she reached down and gathered up the thick woolen blanket on the floor at the foot of the bed, then returned to the living room.
“I saw them once,” Pete said, before she had the bedroom door fully shut behind her.
“What?”
“The people who done this. I saw them once, but thought it was a dream.”
She came to him and sat on the edge of the armchair, one arm around his shoulders, the blanket on her lap.
“There was a tall man,” he said. “Mean lookin’. And a boy, ’bout the same age as I was back then. They was in our house, in my Pa’s room. The mean lookin’ man was tellin’ my father he’d do best to stay outta their business. He was holdin’ a big blade. Looked like a lawnmower blade, I think. I always figured I’d dreamed it, but the way Pa was that night before he died…I knew I’d seen him look like that before but couldn’t remember when. It came to me though. He was real afraid of those people, and I ain’t hardly never seen him scared of nothin’ or no one.”
Louise nodded, then stood and set the blanket down upon the cushions. “You better get some sleep now, and rest yourself,” she said. “We’ll try to figure out what to do tomorrow, all right?”
He didn’t answer, just scooted forward off the couch and dropped to his knees on the cushions.
“If you need anythin’ in the night, you come get me, you hear? I’m just in that room back there.”
He nodded, and set about unrolling the blanket.
After a moment spent searching for some words of comfort to offer him, Louise gave up. “Good night,” she told him and headed for her bedroom. She had one handle on the door when Pete said, “You gonna come with me to see the girl?”
“I thought you didn’t want my help,” she said.
“Not with what’s gotta be done later. I don’t want you nowhere near that. But I need to find the girl. She told me the street, but I ain’t sure I can find it on my own.”
She looked at him for a moment, at the vulnerability peering out at her from behind a mask of hurt and smoldering anger, and she nodded.
“I’ll help you. However I can.”
Satisfied, and still wearing his jacket, he wriggled down under the blanket. “Good night then.”
“Good night.”
With one last lingering look at the boy, she turned off the light.
A sound jerked him from sleep. For a moment, in the dark with only the pale glow from a streetlight filtered through the snow and the grimy window across from him, Pete was unsure where he was. The shapes that rose around him as his eyes adjusted were unfamiliar ones, and for a moment fear rippled through him. Gradually, he remembered and allowed a long slow breath of relief to escape him. He relaxed, but only a little. These days, tension seemed to have made taut ropes of his muscles and resting only eased the discomfort they caused him for a short time.
He shivered.
It was freezing outside, and though the apartment was warm and he was still dressed, a chill threaded through him.
At last he sat up, and rubbed his eyes, then squinted into the dark until he made out the faint outline of the TV. Atop it, the time on the VCR read 4:30 in glowing green numerals. Pete got to his feet and kicked his shoes free of the blankets, which, though warm, had felt scratchy on the exposed skin of his hands. He grabbed one of the cushions, replacing it on the sofa before dropping heavily onto it.
Since stepping off the bus at the station, he’d felt out of place. Part of it was the fact that he could count on one hand the amount of times he’d been in a big city, but mostly it was because he felt alone, and isolated, as if no matter where he went or with whom, he would still feel as if he journeyed by himself. The death of his father had awoken terrible, frightening feelings in him that frequently debilitated him and left him weeping. He had no mother. He had no father. The farm was gone. Death had cut him loose and set him adrift in an alien world that had never seemed more threatening. Every shadow, every face, every street was a potential threat, and Pete felt in constant danger.
And there was the anger, the awful consuming hatred whenever he tried to picture the face of the man who he’d seen standing in his father’s bedroom that night, or when he felt the phantom touch of the child who’d stood by his side, smiling. And though it had taken him some time, he’d finally understood why his father had been afraid, and why Pete had sensed hesitation in him the day they’d picked up the girl. Pa had known what he was calling down upon them by helping Claire, but he’d done it anyway. In Pete’s book, that made his Pa a hero, and from what he’d gleaned from comic books and TV shows over the years, the death of heroes was always celebrated, and avenged.
Pete had never wanted to be a hero, only happy. For a long time, and due in no part to his father, and Louise in the brief time in which she had been content to be his mother, he’d managed the latter quite well. He’d wanted for nothing, though he hadn’t wanted much. He’d worked and he’d played, and though his future had always been a latent concern, he’d always figured he could cross that bridge when he came to it.
But now someone had shoved him over that bridge and burned it down behind him, taking everything he knew along with it, and forcing him to confront an uncertain future. He was alone, his father murdered, a hero dead. And then there was the girl, who’d been hurt too, left barely alive and lucky to escape. Who knew how many others had had their lives destroyed by these evil men?
He looked again at the clock. Only a minute had passed. He wondered when Louise would wake, or if he should leave and come back later when she was likely to be up and ready to face the day.
On the street outside, a dog barked.
It was followed by low murmuring.
The dog barked a second time, then yelped.
Pete rose and went to the window, wiped away the cloud of his own breath and peered down.
There were three men in the street, all of them dressed the same. They were talking animatedly, but keeping their voices low so they would not wake the tenants in the buildings around them.
He strained to hear what they were saying, but they were being too quiet.
He returned to the sofa and sat, his head turned toward the window.
Claire’s face swam to the surface of his thoughts, and he felt his nerves twitch. He hoped more than anything she didn’t hate him for leaving her alone at the hospital, and made a note to tell her that he wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t been frightened by the amount of people suddenly rushing toward him at once, all speaking at the same time, the look in their eyes serious, demanding answers. He’d fled, and hadn’t made it a whole mile down the road before he’d regretted it.
There was still time to set things right. That’s why he was here. There would be ample opportunity to explain himself to her in person. The thought made him smile. He imagined her as he’d seen her on the news— scarred and bruised but cleaner and healthier looking than she’d been in Elkwood. Her eye was still gone though, and he ached at the thought of how much pain it must have caused her, both in having it torn out, and waking to find it gone. The picture he’d seen had shown her looking exhausted, the lids of her missing eye stitched together with black thread so that it looked as if she might only have been in a serious fight. Her hair had been combed, her lips colored a little. The sight of her had made his heart beat faster.
Down in the street, there came the rumble of a car engine, the slight squeak of brakes. One of the men raised his voice, but his words were no clearer. He sounded annoyed.
Though Pete had long abandoned the idea that Claire would fall madly in love with him just because he’d
