Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "No, no, we misunderstood. The opening is for September, not June."

  "September." Byrne stood up again and turned to Helen. The joy, the relief, the unwitting charm—all gone. In their place was a look so cool it bordered on contempt. "Do you mean to say that we're standing here on April first to register for a class that's almost half a year away?"

  "I'm sorry," Helen said, wincing under his baleful look. "The staff is reduced in the summer and Summercamp slots are much more limited."

  "What the hell good is half a year away?" he said in an undertone through clenched teeth. "She needs the school now!"

  "I know that, but—"

  "June was bad enough!"

  "But you can have a nurturing home environment with relatives and friends—" Helen checked herself and stood up abruptly, determined to head off any more discussion in front of Katie. "Ms. Bartholemew, perhaps you'd like to take Katie—?"

  Byrne cut her off with a short, bitter laugh, as if the joke were on him. "Never mind," he said, turning on his heel and taking his daughter's hand. "Forget the whole thing."

  ****

  Someday he'll kill us all.

  Peaches gripped the door handle, her standard hint for Nathaniel Byrne to kindly remember his cargo was precious, and turned back to Katie, cocooned in her custom-made car seat.

  "Are you all right back there, honey?" she asked pointedly.

  The child, feeding off her father's frustration, was edgy and uncommunicative. "I don't know," she answered.

  Byrne was driving the way he always drove: expertly, and much too fast. His wife used to blame his habit on the long commute that he had to make between Salem and Boston every day. Linda had begged him to shorten the commute by moving closer. He'd compromised by moving faster.

  "She led me on, damnit."

  Nathaniel Byrne's thoughts were bubbling up like tar over the edge of a pot. "Who does she think she is?" he barked.

  Peaches doubted he wanted an answer, so she shrugged and said, "Who knows?"

  "I mean, if I misled someone like that, I'd be hauled in front of the SEC in two seconds flat."

  "I was as surprised as you were."

  "Why couldn't she just say she didn't have a space this summer? She could've told you when you called. Why waste my time?"

  Peaches sighed and said, "We'll never know."

  "She should've moved heaven and earth to get Katie in. She knew the situation."

  "Yes. She did."

  "God. What a coldhearted, unrelenting ...."

  His disgust was music to Peaches's ears. She hadn't liked seeing sparks fly between them. Sparks were all too capable of starting a fire.

  "Some women are like that," she said in a pensive voice. "They haven't become successful by being kind. The bottom line for them is always business. They'll do anything to get it."

  He downshifted and took a corner hard. "She didn't sound like the type. She certainly didn't look like the type."

  It was a tense ride home.

  * * *

  The cook, who drank, had been keeping supper warm for them. Father, daughter, and nanny sat down to a meal of overdone three-cheese lasagna.

  Byrne poked at the dried-out, curled edge of a noodle and scowled. "This isn't edible. I've got half a mind to fire her."

  Peaches thought the cook—sixty-two, hard of hearing, and uninvolved—suited the household perfectly, so she said, "Well, we did tell cook we'd be in and out."

  "We were in and out," he snapped. "Or didn't you notice?"

  He was acting far too upset over the failed attempt to get Katie settled somewhere. Peaches was beginning to fear that he might make some rash decision.

  "It's not the end of the world if Katie can't get into The Open Door," she said soothingly. "We'll just look for another preschool."

  "What's the point? Anything that's any good will be filled."

  "We don't know that. I'll get on the phone tomorrow and see."

  Katie, who'd refused to let anyone cut her food tonight, was busy separating the layered noodles with her fingers and rearranging them into a fort. Byrne watched her effort morosely, then said, "Finally. An honest effort to make something."

  "She's going to surprise you someday," said Peaches, smiling.

  He snorted. "And in the meantime?"

  He leaned forward on his elbows and cupped a fist in his open hand, lost in thought.

  "Uh-oh, Daddy," said Katie, wagging a messy finger at him. "You diddent finish."

  Smiling grimly, he said, "Oh, yeah? And what about you, tomato-face? How about eating some of that instead of playing with it?"

  Katie giggled at the notion that she was a vegetable and said, "I'm not a tomato face."

