The Things That Keep Us Here

by Carla Buckley

  She had seventy-four dollars in cash. She’d load up on whatever she could find, the basics, like rice and powdered milk. It might be enough to last another week. She couldn’t think beyond that. Bending, she picked up the baby and pressed her lips to his warm, downy head. Something glinted on the sleeve of his shirt. She turned him around in her arms and plucked it free.

  Maddie said, “Kate? Do you think the TV’s working somewhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ann held up the golden filament. A long hair curved between her fingers. Dread curled in her belly. It looked like … a cat hair. But how was that possible? “Kate,” she said, “where did you get this shirt Jacob’s wearing?”

  “From his new bag of clothes.”

  “The clothes I got from next door?”

  “I guess.”

  She meant the bag of hand-me-downs Ann had retrieved from the closet in Jacob’s bedroom. Libby’s sister must have had a cat. So this was the source of Maddie’s allergy attack: cat hair, their old enemy. Dread evaporated away into pure relief. “Look, girls,” she said. “Cat hair.”

  They glanced over.

  “I’m going to change Jacob,” Ann said. “Don’t put him in any more of his new things until I wash them.”

  Kate shrugged and flopped over on her belly. “Okay.”

  Ann paused in the doorway and regarded her daughters. There was no way to deliver this but directly. “Listen, girls. If anything happens, I want you to take the baby and go to Dr. Singh’s.” She’d glimpsed him the day before, balanced on a stepladder and doing something to one of his gutters. She’d watched him for a while. He never once coughed or wiped his nose.

  “Why?” Maddie raised herself up onto an elbow. “We don’t even know him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if anything happens’?” Kate swung her feet to the floor. “Are you sick, too?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not sick.” She jiggled the baby on her hip. “I just want you to be prepared. That’s all. Dr. Singh’s a medical doctor. He’ll take care of you. He’ll help you find Grandma and Aunt Beth.”

  “Whatever.” Kate lay back down and drew up the blankets.

  “Honey. You have to listen.”

  But Kate merely rolled onto her side and faced the sofa cushions.

  She reminded her of Shazia, the way she was lying there, so still and distant. Where was Shazia? Had she safely reunited with her lover? A tide of loneliness washed over her.

  Maddie was watching her. “I heard you, Mommy.”

  Ann smiled down at her compassionate child. “I know you did, darling.”

  Peter had been right. All the neighbors should have banded together. They should have taken turns hauling the trash to the dump and going to the market. But everyone had been terrified. No one had trusted anyone. She hadn’t even trusted Libby.

  What goes around comes around. That’s what Peter’s father used to say. He’d been right. She was getting what she deserved, and now there was no one there to help her.

  She glanced through the window at Barney, lying there beneath the birch. The thought crept in.

  Almost no one.

  THE FOG MUFFLED HER FOOTSTEPS DOWN THE PAVEMENT. SHE halted at the end of the curving road and stood looking at the brick ranch house.

  It had been different when she’d gone into Libby’s house. Then, it had been for the baby. It hadn’t felt like trespassing. She’d been inside it a million times before. She knew how the sunlight patterned the floor in the morning. She knew that the floor beneath the dining room table creaked, but only in the summer, and that if you stood at the bottom of the stairs, you could hear televisions going in three different rooms.

  This house, however, was a stranger to her. She’d never been welcome here. She’d never once been invited in. The closest she’d ever come was walking past on the sidewalk when the front door hung open. Even then, she’d never really caught more than a glimpse of lamplight or wood floor before the door shut again.

  The front door was securely latched. She considered the narrow window beside the door. Even if she managed to crack it open, she wouldn’t be able to reach in far enough to unlatch the door. And what if it had a key lock? Her heart sank.

  The side gate creaked open easily under her hand, and she found herself in a secret garden. Tall bushy shapes loomed at her. Ivy crawled across the fence. There was a pool sheeted with weathered green material, chairs stacked to one side, a shed at the back. She turned to the house. A set of French doors was centered between two large picture windows. She walked over and jiggled the door handle, but it refused to turn. She chewed her lip in frustration.

