The Devil Crept In

by Ania Ahlborn

  “Well,” she eventually said, “I assume you don’t adopt out children, so . . .” Her words faded in volume. She swallowed, and forced a pained smile at the planks at her feet, feeling as though she’d revealed too much far too soon.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to escape the situation. Ras’s eyes were roving. She could feel him sizing her up, picking her apart, figuring her out. “I’m taking up your time. I should go.” She clenched Ansel’s keys in her right hand and made to turn away, but the old biker stopped her short.

  “Well, what would you do?” he asked.

  “Sorry?” Rosie gave Ras a sideways glance. She was feigning confusion, but she had an idea of what he meant.

  “To make your hopes and dreams come true,” he clarified—exactly what Rosie had thought he’d been getting at. “What would you give up to get what you want?”

  She watched him for a long while, thrown off balance by the directness of his inquiry. It was a question she’d contemplated so many times, vacillating between giving up everything and nothing at all. Back when there was still hope, it hadn’t felt as though sacrifice was necessary. Patience would remedy the situation, and in a way, it had. She’d waited for years and finally been given what she wanted, but it had been torn away. Hope, born dead in a bathtub. White porcelain left soiled with swaths of blood. And why? Had she angered God somehow? Had she done something so terrible in a past life that she was now the butt of some evenhanded joke?

  No, that couldn’t be. Rosie had grown up a good girl; she’d always been a pious woman. She had done her time in church pews and had prayed every night. At least, she had until her baby had been snatched away.

  “Anything.” The word passed over her lips, three syllables riding upon a shallow breath. Anything. Because without a child, Rosie wasn’t sure she mattered. She wanted to be bigger than herself, wanted to give meaning to someone’s life beyond her own.

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Ras offered.

  The invitation snapped Rosie out of her stupor. “Oh, no,” she said. “No, really, I don’t want to impose. I should be getting back.” She had a good six hundred miles to drive. It had taken her nearly two days to get to the Happy Hope Retreat. She was sure, however, that if she hurried, she could be back in Deer Valley by morning. She’d arrive in time to make Ansel his breakfast—an apology for vanishing off the face of the earth.

  “Well, sorry, Rosie, but you’re on my turf now,” Ras said. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours, anyhow, and it’s dangerous out there on the one-oh-one. You’ll stay here, get some sleep, and be on your way first thing.”

  Sleeping in the car—even if it was for a few hours—wasn’t the most appealing thought. Last night had left Rosie’s back aching. Just thinking about another evening behind the wheel made her spine creak with a throbbing pain. And she was tired. Getting down here had been one thing; she’d been fueled by grief and anger and bitterness. How dare Ansel threaten her with hospitalization? As though she were some . . . some lunatic. Of course she was upset. Her baby was gone.

  But those resentful, hateful thoughts had melted with every mile that rolled onto the odometer, and now, knowing that she had to explain why she’d left, would only make the journey that much more exhausting. A night at the Happy Hope sounded good, just what she needed to get her head on straight. Ras, though . . . While he seemed nice, he didn’t particularly strike her as on the level. What if some of his biker buddies showed up? What if she found herself in a situation she couldn’t handle? Strange people lurked on the upper West Coast. Like Ted Bundy. Or the Green River Killer. The police had yet to catch that one, and for all anyone knew, Ras may have been the culprit, keeping a low profile while living in Big Sur.

  “I don’t have any money,” she explained, sure her lack of funds would be enough to have Ras waving a dismissive hand her way. She’d left home in a hurry, only had the cash that had already been stuffed into her wallet—she needed that for gas if she was going to get back, and it may not even be enough to fill the tank. Credit cards had never been Rosie’s thing. She had a MasterCard in her name, but it was something she used only in emergencies. It was safely tucked away in the kitchen junk drawer. Useless to her now.

  “Then you can help with dinner,” Ras said. “We’ll call it even.”

  Rosie’s stomach flipped. He wasn’t going to let her leave.

