She sighed. Her eyes were closed. She murmured, “If you really mean it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I want this to last.”
“It will,” she said. “I know it will.”
But it wasn’t her words that he heard. It was like soft music drifting through the dream. And the dream was taking him away from everything he’d known, every tangible segment of the world he lived in. It took him away from the cracked plaster walls of the Kerrigan house, the noises of the tenants in the crowded rooms upstairs, the yelling and bawling and cursing. It took him away from the raucous voice of Lola, and the empty beer bottles cluttering the parlor, and his father snoozing on the sofa. And in the dream there was a voice that said good-by to Tom, good-by to the house, good-by to Vernon Street. It was a murmur of farewell to the tenements and the shacks, the thick dust on the pavements, the vacant lots littered with rubbish, the yowling of cats in dark alleys. But there was one dark alley that refused to accept the farewell. Like an exhibit on wheels it came rolling into the dream to show the rutted paving, the moonlight a relentless lamp glow focused on some dried bloodstains.
His eyes narrowed to focus on the kin of the number-one suspect.
His voice was toneless. “Tell me something.”
But he didn’t know how to take it from there. It was like a tug of war in his brain. One side ached to hold onto the dream. The other side was reality, somber and grim. His sister was asleep in a grave and she’d put herself there because a man had invaded her flesh and crushed her spirit. He told himself he had to find the man. Regardless of everything else, he had to find the man and exact full payment. His hands trembled, wanting to take hold of an unseen throat.
She was waiting for him to speak. She sat there smiling at him.
He stared past her. “You like your brother?”
“Very much. He’s a drunkard and a loafer and very eccentric, but sometimes he can be very nice. Why do you ask?”