Ruin Falls

by Jenny Milchman

Jill looked about to argue, but Liz was already walking off. “And watch out for that wind,” she added, glancing skyward. High-up branches were twisting back and forth, their foliage getting snarled. The temperature was dropping. “There are jackets in the shed.”

  “Liz!” Jill called, and she turned. “You watch it, too. Okay? I mean it. You watch out.”

  Liz raised one hand in acknowledgment, but the wave felt more like dismissal. It was too late for her to watch out.

  In the mudroom, she kicked off her shoes, then went upstairs to Paul’s study. His machine exerted a magnetic pull, and Liz switched it on. The History button brought up the three preserved tabs, and Liz clicked the one with the letters PEW, getting that same blank homepage.

  Only now she had passwords to try.

  Paul’s username was easy to figure; he always used the same one. She typed in Professor, then let her fingers hover over the keyboard. The cursor flicked in the second blank slot.

  c-l-o-s-e-d-l-o-o-p Liz typed swiftly.

  INCORRECT PASSWORD.

  w-a-t-e-r-s-h-o-r-t-a-g-e

  She hit Enter.

  Same message.

  What had Tim’s text said? This site was sealed like a grave. The police worked with an IT guy, but that guy didn’t know Paul, the esoteric bank he would draw on for a password.

  t-o-p-g-r-o-w

  It was a new system of raised beds for roofs, which Adoring Girl had been looking at on her tablet.

  INCORRECT PASSWORD. YOU HAVE NO TRIES LEFT. PLEASE RETURN LATER.

  Liz clenched her hand around the mouse and refreshed the screen. Paul’s three tabs blinked, and for a moment, it wasn’t PEW that drew her attention. She clicked on the page for Eastern Ag, letting her eyes drop from the fall course schedule to the scrolling line of this season’s football games.

  She skidded the mouse back over to the PEW page, and entered Paul’s username in a series of rapid clicks.

  In the password box she struck an entirely new series of keys.

  m-i-c-h-a-e-l-b-r-a-d-y

  The screen changed and she was in.

  At first glance, PEW was organized in much the same way her gardening boards were. Whenever Liz had a question or just wanted to chat online she went to a site called The Thumb. Most people hung out in The Shed, and there were a few less frequently visited rooms: Exotics, Keeping It Real, The Last Layer.

  She had no context to understand the titles of the PEW pages. Road Less Traveled had the most threads and posts, while ones like Playdate, Ingredients, and Pitchfork had fewer. There was a thread specifically for lurkers. Liz decided to start with Road Less Traveled, staring at a long, glowing chain of threads. Thousands of them. This site had to have been around since the Internet came into broad use.

  She chose the most recent, which had the heading HOW ARE WE? Liz scrolled, looking for Paul’s avatar and, when she didn’t find it, trying to get a sense for the cast of characters who were here. But it was like arriving at a party where everybody else already knew one another. Liz couldn’t make sense of statements that read: THIS ISN’T COMPARING BRANDS OF HUMMUS, PEOPLE. Or, SOME OF WHAT WE GIVE THEM AMOUNTS TO LIFE OR DEATH.

  Give who? Liz rubbed a hand across her eyes, reopening them to see a stream of avid remarks. You couldn’t start a chat with the most recent thread; you had to go back to the beginning. There Liz would find an appearance of the Professor, get to know the people Paul had been chatting with.

  She screwed her fists into her eyes, willing an explosion of clarity along with the white stars that sparked. Liz scrolled through the array of dates, backward in time, until she came to the first few posts in Road Less Traveled.

  PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF and HAVE I GOT A PROBLEM FOR YOU.

  Then she began to read.

  The computer kept track of how much time had passed; other than that, Liz had lost all sense. She was gritty-eyed with tedium, her fingers numb on the mouse and her mind bleary.

  Paul wasn’t in any of these threads. No avatar seemed to be his; Liz didn’t hear his voice. She had come to know a group of parents—moms mostly—concerned with how to cope on playdates when the other mom insisted on serving doughnuts or juice drink. Or at which point to email the school because the teacher incorporated screen time into her lesson plan. How to shield your child from the fact that the way of life he was living was destined to come to an end.

