“But they’re still together. Isn’t that the most romantic?”
“Sure. That took four pages?”
“I never heard it before. I’m going to copy it and keep it.”
“Knock yourself out,” said Adam.
SOMEBODY’S SON
Mallory woke on the couch and nearly jumped to her feet. She felt as though she’d slept for nine or ten hours. But when she glanced up at the exceptionally ugly clock Dad had won in a Chamber of Commerce raffle—a bas relief in wood of the Pioneer Woman statue on the square with the arm she pointed forward as the minute hand—she saw that it was barely eleven a.m. Still Sunday.
The dance had only been last night. It felt like a year ago.
She’d lain down at eight, perhaps eight-thirty, once she was sure that Adam was finally out like a light after she’d made him cinnamon toast and cocoa for which he was starving but too shaken to eat. Adam kept asking if Owen was going to die. Merry kept assuring him that he wasn’t. By then, Mally was herself exhausted.
It had been a long, long night since she and Drew got the panicky call from Adam. Drew dropped Mallory off immediately. Although Adam usually loved being left home alone, he acted weird, almost as though he were a little kid afraid of the dark instead of nearly a teenager. He followed Mallory from room to room until she finally got him to go to sleep.
Something was bugging Mally.
It wasn’t like her to ever forget a moment from one of her dreams—the extraordinary kind of dream that she greeted with undeniable attraction and dread. But being up all night, sleeping on Sunday morning, alone in the house—all of it had Mallory turned around. So it was with a shock that she remembered, while brushing her teeth, what she’d “seen” during her nap.
There were a man and a woman, seated side by side on a generous, wide old wooden porch—the old man leaning forward to touch ... his wife? Perhaps his wife ... Mallory could hear them speaking in old, reedy voices she somehow knew were accustomed to soft reassurances of devotion, now raised in anger: I’m taking them now, Helene. You can’t go on like this forever. I’m taking them to the museum in White Plains. They got a real nice display there. It’s finished now, darling. It’s finished.
Don’t you touch them ... or if you have to, only take the things they gave us. Not the toys or the pennants. Please leave me that. Please.
I won’t give away ... childhood things, Helene. Not to strangers. Just the part that happened over there. I’d like for some of the toys and such to go to the children. Perhaps they’d like to have them.
I don’t want anyone to have them! At least, not all of them. Not now. Wait until I’m gone, too.
We got grandchildren now, Helene. You don’t want to go looking to leave them. You said all you wanted was ...
I know what I said.
It’s true! You don’t pay those girls and their brother any more mind than if they were puppies. It has to stop. I’m not ready to go live in a box. I feel just like you do.
You don’t, no. You couldn’t.
“Meredith?” Mally called out softly.
“I’m here, ’Ster.”
“What were you doing?”
“I did some homework. Adam’s okay. He’s upstairs in Mom’s room, watching TV. I saw Owen at the hospital. It was strange. Luna poured out all the formula? So they couldn’t see if there was some contaminant in it. Not for that reason. She told me she had a premonition. But actually, I think it must have tasted funny or something.”
“Luna was good to get him to the hospital,” said Mallory. “I could eat my own leg. Is there food?”
Inspecting the fridge, Merry said, “Well, there’s a hotdog. And some pickles. The pickles look a little iffy.” Unless the twins pressed a list into his hand and insisted, Tim lagged over getting the groceries. Over the past few months, they’d had mac and cheese or cereal for dinner so many times that even Adam was begging for broccoli. One of Carla’s jobs was supposed to be to cook something the Brynns could freeze. She’d done it once. A tuna casserole with peas and pearl onions and big clumps of cheese. After that, Campbell gently told Carla that she could skip the food-prep thing.
Merry said now, “There’s a hotdog. And ... mmmm ... something in a pan. And a big jar of Gram’s applesauce that hasn’t been opened. And some gross leftovers in bags that look like they’re from Thanksgiving.”
Mallory stood on a chair to take down the huge box of oatmeal. She hated oatmeal but it did stick to a person’s ribs. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Merry said, “No, I ... no. I’m just not.” And then she blushed.
