What girl? Had Melissa called? The way this stupid house muffled sound, Ivy hadn’t had a clue. Just like Cory standing on the porch right now wouldn’t hear them even if they screamed.
“I did,” Ivy’s mom said dully. “It isn’t her.”
“I don’t believe you.” Nick lowered the gun to her mom’s chest, and Ivy cried out.
“She’s telling the truth!” she shouted. “It’s my friend out there! He planned to come over earlier—before you even got here! Oh please, he doesn’t have any idea!”
—
In the moment following Ivy’s announcement, everything went completely still. When the doorbell rang again, it sounded an oddly cheerful chime in the silent house.
Nick squinted up the stairs. “Harlan,” he said, “let her come down.”
Ivy had been trying every which way to lose Harlan’s shackling presence; but once she did, she hesitated. She shucked off her hoodie—stupidest, vainest act ever, but she didn’t want Cory to see her in that ugly old thing—and tossed it on the floor. Starting downstairs, she didn’t have the first idea of what she was going to do when she got there.
Nick met her midway, gripping her mother, who looked at Ivy with sightless eyes. Ivy nearly reached out and grabbed her. Partly to check whether her mom was okay, partly to hold on to her herself. But their position—the three of them on the stairs—was too precarious to make any sudden moves.
Nick broke into her thoughts. “That’s your friend out there?”
Ivy nodded.
“You need to send him away.”
Ivy nodded again.
“Your mother did a pretty good job with her friend,” Nick went on.
What friend? Ivy looked at her mother. What was wrong with her anyway?
“I’m hoping you’ll be as good,” Nick continued. “Because if you try to tell your pal anything stupid, I will shoot him. Even if I have to fire through you to do it.”
That snapped her mother out of it. She twisted in Nick’s grasp so suddenly that she nearly hurled herself free. Nick pulled her up short by her hair and she let out a yowl of pain. Ivy wouldn’t have imagined her mother capable of making such a sound, so wounded and young.
“Mom?” Ivy said in a small voice. “What’s the matter with you?”
Her mother stilled in Nick’s grasp and his grip on her hair loosened. She hung there, motionless.
“Calm down,” Nick said, smiling. “I didn’t say I was going to shoot her. Or her boy toy either. Just that I would if I have to. So long as the pretty princess behaves, nobody gets hurt.” He paused, finally letting go of her mom, but keeping the gun trained on them both. “Can you do that, princess?”
Ivy nodded a third time, and brushed past Nick on the stairs.
—
The doorbell rang again, and Ivy jumped. From behind, she felt a metallic, unfeeling caress. The gun, against the small of her back.
“Princess,” Nick said, and Ivy let out a little whimper. “I changed my mind. If you screw this up, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to kill your mother.”
Ivy couldn’t bear to turn in her mom’s direction, see her looking slumped and dumb, as if she hadn’t even understood what Nick said.
From upstairs, Harlan called down encouragingly. “Just make him go away,” he said. “And Nick won’t do anything.”
Ivy turned the doorknob.
Cory stood on the porch, legs planted wide, his gloved hands shoved into the pockets of his parka. Snow fell in a sheet behind him. It was still coming down hard.
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry it took me a while to get here.”
Ivy stared at him. She wasn’t sure her voice would work. Her jaw felt like it had rusted shut.
Cory spoke into the silence. “You were right. My folks were worried about the storm.”
Ivy could feel the weight of all three people behind her. Not just Harlan’s immense contribution, but also her mother, so hushed and weirdly stuporous, plus Nick and his gun.
“So you wanna go out?” Cory asked. “People will be by the Rock. I got snowshoes in my car.” He inclined his head. Snow flew like darts through the air. “Nice weather for a trek.”
A smile wobbled on Ivy’s lips. On any other day, she would’ve had to inwardly marvel at the cliché. Her first chance with a boy, and he was just like her father.
Her dad. How could she have forgotten about her dad?
“Hey, are you all right?” Cory asked.
There was a warning cough behind her, a rumble that threatened to turn into a growl.
