by Daniel Pyle
He’d watched the accident from less than a foot away, but this somehow seemed worse. To see his father’s body tossed to the side, collecting rain like a backyard birdbath, made him want to scream.
He heard wet smacking sounds behind him and turned. The pair of stained leather boots was backing away from the overturned station wagon.
The man above the boots hunched over, tugging at something inside the car, but even so, Davy could tell he was tall and husky. He wore his checked flannel shirt tucked into the waist of a tight pair of jeans. Davy couldn’t make out his face; a mane of dark, shaggy hair covered the back of the man’s head. The rain running out of this hairy jungle was brown and thick, as if the guy hadn’t washed the dirt out of his hair in months.
Before Davy could think to do anything at all, he saw what was happening. One of the side windows had shattered. What first appeared to be a long, white branch growing out through the frame turned out to be a pale, limp arm. The man, holding tight to the wrist, yanked the way Davy’s Daddy yanked the lawnmower’s start cord. Davy continued to stare; the booted man jerked on the arm again, and Davy’s mother came sliding through the window.
The man backed away from the station wagon, never letting go of the arm. Moving carefully but deliberately backward, he dragged Davy’s mother through the mud toward Davy and finally let her drop to the ground. The mud splatter from her falling body hit Davy across both eyes, but not before he’d seen the blank, lifeless expression on his mother’s tumbling face.
Dead. Like his father. Gone.
He wanted to deny it, to tell himself she was okay, that she’d look over at him any second and smile, but he knew better. He wouldn’t let his mind play tricks on him.
Mr. Boots turned back to the car without saying a word. He came close enough to the station wagon to touch it, dropped to his knees, and poked his head in through the windowless frame.
Davy turned to his mother. She had landed with her face pointed mostly away from him, but Davy could still see the caked blood on her cheek and a single vacant eye. He flipped onto his elbows and crawled to her. Her hair floated in the mud around her head. Davy reached out and tilted her face so her glazed eyes faced the sky. The rain had already washed away most of the blood, but Davy knew it couldn’t wash away the deep gash running from her cheek to her jaw to her neck. He dropped his forehead to hers and cried.
It wasn’t fair. His daddy and his mommy both in one night. How could something like this happen?
He heard more noises from the car. Mr. Boots emerged from the shattered window with a furry, writhing body curled into the crook of one arm.
Manny.
Davy said the dog’s name, and the sound coming out of his mouth sounded so wrong, so high-pitched and alien, that he immediately wished he could take it back.
“Not gonna make it,” Mr. Boots said, his voice deep, booming. Mr. Boots dropped the beagle to the ground the same way he had dropped Davy’s mother. Manny bounced once, like a half-deflated basketball, and then lay still. He moaned. Davy didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget that sound. Manny didn’t quiet until Mr. Boots lifted one of his own hefty legs and brought his boot down hard on the dog’s throat.
Davy choked again, and this time he lost his breath altogether. He gasped and cried and tried to scream all at once.
Mr. Boots looked over at him and brought his foot down again, softer than the first time but hard enough to snap at least a few more bones in Manny’s poor, unmoving body.
Davy’s own worthless body continued to betray him. When Mr. Boots walked over to Davy, all the boy could do was drop to his mother’s chest and cling to it like an infant.
“It’s just you and me now,” Mr. Boots said and reached down to pull Davy onto his knees.
Davy shook his head, trying to stifle another bout of hysterical sobs. “Nuh…hu, no. My broth…my Georgie.” He couldn’t believe his family was gone. His whole family. He wouldn’t believe it.
Mr. Boots frowned. His face had deep wrinkles, but in other ways he didn’t look any older than Davy’s father. The man’s frown suddenly reversed itself, and the smile revealed half a dozen toothless gaps. Mr. Boots pulled Davy to his feet and pointed over the car wreck.