  Cupping her gloved hands around her eyes, she peered in. Pale green walls. A beige curve of countertop. A small table and chairs set to one side. Below the legs of one chair lay a bedroom slipper, wrong side up. Beneath it spread a puddle of something brown. She let her focus go soft and stepped back.

  All right, all right. She’d have to be quick, before she lost her nerve. She scanned the patio. The metal chairs were a possibility. She picked one up and hefted it. The French doors would be tricky, their panes close-set and bracketed by thick strips of wood. She’d have to try one of the picture windows.

  Holding the chair by its arms, she swung the pointed legs at the glass. The impact rattled up her arms. The glass shook and reflected her image back at her. She hadn’t even scratched it. Stepping back, she whirled in a circle and smacked the chair at the glass. The blow wrenched the chair from her grasp. Surely that had done something. But when she checked, she saw no blemish, not the tiniest crack. In disbelief, she ran her gloved fingers over the cold, perfectly smooth surface. What was this stuff, bulletproof? She clenched her hands into fists. Of course it wasn’t. It was ordinary window glass. The fault lay in the chair. It wasn’t heavy enough. And she wasn’t strong enough.

  Peter could have done this. It would have taken him one swing.

  She ran her gaze over the yard. Finn had lined his gardens with bricks, pushing them into the earth so they stood at angles. Maybe she’d have better luck with a smaller weapon. Crouching, she dug her fingers into the dirt and pried a brick free.

  She leaned back. With all her might, she hurled the brick at the window. The glass crazed but held. Yes! Scooping up the brick, she threw it again. A tiny hole opened. She bashed the brick over and over at this soft, malleable spot, watching with glee as the cobweb of cracks spread outward. When the brick crumbled beneath her grasp, she ran to dig up another.

  On her third brick, her hand punched through. With a shocked gasp, she stopped herself. My God. What if she sliced her arm on the jagged edges? She was no better than that stranger on TV, the one she saw hammering the Watergate windows. Now she understood what drove him. Not fear, not rage. Desperation. She released the brick to fall unseen on the other side of the glass and closed her fingers into a narrow point. Slowly, inch by inch, she withdrew her arm until she stood at last whole and uninjured.

  No more bricks. She used the chair instead to chip at the broken edges, widening the hole until it was big enough. She dropped the chair and climbed through.

  The smell slammed into her, nauseating and thick. The mentholated Vaseline she’d spread along her upper lip did nothing to keep it at bay. The room was in shadow. She made a wide circle around the leaking thing on the linoleum, stepped to the cabinets, and banged one open. Glasses. She went from door to door, finding dishes, cups, blender, thermos, waffle iron, everything tidily put away, all of it useless.

  She spun around to the pantry. Empty. So was the refrigerator. She reached into the murky interior and patted the shelves to make sure. She lowered the oven door. She checked the microwave. Peter had seen towers of cans. There’d been gallons of water. Where was it all?

  She stood there.

  Without meaning to, she found herself focusing on the thing lying at the end of the room. It was a black-and-yellow pool of fat and bone and sinew, covered in dark greasy material that had once been clothing.
Walter Finn, damn it, what have you done with the things you hoarded?

  The bathtubs and sinks were dusty and bare. She tracked through rooms, scanned closets, checked under beds, and unzipped suitcases. Coming to the end of the long hallway, she switched on her flashlight and pulled down the attic ladder. Standing on its topmost rung, she swept her light around the rafters. Pink insulation puffed between wooden beams. A crumpled beer can lay on its side. A magnificent spiderweb stretched across a far corner.

  The basement was damp with the odor of mildew. The windows were shrouded by black plastic. One corner drooped, letting in a faint stripe of light. Weather insulation? Then no. Finn had light-proofed the basement. The furnace crouched sullenly along one wall. She spied two wooden chairs, a rolled-up rug, a dozen or so paint cans. She came around the corner and saw a long folding table with a chair positioned before it. A computer sat there. She pushed the buttons and tried the keyboard. It was dead. Same for the radio beside it. A portable heater sat beneath the table. She thought about taking it, then decided against it. It was useless without power.