Cory cocked his head, trying to get a look inside the house.
Ivy spoke hurriedly. “I can’t go out tonight. I’m sorry.”
“Is it the weather?” Cory asked. “ ’Cause I’d be glad to talk to your folks. That’s them inside, right? Probably I should introduce myself.”
Ivy looked at him.
“I mean…if we’re gonna hang out or whatever.” A hopeful smile appeared on his mouth.
Ivy’s cheeks bloomed. Even anticipating the thrust of the gun against her—or worse, one explosive burst from it—she couldn’t stop staring at Cory’s mouth.
“Don’t worry, I chained up. The beast is great on a night like this.” He offered a grin, sticking his thumb in the direction of his Explorer.
How Ivy longed to be in it. The power of that engine, considerately left thrumming so that the interior would stay warm, could take her away from here so fast. Take all of them away. Ivy nearly made a run for it right then. Only movie images of bullets and spatters of blood flying, fleshy crimson against all the snow, stopped her.
“It’s not that,” Ivy said. “It’s—my dad is sick.”
Or hurt. Just not that word she couldn’t think.
“Oh,” Cory said, clearly confused. “Like, and you have to take care of him?”
What a dumb lie. Ivy wrapped her arms around herself, her body wracked by shivers.
Cory took a step forward. “Is he going to be all right, your dad? Hey, you want my coat?” He pulled the zipper down with awkward, puffy fingers, and began to shrug out of his parka.
“No—” Ivy started.
“He’s not going to be okay?” Cory’s face folded with concern.
“No, not that—” Ivy tried to push at the coat Cory was offering.
From behind her came a grunt, and then a barely audible tick.
The safety on the gun.
Cory first, then her mother.
Ivy’s knees jolted. “Cory, look!” she said, almost crying. She would’ve cried if she hadn’t thought it might alert Cory. “I don’t want your coat, I don’t want anything from you! My dad isn’t even really sick.” She let out a laugh that burned her throat, as if she’d just thrown up.
Cory began to frown.
“What I really want is for you to go. Okay?” Ivy took a step into the cold, away from the front door, as if a few feet could deter a bullet. “I just want you to leave. I mean, I don’t want us to go out. At all. Okay?”
Cory’s coat was still thrust out. It fell to the ground as he stumbled backward across the slippery stone. “Sure, okay,” he said, righting himself. “I just—I guess I misunderstood. Take care, Ivy. Hope your dad is—” He seemed to remember the lie and his face fired red despite the temperature. He turned and took the wide steps at a skid.
Leaving without his coat.
Ivy couldn’t let him come back up here.
The lidless eye of the gun continued to probe from behind. Ivy pictured it tracking Cory across the snow like one of those red laser beams in a heist movie.
“Cory—” she called out, her voice hitching, breaking apart on the word.
Cory turned back, an expectant lift to his eyebrows, and Ivy hurled the parka. Cory bent and snatched it up. He threw himself into his car, grinding the gears and fishtailing as he swung the vehicle around.
Then he was gone.
Nick stepped out onto the porch. He squinted into the snow with an expression of
fierce hatred. “Goddamn storm,” he said.
As if it was personally setting out to upset him. As if he hadn’t just witnessed Ivy’s display of cruelty and betrayal, far worse than any weather could be. Ivy was no better than one of the mean girls at school.
She stared down at the ground, blinking through a silver sheen. Her legs, her whole body, were entirely glued with white. Snowflakes ran down her face like tears.
“Get back inside now,” Nick said after a while. “Good job.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sandy stepped forward and took Ivy into her arms. The two of them like refugees, shock-stung, wordless.
Ivy stood like a post in Sandy’s loose grasp, her head hanging, hands at her sides. There wasn’t any tension in her body. It had all drained out onto the stone, become one with the snow when she’d sent that boy away.
Sandy hadn’t even known her daughter had a boyfriend.
She hadn’t known anything, least of all herself.
Nick didn’t have to speak. She could feel him beside her, and she understood what he wanted her to do. How she hated understanding what he wanted her to do.
