Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Helen pumped soap lavishly into her hands and began a surgical scrub at the sink. "I'm exactly the same as before I left," she said, scowling. And why the hell am I washing up in the kitchen?

  Frustrated that she couldn't have a second's privacy once she walked through her front door, Helen added, "I'm going to use some of this soap in your mouth, young lady, unless you get out of here while you can. Beat it."

  "Okay, you don't want to talk about it. That's cool with me," Becky said with a lofty air. On her way out she lifted a fold of her mother's dress in back and let it drop. "But you'd better get some Wisk on those grass stains before it's too lay-ate."

  Chapter 20

  On Monday the Stickneys withdrew their son from The Open Door. On Tuesday it was the Comfords. Neither couple offered a reason. Helen had never been faced with three successive withdrawals before—it was like being fired three days in a row—and so she forced herself to say to Mrs. Comford, "May I ask why?"

  Mrs. Comford's smile was brisk, her manner brief. "We've decided against an urban preschool. It's too ... urban. You will let me know about my registration fee?"

  "Of course," said Helen blankly, dropping back in her office chair as if she'd been slapped.

  Mrs. Comford was barely out the door when the phone rang.

  "Hi," Nat said. "It's me. I waited a day so that I wouldn't seem anxious; but now, of course, it's made me anxious. When can I see you again?"

  It was heaven to hear his voice; heaven to be desired instead of rejected. But Mrs. Comford had left an aftertaste like a sour pickle, and it must have showed in Helen's voice.

  "Something wrong?" Nat said quickly.

  Helen sighed and said, "Just another day in the preschool trade." She explained what had happened. "I have this godawful fear that a salmonella rumor's cropped up again. Someone always gets a stomach ache from eating too much ice cream at the Social; who knows how it's being interpreted. Now that I think about it, everyone heard Becky's friend Laurie going around moaning and groaning at the end."

  "She ate enough ice cream to sink the Lusitania," Nat said, laughing. "What did you expect?"

  "I know, but it doesn't take much to bring down a preschool."

  "Look, I'm a numbers man," he said. "Three withdrawals is not an anomaly."

  Helen wanted to believe him. "Thanks, Nat," she said, letting herself feel relieved. "You're good for the soul."

  His voice was amused and insinuating as he said, "Right now it's not the soul I'm thinking about. Lena ... let me see you tonight."

  She knew this had to come. She had bounced between thoughts of him and worries about the withdrawals for three days now. "Nat ... no. The owl walk is one thing, but Derby Wharf was a big, huge, giant mistake."

  "Oh, I agree. Absolutely. Pure misery, the whole time," he said with an edgy chuckle.

  "No, really. There are things about me that you don't know."

  "Let me find them out."

  "Beliefs I have that you don't share."

  "Convert me, then."

  She wanted to scream, You're on the rebound, nitwit! You're horny and hurt and I don't mean a tinker's damn to you! Leave me alone! Don't torture me with wanting me!

  Instead she said softly, "Nat, we can't go any farther with this. We can't. I have two teenagers. My daughter has made me her role model for sex and is watching every move I make; my son is just itching for me to get a life so he can grab a can of spray paint and run. In a couple of more years I'll be through this crisis of teenage timing—I hope—but for now ...."

  Her sigh was brimming with frustration. "For now, any dating I did would be strictly hit-and-run."

  There was a long silence. Finally, in a voice as low and tense as her own, he said, "I've taken a hit from you, Helen. Please don't run."

  Biting her lip, she looked up at the ceiling above her desk, as if a solution were scribbled there in chalk. It wasn't. She closed her eyes and let out a long, wistful sigh. "Can we just go slow, then? Can we just do the owl walk for now?"

  He didn't say yes; he didn't say no. She hung up, half-convinced that he was calling on his cell phone from the parking lot of the preschool. But he was in Atlanta, she knew, and wouldn't be home until the next day. And meanwhile, who was there to put poor Katie to bed?

  ****

  Peaches knew that Nat was planning to be home from Atlanta by three, which worked out well. Katie's play date with Amy was scheduled to end around then.

  When Nat walked into the music room in his loosened tie and rolled-up sleeves, he found Peaches deep in conversation with Amy Bonham's mother.

