“What is that? What’s back there?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “An old rolled-up carpet.”
Sarah climbed down the ladder, and Alex followed. Neither of them spoke as Alex folded the ladder, pushed it up into the ceiling, then used the pole to flip up the hasp over the staple in the ceiling. He tapped it once, and it clicked home. Then he pried at it for several seconds before he could get it open. He tapped it closed again, then set the butt end of the pole on the floor and shook his head.
“There’s no way that could have fallen by itself,” he said.
“Do we have a padlock for it?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll get one tomorrow.”
Later that night, Sarah looked in on Brian before she went to bed. His top blanket had partly slipped off, as if he’d been tossing and turning. He lay still now, deep in sleep. Sarah pulled the blanket over his shoulders and gently kissed him on the brow.
Sarah heard Alex in their bathroom, brushing his teeth. She pulled her sweater up over her head, folded it, and opened the large drawer in the bureau. Her sweaters were neatly lined up, shoulder to shoulder, one row on top of another. Sarah laid her sweater in place, started to shut the drawer, then stopped. She was remembering something from this afternoon. Now she scanned the top row, then bent down and lifted each sweater, looking at the one beneath.
Her pink cashmere was gone.
She remembered the sweater she’d seen today on Mrs. Green. It had been a pink cashmere, and she’d thought at the time that it looked familiar.
Sarah straightened up slowly, drawing in a deep breath, trying to remain calm, trying to remember the last time she’d seen her sweater. Had she taken it to the dry cleaner’s and forgotten about it? Not likely. Perhaps she’d lent it to someone. Yes. Now she remembered. Kay had borrowed the sweater several months ago. But hadn’t she returned it a few days later? Perhaps not.
Obviously not, Sarah thought. We both must have forgotten about it. I’ll ask her tomorrow.
Sarah closed the drawer and climbed into bed.
Much later that night Sarah was awakened by a disturbing dream. She tried to recall what it was, but the harder she concentrated, the farther away from her it receded.
She got out of bed and moved slowly to the bathroom, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light. She fumbled in the dark medicine cabinet for the plastic drinking glass. After she’d taken a drink of water, she walked out to the bedroom, then passed through it to the hallway, deciding to look in on Brian while she was up.
He was sleeping soundly. However, the covers had partly fallen away from him. Sarah gently pulled them up to his chin.
She moved quietly away from his bed to the window. She stood there for a few moments, looking up at the sky. The snow had stopped, and the sky had partially broken, leaving small openings where cold stars shone through. The moon, however, was almost completely obscured and only faintly lit up the covering clouds.
Sarah’s gaze fell to the dimly lit, snow-covered yard at the side of the house.
The garage was dark and silent, and the trees and bushes were almost uniformly black against the white background of the lawn. Sarah started to turn from the window when something caught her eye. It was in the yard almost directly below her.
A patch of yellow light.
Sarah knew immediately what it was: light falling on the snow from a window in the house. She estimated that it was coming from a kitchen window.
Alex had been the last one down there, she thought. He must have forgotten to turn it off.
But something was wrong. The patch of light was small, much too small to be falling from any of the large kitchen windows. It had to be coming from a smaller window, one closer to the ground.
A basement window.
27
SHE LAY UNCOMFORTABLY IN the dark. At least she was warmer than before, now that she had the sweater. The memory of stealing it delighted her. She giggled. The sound echoed in her small space, and for a moment she imagined that she was not alone.
“Hello-o,” she sang softly, then giggled again.
All things considered, she felt good. Oh, her back and joints ached horribly, but that was to be expected, given her sleeping arrangements. And besides, it was a temporary condition. Soon she’d be out of here. The main thing was she was warm.
And pretty, too.
She smiled in the dark and reached up to touch her newly styled hair. In the process she banged her elbow on the cold, hard wall. She cursed once, a bark, and felt the pain spread quickly from her elbow up to her shoulder and down to her fingers.
She lowered her arm and focused on the pain, exploring it with her mind, aware that it was touching something deep within her. The pain began to fade, so she banged her elbow again, harder this time and with purpose.
Now her joint was on fire, and the pain spread across her back and through her chest. It began to stir the emotion she’d sought—hate. She embraced it and considered the people in the house. Not her son, Timothy, but the people who’d taken him from her. Alex and his wife.
They thought they were so damn smart, so goody-goody, rich and fancy and everything nice. Well, it was time to show them who the smart one was. Who the strong one was.
It was time to hurt them.
Timothy would have to wait. Besides, she could take him away from them whenever she wanted, now that she looked pretty. He wouldn’t be afraid of her. He’d come with her gladly. And once she left with him, she’d never come back. So if she was to hurt them, she had to do it first, before she took her son.
She thought about exactly what she would do, what she could do, to them. So many things, so hard to choose.
No matter. She’d think of something just right. She’d sneak back into the house and decide then.
Improvise, she thought, smiling, tenderly rubbing her elbow.
28
SARAH HURRIED INTO HER bedroom and shook Alex awake. “Alex,” she said in a loud whisper. “Alex, wake up.”
