As Night Falls (19 page)

S
andy stepped forward and took Ivy into her arms. The two of them like refugees, shock-stung, wordless.

Ivy stood like a post in Sandy's loose grasp, her head hanging, hands at her sides. There wasn't any tension in her body. It had all drained out onto the stone, become one with the snow when she'd sent that boy away.

Sandy hadn't even known her daughter had a boyfriend.

She hadn't known anything, least of all herself.

Nick didn't have to speak. She could feel him beside her, and she understood what he wanted her to do. How she hated understanding what he wanted her to do.

“Ivy,” Sandy whispered.
Forgive me
. “You have to go back upstairs now.”

Nick smiled.

Her daughter raised her head, but she didn't look at Sandy. Her gaze was directed at a slant. Possibly it wasn't directed at all.

The cost of this night. Sandy was trained to recognize the signs, and she saw them all in Ivy. Shock. Dissociation. Trauma.

And, of course, even worse was coming.

“Are you—okay?” Sandy asked. It wasn't a therapist's question, neutral, unleading, aware that there was no such thing as
okay
. It was a mother's, who needed there to be. “Up there, I mean?”

She got no response.

“With Harlan,” Sandy added.

Ivy's cloudy eyes cleared momentarily. “Yes. He's fine.”

Sandy felt something give in her chest. “Oh, thank—”

Harlan's hand closed around Ivy's upper arm, and he began steering her upstairs, the two of them moving like one shambling beast.

“Ivy!” Sandy shouted.

Ivy paused, but didn't turn on the stairs.

“I'm sorry.” Sandy lowered her head. Her tears made splotches on the floorboards. “I'm so, so sorry.”

“It's okay, Mom,” Ivy said woodenly. “It's not your fault.”

Oh yes, it is,
Sandy thought. She hadn't been talking about the boy.

With Ivy and Harlan out of sight, Sandy's mind was directed two floors away. Now that she knew Ivy was all right—physically at least—Ben was everywhere inside Sandy, in each thought, on the tip of her tongue, and even in her hands.

“Tell me your husband's name,” Nick said.

Sandy flinched. He was able to read her as if she'd painted signs.

Nick straddled one corner of a high occasional table. It had been forged from the round base of a tree, silken, undulating wood.

He continued to eye her. “If you want to go see him, that is.”

At that, Sandy lifted her head, though she didn't allow hope to spark. She knew who she was dealing with now.

“Come on,” Nick said exasperatedly. “I thought we were going to stop this game of pretend. I saw your face back there in the kitchen just before the kid drove up.” He paused. “Can't believe I didn't realize what was going on until then. What the hell happened? Did you just—forget?”

Not forget. That wasn't the right word. You couldn't forget more than twenty years of your life unless you were amnesiac. But there were other defenses a fully functioning person could mount. And not even realize they were doing so until something—or someone—jolted them off the high tip of the spire on which they had built a fragile, careful life. Dissociation, compartmentalization, splitting. Sandy knew all the terms. Why had her patients never told her how unhelpful those words were, how much they missed of the real life, flesh-and-blood process?

What had really happened was that she'd amputated a part of herself. And after that part was gone, she never spoke about it, gave it no reference or mention. Ultimately she hadn't even thought about it, until it receded into a state where it felt more dreamlike than real.

The problem with dreams, though, was that you eventually woke up.

Nick's leer assailed her, knitting past and present into a single lurid tapestry.

“You'll really take me to my husband?” Sandy whispered.

“Maybe,” Nick said lazily. “Maybe not.”

A howl built like a twister inside Sandy. She imagined inhuman strength: throwing Nick off the table—their beloved find of a table, like a piece of the forest itself—and bringing the whole slab down upon his head.

Nick laughed. “Come on, Cass. One thing you've got to remember is that I don't exactly stick to my word.”

Her energy unleashed itself in one drawn-out yell. “I told you not to call me that!”

Nick fiddled calmly with the cuff of his borrowed shirt, unmoved by her force. “Do you have a different name now?”

Sandy felt the two halves of her life collide with the power of a plane touching down. One moment she was airborne, in a state of roaring suspension, and the next she was on the ground, everything silent and calm around her.

“Sandy,” she said at last. “I changed my name legally to Sandra. In college.”

