The Things That Keep Us Here (30 page)

FIFTY

A
NN STOOD BY THE BEDROOM WINDOW AND LOOKED OUT
over the backyard. The moon hadn’t yet risen. Everything out there was shifting black and gray, ground and house and sky. The night took on a different quality when there was no artificial light and noise to compete with it. It was longer and fuller and much more present. Getting through it required effort. She remembered this from before. She’d stood on the edge of a canyon and, for a long time, looked deep into the abyss. She’d finally stepped back. She didn’t think that she could do it again.

A gust of wind rattled the panes and plucked at the eaves. What was it bringing this time? The wind could be fierce here. Once it had lifted the table from the patio and sent it spinning into Libby’s backyard. Smith had come out to help her carry it back, and they’d laughed at how ferocious the wind could be.

The wind howled louder. It roared across the yard straight at the house.

Peter lay beneath it all, alone.

A shadow moved across the grass and disappeared beneath the spiky branches of the birch tree. She strained, trying to see, but the shape didn’t reemerge on the other side.

She had to lean on the front door to open it. The wind wrenched it from her grasp and slammed it against the house. The blanket around her shoulders sailed up. She grabbed at its ends and knotted them around her neck. She had to work to get down the stairs, curling her body protectively around the things she carried. Objects rattled down the street. Trash cans, probably, and whatever else had been left lying around.

Now the wind was at her back, propelling her around the corner of the house. She stumbled across the uneven pitch of the ground. She stopped by the birch and stood looking a long time into the darkness. What was he doing there? The clouds parted and nascent moonlight picked out the small shape huddled at the base of the tree.

“Barney.”

His eyes gleamed. He was staring at her.

“Here, boy.”

She took a few steps, then stooped to set down the bowl. She didn’t see him move, but there he was, hunched and lapping voraciously at the food. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the stiff stick of beef. It was their last stick of jerky. She peeled back the wrapper and broke off a piece. The dog came close and took it from her fingers with surprising tenderness. She gave him another bit. Another polite nibble and she fed him the final third.

He sniffed her fingers. He wasn’t limping anymore. Peter had done a good job of treating his injury.

She unscrewed the jar of water and poured its contents into the bowl. He drank, pushing the bowl around on the ground, sneezed. He looked up at her, then padded back to the tree. She untied the blanket from around her shoulders and lowered it to the ground. He pawed it, nosed up a corner, turned in a circle. He collapsed with a sigh and closed his eyes.

She sat down beside him and leaned her head back against the trunk.

“Peter planted this tree.”

The moon glided into view, huge and yellow and full. “It was in memory of our son, William.”

The name felt full in her mouth. The dog moved closer and rested his head on her lap. She put her hand on the scruff of his neck, the fur cold and springy beneath her fingers. She felt grateful for his simple devotion.

Peter wasn’t alone anymore.

FIFTY-ONE

A
NN PRESSED A CLEAN WASHCLOTH ALONG THE PORCELAIN
interior of the bathtub, brought it up, and squeezed out a few drops over the measuring cup. She lifted the cup and eyed the level. She’d collected a whopping nine ounces. So now they were down to bottled water. She’d lined the plastic bottles on the kitchen counter. There were fifty-three of them. Fifty-three bottles wouldn’t go far among four people, even if one of them was a baby and two of them were children. Plus, there was now Barney to think about.

She stood, swayed. Dizzy, putting a hand against the wall, she waited for the bright spots before her eyes to dance away.

She carried the cup down the stairs. A brown haze hung in the room. All the fires had been smoking recently. Maybe the chimney was blocked. “Kate, open a window, please, honey.”

Kate pushed herself up from where she’d been lying on the sofa. She’d been doing a lot of lying around lately. So had Maddie. It wasn’t just grief, Ann thought, feeling a pinch of fear. Their bodies were conserving.

Maddie said, “Would you rather have a hot fudge sundae or pizza?”

Kate unlatched the window. “Pizza.”

“What if it was a Graeter’s Shamrock Surprise Sundae?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kate sprawled back on the sofa. “I never want to eat anything cold again.”

A persistent mist rolled against the windowpanes. Ann had waited, hopeful, all day, but it hadn’t turned to rain. Still, the bowls she’d left out on the patio might hold some moisture. It was time to rotate them out, anyway.

Kate said, “Would you rather have electricity or the phone?”

It was as though they were living in some undeveloped country. Stay here and wait for help or chance the risk of exposure and go out looking? No. She wouldn’t leave Peter. She pulled down the plastic bowls from the cabinet.

“If I say electricity, would that mean TV, too?” Maddie asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“What about the radio?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Okay. The electricity.”

Ann filled the sink with water and poured in the last of the bleach. The sharp smell of it made her eyes tear.

“You sure?” Kate asked. “If you had the phone, you could call Grandma.”

