Accusing him.
“But I — ” he began, but quickly fell silent, his eyes still fixed on the deer.
“Matt says he didn’t shoot it,” Eric said.
“What do you mean, you didn’t shoot it?” An uncertain look came into Marty Holmes’s eyes. “Where’s Bill?”
Matt pointed in the direction of the bluff. “He was right over there,” he said. As he gazed at the spot, the memory of the flicker of movement he’d seen in the gun sight popped back into his mind. Could it have been his dad? Of course not! If it was, surely he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger! He grasped at the idea like a straw in the wind. “That’s why I didn’t shoot,” he said. “I didn’t want to risk hitting my dad — ”
Marty Holmes’s expression darkened as he turned and started toward the bluff, pushing his way through the branches that blocked his path, Eric following right behind him. As a terrible fear began to gnaw at his gut, Matt looked once more at the deer he’d last seen in the sight of his rifle, then hurried to catch up with Eric and Marty Holmes. A few moments later they were on the trail that ran along the top of the bluff. Almost against his own will, Matt made himself look down.
For a moment he saw nothing, but then, almost hidden by the bushes it had fallen through, he saw it.
A body.
And even though it lay facedown, he knew exactly who it was.
His stepfather.
“No,” he breathed. “I didn’t shoot. I know I didn’t shoot!”
But when he opened the Browning’s clip, he knew he was wrong. Of the five cartridges he’d loaded, only two remained.
Three bullets — bullets he clearly remembered loading himself — were missing.
* * *
JOAN HAPGOOD EYED the stacks of frozen pizza as if they were so many cobras waiting to strike. Which, in truth, they might as well have been, since she knew it wouldn’t matter which one she finally reached for — when she got home it would turn out to be the wrong one, and her mother’s words would certainly be sharper than a serpent’s tongue.
But it wasn’t just that. If she chose the wrong pizza — and she knew there was no possibility of choosing the right one — her mother would harp on it all day long. On the other hand, her mother would find something to harp on anyway, so what did it matter if it was the pizza or something else? Pulling the freezer open, she tried to remember whether it was pepperoni or sausage her mother had declared inedible, then gave up and tossed two of each into the grocery cart. No worse to be hanged for being a spendthrift than for bringing the wrong thing.
She finished the shopping, went through the checkout stand, and loaded the groceries into the Range Rover, then glanced at her watch: almost ten. Where had the time gone? She would have to hurry if she was going to get home, put everything away, tend to her mother, and still get to the caterers by eleven to go over the last details for Matt’s party tonight.
After the dinner last night, she almost wished she could simply cancel the party.
But that wouldn’t happen — it would just be four times worse than last night — or, more accurately, ten times worse, since they’d had only three guests last night, and there would be thirty tonight. She was not looking forward to it, hadn’t been looking forward to it since the night Bill left. She’d been sure he was bluffing then, assumed he’d stay away that night and be back the next morning. Except Bill hadn’t come back.
He hadn’t even called.
The days had crept slowly by, and she just as slowly came to understand that he might not be back, at least not right away. Over and over again she’d replayed the arguments they’d had about her mother, and eventually she had to admit to herself that Bill was more than half right — he’d tried to talk about the problems her mother was causing them — and all she’d done was put him off. When she came to that conclusion, she’d picked up the telephone book and begun looking for someplace to put her mother. But even as she stared at the listings in the yellow pages — beautifully scripted advertisements for Continuing Care Facilities and Leisure Living Centers and Retirement Environments — she knew she would never be able to do it. She would never be able to send her mother to a nursing home — no matter what they called it, or how nice it looked. The only reason she’d even considered finding a place for her mother was to repair her marriage, not to give her mother the best life she could.
But as the time Bill was gone lengthened, she’d started feeling as if she were literally being torn apart, her mother pulling at her from one side, her husband from the other. And she was caught in the middle, with no escape.
The problem was that deep in her heart, she knew that Bill was right, that for his sake and for Matt’s sake — even for her own sake — she should find a place for her mother. Matt was already suffering, though she hadn’t realized just how much until last night. And she’d seen the unhappiness in Bill’s eyes too.
She’d tried to ignore what she herself was going through, but as she steered the Rover back toward Hapgood Farm, she found herself going slowly, putting off as long as she could the moment when she would have to start dealing with her mother again.
Her mother, and Cynthia.
Cynthia, who had become almost as strong a presence in the house as her mother. Not an hour went by that her mother didn’t speak of her long-dead sister.
And Cynthia had many dates — practically every boy her age wanted to go out with her. Cynthia went out with them all, and every night when she got home Joan would sneak into her room and the two of them would whisper in the darkness for hours as Cynthia told her everything that had happened.
Now, though, it was her mother who whispered in the darkness for hours. But it wasn’t always whispering, and it wasn’t always in the darkness. But it was always about Cynthia, and what would happen when Cynthia got home. Every day, her mother spent hours in what Joan had already come to think of as Cynthia’s room, going through everything over and over again, making certain that everything was in its place, that nothing had been touched.
And screaming at her if she so much as set a foot through the door.
Would the screaming of her guilt be any worse, if she put her mother into one of the facilities she’d found in the yellow pages? Joan wondered. She had actually driven by one of them a few days ago. It was a lovely three- story brick Colonial surrounded by beautiful gardens, and if you didn’t notice the people in wheelchairs sitting under the trees — wrapped in heavy scarves against the nip in the fall air — it would be easy to mistake it for someone’s private home. But even as she enjoyed the beauty of the place, Joan remembered the things she’d read about how the elderly were sometimes treated.
Tied into a chair and left in the hall for hours.
Strapped into bed at night and kept so drugged they didn’t even have the will to complain.
She could never do that to her mother. Never.
And so, tonight, she would stand next to Bill in the receiving line at Matt’s party and try to pretend that nothing was wrong, that they were just going through what some of her friends called “a bad patch” in their marriage, though she suspected that what her friends usually meant by “a bad patch” was that their husbands were having an affair. Bill would be fine, of course; a talent for always being gracious and never letting his true emotions show had been bred into him for generations.
She came around the last curve in the driveway and was pulling the car into the carriage house when she noticed that a fourth car had joined the group parked in the area behind the house.
The brand-new black-and-white Ford Taurus that the town had bought for Dan Pullman in recognition of his