  The garage was empty, too. She opened car doors, shone her flashlight across the seats and footwells, raised the trunk and pushed aside the tarp and bottles of motor oil he kept there.

  Back to the kitchen, gagging at the foul odor, she searched every cabinet again. Nothing. Someone else had beaten her to it. They’d come in and taken everything, leaving behind not so much as a salt-shaker or a tea bag.

  But did that make sense? Trespassers would have left some evidence of their presence, either in cabinet doors hanging ajar or—she glanced at the gaping hole in the window—broken glass.

  The room had grown cold and moist with fog. She looked down again to the form on the floor. “You win.” You old bastard.

  Stepping back through the jagged hole, she looked around the yard. The sun, having never made a real appearance all day, was sliding below the treetops. Night was coming. Her gaze lit on the shed tucked in the far corner.

  The door was locked. Keys hung inside the front hall closet. She’d seen them dangling there. Surely one of them belonged to this door. It turned out to be the third key she tried.

  She found herself in a musty space. Here, too, Finn was obsessively tidy. Terra-cotta planters were stacked on the shelves beside containers of plant food. Garden tools hung from hooks. Bags of soil and grass seed stood upright along one wall. But she saw almost none of it. Her focus was on the long row of soup cans and the big plastic jugs of water. She let the beam of her flashlight linger on the long, narrow canvas bag.

  Tomorrow they would head north.

  FIFTY-TWO

  ANN SAT UP, INSTANTLY ALERT. HER HEART THUDDED inside her chest, painfully hard. It was the dream she’d been having. She remembered snatches of it, Peter smiling and beckoning to her. Come on, honey; the water’s great. She kept sloshing through the waves toward him, only to have him reappear, farther away each time. Then the tide grabbed her and slammed her under, and there he was, his hand gripping her arm, pulling her sputtering sunward.

  But it had been a dream of frustration and loss, not one to send her heart hammering.

  The girls lay sleeping soundly beside her, two narrow lumps, their hair spread across their pillows. What had awakened her? The baby. Quickly, she slid out of bed and padded over to where Jacob sprawled on his back, one tiny thumb in his mouth. Kneeling, she put a hand to his chest. It was an agonizingly long moment before she felt the gentle rise of his breath. Sagging with relief, she rocked back on her heels.

  “Why can’t Jake sleep with us?” Maddie had said.

  “Because,” Ann had replied, and Maddie had glanced up at her, surprised at her tone.

  Pulling a sweatshirt over her head, she went to the bank of windows.

  The street lay blue with moonlight. Nothing moved that would have startled her awake. It must have been her own peculiar alarm clock once again chiming for no good reason, as if waking her every night now could compensate for the single time she’d let her attention wander.

  She rested her forehead on the cool glass. Back in the corner of the yard stood Peter’s tree, the small shape of his guardian constant beneath it. How would she persuade Barney to come with them in the morning? Maybe she’d bring along an old shirt of Peter’s and let him adopt it as his own bed.

  Then she heard it. Stealthy crunching steps from the floor below. She straightened, listening hard. Silence stretched all around her.

  The slow creak of a door opening. Her heart leaped into her throat.

  But then she was in the hallway, crouching down and peering through the slats of the railing. A beam of light played across the floor below, glinting off a thousand sparkling diamonds. Broken glass. That was how they’d gotten in.

  The bright orb of a flashlight throbbed, a bulk of shadow passing behind it. She pressed back against the wall.

  No way to call 911 for help. Even if she somehow managed to get outside, there’d be no neighbors to run to. She couldn’t possibly leave the children alone with strangers in the house, not even for a moment. She was defenseless. No, not defenseless. But she couldn’t do it. The thought terrified her.