  For the most part, Paul hadn’t concerned himself with such minutiae of child-rearing, which was why Liz had been able to apply her own brand of moderation. But even if Liz were able to swallow the idea that Paul had decided to hang out in a chat room with a bunch of clucking moms, commanding power because he could back up his replies with science and research and theory, she couldn’t find any evidence of his presence here. She continued to scroll and click and read, but it was no use.

  Outside the wind was strong enough to bring down early leaves from the trees, send them scuttling across the ledge outside Paul’s window. Liz got up to lower the sash. The sound of the wind quieted, although she could still hear its rasp.

  And then she realized. She’d been wasting great gobs of time. She didn’t have to go back to the inception of PEW. Whatever Paul was doing, he hadn’t been planning it for decades. A few months—a year at most—should do.

  The mouse overshot in Liz’s haste to click on a more recent thread. She drew it back to the title, steadying her hand.

  A great gust of wind sounded outside.

  And then the fist-sized end of a branch crashed through the window, spraying a broken rain of glass out over Liz’s arm, the desk, and everything on it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sheer instinct sent Liz shooting back across the room in Paul’s chair. The chair hit a stack of books and tilted precariously, nearly tipping her over. She got it back onto its wheels, then stood up on trembling legs. She looked down, checking herself for damage. There was a dagger of glass lodged in her forearm.

  “Liz!”

  “Liz, are you all right?”

  A paired beat of footsteps up the stairs, and Jill and Lia burst into the study.

  “Oh God!” Lia cried when she saw the shattered window.

  Jill reacted with brute efficiency. She marched Liz down the hall and into the bathroom, taking out alcohol and other supplies. When Lia appeared in the doorway, Jill ordered her to find a dustpan, some cardboard, and duct tape for the window. “Wear your gloves,” she commanded, and Lia tugged on her thick canvas pair before disappearing.

  Jill looked down at Liz’s arm. “This is going to hurt a little, Lizzie,” she said, and drew the blade of glass up and out. She slapped a gauze pad to the wound, pressing hard and switching it out as soon as blood soaked through the cotton. After a while, the bleeding slowed down. Jill cleaned the cut, then dressed it with a large, square bandage.

  “Good job, Florence Nightingale,” Liz said through clenched teeth. “I think you missed your calling.”

  “You should’ve seen how Andy’s wound bled the first few days,” Jill replied mildly, seeking no sympathy. “I’ve developed some skills.”

  Mad skills, Tim had said earlier. Look where Liz’s had brought her.

  Where had hers brought her?

  She frowned, feeling the movement all the way down in her forearm, which was beginning to throb. There was something wrong with what had just happened—beyond the obvious—but pain was keeping her from identifying it.

  From down the hall came the whir of a vacuum. A few minutes later, the machine quieted and Lia came in holding a roll of silver tape and a leftover piece of cardboard.

  “I blocked the window.” She indicated her supplies. “It should hold for the night. But you’re going to need to get a glass guy out here. Might be hard to find someone good, given the age of the house.”

  Artfully replacing the window was the last thing on Liz’s mind. She trailed both women back to the study. The missing panes of the window were covered, and all the glass had been cleaned up.

  “N
ora Hamilton,” Jill said suddenly. “The woman with the adorable baby who comes to the weekend markets? She has a big black dog?”

  Liz nodded, though she wasn’t sure she remembered.

  “She does home renovation or restoration or something. I bet she’ll know a glazier.”

  Liz gave another vague nod.

  “I took a look outside as I taped things up,” Lia remarked.

  Liz and Jill both shifted in her direction.

  “That branch had to have sheared right off the tree in order to hit this window.”

  “Branches coming off trees in a windstorm,” Jill said in an imagine-that tone.

  Liz sent Jill a sharp glance. And then she realized what she’d been trying to put her finger on.

  A flush rose on Lia’s elfin face. “I’d better be going. Hope everything works out, Liz.”

  The girl’s footsteps tapped out a rhythm on the stairs, and Liz turned to Jill. “She’s right, you know. How did a branch make it that far?”

