paint—and there was a boy who looked about her own age with him. The boy walked a step behind the dirty man and seemed to tug on his sleeve like he was trying to hold him back.
Beth touched Alfred’s neck and felt the vibrations coming off him like electricity. She thought about taking Alfred into the house and locking all the doors, but by the time the thought was fully formed, it was too late. The man ran at her, boy in tow, and she was too dumbstruck to move.
FIFTEEN
Libby pulled the Honda into the garage and shut it off with a slow turn of the key. For a while, she simply sat there, leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed, listening to the car’s engine click as it cooled. She and Trevor had left the house that afternoon around one, and although it was just past seven now, it seemed she’d been away for days. She thumbed the button on the remote clipped to her visor and waited until the garage door had rolled all the way down to the concrete and thumped in place before letting herself out of the car.
She considered leaving her shopping bags in the trunk—she could always come out and get them later—but then she remembered the books she’d picked up and her earlier thoughts of slipping into a nice warm bath, glass of wine in one hand and a paperback in the other, maybe with some music drifting in from the stereo in the bedroom.
Yes. Throw in some bath salts and a few unscented candles, and she’d have herself the perfect evening.
Libby jammed a key into the trunk and popped it open, reached inside for her bags and pushed the lid shut again.
Except she didn’t think wine would cut it. Maybe she’d bring up a bucket of ice and beer instead. She had an untouched six-pack of Corona in the back of the fridge and thought there might also be a lime in the bottom drawer with the apples and oranges. If there had ever been a night to indulge in a little heavier-than-usual drinking, surely this was it. Although at one point during the day she’d intended to come home and put in a couple of hours of work, she’d already been second guessing the idea before she’d lost Trevor. She’d decided on the drive home that any work she did now would have been worthless anyway and that she might as well go ahead and take off the whole day.
She let herself into the kitchen through the connecting door, shut off the garage light behind her, and deposited the shopping bags on the counter beside the half-full sink of dishes. She’d have to run the dishwasher soon, but that could wait for later, too. She hung her keys on the hook beside the fridge and carried her purse with her into the living room, where the newly repositioned leather sofa waited like an open-armed lover.
Libby dropped face first onto the cushions and let out a long, tense sigh. The sofa sighed back, the cushions compressing beneath her and making a low burping sound when she turned lazily onto her side. To think, none of this mess would have happened today if she’d just let Mike come and pick up Trevor, if she hadn’t been so afraid of what he’d think of her redecorating.
She hadn’t turned on the living room lights. As the daylight filtering in through the windows continued to wane, the room dimmed around her. The couch was so soft and the lighting so relaxing that Libby almost fell asleep right there and then, forgoing the bath and the beer and the paperback,
Libby groaned, pushed herself into a sitting position, and finally stood.
On her way upstairs, she found a pair of Trevor’s action figures pushed to the edge of one of the steps. She’d told him a hundred times not to leave his things on the stairs, that someone might trip and really get hurt, but she guessed little boys just weren’t programmed to remember certain rules no matter how many times you told them. It would be one thing if he’d disobeyed her on purpose, but she was sure he’d just forgotten. Despite what had happened at the Mountain View, she knew Trevor was probably a better boy than most moms could ever expect to have, and not, as the mall security guard had suggested, an
Besides, at least he’d pushed the toys to the side, where they were unlikely to get underfoot. Libby reached down to pick them up and carried them with her to the second floor.
Trevor’s room wasn’t exactly spic and span—rumpled bed sheets covered the mattress, a pile of his clothes filled one corner, and several of his coloring books and his tub of crayons lay on the floor where he’d left them—but neither was it a total pigsty. Although she and Mike had always tried to instill a sense of cleanliness in their son, neither of them had ever been obsessive, and they hadn’t wanted to bring up Trevor like a couple of museum curators, making him afraid to touch anything and uncomfortable in his own room. They’d always believed a house was for living in, not for displaying, and if that meant the occasional coloring book on the floor or the previous day’s outfit piled in the corner, so be it.
She arranged the action figures on top of Trevor’s bookshelf, which was mostly filled with magazines and comic and coloring books, along with several first- and second-grade readers. Trevor had mastered his reading skills very early, much sooner than many of his classmates, and although he was only headed for the first grade come fall, he now read at a third-grade level. The school had talked about skipping Trevor a grade, but Libby suggested they wait at least another year. Trevor liked school, had made some good friends, and she didn’t want to push him too fast. Besides, although he’d shown a talent for reading, she knew it was something that simply came easily to him and not a sign that he was trying to surge his way through the school system any faster than the rest of the kids. She was also well aware that he still preferred the pictures in his comic books to anything Dick, Jane, and their dog, Spot, had to offer.
Libby had gotten one of the action figures into a standing position, but the other didn’t want to stay upright. After only a second try at getting the uncooperative toy to balance, Libby gave up and let the little guy rest on his back. Five minutes after Trevor came home, the thing would be in the bathtub or the laundry hamper or back on the stairs again anyway.
Smiling, she returned the coloring books and the crayons to the bookshelf, took the pile of clothes from the corner of the room, and headed for the utility room.
She came to the open door of her dark office, looked inside. Her laptop’s power light pulsed, which meant it was not off but merely asleep. Work was only the flip of a lid and a few keystrokes away, but she resisted the urge to enter the room.
Besides her website work, she also did some occasional consulting for a graphics firm based out of Denver. When helping out with one of those jobs (designing a law firm’s new letterhead or a company’s revamped logo), she often had deadlines to meet and customers to please, but none of her current projects were in any dire need of attention, and she’d already decided to let it go. At least for tonight.
She moved on to the utility room, threw Trevor’s clothes on top of the washer and promised herself she’d get to them later. Like the dirty dishes. Like her work.
The master bathroom called to her.
She turned on a bedroom lamp and sorted through the stack of CDs on top of the dresser until she found the new Paul McCartney album, which she inserted into the stereo and set to repeat. The music came softly from the stereo’s small speakers, mellifluous and perfect for her current mood. She turned it up just a notch, loud enough to hear from the bathroom, but not so loud that it would disrupt her reading once she’d gotten into the bath.
She crossed the room, the hardwood floor cool beneath her bare feet, slipped out of her pants and tossed them gently on the unmade bed.
She smiled. A coloring book or two and a couple of action figures and she’d be worse than her son. She left her shirt on for the time being, readjusted the waistline of her bikini briefs, and moved onto the bathroom tile, which felt noticeably cooler than the hardwood.
She wasn’t normally much of a bath person, though mostly because she rarely had time for such niceties. A quick run through the shower was usually about the best she could expect, and even then she sometimes had to simultaneously brush her teeth and shave her legs to get everything done in the available timeframe. She had expected the tub to be too dirty to use, covered in soap scum and strands of shed hair, but it actually looked