Nick set his ashy eyes upon her. “That works.” He eased down off the table and walked in the direction of the kitchen archway. When he got there, he turned and looked back.

Sandy frowned, but she was already walking forward, tripping as she started to hurry.

At the entrance to the basement, Nick stopped her with the flat of one hand.

“I don't think we'll find your husband in any shape to do much,” he said. “But just in case we do—remember, I've still got the gun. And no reason not to use it.” Nick moved his palm to her shoulder and she cringed. “You should know that best of all.
Sandy
.”

She raised her eyes to Nick's lightless ones. Not for one second did she doubt him.

Her brother had always been the most dangerous person Sandy knew.

T
he basement was big and dark and empty, a featureless, cavernous space, and it seemed at first that her husband—superhuman as always—must have not only survived the fall, but escaped. Gone for help. Someone might be on the way even now, as Sandy descended the steps.

Then her eyes began to adjust, and in the distance she saw the ladder of two-by-fours that Nick had pounded up over the exit door. The windows were slits a ways off the floor, too small for a man to crawl through.

Sandy entered the grayed-out space as if she were wading into the sea. Toward one side was a bricking of storage bins, high as a wall: items that had never gotten unpacked after their move, and other artifacts of family life. Her wrapping station, readied for the holidays, waited like a pageant just before the curtain rose.

Nick took a step beside her into the void.

As Sandy inched away from him, a narrow band of light captured her eyes, and she blinked. The light was coming from beneath the wine cellar door. A mound lay in front of the door, curved in on itself like a larva. Flashes of silver tape sparked, and Sandy started to run.

She skidded onto her knees like a ballplayer sliding into base. More sparks, and the grating of cement through her jeans. Sandy barely felt it. She crabbed forward, warning herself not to touch Ben's still form.

“Honey?” she whispered, from a few feet away.

Time passed without a reply or a single hint of motion. Too much time.

Sandy felt Nick standing over her, the weight of his satisfaction. She wanted to rise, grab her brother, and wrest away the gun, not caring whose body the bullet struck when it went off. It wouldn't matter if she got shot. Nick's preeminence had been established since before she was born. He had gotten everything, and if he'd stolen Ben from her, the one thing that had allowed Sandy to enter another life, then she didn't want to live.

But that life had given her Ivy. Sandy had to survive this. For Ivy.

From the concrete floor came a sound, a signal.

“San—?” The single syllable emerged on a breathy wisp.

She looked down, and as the dim light gave way to a coherent form, Sandy saw Ben's eyes blink. She was beside him without being aware that she'd moved, extending one halting hand. Nick trailed her unhurriedly. Perhaps it hurt him to walk on his injured foot. Oh, how she hoped it hurt for him to walk.

“Ive?” Ben brought out, and Sandy bobbed her head.

Even in the low light, she could see relief flood his face. It was her turn then, and she mouthed,
McLean?

Ben turned his head a fraction to the side, and Sandy raised her eyes to the wine cellar door. No noise came from the small room. But the light was turned on, which in an emergency just might have allowed McLean to endure a barrier of wood between him and his master.

Ben gave a single nod, corroborating her conclusion.

Joy frothed inside her, and Sandy burst out, “Oh, honey. Oh, thank God. You're okay. You're alive.”

A rusty rumble registered late as an attempt at laughter.

“I'm—some,” Ben said. “Some.”

“Some,” Sandy repeated. She didn't understand, and she didn't care. Ben was speaking more freely now, and that speech seemed to indicate a hold on life.

Ben couldn't move a hand or finger; both wrists were bound together. But somehow he communicated—a slight lift of one shoulder maybe—that she should wait.

“Nah—not good,” Ben said. “But some…”

Sandy felt connections fire. “You're
something
. I get it. I get it. Oh my God, Ben, I'm so—” She broke off.

What had she been about to say? She was going to apologize and then Ben would want to know why, how was this her fault, and she couldn't tell him that now, when he'd just been given back to her. Sandy had kept half a lifetime from Ben, not consciously, but because her past could never be threaded with this present. She had walked away from that existence, and in doing so had lopped off a part of herself. It had been the right thing to do, a necessary surgery. Only now did the excision strike her as an appalling breach of trust. How had she not realized this before? She'd kept herself from thinking about that time so thoroughly that she had been able to deceive her own husband. Her shoulders bowed and she hid her face in her hands.

