The Darkest Evening of the Year (19 page)

Chapter
44

A
t Amy’s house, Brian measured kibble and treats into plastic Ziploc bags, more than they would need, enough for three days. He packed them in a tote with a food dish, a water dish, and other dog gear, while Nickie politely and successfully begged for nibbles.

In her bedroom, Amy selected two days’ worth of clothes—jeans and sweaters—and packed them in a carryall with her SIG P245. She included a fully loaded spare magazine.

Since moving to California, she had not used the weapon.

She had no clear reason to suppose that she would need it on this trip. Vanessa was evidently a disturbed, petty, and vindictive woman—even cruel, judging by the evidence of her e-mails—but that did not make her homicidal.

In fact, she seemed too selfish to do anything that would put her liberty—and therefore her pleasures—at risk. To secure a life of luxury and privilege with the wealthy man who evidently thought more with his little head than with his big one, she had good reason to expedite this transferral of custody without a hitch.

Besides, although Vanessa might have been a bad mother, might have been resentful of and mean toward her daughter, she had neither abandoned the girl nor strangled her in infancy. Judging by the news these days, more babies than puppies ended up discarded in Dumpsters. A decade spent looking after the girl, no matter how reluctantly, seemed to argue that at least a faint flame of accountability still lit the final chamber in the otherwise dark nautilus of her heart.

Abandoned in a church at the age of two, with a name pinned to her shirt, Amy could never say for certain who she was or that her birth parents had found her any less repulsive than Vanessa found the girl whom she called Piggy.

By the age of three, she’d been adopted from Mater Misericordiæ Orphanage by a childless couple, Walter and Darlene Harkinson. She had legally taken their name.

She retained only vague memories of them because, just a year and a half later, their car had been hit by a cement truck. Walter and Darlene had perished instantly, but Amy had survived unscathed.

At four and a half, twice traumatized—once by cold rejection, once by loss—Amy had returned to the orphanage, where she lived until shortly after her eighteenth birthday.

Young Amy Harkinson might have been emotionally fragile and even psychologically damaged for life if not for the wisdom and kindness of the nuns. The nuns alone, however, could not have restored her.

No less important had been the golden retriever who had come limping toward her across an autumn meadow, filthy and half starved, only a month after her return to Mater Misericordiæ.

With its charm, the golden earned itself permanent residence as the orphanage dog. And because of its mysterious inclination, it had bonded to Amy above all others and had become no less than a sister to her and the foremost healer of her heart.

Curiously, what now inspired Amy to include the pistol in her bag was not the e-mail witch who had tormented Brian, but this new golden retriever that, less than a day previously, had come into her life with an air of mystery and with a direct stare that reminded her so powerfully of the dog who, long ago, had given her life meaning and who perhaps had even saved her.

She had known terror, loss, and chaos, but always she had found at least a fragile peace after terror, hope after loss, and pattern in the wake of chaos. In fact, it was her eye for pattern that made it possible for her to go on living.

The directness of Nickie’s eyes, Theresa’s beautiful but bruised purple eyes, Brian’s drawings of the dog’s eyes, his grandmother’s vivid wink in the dream, the bright eye of the lighthouse repeatedly flaring into her memory after all these years, blind Marco in the Philippines (real or not), blind Daisy at the side of three-legged Mortimer:
Eyes, eyes, open your eyes,
the pattern said.

The only physical danger she had faced recently had been from Carl Brockman and his tire iron, and that threat had passed. Yet she read the pattern of these eyes as having urgent and dire meaning.

Among other recent patterns, there were several incidents of strange effects of light and shadow, reminding her that there are both things seen and unseen.

In the scene as now set, something unseen waited.

Until her eyes were fully open or until the patterns proved to be benign and her interpretation proved to be misguided, she believed that packing the pistol and the spare magazine in the carryall was only prudent.

She had told Brian she would bring the gun. He had merely nodded as if to say
Why wouldn’t you?

Likewise, neither of them had questioned the wisdom of bringing Nickie. Of all the patterns in the current web, the one that wove through all the others was
dogs,
and this dog in particular.

Although they were using Amy’s Expedition, Brian drove because he’d more recently gotten sleep, even if it had been troubled by a tornado, and because Amy wanted to think without the distraction of traffic.

They had put down both rows of backseats, allowing Nickie to lie immediately behind them in the now spacious cargo area.