  Peaches could tell at a glance that he was disappointed to find visitors. His smile was polite and weary. Clearly he wanted a beer; Atlanta in summer was no picnic. Whatever energy he had was saved for his daughter. His gaze softened when he spied her at the far end of the room, playing dress-up with Amy.

  "Look at this, Daddy!" Katie cried, running up to him with her new stick-on earrings. She held her curly hair back from her ears. "Amy gave them to me. See?"

  Nat dropped his briefcase and squatted down to give her a hug. "Well, you look just gorgeous in them, buggles. Can I try them on?"

  Katie let out a shriek of laughter and clapped her hands over her ears as she goose-stepped back from him. "No-o! Daddies don't wear earrings!" She turned and fled to the other end of the room.

  "I guess you're right," he told her, smiling. "Well, after I change clothes, you have to dance with me, because you look so pretty. Okay?"

  She turned back to her father and said, "Okay, Daddy. But first I hafta put this ... this long thing on," she said, grabbing a thrift shop shawl that Linda had bought for the dress-up box. "An' a hat." She began rummaging through the box for suitable millinery.

  Constance Bonham had been burning Peaches's ears off with preschool gossip. Now she turned the heat on Nat.

  In a grimly discreet voice she said, "Nat, have you heard about this Satanism business? Is there possibly anything to it? I want to say no—it seems so unlikely—but nowadays nothing is unlikely. I mean, these cults are everywhere. Why not Salem? It's a natural fit."

  Nat had been about to slip away. Now he stood there, obviously dead tired, suit coat slung over his shoulder, briefcase in his hand, and said, "Connie, I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Mrs. Evett's daughter, for God's sake! She was arrested for spraying Satanistic graffiti on the statue of Roger Conant!"

  Even Peaches was surprised at the change in Nat. His stance turned rigid and a dark flush suffused his face. His brows came down hard over his steel blue eyes as he said sharply, "Who the hell said that? Becky was there to stop her brother from tagging the statue!"

  Constance gasped and said, "Her brother, too?"

  "No, no," Nat said impatiently. "I mean yeah, he sprayed paint on the statue. That's all. Regular graffiti stuff. There was nothing Satanistic about it."

  "What did he spray on it, then?" Constance asked him.

  Nat snorted and shook his head. "I don't know. Just ... stuff. Jesus. Helen was right. This town has witches on the brain," he said, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  Peaches had been watching his reaction with growing annoyance. Bad enough that he was intrigued by the Evett woman; but now he was defending her. This, after slipping away on Sunday night. She never expected him to move that fast. She bit her lip, pondering her next move.

  Nat misinterpreted the look on her face. "Peach?" he said, scowling. "You haven't heard anything?"

  "Not a word," she said, acting as if she were trying to seem calm. "I'm as distressed as you are."

  "I'm not distressed," he snapped. "I'm goddamned pissed." He turned on his heel. "It's dumb gossip, Constance," he said over his shoulder as he walked away. "Ignore it."

  Rebuffed, Constance turned to Peaches. "He doesn't want to know," she said flatly.

  Peaches lifted her finely shaped eyebrows in the barest suggestion of a shrug. "He's a man. Do they ever?"

  ****
<
br />   The weather forecast was terrific right through the weekend, which meant that Helen's one possible excuse for not seeing Nat—rain—would be denied her.

  Not that it mattered. In their last phone call he'd announced his intention of getting into her life one way or another. He planned to attend the monthly meetings, to volunteer his time (and considerable talents) at fund-raising, to help chaperone field trips when the occasion arose, to crotchet potholders for the Penny Fair if he had to. Whatever it took.

  It was a very grand vision. "Whom do you hope to impress?" she had wanted to know.

  "Her initials are Helen Evett."

  "You're doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons."

  "I'm doing all the right things for two great reasons: Katie and you."

  And on it went, until finally, worn out by his relentlessness, Helen had thrown up her hands and said, "If you do half the things you say you will, I'm going to end up paying you to have Katie come here."

  And now it was Saturday, and her heart was doing its thumpa-thumpa thing at a one-two clip, and she was obsessing over frizzy hair, baggy khakis, and the wrong shade of lipstick when the real issue, the only issue, should have been: Where on earth can this possibly go?

