Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  And then they landed with a sickening thud. Somewhere in her consciousness Helen heard a major bone break and felt searing pain rip through her leg. She blacked out from the agony of it, then made herself come back.

  Katie. The child lay motionless on top of her, a rag doll again. Helen's single thought was a wild denial. Don't let her be dead. No.

  Hardly daring to move, she whispered, "Katie?" Her answer was a whimpering sound, a puppy left too long in the cold.

  Helen fought the urge to black out again and turned her head with an effort to look above them. There was Peaches, staring down at the two with utterly cool curiosity, assessing the damage. A hint of a smile crossed her perfectly formed lips.

  A car door slammed outside. It was like the hushed call of a director: action.

  Katie, revived, burst into tears. Peaches turned and fled from the balustrade. Helen tried to sit up but fell back in pain. The toddler, realizing she was on safe ground again, scrambled to her feet but tripped and fell back down on Helen's broken thigh, sending her, finally and against her will, into the sweet release of prolonged unconsciousness.

  Chapter 29

  When Helen came to, she half expected to see Katie playing pony-boy on her shattered thigh: the pain was unbelievable.

  But Katie was gone. In her place, two paramedics—the burly one looked kinder—were in the process of rearranging Helen's leg fragments in a splint. In a near-swoon, Helen rolled her head from side to side, looking for other, more beloved faces.

  Becky was standing a little to the left, pressing Katie close to her shoulder, stroking her cheek, soothing her whimpers. Next to her stood Russell; even through her tear-blurred vision, Helen could see that his nose was red from crying. To Helen's right, Nat was on his knees, doing for her what Becky was doing for Katie.

  All safe, all alive. Helen's smile, so barely there, was profoundly joyous. "I feel ... like Dorothy ... in the Wizard of Oz," she whispered.

  "Oh, Mom ... oh, Mom," Becky said, tears running freely down her cheeks. "I saw it. I saw what happened."

  "You coulda died," said Russell in a voice as pallid as his face. "You almost could've."

  "She'd never do that," Becky said in distress to her brother. "How can you say that?" She turned back to Helen. "I got free out of the closet ... I saw you ... I you lean so far over ," she said, covering her hand over Katie's ear and pressing her close. It was just horri—"

  "Hey, kids, c'mon," Nat said, cutting her short. "Let these guys do their job. You're not making it any easier."

  He turned back to Helen and said in a low, shaken voice, "Everyone's fine. You kinda took it on the chin, darlin'," he said, trying to manage a smile. "But it's over now, Helen. It's over."

  "Peaches?"

  "It's over."

  After that he hustled the children into the music room and cleared the way for the paramedics to get Helen onto a collapsible stretcher and into the ambulance.

  "As soon as Janet gets here," he told Helen last thing, "she'll take the kids back to your house and I'll follow you to the hospital. I wish I could come with you now, but—"

  "No," Helen said faintly. "Stay. Until Janet." In a groggy, pain-drenched voice she whispered, "How did she die?" Because she knew.

  "Later ... it can wait," he said, more somber than ever. She motioned to the paramedics for a moment's more time. "Please, Nat," she begged. It seemed to her that she had to know. That she had to put Peaches Bartholemew behind her before she could begin the rest of her life.

  Nat seemed ultimately to understand that. He said in a flat-calm voice, "She was climbing down the ivy that's trained up the back of the house. Her carryall was slung diagonally across her chest. It got caught in the growth when she lost her footing on the way down. The handle caught around her neck, breaking it."

  Helen closed her eyes; tears surprised her by spilling out. "Who found her?" she whispered, dreading the answer.

  "Thank God, the police. They didn't see her at first. They saw the jewelry, splattered on the ground below her. It fell out of the bag as she—"

  "Hanged there. Oh, God."

  "It's over, Helen. Go. I'll be there for you as soon—ah, there's Janet now. I'll be there for you, Helen. Period."

  Six days later, Helen was out of the hospital. Her doctors called her spunky and Nat called her nuts; her insurance company was thrilled. Her aunt thought it was scandalous, but Helen didn't care. She had minds to soothe and hearts to fill, at home and at school.