As Brian pulled away from her bungalow, Amy thought that she glimpsed Theresa’s small pale face at a window in Lottie Augustine’s house.

She said, “Wait, stop.”

Brian braked, but when Amy looked back, a curtain fell across the glass, and the face was gone.

After a hesitation, she said, “Nothing. Let’s go.”

Block after block, street after street, and up the freeway ramp, she kept checking the side mirror and leaning between the seats to get a better view through the tailgate window.

“No one’s following us,” he said.

“But she told you we’d be watched.”

“They don’t need to watch us now. They know we’re going to Santa Barbara. They can put a tail on us there.”

Rush hour had long passed. Northbound traffic remained heavy, but it moved fast, the freeway a loom ceaselessly weaving from the warp and woof of speeding vehicles a fabric of red and white light.

“Do you think, as bitter and troubled as she is, she really could manipulate some very wealthy man into this, and into marriage?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “If he was unfortunate enough for their lives to intersect, Vanessa could turn him off his path and onto hers. It’s not just how she looks. She has an instinct for your weaknesses, for finding the buttons that open the door to your dark side.”

“You? Even young and stupid, as you described yourself then? I don’t think you have a dark side.”

“I think most of us do,” he disagreed. “Maybe all of us. And the most important thing we can ever do is keep the door shut to it, keep the door shut and locked tight.”

Chapter
45

P
iggy can’t keep them out. They can keep her in, but she can’t keep them out.

She never knows when the door will open. This is scary.

Let not your heart be troubled.

Sometimes she hears footsteps. But sometimes they make no sound, like your shadow makes no sound when it runs down steps behind you, and they come in quick.

She must never be caught doing the thing she does sometimes, so whenever she is doing the Worst Thing She Can Do, she always listens really hard for the lock squeak.

She cleans up potato salad, all Mother’s mess. She bags trash. She washes dirty cleaning rags in her bathroom sink.

Then she goes to the door to listen. Voices. They are far away, maybe as far as the kitchen.

Mother and the man stay awake all through the dark. They sleep when the sun happens.

Doing the Worst Thing She Can Do is safer when they sleep. But right now she wants to do it so bad.

She wishes she had a window she could see out. Sometimes, they live where she can see sky.

Her windows have wood over them now. Sun comes through some cracks, but she can’t see out.

If she could see sky, she could wait to do the Worst Thing. Sky makes her feel better.

Sky is best when the dark comes out. It gets deeper. You can see then, and you think what Bear said.

She misses Bear. She misses him worse than all the windows there will ever be or never be. She will always miss Bear.

She will never forget him, never, the way she makes herself forget some things.

She likes moon. She likes stars. She likes shooting stars you can wish on.

If she could see a shooting star, she would wish for a window. But first she has to have a window to wish from.

Bear taught her how star wishing works. Bear knew everything. He wasn’t dumb like her.

Let not your heart be troubled, Piggy.

Bear said that a lot.

And he said
All things work out for the best, hard as that is to believe.

You just have to wait. Wait for a sandwich without a dead bug or live worm or nail in it. You wait and sometimes a good sandwich comes. Wait for a window. Wait.

The kitchen voices are still kitchen voices, you can’t hear the words from this far. Maybe she is safe.

The big chair has a cushion. The cushion has a cover. The cover has a zipper.

Inside the cover, under the cushion, the Forever Shiny Thing is hidden.

Forever
means all the days there are ever going to be, and then that many more. Bear explained it.

Forever
means no start and no finish.
Forever
means every good thing can happen to you, every good thing you can think of, because there’s time for all of it.

If there’s time for every good thing you can think of to happen, is there time for every
bad thing
you can think of to happen?

She asked Bear her question, and he said no, it doesn’t work that way.

Piggy herself is forever. Bear said so.

As soon as she has the Forever Shiny Thing in her hand, Piggy feels better. She feels not alone.

Alone is better than with Mother and the man.

But alone is hard.

Alone is very hard.

Alone is mostly what she ever remembers. She didn’t know how bad alone was until Bear.

She had Bear, and then she didn’t, and after there was no more Bear, she knew for the first time how hard alone was.

She feels close to Bear when she holds the Forever Shiny Thing in her hand. She holds it now very tight.

Bear gave it to her. A secret. Mother can never know. If Mother finds out, she will get the Big Uglies.

Right here at the chair, where she can quick shove the Forever Shiny Thing into the cushion cover, Piggy does the Worst Thing She Can Do.

