She came into his room and wearily sat down on the bed. After a moment she said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“You do it all the time now.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah.” He flipped a page.
“I don’t mean to, Noah. I have so many things going wrong at once, I can’t seem to deal with them all.”
“Everything’s all screwed up since we moved here, Mom. Everything.” He slapped the magazine shut and dropped his head in his hands. His voice was barely a whisper. “I wish Dad was here.”
For a moment they were both silent. She heard his tears fall on the page of the magazine, heard his sharp intake of breath as he struggled for control.
She stood up and placed her hands on his shoulders. They were tense, all his muscles knotted with the effort not to cry. We are so much alike, she realized, both of us constantly fighting to rein in our emotions, to stay in control.
Peter had been the exuberant member of the family, the one who screamed with delight on roller coasters and roared with laughter in movie theaters. The one who sang in the shower and set off smoke alarms with his cooking. The one who had never hesitated to say “I love you.”
How sad you would be to see us now, Peter. Afraid to reach out to each other.
Still mourning, still crippled amp;y your death.
“I miss him too,” she whispered. She let her arms slip around her son and she rested her cheek in his hair, inhaling the boy-smell she loved so much. “1 miss him too.”
Downstairs, the doorbell rang.
Not now. Not now.
She held on, ignoring the sound, shutting out everything but the warmth of her son in her arms.
“Mom,” said Noah, shrugging her off. “Mom, someone’s at the door.” Reluctantly she released her hold on him and straightened. The moment, the opportunity, had passed, and she was staring once again at his rigid shoulders.
She went downstairs, angry at this new intrusion, at yet another demand tugging her away from her son. She opened the front door to find Lincoln standing in the bitterly cold wind, his gloved hand poised to ring the bell again. He had never stopped in at her house before, and she was both surprised and puzzled by his visit.
“I have to talk to you,” he said. “Can I come in?”
She had not yet lit a fire in the front parlor, and the room was cold and depressingly dark. Quickly she turned on all the lamps, but light was poor compensation for the chill.
“After you left my office,” he said, “I got to thinking about what you’d said.
That there’s a pattern to the violence in this town. That there’s some sort of connection between 1946 and this year.” He reached in his jacket and took out the sheaf of photocopied news articles she’d left him. “Guess what? The answer was staring right at us?’
“What answer?”
“Look at the first page. The October issue, 1946.”
“I’ve already read that article.”
“No, not the story about the murder. The article at the bottom. You probably didn’t notice it.”
She smoothed the page on her lap. The article he’d referred to was partly cut off; only the top half had been included in the photocopy.
The headline read: REPAIRS ON LOCUST RIVER BRIDGE COMPLETED.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” she said.
“We had to repair that same bridge this year. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“So why did we have to repair it?”
“Because it was broken?”
He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Geez, Claire. Think about it!
Why’d the bridge need repairs? Because it got washed away We had record rainfall this past spring, and it flooded the Locust River, washed out two homes, tore out a whole series of footbridges. I called the U.S. Geological Survey to confirm it. This year was the heaviest rainfall we’ve had in fifty-two years.”
She looked up, suddenly registering what he was trying to tell her. “Then the last time the rainfall was this heavy.
“Was the spring of 1946.”
She sat back, stunned by the coincidence. “Rainfall,” she murmured. “Moist soil.
Bacteria. Fungi.
“Mushrooms are fungi. What about those blue ones?”
She shook her head. “Max had their identity confirmed. They’re not very toxic.
But heavy rains would encourage the growth of other fungi. In fact, it’s a fungus that caused mass occurrences of St. Vitus’ dance.”
“Is that a seizure?”
“The medical term for St. Vitus’ dance is chorea. It’s a writhing, dancelike movement of the limbs. Occasionally, there’ll be reports of mass occurrences. It may even have inspired the witchcraft accusations in Salem.”
“A medical condition?”
“Yes. After a cold, wet spring, rye crops can be infected by this fungus. People eat the rye, and they develop chorea.”
“Could we be dealing with a form of St. Vitus’ dance?”
“No, I’m just saying there are examples throughout history of human diseases linked to climate. Everything in nature is intimately bound together. We may think we control our environment, but we’re affected by so many organisms we can’t see.” She paused, thinking about Scotty Braxton’s negative cultures. So far nothing had grown out from either his blood or spinal fluid. Could there be a locus of infection she had missed? An organism so unusual, so unexpected, the lab would have discounted it as error?
“There must be a common factor among these children,” she said. “Exposure to the same contaminated food, for instance. All we have is this apparent association between rainfall and violence. It could be just coincidence.”
He sat in silence for a moment. She had often studied his face, admiring the strength she saw there, the calm self-confidence. Today she saw the intelligence in his eyes. He had taken two completely disparate bits of information and had recognized a pattern that she had not even noticed.
“Then what we need to find,” he said, “is the common factor.”
She nodded. “Could you get me into the Maine Youth Center? So I can talk to Taylor?”
“That could be a problem. You know Paul Darnell still blames you?’
“But Taylor’s not the only child affected. Paul can’t blame me for everything else that’s gone wrong in this town.”
“Not now, he can’t.” Lincoln rose to his feet. “We need answers before the town meeting. I’ll get you in to see the boy, Claire. One way or another.”
Standing at the parlor window, she watched him walk down the icy driveway to his truck. He moved with the balanced stride of a man who’d grown up in this unforgiving climate, each step planted squarely, the boot sole stamped down to catch the ice. He reached the truck, opened the door, and for some reason glanced back at her house.
Just for an instant, their gazes met.
And she thought, with a strange sense of wonder, How long have I been attracted to him? When did it start? I can’t remember. Now it was one more complication in her life.
As he drove away, she remained at the window, staring at a landscape bled of all color. Snow and ice and bare trees, all of it fading to black.
Upstairs, Noah’s music had started again.
She turned from the window and flicked off the parlor lamp. That’s when she suddenly remembered the
