Page 76 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Oh God. Me too.”

Darkness, comfort, and sleep.

“SHE’S CRYING!Somebody make her stop! Oh God, she’s crying—make her stop!”

Ellery struggled to wake up. Oh God. Jackson was shouting and flailing, pushing himself up and screaming into the darkness of the bedroom, and Ellery squinted at his phone on the charger.

Three hours. Ellery wasn’t sure he could cope with this with only three hours of sleep after the day they’d had.

“Baby,” he tried to soothe. “Baby, c’mon, calm down.”

“Somebody get the fucking baby!”

The scream was ripped out of Jackson’s throat, and Ellery recoiled for a moment, stunned and disoriented and, yes, a little afraid.

This was tearing from Jackson’ssoul,and Ellery thought he knew where, but the memory was fleeting, a casual confession—as so many of Jackson’s worst confessions were—of another atrocity he’d managed to survive.

“Jackson Leroy Rivers!”

Ellery’s mother’s voice snapped through the air like a whipcrack, and Ellery sat up in bed straighter, his senses whirling from another emotional assault.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jackson said, sounding woozy and hoarse—but lucid.

“Why are you making all this noise?” Taylor Cramer demanded, slamming on the lights. Ellery’s mother was wearing blue silk pajamas, with her hair pulled back into a braid for sleeping, and Ellery had a muddled moment to wonder how she managed to look like she was wearing a business suit at two in the morning.

“She’s crying,” Jackson said earnestly. “Can’t you hear her crying? She won’t stop….” He trailed off in confusion, glancing around, orienting himself, his consciousness catching up to inform him of reality after the dream’s terrible lies.

“I’m sorry,” he said in the remote voice of an apologetic schoolboy. “I-I didn’t mean to bother everybody.” He made to stand up, but Taylor’s glare held him in place. “If… if you let me go, I’ll play some video games to calm myself down.”

Ellery’s mother looked to him. “Son, does this happen often? I mean, you spoke of dreams but….” She gestured helplessly.

“Something’s been riding him,” Ellery told her, grateful to have his mother there to talk to—or even simply witness. “Fora while this only happened once a month or so.” He let out a shuddery breath. “It was nice,” he said plaintively.

Jackson turned to him, remorse written all over his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice wobbly. “Listen, I’ll go get a hotel room or—”

“Oh, don’t you fucking dare!”

Both of them stared at Ellery’s mother in shock.

“What?” she demanded crankily. “You two use the word like you breathe. How often is this happening now?”

“Almost nightly,” Ellery said when Jackson glanced away.

“Absolutely not,” she said, and Ellery saw fury—and worry—bubbling under her controlled expression like a volcano under an ice floe. “No. No, you two need to be working at optimum levels, and you absolutely cannot do that if this is what your sleep looks like, Jackson.” Her voice altered perceptibly from drill sergeant to the thing Jackson probably feared the most.

A mother.

“Son, what’s on your mind. What baby?”

Jackson squinted at her in confusion. “Baby?”

“Yes.” Disregarding all propriety, Taylor sank down at the side of the bed, and Ellery yearned to go put on his own pajamas but figured now was not the time. “You were begging us to get the baby. What is riding you, son?”

Jackson swallowed and shook his head. “I—”

“What are you worried about right now?”

He lifted his head, and Ellery thought for the umpteenth time that his mother was a genius. Not the old hurt, not whatever had haunted a boy or young man that he might not have had words for. What was the trigger? What was thecurrenthurt that the mature, able man could articulate?

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