The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [77]
“Well,” Chip said, looking first at Steve and then at this other woman and then at her, “there was a lot to do and not very much time. Mostly Amy and I were—”
“Who’s Amy?” the woman asked.
“She was my copilot.”
“She must have been peeing in her pants.”
“No, I don’t think she was.”
“So you really weren’t scared?” the woman asked, circling back to her original question.
“No,” Chip said. “I think there were two things filling up that part of my brain that might otherwise have been wanting—to use your term—to shriek bloody murder. The first, just like my friend Steve here said, was focus. Amy and I were pretty focused on the tasks at hand.”
“And the second?”
Emily watched her husband stare down at the flames in the fireplace for a moment. “I always thought I could do it,” he said finally. “I’d seen the Airbus land in the Hudson. I saw in my mind the CRJ landing on Lake Champlain in just the same way.”
The woman was about to say something more, but Steve took her by the elbow, said jovially that he wanted to freshen up both of their drinks, and then led the two of them away from her husband.
On the way home from St. Johnsbury, you race into the supermarket because you recall you don’t have after-school snacks in the refrigerator for the girls. And since Molly is with them, you want to be sure you have something special. In minutes you have rounded up a six-pack of juice boxes, two pints of ice cream, apples, and peanut butter. In the parking lot on your way out, as you are opening the front door to your car, you run into Anise. She has pulled into the space right beside yours.
“Chip, hi,” she says, climbing out of her pickup with a grocery list and a chaotic raft of coupons in her hand.
“No time,” you tell her, smiling. “I have to race up the hill and beat the school bus.”
“Goodies for the girls?” she asks, motioning at the grocery bag that you have just now plopped onto the passenger seat.
“Absolutely.”
“Here, take these, too,” she says, reaching back into her pickup and handing you a plastic bag with cookies she has baked. “Vegan,” she informs you. “And totally scrumptious. They’re maple. There should be a sugar run tomorrow, so I decided it was finally time to use the very last of last year’s syrup.”
“Thank you, Anise. That’s very kind of you.”
“Try one,” she says, and to be polite you are about to open the bag she has given you. But before you can, she is handing you a cookie that she has, seemingly, pulled out of nowhere. “I baked this one especially for you,” she says, and for a split second you are a bit flustered because you presume she is serious. But she winks, and you decide she is kidding. Then you bite into a soft maple cookie that melts in your mouth. It’s delicious—far and away the best thing this culinary lunatic has offered you since you arrived here in Bethel.
Emily didn’t know Molly Francoeur’s family at all, but she wasn’t about to say no when Molly’s mother, Jocelyn, called, absolutely frantic, to ask if Molly could stay for dinner that night. Emily had just walked into the house herself. It seemed that Molly’s grandmother had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her hip. So Jocelyn Francoeur didn’t expect that she would be back from the hospital much before eight-thirty or nine that evening.
“Of course she can stay with us,” Emily said, adding that the girl could spend the night with them if need be.
“No, I’ll be back before bedtime for sure,” Jocelyn said, her tone a little crazed—which made all the sense in the world, given the accident that had befallen her own mother. “If not, then I’ll have Molly’s aunt come get her. She lives down around Hanover.”
“That’s almost an hour and a half away!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, we have plenty of room and extra pj’s