anguish.
The woman said, “Dead five years now back.”
Deucalion thought of the replicants in New Orleans. Upon seeing a replicant, an identical might think her dead sister had returned.
chapter 67
In the rusting shed, breathing the faint odor of something dead and desiccated, the boy could no longer tolerate the sight of the cottage across the street, its only light a porch light, its windows black with portent.
“Let’s go,” Travis said.
His words came in the pitch of a child’s voice, but in some way not easy to define, his voice wasn’t that of a child anymore.
“There’s no urgency,” Bryce Walker assured him.
“You’re cold.”
“Not that cold. And I’ve been cold before.”
“There’s no use waiting anyway.”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“We know.”
“No, son, we don’t.”
“I know.”
“There are some advantages to being an old fart like me,” Bryce said. “One of them is experience. I’ve had maybe a thousand times more experience than you have. No offense. And one thing experience has taught me is that life can hammer you hard just when everything seems to be so fine, but life can also drop the most amazing moments of grace on you just when you thought nothing good would ever happen again.”
“Let’s go,” the boy interrupted.
“In a moment. What you have to do somehow is be grateful for what good you’ve known and for what good will come, in spite of the bad times, because you come to see that you can’t have one without the other. I’m not saying that it’s always easy to be grateful when the pattern of things so often doesn’t make sense. But by the time you’re my age, you realize it all does make sense, even if you can’t quite say how.”
“Let’s go, all right?”
“We might,” Bryce said. “But not until you tell me what I just said to you.”
Travis shuffled his feet in place. “Never give up.”
“That’s part of it. What else?”
An old Chevrolet passed in the street, briefly whirling autumn leaves in its wake.
“Nothing’s over till it’s over,” Travis said.
“That too. What else?”
From some perch on a roof elsewhere in the Lowers, an owl called out, and a more distant owl responded.
Travis said, “Maybe we don’t ever really die.”
Bryce wanted to fold his arms around the boy and hold him very tight, but he knew that such an expression of sympathy was not wanted yet. Because in spite of what Travis had first said, he had not given up all hope. While there was hope, there need not be consolation.
“All right,” Bryce said. “Let’s go. My ass is half frozen off.”
chapter 68
A tall fence separated the two backyards. For Carson, however, since childhood, fences had existed for one reason: to be climbed. Thankful that she still wore her Rockport walking shoes instead of ski boots, she gripped the headrail of the fence and toed her way up and over.
Michael dropped to her side in the Benedettos’ backyard and drew the pistol from his shoulder rig.
“Isn’t that a little premature?” she whispered.
“I just remembered, good old Larry was thoughtful and stylish and funny, yeah, but he also had a dark side.”
“You think she lied, he’s not at work?”
“She’s a replicant. Her whole existence is a lie.”
“I’m glad you’re not in denial anymore.”
Carson drew her pistol.
Michael said, “A little premature?”
“There’s a baby in there.”
“Good point.”
They crossed the lawn to the deep back porch. There didn’t seem to be a lot of sunning patios in Montana. The wooden steps creaked, though not enough to be heard inside.
Four windows-all with lighted rooms beyond-faced onto the porch. They were curtained.
Michael knelt on one knee at the head of the porch steps, his attention split between Carson and the back of the property, making sure no one surprised them from behind.
At the first window, the curtains were fully closed, and Carson could see nothing. At the second, a one-inch gap gave her a view of part of a laundry room.
On the other side of the back door, the curtains at the first window were again less than tightly drawn, and between the panels she could see a kitchen.
A girl of about five or six sat at the kitchen table. Her face was flushed and wet with tears.
On the table in front of her lay several teddy bears. They had been torn open and dismembered.
Encircling the girl’s neck, a rope secured her to the headrail of the chair.
A flood of fury swept Carson from the window to the back door, but she possessed the presence of mind to know that Michael had more power than she did for this job, and she breathed his name.
When he came to her, she indicated the door and whispered, “Kick it in.”
A door always had to be taken down in one kick or two, unless you wanted to lose the advantage of surprise and be gut-shot going through-or in this case risk giving the Denise replicant a chance to do something unthinkable to the child before she could be stopped.
Michael might argue that a baby was not necessarily a baby baby, but they had worked together long enough for him to know better than to second-guess Carson at a moment like this. He gripped her arm as she offered it to steady him, reared one leg back to slam the door, but hesitated. On two feet again, he quietly turned the knob, and the unlocked door opened.
Making the assumption, as always, that it was a trap, they went in low and fast, but the girl at the table was the only person in the room. Wide-eyed, the child regarded them with no less amazement than she might have if Santa Claus had come through the door months ahead of his season.
Carson eased past the refrigerator to the hall door, which stood half open. Sheltering behind it, she exposed herself enough to survey the hallway. The false Denise was nowhere to be seen.
Michael snared a wicked-looking piece of cutlery from a wall rack of knives.
Too smart to fear him as he approached her with the gleaming blade, the girl said, “Mommy’s not my mommy.”
Michael shushed her and sawed at the rope between her neck and the headrail of the chair.
The hallway remained deserted.
When Carson glanced at the table, Michael had already freed the child; he lifted her out of the chair. Carson