Maybe she will be caught, so she is scared. Then not scared.

The Worst Thing always makes her not scared. For a while.

She has to be careful about time. She is not good about time. Sometimes no time at all seems like a lot. Sometimes a lot of time goes by like nothing.

If she forgets about time, she will Drift Away, like she does, and then she’ll forget about listening for the lock squeak, too.

She is quiet for a while but says what is in her heart.

Always say what is in your heart, Piggy. That’s the best you can do.

She is done. She feels not so alone as before.

“Oh, Bear,” she says.

Now and then Piggy thinks if she says his name out loud, he’ll answer. He never does. She still tries sometimes.

Bear is dead. But he could still answer.

Bear is dead but Bear is forever, too.

He will always be with her. He promised.

No matter what happens, Piggy, I’ll always be with you.

Mother killed him. Piggy saw it happen.

Piggy wanted to be killed, too.

For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light.

The only thing that kept the dark back was the Forever Shiny Thing that was her secret.

Now, before shoving it inside the cushion cover, Piggy looks at it one more time.

Silver. Bear said it is made of silver.

It is a word, one of just a few words she can read when she sees it. The word hangs on a silver chain. The word is
HOPE
.

Chapter
46

T
hey drove through an In-N-Out for cheeseburgers, fries, and soft drinks, and they ate on the road, paper napkins tucked in their shirt collars, more napkins layered on their laps.

Thrusting her head between the seats, licking her chops to take back the drool before it dripped, Nickie suckered Amy into giving her three morsels of hamburger and four fries. She withdrew her head and obediently settled down behind Amy’s seat when firmly told “No more, nada, no.”

Every road has romance, especially at night, and eating on the fly appeals to the delight in journeying that abides in the human heart. There is an illusion of safety in movement, the half-formed idea that the Fates cannot find us, that they stand on the doorstep of the place from which we recently departed, knocking to deliver a twist or turn that, while on rolling wheels, we will not have to receive.

This false but welcome dream of safety, coupled with the comfort of delicious unhealthy food, put Amy in a mood that made disclosure more imaginable than it would have been elsewhere.

When they had eaten and she had stuffed all their napkins and debris into the In-N-Out bag, she said, “I told you about being abandoned at the orphanage, about the adoption and cement truck and the orphanage again…but I never told you about my first dog.”

After the accident and the return to Mater Misericordiæ, she had been reduced by her experiences to frequent silences that concerned the nuns, to a poverty of smiles though previously she had been rich in them, and to a desire for distance from others.

One sunny afternoon in October, a month after her return, she had sneaked off alone to the farther end of the play yard from the church, abbey, school, and residence, the buildings that embraced Mater Misericordiæ’s quadrangle. The big play yard was on high land, and from it a meadow sloped gently to the valley where the town rose and the river ran and the highway receded.

She sat on the mown green grass just where it ended at the brow of the hill, beneath the spreading boughs of immense old oak trees. After a searing Indian summer, the tall grass of the descending meadow had faded to the color of the sunshine that had stolen the green from it.

The shadows of the oaks began to spill down the slope in early morning, but they seeped uphill once more as noon approached. By this hour, the shadows of other trees at the foot of the meadow steadily inked toward the crest.

Through the shadows, young Amy saw something golden coming, and then through the sunshine it ascended, red-gold in the white-gold grass. When she realized that it was a dog, she rose to her knees, and when she saw that it was limping, she stood.

In those days, she had never been in the company of canines, and she had been naturally wary of this animal. Because the dog limped, favoring its left hind leg, Amy’s wariness was tempered by sympathy that encouraged her not to retreat.

The poor thing was in miserable condition, its coat matted and filthy, as though it had been abandoned to fend for itself or as if it had been mistreated. Yet when it came to her, weary and weak and hurting, it smiled.

She didn’t know then that it was a golden retriever or that the lovers of the breed referred to this expression as the golden smile, which was easily offered and so different from the false smile of a dog merely panting.

When Amy reached out a hand to the golden, it did not growl or shy away, but instead took another step and licked her fingers in a manner that at once seemed to her to be a grateful kiss.

Halfway across the play yard, leading this four-legged foundling toward the orphanage residence, Amy encountered Sister Angelica, and then for a while there was much bustling about and excitement, with eager children streaming to the yard to see the wounded dog that Amy Harkinson had rescued from the meadow.

