As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

“You didn’t give me the most important thing of all,” Nicholas said.

  “I’m sorry,” Barbara said automatically. Always before, whenever Nicholas blamed her for something, she had tried to take responsibility. Swiftly, so he couldn’t be angry at her. But for some reason, it felt harder today to tuck his complaint away beneath a blanket of apology. “What was that? The most important thing?”

  Nicholas stared unblinkingly at her across the table. When he spoke, it was quietly, almost under his breath. “Cassie’s still with her sportsman husband, right? In that big place you told me about, up on the mountain?”

  That busybody Glenda Williams had made it her business to deliver updates on Cassandra. She’d even seen fit to place a slice of newspaper in Barbara’s mailbox once with a photograph of a gigantic house perched high on a hill, and an article about it to boot.

  Barbara gave Nicholas a nod as if the conversation were simply continuing, making some sort of sense, instead of flinging her around like a child on a carnival ride.

  And then she thought she understood. “I know how unfair that is, Nicky. You’re the one who deserves that house. And so much more. It all got taken from you.”

  Nicholas seemed to consider this, staring at her levelly so that for the first time since she’d been making these visits, Barbara became aware of exactly where she was, in a sealed container, locked away with a legion of men who had done terrible, violent things.

  “Maybe it wasn’t what I didn’t get,” her son said, scrubbing the short brush on his head.

  There was some gray in there, Barbara realized with a sharp intake of breath.

  “Maybe it was what I got,” he said.

  “You got everything!” Barbara exclaimed, a note of outraged pique in her voice that she couldn’t remember ever applying to her son. “Everything I had to give!”

  After a long time, Nicholas broke their stare. “I love you, Mama.”

  “Oh, Nicky.” Relief coursed through her, and she began to cry. In all the years she had loved and devoted herself to her son, she didn’t know if she’d ever heard him say those words before. “I love you, too—”

  “I thought you should know that,” he said.

  “Five minutes,” the guard intoned from his point of remove.

  “Nicky?” Barbara said. “Is anything the matter? You’re not—you’re not sick, are you?”

  “No, Mama. I told you, I’m doing real well in here.”

  “Oh,” Barbara said. “Well, that’s…good.”

  Nicholas offered an odd, sad smile. “Is it? You’re happy about that?”

  “Of course I am,” she said, giving the words thrust.

  “Good,” Nicholas said, still with that peculiar note in his voice. “Because I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

  “Nicky! I could never be disappointed in you.”

  It had occurred to her, during the dark days and years that had accumulated without Gordon, or Cassandra, and especially without her beloved boy: what if she had pulled back just a little, changed course the slightest bit? She might have; in the chill, dull light of retrospect, possible places stood out. But parenting Nicholas had been such a slalom ride for her. From the moment her sweet, beautiful son tumbled into her life, Barbara had been overcome. Nicholas pulled her along like a river, and Barbara had been helpless ever to stop.

  “No,” Nicholas said. “You couldn’t, could you?”

  He was agreeing that she’d succeeded in her mission of motherhood. The one thing Barbara had most hoped to provide her son with was overarching love and approval.

  So why did Nicholas’ response sound so much like damnation?

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Sandy acted on brute instinct, flying forward and throwing her body against the immense door. Her full weight against the wood was enough to ram it shut. She and Ben had both thought it wise not to install a lock on a teenager’s door, a decision whose pointlessness Sandy now understood. Hardware wasn’t the only way to keep a person out. It wasn’t even the mightiest.

  Still, Nick was at least temporarily barred outside.

  With McLean there, holding him in check?

  That had to have been their dog, although Sandy had never heard Mac growl like that in all the time he had been a part of their family. She could picture the standoff, though: McLean a length of fur-covered muscle, Nick more than half beast himself now, his teeth bared to meet McLean’s fangs, eyes crackled with reddish threads.

  “Mom,” Ivy whispered.

  Sandy twisted to look at her daughter. One of the windows was cracked open, a knife blade of frigid air entering through it.

