As Night Falls (21 page)

C
arolyn Mills was washing up after dinner when she became aware of a noise on the dirt road outside. It happened sometimes, an encroachment, even way out here on a piece of acreage that had been in her husband's family for generations, bordered by state land. Danny was responsible for the road himself, plowing it, but also laying in fresh gravel after the spring runoff washed the old away. Tasks that to Carolyn were novel and new were for Danny like taking a shower or sweeping the floors. Up here you maintained the road. In the Connecticut suburb where she'd grown up, you took care of yourself and your house, although Carolyn's family had had a cleaning woman for the latter. Actually, they had people for the former, too: performing mani-pedis, waxing stray hairs while coiffing ones they meant to keep.

This noise didn't belong to a car; there was no rumble of an engine. And though a light snow was falling, there wasn't enough accumulation to merit a shoveling yet. Danny must be in the living room, with the paper and his pipe.

Carolyn called out to him, setting aside her sponge.

“Hunter gone astray, I'm thinking,” Danny said, rising from his chair by the woodstove.

In addition to coming from a completely different background, Danny was also almost twenty years older than she. How her family had blanched when perennially single Carolyn had gone for a ski weekend with girlfriends—women who weren't single, who had left behind husbands and even children—and simply never come back.

Eventually her family had rallied, attending the small wedding she and Danny hosted up here. Her husband loved this land, and would never think of traveling out of state to take part in some white and flowery occasion beneath a tent.

“This late? With weather up there on the mountain?” Carolyn asked, indicating the occlusion of the moon outside. Even she knew this was no night for hunting.

Danny gave a shrug she had learned to read. It said:
Who knows what folks from downstate get up to?
“Let's see if he needs any help.”

He walked past her toward the mudroom. But when Danny drew the side door open, there was nobody to be seen.

Her husband stepped outside, coatless in the cold. The temperature hardly seemed to affect him, but when he came back inside he rubbed the sleeves of his shirt up and down, shaking his head. Snow drifted down like confetti.

“No one there,” he said.

And still those sounds, a slow sliding along the dirt, almost a rasp.

“It's coming from in front,” Carolyn noted.

They went to look. With the lamps on, it was impossible to see more than a few inches through the window, so Danny opened the door, and they squinted out into the flakes.

Only Carolyn wasted time on a gasp.

One of the reasons she'd fallen so deeply and surely in love with Danny was his air of take-charge capability. Nothing was beyond him. Carolyn had been taking one final run when she'd lost a ski and badly strained her ankle. She was hovering mid-slope, trying to decide whether to try and wedge her one ski back on, or hobble down in her boots—maybe even take the slope butt-first, so badly was her ankle beginning to swell in its constraining cuff—when Danny swooped down amongst the moguls, landing a perfect Christie beside her. Instantly, he assessed the situation, and just as fast, he was skiing her downhill, somehow managing to tow her equipment along. Nobody had to go back up the mountain for so much as a pole. Carolyn had known then and there that she'd never leave this man's side.

He told her to go get the phone, and Carolyn cursed the paralysis that always beset her when trouble came. Even she could intuit that this situation was much more dire than the one she had faced on the slopes, and it had landed literally at their front door, in a house that was lost in the woods and a thickening layer of snow.

Carolyn turned and ran, praying the landline hadn't gone out, while Danny ducked outside. Racing back with the phone, Carolyn watched him from the window. She could see quick questions being mouthed, and a brisk examination performed when he was met with nothing besides a blank stare. Danny seemed to decide that it was safer to take the woman in his arms than task her with walking one more step. She was wearing the oddest coat: black on one side, beige in front.

Danny strode back into the house, his back barely bent beneath the burden he carried. His arms were streaked with something dark. Not dirt. Carolyn drew in stifled breath again. That coat wasn't two-toned; it was soaked through with blood.

“Call the police,” Danny said. “Number's on the fridge.”

Her husband was practically law enforcement in this town himself, lifelong friends with the old chief of police, and an advisor of sorts to the new.

She dashed back into the kitchen, hunting for the right magnet on the refrigerator.