He saw Georgie, his brother, pinned to a tree trunk fifteen feet away, dangling so the toes of his sneakers floated two feet above the ground, jabbed onto the sharp stub of a broken limb. Davy couldn’t understand how Georgie could have flown from the car and ended up so close to the final wreck site. It wasn’t possible, was it?
Davy looked up at the man in the checkered shirt, Mr. Boots, and the stranger giggled.
“You and me,” he repeated. “Just the two of us.” He jammed his hands beneath Davy’s armpits and lifted him until their noses came within an inch of touching. “Someone up there’s been listening.” He looked up into the growing storm and then back into Davy’s eyes. Without warning, he pulled the boy close and kissed him on the lips.
Davy tried to squirm away, but the stranger had a superhero’s strength. With nothing else to do, Davy closed his eyes and cringed until the man’s lips left his face.
“Don’t worry,” the stranger crooned. “We’ll get this mess all cleaned up before anybody does so much as think about noticing.” He flung Davy over his shoulder, ignored the boy’s fists beating against his spine, and headed back toward the road.
PART I
TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER
ONE
The city of Foothill wasn’t exactly a metropolis, but it did have the Mountain View Mall, and you could hardly call any place large enough to boast such an extravagant shopping center the boondocks.
That Friday, the mall’s parking lots were full, and inside, although it was just past four in the afternoon, the food court bustled. There wasn’t a single line in the place less than fifteen customers long—with the exception of the one leading to Wu’s Chinese, which the local paper had recently vilified for failing a health inspection with nearly a dozen violations. The more popular eateries were just about overrun.
It took Libby and Trevor Pullman almost twenty minutes to get their tacos. By the time Libby accepted her change from the cashier and dropped her wallet into her purse, she felt like she’d been standing for a week. Trevor, peeking frequently back at his mom to be sure he hadn’t lost her, carried the tray toward an empty two-seat table at the far end of the room. Libby followed behind with their shopping bags, watching the tray in Trevor’s small hands, wondering if he might lose his grip and spill their long-awaited supper on the floor. She didn’t ask Trevor to be careful because that would have only made him nervous. She didn’t want to make a worrier out of her son; even something small like letting him carry the tray would help build his confidence, and as far as confidence went, she hoped he would someday have a gutful.
In the large open area at the end of the food court, the area where the mall would soon hold their big back-to-school extravaganza and set up Santa when Christmastime eventually rolled around, the mall overseers had, for the summer months, erected an enormous glittering carousel on a raised platform. The ride, a beautiful Victorianesque number, must have cost the mall a whole bag full of pretty pennies, and the line of people waiting to mount one of the painted animals was so long and unorganized that you probably could have called it a mob. From the speakers in the carousel’s hub came not the cheap, amusement-park calliope Libby would have expected, but a nicely reproduced piece of some classical symphony that Libby recognized but couldn’t name, something by Mozart or maybe Beethoven. It didn’t surprise Libby that Trevor had led them to an empty table close enough to the twirling carousel that they could almost reach out and touch its platform.
Trevor eased the tray onto the table without incident. He hopped into the chair on his side with a spryness that made Libby almost wistfully envious.
She thought, Ah, to be six again, and lowered herself into her own chair feeling a like a hundred-year-old invalid.
Actually, Libby’s doct
or had recently assured her she was, for a twenty-eight-year-old mother, so perfectly fit that the editors of Healthy Living could have dedicated an entire issue of their magazine to her.
Libby wondered what the Healthy Living people would think about her greasy pile of tacos.
Smiling, she pushed the shopping bags beneath her seat and helped Trevor tear the corner from a packet of taco sauce.
“What’s funny?” Trevor asked. He took the sauce from Libby and squirted it unevenly onto his unwrapped taco.
“Oh,” Libby said, unwrapping the first of her own tacos, “nothing much. I was just thinking I might try to eat my dinner through my nose.” She brushed a strand of shoulder-length hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
Trevor grinned and wrinkled his own nose. “There’s boogers in there.”
