The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [93]
“He …” She floundered for a moment, trying to find the right words. It had been much easier talking to the psychiatrist around midnight, when she was at once exhausted and in shock. When she resumed, she said, “As I told Michael last night, he went a little nuts on this door in the basement. It was just the old coal chute. But it was nailed shut, and he took an ax to it.”
“It was a violent act?”
“An act with an ax usually is.”
“I see your point.”
“And I think he was more disturbed than I was by Tansy Dunmore’s paranoia. At first I was pretty shaken—more than Chip. But I guess I got over it.” The night before she had told John and Clary that the knife Chip had brought to the basement was one of the items Tansy had left hidden in the house. “He was a little obsessed by it.”
“Her paranoia.”
“Yes.”
John shook his head ruefully. “She was a very ill woman toward the end.”
“So I gather.”
“And Chip’s therapist knew about all this?”
“Michael? Oh, absolutely.”
“Good,” he said, but the word caught just the tiniest bit in his throat. Then he smiled. “Tell me: How are the world’s most adorable twins?”
Before Emily could answer, Reseda appeared in the kitchen entrance from the dining room, a towel on her head like a turban. “They’re fine, John,” she told him. “I just peered into the living room, and they’re still sound asleep.”
“Reseda, God bless you,” John said, rising from his chair, a small eddy of laughter in his voice. “Well, I think that coffee is just about ready. May I help myself, Emily?”
“Go ahead.”
“You were suggesting Valerian to Emily?” Reseda asked him.
“I was, I was. Doesn’t this coffee smell heavenly? Ladies, may I pour? Reseda?”
“Thank you, John,” Reseda said, “but I think I’ll have tea.”
“Of course you will,” he murmured, “of course. You know, Emily, on the bright side, at least you’re here in Bethel right now and not in West Chester. I don’t know what sorts of friends or support group you had back there, but here you have a whole big family waiting to care for you and those two precious children of yours. Imagine: You had Reseda and Holly staying the night. You have Anise’s magical cooking in your refrigerator. And you have people like my own lovely bride and Sage and Peyton at your disposal.”
“And you, John,” she said, taking the mug of coffee he was handing her. “Really, I’m so lucky to have you, too. You’re such a gift.”
He rolled his eyes. “Some folks would say I’m more of a curse. Wouldn’t you agree, Reseda?” Her friend raised her eyebrows but otherwise didn’t respond. “But, yes, I do try. We all try here in Bethel.” He paused for a moment and then said with great earnestness, “It’s a bit like all of you have come home to a big family, don’t you think? It must feel a bit like coming home.”
Garnet had seen greenhouses as large as this one, but they had all been commercial nurseries—not someone’s personal greenhouse. There had been a nursery like this not too far from where they lived in Pennsylvania, and two or three times she and Hallie had gone there with their mother, and Garnet recalled trying (and failing) to convince Mom to buy one of the stone gargoyles or garden trolls the place sold. But she had never been inside a greenhouse this large in someone’s backyard—or one that had grow lights on stands above many of the tables of plants. It struck her as longer than any of the ones she had seen from the roads as they drove between the highway and their new home. It belonged to Sage Messner, the older woman she and her sister had met at Mr. and Mrs. Hardin’s house a couple of nights ago. Saturday.
It was a little hard to believe that Saturday night was only a couple of nights ago. It was Tuesday morning, but in some ways Saturday night felt as far away as when her family had lived back in West Chester. Maybe it even felt as far away as before her dad’s plane had crashed in the lake. She and Hallie hadn’t been expected to go to school today, and now their mom was off meeting with doctors and bringing their dad home from the hospital, and Reseda had taken her sister and her here