Sooner or later, she would have to risk it. Leave the children alone and go look for food. How many trips would she have to make before she found an open store? Peter had said there were no police around. He’d said there’d been a scuffle in line that no one had stepped in to break up. That had been weeks ago. Tempers would be even more dangerous now. She set the containers on a dishtowel to drip-dry and glanced at the girls. Jacob scooted along the floor toward her. He was growing so fast, he was practically crawling. And Libby would miss it all.

She had seventy-four dollars in cash. She’d load up on whatever she could find, the basics, like rice and powdered milk. It might be enough to last another week. She couldn’t think beyond that. Bending, she picked up the baby and pressed her lips to his warm, downy head. Something glinted on the sleeve of his shirt. She turned him around in her arms and plucked it free.

Maddie said, “Kate? Do you think the TV’s working somewhere?”

“I don’t know.”

Ann held up the golden filament. A long hair curved between her fingers. Dread curled in her belly. It looked like … a cat hair. But how was that possible? “Kate,” she said, “where did you get this shirt Jacob’s wearing?”

“From his new bag of clothes.”

“The clothes I got from next door?”

“I guess.”

She meant the bag of hand-me-downs Ann had retrieved from the closet in Jacob’s bedroom. Libby’s sister must have had a cat. So this was the source of Maddie’s allergy attack: cat hair, their old enemy. Dread evaporated away into pure relief. “Look, girls,” she said. “Cat hair.”

They glanced over.

“I’m going to change Jacob,” Ann said. “Don’t put him in any more of his new things until I wash them.”

Kate shrugged and flopped over on her belly. “Okay.”

Ann paused in the doorway and regarded her daughters. There was no way to deliver this but directly. “Listen, girls. If anything happens, I want you to take the baby and go to Dr. Singh’s.” She’d glimpsed him the day before, balanced on a stepladder and doing something to one of his gutters. She’d watched him for a while. He never once coughed or wiped his nose.

“Why?” Maddie raised herself up onto an elbow. “We don’t even know him.”

“What do you mean, ‘if anything happens’?” Kate swung her feet to the floor. “Are you sick, too?”

“I’m fine. I’m not sick.” She jiggled the baby on her hip. “I just want you to be prepared. That’s all. Dr. Singh’s a medical doctor. He’ll take care of you. He’ll help you find Grandma and Aunt Beth.”

“Whatever.” Kate lay back down and drew up the blankets.

“Honey. You have to listen.”

But Kate merely rolled onto her side and faced the sofa cushions.

She reminded her of Shazia, the way she was lying there, so still and distant. Where was Shazia? Had she safely reunited with her lover? A tide of loneliness washed over her.

Maddie was watching her. “I heard you, Mommy.”

Ann smiled down at her compassionate child. “I know you did, darling.”

Peter had been right. All the neighbors should have banded together. They should have taken turns hauling the trash to the dump and going to the market. But everyone had been terrified. No one had trusted anyone. She hadn’t even trusted Libby.

What goes around comes around
. That’s what Peter’s father used to say. He’d been right. She was getting what she deserved, and now there was no one there to help her.

She glanced through the window at Barney, lying there beneath the birch. The thought crept in.

Almost no one.

THE FOG MUFFLED HER FOOTSTEPS DOWN THE PAVEMENT. SHE
halted at the end of the curving road and stood looking at the brick ranch house.

It had been different when she’d gone into Libby’s house. Then, it had been for the baby. It hadn’t felt like trespassing. She’d been inside it a million times before. She knew how the sunlight patterned the floor in the morning. She knew that the floor beneath the dining room table creaked, but only in the summer, and that if you stood at the bottom of the stairs, you could hear televisions going in three different rooms.

This house, however, was a stranger to her. She’d never been welcome here. She’d never once been invited in. The closest she’d ever come was walking past on the sidewalk when the front door hung open. Even then, she’d never really caught more than a glimpse of lamplight or wood floor before the door shut again.

The front door was securely latched. She considered the narrow window beside the door. Even if she managed to crack it open, she wouldn’t be able to reach in far enough to unlatch the door. And what if it had a key lock? Her heart sank.

The side gate creaked open easily under her hand, and she found herself in a secret garden. Tall bushy shapes loomed at her. Ivy crawled across the fence. There was a pool sheeted with weathered green material, chairs stacked to one side, a shed at the back. She turned to the house. A set of French doors was centered between two large picture windows. She walked over and jiggled the door handle, but it refused to turn. She chewed her lip in frustration.

Cupping her gloved hands around her eyes, she peered in. Pale green walls. A beige curve of countertop. A small table and chairs set to one side. Below the legs of one chair lay a bedroom slipper, wrong side up. Beneath it spread a puddle of something brown. She let her focus go soft and stepped back.

All right, all right. She’d have to be quick, before she lost her nerve. She scanned the patio. The metal chairs were a possibility. She picked one up and hefted it. The French doors would be tricky, their panes close-set and bracketed by thick strips of wood. She’d have to try one of the picture windows.