Ben tried to console her, but the effort clearly cost him. There was a gray, withered quality to his skin. Ben's normally vivid eyes were dim with pain. Sandy imagined him on a trek or climb, fallen from some great height, lying there and hoping help was on its way.

“My legs.” Ben gestured downward with his chin. “They're pretty bad.”

Sandy looked down, then away, her mind clouding with horror. She had been there when emergency units arrived at the hospital, but seeing her husband in similar straits made Sandy's throat seal up, a clutching, choking grasp.

She forced herself to look back. In a way, the binds Nick had applied were helping; the tape served as something of a splint along the ankles. But above each silvery wreath, Ben's bones no longer lay smoothly, seamlessly beneath the skin. Two jagged-edged pieces didn't line up; his jeans were tented with what had to be shards.

Sandy got to her feet, beseeching Nick. “Cut the tape. So I can take a look at his legs.”

Ben lay on the floor, blinking silently, depleted by his effort to communicate.

“Still inflating your own abilities, huh?” Nick said.

Sandy regarded Nick. He wanted to act as if he knew her—well, she knew him, too. And though he might not be about to let Ben go free, Nick had proven moveable in other respects. As had always been the case. As long as his aims and desires weren't thwarted, her brother tended to be a rather affable sort. He had come here to use them, because he believed everything and everybody was put there for his own benefit. But Nick didn't make people suffer.

Until the day came when he did. But Sandy wouldn't think about that right now.

She was good at that, she chided herself, blade-sharp. Not thinking about things.

One thing, though. Upon acknowledging the truth, the phantom itching in her hands had fled. Permanently, she sensed. Sandy glanced down at the tiny patches of scar tissue that remained, the crinkled texture of plastic wrap here and there among the healthy, healed skin.

Ben had asked about those scars, of course. But he'd accepted her explanation of a childhood accident. She herself hadn't thought further than that partial truth until now.

Her gaze darted around, envisioning ways to make her husband more comfortable.

“I need to get a blanket,” she told Nick. “There's one in the laundry area. And water.”

Nick squinted down at Ben. “Blanket, yes.” He jerked his chin toward the washing machine and dryer. “Water, no.”

Like they were bargaining, playing
Let's Make a Deal.
Everything and everyone had also always been a game to Nick.

Sandy opened her mouth, but Nick warded her off with one arm. “If your husband takes anything down, he's gonna choke when it comes back up.” Nick shook his head. “We found him alive, Cass—or I guess I should say Sandy. Conscious even. Not bad for the fall he took. Tough son of a bitch, ain't he?”

Sandy looked down at her shattered husband on the floor.

“I think you should quit while you're ahead.”

Sandy walked back to Ben with the softest quilt she could find, and one of his sleeping bags as well. The bag was rated to twenty below, and the two together should stave off shock.

Sandy squatted, arranging the folds around Ben's body, taking care not to touch him. He was shivering, but his core radiated a reassuring heat. He was her husband, and she longed for him to fold her up in his arms until this night had passed, taking the storm that had come along with it. Sandy settled for placing her hand on the floor beside Ben. Spasmodic jolts and jitters began to subside as the material settled down, camouflaging the heap Ben made on the floor.

She was about to stand up when something in her husband's eyes told her not to go.

Sandy crouched down again. “What is it, honey?” she asked, softly, encouragingly.

“Why?”

“Why what, Ben?”

He paused to muster breath. “Why does.” A sucked-in sip of air. “He keep. Calling you. Cass?” The last syllable, when it emerged, was strong and sure, the truest approximation of Ben's real voice yet.

“He doesn't know,” Nick remarked blandly. “So that's how you've pulled this off.” He extended one arm, taking in the whole of the basement.

Ben's gaze held Sandy's.

Love was a steel girder between them. You could walk across it, precariously high off the ground, yet be safe so long as you kept your balance.

That balance was threatened now. They were going to fall.

Nick spoke into the silence between them, soft as a caress. “Tell him, Cass.”

Sandy didn't take her eyes off her husband.

