The mudroom was dark and cramped. “Linda?” she called. There was a thump and a rumble, like a subterranean beast waking up hungry, and Meg jumped in her skin until she realized it was just the furnace kicking in. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, impatient with her imagination. She wiped her boots off on the bristly mat and opened the door to the kitchen.
She saw what was on the floor there.
For a moment, none of it made sense; then the reality of what she was seeing slammed into her and her lungs and throat filled with a scream that would have torn her voice clean out of her-
– and she heard a creak. Beyond the kitchen.
Meg tumbled backward out of the mudroom door and ran, slipping, rolling, slopping through the snow, catching herself on her car’s hood, flinging herself behind the wheel. She twisted the key so hard in the ignition the starter motor ground its teeth, then threw the stick into reverse and gunned down the drive, one arm twisted across the seat back, the other barely keeping the wagon from sliding into the snowbanks lining the narrow way. She backed straight into the road without looking in either direction and slammed on the brakes, blocking both lanes of traffic.
She stared up the driveway. There was nothing stirring. No hand or face appeared at the open mudroom door. Then, with a suddenness that made her flinch, an orange-striped cat darted through the open door and bounded over the snow toward the barn.
Meg’s head fell forward onto her steering wheel. The cat. She had forgotten the cat. Linda had visited the shelter the same day she gave her husband his walking papers. She had told Meg his allergies kept her from owning a cat for years, but they weren’t going to hold her back one minute longer.
Her whole arm trembling, Meg reached for the phone on the passenger’s seat. It was almost too heavy for her to lift. She dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one Emergency Services. Please state your name and the nature of your emergency.”
“I’m…” Meg took a breath. “I’m Meg Tracey. There’s been a-someone’s been killed.”
“Where are you, ma’am? Are you safe?”
Was she safe? Oh, God. Meg smashed the door lock button.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yeah. I think so. I think I’m safe. I’m not in the house. I mean, I was, but now I’m in my car. Across the road. Please, you’ve got to send someone.”
The dispatcher’s voice was both calm and authoritarian. “I’m already alerting the police and ambulance service, ma’am. Tell me where you are.”
“398 Peekskill Road.”
There was a crackle over the phone. Then the dispatcher again, this time alarmed. “Did you say 398 Peekskill Road?”
“Yes! For God’s sake, hurry.”
“Stay right where you are, ma’am. The first car will be there within five minutes. Don’t go back into the house.” The dispatcher sounded shaky now, like someone reciting a well-worn prayer during a moment of crisis.
“I won’t. I-”
The dispatcher hung up. Meg stared at the phone. Weren’t they supposed to keep her on the line until someone got there? Inside her warming car, she shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself and settled in to wait for someone to deliver her from this nightmare.
THREE
There are moments in life that are between: between the blow and the pain, between the phone ringing and the answer, between the misstep and the fall. One that comes to everyone is a moment, or three, or five, between sleeping and waking, when the past has not yet been re-created out of memory and the present has made no impression. It is a moment of great mercy; disorienting, like all brushes with grace, but a gift nonetheless.
Russ Van Alstyne was floating in this moment.
He rolled over and emerged from a dreamless sleep like a diver floating to the surface of the ocean. The room he was in was dark, tiny, not his. He had never made up stories about the cracks in the plaster ceiling, and he had never tried to replace the lopsided overhead glass light. The room was neither dark nor light but thick with shadows, and he lay in the comfortable bed with quilts rucked up beneath his chin and wondered if it was day or night. Was it summer or winter or spring or fall? His hand moved between thick, thousand-wash sheets. Was he alone or was…?
That thought tumbled him back into his life.
He pressed his face toward the feather pillow, desperately reaching for the last handhold on the vanishing train of sleep, but that car was gone, and he was well and truly awake. In an upstairs bedroom at his mother’s house. He eyed the small windows in the kneehole wall, where gray light leaked in around the brittle green shades. Probably late afternoon. He should call the station and get a status report from Lyle MacAuley. Things had been dead quiet since New Year’s, thank God. The only open case they had was the death of Herb Perkins’s border collie. Somebody had lured the dog out of the barnyard and butchered it. Gruesome but not urgent. Lyle was checking out the extremely long list of people who might have disliked the foul-tempered Perkins enough to give him the Millers Kill equivalent of the horse’s head between the sheets.
He dropped his hand over his eyes. He could identify with the poor dumb dog. Get tempted out of your home by a forbidden treat and next thing you know, your guts are steaming in the snow next to you.
No. He wasn’t going to start feeling sorry for himself again. He had too many things to do. Empty the woodstove ashes and restock the bin. Get a head start on shoveling out the driveway. Offer to help his mom with dinner.
He wondered how he was going to manage any of these when he couldn’t summon the will to get out of bed. He checked his watch, holding his arm out straight and squinting to bring the face into view. It was three o’clock on Monday. And he was still alive. Not doing much, but still here. That was something, wasn’t it?
He heard the stairs creaking, quiet footfalls outside his door. He shut his eyes and let his hand fall relaxed over the quilt, putting off for a little more time the minute he would have to emerge in the land of the living again. The steps retreated downstairs, and he sighed. Christ, here he was, fifty years old and hiding from his mother. Could he possibly be any more pitiful?
With that, he tossed off the covers and swung out of bed. He was completely clothed, except for his socks, and as he pulled them on he tried out his game face. Capable. Stable. A guy who can Deal with Things. He stood and checked himself out in the dresser mirror. Okay. No stains. No bad bed head-although if he didn’t get to the barber soon, he might as well start wearing a ponytail like one of those idiot downstaters in the throes of a midlife crisis.
He did not meet his own eyes.
He opened the door onto an upper landing masquerading as a miniature hallway. In the bedroom opposite, twin beds frothed with pink gingham and lace and heaps of stuffed animals, ready for his nieces to sleep over. He shuffled down the first flight and paused on the turning. He could hear voices from the kitchen. His mom and… he eased down a few more steps… his sister.
“… yet?” Janet was saying.
“No. He got in a little before lunchtime, looking like death warmed over. He went straight to bed. I didn’t ask.”
“What’s going on with Linda?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying not to interfere.”
“Has he talked to a lawyer yet?”
“As near as I can tell, he doesn’t want to consider it.”
“Oh, for chrissakes.”
“Janet…” His mother’s warning tone. God help the child who swore or blasphemed in front of her. Even if that child was a forty-six-year-old mother of three.