  They might stay downstairs. They might be content to steal her food and water and leave. All their supplies sat there, temptingly, in the bags she’d packed. They could just pick them up and sneak back out into the night. But what if they ventured up the stairs to look around?

  The lock on the bedroom door was useless, not intended to withstand force.

  Downstairs, floorboards creaked. There was the soft scuffle of furniture being moved. What were they doing? Why didn’t they hurry and leave? She stood, indecisive. A kitchen cabinet banged open. There was no way out except past them. How many of them were there? It sounded like more than one. She was outnumbered. But not helpless.

  She glanced over her shoulder into the shadowy bedroom.

  Edging back, she quietly drew the door shut and pressed the metal button. The click sounded like thunder in the stillness, but there was no answering shout from below. It was almost worse to be in here, where she couldn’t hear where they were. She had to be quick.

  Backing up, gaze steady on the doorknob, she retreated to the closet. She tore her gaze away from the door and turned. Standing on the stool, she shoved aside the sweaters and reached for the long, slim object in the back. Food and water hadn’t been the only things she’d found in Finn’s storage building. She unzipped the canvas and slowly removed the gun.

  Peter had once shown her how.

  This is a Remington 870 classic twelve-gauge shotgun. The gauge refers to barrel size and shell type. It’s a pump-action.

  She had no idea what gauge this gun was, but she was pretty sure it was a shotgun. The same principles had to apply. She lifted the hamper lid and pulled the fabric liner away from its Velcro strips, cringing at the loud ripping noise. She felt around at the bottom for the heavy cardboard box.

  You slide the shells into the magazine. There’s a little catch to prevent shells from sliding back out. You try it, Ann.

  She tilted the barrel up and looked down. Here was the opening where the shells went in. Here was the handle she pulled to insert them. There was an audible ka-chuck sound. Her heart leaped. She stopped and looked over her shoulder. All was silent.

  Her palms were slippery with sweat. She wiped them on her sweatshirt. Now what? She wouldn’t go downstairs after them. She wouldn’t leave three sleeping children to go down and confront them. She’d stay up here. She’d wait for them to leave. Maybe they already had.

  A sound floated up through the heat register. Laughter. They were still here, in the room below her, her kitchen, relaxed and happy as they went through her house and stole her children’s food and water. There was another muffled laugh. They were growing brazen.

  These were the very same kind of people who had killed Peter.

  The door sprang open and she was in the hall, walking toward the head of the stairs. There was only on
e stairway. They wouldn’t be able to get by her to the children upstairs.

  Drawers opening. More footsteps. A low chuckle.

  A man came out of the dining room, plastic bottle tipped to his mouth.

  He spotted her at the same instant and froze. Then he lowered the bottle, water dripping down his bearded chin. He was dressed in bulky layers and wore a knit hat pulled low over his forehead.

  “Get out of my house.” Her voice sounded like a stranger’s to her, low and uncertain. She could barely hear it over the hammering of her heart.

  He swiped a forearm across his mouth. “Sorry, lady. Didn’t know anyone was home.”

  “Get out.”

  Her arms trembled. She was terrified she was going to drop the shotgun. Her hands were so sweaty. She heard the clatter behind him, the rattle of dishes, cabinets banging open and closed.

  “All right, all right. Calm down.” He set the bottle on the dining room table behind him. It toppled over, dribbling three, maybe four, ounces’ worth. What she measured for each child at mealtime.

  Fury boiled up in her. She lifted the gun and braced it against her shoulder. “You think you can push us around?” Her voice was a growl. “Fuck you people.”

  “Come on.” He patted the air. “Calm down. No one needs to get hurt.”

  See the bead. That’s how you aim. Come on, Ann, pay attention. It’s not the most accurate. You have to hold the gun slightly below your target.

  She went down the stairs. He backed away and stumbled into the kitchen.

  She glimpsed another shape turning behind him. She had the impression of height and skinniness. Just the two men, then. She stopped in the doorway. Any farther and she couldn’t keep an eye on both of them. “Get out. Both of you.”