  Peaches took the damp cloth that she kept by her side and reached over to do some preliminary mopping up. "How would you like some cereal and bananas instead?" she asked the squiggly, resisting child.

  "Yes, with jimmies on it," Katie demanded, twisting her hands above her head in sleepy petulance.

  "Ha-ha. That's a funny joke," said Peaches as she got up and began heading for the kitchen.

  "Peach?" said Byrne quietly. "Switzerland: Would you go if I sent her off to her grandmother for a while?"

  It came out of the blue. Peaches had considered many scenarios, but not that one. Up until that afternoon Nathaniel Byrne had been determined to avoid reaching out to his mother-in-law at all cost. They did not get along—even at Linda's funeral there had been coolness—and that, so far, was that. Switzerland! She'd be baby-sitting half a world away while he ... who knows what he'd be up to?

  She turned to him, lasagna fort in hand, and said softly, "If you think it's necessary, of course I will. But let me have tomorrow first. Absolutely, we'll do whatever is best for her. But ... Switzerland?"

  Peaches didn't have to point out the obvious: That with his schedule, he wouldn't see Katie the entire time.

  "I know, I know," Byrne said, giving his restless daughter a brooding look. "I'd hate it, too. But I don't know what else to do, where else to find family."

  He'd ignored them all in the course of his career, and this was where it had got him: alone, with only hired help for comfort.

  "Leave it to me," Peaches said, resolutely upbeat. "I'm not going to let you down."

  He gave her a tight, bleak little smile. "Thanks. You're a doll."

  He was letting her see him at his most vulnerable, which was progress; he was a proud man, after all.

  But the downside was that he was so vulnerable. He's easy pickings right now, Peaches decided as she brought out a box of Cocoa Puffs from the pantry. All it would take was one good woman. Several of Linda Byrne's female friends had called during the past month, offering their sympathy—and worse, their help.

  She had to move fast.

  Chapter 7

  Helen Evett drove home in a state of dismay. Somehow she'd let them slip through her fingers. Nathaniel Byrne was right, of course. Without actually saying so, Helen had let them all think that Katie was being considered for the summer session. Who could blame him for being angry?

  She could argue that he had overreacted. But she remembered her own edginess after Hank's death far too well to blame Byrne. His wife had only been gone a month. He was still in shock.

  So that was that. Surprisingly, Helen felt no guilt over the confusion; all she felt was a terrible emptiness that Katie wouldn't be coming to her preschool.

  She hurried up the front steps of her shingle-and-clapboard Victorian, anxious to check her answering machine: Maybe Byrne had changed his mind about September. Inside, the house was pulsing to the sound of heavy-metal music. Dropping her trench coat over one of the hooks of the oak hall tree, Helen cupped her hands and yelled, "Russ! Turn it down!" to absolutely no avail. "Beck-eee! You home?"

  "In the kitchen, Mom, making tea," came her daughter's voice.

  "Russell! I'm begging you!" Helen shouted. She detoured into the kitchen and said, "Any calls?"

  "Don't know; j
ust got in," said Becky, lighting a burner under the teakettle. "I'm in kind of a hurry; French Club tonight."

  She was wearing her blackish-charcoalish turtleneck and a long black shirt. Helen had to admit that her daughter looked terrific in black. With her shining gold hair and the flush of youth on her cheeks, Becky was able to pull off the simple severity of the outfit very well—even with Doc Martens clodhoppers on her feet. She was turning out to be a beautiful, very together young woman. If only Hank...

  "Make sure you eat something before you go dashing off," Helen said on her way out to the answering machine in the sitting room. If a call had come, Russ couldn't possibly have heard it over the din in his room.

  No calls. It was disappointing. Helen was about to go upstairs and cut the electric cord to Russell's amplifier into tiny pieces when the phone rang. It was Alexander's mother, still upset over the Thomas-The-Tank-Engine episode in the lobby of the preschool.

  "I've decided that Alexander won't be coming back for the summer session," Mrs. Lagor said firmly. "In the first place, we'll be away the whole time."