  “I can get down from here,” Ivy said in a low voice. She gestured outside.

  “Ivy, no,” Sandy said. “There’s no way. We’re thirty feet off the ground.”

  Her gaze flicked to the door before she cast it back toward the slitted window.

  Her daughter peered beneath the raised glass. “It’s no worse than some of the climbs I’ve done with Dad,” she said. “I really think I can do it.”

  It was different from any climb Ivy had done with Ben, and Sandy knew it. But she also knew they had no other choice. Nick was going to kill Ivy as soon as he got the chance. Harlan was dead, and so Nick would destroy the one person who meant the most to Sandy.

  She shoved the window the rest of the way up, letting a breath of cold, frosty air into the room. Then she grabbed a hoodie from Ivy’s floor, zipping it around her daughter.

  “In or out?” she asked, her voice splintering on the final word. The game they’d always played, offered in the hopes of delivering Ivy a few extra shards of strength.

  But Ivy seemed to have strength enough on her own, standing straight and tall, level with Sandy so that they could look right into each other’s eyes. Sandy felt an electrocuting jolt of pride.

  “Out,” her daughter whispered.

  Ivy hoisted one leg over the sill, then brought the other up as well. She looked down, assessing the route with the same focus Sandy had seen Ben apply countless times.

  Ivy lowered herself, executing a precise flip of her body so that she dangled with her chest against the clapboards.

  The last thing Sandy saw was Ivy’s fingers letting go of the sill.

  —

  A gunshot split the silence in the hall. There was a high, shrieking yelp, then a skitter of claws and a thud.

  Sandy let out a scream before clapping her hand over her mouth. She tore her head back around to the window. Had Ivy heard that? Nothing would make her more likely to fall, lose all focus, than the thought of something happening to their dog.

  The bedroom door heaved open on its massive hinges.

  “Your dog’s dead,” Nick announced. “I splattered his brains all over the wall.”

  Sandy felt the familiar quake at her brother’s fury, his careless wrath, shiver through her. “He ran away,” she said. “I heard him.”

  Nick jeered at her. “You always were a sucker, Cass,” he said, gun held loosely by his thigh. “You could never admit she wasn’t ever going to change.”

  Sandy fought desperately to see into the hall, to check on Mac and also to buy time, give Ivy every possible minute to get away.

  “Mama, I mean,” Nick went on. “I may be high as a kite right now, but I’m still sharp enough to wonder why you loved her so much when she never gave a damn about you.”

  The words hit Sandy like an iron weight; she staggered.

  Nick aimed a sloppy grin at her. “Know what you did when you changed your name?”

  Sandy bore down. If it would prolong the moment when Nick noticed Ivy’s absence, she could stand any cruelty, even the truth flung right in her face.

  “You cut off the part I called you by.”

  Cassandra. Sandra. He was right.

  Nick jabbed the gun in her direction, and Sandy reeled back.

  But Nick only laughed. “Don’t worry. A bullet’s not going to be the way you die.” He leaned forward an
d grabbed Sandy’s arm, his fingers like drill bits boring into her skin. “I want you to know what it feels like to live after the princess is gone.”

  He took a look around, as if the question was just now occurring. “Where is she?”

  Sandy raised her face, eyes trembly with their need not to look, not to show him.

  Nick grabbed for Sandy’s wrist again and the spiral of scar tissue on it split. “I got a piece of you all those years ago,” he bit out. “I’ll always know you better than anybody else.”

  He made his way over to the window, and looked down. Then he turned back around with an expression of blank and terrible calm on his face. Sandy pushed in front of him, peering out herself. But she didn’t see anything. Ivy had gotten down already. She must have.

  “Just remember,” Sandy said. “You took out a piece of yourself in the process.”

  Nick’s fingers fumbled for the wound on his leg, landing some ways north.

  Sandy had moved so fast toward their father that momentum had carried the blade into Nick’s own flesh. That had been part of their mother’s testimony: why would Nick have injured himself if the whole thing hadn’t been a terrible accident?