  “Okay,” she eventually agreed, nervous, but unable to shake the irony of it. Here she was, fearing for her life when, having climbed into Ansel’s car days before, her only reason for driving to California had been to end up dead. “Okay,” she repeated, giving Ras a smile. Because, just standing there, she did feel a little better. Perhaps hope wasn’t out of season after all.

  13

  * * *

  THE HAPPY HOPE RETREAT left Rosie feeling rested and optimistic. Ras had offered her a warm bed and a home-cooked meal, and while it seemed impossible that such simple kindness could do much for her resolve, it had somehow been enough to invigorate her faith in the future.

  There was the nightmare, however; the way she had awoken in the dark, pinned to the mattress, hardly able to breathe, suffocated by her own misgivings. She hadn’t been able to move her arms, her wrists immobilized by invisible weights. Sleep paralysis brought on by stress and anxiety, no doubt. Too much guilt. It would all be better soon.

  Despite the nighttime incident, she awoke unusually refreshed, sure there was magic in that blazing white farmhouse; a revitalizing energy that had wormed its way into the very marrow of her bones. The idea of facing Ansel after what she’d done felt less daunting than it had yesterday. He’d still be upset, of course, and that fact alone had her searching the house for her now-absent host. Perhaps Ras could offer just a little bit more comfort before she hit the road, but she couldn’t find him. He was probably out riding his motorcycle, or tending to the land in his rusty red truck. Regardless, she was confident she’d be able to handle Ansel on her own, sure she’d instill in him the same sense of sunniness that Ras’s old place had ingrained in her. Onward and upward. For better or for worse. Happiness and hope. Everything would turn out fine.

  · · ·

  When Ansel got home from work that evening, the house was neat as a pin. Rosie—having arrived hours earlier—set to making dinner and cleaning the mess she’d left. She heard the front door open and close from across the house, but Ansel didn’t immediately appear in the kitchen’s threshold. It took him more than a minute to show himself in the doorway. When he finally did, he was pale, as if he were seeing a ghost.

  “Rosie?” He stared at her, as though trying to clear his vision. But he didn’t yell. And he didn’t begrudge her.

  Over dinner, she told him about her trip—one that had begun as a desperate escape and ended with a newfound sense of understanding. He held her hand and gazed at his plate, not once bringing up the hurt he surely felt. When Rosie’s story was done, he offered her a small smile. Nothing more, nothing less. Rosie looked away from him, still feeling terrible about the past few days. She thought about begging his forgiveness, but couldn’t bring herself to swallow that much pride. They went to bed without a word.

  And then there was the sadness. Neither had time enough to recover from the sudden loss of their unborn child, but Rosie vowed to limit her tears to the upstairs bathroom. If she needed to cry, she did it while soaking in the tub in which her baby had died. Whether or not Ansel wept for their child, Rosie didn’t know. And because she couldn’t soothe his pain any more than he could take away her own, they didn’t talk about it. It was too raw. Be happy, have hope, she told herself. It would all work out as long as she remained cheerful—at least when Ansel was looking her way.

  But Rosie’s idealism was only able to stanch reality for so long. When Ansel failed to come home from work on time, she assumed he’d gotten stuck with an emergency patient; a case of whooping cough or a broken bone. One hour turned into two, and she began to worry. A
nsel’s dinner dried out in the oven as she paced the house like a sentry on patrol. She tried calling the office, but the line was already being forwarded to his messaging service. She paged him, but he had yet to respond. That was definitely unusual, seeing as how that beeper was fastened to his hip as securely as if it had been a pacemaker buried deep inside his chest.

  At the three-hour mark, she was convinced this was his way of getting back at her for what she’d done. This time, it would be Ansel who would go missing for days without a word. Or maybe he was in town, drinking at the bar. With Rosie’s disappearance, her fiercely private husband could have bent to the will of his emotions and mentioned it to a friend; said something without realizing he’d done so. And if he had? It meant all of Deer Valley knew about how she’d abandoned him. It meant they were whispering. It’s a wonder she’s been able to keep a husband with a face like that. Poor dear can’t even make a baby. Not fit to be more than an old maid.

