As she stood Nina saw her wedding picture, a framed 10x12 that had hung on the wall for so many years she’d pretty much stopped noticing it. They were married in Jamaica, on the beach under a huge white parasol, exchanging vows of their own composition. Will’s grin was as wide as the Caribbean behind him.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Nina said to that smiling face. “Sorry it came to this. And I don’t believe it was you. I’ll never believe it.” She touched a finger to her lips, then to Will’s beaming face, leaving a tiny wet spot on the glass.
* * *
Over the next twenty hours Jenny dozed off at least a dozen times—and each time Jack was there, pulling her ear, shaking her shoulders, and once, when fatigue dragged her to the cliff-edge of unconsciousness, he stood her up and smacked her across the face, first one side, then the other, leaving welts that would turn to bruises.
“Sit,” he said. “And pay attention.”
The phone rang twice more during that torturing period and each time Jack broke the connection, cruelly increasing Jenny’s certainty that Kim had died.
After forty-two hours on the couch, after soiling herself not once but three times, after her first hallucination from dehydration and exhaustion, Jenny realized that her husband was insane. He’d had some sort of breakdown, and if she was going to get out of this in one piece, she had to figure out a way of talking him down. She should have twigged to this sooner, before things got so far out of hand. The trouble was, she wasn’t even sure she could compose a meaningful sentence right now, let alone convince a man who was temporarily insane that he needed help.
And yet, to look at him, Jack seemed fine. In all this time he hadn’t eaten, slept or relieved himself either, and apart from a heavy shadow of beard he looked like a man who’d just stepped out of a refreshing shower.
He’d switched off all the lights sometime during the afternoon. The house was dark again.
Jenny said, “Jack, maybe I was wrong about leaving. Maybe we need each other right now. We should talk. I was angry, humiliated, so full of pain. I needed you and you weren’t there. But now...can’t we try to work things out?”
Jack chuckled. In the faint glow from the street lights Jenny saw his head angle toward her. “There’s a lesson here, Jen,” he said. “I hope you can pick up on it. I hope you can accomplish that much.”
“What lesson, Jack? Really, I’d like to know.”
Jack’s gaze returned to his feet. Without hesitation Jenny plucked a heavy wooden statue of a tiki god off the end table beside her. Then she stood up, her legs sagging like unwatered stems. Concealing the statue with her thigh, she said, “I’ve had enough of this, Jack. If you want me to stay, you’ll have to kill me.”
Jack said, “Have it your way,” and got to his feet.
Marshaling the last of her strength, Jenny bolted past him into the hall. She was halfway to the basement door when a hand fell on her shoulder and she brought the statue around in a savage arc. It met something solid in the dark—there was a bright smacking sound—then it was gone.
Jack stepped into the faint column of street light that bathed the hall, the carving in his hand. Grinning, he snapped it in two across his knee.
Jenny lunged for the basement door, got there one short step ahead of him and slammed the door behind her, shooting the heavy bolt. She tramped down the steps, almost falling, and grabbed the phone on the rec-room wall.
“Hi, hon,” Jack said from an upstairs extension. “You’re learning.”
Jenny dropped the receiver and ran to one of the windows. They were small and high, but she thought she could fit if she sucked in her tummy. She stepped onto a chair, twisted the security latch and opened the window, then punched out the screen. She chinned herself up, got halfway out into the flower bed—and bumped her head against Jack’s knee. He was hunkered down on the grass in front her, offering his hand.
Jenny wiggled back inside, scooping black earth into her shirt. She sprinted upstairs, flung open the door...and ran headlong into Jack in the hallway. He held her in a firm embrace, one hand encircling her neck.
“Did you know the neck of a human being is exquisitely fragile?”
Jenny brought her knee up into Jack’s groin. Jack pivoted, deflecting the full force of the blow, but Jenny managed to slither free of his grasp. Without looking back, she raced to the front door, yanked it open—
And Jack slammed it closed.
“Come,” he said in the dark. He led her back to the couch. “We’ll sit.”
Jenny wept. She wept and wished Jack would die.
He resumed his position on the Laz-Y-Boy, feet crossed, arms perched on the armrests, face a smooth, unreadable blank.