“Wha—?” He blinked open his eyes.
“There’s a light on in the basement. I think someone’s down there.”
He sat upright in bed. “What?”
“I saw the light from Brian’s window.”
Alex hesitated a moment, then quickly got out of bed. Sarah followed him out to the hall. He flipped on the light and quickly went down the stairs. She started after him, then turned and walked quickly back to Brian’s room. When she saw that he was still asleep, she closed his door and went after Alex. She found him in the kitchen removing something from a drawer. When he turned, she saw that he’d armed himself once again with the flashlight and the baseball bat.
“Maybe you should stay upstairs with Brian,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“He’s okay. He’s asleep. If you’re going down there, I’m going with you.”
Alex paused. “All right,” he said, “but stay close.”
Together they moved through the laundry room to the basement door. Alex pressed his ear to it and listened for a few moments. He looked at Sarah and shook his head. Then he handed her the flashlight and quietly slid back the bolt, unlocking the door.
Sarah stood back as he pulled open the door, stepped out onto the landing, and stared down the stairwell. She leaned around the doorframe. The stairs were dark, but the floor below was partially lit. Light spilled from the open doorway of the furnace room. Sarah remembered having gone in there earlier in the day, looking for Patches.
She told Alex, adding, “But I think I turned off that light.”
Alex switched on the overhead light and started down the stairs, holding the bat before him as if it were a sword. Sarah stayed one step behind. When they reached the bottom, they walked cautiously to the open door of the furnace room.
The room was harshly lit by a bare bulb. The huge iron furnace stood cold and silent, its ducts reaching outward and upward like the heavy branches of a petrified tree. From the corner of the room came t
he soft hissing of the small heater. It winked at them with a wavering blue eye. Alex moved quietly toward the large furnace, as if he were afraid he might awaken it. He bent down under a duct and looked behind the furnace, ball bat at the ready, then stepped back and stood up.
“It stinks back there,” he said quietly.
Sarah remembered smelling the same faint stench.
Alex followed her from the room, and they crossed the hall, looking into the old canning room. It was empty except for its vacant shelves. They quickly searched the kitchen and the bath, finding both rooms dusty and silent and empty. In the bedroom Alex looked into the closet, then yanked open the door of the wardrobe, releasing a faint odor of cedar.
Back in the hallway, they checked the outside door, then walked into the living room. Sarah was the first to notice the broken window.
It was in the corner of the room, beyond the last of the stacked cardboard boxes. One of the window’s small glass panels had been broken along a roughly diagonal line. Half of the pane was still in its frame, and the rest of the glass lay in shards on the dusty carpet.
Alex checked the window latch. It was locked.
“Someone broke in here,” Sarah said.
Alex shrugged. “This could’ve happened months ago, for all we know. Maybe I bumped it with the lawn mower.”
“Or maybe someone broke in. Alex, listen, there’s something I was going to tell you, but so much else happened that I forgot, and I know it’s going to sound crazy to you …”
“What is it?”
“There’s food missing from the cupboards.”
“What?”
She explained how she’d first suspected and then confirmed her suspicions by digging out last week’s grocery receipt.
“Lunch meat and tuna fish and crackers … lots of things.”
Alex stared at her for a moment, worry lines deep in his forehead. He took the flashlight from her and more closely examined the window’s latch. Then he shone the light outside, scanning the beam across the snow-covered lawn, which was nearly level with the bottom of the window. He switched off the flashlight and handed it to Sarah. Then he tore a flap from a nearby box and wedged the piece of cardboard into the window pane.
“That’ll have to do until I get a new piece of glass.”
“Alex, I think you should nail these windows shut.”
He looked at her.
“I’m serious,” she said.
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“What about tonight? Someone could get in here.”
“Sarah, it’s late, my tools are in the garage …” He shrugged his shoulders in exasperation. “Look, if anyone got in, they’d get no farther than the basement door upstairs. I’ll search down here again tomorrow before I nail everything shut.”
She gave him a brief smile. He put his arm around her.
They walked back along the hallway, turning off the room lights as they went. When they reached the furnace room, Alex paused, then walked into the room. He stood before the old furnace for a moment before he turned to Sarah.
“Bring the flashlight.”
She saw now that he was standing next to the furnace’s small door. It was about eighteen inches square—large enough, Sarah suddenly realized, for a person to squeeze through. And the furnace itself was large enough for several people to stand in.
Alex lifted the latch and pulled open the door. Sarah shone the light inside.
The furnace was empty. Its curved inside wall was a sickly gray splotched with red. There were four large black holes evenly spaced around the circular wall—openings for the abandoned air ducts. Sarah pointed the light at one.
She saw something in the duct.
“What’s that?”
Alex took the flashlight from her and leaned into the furnace. Standing where she was, it looked as if he were being eaten, headfirst, by a giant iron spider. Alex backed out.
“The ducts are plugged, that’s all,” he said. “I think the men who installed the new heater did it to prevent drafts.”
He closed the furnace door and brushed dirt from his hands.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go to bed.”