  Four hours overdue now. Rosie envisioned calling the police. But while she vacillated on whether or not to report her husband as a possible missing person, her decision was made easy by the carnival whir of blue and red lights outside. She spun away from the phone that sat beside the couch—olive green to match the drapes—and watched a police cruiser pull up to her white picket fence. Two uniformed officers exited the car and stalked up her walkway.

  Her first instinct was to hide, pretend she wasn’t home. Hearing the police thump on her door, Rosie couldn’t help but hope that, if she ignored them, bad news wouldn’t exist. Schrödinger’s cat was, after all, one of Ansel’s favorite theories. If patients don’t want to hear the truth, he’d once joked, they shouldn’t listen.

  And quantum theory wasn’t the only thing keeping Rosie from rushing toward the door. She didn’t want the officers to see her face twist up with ugly fear. She knew it was crazy to be self-conscious right then. Ansel was missing, and here she was, worried two strangers would find her impossible to look at. Had she really gotten this bad?

  She forced herself to move toward the entryway. Sasha the cat appeared beside Rosie’s feet, materializing from wherever he’d been napping to lend emotional support as she pulled open the door with a trembling hand. His pathos was, however, short-lived. He rubbed past his owner’s leg and made a casual exit. Bad news wasn’t in the cards for him this evening. He had better things to do.

  Rosie watched Sasha slink away into the darkness before looking up at the police. They were both staring at her with twin expressions of pensive austerity.

  “Missus Aleksander?” The officer’s name tag read BATTEN. “Rosamund Aleksander?”

  She only nodded, doubting she could speak even if she tried.

  “There’s been an accident.” She clung to the doorjamb, her fingers gripping it tight enough to make her palm ache. “Ma’am, your husband . . .” Officer Batten hesitated, but the policeman behind him quickly stepped in to pick up the slack. This one’s name tag read TRELAWNY.

  “You understand that you live along a logging road. With the trucks coming and going, it’s not meant for regular traffic . . .”

  Rosie swallowed. Yes, those trucks. They screamed down the road so many times per day that she’d learned to block out the noise. It’s how Ansel had gotten the land so cheap, buying it off a man selling his acreage to logging companies. He’d given Ansel a more than fair price for a small plot just big enough for a house. The owner had planned on building his own place in this very spot but had changed his mind, and at first Rosie couldn’t fathom why someone would decide against building their forever home in such a gorgeous spot. But that had been a Sunday, and on weekends, those trucks didn’t run.

  “Missus Aleksander, maybe it would be better if you came with us,” Trelawny suggested.

  “Oh my God.” Realization. “Is he hurt? Did he get an airlift?” If Ansel needed serious medical attention, they’d helicopter him in to Portland. And how was she supposed to get there without a car? Even if she did get there, how would she navigate a city so big? Who would feed Sasha while she was away? And what about Ansel’s patients, his practice? What about her garden? Her tomatoes were just starting to come in.

  “Missus Aleksander . . .” The officers were being patient. Ansel had more than likely treated them or their families in the past. Their fondness for Ansel was surely the only reason they weren’t shaking her by the shoulders—a childless, wretched waif with zero social graces, unable to follow a simple conversation.

  “I don’t have a car,” she explained. “What about the cat? He’s in Portland, right? I don’t know how to find him. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “No, ma’am . . . he’s not in Portland.” Batten this time. Rosie gave him a blink. “But, I’m sorry . . .”

  “I’ll need a ride,” she told them. If he wasn’t in Portland, he was more than likely in McMinnville, thirty miles away. Leaving the house was the last thing she wanted to do, but there was no choice. They’d have to take her to wherever Ansel was, drop her off at the correct hospital.

  “A ride, ma’am?”

  “To the city,” she said. “I just need to get my bag.”

  She left the officers on the porch, staring at each other.

