Ruin Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  The boy’s face snapped back. He opened his mouth, yowl-shaped, but clamped it shut before any sound could emerge.

  Kurt swiveled smartly. He hadn’t expected to go back. Tom had fulfilled his part, and they could have left right then. They had what they needed without attempting what had essentially been a fallback, a far more risky Plan B.

  But something was alive in Kurt, and he couldn’t damp it. There was more here for him to mine.

  His mother had never fully recovered from her destruction of the book; scaly scars grew to cover the narrow column of her wrist until it looked reptile-like, less than human.

  “Conceal yourself,” Kurt commanded Tom. “Here. And stay put no matter how long it takes for me to return. Do you understand?”

  The boy’s head nodded up and down, Kurt’s handprint still flaring. He wore that look again. Utter boredom and disdain.

  “Yeah. I think I got it.”

  Kurt would move the van a little closer. Make sure he had his supplies.

  And then he would go inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was long past dinnertime, although Liz had no appetite. The cut on her arm was making her queasy, and so was the exchange with Jill. They had never been that kind of friends, getting into girl-fights in high school or the earlier grades. Jill might have initiated a quarrel or two, but if she had, Liz had only a distant memory of it, and she herself wouldn’t have fought back.

  Another thing Liz couldn’t remember was the last time she’d eaten. Meals seemed an artifact of a former life, when hungry voices would clamor, and she would delight in concocting rainbows from the garden and arranging them on plates.

  She fixed herself a sandwich, then sat down at the table. The dressing Jill had applied caught her attention. A plum-colored shadow of blood had seeped through.

  Someone knocked in the front hall, tapping on the screen part of the door.

  Hope lit inside Liz. Maybe Tim had learned something about that website, or the mother and her son. Or else Jill had come back to apologize, and suggest a course of action.

  Liz got up and went to the door. The man standing there wasn’t the police chief.

  He was tall and broad-chested, with a waving slick of hair, the color of coffee taken black, and worn in an old-fashioned pompadour. His blue jumpsuit had the word Crane’s embroidered above the pocket on the bib, and he carried a metal toolbox in one hand.

  Liz peered around him and saw a panel van parked a little ways down the road.

  “Hello,” he said to her. “I hear that you have a broken window?”

  Jill, Liz realized, with a prick of feeling. At war or not, her best friend had still managed to track down a referral for a glazier.

  Liz stepped aside, letting the man in. “It’s upstairs.”

  He took a few studied steps around her, giving her space. Liz noted the wide circle he made, as if aware of how she might feel, a woman alone at night with a strange man. Of course, he couldn’t know that no one else was home, but still, she appreciated his discretion.

  “It’s a good thing we’re having a slow night,” he said as he trailed her upstairs, leaving two steps between them. “That wind is supposed to start picking up again.”

  “Is it?” Liz said. “I don’t really know how this happened. I should go take a look at the branch.”

  The man set down his toolbox and began peeling off the pieces of duct tape Lia had applied. He whistled through his teeth upon exposing the damage. Night air entered through the missing panes. “Now, this is a fine mess.”

  “Bad?” said Liz.

  He was frowning as he planed his hand around the empty mullions. “Someone didn’t trouble to clear these shards out very well.”

  He spoke with a strange precision, and moved that way, too. When he drew his hand slowly back into the house, a bead of blood welled up on the palm.

  “Oh no, you’re cut!”

  The man gazed down at his hand with an expression of distaste.

  “I have first-aid stuff,” Liz said. She extended her own arm ruefully. “You’re not the only one this window attacked tonight.”

  The man took a step backward when she stretched out her arm. Frowning, he bent and unsnapped the clasps on his toolbox.

  Liz’s cheeks stained. She felt bad that the man had to come out at the last minute, then got hurt to boot. But she also felt embarrassed at how he had taken her reaction to his injury. This was a good-looking guy, probably used to attention from women, and now he thought she was some cougar whose husband left her alone for too long.

  “Can I make you some coffee?” she asked, still feeling heat on her face.

  The man straightened. Something caught his eye on Paul’s bookshelf and he picked up a framed photo. “Are these your children?”

  Liz had kept her back to that photo every time she’d been in this room, unable to bear looking at it—or worse, turning it facedown.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Coffee?”

  The man looked at her. “They’re quite a pair. How old are they?”

  Liz felt an odd prickle, the instinct any mother has when a grown man took perhaps too great an interest in her children. Good-looking, she’d just been thinking about him. Used to attention from women. Yet he sure had been keeping his distance from her since he’d arrived.

  “Eight and six,” she said. “Let me see to that coffee.”

  “Never drink it,” the man responded. He was still looking at the picture. “No coffee, no alcohol, no medication.”

  “Wow,” Liz said. “That’s—strict.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I run a tight ship.” He finally set the photo down on the bookshelf again. “Eight and six, you said?”

  “That’s right,” Liz replied. “Look, how long do you think it will take to replace the window? I’m going to be—I mean, my husband will be getting home soon, and—”

  The man had taken a small tool from his box and was loosening errant pieces of glass, whisking each one into a pile on the sill. “Will he?”