They left the room, switching off the light and shutting the door behind them. Sarah followed Alex up the stairs. He closed the basement door and solidly slammed home the bolt.
On Saturday morning Sarah awoke to the sound of Alex going down the stairs and out of the house. She climbed out of bed, stretched, then stood for a few moments at the window.
The sky was blue gray over the mountains and light blue overhead. The smooth colors were broken only by a few stray clouds, stragglers from the storm that had passed in the night. Below her, the lawn was evenly white, and the trees and bushes looked as if they’d been dolloped with whipped cream.
Like a scene from one of Brian’s books, she thought, smiling.
But her smile quickly melted as the memories of yesterday began to flood into her mind:
Christine in her shop. Or had it really been Christine? The woman calling herself Mrs. Green looked like Christine’s photographs. But not exactly. And everyone said Christine was dead—Alex, Frank O’Hara, the Albany police, even the hospital.
The missing food. On this matter there was no room for doubt. Food had been taken from the cupboards, perhaps by the same person who’d broken into the basement window—the same person who’d been in the kitchen while Sarah was in the living room wrapping Christmas presents. Mrs. Green?
Last night’s hunt. That’s what Alex had been doing—and she, too, she realized—hunting. First at the shop, then throughout the house, and finally in the basement. Hunting for whom? Mrs. Green again?
Sarah didn’t know which reality upset her more: that Mrs. Green was really Christine, a madwoman bent on revenge; or that the woman in her shop was someone else, a complete stranger, with thoughts and plans totally unknown to them.
She turned from the window, trying to clear her mind. After she’d washed and dressed in faded jeans and a baggy sweater, she looked in on Brian. He was still in bed, but awake.
“Good morning, pumpkin,” she said. The cheer in her voice sounded false.
“Morning.”
“I’m going to make breakfast pretty soon. Will you be up and ready?”
“Okay.”
When Sarah got down to the kitchen, she heard the muffled thud of hammering coming from below. She put water on for coffee, then set the table. She was pouring orange juice into three glasses when Brian came into the kitchen.
“What’s that noise, Mom?”
“It’s your dad.”
“What’s he doing?”
Sarah wondered when she’d be able to explain all of this to Brian. Perhaps when he was older. Perhaps never.
“He’s fixing some of the windows in the basement,” she said.
“Oh. Can we make a snowman today?”
“Hey, good idea.”
Sarah shook cereal into a bowl, then sliced half a banana on top and added milk. While Brian ate, she got things ready for her and Alex. Then she remembered that she had to call Kay. She picked up the phone but hung it up at once, deciding to talk first to Alex. One thing was certain, though: She wasn’t going to the shop today.
The thudding from the basement stopped, and a few minutes later Alex came into the kitchen carrying a hammer and a coffee can filled with nails. He set them on the end of the counter.
“Are you finished?” She noticed that his hairline was damp with perspiration.
“Yes, for now.” He washed his hands in the sink, then dried them on a dish towel. “It’s a pretty crude job,” he said, “but no one will be coming in through the basement windows. Or the door, for that matter.”
“You nailed the door shut?”
He looked at her and smiled.
“No, I just wedged a length of two-by-four against it.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to build a snowman, Dad,” Brian put in.
“You are?”
“Well, me and Mom.”
“What about me? Can’t I help?”
Brian grinned. “Sure.”
After breakfast, Brian bundled up and went outside to find some branches and stones for the future arms and face of the snowman. Sarah and Alex began clearing the table.
“I’m not going to work today,” Sarah said.
“I don’t blame you.”
“I was going to call Kay and have her cancel my appointments, but I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“Tell her you’re sick.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean about Christine. Or Mrs. Green, or whoever the hell she is. What if she comes back while Kay’s there?”
Alex called the police—specifically, Detective Yarrow. He was put on hold for a few minutes, and when Yarrow came on the line, Alex told him how Mrs. Green had terrorized Sarah in her shop yesterday.
He listened for a moment, then said angrily, “Where were you? Where were your men? … Right, well they’d better be there all day today. … No, my wife isn’t going in, but her partner is. … Yes, we’ll be home. … Fine.” He hung up. “He’s coming here this afternoon to get a statement from you.”
“Why not this morning?”
“Who knows. He’s busy. And he said he’d make sure someone was watching the shop all day today, so I don’t think you have to worry about Kay.”
Sarah was worried, though. So when she phoned Kay, she told her about her encounter with Mrs. Green.
“Oh, my Lord, honey, are you all right?”
“I’m still a little shaken, but otherwise okay. I’m not coming in today, though.” Sarah told her how the police would be watching the shop all day. Then she suggested that Kay might feel safer if she stayed home, too.
“Are you kidding? I need the money too much. Besides, I hope that bitch does come back. I’ll show her a thing or two.”
Kay said she’d call all of Sarah’s customers for today and reschedule them. Sarah thanked her and hung up. Alex was standing by the sink, staring out the window.
“The electric company’s here,” he said.
Night of Reunion: A Novel Page 20