Libby nodded thoughtfully, feigning consideration and trying not to laugh. “I guess I’ll just have to stick with my boring old mouth.”
Trevor giggled and lifted his taco. Half the shell’s contents spilled out during the trip from the wrapper to Trevor’s mouth, and after chewing his first bite long enough to liquefy it, he spent thirty seconds hand-transferring the spilled meat and cheese back into his shell.
Libby finished her first taco and inserted a straw into their cup of Mountain Dew. She took two sips and offered the drink to Trevor. He took a long swallow politely enough but left a pair of oily handprints on the cup and two even oilier lip prints on the straw.
While Trevor munched on his one and only taco, Libby started in on her second. Although their meals often consisted of equal parts conversation and eating, tonight they dined in silence. Trevor stared intently at the revolving children and over-chewed his food. Libby’s thought about Mike.
The divorce had been final for almost six months now. Mike had moved out five months before that. The whole marital breakdown was now nearly a year in the past, if you could believe that. Sometimes Libby could swear she and Mike had been together only weeks ago; other times, their marriage seemed so distant and foggy that it might have happened in another life altogether.
Today had been one of the weeks-ago days.
Libby finished her second taco and unwrapped the last. She’d been especially hungry this afternoon. Trevor had popped the final mouthful of his meal between his lips and chewed away at it with no less determination than he’d shown any of the previous bites.
“Hey, Mom,” he said after swallowing the food and helping himself to another swig of Mountain Dew.
Of course, Libby knew what he was going to ask, had expected it since they’d walked into the food court and caught their first glimpse of the carousel. She kept eating.
“You think maybe I could ride the merry-go-round while we wait?”
Libby pretended to think about it for a second. “You promise not to puke?”
Trevor smiled and rolled his eyes in a way that reminded Libby almost eerily of her ex-husband. “Yeah right. I’m not a baby.”
“Nope,” Libby said, “that’s true. How about we make a deal?”
Trevor waited.
Libby said, “You can ride it—”
Trevor’s eyes sparkled.
“But first you have to throw away our trash.”
Trevor nodded enthusiastically and balled up their empty wrappers. “You want the rest?” He pointed at her half-eaten third taco, and she shook her head.
“But let’s save the drink,” Libby suggested.
Most of the food court’s self-serve soda machines offered free refills. Mike wasn’t supposed to meet them for another half-hour, and with all the people milling about, the food court felt a little warm. Libby thought she’d need to make at least one more trip to the soda machine.
She used a napkin to give the tabletop a quick wipe down. The mall had people to do that, she knew, and sooner or later somebody would, but Libby hated leaving a mess. They were human beings, after all, civilized people, not pigs at a trough. Once she’d finished, Trevor piled everything but the Mountain Dew on their tray and rushed it to a nearby wastebasket. He dumped the trash and added the tray to a long-ignored pile.
He was a good kid. Libby didn’t have to remind herself how lucky she was.
By the time Trevor had returned to the table, Libby was out of her seat and reaching for their bags.
“Mom?”
Libby looked up and found him glancing purposefully toward the carousel. And not, she realized, because of his interest in the ride. At least not for that reason only. He was avoiding looking at her.
“Do you think maybe I could go alone?”
She didn’t have to ask for clarification. He wanted to leave her here and go wait in line by himself, be a big boy.
Her gut reaction was to refuse. With all the commotion in here, any sicko could pluck a kid from the crowd like an apple from a tree, but she was probably a little paranoid to assume there was a skulking maniac scoping out the gathered people like some hungry migrant eyeing an unguarded orchard. And even if (God forbid) said maniac did exist, half the kids in line were standing by themselves. The odds of the hypothetical kidnapper targeting Trevor had to be astronomical.
Still, Libby hesitated. Trevor was her baby.
He’s not a baby.
Her little boy.
He’s not so little anymore.