“Tell him,” Nick repeated, and his voice was no longer gentle. “Or I will.”

Sandy closed her eyes. She wasn't sure if her husband would understand or even register her words; she could no longer tell anything from his pain-dulled face. But the truth was a watery rush inside her now. “I changed my name when I went to college. Just before you and I met.”

Ben blinked.

“I used to be called Cassandra.”

A solitary shake of the head, palpable confusion. “He—” Ben licked blood-encrusted lips, before starting again. “He knew you then?”

Sandy stared down at her husband. After a moment, she nodded.

“Like—” Again, Ben broke off, but after that, his voice became stronger. “A stalker? That's why he came here?”

Nick belted out a laugh. “I think you've got things a bit wrong down there. Care to correct him, Cass?” Nick paused. “I think it's okay for me to call you by your real name again now, isn't it? Since we're all
family
?”

Sandy slid her hands under the muffling blankets, searching for some part of Ben it might be safe to touch. “Nick isn't a stalker, honey.” She fought to get the next words out. “He's my brother.”

Ben's whole body jolted and the movement made him cry out.

Sandy laid her hands against his side, trying to still him. “I'm sorry.” She didn't allow herself to cry. She didn't deserve the relief that would bring, for the two of them to cry together, for tears were now rolling out of Ben's eyes. When Sandy tried to blot the wetness with the tips of her fingers, Ben jerked away, ignoring the agony it must've caused him to move.

“You don't have a brother,” he rasped. Then comprehension cleared the silt out of his vision. “You lied to me. The whole time we've been married? And then even after he came in—”

Sandy shook her head, fast and hard. “I didn't recognize him myself. I swear. It's like—I put up a wall between that life and my real one. It took a while for it to come down.”

Disbelief bathed Ben's features, and Sandy tried again, though her first explanation had been the truer. “I haven't seen him in more than twenty years. He looks completely different. His hair is short—” She broke off, shuttering her eyes against the recollection of Nick's curls, which he used to keep groomed like a pet. How the girls had loved those curls. How their mother had.

Ben's face went stony, whether from pain or fury or both, and Sandy's voice began to climb, reaching for ever less relevant justifications. “He used to be so skinny! He must've spent a lot of time lifting weights in—”

Ben responded as if she'd said nothing. “You're relay—” The word split, fragmented in his mouth, though Sandy understood it.
Related.

Nick spat a fat globule of saliva onto the concrete. “You got it.”

Ben was himself once more now, betrayal and rage fueling him. He wrenched his shoulders back, throwing off the coverings.

“Honey, stop,” Sandy cried. “You're going to hurt yourself.”

Panting, stomach muscles visibly straining, and sweat mixing with the remnants of tears on his face, Ben made it into a seated position.

Nick took a step forward, though he seemed more to be observing the act than concerned by it.

“No,” Ben growled. “
You
hurt me. And him—” Ben's wrists strained against their binds; he tossed his head back and forth like a dog, grunting with effort.

A cry escaped Sandy. “Honey, please, stop! I would never hurt you!”

Ben mustered all the force that resided in the top half of his body, angling his torso to try and lift it from the floor. But he only made it inches before dropping back down. There was a second's lag time as Ben sat there, blinking. Then pain contorted his face, and a helpless howl emerged before he got control and bellowed, “Get out of here, Sandy, or whoever you are—”

Nick's head turned back and forth between them as if he were watching a show.

He wanted them to keep battling; Sandy saw the desire lapping in her brother's eyes. He had come here for help in his escape, but would a side benefit be to bring Sandy's life down around her, enjoying the fireworks as it fell?

Nick had never given Sandy his time or attention. He'd ignored her, dismissed her, except on the rare occasions Sandy was forced into his consciousness. But that had been because Nick didn't just get the best of everything—he got everything, period. While Sandy now had so much. A house, a family, a life. At some point, especially if his escape was delayed much longer, would these penetrate Nick's self-absorption, become worthy of his notice?

Ben fought to subdue himself, an almost physical feat. His breathing leveled out and the expression on his face smoothed as if a roller had passed over it. A thin thread of blood unraveled from beneath the blanket as he lay back down. Something must have broken through.

Sandy remained on her hands and knees, unable to stem her tears.