Savage (3 page)

“Janice, where are you?”

His voice caused her flesh to tingle and itch as if covered with insects, the sound of her name coming from his mouth so sickening that it made her want to change it to something else entirely. But then he would eventually know it, and speak it, and it, too, would be corrupted by his foul mouth.

She could feel him there in the doorway behind her, the poison of his very presence radiating from his body.

“There you are,” her husband, Ronald Berthold, said, followed by the sloshing of water and the sound of him swallowing.

Though she would have preferred to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the undulating expanse of ocean, she braced herself and turned to look at him.

Her husband was drinking greedily from a bottle of water. He had been out for a morning run and still wore the sweat-stained T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers upon his feet.

She could smell him now, smell his sweat, and almost became sick, breathing through her mouth to counter the nausea.

“Hey,” he said as he brought the bottle down from his mouth, screwing the cap back in place. “We should think about getting out of here sometime today. There's a pretty big storm coming.”

She'd heard the weather report earlier but had been distracted from the news by the fact that her husband had been getting ready to leave for his run. That was all she could focus on at that moment, the sweetness of him not being there. She would have tolerated the most destructive of natural disasters if it meant he wouldn't be there.

“I'll start to pack,” she said, hating to speak to him because it would only lead to him talking to her more.

She sensed his movement and turned to see that he had left the entryway and was approaching her.

Oh God,
she thought, feeling her revulsion rise. She turned to face him. The smell coming off his body was nearly too much, and she felt herself grow light-headed.

“I should probably get started if we want an early start” she was able to get out without gagging, trying to move past him, but he reached out and gently took hold of her arm.

The feeling of his hand on her flesh was beyond awful, and it took all that she could muster not to scream. And to think that at one time, so very long ago, when she was too young and naive, she had actually invited his touch.

She fired a withering glance at his hand upon her arm, and he released her as if laser beams had shot from her eyes to sear his flesh.

“Let me shower and I'll go pick up Alfred from the vet,” he suggested.

“No, I'll do it,” she said quickly, seeing it as a way to remove herself from his loathsome presence, if only for a time. Yes, she would have to spend some of the time with the dog, but at least Alfred was somewhat tolerable.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice like nails on a blackboard. “I can do it . . . just let me clean up a bit and—”

“No,” she said with finality, already on the move to get away from him. “I'll do it. You stay here and get the house ready for the storm.”

She could feel his eyes following her as she was leaving the room.

“Okay,” he said. “See ya when you get back.”

Janice was already starting to feel better being away from him when she heard him call out from the sunroom, words that were like poison-dipped blades thrust into her flesh.

“Love you,” Ronald Berthold announced.

It was all she could do to keep from vomiting.

Sidney had hoped that a warm shower would have helped her headache, but that wasn't the case. It felt as though she had a steel band wrapped around her forehead and somebody was slowly tightening it.

She sometimes had problems with sinus headaches, especially when the weather was going to get bad, so it didn't surprise her one bit to hear that a pretty serious storm was on the way.

Before leaving the house, she'd taken two Advil, but it hadn't done much of anything to cut the nausea-inducing pain, so she figured that maybe some caffeine might do the trick. At this stage in the game she would be willing to try just about anything. She wondered if it was entirely the weather's fault for her nasty head pain, or if it also had to do with what had gone on earlier at the house with her father, and the message she still hadn't listened to. Her eyes darted from the road to quickly glance at her phone on the passenger seat.

Snowy whined from the backseat of the Jeep, realizing where Sidney was going. Charter Street was unusually crowded for a week day, and it took her longer to find a parking spot. An SUV pulled out of a space directly across from the Sunny Side Up Diner, and she thought maybe there was the chance that today wasn't going to be as bad as she'd originally thought.

The dog started to pace in the back of the Jeep, going from the window on one side to the other, whining the entire time. Sidney turned in the driver's seat, motioning with her hand for Snowy to pay attention to her. She hadn't intended on bringing Snowy to work with her today, but seeing as her father wasn't having the best of days, she thought maybe it would be a good idea.

Sidney snapped her fingers, even though the dog could not hear, but the movement was enough to capture her attention.

“You be good for a minute, and I'll bring you a corn muffin, all right?” Sidney said, giving the hand signal that informed the shepherd that she was leaving for a moment but would be right back.

The dog sat obediently, watching her with a steely gaze as Sidney got out of the Jeep and crossed the street to the diner.

Jillian, a classmate of hers since kindergarten, was working the to-go counter and greeted her with a smile, and immediately asked how she and Cody were doing. Sidney thought about just blowing it all off and saying they were fine, and leaving it like that, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it, the words much harder to get out than she expected.

“We're not together anymore.”

The expression on her friend's face went from shock to sadness and sympathy.

“Oh my God, what happened?”

Sidney just didn't want to get into it right now and attempted to simplify. “It was just one of those things. We'd grown apart, and with me leaving for school, we thought it would be best if . . .” Sidney paused, and Jillian accepted this as an invitation to put in her two cents.

“That really sucks; I'm so sorry. I didn't think you two would ever break up.”

“Yeah, but . . . ,” Sidney said, eager to wrap the conversation up.

“I thought for sure that you two were like, permanent. I could totally see the two of you married and stuff, and . . .”

Sidney's headache had grown much worse, and her stomach wasn't doing too good at the moment either.

“Things change,” Sidney said firmly, but then managed to smile.

“Well I think it sucks,” Jillian added. “But who knows? Maybe you'll get back together.”

Sidney wanted to tell her
no
, that they wouldn't be getting back together, and the fact that they
had
been together for so long didn't necessarily mean that they
were
going to be together for eternity. It was just over; things like this happened.