  "Oh, but—" They weren't doing any such thing. Mr. Lagor was a contractor; summer was his peak season. But Helen could hardly point that out, so she said, "I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Lagor. But we'll be looking forward to seeing Alexander again in the fall."

  There was an utterly meaningful pause before Mrs. Lagor said, "I'm not sure about fall. I think Alexander should stay home until kindergarten."

  Which was the exact worst thing for the overprotected child. "I see," Helen said. Very carefully, she laid out her argument against the idea. "It's true, some children are better off at home until then," she said. "If they have siblings or neighborhood friends close in age to play with, then staying at home can be every bit as enriching as attending preschool; in fact, more so."

  But Alexander was an only child and Mrs. Lagor was very aloof. Helen hoped the disadvantages would be obvious to her.

  Apparently not. Before Helen could pursue her case further, Mrs. Lagor said vaguely, "Don't worry, I'll be sending you a letter," and hurried off the phone.

  Poor Alex. She's going to hold on to him until they pry him loose with a crowbar. And yet, Helen could hardly blame the woman. She herself had to fight an almost constant urge to keep her own kids under lock and key. It was a scary world out there.

  Helen was halfway up the stairs when it hit her. She now had room for Katie Byrne in the summer session. It seemed too good—and too eerie—to be true. After all the handwringing, after all the back-and-forthing between Nathaniel Byrne and her, all it had taken was one quick phone call and suddenly Katie was safe.

  Safe?

  Helen frowned as she pounded on Russ's door with loud and empty threats, then retraced her steps down the hail to her bedroom. Safe from what?

  She opened the door to her room and went in, intending to change into jeans and a shirt, but stopped dead in her tracks and sniffed.

  Perfume. The smell of Enchantra pervaded the room, distinct and overbearing, as if someone had spilled the bottle that stood on her old walnut bureau. The pearlized decanter was round and roly; Helen had knocked it over herself in the past. But the stopper had never fallen out, which is what had to have happened for the scent to be so strong.

  She picked up the bottle and checked it: The stopper was still in hard. Annoyed without really knowing why, she went back to Russ's bedroom, banged on the door, and opened it. Russ was now under his headset; she motioned him to take it off.

  "Were you in my room earlier?"

  His green eyes went blank. "Whuffor?"

  "Someone spilled my perfume."

  "Well, it wasn't me," he said, snorting. "Ask the ditz." That was a little more logical, but only just. Helen knew that her daughter would never use Enchantra. Becky preferred younger, lighter scents. For that matter, Helen never used it, either; it had been a gift from her aunt. She threw open a window, despite the chill, and then called her daughter upstairs.

  Becky walked in and made a face. "Whoa, Mom—go easy on that stuff."

  "You weren't in my Enchantra?" Even as the words left Helen's lips, a small dim bulb seemed to go on in the cluttered closet of her mind.

  Becky was plainly puzzled by the question. "Why are you asking me?" she said, picking up the bottle. "You're the one who reeks."

  "I'm not wearing Enchantra," Helen said bluntly.

  Becky pulled on the stopper, which made a little puh sound as it came out. "In tight. It couldn't have evaporated." She bent her face close to the embroidered linen that covered the bureau top. "I don't smell anything there."

  "Right," said Helen tersely. "It's in the air around us."

  Becky spied the open window. "Oh—well—if you're gonna leave the window wide open ...." She walked over to it, parted the lace curtains, and took a deep breath, testing the outside air. "Nothing," she said, baffled, and turned around to face her mother. "Definitely, it's in this room."

  So was the knocking. And the jiggle. And the cold rank smell of the sea.

  "I know that, Becky," Helen said in a pale echo of irony. She tried to shake away the unease that was ambushing her routinely nowadays. "What I don't know is why."

  They were standing in the most open area of the room, between the four-poster bed and the oak armoire that dominated one wall. It was where they'd stood two nights ago when Helen lost it in front of her daughter, and her daughter lost it in front of Helen. Surely Becky remembered.

  The girl went over to a far corner of the bedroom and sniffed. "Maybe I don't smell it after all," she said in an edgy, hopeful voice. "We need another opinion."