Holding the chair by its arms, she swung the pointed legs at the glass. The impact rattled up her arms. The glass shook and reflected her image back at her. She hadn’t even scratched it. Stepping back, she whirled in a circle and smacked the chair at the glass. The blow wrenched the chair from her grasp. Surely that had done something. But when she checked, she saw no blemish, not the tiniest crack. In disbelief, she ran her gloved fingers over the cold, perfectly smooth surface. What was this stuff, bulletproof? She clenched her hands into fists. Of course it wasn’t. It was ordinary window glass. The fault lay in the chair. It wasn’t heavy enough. And she wasn’t strong enough.

Peter could have done this. It would have taken him one swing.

She ran her gaze over the yard. Finn had lined his gardens with bricks, pushing them into the earth so they stood at angles. Maybe she’d have better luck with a smaller weapon. Crouching, she dug her fingers into the dirt and pried a brick free.

She leaned back. With all her might, she hurled the brick at the window. The glass crazed but held.
Yes!
Scooping up the brick, she threw it again. A tiny hole opened. She bashed the brick over and over at this soft, malleable spot, watching with glee as the cobweb of cracks spread outward. When the brick crumbled beneath her grasp, she ran to dig up another.

On her third brick, her hand punched through. With a shocked gasp, she stopped herself.
My God
. What if she sliced her arm on the jagged edges? She was no better than that stranger on TV, the one she saw hammering the Watergate windows. Now she understood what drove him. Not fear, not rage. Desperation. She released the brick to fall unseen on the other side of the glass and closed her fingers into a narrow point. Slowly, inch by inch, she withdrew her arm until she stood at last whole and uninjured.

No more bricks. She used the chair instead to chip at the broken edges, widening the hole until it was big enough. She dropped the chair and climbed through.

The smell slammed into her, nauseating and thick. The mentholated Vaseline she’d spread along her upper lip did nothing to keep it at bay. The room was in shadow. She made a wide circle around the leaking thing on the linoleum, stepped to the cabinets, and banged one open. Glasses. She went from door to door, finding dishes, cups, blender, thermos, waffle iron, everything tidily put away, all of it useless.

She spun around to the pantry. Empty. So was the refrigerator. She reached into the murky interior and patted the shelves to make sure. She lowered the oven door. She checked the microwave. Peter had seen towers of cans. There’d been gallons of water. Where was it all?

She stood there.

Without meaning to, she found herself focusing on the thing lying at the end of the room. It was a black-and-yellow pool of fat and bone and sinew, covered in dark greasy material that had once been clothing.
Walter Finn, damn it, what have you done with the things you hoarded?

The bathtubs and sinks were dusty and bare. She tracked through rooms, scanned closets, checked under beds, and unzipped suitcases. Coming to the end of the long hallway, she switched on her flashlight and pulled down the attic ladder. Standing on its topmost rung, she swept her light around the rafters. Pink insulation puffed between wooden beams. A crumpled beer can lay on its side. A magnificent spiderweb stretched across a far corner.

The basement was damp with the odor of mildew. The windows were shrouded by black plastic. One corner drooped, letting in a faint stripe of light. Weather insulation? Then no. Finn had light-proofed the basement. The furnace crouched sullenly along one wall. She spied two wooden chairs, a rolled-up rug, a dozen or so paint cans. She came around the corner and saw a long folding table with a chair positioned before it. A computer sat there. She pushed the buttons and tried the keyboard. It was dead. Same for the radio beside it. A portable heater sat beneath the table. She thought about taking it, then decided against it. It was useless without power.

The garage was empty, too. She opened car doors, shone her flashlight across the seats and footwells, raised the trunk and pushed aside the tarp and bottles of motor oil he kept there.

Back to the kitchen, gagging at the foul odor, she searched every cabinet again. Nothing. Someone else had beaten her to it. They’d come in and taken everything, leaving behind not so much as a salt-shaker or a tea bag.

But did that make sense? Trespassers would have left some evidence of their presence, either in cabinet doors hanging ajar or—she glanced at the gaping hole in the window—broken glass.

The room had grown cold and moist with fog. She looked down again to the form on the floor. “You win.”
You old bastard
.

Stepping back through the jagged hole, she looked around the yard. The sun, having never made a real appearance all day, was sliding below the treetops. Night was coming. Her gaze lit on the shed tucked in the far corner.

The door was locked. Keys hung inside the front hall closet. She’d seen them dangling there. Surely one of them belonged to this door. It turned out to be the third key she tried.

She found herself in a musty space. Here, too, Finn was obsessively tidy. Terra-cotta planters were stacked on the shelves beside containers of plant food. Garden tools hung from hooks. Bags of soil and grass seed stood upright along one wall. But she saw almost none of it. Her focus was on the long row of soup cans and the big plastic jugs of water. She let the beam of her flashlight linger on the long, narrow canvas bag.

Tomorrow they would head north.