Danny laid the woman on the couch, and Carolyn heard her rake in a breath. “Man…took my car…stabbed me…”

“Shh,” Danny told her. “Lie still now. You're going to be all right.”

Carolyn came and handed him the phone.

“Chief,” he said once the call had gone through. “It's Mills. Got a woman just walked up out of nowhere. She's hurt bad. Lost a lot of blood.”

A pause.

“Forgot all about the 911,” Danny said. “Sorry about that, Chief.”

Carolyn bent over the woman. Her eyes were closed and her skin had gone waxy.

“Blankets,” Danny said.

Carolyn went and fetched an afghan, draping it over the woman's prone form. The sudden weight of the cloth must've disturbed her, for the woman began to writhe on the couch. Blood that had clotted renewed its flow.

“Long,” the woman panted. “Hill.” A great sucking intake of air. “Road.”

Danny looked up from the phone, while Carolyn's hand stilled in the pressure she was applying.

“Long Hill Road, she's saying,” Danny said into the phone. “Maybe she lives there, wants her family notified—”

The woman's body began to jerk on the couch, rising high, then slapping down against the cushions, as if she were possessed.

“Danny!” Carolyn shrieked, trying to hold her.

Danny dropped the phone and the police chief's disembodied voice floated out.

“Keep her calm, Mills,” he said. “I'm sending a bus and two of my men to you while I go check things out on Long Hill. I heard about that road once already from my officer tonight. And you know how I feel about coincidences.”

“W
hat is that infernal noise?” Nick demanded. “It sounds like hissing.”

Sandy felt herself sinking down, becoming infant-soft and trapped again.
Infernal
was the word their mother used to describe Sandy as a child. Only then she'd been Cassandra. Cassandra with her infernal crying, her infernal curiosity, her infernal demands.

If she let herself become Cassandra again, she would never get them out of this.

She straightened the rod of her back. Swallowed around a stone lodged in her throat. Then she went to look through the sliding doors that let out onto the yard, wiping away a circle of vapor on the glass before squinting outside.

“It's sleet,” she said after a moment. “The snow must be letting up.” Sandy took a breath, then glanced back at her brother. “Were you in prison so long you lost your north country?”

Nick regarded her coolly. That chill used to be the harbinger of Nick's cruelest intent. He'd looked at her that way just before he took out the lye.

But now Sandy stared back, her fear transformed in the wake of Ben's learning the truth. Sandy had been terrified for most of her life, but with this chasm opened up between her and Ben, she realized she'd been scared of the wrong thing.

“It should stop soon,” Sandy went on. “You'll want to get out there ahead of it.”

“I told you not to try your shrink tricks on me,” Nick muttered. But he was studying the window while hope lit his gray gaze. He reached down and touched his lower leg.

“Why are you doing that?” Sandy asked boldly. “Didn't my husband hurt your foot?”

“My leg bothers me when the weather's bad,” Nick said. “Call this my way of checking on the storm.”

Sandy hadn't been prepared for that. No amount of strength strapped on like athletic gear, extra padding to protect the flesh within, would enable her to tolerate that memory.

Nick seemed to sense her queasy pang, and aimed a smile at her. “We should bulk up before heading out. What are you gonna fix?”

The thought of preparing her brother a meal repulsed Sandy. Their mother had always waited on Nick, but Sandy had been called upon for the usual chores of childhood, not to mention a fair amount of cleaning up after her brother, until she simply began staying away from the house.

“Harlan will be hungry, too. Make extra.” Nick broke into a throaty chuckle. “A lot extra.”

Everything inside Sandy felt tightly coiled, like an animal ready to pounce.

“And then tell him and the princess to come down.”

The order galvanized her. Sandy found an ovenproof crock that had been judged safe enough to remain behind and dumped some sauce into it, placing the makeshift contraption on a burner. She located a few flimsy plastic utensils in a picnic basket in the pantry, and put them on the table, before crossing to the stairs and calling out to Ivy.

Nick joined her there. “Would you be so kind as to put on the news?” he asked with elaborate politeness. “I want an update.”