“What’s up with you?” Mally sensed something else in the room—something wild and a little dangerous but also as seductive as a sprinkler on a summer lawn.
“Ben was here. Ben came to see me.”
“Who’s Ben?”
Meredith fell silent, remembering the nearly tearful look Ben gave her when he had to leave. Then she said, “He’s that boy I saw last week. At the mall. And walking along the road. That beautiful guy. He ... I don’t know how but he knew we lived here and he came to see me.”
“He stalked you?” Mallory asked, horrified.
“Please Mallory. We’re in the book, and he said he knew our family and stuff. It’s not like he had to be a private investor.”
“Investigator. My sister, with the brain of a jellyfish ... Why didn’t you let him in? Like you went outside the gym last night?”
“Whatever,” Merry said.
“He knew Dad? How did he know Dad?” Mallory asked. It occurred to Merry that Mallory was far too upset over what was basically nothing at all.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was on a team Dad coached when Ben was little.”
“Ben must have been a girl at that time then,” Mally said. “The only team Dad ever even helped coach when we were little was my soccer team.” She paused, stirring the glop of oatmeal congealing in the pan. “Did you do anything? Like do anything?”
“Just talked,” Meredith said. “I wanted to do more, but I guess it’s too soon to be making out. I barely know him. I think he’s the one, though.”
“The one? Please. You’ve known this guy a total of about an hour, Merry. That’s nuts even for you. What’s his story?” Mallory asked. Meredith didn’t answer, except with a shrug. That silent dismissal told Mallory that nothing she said would matter. Merry turned away.
Then, suddenly, she threw open the refrigerator door and grabbed the wizened hotdog, tossing it into a plastic bag with all the rest of the dead leftovers and dropping it into the trash. She rinsed the pan of what looked like applesauce but was all runny and gross. She scraped dishes that were in the sink and stack them in the dishwasher. She then dumped out leftovers and rinsed and stacked those pans and bowls and opened a new box of baking soda for the refrigerator. Merry got out the broom and the counter and sink cleaner and a fistful of old washcloths they used as rags.
This alone was enough to make Mallory want to take her twin’s temperature. She waited until Meredith had finished wiping down the countertop and sweeping the floor before she asked again, “Who is he, Merry? We don’t even know anybody who knows him.” Merry didn’t answer. “Okay! Listen to this. So, why am I dreaming about ... him? Or, at least I think I am.”
Why am I? Merry thought. But she got angry.
“Because you’re crazy? Too stanap,” Merry said—twin language for “This is stupid,” in case Adam was listening. “Did you hear me? His family knows our family. Maybe he just came back to town! We’d have been in seventh grade when he went to Ridgeline. We didn’t know anyone in high school but Drew and his sister.” She looked around her for something else to clean but there was nothing left: The kitchen was as immaculate as an operating room.
Mallory, who had not lifted a finger to help, tried to start the conversation again. “Meredith, this guy. It’s not like he dropped out of a cloud, though. People would know things. Your cheerleader friends, the older girls ... if he’s as hot as you s
ay, why didn’t anybody ever mention him?” Privately, Mallory was wondering: If my dream of those voices is about Ben, what does that mean? Ben was the only new thing on the horizon, except for Owen’s strange illness. It had to be about Ben; they had to be talking about Ben. But how could it be? Mally said, “Let me tell you about my dream at least. When I was napping.”
“No,” Merry said. “Don’t tell me about it. Just pretend you did. I’m going to go upstairs and read until Mom calls.”
“It’s not some killer or weird being thing. It was just some lady telling her husband or her father or whatever that she didn’t want to get rid of some old toys.”
“What does that have to do with Ben or anything? ” Merry asked, relieved. “You’re on someone else’s radar.”
“Nothing. Or nothing I know about. But it’s going to happen. I don’t know why I should know. But I’m afraid I’ll have to find out. About Ben ...”