Sister Agnes Mary, the abbey’s infirmarian, arrived with a medical kit. She found a shard of glass embedded in one of the pads on the dog’s left hind foot, extracted it, and treated the wound with an antibiotic solution.

As bedraggled and dirty and flea-ridden and gaunt as the dog was, the children nevertheless were at once of the unanimous opinion that it should be given residence for life as the school mascot.

Mater Misericordiæ had never before enjoyed a mascot, and the sisters were not convinced that it was a good idea. Besides, being nuns and therefore responsible, they intended to attempt to locate the owner of the dog, though it wore no collar.

After assuring the gathered children that the pooch would not be sent to the pound, where it might eventually be put to death if not claimed, Sister Angelica chased everyone out of the yard to dinner in the refectory.

Amy lingered, tagging behind Sister Angelica and Sister Claire Marie as they, with a makeshift rope leash, led their new charge to the concrete work deck outside the laundry, behind the residence hall. There, they provided water for the dog to drink and devised solemn strategies for giving it a bath.

When Sister Claire Marie noticed Amy, she reminded her that she had been instructed to go to dinner. Reluctantly, Amy retreated.

Although the dog had made no comment on the departure of the other children, it began to whimper as Amy hesitantly walked away. Every time she looked over her shoulder, the dog was watching her, its head lifted, ears raised. She could hear its thin mewling even after she had turned the corner of the building.

Amy had eaten little of the food on her dinner tray when Sister Jacinta—who, because of her sweet high-pitched voice, was secretly called Sister Mouse by the children of Mater Misericordiæ—arrived in the refectory to bring her back to the deck outside the laundry.

The dog had not stopped whimpering since Amy had left. Because of their years of experience with the techniques of manipulation employed by cunning orphans, the nuns were not easy marks. But the dog’s mewling was of such a pathetic character that they could not harden their hearts to it.

Instantly upon Amy’s arrival, the dog quieted and smiled and wagged its tail.

Through the twilight and into the evening, a gaggle of sisters worked on the dog, cutting the terrible mats out of its coat, giving it
two
baths with shampoo and then a third bath with a flea-killing solution for which Father Leo had made an emergency trip into town.

When Amy strayed more than two steps from the dog, it whimpered, so eventually she participated in the grooming.

Because she was by then hopelessly smitten and desperate to find ways to tie the dog inextricably to Mater Misericordiæ, she decided that they must name it right there, right then, while it was still wet from the bath. Instinctively she knew that a dog with a name would work its way into the sisters’ hearts more quickly than would a nameless stray.

She announced that since Christmas was only a little more than two months away, the dog must be an early gift from Saint Nicholas, and therefore should be named for him. Sister Angelica informed her that this foundling was a girl, which set Amy off her stride only a moment before she said, “Then we’ll call her Nickie.”

Now, almost twenty-eight years later, behind the wheel of the Expedition, Brian glanced away from the road and said, “My God. The same name.”

Amy watched him think through the ramifications of this seeming coincidence, and though he returned his attention to the highway, she knew when a shiver of wonder went through him.

“There was a moment in the Brockmans’ kitchen last night,” Brian remembered, “right before you offered to buy Carl off. You’d been crouching beside the dog, and suddenly you stood up, staring at him so intently. You looked…I don’t know, not just startled, stricken, but I didn’t understand what it was.”

“He said her name. Janet hadn’t mentioned it on the phone to me. Right away, before any of the rest of this strangeness had happened, I
knew
the name wasn’t a coincidence. And don’t ask me how I knew or what I mean even now about what
our
Nickie is or why she’s here. But I knew…no coincidence. Then later, when I asked Janet why they decided to call the dog Nickie, she said Theresa named her.”

“The little girl, the autistic girl,” Brian said.

“Yes. Autistic or whatever she may be. Theresa said the dog should be called Nickie
because that’s what her name had always been
.”

He glanced at her again. “Always?”

“Always. What she meant by that…who knows. But, Brian, she meant something.”

Twenty-eight years earlier and three thousand miles east of the California coast, on that long-ago bath night, the sisters accepted the name Nickie for the foundling. They had seen that already the dog had brought Amy out of her troubling silence, that she no longer seemed to want to keep herself at a distance, that she had begun to smile again. They wanted to encourage her.

Once Nickie was clean and dry, the nuns decided that she could sleep in the infirmary, where Sister Regina Marie served as the night nurse when patients were in residence.

