Instantly, it was snatched from her with such force that its core struck the inside of the steering wheel, scattering bright fragments into her lap. A smell of burning wool arose. After one lightning glance downward she kept her eyes on the road while she slapped at her coat, but the car had taken a sharp little veer.
“Watch it,” said the man conversationally with a backward jerk of his head. “He doesn’t like that kid.”
Amanda didn’t answer him. She had drawn a deep trembling breath and was saying calmingly to herself that smoking (like ingesting certain food dyes and nitrites and saccharine, and being exposed to asphalt and standing at curbside in big-city rush-hour traffic and drinking the water in some places) was not really a good idea, and that from cutting down she intended to stop completely.
But under the personal governance of this near-animal?
The traffic light at which she would turn left in the direction of her house blinked from yellow to red. The center might have looked festive an hour ago, but its Christmas decorations had been thriftily turned off, except for a little tree in a hardware store window, and its overhead ropes of tinsel and stars were extinguished by the snow. The town was not quite asleep, however; on the near corner, the door of Shelley’s Bar and Grille started open and then fell shut, as though someone inside were saying protracted goodnights.
These men need me, at least right now, realized Amanda suddenly, and not with a noticeably black eye or a cut lip. As the door of the bar opened and a man and woman emerged, she reached for the cigarettes and matches. “I’m driving you because I have to, but that’s all,” she said steadily. “I didn’t have to tell you that I have medicine for your hand, and I am going to smoke this cigarette.”
The match flame shook, but that might have been attributed to a window not quite closed. The couple from the bar crossed the street in front of them, heads turning automatically, providing a measure of insulation in an electric moment. Amanda drew in smoke, flicked on her turn signal, and put the car gently in motion as the light changed. She didn’t really want the cigarette—indeed, it was making her heart beat very fast—but it had been for her an essential gesture, a brief handhold in this precipitous night, and she took another unhurried inhalation, when she had rounded the corner, before she tossed it out into the snow.
The man beside her was silent and unstirring. Had that earlier command been simply an exercise of power, to underline her subservient status?
The pickup now began to close the distance; in his ruffling through her handbag Dickens had obviously acquainted himself with her address. The last mile was almost totally dark, with luminarias extinguished until tomorrow night, although here and there a single window glowed and, three houses from Amanda’s, a recessed porch was dressed up in strings of mortuary blue. With a sense of time running out, she pulled into her driveway.
But although her headlights had reflected off black windows and the immediate neighborhood was clearly fast asleep, they were taking no chances. Instead of following her in, the pickup coasted to a stop at the mouth of the drive, ready to take off like a flash at any indication of a trap. Her abortive attempt to reach Justin, Amanda supposed; for all they knew, the “Motley” lettered in black on the mailbox might be her father or her brother.
She opened the door on her side before she could be ordered to and was dipping automatically into her bag when her passenger dangled her house keys between thumb and forefinger and then reached awkwardly across himself to manage his own door release. In view of what they had done and were doing, this casual appropriation of her property had a gnatlike insignificance; still, Amanda was stiff with anger as she marched ahead of him through the snow, scarcely feeling the pain in her ankle, and waited for admission to her house.
Had they thought there was a possibility that she would throw Rosie to the winds, manage to get into the house first, lock the door and call the police?
For that matter—this man would certainly want to make sure that the house was untenanted, and her telephone, on a corner table in the living room, had a soundless touch dial—was there a chance . . . ?
He gave her the keys to spare himself any lefthanded fumbling, shouldered past her with a sudden fierce grip on her wrist, stood warily testing the warm dark silence before he swept the inner wall with his palm and encountered the light switch.
Amanda blinked at her little hall, as strange to her as if she had been away for a week. Its cream wallpaper had pencil stripes of grape and slate, the coatrack was occupied only by a raincoat and a blue-and-green Irish wool scarf, the carved chest held the morning’s mail which she had dropped there unopened to answer her telephone and learn about Mrs. Balsam.
The living room to the left, light catching a quiver of silver from the Christmas tree in its depths, was the short end of the L which held kitchen, dining room which was scarcely more than a windowed alcove, tiny guest room, bedroom, and bath. The absolute stillness everywhere seemed to Amanda as proclamatory as a blank sheet of paper, but if she had even eight or nine seconds alone . . .
She tried, saying in a voice which invited echoes, “There’s no one else here, I live by myself.”
This drew a glance of near-contempt from the tense man at her side. In the unspeaking way which was beginning to get badly on her nerves—had he been like this with Ellie Peale?—he snapped the outside light
