The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  The night was dark except for the round pool of yellow lamplight some thirty feet in front of her. Flanked by the house on one side and the garage on the other, the area where Grace stood was deep in shadow. She could see clear down to the hedge on the driveway side of the yard, but the house blocked her view of the rest. Moving carefully forward, she was conscious of the acceleration of her hearbeat.

  Where was Marino? Where was the intruder? Remembering the direction in which the shadow on the curtain had seemed to be heading, the answer was obvious: in the backyard.

  Grace turned and beheld a figure on the roof of the walkway. It was darker than the charcoal sky against which it was silhouetted, and it crouched low as it scrambled along. Whoever it was obviously meant to gain entry by the roof of the house, which slanted down almost low enough to meet the walkway roof over the kitchen door. From there the figure would, perhaps, seek out an unlocked second story window. . ..

  Never afterward could she remember the next few seconds without a shudder, she raised her pistol and pointed it at the figure. . ..

  “Freeze!” Marino yelled from the backyard. His voice sounded muffled and distant, but the order was unmistakable. The figure on the roof straightened like a puppet whose string had been pulled abruptly upright, and jerked around to look in the direction of the voice. In the process it seemed to lose its footing. Its arms windmilled, its feet danced, and then with a little cry it fell from sight.

  Grace stopped breathing. All the blood seemed to drain from her face, her body. She would recognize that voice anywhere, any time, under any conditions, even as high-pitched and frightened as it had sounded then.

  “Jessica!” she cried, horror in her voice, and ran toward the backyard.

  When Grace reached her, Jessica was lying, arms outflung, in the grass, with Marino kneeling beside her. In the background, the tree house from her childhood looked down from the nearly bare branches of the sturdy oak where it had been built so many years before. Beneath it, the bright yellow plastic swings of her swing set were visible even through the darkness, swaying gently back and forth with the wind. A shower of droplets blew down from somewhere above, sprinkling Grace’s face.

  “Jessica, Jessica!” Grace threw herself down on her knees beside Marino, uncaring of the wet grass that quickly soaked through her sweatpants. She leaned over the supine figure, unmindful of the gun, which she still clutched in her right hand. “Oh, my God, is she hurt?”

  “Jesus!” Marino muttered, as Grace’s hand holding the pistol landed almost in his lap. Without another word he removed the weapon from her grasp. Grace barely even noticed. Her attention was all for the white-faced girl who, thankfully, was staring up at her wide-eyed.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jessica said feebly.

  Grace felt heat in her face as the blood returned to it in a rush.

  “Hi, Mom?” she repeated disbelievingly, her voice a couple of octaves higher than normal. That answered her question for her, she thought. Jessica was not hurt. “Jessica Lee Hart, what were you doing on the roof?”

  “At a guess, I’d say she snuck out again,” Marino said dryly when Jessica failed to answer.

  Grace stared down at her daughter without speaking. For an instant, in an attempt to gain control of her emotions, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Jessica was already scrambling to her feet, brushing off her clothes.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom,” Jessica said in a tiny voice.

  “Are you hurt?” Grace’s voice was sharp. Jessica shook her head.

  “Go into the house.” Grace knew she sounded preternaturally calm. What she felt was—blank. Nothing. Just icy cold. She was in shock, she decided dispassionately. Which was probably a good thing, for the moment.

  Jessica slunk into the warm, brightly lit kitchen, with Grace at her heels and Marino bringing up the rear and closing the door behind them. With the section of her mind that remained available to register such things, Grace saw that he carried her pistol, and only her pistol. His, she assumed, was once again tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

  Jessica walked past the table, tracking mud and bits of grass across the floor, to turn and face her mother at the center island. She rested one hand with its green-tipped nails on the counter by the sink while the other flipped long strands of straight fair hair back from her face. The hot-pink strand in front was now purple, Grace noted, to match the earrings that dangled from her ears; Jessica must have recolored it while Linda was here. Grace also saw that Jessica’s hair and clothes were wet and covered with grass and mud, and she was dressed in jeans and the black leather jacket she had worn to the mall earlier. She flicked a glance to the coatrack, remembering Jessica removing the garment and hanging it there when she had come in from the mall. How had she failed to notice that it was missing? she wondered. How had she failed to sense that Jessica was not, after all, safe inside the house?

  “Where have you been?” Grace’s voice was soft and controlled, and sounded unnatural even to her own ears. She moved to the end of the center island, her hand lying along the cold tiles just as Jessica’s was, staring at her daughter as if she were observing with curiosity a creature from a different planet.

  How could Jessica have snuck out of the house again? Did nothing they had experienced mean anything to her? The mere idea that her daughter had been out roaming around in the dark, unprotected, when she knew that someone was out there who wanted, at the very least, to scare her badly, terrified Grace. Did Jessica have absolutely no sense at all? No notion of self-preservation?

  “Mom, I’m sorry” Jessica said. Her face was as white as paper, her eyes were huge, and she looked on the verge of tears. For the first time since she could remember, Grace found that the sight of her daughter’s distress did not move her. Not one bit.

  “Where have you been?” This time there was a force to the question that made Jessica blink.