Sandy grabbed the remote from a chest in front of one of the couches, and lit up the flat screen. The cable was out—or had been cut by Nick, more likely—but after a few seconds of fiddling, and a return to basics, the local channel came in amidst a ghost of static.

The weather report was being broadcast, although the sound quality was terrible, cutting in and out. “The first snowstorm of the season…” said the announcer. There was a series of grainy hisses as the audio blurped off and on. “…blow over as fast as it came in.” Sandy practically let out a cheer. Back to lip-reading until the announcer's commentary grew audible in spurts. “…up to
hiss
feet of accumulation in the higher altitudes, with
hiss
less lower down
hiss
temperatures rising throughout the
hiss
to a balmy thirty-eight degrees.” A final clear burst of words, which should've especially pleased the weatherman since he seemed quite proud of them. “Old Man Winter, you may be just getting started, but for now, you're a lot of hot air.”

The weather map switched to a shot of newly filled salt trucks, while a roster of game cancellations scrolled across the screen. Then the screen changed to footage of construction on a small bridge. A female newscaster, her coat and muffler blown about by a sudden shock of snow, shouted, “Now for the latest on tonight's breaking news.”

Nick pushed Sandy aside to step closer to the TV, but at that moment the flurry of static broke into a buzzing swarm, and audio was completely lost. Hand thrust out, Nick stalked toward the television. The static grew louder, its rush filling the room. Nick ran a hand along the sleek black frame, looking madly around. “How the hell do you get this noise to stop?”

Sandy picked up the remote and pressed Mute. An acrid smell began to drift in from the kitchen, stinging her nose, and she hurried toward it.

Nick strode over to the windows and checked them before lowering himself into a chair. His head twitched nervously, gaze flicking this way and that.

Sandy scraped noodles from their earlier dinner into two bowls, plunking one down in front of Nick. The sauce had charred and blistered in spots, but she supposed it had to compare favorably with prison fare. At the least it would present a distraction from that news story.

Nick twirled a clump of pasta with the plastic fork, but didn't raise it to his mouth. “Didn't the route your husband laid out take us down?”

Sandy gave a nod, frantic and fast.

Nick set his forkful back in the bowl, and stared off into space.

“Lower altitudes,” Sandy murmured. “They said there'd be less accumulation.”

“I heard what they said,” Nick muttered. Then, without so much as shifting in his seat, he raised his voice. “Hey, Harlan. Good news.”

Sandy looked toward the archway, where Harlan and Ivy had appeared. Sandy was about to rush to her daughter, but when she spared another glance, she stopped.

Because, somehow, Ivy knew.

Harlan must have told her; it was the only way. Sandy had the mad urge to rush forward, squeeze the breath from this mountain of a man who not only served as her brother's muscle—allowing him to wreak havoc as surely as their mother had—but who had also cut the last fraying thread between her and Ivy.

Harlan nudged Ivy, just a tap, but enough to make her lurch and step into the kitchen. Ivy looked around the room, her eyes gray and bleak. They were Nick's eyes, at least in this light. How had Sandy never let herself see that before?

She snatched a peek outside before walking up to Ivy. “Listen to me,” she hissed while Nick picked up his fork again. Harlan wedged himself into a chair and lifted his own meal, studying its contents. The bowl looked like a teacup in his hand. “I know that you know.”

Ivy's gaze continued to circle.

Sandy leaned forward, grasping Ivy's slim arms, and ignoring the way Ivy stood like a broom handle in her hold. “But they're leaving, Ive. They're going to go now, for real! And once they do, everything will return to normal.”

Still Ivy wouldn't look at her.

“No.” Sandy shook her head. “Not normal. That isn't what I meant. I mean that we can sort everything out. We'll talk about this. We'll talk about everything.”

Ivy wrenched herself free of Sandy's hands, and looked back toward the living room, where images continued to shadow across the TV screen.

Nick and Harlan both set to their meals.