Instead she just smiled again, saying “Who knows,” and ordered up a large black tea to go, momentarily forgetting the corn muffin that she'd promised Snowy. But she quickly rectified the situation, putting the order in when Jillian brought her drink.

Waiting for the muffin, she distracted herself by watching the flat-screen televisions on the wall above the counter and the weather forecast that was predicting doom and gloom. From what she could see, the storm was going to make a direct hit on Benediction with some heavy rains and high winds and might even stay a hurricane instead of being downgraded to a tropical storm, which is what usually happened.

Great,
Sidney thought, remembering the last bad summer storm and how they went without power for six and a half days, and that one
had
been downgraded.

Jillian returned with her muffin and said again how sorry she was. Sidney thanked her through gritted teeth, leaving the diner with a wave while sipping from the steaming cup of tea. She decided to leave the tea bag in the boiling hot water, wanting the tea to be as strong as it could be to help alleviate the pressure in her head.

She stopped on the sidewalk for an opening to cross, darting out when all was clear. Snowy was patiently waiting, eyes fixed on her as she approached the Jeep. Sidney could see that her tail was wagging like crazy, somehow knowing that a special treat would soon be hers.

“Were you a good girl?” Sidney asked as she slid into the driver's seat.

Snowy didn't wait for an invitation, climbing from the back into the passenger's seat, snout having already found the bag that contained the muffin.

“All right, you gotta sit,” Sidney said while making the hand gesture that the dog was quite familiar with. Snowy sat, trickles of drool already leaking from the sides of her mouth in anticipation.

The dog watched as Sidney rummaged in the bag, first breaking off a piece of muffin for herself, and then another for the dog, which was gently plucked from Sidney's fingers. It wasn't long before the corn muffin had completely disappeared, most of it making its way into Snowy's belly. She didn't give the German shepherd people food all that often, but every once in a while Sidney liked to give her special pup a treat.

“There,” she said, crumpling up the bag. “How's that?” She rubbed the dog's head and pointed ears affectionately, then signaled for Snowy to return to the back before they could go.

Sidney turned the key in the ignition, starting the Jeep up, but before putting it in drive, she unconsciously reached for her phone, checking for new messages.

The message from Cody was still there, begging to be listened to.

She thought she was stronger than that, strong enough to put the phone away—maybe even delete the message—before heading on to work, but in a moment of weakness she called up the voice mail to listen.

“Hey, it's me,”
Cody's voice began
. “I know you said that you didn't want to talk anymore about . . . about us . . . but I think we should—”

Sidney gasped, startled as somebody rapped a knuckle against the driver's-side window. Lowering the phone, she saw an all too familiar smiling face at the window, motioning for her to put the window down.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Rich Stanmore said cheerfully. He leaned into the car, reaching back to pet Snowy. “And how's my Snowy girl?”

“She's good,” Sidney answered. “What are you doing here? I thought you went back to Boston.”

“I did, but I'm back,” he said. He was holding a coffee from Sunny Side Up and took a swig. “My folks left during the week. Dad had to head back for some meetings, so they asked me to come this weekend to close the place up.” He had some more coffee.

“Just in time for the storm.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed, swallowing his sip. “Which makes you the perfect person to see.”

“Oh yeah, why's that?”

“Not only am I closing up the house, but I've got to take care of the sailboat,” he said.

“Yeah . . . ,” she said, still unsure what he was getting at.

“Well, I need to get it out of the water, especially if there's a storm on the way, and Dad has the truck . . .” He waited for her to catch on, but it still hadn't sunk in yet. “I was wondering if Cody could . . .”

She felt her stomach plummet at the mention of her ex-boyfriend's name. She had no desire to go again through the fact that she and Cody had broken up, and even less to answer the inevitable follow-up questions as to why, and how she was holding up, and blah, blah, blah. . . .

She just couldn't do it right then.

“I don't know; I guess I could ask him,” she said, having no idea why she would even suggest such a thing since they hadn't spoken since the breakup, and the fact that Cody hated Rich, having always suspected that the older boy had harbored a secret crush for her.

“Yes!” Rich said, pumping his fist in the air. “If you could do that for me, I would love you forever—seriously.”

“Let me see what I can do,” she told him, regretting each and every word. “But I've got to get to work.”

“Call me later?” he asked.

“Will do.”

“Okay,” Rich said, stepping back from the car.

She said good-bye, rolling up her window as she pulled out of the parking spot. Rich's reflection waved to her in the rearview as she headed down Charter, where she would take a left onto Lafayette.

The day just kept on getting better.

And Sidney seriously began to consider if it was too late to call in sick.

Caroline Moss could not bear the thought of anyone in her home touching her things.

The woman sat in her favorite recliner, surrounded by the accumulation of years: stacks of newspapers and magazines, piles of junk mail, receipts, empty cat food cans and take-out containers. Furniture once covered in plastic to keep it clean had been swallowed up by mounds of stuffed animals, baby dolls, record albums, VCRs and VHS tapes, CDs, milk cartons, and clothing—piles and piles of clothing. To anyone else it would have looked like the town dump, but to Caroline, everything was something of value.

But now somebody was threatening to come and take her treasures away.

As she sat in the comforting nest of her things, Caroline quivered with anger, remembering the unexpected visit from her daughter, Barbara. Caroline managed to hold back another bout of tears, of which there had been many of late, all brought on because Barbara chose to stick her nose into business that didn't concern her. Caroline sneered with the memory of her daughter's overwrought emotional response, pleading with her mother to seek help, if not for her own sake, then for the sake of her brother, Caroline's son, Isaac.