  Even assuming that his attraction for her was genuine and not a knee-jerk response to biological needs; even assuming that he had time, and she had time, to squeeze a relationship into their already harried lives; even assuming that they could figure out a place to even have the damn affair—what then?

  He'd love her and leave her and break her heart. Or he'd love her and want her and she'd have to come clean: By the way—Linda Byrne? Have I mentioned we've met? Very nice lady. Oh yes; we're still in touch. Did you have a message for her? No problem; I'll pass it on for you the next time she haunts me.

  If Nat backed away slowly and then broke into a run, could Helen blame him?

  And yet, there was reason to hope. The encounter or ordeal or whatever it was that Helen had experienced in her office on Sunday seemed to have a finality to it. Maybe Helen had simply passed through a phase, an ultrasympathetic reaction to poor Katie's loss of her mother. After all, Helen had been just four when her own mother died.

  What else could it be? Helen hadn't suffered a trauma to her head, she didn't have a brain tumor, and as far as she knew, her family had no history of schizophrenia. Mass hysteria? But where were the masses? She was all alone in her nuttiness.

  Okay—maybe not completely alone. Both Becky and Nat had sniffed Enchantra when they shouldn't have. But that was such a small thing, compared to the profound events that Helen had experienced.

  She was in a last-minute change into a denim skirt when the doorbell rang. Alone in the house for once, Helen had to answer the door herself. Russ was off at a birthday party, and Becky had graciously agreed to pick him up at ten (anything to help her mother find romance).

  For tonight, only little Katie stood in the way of their falling into one another's arms—and Helen was actually grateful for it. We have time on our side, she thought. The longer we wait, the better for us. Her feelings for Nat ran far too deep to squander them on some quick wild fling.

  She opened the door and fell in love all over again. He was holding his daughter; they came as a pair. It was unbelievably easy to love them both.

  Katie was dressed for the occasion in coveralls with an owl appliquéd on the bib. "We're going to see some owls," she said, cutting right to the chase. "Big, big ones!"

  "Well, that would be exciting, wouldn't it," Helen told her.

  It was a crazy idea, expecting a three-year-old to stay awake through a twilight nature walk. They'd be lucky to hear an owl, much less see one. But Helen hadn't been able to make Nat understand that. He'd given his word, he said. And the new Nat meant to keep it.

  "All set?" he asked Helen. His look was carnal and innocent at the same time, a tough combination for her to have to resist.

  Damn you, she thought. You aren't making this any easier for me.

  "You bet," she answered. "Do you have mosquito repellent for Katie?"

  He groped around in his aqua-blue diaper bag. "Check," he said. "And juice. And a change of pants. And a hat. A jacket. Extra shoes. We can take Everest if we want to."

  "Welcome to ParentWorld," she said with a wry smile. She locked the door behind her and they all piled into his Porsche which, Helen had to admit, was an extraordinary vehicle. Glove-soft leather, discreet electronics, the faint hint of a fine cigar—it was a machine that Batman would be proud to own.

  Helen said something to that effect and Nat astonished her by saying, "I'm thinking of maybe trading it in for a van. You can fit camping equipment in a van."

  She turned to him and studied his clean-cut, clean-shaven profile. He was too lean, too aristocratic to qualify as a Marlboro Man; and yet she could picture him easily with a five-clay-old stubble of beard, frying a freshly caught fish over a campfire while his daughter toasted a pre-dinner marshmallow on a stick.

  She could picture it only too well, and it made her heart ache.

  To sound supportive she said, "I have a sea kayak—it was Hank's—that I've been meaning to sell."

  "Maybe you won't have to," he answered, reaching over to stroke her cheek with the back of his fingers.

  Thumpa-thumpa.

  "Daddy, I wish I could see the owls right away," said Katie from the backseat.

  "Pretty soon," her daddy said.

  Helen turned around. The child was yawning heavily, fighting to keep her eyes open. Helen put her hand on Nat's arm, then hooked her thumb a couple of times toward the car seat.

  "All right," he admitted. "So she finds us boring. It doesn't mean anything. Katie? Tell Mrs. Evett what a nice long nap you took today."