  Reading her again, Nick said, “Bet you wish it had been me instead of Dad.”

  He sounded almost hurt.

  Nick nudged Sandy into the hall. There was no blood here, and no sign of Mac. Still, Sandy’s legs felt faulty, unequal to the task of bearing her along. She hadn’t seen anything amiss when she looked out the window, but something besides the effect of the drugs had to explain Nick’s unrushed breeze, why he wasn’t running outside to halt Ivy’s flight.

  “Didn’t you ever think about it, Cass?” Nick asked. He came to a stop in the hallway as if he’d forgotten what they were doing there.

  “Think about what?” Sandy said, desperate to stall, give Ivy time to get away.

  “If it’d been me who died,” Nick replied vaguely. “Or not even that. What if we’d just held—what would you call them—different positions? In the family, I mean. Like if you and me somehow traded places. You got what I did, and I got everything from you.”

  It was a funny way to put it because Sandy would’ve said that she didn’t get anything at all. But it struck her now that, in reality, she’d been the lucky one. All the love, and false belief, and expectation their mother lavished upon Nick had bowed and broken him. No one could stand up under such weight.

  She lifted her head and looked at her brother. This version of Nick seemed almost workable, someone she might even be able to reason with.

  Or beat outside.

  Sandy put on a burst of speed, taking the stairs at a run and ignoring the voids on either side. Nick trailed her, but Harlan’s body amidst its folds of quilt presented an obstacle at the bottom, too massive to skirt around.

  “You took him from me,” Nick said, pointing unsteadily. “And so you know what comes next? I get to take everything from you.”

  The front door blew open, creating a wind they felt all the way at the stairs.

  Nick and Sandy looked around, then at each other, Nick’s gaze vacant in comparison to Sandy’s needle-sharp alertness.

  The voice that called out was high and brittle as shale, uniquely recognizable to them both.

  “Nicky?” it said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The wooden part of the house would be the toughest. The boards were sleek and stained smooth, impossible to get a grip on or even a toehold. Ivy realized this as she hung beneath her window, feeling with her feet. The good news was that the boards also made up the shortest portion of her descent. They had been used on the upper area of the house, while a stone foundation made up most of the first floor. If Ivy could just slide for a bit, then stop herself, she’d have a ready-made climbing wall.

  But this, the smooth and silky segment of boards, was what her father called the dead zone. The place where a climber could enter an uncontrolled descent. Ivy felt her heart pattering in her chest. She was hardly aware of the temperature, so fast was the blood coursing inside her. But her reddened fingers gave the cold away. Ivy wouldn’t be able to rely on dexterity from her hands for very long.

  She had to get down, and fast. But speed was the enemy of a climb.

  Ivy glanced through her window one last time, clinging with all her might to the side of the house. She could see her mother still standing there. Then Nick appeared behind her and Ivy’s hold went instantly slick. She felt herself start to slip.

  Wedging her knees into a crevice between the boards, Ivy was able to slow herself enough to gain some control. Taking a deep breath, and channeling her father’s focus and his confidence, she sank into her descent. Climbers focused on three spots. One in front, one above, and one below. Anywhere else and you had the recipe for a mistake.

  The wooden boards were terribly smooth, but they delivered one advantage Ivy hadn’t expected. They were relatively soft, more so than rock anyway. She was aiming for a large hump of stone. It protruded enough that she would practically be able to stand upright on it so long as she didn’t miss. Still, Ivy quickly figured out that this plan would’ve been physically impossible—she was going too fast—except that as she slid, she was able to dig her fingertips a tiny bit into the side of the house, slowing her pace.

  Wind shrieked around her, commanding her to stop. The snow had ceased falling, but the wind stirred what lay on the ground into blinding cyclones. Ivy couldn’t let go with either hand, and the snow stung her face. She didn’t need to see, though; a descent like this was all about sense memory. Ivy had imprinted the location of that rock on her brain and she trusted her feet to know what to do when it appeared.