“Why do you care so much? Why are you all over this? You have a boyfriend. It’s not like I’m a freak because I met a new guy,” Merry said. “If you want more information, ask Luna. She can really see the future!” In fact, Merry wanted to talk about Ben endlessly—especially to Mally, who, for all their bickering, was the other half of her heart. Yet, at the same time, she didn’t want to mention him at all. It felt as though jabbering about him the way she would an ordinary guy would ... break the spell. So she told her sister about her encounter with Luna in the ER, followed by Big Carla’s odd visitation and her prayer chain.
“Mom sure can pick ’em,” Mallory said.
“I’m with you on that. Thank goodness for Grandma and Sasha. And that Grandma talked Mom out of the next candidate.”
“And I’m sorry. I have no idea why I’m all over this. I really don‘t, ’Ster. But I am and there’s a reason.”
“I have to lie down for a while,” Merry said.
“Okay,” said Mallory.
There was definitely a full moon, Merry thought. Owen throwing up, Ben showing up, Luna thinking she was clairvoyant, Big Carla acting like she actually was clairvoyant, and Mallory having random visions. Her head felt like a sack of pebbles brushed about by the sweep of seawater. With the volume of poems in which she’d found “The Highwayman” clutched to her chest, Merry lay down on her bed and began to drift off to sleep.
Suddenly, Mallory was in the doorway. “Mer? Did I tell you the other thing about Luna dancing naked in the woods? It’s been bugging me.”
“I don’t know,” Merry answered.
Mallory bit her lips. She seemed to be debating whether she should speak. “In that big bonfire. They were burning hair.”
“Their own hair? That’s not a crime. I assume they weren’t setting it on fire while it was still on their heads,” Merry said.
“No, it was little curls. Infant hair. From a baby. Blond curly silky baby hair.”
Neither of them had to say who had curls that looked just like that.
EVIL WORK
At four on that endless day, Merry awoke to a commotion downstairs. She sprinted for the stairs, expecting to see her father and mother with Owen. In fact, it was only Drew, whom Mallory could see outside on the porch, banging on the door as a rising wind with a skein of snow in it pulled at his hat and the armload of white paper packages he was bringing to the Brynns.
When Merry got down into the kitchen, shivering and trailing the comforter around her shoulders, Mallory told her that their father had called to tell them tests on Baby Owen were only beginning in earnest. They would be home alone that night. Outside, it was darker than murder. Drew had worn a light jacket to work at Pizza Papa’s but said his fingers nearly turned to kindling in the time it took Mallory to answer the door. The sun had fallen behind Crying Woman Ridge, and the nip of the wind reminded them that winter would take its sweet time on the way out and for the residents of Ridgeline not to get giddy and store their parkas in the cedar closet.
“Wait a minute,” Mallory said as Drew inspected the thermostat and stuck his hands inside his own sweater. “Why were you out there banging on the door? You don’t knock on the door. Nobody does.”
“It was locked,” Drew said. “You were sacked out on the couch. You wouldn’t know. The door was locked.”
“It was not,” Merry and Mallory said simultaneously.
Mallory admitted being out of it. She and Adam had both fallen asleep downstairs to some dreadful old movie, sleeping away the hours the way people do when life is tense and nothing can be done for it. “Did you lock the door?” she asked Merry.
“I just said I didn’t! I was asleep too.”
“Then, who did?”
Nobody in Ridgeline locked their doors, except possibly in Haven Hills, where every room had the equivalent of an electronics store in gadgets and every wall was hung with art. In the Brynns’ house, there was nothing of value to steal. The gigantic boat-shaped dining-room table was an antique, given to them when Grandpa and Grandma Brynn moved out of the house, but Tim often said he thought the house had been built around the table because no door was wide enough to carry it through. The art in the Brynn household could look like abstracts from a distance but were in fact matted and framed geometric shapes and finger paintings that Adam and the twins had brought home proudly over the years, never imagining they’d still be forced to confront it years later. Whenever their mother said that their blots and shapes looked like half the stuff in the Museum of Modern Art—and she was careful to say this when there were people around—Mallory wanted to deflate like a helium balloon.
Adam came up out of the den, rubbing his eyes. “I passed out,” he said.