This time when Jenny curled in the dark a helpless delirium claimed her and she sat sobbing and sniffling, all traces of concrete thought abandoning her so completely, she might have been born and suckled on this very couch, then shackled here for a lifetime marked only by misery. Her memory offered no alternative. In the few black hours that followed her mind simply disconnected and she stared unblinking into space.
Sometime later, crouched in the kitchen over her empty dishes, Peach gave voice to her hunger, uttering a drawn-out, mournful caterwaul that finally broke through Jenny’s paralysis. It sounded like a baby crying.
“I can’t take this anymore,” she said, getting to her feet. The room spun for a beat, then stood still. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“Fuck you.”
Jenny shuffled past the recliner like a zombie. Jack’s foot popped out and tangled her legs. Jenny went down hard, her head missing the edge of the coffee table by bare inches. She started to push herself up and saw Charlie Haid’s switchblade glimmering under the loveseat where Jack had kicked it a lifetime ago.
Six inches from her fingertips.
Concealing it’s length with her forearm, Jenny picked up the knife and got to her feet. Then she stumbled into the hall.
Jack remained in his chair.
“Peach,” Jenny said, arresting the cat’s wails. She could see its eyes, cool amber moons in the shadows of the kitchen. “Come on, kitten.”
Peach answered uncertainly, then she was padding eagerly toward Jenny.
“Come on, baby. Let’s go.”
The cat made it as far as the oblong of exterior light that frosted the hallway. Then, ears down, it released a warning hiss that raised Jenny’s hackles.
Jack was standing right behind her.
Whirling, Jenny charged, the switchblade aimed at Jack’s heart. Jack side-stepped in the narrow hall, one hand arcing down, deflecting the blade’s trajectory. Anticipating his reaction, Jenny stabbed forward as her arm angled away. She heard Jack cry out, felt the tip of the blade find flesh before spinning from her numbed fingers. Head down, she continued her attack, plowing into him with frenzied strength, knocking him to the floor. Her nails dug bloody furrows in his neck, then she was kneeling astride him, fists buried in his hair, pounding his skull against the terra-cotta tiles.
“You sick fuck. Leave—me—
alone
.”
Jack stiffened then, his neck suddenly rigid, and Jenny realized through a receding red haze that since he disarmed her, he hadn’t been resisting her attack.
“That’s
it
,” Jack said. “
That’s
the lesson. Do you feel it, Jen?”
And in that moment she did: the terrible exhilaration of blood battle, the ravening lust for the kill.
Then shock crashed over her and she released Jack’s hair. Jack dragged his fingers through the blood on his neck and war-painted Jenny’s face with it. Jenny tried to get up, but Jack pulled her close, pressing his lips to her ear.
“You felt it, didn’t you,” he whispered, his breath sending cold thrills through her body. “Remember it.”
“Go to hell.”
“I intend to, sweetheart. I intend to.”
He released her then and Jenny stood, ready to fight him again if she had to. Jack got up and opened the front door. His
gi
top had fallen open and Jenny could see where she’d caught him with the knife, a raw but superficial slash across his ribs.
“You can go now,” he said.
Jenny didn’t move. A finger of breeze curled through the doorway and tousled her hair. It felt clean and good against her face.
Jack stepped away from the door. “Go.”
Jenny hesitated, fearing a trick, then stumbled toward the open door. She brushed past him, expecting his hand to close around her arm, but then she was outside, standing on the porch, the night air cold, making her teeth chatter. Incredibly, she found herself turning back, approaching the door. This was her home...
Jack’s face floated in the gap.
“I need my car keys...and Peach...”
“Go now,” Jack said. “As you are. Or we’ll sit some more.”
Wisely, Jenny fled.
It was four-thirty, Monday morning.
* * *
Jenny lost her footing on the lawn and fell. The grass was wet and she realized it was raining, a chill, misty drizzle. She regained her feet and stumbled onto the Parkway. The high beams of a passing cab speared her and she thought, an instant too late, of flagging it down. She waved her arms in the cab’s hissing backwash, but the brake lights remained stubbornly dark. She had no money anyway.
She limped across the grassy median, darting glances back at the house, fearful her freedom was just another part of Jack’s tormenting game. But there was no sign of him. The lights were off, the house a brooding silhouette in the darkness.