  One final claw at the boards—a splinter shooting deep beneath her nail and the ensuing scream lost beneath the wind—and she was there. The rock seemed to come up and catch her feet like a holster. Ivy flattened her body against the house, chest heaving, the solidity of stone a temporary platform while she rested. She exhaled a long, pent-up breath, suddenly aware of the cold slicing deep into her core. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose felt like iron.

  The worst part was over, though. Ivy broke one of her father’s rules, tilting to look all the way down at the snow-heaped ground. She identified the next likely rock. Once she gained that one, she would be able to hold on with her hands—frozen as they were—in addition to her feet. After that, this climb would be a piece of cake.

  —

  Her dad always said that half of the game was mental toughness, but as Ivy maneuvered, she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering. Where was Nick now? He could be waiting for her on the ground, and Ivy bit down on a jolt of panic. If she let fear overtake her, she wouldn’t reach the bottom, simple as the remainder of this route was. She distracted herself by considering where she would run as soon as she was on land again.

  The Macmillans were hardly ever home, although Ivy supposed she could break into their place. Probably such a thing would be excused under these circumstances; their camp was falling apart anyway. The Nelsons’ cabin was also an option, but Ivy didn’t know if she’d be able to make herself go in there again. Especially since the Randalls lived just a mile or so away, and might even be home. Ivy babysat for their toddler, and she often walked to their house. She was going to be so ecstatic to be free, fueled and heated by adrenaline, that Ivy figured she might get all the way to town. She could go anywhere so long as she was unshackled from Nick.

  Ivy found her next hold, then let go of the rough piece of rock she gripped. Thank God her father had insisted on a real rock foundation instead of the stone-facing he scoffed at on other people’s houses. This was easier than many sections of peak she’d hiked with her dad. Her foot felt for a spot as she continued inchworming her way down. Ivy could make out craggy surfaces on the rocks, peer into dimples that provided holds. The recently emerged moon illuminated her way, and she experienced a giddy sense of triumph. In just a few feet, she would be able to jump the rest of the way down. The
n she would run and run and run and maybe never stop.

  A gust of wind sent a spatter of snow at her face, and Ivy let go with one hand to wipe away the wet. She didn’t even need both hands. Her foot felt for its next perch; found it and lodged securely. Ivy took in a bracing breath of air, letting snow particles dance on her tongue.

  It seemed like she was hardly climbing. She had entered the zone her father always talked about, where the rock had become an extension of her body. The fact that she clung to the side of their house in order to escape a madman didn’t matter. She was the climb and the climb was her.

  Then her foot caught a jutting piece of rock.

  Her father had taken such pride in this house.

  “Look at them,” he’d told Ivy’s mother on the morning a dump truck spilled a pile of glowing gold- and purple- and smoke-colored rocks next to the hulking skeleton of their house-in-progress. “Every single one is different. Look at the irregularities in that stone.”

  It was one of those irregularities that had snagged Ivy’s foot. Her stiff and freezing fingers flailed, but they couldn’t curl tightly enough to catch hold. The stones in this section were glazed with ice, impossible to get any sort of grip on. Ivy’s body tilted at a pitch; she felt the initial rush, followed by the total unrestrained terror of freefall. She bounced, hitting the bigger rocks with enough force to make her cry out, before landing in a crumpled vee on the ground.

  —

  Ivy was on her feet again and running before the cold of the earth had penetrated. The snow must have blanketed her fall, cushioning her from the worst of the impact.

  But it hadn’t blanketed it completely. Shock or adrenaline or something triggered her to run; she made it perhaps a quarter of a mile before she started to slow. It took Ivy a few more loping steps to realize how badly she was injured.

  Something started to come apart in her ankle—some essential part she needed, although Ivy couldn’t have said what it was—as she continued to drag herself across the unlevel ground.

  Ivy dropped to her knees then, and crawled.