  · · ·

  They gave her a ride, but it was a short one. Officer Batten opened the back door of the cruiser, motioning with the sweep of his hand for her to exit. There was no signage on the outside of the brick building, but that was remedied as soon as the trio stepped through an unmarked door and into a cold, harshly lit hall. The fluorescents gave off an alien buzz overhead. Signs with various bits of information were posted every few yards. Then, a sign with a single word printed in big block letters above an arrow pointing left: CORONER.

  It was only then that she understood. Only then that it started to come clear. And yet, she couldn’t shake a thought. An awful, inappropriate thought.

  At least I don’t have to go into the city.

  As far as she was concerned, she’d never leave Deer Valley again.

  They reached a door. A room. The officers ushered her inside. There was a metal gurney, a sheet, a body beneath. A man in medical scrubs pulled the sheet away, exposing Ansel’s face. Not a scratch on him. But she could tell the coroner’s assistant was careful with just how far he folded it down, keeping most of Ansel hidden beneath linen that looked starch-stiff and paper-thin.

  Rosie stared at her husband for what felt like forever. She considered reaching out to him, but couldn’t bring herself to raise her fingers to his already graying skin. Somehow, despite the panic that had seized her at home, now she felt nothing but emptiness, as though her beating heart had been cut from her chest and replaced by a void that would never be filled.

  She tried to cry, to scream, to collapse onto the floor and wail before blacking out with grief. That’s what a good wife would have done. She searched for something appropriate to say, something sorrowful and soul-sick that would haunt Officers Batten and Trelawny and the man in medical scrubs for the rest of their lives. But all that came out of her was “Yes, that’s him.” Cold. Unfeeling. As though Rosie had seen Ansel die a million times.

  Officer Batten drove her home, and while standing on the porch, he asked if there was anything she needed. Rosie didn’t understand the question. She needed her husband. Was he able to raise him from the dead? She turned away and, despite the officer’s kindness, closed the door in his face.

  Alone in the living room, she stared into the quiet space that still smelled faintly of Ansel’s cologne, her gaze pausing on all things remanent of him. His books. His medical magazines stacked on the side table next to the phone. His collection of CDs and DVDs, alphabetically filed on the bookshelf next to the TV. Old vinyl records he had inherited from his dad.

  She took a few steps into the living room, paused, eventually continued on toward the couch. Taking a seat in her usual spot, she stared at the dark screen of the television. And then she quietly wept, wondering how in the world she�
�d ever live without him.

  14

  * * *

  THERE WAS A FUNERAL.

  Rosie wore a plain black dress—long-sleeved and ankle-length—with her hair pulled back in a braided chignon. She could have stepped straight out of colonial New England, which is what it felt like; Hester Prynne’s inheritrix, a scarlet W, for widow, pinned to her breast. Standing stiff in the town’s tiny cemetery, she kept her hands clasped and head bowed, sure that those who had come to bid their physician adieu were casting sideways stares, wondering why Ansel Aleksander had ever married a woman like her. There was, after all, no telling what part Rosamund had played in the good doctor’s untimely demise. Because after a man like Ansel died, there was money involved. There was the practice, which now landed on Rosie’s shoulders. The gossip would spread. She killed him. It’s certain. Except that, when Ansel and Rosie had said their vows, neither of them had a dime to their names.

  Rosie wasn’t sure what those blathering prattlers expected her to do with the practice. Keep it? She was no doctor. What use was it to not let it go? It was clear, however, that they disapproved of her signing over the deed. Their eyes roved over her like horseflies. Incessant. Biting. Buzzing in a different direction as soon as she looked up.

  She had no intention of buying a car, especially after the accident. She’d only ever driven a handful of times. The trip to Big Sur had been a record—one that she was perfectly happy to let stand for the remainder of her life. But regardless of whether she drove or walked, there were responsibilities attached to her newly widowed existence. There was grocery shopping to do. She still had the garden, of course, but without things like meat and cheese, she’d waste away to nothing. Ansel had been the one to swing by the market after work when they needed extra supplies. Now she’d have to do it herself, no matter how anxious it made her feel.