another day after you have tried to atone for the deaths of thirty-nine people with a fortieth. Funny: Your mind formed the words thirty-nine people, not thirty-nine souls. Because you know now that souls don’t die. For a person who is not religious, this is a revelation. It has not been a joyful one, however, because along with your discovery that there is an afterlife has come the knowledge that sadness and pain transcend the grave, too. Children live on, their hair always dripping with lake water and jet fuel, their abdomens skewered with the horrific shards of metal airplanes. Dead fathers watch helplessly as their dead daughters pine for playmates. Young women stagger through the blackness of your basement after interviews for jobs they never will have.
The blackness of your basement: no white light there. Perhaps there is no white light anywhere. It’s a myth. A vision triggered by dying brain chemicals and desperate endorphins.
Still, no one will ever understand what you are about to do. You could never explain it. You should have died back in August.
In the distance, you watch a silhouette move in the greenhouse, and you wonder why you see only one. Aren’t all three girls out there? After dinner, all three went out there to play. Two, you presume, must simply be in corners you cannot see. Or, maybe, the light from the lantern (didn’t they bring more than one?) is angled so that you can only see one of the children.
Your mind roams back toward the house. It is possible that one or two of the children has gone back inside for something. You pause and run your fingers over the side of the blade, trying to decide what to do. And then you see the second lantern bobbing at the edge of the meadow a good ninety or one hundred yards from the greenhouse, and then it’s gone, disappearing into the brush and the trees. And that’s when it all makes sense. Your judgment is suspect, and so the decision has been made for you. There is but a single girl remaining inside the greenhouse, and so, clearly, she is the one. You take a breath and march ahead, resolved.
H allie ran to the entrance of the greenhouse and stared into the dark when she heard her mother’s voice. Her mother was calling out her name and Garnet’s, dashing from the house and spraying the greenhouse and the carriage barn and the woods with one of their regular flashlights. Hallie thought for a split second there was someone else out there-someone other than her mom and Garnet and Molly-though she couldn’t have said whether it was because she had heard footsteps in the grass or because she had seen a shape change the consistency of the darkness enveloping the chasm that now separated the greenhouse from the rest of the property.
“Garnet? Hallie?” her mother was shouting over and over, and so Hallie screamed for her mother that she was right here, she was right here in the doorway to the greenhouse, and her mother ran to her and knelt briefly before her, studying her in the light from the lantern without saying a word. Then she spoke: “We’ve lost power. Again.” She rolled her eyes, trying to make light of the way, a moment ago, she had been frantically shrieking their names. Then she looked over Hallie’s shoulder into the greenhouse, and Hallie could see the concern instantly return to her face. “Where in heaven’s name are your sister and Molly?”
“They went to the woods to get stuff for the game.”
“Stuff?”
“Twigs and moss and things.”
“At night?”
“Uh-huh.”
Her mom shook her head. “I wouldn’t want them doing that any night and certainly not now. Not with a blackout. They won’t be able to see the house to get their bearings.”
“I saw the porch light go out and the house get dark,” Hallie told her.
“Which direction did they go in? Do you know?”
“They were just going to go to the edge-to that path at the bottom of the field.”
“Okay. You stay here while I go get them. Don’t move.”
Hallie nodded, but only seconds after her mother started off toward the path, she followed her, suddenly very afraid to be alone in the greenhouse.
“Wait up!” she cried, and her mother paused, shining the light back on her, and Hallie ran through the mud and melted snow. She realized that her mom was navigating this chilly March slop with nothing but socks on her feet. When she caught up, her mom took her hand and pulled her along, crying out Garnet’s and Molly’s names into a wind that seemed to be increasing, growing more blustery the closer they got to the woods. But it really didn’t take them long to find the girls. Within minutes they were upon her sister and their new friend, perhaps a dozen yards past where the grass would merge with the trees. The small copse of pines where they were standing was illuminated by their lantern.
“Is everything okay?” Garnet asked their mother, becoming a little unnerved now herself.
Hallie watched their mom embrace first Garnet and then Molly. She held each child at arm’s length and seemed to inspect them, just as she had examined her back at the greenhouse. “I was worried about you,” she answered. “I didn’t know where you were. What were you two thinking going into the woods at night?”
“We were just getting things to make it look like the dolls were in the forest.”
“We lost power,” Hallie said.
“We did?”
“Yes, we did,” their mother told them, her voice sounding less unhinged than it had a moment ago but also more stern. Abruptly Hallie watched her mother’s head spin toward the path that led back to the fields. “Chip?” she said into the dark. “Chip, is that you?” Hallie had heard the sound, too: a rustling, a scuffling among the leaves.
When there was no response, their mother took Garnet by the hand and pointed her flashlight toward the meadow. “Did you girls hear something?”
Molly, who hadn’t said a word, suddenly started to whimper. “I’m scared,” she sniffled, and she ran the sleeve of her coat across her nose and then wiped at her eyes. “I want to go home.”
“Oh, Molly, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry. I’m sure we just heard a deer or a fox or something,” Emily said, but Hallie could tell that her mother didn’t believe a word she was saying. “I just got spooked by the blackout. Come on, girls, let’s head back to the house.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Hallie asked.
“I guess he’s back at the house, too,” her mother answered. “Come on. I’m positive the power will be back on in a couple of minutes and we’ll be able to have some hot chocolate.” Then they walked purposefully from the woods along the path and up the sloping meadow past the greenhouse-retrieving the single lantern there-and into the dark house.
S ilently you place the knife at your feet and push shut the door to the wheelbarrow ramp, locking it from the inside, your fingers spidering along the wood frame in the absolute dark. You feel around for the horizontal beam and drop it back in place, listening as your wife calls your name in the kitchen above you. She sounds anxious, frenzied. You want to yell up to her, Down here, honey. Just checking the breakers in the fuse box. Everything’s fine! But Ethan Stearns is standing between you and the stairs, a beacon that is strangely but perfectly visible in the blackness. He is scowling, incapable of masking his disgust.
But, really, what were you supposed to do? Massacre all of them?
You couldn’t have done that. You see in your mind an image of the children at daybreak, all dead, Emily, too, their throats cut as they bled to death in the woods-their parkas and sweaters forever stained red. You see it all in your mind with the sun overhead, the sky the same breathtaking summer cobalt it had been on August 11 over Lake Champlain. But this was never supposed to have been a slaughter of that magnitude: three fifth-grade girls and your wife. This had been about a playmate. A single playmate. You kill a child and then you kill yourself. That was the bargain.
But Ethan is shaking his head.
She deserves friends.
Was it always a plural? Friends? He nods. It was, it was.
You kneel and paw at the dirt floor until you have recovered the knife. There you notice little Ashley, sitting with her legs crossed, her eyes sadder than you have ever seen them. Does she understand what she is asking- what it means?
She deserves friends. Do what it takes.
You gaze at Ethan. No, you want to say aloud, no, but for some reason you are afraid to speak in this dark and crease the blackness with noise. But you do think to yourself: No. Absolutely not. That is asking too