Sandy had always lied to Ben. She'd justified it by telling herself that they weren't big lies; these were about the definition of white lies or fibs. Like if business was slow for Off Road during mud season, Sandy would downgrade the sum on their propane bill. Or when she hadn't insisted that Ivy tell Ben about her failing grade earlier-this-evening-slash-a-whole-lifetime-ago. Sandy lied so often that it had become a habit, a way to survive everyday worries and stressors and hassles, the lubrication of a shared life. But now she realized that these small lies had been possible only because their entire relationship was built upon one tremendous, overarching deception. And although Sandy didn't take those same liberties with Ivy, a similar faulty foundation lay beneath the two of them.

At the table, Harlan was digging in with gusto, while Nick shoveled up one forkful after another, swallowing them down unchewed.

“ 'S good,” Harlan remarked, his mouth full.

“Honey?” Sandy said to Ivy. “Why don't you go get the packs and put them by the door? Gather up all the outerwear too, please.”

Ivy didn't make a move. Instead, she opened her mouth, and posed a slow, defiant question. “Why were you watching that weird old-fashioned kind of TV?”

Sandy responded, keeping her answer deliberately vague. “It was the news, honey. We wanted to check on things before they go.”

It took Ivy only a moment to parse the statement. Sandy watched as its meaning came clear.
No,
she thought, the word a tiny pinprick in her mind.
Ivy, please. Just keep quiet.

But it was too late. Ivy was angry in a way she never had been before. This wasn't the resentful petulance of a teenager, but the legitimate rage of a young woman who had every right to feel betrayed. As Ivy's fury unfurled like the petals of a carnivorous plant, Sandy knew she was about to witness the implosion of the last chance they had.

“Oh,” Ivy said. “That's right. My
uncle's
been in jail.” The word seemed to blister on her tongue.

Nick looked over at Ivy in the midst of slurping up a strand of pasta.

“He doesn't know that nobody gets their news on TV anymore,” Ivy continued. “And you haven't filled him in, have you, Mom?”

Sandy held up a desperate hand, warning Ivy, pleading with her, but Nick sent her a look that tripped her back a step.

“We all know that's not your way,” Ivy went on. “To tell people the crucial stuff they really need to know.”

Nick pushed back his plate, studying Ivy with a look of intent alertness.

Ivy faced him. “What you were watching wasn't news,” she went on, emitting a dry, husky laugh. “It was olds.”

Sandy's mouth was so woolly, she could hardly speak. “The television is fine for local.”

Ivy shook her head. “You couldn't even hear on that thing.”

“Is there something that we could hear on better?” Nick asked. “And get tonight's stories?” There was a thrum beneath his mild tone, like a railroad track just before the train came roaring along.

“You get news online now!” Ivy burst out, wielding the scrap of knowledge like a weapon. “For all you know, the police are waiting for you at the bottom of our road.”

Harlan turned a panicked face to Nick, anguish grouping his features together into one sodden mass.

Ivy huffed in satisfaction. “Too bad you smashed all of our computers.”

Nick nodded sagely. “That is too bad.”

Sandy was suddenly filled with a seething hatred and rage, directed not at her brother, still less at Ivy's perfidy, but at herself.

A slow smile rose on Nick's face. “What to do, what to do?”

For the first time, doubt entered Ivy's eyes. She looked at Sandy.

Sandy turned away, feeling fright and desperation overtake her.
Oh, baby girl. They were about to go. You've put us all back in danger just to lash out at me.

She heard Ivy speak as if from a distance. “I mean, probably not for local, my mom's right about that. I meant more for national stories—”

“Ivy,” Sandy said quickly. “Don't lie to him. It will only make him—”

“Oh, you're a fine one to talk!” Ivy shrieked, so suddenly that Sandy jumped.

Nick moved into the space between them. His step seemed sturdy enough now. Maybe he could even get on Ben's boots.

“It's okay!” he said heartily, as if someone had inadvertently offended him and he was brushing it off to be polite. He flashed a smile at Sandy. “Don't blame the pretty princess. She's a smart girl to suggest we double check.”

Sandy stared at him.

“Come on.” Nick paused to chuck Ivy beneath her chin, ignoring it when she flinched. “I bet it won't be too hard to find a computer. Let's go visit those neighbors you told me about.”