The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [144]
“And you know all of this … how?” you ask finally.
“Know is a very loaded word in this case. The truth is, I know nothing. I am certain of nothing. But that’s what faith is, isn’t it? We believe things we can’t prove and have some confidence that we’re right.”
“They want things from me.”
“I am sure they do. But if you want me to,” she says, leaning in to you in a fashion that is at once provocative and intense, “I can try to make them leave.”
“You can?”
She nods. “I can try. And if I succeed, I want you and your family to move away.”
“Leave this house?” You are surprised by the loyalty you have to the Sheetrock and plaster. To the rooms you have made new and to the rooms that await new wallpaper and paint. You have changed the house dramatically. Made it yours.
“Bethel,” she answers. “The White Mountains.”
“You don’t think we belong here?”
She shakes her head. “I think you belong here too much.”
In the morning, John Hardin gazed up at the wondrous penumbra of lime green on the tips of the trees: not leaves yet, but waves and waves of buds. That moment when life moves from mere mist to a tangibility that swallows the twigs. It was weeks past the equinox now, and the days were starting to feel pleasantly long. He and Clary were likely to have dinner when it was still light out, which was rather nice, they both agreed. And there had been one last, torrential sugar run the day before. A person could have stood at the top of Mooseback, the squat little mountain just east of Bethel, and seen steam from sugarhouses in all directions. Over the weekend he had taken Verbena and her girls to Claude and Lavender Millier’s sugarhouse to witness boiling firsthand. As John had expected, the Milliers’ son had driven up from Salem for the weekend. And the girls had loved it. Verbena had been positively entranced. Said it brought back memories long dormant of visiting one of her grandmother’s neighbors in the woods near the lake in Meredith.
He was just about to get into his car and drive to the office when he heard the front storm door squeak open and saw Clary walking briskly across the slate to the driveway. Like him, she usually rose and dressed early, even though she didn’t have a law practice to tend to, but they had made love this morning and she was still in her ankle-length red nightgown.
“What did I forget?” he asked her, though her hands were empty.
“Phone call,” she murmured, and he could see the worry on her face.
He nodded. The cordless phone didn’t work this far from its base. He tossed his briefcase onto the passenger seat of his car, thought of the body of the dead psychiatrist that once had lolled there in mangy old blankets, and strolled back to the house. He noticed that there was a perfect line on the grass where the rising sun had melted the frost: The grass was white where it was still masked by the shade from the house and green where the rime had turned to water.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Anise.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
In the kitchen he reached for the phone. “Good morning,” he began, “though I have the distinct sense based on the scowl on my wife’s usually lovely face that you haven’t rung me with good news.” Clary was standing in the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. Her lower lip was quivering with anger; she looked profoundly unhappy.
“I just saw Reseda. She came by my house this morning.”
“Wonderful! I always want my girls to be friends.” He was absolutely sincere in that he did want all of them—the women as well as the men—to get along. But there was also a layer of black humor rippling just beneath the surface of his remark. He knew that Reseda and Anise would never be close, at least not in the way that most of the women were. Reseda was always going to be something of an outsider.
“It wasn’t wonderful at all.”
“No?”
“No, John. It wasn’t. She believes we killed both Hewitt and the psychiatrist. She said the death of the doctor—”
“Not dead, my dear. Only missing.”
“Presumed dead. It’s been a while.”
“And he has, more or less, fallen off the radar. There