  “What?” Liz asked sharply.

  “Silly,” he grunted. He was straddling the desk in order to lean for the farthest square of open space. “I should have made sure I can match the glass before I started this. At least it will be in better shape now.”

  “Yes,” Liz said quickly. “It looks great. You know—you don’t even have to finish tonight. We could put the cardboard back. Or, it’s pretty warm out, we don’t even have to—”

  He was studying her without quite meeting her gaze; his own eyes fixed on a point a little lower than her face. He got off the desk deliberately, planting first one foot, then the other.

  “You’d like to just leave it alone, would you?”

  “Well, it would be okay. One thing I do feel strongly about is matching the age of the glass—” Two hours ago, it’d been the last thing she cared about.

  “Oh, I know you do,” the man said. “I know how you historic homeowners feel. Let me see what I have out in the van.”

  Liz followed him downstairs. As soon as he was gone, she had the impulse to lock the front door, then all the other entrances to the house. Thank him politely through a window—an intact one—and say she’d suddenly remembered something she needed to do.

  What could that possibly be?

  And he’d left his toolbox upstairs.

  The man reappeared with a stack of blue-tinted squares. Their edges looked sharp, dangerous. “Let’s see how these will do.”

  “I’ll just be …” Liz hesitated. “… seeing to things down here.”

  The man turned on the stairs. The glass caught bristles of light from the chandelier, striking Liz’s face so that she had to block her eyes.

  “You’d better come along,” he said. “You were the one who cared about getting just the right match.”

  Liz looked over her shoulder. The front door was still open. She could say she had something to do in the garden, but if she went out there, she’d be in the worst p
ossible spot, isolated and alone. And if instead she ran for her car, she would look ridiculous. Unless she was right—about what, she wasn’t sure—in which case this man could easily beat her to the porch.

  She imagined the pile of glass dropping in a tinkling shower. The sound of his shoes crunching it as he gave chase.

  She took a step forward and followed the man to the second floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “I apologize if I sounded strange before,” he said, heading over to the desk. He set the stack of glass down. “About your children.”

  “Oh,” Liz said. “No, not at all.”

  “You don’t have to be polite. I rattled you,” he said. “And I didn’t intend to.”

  “Well …” Liz hesitated, unsure how to proceed. “Maybe a little.”

  “I have a boy of my own,” the man said. “He’s eleven.”

  Liz waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. He turned and held one square up to the unbroken pane above, tsking his tongue.

  Liz glanced into the open toolkit. She didn’t see anything that looked capable of glazing a windowpane, although she supposed she wouldn’t have any idea.

  “Your children are happy,” the man said suddenly. He laid the piece of glass he was holding aside. “They get along well.”

  Liz felt her eyebrows drawing together.

  “You can tell from the picture.”

  “Oh,” Liz said again. Her throat clutched. “Yes. I hope so.”

  It was a shot of Reid and Ally on a tree. Reid was straddling a high branch, and Ally was looking up at him, head thrown back so that her hair looked almost translucent, shot through with sun.

  “My boy is happy,” the man mused. He wasn’t doing anything with the glass anymore. “Maybe you can’t see it in pictures. But I still think that I’m right.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Liz said softly. She had to get this man out of her house. How long did it take to replace a pane of shattered glass?

  The man walked over to her in the oddest way, a forced slowness to his step, as if he were moving through mud. He leaned down and his gaze hooked hers. His eyes were strange: lushly lashed, beautiful orbs of color, but with no depth to them. They were as lifeless as beads.

  “You couldn’t have prevented it. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

  It was ridiculous to keep pretending this was just an ordinary home-repair mission.

  “Prevented what?” Her voice reached a shrill note. “Do you know what’s happened?”

  He reached for her arm as if trying to pluck an electrified wire, fingers missing their mark before descending again. Liz recoiled, and for a moment the man seemed to regard her with understanding. He skated his thumb over the dressing Jill had applied. The cut was sore, and his touch probed it painfully. Liz tried to withdraw, but she’d have had to apply real strength to get free. Now that he had her in his grasp, the man didn’t seem inclined to let go.

  “Even if you were a person inclined to try and step in.”

  Liz went rigor mortis stiff in his hold. She felt as if she’d just discovered she wasn’t wearing any clothes. “What the hell are you saying?”

  “There’s no need to get upset. I was only trying to reassure you.” The man finally let go of her arm. “The wind kicked up. It was a force of nature.”

  She followed his gaze to the open panel of glass.

  He picked up his toolkit, then turned and left the room.

  Liz hurried after him, but he was down the stairs and out the front door before she could catch up.

  He hadn’t taken his glass.

  An engine rumbled outside. Liz lifted the curtain and peered at the van as it drove off, trying to make out the plate. It was impossible to see at this distance. Shivers skittered over her skin. She got out her phone and scrolled for Jill’s number. As furious as she still felt at her friend, she had to tell her this.

  “That was the creepiest thing,” she said. “Or maybe it was meaningful—I honestly can’t tell. I’d better call Tim.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Lurcquer,” Liz replied absently. “He’s been helping me.”

