Nightshade

Frank pretended to be shocked by her sudden outburst, but she knew better. Before he could come up with some excuse — claim he had been doing nothing more than changing her diapers — she turned her wrath on him. “Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? Do you think I haven’t watched the two of you? Well, it’s over. Get out, Frank. Get out, and don’t ever come back.” He tried to argue with her, but when she told him she’d call the police, he changed his mind. Finally, he packed a suitcase and left.

Then she’d turned her attention to Joan.

It was as much Joan’s fault as it was Frank’s — she was as sure of that as she was sure that Frank had been getting his pleasure with his baby daughter. Frank was weak, and it had been easy for the little girl to seduce him.

She glowered at the child she knew had stolen her husband away, stolen Cynthia’s father away.

“Evil,” she whispered. “You’re an evil child, and you must be punished.”

She’d slapped Joan then, slapped her hard enough to make her cry. “Be quiet!” she told her. “That might have worked on your father, but it won’t work on me!” But Joan kept crying, kept crying until she could no longer stand it. She picked Joan up then, and took her down to the cellar and put her in the cedar chest that stood beneath the dark chamber’s single tiny window. “You want to cry?” she asked. “Then cry in there!”

She closed the lid, plunging Joan into darkness. Joan had screamed, and pounded on the sides of the chest, but she refused to hear it. After a while, though, Joan stopped crying.

And she went back out into the sunshine, to be with Cynthia…

* * *

NOW THE STRANGE light in the summer sky was disturbing Emily’s memory, and bits and pieces of reality slowly began to intrude upon her consciousness.

It wasn’t a summer afternoon at all. It was a night so dark and endless that she couldn’t remember how long it had gone on. But now the darkness was receding.

Light!

She could actually see light!

She tried to turn her face toward it, but pain shot through her arm and her leg, pain so sharp that a scream of agony rose in her throat.

But all she heard was a strangled gasp as the scream died before leaving her lips.

Her mouth!

She couldn’t open her mouth!

The pain in her shoulders grew worse, and she realized she could no longer move her arms. And her hands felt cold and numb.

Then, in the shadows beside her, she saw a flicker of movement. Someone was there!

Cynthia! It was Cynthia, come at last to help her, to take her away.

She tried to speak her daughter’s name, but again nothing escaped her lips and the words died in her mouth.

She grunted as she was suddenly jerked up from where she lay. Why was this happening? Why wasn’t Cynthia helping her?

What was —

Her thought was cut off by a sound.

Thunk!

It was a familiar sound — one she was certain she’d heard a hundred times before. But it was a sound she couldn’t quite place.

Then she realized that though her arms still hurt, her hands no longer felt cold or numb.

They didn’t hurt at all.

And on the floor beneath her legs she could feel something warm, and wet.

What was happening? Why couldn’t she feel her hands?

Then, in a flash, it came back to her, and she knew where she had heard that familiar thunk before.

She had indeed heard it at least a hundred times.

It was a sound she’d made herself, working in her kitchen.

Preparing the meals to feed her family.

It was the sound a cleaver made as it sank into a butcher block…

As the shock of the blow slowly wore off and the pain from her severed wrists began to penetrate her mind, Emily sank once more into the darkness of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 16

KELLY CONROE WONDERED why she’d even shown up for song-leading practice that afternoon — she didn’t feel like singing, she missed half the steps, and now the rest of the girls on the squad were mad at her. She should have followed her instincts and gone home. But when the final bell rang, and she opened her locker to get her book bag, she’d heard her father’s voice almost as clearly as if he’d been standing right behind her. “You made a commitment, Kelly. Perhaps other people don’t take commitments seriously, but the Conroes do. We always have, and we always will.” So she dropped the bag back onto the floor of the locker and went to the girls’ locker room to change into her gym clothes. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t focus her mind on the drill, and when it was over, she changed back into her regular clothes as quickly as possible, escaping from the locker room before anyone else was dressed. The last thing she needed was to listen to everyone talking about Matt Moore and what he’d done.

In fact, it seemed like no one had talked about anything else since Matt’s birthday.

Even at home, it seemed as if it was all she heard about.

“I don’t understand why Dan Pullman hasn’t arrested him,” her father had said that morning.

“I’m sure when he has proof of what happened, he’ll do whatever needs to be done,” Kelly’s mother replied. But it wasn’t enough for her father.

“What needs to be done is to lock that boy up before anything else happens.”

Nancy Conroe had carefully folded her napkin before speaking again, which Kelly recognized as a sign that her mother was angry. “If Dan Pullman isn’t certain what happened, I don’t think the rest of us are in any position to judge Matt.”

Gerry Conroe’s face darkened with anger. “We know what happened — Matt and Bill had a fight, and Matt shot Bill! Shot him in cold blood, Nancy.” He shook his head sadly. “I knew it was a mistake to take that boy in. I always say, if you don’t know the father — ”

“You don’t know the son.” Nancy finished the familiar litany. “But as far as Bill was concerned, he was Matt’s father. He raised him as if he were his own son.”

“That’s not the point. Breeding is the point. Breeding will always out. Look at the condition this country is in! And it’s the worst elements who are having all the children — the worst! If we knew who Matt Moore’s father was, we’d know a lot more about him.” His attention shifted to Kelly. “Which is why I never approved of you going out with him. Bill was my best friend, but Matt…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.

It had been the same at school. In the space of the weekend, every one of their friends — everyone she and Matt had grown up with, everyone they knew — had turned against him. By the time Matt came back to school, Kelly knew what would happen to her if she didn’t join in the ostracism that had suddenly shut Matt out of everything. All her friends would turn their backs on her as coldly as they had turned them on Matt. But still she tried to stay neutral. She hadn’t been willing to risk actually talking to him, let alone sitting with him at lunch. But at least she’d tried to warn him away from the table where he usually sat before anyone had a chance to humiliate him. And though she hadn’t defended him — at least not out loud — she’d done her best not to listen to what everyone else was saying about him. No matter how bad the fight with his stepfather had been, she didn’t believe