  “I don’t like her,” Jill said with a shrug. “Or maybe more accurate is that I don’t trust her. I haven’t ever since Paul made the suggestion that she intern for us.”

  “It sounds more like you didn’t trust Paul.”

  Jill looked down. “Maybe that, too.”

  “Why?” Liz’s gaze flicked to the computer screen, the pages and pages of chat. “Jill? Tell me. What did you see that I didn’t?”

  Jill lifted her eyes. “What have I always seen, Lizzie? Darkness? The flipped-over underbelly to things that would otherwise just slither away on their own?”

  “Paul’s not a snake.”

  Jill took a breath. “He’s a compelling guy, mesmerizing even, and I can totally understand why you fell for him.”

  Had the people in the chat room done the same thing? Fallen for Paul? And if so, where had that led them?

  “But I don’t think he’s a good man, if you know what I mean,” Jill went on. “As strong a pull as Paul has, I guess I’ve always wondered why you chose to give so much to him.”

  There was a thousand years of understanding in the statement, the ageless calendar of best friends. But all it did was cause molten anger to bubble in Liz.

  “Coming from the woman who never gave a guy more than a few days of her time,” she snapped. “Including the father of her child.”

  Jill let out a shocked laugh. “That was low, Liz. Underbelly-of-the-snake low.” She paused. “I’m sorry if I pushed. I guess I figured time might be a little short for tiptoeing.”

  Liz stared at her, unseeing.

  “We’re moms, Lizzie, and we’re gardeners. We put seeds into the ground and hope that they grow. But children make you work harder than that. For that matter, gardens do, too.”

  The distance to where Jill stood felt endless, impassable.

  “Our kids are in trouble. You don’t even know where yours are. And I’m just saying that if you want to find them, then you have to start turning to yourself for some of those answers Paul used to provide.” Jill took a breath. “You have to start digging.”

  THE MAN

  “You won’t have much time,” Kurt had cautioned his son as soon as they’d arrived at the house and located the woman. A light was shining from a room on the second floor. Kurt scaled the clapboard side of the building to find her sitting at a desk.

  He returned to the ground, feeling a surge of power so great, he could’ve jumped. But back on the grass, Tom stared at him with the bland gaze that Kurt was coming to loathe.

  “You will need to get in, grab them, then get back out,” Kurt told him.

  Still that look. It said, There’s nothing you can do that would surprise me.

  Oh no? Kurt wanted to respond. I’ll bet I could come up with something that would provide a little zing.

  Tom’s smaller size would be an advantage in making it through the window. Kurt explained the task, issuing instructions as they both climbed up to the flat stretch of roof that lay right below the pane of glass. He let Tom peek through so that he could see what he’d be going for. Kurt had volunteered the two of them for this task, claiming that he had the necessary skills, which was true. But what Kurt didn’t say was that this was less a job to him than an indulgence. He could’ve come at any other time, in the middle of the night, or—given a little advance scouting—when the house was empty.

  But that would’ve been far less gratifying.

  Kurt had never been a collector of objects: rocks or action figures or cars. Instead, he collected observations. He lurked and listened, watched and took in. Kurt absorbed people’s thoughts and behaviors in the same way that a cold-blooded creature soaked in sun.

  Tom didn’t seem to notice the woman sitting there, which strained Kurt’s sense of credulity. The woman was in everything Kurt saw, a double negative over the reason they were really here. There was a light in her eyes, a crazed heat, which Kurt had never experienced before. Those kinds of things—engorged emotion, frenzied closeness—weren’t for the likes of him or his. Kurt’s wife, Tom’s mother, was a reasonable sort, placid and unfazed by anything.

  Of course, Tom’s mother probably wasn’t feeling quite so reasonable these days. The thought lit a charge in Kurt, and he turned to gaze at the woman again. It might’ve been reflected glow from the computer screen, but her face seemed wreathed in a halo of light. She was utterly unaware of Kurt’s presence, focused and intent, which made things all the more exciting.