  She left the room and returned in a few seconds with her irritated brother in tow. "Do you smell anything?" she asked Russ.

  "Yeah. Girls." The boy shrugged out of her grip and escaped back to his room.

  Becky whispered, "Do you think we were broken into?" The blood had drained from her face, leaving her a wan version of her former self.

  "There's no evidence of it," Helen said as she turned on the brass swing-out lamp above her bed. She wanted light. Lots of it. The deepening twilight would soon be night.

  "Could someone have a key?"

  "Only Aunt Mary has a key."

  "She could've been here!" said Becky. "She could've been cleaning your room or looking for something or, I don't know, just wandering. She's getting really weird."

  "She's just the same as she's always been!" Helen said sharply.

  "Oh, Mom. She's not. She can't remember anything very well and she gets flustered all the time. Yesterday when I came home from school she was in the yard sitting on the bench with a trowel in her lap. She called me over and said, ‘What's this thing? I used to know.'"

  Helen made an impatient tisking sound and said, "Everyone forgets the name of something once in a while."

  "It wasn't just the name she forgot," said Becky. "She didn't know what the trowel was for—and she's been a gardener all her life! I wasn't going to tell you because I know how much she means to you," Becky confessed. "But that was before this bit."

  Helen was caught between two agonies. She could assume that the "bit" was the work of her beloved aunt or she could assume. . . something else entirely. Neither suspicion could possibly lead anywhere satisfying.

  She swore under her breath, then sighed and put her arm around her daughter as she led her out of the bedroom. "Look ... honey ... don't mention this to anyone for now, okay? Or about Aunt Mary. Just don't say anything to anyone about anything. Let me look into this. There has to be a simple explanation."

  Helen could see how relieved Becky was to be let off the hook of responsibility. She was still a kid, for all her apparent maturity. "I'm glad you're being so normal about it, Mom," she said, kissing her mother on the cheek.

  She took off and Helen was left to figure out what a sixteen-year-old considered "normal" in a mother. One thing was certain: She couldn't let Becky know she was upset, much less afraid, of the unexplained events aroun
d them. One more disaster like the night before last, and Becky would lose confidence in her mother altogether. A wall would go up, and there they'd be: just another mother and daughter who couldn't communicate. Helen had managed to stay standing—emotionally speaking—after her husband had been gunned down. Now was not the time to trip and fall.

  Throwing a second window open, Helen shivered and hurried out of the room. She closed the door behind her with the thought that whatever was inside would eventually go outside, and then she went downstairs to make dinner for Russ and her.

  She wanted to call Nathaniel Byrne at once with the good news about the opening at the preschool, but two things were stopping her: one, it was the dinner hour, and she suspected that they let the machine take their calls; and two, she wasn't all that sure that Katie's father would consider an open slot at The Open Door to be good news.

  ****

  At eight o'clock that evening the phone rang at the Byrne mansion. Peaches picked it up. It was the director of The Open Door, Helen Evett, which didn't surprise her at all. So she was right. There had been sparks.

  Her voice was deliberately cool as she said, "How can I help you, Mrs. Evett?" It was an idle question. The point of the call was all too obvious; Helen Evett was going to muscle Katie into her preschool.

  "I ... this is almost embarrassing after the misunderstanding we had this afternoon, but I have some very good news for Mr. Byrne. It seems we do have room for Katie in the summer program, after all."

  "Really."

  "Yes. I wonder if I might speak to Mr. Byrne about it."

  "I'm afraid it would be a waste of your time, Mrs. Evett. We've made other arrangements."

  "Oh." There was a confused pause. "So quickly?"

  "Yes," said Peaches. "But we do appreciate your efforts."

  The director's voice sounded bemused as she said, "It was nothing I did, really. We had a last-minute cancellation. It seemed almost fateful."

  My ass. "We appreciate your thinking of us. Thank you so much for calling."

  "Well, naturally I thought of Katie. She made quite an impression on me," Helen remarked. Clearly she was stalling. She sighed and said, "I wonder—could I have a moment of Mr. Byrne's time if he's free? Our leave-taking was so awkward," she explained.