  Her shattered femur had been expertly rodded; she'd been able to avoid the dread cast-brace. All that remained was to master the use of crutches. It wasn't easy. She hadn't given her son nearly enough credit for his earlier nimbleness on them.

  Russ teased her often about her awkwardness; it gave him great joy. (Without asking her, he'd also painted her crutches bright yellow, because he was afraid that someone might not see them and knock them out of his mother's grip.)

  Helen stayed at home for a full, luxurious week, surrounded by flowers and fruit baskets and the good wishes of the parents who'd stayed loyal through it all. It seemed to her that after months of stop-and-start agony, her life was moving into a smoother stretch, like a river that hits sudden rapids and, just as unexpectedly, flattens and becomes serene again.

  The first good news had come early. While Aunt Mary was visiting in the hospital, a sharp-eyed surgeon had taken one look at her and, after a few questions, suggested that she be tested for hypothyroidism. Aunt Mary's puffy eyes, her facial fuzz, her distressing bouts of forgetfulness—all were symptoms, he ventured, of the eminently treatable disease. There was dancing (well, hobbling) in the hospital halls that night.

  There was more good news. Nat had decided to leave his job and work at home. He couldn't give it a hundred percent anymore, he said, and it didn't seem right to give it any less.

  As for the brick mansion with its bloodstained door, it would be sold.

  "Too many traumas; too many brutal memories for Katie and for me," he'd told Helen in the hospital. "I can't go into the garden, my old bedroom, my new bedroom. Katie—well, I wouldn't think of taking her up the stairs again."

  "It's been in your family so long," Helen had said, though she agreed completely.

  Nat had merely shrugged. "It's time to move on."

  Go where money is, his great-great-grandfather had commanded. The words were like a curse that had hung over the majestic, sorrowful house on Chestnut Street. They had sent Nat away from his home in search of a fortune and had drawn Peaches into its midst on the same wretched quest.

  And like any curse, it had left in its wake death and destruction and burned-out dreams.

  So Katie had stayed at Helen's house for a couple of days; but by the time Helen was out of the hospital, she and Nat had moved into a small, charming Victorian rented out by an elderly gardener who'd decided to move to Vancouver to be nearer her daughter.

  "I'm really getting the hang of this parent thing," Nat had told Helen one afternoon on his way to pick up Katie from The Open Door. "And the house is working out great. It's just the place to crank up a new career. They say everyone has at least one book inside him. Mine happens to be a common-sense guide to investing—not the Great American Novel—but what the hell. Maybe the novel will follow."

  Another blessing: The Open Door was still open. Not many parents and preschoolers went through it anymore, but it was still open. The appalling death of Peaches Bartholemew had sent another round of parents withdrawing, of course; violence to them was violence, and Helen couldn't blame them.

  "At least the halls aren't buzzing with all those false rumors anymore," Janet had told her boss on the phone.

  "Why bother," Helen had answered wryly, "when the real facts are so much more sensational?"

  A version of those facts had made it into the Sunday paper; but much of the story was too painful to tell. Helen had declined to give interviews, so the world would never know the whole, sordid truth: that Peaches had somehow poisoned
Linda Byrne with ergotamine, either in pharmaceutical or natural form.

  It seemed likely that the nanny had doctored some of the old Tylenol capsules that they'd found in the medicine cabinet. Her fingerprints had been found on the bottle, along with Linda's. But the fingerprints weren't proof, and in any case the question was moot, because Linda was dead and so was Peaches.

  The real question was, how could an innocent like Linda have allowed a demon like Peaches to touch her soul? Not an hour had passed in which Helen hadn't pondered it. Like most dark mysteries, it was fated to drag through time unsolved.

  But now it was Monday morning, and Helen, with Becky's help, had dressed in her favorite sundress, the pale yellow one dotted with blue cornflowers, and was waiting for the arrival of Nat to take her to school for the first time since Russ had run away.

  Becky wasn't very happy about it. "The doctors wanted you to stay home for a month, Mom," she insisted as she cleaned away the breakfast dishes. "The best you could whittle them down to was three weeks. Why are you going back in two?"