  "Uh-huh."

  "And tell Mrs. Even how excited you were when we were getting dressed to go on our hike tonight."

  "Mm-hmm."

  "And tell Mrs. Evett what kind of owl we have in our yard. You remember—what did we see in your Big Book of Owls?"

  Gone. Katie's head was drooping forward and to one side; her mouth was a little ajar as she drew in long, deep breaths of sleep.

  Smiling, Helen said softly, "Maybe we should just turn around and go home?"

  "Not a chance; she'd never forgive me," Nat said. "She really has been fixated on this trip—I'm telling you. Anyway, Peaches said she slept almost twice as long as usual today. She'll perk up."

  "She's exhausted," Helen said, but there were worse things to do than drive around in a Porsche with a handsome man and a sleeping three-year-old, so Helen sat back and enjoyed the short ride north to the Ipswich River Sanctuary. Nat, who'd tracked the place down through the Audubon Society, said it was the best kept secret in Massachusetts: 2,800 acres of wilderness—eight miles of river and forest—hidden behind rural suburbia off Route 1.

  They talked of childhood pleasures and favorite vacations, staying away from the subjects of their marriages and their careers, and in a short while they were pulling into the parking area behind a modest, rustic outbuilding where the staff naturalist was in the process of briefing a small group of adults that had gathered for the hike.

  Nat, carrying his droopy-eyed daughter, nudged his way up to the front of the gathering.

  "We'll be taking our time, walking very slowly," said the naturalist, a big man with a beard and a laid-back slouch that made him look a little owlish himself. "Naturally we'll keep our voices to a minimum."

  He looked at Katie and translated for her benefit. "We must be very, very quiet.

  "We'll keep an eye out," he continued, "for a tree covered in whitewash. With any luck, we'll find owl pellets below it on the ground. Unlike eagles and vultures, the owl swallows its prey whole, so it has to get rid of the undigestible parts. It regurgitates a pellet with the bones in the center, tightly packed and surrounded by either soft fur or down feathers. That way, the owl doesn't gouge itself on the sharp bones as they come back up."

  He
led the group to a small glass case and said, "Here's an example of a pellet that's been carefully pulled apart for examination. You can see the intact skull—the best way to identify the prey—which in this case belongs to a field mouse. Other prey are birds, shrews, voles—whatever's on the menu that night."

  All of it was very interesting, but not to Katie. She sighed; she plucked at her father's jacket in boredom; she yawned repeatedly.

  Nat and Helen exchanged glances. He grimaced. Maybe they should bag the whole thing, his look said.

  The naturalist was telling the group that he'd be calling to the owls, who he was convinced heard the calls. "Some may call back," he said. "Definitely the screech owl will, and maybe the barred owl. if we're lucky, we'll hear the saw-whet owl. I doubt that we'll hear a great horned owl; they're later in the night."

  Perking up, Katie interrupted him. "We have a short-eared owl. In our yard."

  "Really!" he said, genuinely interested. "That's very uncommon. Where do you live?"

  Katie automatically looked at her father. "Right in the heart of Salem," Nat said proudly. You'd think he was the one who'd given birth to the bird.

  The naturalist said, "They prefer marshes and prairies. Is the owl hurt, do you think?"

  "No," said Katie confidently. "It goes like this: keeyow," she said, dipping her head in imitation of a sneeze.

  Smiling, the naturalist said, "Well, we won't be hearing a short-eared owl; they tend to move around in late afternoon."

  Katie's face registered massive disappointment. Her brows came down and she stuck out her lower lip.

  Her father recognized the signs. "Do you maybe want to go home, honey?" he murmured. "Are you tired?"

  "Yes," she said, fed up with the tour, the tour leader, and the grown-ups who'd duped her.

  Nat smiled an apology to the rest of the group and backtracked out of the room before Katie began what he clearly thought was going to be one of her fits. Helen, falling in behind him, was still listening to the group leader's remarks on her way out.

  "There's an old Indian legend," he was saying in his quietly interesting way, "that says when a person dies, the soul of that person enters an owl; and if that owl happens to look you in the eye, it means that the soul has made contact with you, and you become his friend."