  “I’ve been to a party, okay? A party. I knew you would never let me go so I snuck out. I’m sorry.” Truculence laced Jessica’s voice now. Her chin was up, and her hands were clenched into fists. Grace felt her muscles tense.

  “Your bedroom door was locked. You crawled out your window, didn’t you? You deliberately locked your bedroom door and turned on your stereo so that I would think you were in your room when I got home, and you crawled out your window, along the roof to the walkway, and down the trellis on the back of the garage, didn’t you?” Now that she was alerted to the general idea, Grace could picture the route as clearly as if she’d seen a map of it. “To begin with, do you know how dangerous that is? I had a gun; Detective Marino had a gun. We thought you were that creep who’s been breaking into the house. What if one of us had shot you? What if the creep was out there watching somewhere and grabbed you? What if you fell off the roof? What if? . . .”

  “Oh, Mom!” Jessica interrupted. “You think everything I do is dangerous! Everywhere I go, everything I eat, all my friends! You just want to keep me ten years old for the rest of my life! Well, you can’t! It’s my life, and I’ll live it the way I want!”

  “Young lady, with that attitude, you’ll never get out of this house again!”

  “What are you going to do, ground me forever? It won’t do any good. I’ll just sneak out.”

  “If you do . . .”

  “What, Mom? What are you going to do? What can you do, huh? Nothing, that’s what!” Jessica was yelling at the end, thrusting her face toward Grace’s, her eyes flashing.

  Grace got a whiff of beer from her daughter’s breath.

  “You’ve been drinking!” She could not believe it. Not again.

  “I had some beer! So what? It was a party, and there was a keg, and I had some, just like all the other kids! You know what else I did? I smoked a couple of cigarettes, and part of a joint—you hear that, Detective? part of a joint—and made out with a really cute guy! And I’ll do it again any time I want and you can’t stop me! So there!”

  Grace lost it. For the first time in
years she completely lost control of her temper.

  “Want to bet?” she bit out. Then, before she even knew what she meant to do, she drew back her hand and slapped Jessica’s face.

  The sharp sound of the slap and Jessica’s resultant gasp echoed through the room. Grace’s hand stung in the aftermath of the blow. Her face drained white at exactly the same rate that Jessica’s did.

  Only Jessica’s left cheek was slowly pinkening as the blood rushed to fill in the imprint of Grace’s hand.

  For a moment mother and daughter simply stared at each other.

  “I hate you,” Jessica choked out, her hand pressed to her abused cheek. “I want to go live with my dad!”

  Grace felt as if there were no bones left in her body. She felt sick, literally sick to her stomach. But there could be no backing down now, no gathering her daughter into her arms and apologizing and crying with her as she promised her that everything would be just as Jessica wished. She had to remember what was at stake here—for Jessica’s sake.

  “Go to your room,” she said steadily. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “The door’s locked, remember?” Although tears were running down her face now, and her hand was still pressed to her cheek, Jessica still managed to look, and sound, defiant. “I can’t get in.”

  “I’ll get it open for you. Come on.” Marino, who’d been a silent presence in the background during this tender mother-daughter exchange, intervened in a quiet voice before Grace could reply, which was just as well. Grace was so upset she could barely talk. She must have done a million things wrong for them to come to this, she thought. And she was afraid, so terribly afraid, that the situation might be beyond repair.

  What did a mother do, when her half-grown daughter wouldn’t listen? Chain her to the wall?

  Marino left the kitchen, with Jessica still rubbing her cheek, stomping in his wake. Grace watched her go, aching for the sweet little girl who had once thought her mommy was the most wonderful being on earth.

  Then she turned, leaned her upset stomach against the counter, gripped the tile edge with both hands, rested her forehead against an overhead cabinet, and closed her eyes.

  She was still standing like that when Marino returned to the kitchen. Five minutes could have passed, or fifty. She heard him enter the room, knew by the sound of his footsteps on the hardwood floor that it was him, but still she could not bring herself to open her eyes or look around.

  She felt tired, and sick, and utterly drained. And sad. So terribly, terribly sad. As if she had lost Jessica forever.

  “You okay?” He came up behind her and put his hand on her arm. Grace felt his touch as just the slightest of pressures and realized that she was still wearing the bulky, brown-wool toggle coat that she had put on what seemed like hours earlier. She realized, too, that her sweatpants were wet from the knee down, her feet were soaked, and she was crying.

  She never cried. She had learned long ago, in a very hard school, that crying was a waste of time. The only thing that ever came of it was a stuffed-up nose.

  “Fine,” she said, only her voice sounded strange.

  “Grace . . .” His hand tightened on her arm.

  “I’m okay.” Her voice was sharp. He released her arm and stepped back. Still she could not face him.

  Grace realized that she was hot and started to undo the wooden fastenings that closed the front of her coat. It gave her something to do, while she struggled to regain her composure. Shrugging out of the garment, she was surprised to find it being lifted from her shoulders and set aside. This small kindness made more tears well up. She closed her eyes tightly, willing the tears to stop, determined that he should not see.