  “Well, well,” Jill said. “Tim Lurcquer. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  Liz ignored that. “I’m sorry about before. I still think you were out of line, but I shouldn’t have lashed out like that.” She felt the press of tears. “Some days I just hate everyone now. Most of all myself.”

  “Nobody could’ve seen this coming,” Jill responded. “Don’t blame yourself.”

  It was an eerie echo of the glazier’s words, and Liz spoke abruptly.

  “Jill? You didn’t—call anyone to come out and fix my window, did you?”

  She shuddered a little, recalling the way the man had trouble touching her, then wouldn’t let go. Beneath the bandage, her cut pulsed rhythmically.

  “Not yet,” Jill replied. “I’ll look for someone, I promise—”

  “That’s the problem,” Liz interrupted, a series of shivers rippling up and down her spine. “Somebody already came looking for me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Crane’s, his overalls had said. Liz booted up Paul’s machine again, Googling glaziers in Wedeskyull. She searched the whole Albany area, downstate as far as New York City. There wasn’t any glass business called Crane’s. Aside from a heating and cooling company in New Jersey, nothing by the name of Crane’s came up for any household services.

  The man hadn’t been here about the window. He’d even left his pile of glass. Liz bet if she looked at those panes, they wouldn’t be close to a fit for the one that had broken.

  Liz phoned Tim at the station, but he wasn’t on duty. Before she could try his cell, someone banged on the front door.

  Liz ran downstairs, questions for the glass guy already coagulating. He’d come back, he wasn’t a threatening presence at all, but here to help—

  When she drew open the door, something painful gripped her chest.

  “Mom,” she said. “Dad.”

  Her mother looked at her, before switching her gaze to Liz’s father.

  “So you are back from out west,” her father said, as if Liz had ventured to Wyoming with her family.

  Liz didn’t bother to ask how they had found out about her premature return. Jill had told them what happened when Liz was still in Junction Bridge, hadn’t she? But the news could’ve been transmitted in any of a dozen small-town ways.

  “Is it true?” her father asked. “Has Paul taken the children?”

  Jill. Small-town ways. Liz nodded.

  Her mother drew in an audible breath. “Oh, Elizabeth. Why would he do that?”

  Liz stared at her mother. “I don’t know, Mom. You make it sound like—there could be a good reason.”

  Again, her mother looked to her father.

  Until a few years ago when they’d downsized, the Burkes had lived in the same house in Wedeskyull for four decades. Their people came from an Adirondack village a little farther north. The Burkes went to church every Sunday, visited their doctor twice a year, and worked on the other days. Liz’s father considered himself a self-taught man, while Liz’s mother was always busy, either in the house or the community. For them it was Paul who was the throwback to another era, not a visionary but a hippie. He came from away, even though his home was in the same state, and that factor also worked against him.

  For a medley of these reasons, Liz and Paul had seen little of Liz’s parents once they’d married. Ally and Reid had only slightly more contact with this pair of grandparents than they had with the other. Liz’s mother contented herself with biweekly check-in calls, as regular as a metronome, and aside from the occasional summer barbeque, an hour or two stolen away from high season at Roots, or holiday suppers, the two families spent hardly any time together.

  In retrospect, Liz realized that she hadn’t been much closer to her parents even when they all shared the same house. Her father was the sun she an
d her mother orbited distantly around, never touching it or each other.

  Still, in an emergency, her parents would step in, especially her father.

  “All right,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  Liz went light as a little girl. There was a relief in having her parents here, especially her dad, and knowing exactly which role to fill. She stepped aside to let her father into the house, telling him about the strange glass guy’s visit as she did.

  “Well, I can’t see a connection there,” her father said. “Human beings tend to impose patterns. But you have enough on your plate right now without conspiracy theorizing.”

  Liz felt something in her subside as she began to follow her father up the stairs.

  “Have you looked through Paul’s closet?” he asked over his shoulder. “Itemized what was taken? That will give you some leads as to where they’ve gone.”

  Liz’s foot faltered on the step. “What do you mean, Dad? Is Paul’s winter coat missing? So I know whether they’re in a warm or cold climate?”

  If Jill were here, she’d tell my father that now we know which hemisphere to search.

  Her father came to a stop at the top of the stairs, and Liz paused on the riser beneath. She could sense her mother from behind.

  “We need lists of Paul’s known contacts, the people he was spending time with,” her father said. He began to open doors along the upstairs hallway, peering into Reid and Ally’s rooms, which Liz had been avoiding. Her father stepped inside, and a host of noises ensued.

  Liz was assailed by sudden clarity, as if she could see through walls. Her father was in there shuffling things around, looking at things, tugging open this, flicking shut that. Busy as a swarm, but Liz would never hear another word about this. Or rather, she might hear a lot. But that would be it. Talk that amounted to nothing.

  Her father emerged from Reid’s room.

  Liz looked at him, the face and form that had always seemed mountainous to her, hewn out of the same earth she submerged her hands in every day.

  “I already went to talk to some of his students,” she said.