Although bathed, medicated, fed, and provided with a soft bed of folded blankets, the dog who was an early gift from Saint Nicholas proved not to be content without Amy at its side. The ceaseless and pathetic whimpering began again.

In those days, the concept of a therapy dog might not have been widely in use; but the nuns of Mater Misericordiæ recognized that a bond of some value had formed between the girl and the four-footed waif. Rules were bent if not broken, and although in the best of health, Amy bunked in the infirmary during the week that attempts were made to determine from where the dog had come.

The unrelenting and insistent prayers with which Amy pestered God must have made Him throw up His hands in exasperation and shout “All right already!” in the halls of Heaven, because the sisters failed in their good-faith efforts to locate an owner.

After Dr. Shepherd, a veterinarian, had examined Nickie and had brought her shots up to date, and after it had become clear that the dog was uncommonly well-behaved and housebroken, Mater Misericordiæ yet again lived up to its name—Mother of Mercy—and gave Nickie a forever home.

Although, as official mascot, the dog had free rein of all buildings except the church—and was often invited there, as well—she slept every night in Amy’s dorm room. For the next eleven years she was Amy’s shadow, Amy’s confidant, and Amy’s deepest love.

Over those years, of the more than three hundred girls who came at different points in their lives to Mother of Mercy, none became better known than once-shy and silent Amy Harkinson or had more friends, or held more student offices. In each yearbook for more than a decade, no one among them saw her photograph appear more frequently than Amy’s—except Nickie, of course, whose grinning mug brightened more pages than not, appearing in class plays and in a Santa hat at Christmas parties, wearing bunny ears for Easter and an American-flag neckerchief on the Fourth of July, always surrounded by adoring girls and beaming nuns.

Amy was sixteen when one day the usual energetic Nickie seemed tired, the next day still tired, and on the third day lethargic. She was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, a fast-spreading cancer that was too advanced for a surgeon to strip it all out or for chemotherapy to hold it at bay.

Nickie’s decline was swift. Her suffering would be certain if she was not given the mercy that is right for innocent animals; and no one could bear to see her suffer.

Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.

Mother of Mercy was a fine school as well as an orphanage. The passing of Nickie, dear mascot to all and sister to Amy, provided an opportunity not only to share but also to learn.

Those girls who felt strong enough—most did—were invited to assemble at twilight in the quadrangle, where the issue of animals’ souls was not debated but quietly accepted, and where prayers were said for Nickie. And during prayers, as twilight faded, candles were raised, hundreds of candles, while at the center of those assembled, Amy knelt beside her best friend to give comfort and to bear witness.

Sister Agnes Mary, the infirmarian, had volunteered to assist Dr. Shepherd, the veterinarian, in the administration of the two injections. The first would be a sedative to convey Nickie into a deep sleep, and the second would be the drug that stopped her heart.

Nickie’s favorite recreation-room sofa had earlier been placed in the center of the quadrangle, and Nickie, so weakened, had been carried to it. Amy knelt on the ground, face to face with this first dog that she had ever saved.

Estimated to have been three when she had limped up the meadow to her mistress, Nickie had been fourteen there in the last twilight of her fabled life, but she had still looked like a puppy, with little white in her face.

Only sixteen, Amy found a strength in herself that she had not known she possessed, strength to keep her voice calm and reassuring, even if she could not hold back the tears.

As if to say
It’s all right, you’re doing great,
Nickie licked Amy’s fingers, as she had licked them that first moment they had met in the meadow. A kiss hello, and now a kiss good-bye.

Nickie had always loved to have her face held firmly in cupped hands, thumbs stroking her cheeks, and would submit to this pleasure as long as anyone could be conned into providing it. Now Amy held that always-before comic face in her hands and looked into those expressive brown eyes. She said to Nickie, “You’re the sweetest dog who ever lived, and I have always been so proud of you, how smart you are, how quick to make a friend of everyone. I’ve loved you every moment, I couldn’t love a sister more, or my own child, or life,” and while she talked, the injections were administered, and Nickie went to sleep looking into Amy’s eyes. Amy felt the poor body twitch when the great heart stopped, just stopped, and Nickie went to God while waves of candlelight washed across the walls of the quadrangle and dazzled in windows and glimmered in grief-wet faces, and every flame said the same thing—
A special dog passed this way, who brightened the life of everyone she met.