Once across the Parkway, she descended a set of steps to the bike path bordering the canal and leaned against the guardrail, gazing into the oily water. Within seconds she was asleep on her feet. She folded to her knees, the impact jarring her awake, and thought, I’ll just lie here a while...
Then she thought of Kim.
Oh, honey. Please be all right. I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.
She pulled herself up on the guardrail and started along the lamp-lit path, hands fisted, teeth set with determination. It would be dawn soon, full light by the time she reached the hospital. And if Kim was dead and Jack had made her miss it, she would kill him. Somehow, she would kill him.
At Wellington Street, downtown, The Parkway became Sussex Drive and Jenny thought,
Richard’s gallery
. If he was there she could use his phone, maybe borrow some money for a cab.
Ten minutes later she was leaning on his doorbell. The door opened on its chain and Richard’s sleepy face appeared in the gap.
“Richard. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Jen?”
He opened the door and Jenny collapsed into his arms. He saw the finger-smears of blood on her face and Jenny told him it wasn’t hers. He swung the door shut and held her close.
After a moment she broke the embrace, saying, “I have to use your phone.”
He led her to the extension in his office. Jenny’s hands shook so badly she misdialed the number twice before Richard punched it in for her. Her voice broke as she asked for the ICU...then she was on hold, knuckles white around the handset, tears streaming from her eyes.
Watching her, Richard felt helpless. He wanted to hold her, take the hurt away, but he had no idea what was going on.
Then she was speaking into the phone, trying to control the sob in her voice, asking if there had been any change in her daughter’s condition while doing her best to apologize for not checking in sooner. Then she was nodding, saying, “No change, then. All right, thank you...” She left Richard’s number, said she’d be in as soon as she could then made the nurse promise to call immediately if anything changed.
After she hung up Richard led her upstairs, drew her a hot bath and undressed her as one might an exhausted child. Seeing her in her under things, his first instinct was to call a doctor—she was bruised and scraped, terribly pale—but Jenny rejected the idea in no uncertain terms. “No, Richard. No doctors. If you call a doctor, I’ll leave.” While she bathed, Richard showered in another bathroom, then got dressed and fixed them some tea.
They sat at an oval table near the painting Richard had hoped she would see at his opening:
Girl on a Swing
. Jenny saw it now and said how beautiful it was. She sipped her tea, her eyes dull and unfocused.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Richard said.
“No, I don’t. But I owe you that much.”
“There’s no rush, Jen. We can talk about this anytime or not at all. And whatever your reasons for being here, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. There’s plenty of room and...I’m glad to have you.”
Jenny managed a wan smile. “Thanks, Richard, but I’d just as soon get this over with now. Then, if you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down someplace and sleep for a couple of hours.”
Richard said that would be fine. Then he sat back and listened to Jenny’s story in shock and disbelief.
* * *
What Jenny had hoped to compress into a few minutes took over an hour, and Richard came out at the end of it feeling as drained as Jenny looked. He rose stiffly from his chair and opened his hand to her, helping her to her feet. He offered his embrace, and she accepted that, too. There were no further words and none seemed needed.
When Jenny’s feet were firmly under her, Richard led her upstairs to one of the guest rooms, an angular, sunlit space with a gabled window overlooking a majestic scotch pine. He folded back the comforter on the antique double bed and covered Jenny when she lay down. Before leaving, he drew the curtains against the daylight.
In the warmth of the comforter Jenny slid evenly toward sleep, lulled by the sweet sigh of breeze in the tree outside. She spent the next twelve hours there, in a deep, dreamless slumber.
TODD BRUBAKER, WHO WAS SIX, was determined to be brave.
“Getting your tonsils out is no big deal,” his daddy had told him when the doctor said Todd needed his removed. “I had mine out when I was only four and in those days they put you to sleep with ether.”
“What’s ether?” Todd had asked him.
“Ether’s nasty stuff,” his daddy said, and Todd thought about that now, while the three other boys in his hospital room snored around swollen adenoids. They were all his age, too, except for Timmy McNamara, who was only five. “They used to drip it into a mask and you had to breathe it into your lungs. It smelled like nail polish remover.”