  "Because I want to thank the parents who've hung in there," Helen said, draining the last of her coffee. "This has been a long and bumpy ride for them."

  "Them? What about us?"

  Helen gave her daughter a melancholy smile and said, "We knew we were innocent. They didn't."

  Becky was having a harder time than Helen with the parents' faintheartedness—but then, Becky wasn't a parent. "The school was almost empty last Thursday when I picked up that stuff for you," she said indignantly. "I didn't see any great show of faith."

  Helen shrugged and said, "When you're older, you'll—"

  The mellow toot of Nat's new van alerted them to start Helen on her way. Fending off her daughter's offers of help, Helen slung her handbag across her chest, took up her crutches, and began her awkward step-thump to the front door.

  By the time she reached it, Nat was on the other side, with his bright-morning grin that perfectly matched hers. They spoke the same language, those grins: I'm so happy that you're alive.

  Helen waved to Katie, sitting in the backseat, and Katie waved back with both hands.

  "She's been wild with excitement that you're coming," Nat said as he hovered over Helen while she poked her way slowly down the steps. "She brought you her favorite barrette to wear. Look thrilled."

  Helen flashed Nat a look of pure love. "I am thrilled." With his help, she got herself into the van, then made a big fuss over Katie's gift and promptly clipped it to her hair.

  "It looks pretty," Katie said, clutching her hands together and cocking her head appraisingly. "Pink is pretty. I like pink best. Don't you like pink best?"

  That was the opening theme in a happy monologue that lasted most of the way to school. There was one brief pause, during which Helen said to Nat, "I've been trying to prepare myself for today, but—"

  "But baloney. The school's still standing. I say, that's a miracle in itself." He reached over and took her hand. "Give it time, Helen. You'll build your business back up."

  "I've been thinking of maybe changing the location ... maybe even the name," she conceded, blushing to admit it.

  "Don't you dare."

  She didn't have the heart to tell him she'd been thinking of selling out altogether. In any case, they never got a chance to get another word in edgewise.

  By the time Nat pulled up in front of the little brick bank, Helen was ready to stick her crutch on the gas pedal and send the van off again. A crowd had gathered, and it didn't look kind.

  Curiosity seekers. She averted her gaze from them. Nat helped her out of the van. "All set, darlin'?" he murmured. She nodded and the three of them—Helen on her crutches, Nat holding his daughter by the hand—began their march to the front door of The Open Door.

  Helen scanned their faces, all of them looking either sheepish or frankly curious. They were faces she knew. She hadn't seen some of them since the first wave of panic after the picnic. There were the Baers ... Mrs. Stickney ... Lynn Comford. Apparently everyone had come to stare. An air of awkward embarrassment seemed to hang over the gathering. No one, obviously, knew what to say.

  In the meantime, a group of mothers and their children were rushing to the front from the parking area, unwilling to miss a thing. The scene had the look of the Academy Awards—but the feel of Gallows Hill.

  Flushing with emotion, Helen smiled bravely and kept her eyes fixed on the wide stone step that lay at the threshold of the big glass door. She had no desire to trip and fall—if the pain didn't kill her, the humiliation certainly would. She began working her crutches through the crowd and onto the stone step.

  Then, from behind her she heard a single loud clap. Followed by another. And another. The clapping became steadier, louder, evolving into a slow, sad drumroll of applause. Helen glanced at some of the faces. More than one had tears rolling down.

  She was stunned: clever Gwen Alaran—in tears. Little Sarah, gashed at the picnic, there with her mom and dad. Candy Green, bearing flowers ... Henry holding their daughter Astra ....

  All applauding: not in jubilation; not with any hip-hip-hoorays; not with grins, or backslapping, or fists in the air. What Helen saw, all around her, was a community expression of regret and apology. Completely unprepared for it, she felt goose bumps lifting the hairs on her arms. She had to bite her lower lip and fight back tears. On the wide step she turned on her crutches and said in a trembling voice, "Thank you, everyone."

  Inside, more tears, many smiles, more applause. Preschoolers from other years—now young boys and girls—were there, and their mothers and fathers. Nannies—loving, tender nannies whom Helen respected and liked—were there. Russell was there! Becky! She knew! And Aunt Mary, blowing her nose.

