Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [172]
Nest stayed in her room with the door closed and did not reappear until Old Bob called her to dinner. They ate at the kitchen table without speaking. Afterward, as the light began to fail and the dusk to descend, her friends called and asked if she wanted to meet them in the park to watch the fireworks. She asked him if she could, and while he was inclined to say no, to keep her safe in the house and close to him, he realized the foolishness of taking that particular course of action. He might shelter her for a day or even a week, but then what? At some point he would have to let her go off on her own, and there was no reason that he could see to postpone the inevitable. Nest was smart and careful; she would not take chances, especially after last night. In any case, was her father really out there? No one besides John Ross had actually seen him, and he was not sure he trusted Ross anymore. Gran had worried that Nest’s father might return, but she had never actually said he was back. Old Bob had thought at first that he should call the police and warn them of his concerns, but on reflection he realized he didn’t have anything concrete to offer, only a bunch of vague suspicions, most of them based on John Ross’ word.
In the end, he let the matter slide, giving Nest his permission to go, extracting in exchange her firm promise that she would sit with her friends in a crowded place and would not go off alone. The park was safe for her, he believed. She had lived in it all her life, wandered it from end to end, played her childhood games in it, adopted it as her own backyard. He could not see forbidding her to go into it now, especially while she was still dealing with the shock of her grandmother’s death.
After she was gone, he began cleaning up the kitchen by putting away the food gifts. The refrigerator and the freezer were soon filled to capacity, and there were still dozens of containers sitting out. He picked up the phone and called Ralph Emery’s house, and when the minister answered he asked him if he would mind sending someone around first thing in the morning to take all this food down to the church for distribution to those who could make better use of it. The minister said he would take care of it, thanked him for his generosity, spoke with him about Evelyn for a few minutes, and said good night.
The shadows in the house had melted together in a black mass, and Old Bob walked through the empty rooms and turned on the lights before coming back into the kitchen to finish up. The shotgun was gone, taken by the police for reasons he failed to comprehend, part of their investigation, they told him, and he felt strangely uneasy in its absence. You’d think it would be the other way around, he kept telling himself. He washed some dishes by hand, something he hadn’t done in a long time, finding that it helped him relax. He thought always of Evelyn. He glanced over at the kitchen table more than once, picturing her there, her bourbon and water in front of her, her cigarette in hand, her face turned away from the light, her eyes distant. What had she been thinking, all those times she’d sat there? Had she been remembering her childhood in the little cottage several houses down? Had she been thinking of Nest? Of Caitlin? Of him? Had she been wishing that her life had turned out differently, that she had done more with it? Had she been thinking of missed chances and lost dreams? His smile was sad. He regretted now that he had never asked.
He finished the dishes, dried them, and put them away. He glanced around, suddenly lost. The house was alive with memories of his life with Evelyn. He walked into the living room and stood looking at the fireplace, at the pictures on the mantel, at the place in the corner by the bowed window where the Christmas tree always sat. The memories swirled around him, some distant and faded, some as new and sharp as the