“Ivy,” Sandy whispered. Forgive me. “You have to go back upstairs now.”
Nick smiled.
Her daughter raised her head, but she didn’t look at Sandy. Her gaze was directed at a slant. Possibly it wasn’t directed at all.
The cost of this night. Sandy was trained to recognize the signs, and she saw them all in Ivy. Shock. Dissociation. Trauma.
And, of course, even worse was coming.
“Are you—okay?” Sandy asked. It wasn’t a therapist’s question, neutral, unleading, aware that there was no such thing as okay. It was a mother’s, who needed there to be. “Up there, I mean?”
She got no response.
“With Harlan,” Sandy added.
Ivy’s cloudy eyes cleared momentarily. “Yes. He’s fine.”
Sandy felt something give in her chest. “Oh, thank—”
Harlan’s hand closed around Ivy’s upper arm, and he began steering her upstairs, the two of them moving like one shambling beast.
“Ivy!” Sandy shouted.
Ivy paused, but didn’t turn on the stairs.
“I’m sorry.” Sandy lowered her head. Her tears made splotches on the floorboards. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Ivy said woodenly. “It’s not your fault.”
Oh yes, it is, Sandy thought. She hadn’t been talking about the boy.
—
With Ivy and Harlan out of sight, Sandy’s mind was directed two floors away. Now that she knew Ivy was all right—physically at least—Ben was everywhere inside Sandy, in each thought, on the tip of her tongue, and even in her hands.
“Tell me your husband’s name,” Nick said.
Sandy flinched. He was able to read her as if she’d painted signs.
Nick straddled one corner of a high occasional table. It had been forged from the round base of a tree, silken, undulating wood.
He continued to eye her. “If you want to go see him, that is.”
At that, Sandy lifted her head, though she didn’t allow hope to spark. She knew who she was dealing with now.
“Come on,” Nick said exasperatedly. “I thought we were going to stop this game of pretend. I saw your face back there in the kitchen just before the kid drove up.” He paused. “Can’t believe I didn’t realize what was going on until then. What the hell happened? Did you just—forget?”
Not forget. That wasn’t the right word. You couldn’t forget more than twenty years of your life unless you were amnesiac. But there were other defenses a fully functioning person could mount. And not even realize they were doing so until something—or someone—jolted them off the high tip of the spire on which they had built a fragile, careful life. Dissociation, compartmentalization, splitting. Sandy knew all the terms. Why had her patients never told her how unhelpful those words were, how much they missed of the real life, flesh-and-blood process?
What had really happened was that she’d amputated a part of herself. And after that part was gone, she never spoke about it, gave it no reference or mention. Ultimately she hadn’t even thought about it, until it receded into a state where it felt more dreamlike than real.
The problem with dreams, though, was that you eventually woke up.
Nick’s leer assailed her, knitting past and present into a single lurid tapestry.
“You’ll really take me to my husband?” Sandy whispered.
“Maybe,” Nick said lazily. “Maybe not.”
A howl built like a twister inside Sandy. She imagined inhuman strength: throwing Nick off the table—their beloved find of a table, like a piece of the forest itself—and bringing the whole slab down upon his head.
Nick laughed. “Come on, Cass. One thing you’ve got to remember is that I don’t exactly stick to my word.”
Her energy unleashed itself in one drawn-out yell. “I told you not to call me that!”
Nick fiddled calmly with the cuff of his borrowed shirt, unmoved by her force. “Do you have a different name now?”
Sandy felt the two halves of her life collide with the power of a plane touching down. One moment she was airborne, in a state of roaring suspension, and the next she was on the ground, everything silent and calm around her.
“Sandy,” she said at last. “I changed my name legally to Sandra. In college.”
Nick set his ashy eyes upon her. “That works.” He eased down off the table and walked in the direction of the kitchen archway. When he got there, he turned and looked back.
Sandy frowned, but she was already walking forward, tripping as she started to hurry.
At the entrance to the basement, Nick stopped her with the flat of one hand.
