, faster,” like she’s right up against me, even as I’m wrestling the bike through a skid, leaving skin all over the asphalt. I didn’t know anything for a long time after that, didn’t hear anything or want anything. I became aware of my heartbeat in my ears, muddy and monotonous, and then I was outside myself and frantic, listening as hard as I could—to paramedics shouting, to tires hissing and the sound of the ocean over the berm, to a train’s whistle across South Oyster Bay. But I couldn’t hear Cynthia anymore, anywhere.

      Nikki

      The light in the waiting room is the same dull light, and the people coming and going have always come and gone, and his father rubs my shoulders, and his mother’s face is carved by tears, and Cynthia’s parents hold each other while Mark smolders, all of us underwater for what feels like forever. I try so hard to believe he’s going to pull through, almost like praying, or willing the life back into him, when it’s probably only Cynthia who could do that, and she died at the scene. But he keeps not pulling through. And I’m sick with myself, knowing I should have loved him more or loved him better, or just let him go, since I never could have loved him more or better. At least he had Cynthia. At least I think he did, hope he did. Almost anyone would have been better than me, I want to tell him, as though admitting the poverty of my love will keep him alive to hear my confession. I need him now more than I’ve ever needed him, and now that I need him, I won’t get him, exactly what I deserve. The surgeon who finally tells us is the hairiest man I’ve ever seen. I know before he says a word that Kyle’s dead. Everyone knows. It’s in the way he carries himself, slumped toward us through the swinging doors, all the color drained from his face. I look for pieces of Kyle woven into the fur of his forearms. I watch his mouth move, Kyle’s mother collapsing, all these millions of hairs reaching out of his scrubs, and all I can feel—all I’ve felt for weeks, really—is Burke out there waiting, a shark in deep water swimming circles toward shore. And I think, Kyle. I sit back in my seat with my face in my hands, trying to hold on to him, the whisper of his breath and the heat coming off his skin, how we’d dance sometimes while dinner was cooking, when the light was just right and the wine was just right and the music was perfect, everything we had and might have had here now with me.

      Mark

      Her father’s voice on the phone was like an infection, my throat catching and closing as I sat trying to calm down, not wanting to calm down, holding onto the loss of her. I didn’t know she died with Kyle, so for a few minutes my grief was all there was—until I got to the hospital and found out they crashed together, bringing on this panic of love and loss