  “Did you . . . get the door open?” she managed with only the slightest hesitation in her voice. Still she could not turn around or open her eyes. The thrice-damned tears would not go away.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Credit card. Easy as pie. Grace . . .”

  His hands curled around both her arms above the elbow. Grace could feel the solid presence of him close behind her.

  “Just leave me alone. Please,” she said when he started to turn her around. She opened her eyes, blinking rapidly, trying by sheer dint of will to dissipate the tears, when she realized he wasn’t going to do as she asked.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad.” He turned her to face him despite her resistance, his hold gentle but unbreakable. Pride compelled her to look up at him, and she had to look up, she found. It was always a surprise to her to discover that he was so tall. The top of her head did not reach his nose. His shoulders were wide, blocking her view of much of the kitchen. His head was bent toward hers, and his face was close enough so that she could see every vein in the slightly bloodshot brown eyes and every tiny line surrounding them. His hair looked very black with the bright kitchen lights shining on it, while his skin looked very bronze. He was frowning down at her, his mouth tight with concern. His lower body was mere inches from hers, almost trapping her against the cabinets. She could feel the solid strength of his legs in front of her, while in back the hard edge of the counter pressed into her flesh just above the base of her spine.

  “Yes, it is.” Abrim with tears or not, her eyes met his defiantly as she lifted her hands to brush the moisture away. “It is that bad. I just slapped my daughter for the first time in our lives. It’s worse than bad.”

  “You lost your temper. It happens.”

  “Oh, God, I feel like such a . . . rotten mother.” To her annoyance, she gave a mighty sniff and felt a tear spill from her right eye. She hadn’t meant to say such a thing, to make such a confession to him of all people, when she knew he had disapproved of her mothering skills from the first. But she couldn’t seem to help it. She felt wretched, absolutely wretched, and he was there and being sympathetic when what she needed more than anything on earth right at that moment was a shoulder to cry on. . ..

  “Oh, let me go, Marino,” she said, avoiding his gaze and trying, without putting much real force into the effort, to pull her arms away from his grip, “before I make a total, utter, and complete fool of myself.”

  “You’re not a lousy mother, Grace.” His voice was soft, while the hands on her upper arms were firm as they refused to let her go. “Know what I’ve seen since I’ve met you two? I’ve seen a woman who loves her daughter and is doing her very best for her. And I’ve seen a daughter who loves her mother, but is grappling with a few issues of her own right now. For God’s sake, she’s a teenager. They do these things. It’s nothing to beat yourself up over.”

  Grace looked up then, met his eyes, and despite her best efforts gave another sniff.

  “Who are you, Dr. Mom?” she asked, trying to lighten things up.

  “Something like that.”

  The expression on his face was her undoing. He looked as if he cared.

  Tears welled into her eyes anew, and spilled down her face. She was not accustomed to having anybody look like that for her.

  “Oh, God,” she said miserably, giving up and letting her head drop forward so that her forehead rested against his chest. He had removed his jacket; her skin touched the soft flannel of his shirt. “I told you I was going to make a fool of myself.”

  “Go ahead,” he murmured, his body curving around hers. “I’ve got all night.”

  Chapter

  29

  GRACE GRIPPED the soft, much-washed cotton flannel—it smelled faintly of Downy—with both hands and hung on as if for dear Ufe. His arms were wrapped around her, gentle and strong and protective, holding her close. It was such a luxury to lean against him, such a luxury to be comforted, to feel as if her troubles mattered to someone besides herself, that she could not bring herself to pull away.

  “So talk to me,” he said, and she sniffed and gulped and held on tighter and complied. She talked about Jessica, about what a sweet little girl Jessica had been and how Jessica hated her diabetes and how she suspected that Jessica was rebelling against her by not injecting her in
sulin on time or eating properly or taking care of herself in general. She talked about her guilt about being a working mother and her particular guilt about working so much when Jessica was young. She talked about her divorce and the effect it had had on Jessica. She talked about her terror that Jessica was getting into trouble with drugs and her fear that Jessica had been targeted for revenge by a drug ring. All the while he held her, and listened, and made sympathetic noises. When at last Grace ran out of words, she just rested in his arms, her head against his chest, feeling strangely at peace.

  “Do you realize,” he said at last, the bristles on his chin scratching along her cheekbone as he bent to speak in her ear, “that you have been talking to me forty-five minutes straight about Jessica? What I want to know is, what about Grace?”

  Grace looked up at him then, lifting her head away from his chest and tilting her chin so that she could see his expression. She still held on to the front of his shirt, but less desperately now. His face was very close, his eyes warm and touched with humor as they met her gaze, his mouth twisting up at the corners into a wry half-smile.

  “What do you mean, what about me?” she asked, frowning.

  “Your whole life revolves around her, doesn’t it?”

  “To all intents and purposes, she is my Ufe.”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t be. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you need to live for yourself just a little for a change.”

  Grace felt herself getting angry—what did he know about her and her daughter?—but the anger died almost at birth. After all, what he was saying was no more than what she had been telling herself for some time: she needed to let go of Jessica, at least to a certain degree. But what she knew with her head was not all that easy to convey to her heart.