  “How long are we going to stay up here?” Tom asked, not exactly complaining, sounding mostly just bored.

  Kurt looked at him. The boy was sprawled a little too close to the edge. There was a smell of mildew, decay, coming from the piece of wood that Kurt gripped, and for a moment Kurt imagined giving one good swing and sending Tom flying down fifteen feet to the ground.

  A piece splintered off, penetrating the webbing of Kurt’s thumb. Kurt was able to make out the protruding wedge even in the low light. He drew it out, calmly placing his other hand over the blood that welled up.

  Then he spoke to Tom. “Until the room is empty and I can allow you access.”

  Tom rolled his eyes, sprawling back on his elbows.

  Again the piece of wood frayed in Kurt’s grasp.

  He wondered if the Shoemaker had taken his son along on killing sprees simply because he had no other choice. Finding a babysitter was risky when you planned to return with a body or two. Kurt felt rusty laughter build in his throat. He was with Tom all the time now. He too had to make him his companion in everything. But that didn’t mean he liked it.

  Kurt had asked his mother about the Shoemaker once. He had come back for the weekend, just before everything imploded at college, and his mother was preparing the same tasteless, sterile offering she had served every night while he had been growing up. One of her paperbacks had been splayed open on the counter, commanding her attention as a pot of vegetables boiled down on the stove and the meat cooked through.

  Something about the sight of the book emboldened Kurt. He was an adult now, away at college. His parents probably missed him and would welcome a little additional company. Even if they didn’t, Kurt was old enough that they could move onto a more level plane of relating. His parents might not have been great with children, but children were a foreign species of sorts. As adults they could be equals.

  “Do you need any help?”

  His mother looked at him distantly, stirring the slurry of vegetables.

  “With dinner?”

  The spoon stilled in his mother’s grasp. “No. I don’t need any help,” she said, as if the word tasted bad. The pot gave a thick, vegetative blurp and Kurt’s mother wielded her spoon, sloshing the mixture around until it had cooled.

  Kurt looked around the kitchen at the unset table, the roasting pan in the sink.

  “Don’t you have some studying to do?” his mother said.

  “It’s done,” Kurt said, then waited for the praise, at least an acknowledgment. He could hear it in his h
ead. Do you ever give yourself a break, son? You’re always so responsible.

  “Go let your father know dinner will be in fifteen minutes, then,” his mother said. She removed an oven mitt from her hand before reaching for her book.

  “Is that the one about the Shoemaker?”

  His mother lifted her head slowly.

  “The book,” he said, pointing. “I used to like reading them, too—”

  His mother looked down at the copy as if she’d never seen it before. “Go tell your father to come,” she repeated in the same tone of chilly disdain.

  She inserted the paperback beneath the stove burner, moving the vegetable pot aside. The cover caught with a gentle whuff, edges of pages curling in, and his mother kept it there until all the charred bits had disappeared in a scurrying fleet.

  Kurt smashed the glass with the branch, then lay down beneath the window frame. He listened for the beat of footsteps to recede before pointing his finger at Tom. The boy dove through the open space. It occurred to Kurt that Tom could get cut by the leftover fangs of glass. But there were leaves that would disinfect wounds. Kurt knew how to identify them now.

  Tom seemed fine as he crawled back out, clutching his bounty. Kurt took the stack of dusty academic journals from him and they traded nods. There was something new in the boy’s gaze, a pride that made Kurt blister.

  The floor inside again shook with footsteps. In silent agreement, Kurt and Tom stayed put, lying flat against the tarpaper until the room had emptied. Then they lowered themselves to the ground. The van was parked a half mile away. As they began to walk, Kurt felt an altogether alien sensation on his back.

  Tom’s hand.

  “Dad?” his son said softly in the dark.

  An alien sound, too.

  Kurt turned around slowly, precisely, on the spot of earth he inhabited.

  “That was—kinda cool. Not something you get to do, you know, every day.”

  Heat surged inside Kurt like a lava flow. It was hard to see anything, but he sensed that the boy was staring up at him. Kurt reached out, his hand cupped, tender, and then he slapped Tom across his milky cheek.