She thought about the way he’d avoided her eyes. It was one thing for him to feel a little nervous about waiting in line alone, but to be afraid just to ask…she didn’t want him so scared of her that he couldn’t pose a simple question.
“All right,” she said, “but you make sure you always stand where I can see you.”
“Really?” He smiled wide enough to reveal a chunk of beef stuck between two of the teeth, halfway back into his mouth.
Libby nodded. “Sure. I was sick of standing in line anyway.” This was true but not exactly what she was thinking. Abandonment—that’s what she was thinking—my baby is abandoning me. And although she knew Trevor would want to venture out on his own more and more in the coming years, that it would only get worse, she wouldn’t let herself feel hurt. It was part of growing up, after all, and it proved she was doing her job. You didn’t teach a bird to fly and then expect it to sit around the nest waiting for another half-chewed worm.
Besides, it wasn’t like he was going off to war. Even at the back of the line, he’d be no more than forty feet away, and she could keep an eye on him the whole time.
“You better go ahead and hurry and get in line though,” Libby said. “Dad will be here soon, and he probably won’t want to wait around all night.” She fished her wallet out of her purse and handed Trevor a five. She hadn’t noticed a sign giving the carousel’s price, but she saw a tall, flustered man at the head of the line taking money and handing out change.
“Have fun,” she said. Trevor told her thanks and hurried away.
Libby dropped back into her chair and slumped against the backrest. Trevor made his way to what may or may not have been the end of the line (Libby thought they really should have set up one of those rope mazes), and she helped herself to the Mountain Dew.
So much waiting for so little reward, Libby thought, watching the carousel. Each group got about three of four minutes on the ride before it shut down and a new batch took their places. The kids obviously considered the wait worth it; the children hopping down the carousel’s exit steps had some of the biggest smiles Libby had ever seen. Even the few disembarking adults looked sufficiently satisfied.
Simple joys, Libby thought. It was a pretty magnificent carousel. Libby couldn’t bring herself to think of it as a merry-go-round—the term didn’t seem fancy enough. At some point, the music had changed, this time to a Beethoven piece she recognized: Für Elise. She’d tuned the music out during dinner, but now she let herself listen.
A group of four ten- or eleven-year-old girls had stepped into line behind Trevor. He looked over at Libby, saw her watching, and waved. Libby waved back, smiling now, and fin
ished off the Mountain Dew.
She slid farther into her chair, realizing she’d be sitting here for a while and that she might as well get comfortable. Her thoughts drifted back to Mike.
Libby had suggested they meet at the mall. She’d told Mike she had some shopping to do and that it would be easier for the both of them, but that had been a lie. It would be easier for Mike, for sure—the mall was a lot closer to his place than her house—but Libby had gone more than a little bit out of her way. There was nothing necessary about the new blouse and three new paperbacks she’d picked up, nor about the Dragonball Z action figure she’d bought Trevor at the toy store.
The truth was, she’d arranged for Mike to meet them at the mall because she didn’t want him coming to the house.
She didn’t want him to see what she’d done to the place.
That was stupid, of course—it was her house now, after all—but part of her felt unreasonably guilty all the same.
Since Mike had left, she hadn’t changed much of anything. She hadn’t rearranged the furniture, had kept the pictures hanging where they’d always hung; there were even some of Mike’s old clothes folded on the top shelf of the closet. She hadn’t been stagnant on purpose, hadn’t left things the same out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. She simply hadn’t had the time or the inclination to reorganize. Or so she told herself.
And did she have any reason to believe otherwise? The divorce had been a mutual thing—which sounded like something you said about a week-long high school romance rather than an eight-year marriage, but it was true—they’d both known they would do better apart. Things had gotten too hard; by the end, they been fighting almost every night. Even their love for Trevor hadn’t been enough to hold them together.
So redecorating the house a little shouldn’t have been a problem, and yet it had taken her all this time to do it, and now that she had, she was afraid of what Mike might think and feeling guilty.