“Did you lock the door, Adam Ant?” Merry asked. “Drew couldn’t get in.”
“I didn’t lock the door,” said Adam. He looked suddenly panicked.
“Laybite,” Mallory warned her twin in their language. She didn’t want Adam getting spooked. “Let’s forget it. It probably happened by accident. It blew shut. Somebody turn on some heat.”
“Even if it did blow shut, it wouldn’t have locked,” Merry went on. She glanced out into the darkness. “You need a key to lock that door. That’s why Dad’s getting a deadbolt, like we have on the back door. If there was a fire, you’d have to be trying to find the key to get out.”
“Scarik hum vis wers,” Mallory told her twin, more forcibly this time. It was twin language for “stop saying things like that.” Adam’s eyes were widening. But it was too late. Meredith was on a roll.
“It creeps me out. We were just there sleeping, and somebody came into the house and locked the door?”
“That’s unusual in the annals of crime,” Drew said. “A door-locking prowler.”
“It’s not funny,” Mallory said. “What if someone’s in here with us?”
“Let’s split up and look around,” Merry said. “I’ll take our room, and Adam, you go down and look in the basement.”
“Meredith! That’s so juvenile. That’s what they do in horror movies. Everybody splits up and goes around the house, and the psycho pulls out a fuse and picks them off one by one.”
“I’m calling the police,” Adam said. There was a ring of white around his mouth, and his eyes were like twin moons.
“What are you going to say?” Merry asked. “We want to report a locked door?” She paused and gazed out into the dark, where snow was now sparkling in gusts of confetti under the porch light. “We’ll look around. I’m not scared.”
“Neither would I be if I had picked our bedroom to check,” Mallory said. “Although that’s inevitably where they are. He probably walked out of a closet behind you.”
“I thought we were trying to avoid scaring Adam?” Merry said. “Stop being an ass, Mal. Think. So who besides us has a key? Grandma, Mrs. Vaughn? Maybe. Nobody else as far as I know.”
“I don’t think even Sasha or Carla has a key to our house. They come to work while Mom’s still here,” Mallory said. “Mom is uber security conscious. Grandma has one. But Grandma
would have called out to us.”
“It was probably my mother,” Drew said. “She’s a compulsive door-locker. Does anyone want some pizza? Because I have like, six pizzas here, and the price is right.”
“Drew,” Mallory said. “Come on, let’s look around.”
Armed with Tim’s twenty-watt floating flashlight, which was the size of a small cat, and the heavy tool from the kitchen that Campbell used to sharpen knives, the four of them began in Tim’s tiny basement office and checked every corner of the two and a half upper floors, opening every closet with Merry’s involuntary gasp and Mallory’s equally involuntary reprimand. Tightly squeezed next to Drew, Adam carried his aluminum ball bat.
“Why are we whispering?” Drew whispered. “If there’s a mad killer in the house, is it less likely that he’ll get us if we talk quietly?”
“I don’t know. I feel like we’re in some British mystery,” Mallory said.
“I feel like we’re in Scooby Doo,” said Drew.
Soon, every light in the Brynns’ house was on. It would have looked, from the outside, as though the family were hosting a party. But there was no one in the house but the people who lived there and Drew. And all those ghosts, Mallory kept thinking.
They all jumped when the telephone screeched. Fumbling to grab it, Merry said hello to Sasha, who said she had been called in unexpectedly to her other job or she would have come over to see if she could help. She was going to drop by the hospital on the way to the house of the elderly woman she cared for.
Sasha said, “I was just thinking. On Friday, he was playing with his blocks and jumping on the sofa like the happiest little boy in the world. And suddenly, just like before, down he went. I’ll make something special for him when he comes home, like some pudding, the poor thing. I hope he didn’t eat spoiled or contaminated food.”
“I cleaned the whole refrigerator and threw everything out.”
“Oh,” said Sasha. “That’s good. And now, I have to run. Sorry, Merry.” Sasha was usually chatty, unlike Carla or Luna. But before Merry could say another word, she hung up.