“I don’t think we’ll find your husband in any shape to do much,” he said. “But just in case we do—remember, I’ve still got the gun. And no reason not to use it.” Nick moved his palm to her shoulder and she cringed. “You should know that best of all. Sandy.”
She raised her eyes to Nick’s lightless ones. Not for one second did she doubt him.
Her brother had always been the most dangerous person Sandy knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The basement was big and dark and empty, a featureless, cavernous space, and it seemed at first that her husband—superhuman as always—must have not only survived the fall, but escaped. Gone for help. Someone might be on the way even now, as Sandy descended the steps.
Then her eyes began to adjust, and in the distance she saw the ladder of two-by-fours that Nick had pounded up over the exit door. The windows were slits a ways off the floor, too small for a man to crawl through.
Sandy entered the grayed-out space as if she were wading into the sea. Toward one side was a bricking of storage bins, high as a wall: items that had never gotten unpacked after their move, and other artifacts of family life. Her wrapping station, readied for the holidays, waited like a pageant just before the curtain rose.
Nick took a step beside her into the void.
As Sandy inched away from him, a narrow band of light captured her eyes, and she blinked. The light was coming from beneath the wine cellar door. A mound lay in front of the door, curved in on itself like a larva. Flashes of silver tape sparked, and Sandy started to run.
She skidded onto her knees like a ballplayer sliding into base. More sparks, and the grating of cement through her jeans. Sandy barely felt it. She crabbed forward, warning herself not to touch Ben’s still form.
“Honey?” she whispered, from a few feet away.
Time passed without a reply or a single hint of motion. Too much time.
Sandy felt Nick standing over her, the weight of his satisfaction. She wanted to rise, grab her brother, and wrest away the gun, not caring whose body the bullet struck when it went off. It wouldn’t matter if she got shot. Nick’s preeminence had been established since before she was born. He had gotten everything, and if h
e’d stolen Ben from her, the one thing that had allowed Sandy to enter another life, then she didn’t want to live.
But that life had given her Ivy. Sandy had to survive this. For Ivy.
From the concrete floor came a sound, a signal.
“San—?” The single syllable emerged on a breathy wisp.
She looked down, and as the dim light gave way to a coherent form, Sandy saw Ben’s eyes blink. She was beside him without being aware that she’d moved, extending one halting hand. Nick trailed her unhurriedly. Perhaps it hurt him to walk on his injured foot. Oh, how she hoped it hurt for him to walk.
“Ive?” Ben brought out, and Sandy bobbed her head.
Even in the low light, she could see relief flood his face. It was her turn then, and she mouthed, McLean?
Ben turned his head a fraction to the side, and Sandy raised her eyes to the wine cellar door. No noise came from the small room. But the light was turned on, which in an emergency just might have allowed McLean to endure a barrier of wood between him and his master.
Ben gave a single nod, corroborating her conclusion.
Joy frothed inside her, and Sandy burst out, “Oh, honey. Oh, thank God. You’re okay. You’re alive.”
A rusty rumble registered late as an attempt at laughter.
“I’m—some,” Ben said. “Some.”
“Some,” Sandy repeated. She didn’t understand, and she didn’t care. Ben was speaking more freely now, and that speech seemed to indicate a hold on life.
Ben couldn’t move a hand or finger; both wrists were bound together. But somehow he communicated—a slight lift of one shoulder maybe—that she should wait.
“Nah—not good,” Ben said. “But some…”
Sandy felt connections fire. “You’re something. I get it. I get it. Oh my God, Ben, I’m so—” She broke off.
What had she been about to say? She was going to apologize and then Ben would want to know why, how was this her fault, and she couldn’t tell him that now, when he’d just been given back to her. Sandy had kept half a lifetime from Ben, not consciously, but because her past could never be threaded with this present. She had walked away from that existence, and in doing so had lopped off a part of herself. It had been the right thing to do, a necessary surgery. Only now did the excision strike her as an appalling breach of trust. How had she not realized this before? She’d kept herself from thinking about that time so thoroughly that she had been able to deceive her own husband. Her shoulders bowed and she hid her face in her hands.
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