  And Janet—steadfast, loyal Janet—was there, standing by her office, tears flowing freely. She threw her fleshy arms out wide, then remembered to restrain her enthusiasm and caught Helen, balanced on crutches, gently by her shoulders.

  "Welcome back, Helen Evett," she said with quivering lips, and kissed Helen on her cheek. She pointed to a banner overhead: WELCOME BACK.

  Helen managed to whisper, "Janet, was this all your idea?"

  Janet smiled and nodded toward the tall, grave man riding shotgun alongside Helen's crutches. Helen whipped her head around. "Nat!"

  His eyes were dancing with pleasure but his expression was bland as he said, "Hey ... my kid's gonna be late for school."

  Helen continued her step-thump down the hall toward her own office. Teachers, mothers, fathers ... and everywhere, the children she loved; had always loved; would always love. At the door Helen turned again to say thank you, but it was hard. The words were tangled around her heart, and her heart was caught in her throat.

  From behind his mother's skirt appeared little Alexander Lagor, clutching his Thomas the Tank Engine in one hand, thrusting a clump of white lilies at Helen with the other.

  "These are for you, Mrs. Evett. B'cause you got hurt."

  "I gave Mrs. Evett a barrette," Katie chimed in. "A pink one!"

  "Yes, you did, Katie. Thank you, Alexander," Helen said softly to the shy little boy. "They're very beautiful."

  Alexander shuffled backward toward his mother and didn't stop until he was hidden safely behind her skirt again.

  Janet announced cheerfully, "Everyone? For those who don't have to go on to work—and for those who do—there are milk and cookies, coffee and doughnuts in the assembly room."

  The little brick bank had room for them all.

  Epilogue

  Helen's moan of passion turned into one of dismay.

  "Oh, no! Here they come. Hurry, Nat!"

  "Lena," Nat groaned in a voice more hoarse than amused. "You think I can turn it on and off like a water spigot?"

  Helen wound her fingers through his thick hair and gazed up at him. The blue eyes under his glistening brow were a little unfocused.

  She knew the look. "Yeah," she said in a sexy, lazy taunt. "I do."

  S
he pulled him down to meet her kiss, bringing him to exactly the level of passion that was required to make the spigot flow freely, then pushed him away with a giggle. "Hurry! Clothing!"

  Nat jumped out of bed and into his brand-new Bermuda shorts while Helen grabbed a handful of tissues, slapped them between her thighs, and made a dash for the bathroom.

  "For a lady with a rod through her femur, you move pretty fast," Nat said in admiration. "And you don't look bad doin' it, either."

  She laughed at the pun and slammed the door in his face. Just in time, too. The predictable knock at their door came within seconds, and Becky ushered Katie into the room.

  "Daddy, Daddy!" cried Katie. "I saw a starfish, but it was dead and Becky said it would stink if we took it back to Salem."

  "Hi, Mom!" Becky called through the bathroom door. Helen opened it. "Hi-hi," she said, knotting a batik pareo around the bathing suit she'd slipped on. "Where's Russ?"

  "In the game room with the kid from two-sixteen."

  "An' I saw a crab—it walked like this, backward," Katie said, sticking out her behind and shimmying in reverse. "And then I saw ... um ... this black thing with ... like a porcupine has?" She turned to Becky for help.

  "Sea urchin, sweetie," said Becky.

  "Aunt Mary called," said Helen. "She says hi."

  "I bet she's sorry she didn't come."

  "With the backgammon tournament this week at the center? Are you kidding?"

  "An' those things could stick you if you stepped on 'em!" Katie said, tugging at Helen's pareo. "I didn't go by them, though. Becky carried me so I could see them in the water."

  "How was the beach?" Nat asked Becky. "Empty? Crowded?"

  "Great! I met some kids my age. They want to meet me down at the pool," Becky said. "if you want me, that's where I'll be. Just shout."

  She flounced out of the room, then turned back at the door that separated the suite. "Y'know—I never knew a honeymoon could be such fun."

  Her mother and stepfather exchanged a look. "Yeah. Neither did we," Helen said dryly.