The Shuddering (15 page)

“Will you keep it down?” he asked, nearly pleading. “You’re going to wake everyone up.” Pulling the sheets back up to his chin, he closed his eyes, determined to fall back asleep despite the pounding of his heart. But she wasn’t having it. Grabbing the sheets by their hemmed top edge, she pulled them away from him with a jerk.

“Answer me,” she snapped. “What the hell is this?”

Their eyes locked. He was the first to look away.

“I knew it,” she hissed, sliding off the bed and stomping through the room. She snatched her shirt off the floor like a matador waving a cape at a bull. “This is why you didn’t want me to come up here with you, right? So you could fuck her instead of me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was shooting for indifference, fending off the nausea that was clawing its way up his throat. April was right: he yearned for a random run-in in an empty room, just him and Jane, so he could apologize and maybe, just maybe, she could forgive him for leaving, for losing touch and letting her go. He wanted the secrecy, wanted the torrid affair with the girl he still pined for. He had been forced to give her up: first for an education, then for some asshole who had swept her off her feet, and so he’d moved on too. But when Sawyer had learned that Alex had cheated, a part of him wanted to break the bastard’s jaw; the other part wanted to drop everything, move to Arizona and heal Jane’s hurt. It didn’t matter that he and April were together. It didn’t matter that he’d given her a ring.

Again came the guilt, the question of whether he even loved April at all—because if he did, why would his first instinct be to run to someone else? He hated himself for it; had vowed to keep himself in check; purposely avoided Jane in conversations with Ryan, kept blowing Ryan off when it came to getting together again. But she just kept coming at him, worming her way into his thoughts, forever in the background, forever waiting like some phantom he couldn’t shake.

April yanked her shirt over her head and threw open the bedroom door, making as much noise as she could as she marched toward the bathroom. Sawyer knew it would come to this. He
knew from the moment they had gotten together but had tried to convince himself that he was wrong. April would take Jane’s place in his heart, and when the news of the baby came, for a moment she had. Sawyer pictured himself as a husband, a dad, and even if his thoughts circled back to the girl from his past, all he’d have to do was look into his child’s eyes and remember that April had given him this new life, this new purpose to exist. Because what could have been more powerful than that? He had gotten cocky. A final trip up to the cabin? Sure, why not? What could possibly happen, especially with April on his arm?

But what happened had been inevitable. He saw her, he touched her, he smelled her, and he was addicted all over again. Jane made him weak, desperate. She broke his will. But he had waited too long, tying himself to April forever. And now Jane would never want him, and April would never take him back.

Ryan peered into the darkness as he lay on his side, listening to a muffled one-sided argument taint the otherwise peaceful quiet. He considered getting up, making sure that all was well with his closest friend, but he decided against it, not wanting to get involved. Ryan was a believer in fate. Everything happened for a reason; nothing was random or left to chance. He and Jane being born at the same time; the implosion that had become their family life—all of these things had to happen to lead him to where he was now—with his sister, his best friend, and Lauren, a girl he hardly knew but was starting to need. They all had to take their own journeys, be it together or alone. He could only hope that Jane and Sawyer would journey together…and that Lauren would agree to visit him in Zurich.

He tried to make out the words, listening for the master bedroom door to creak open, for Jane to stick her head out into the
hall. But the dispute came to an abrupt conclusion, and silence overtook the house once again. He relaxed, didn’t move as he continued to listen and think. His move to Switzerland was part of his fate, a fate that would remove him from the life and people he knew. Maybe that distance was just what he needed to get his head on straight, to get over the fears Jane had so often encouraged him to let go of. He wasn’t sure that he and Lauren would work out, but for the first time in his life he actually wanted to try. He wanted to let her in, to
not
push her away the way he had pushed Summer. Because who knew how that relationship would have turned out if he hadn’t been so afraid?

He peered at the ceiling when he heard the same thump on the roof that he had before the argument had erupted. Oona stirred at the foot of the bed but didn’t rouse, exhaling a loud breath through her nose before emitting a muffled bark in her sleep. Ryan went through the possible animals that could make it up onto the roof—various foxes, possibly a cougar. As a kid, his dad had taught him that porcupines could climb trees, and they had caught one doing just that as they rode the snowmobile up and down the driveway while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner one year.

He closed his eyes, wondering just how hard Jane would scream if she saw a giant quilled rodent fall from the roof.

C
lyde hardly heard his cell buzz over the iron drone of Megadeth. Pushing through an alcohol-induced haze, he rolled onto his stomach—soured by more than a dozen guzzled beers—and tumbled four inches to the floor from the mattress pushed into the corner of his spartan room. He hefted himself onto his hands and knees, dirty blond hair hanging around his face in a curtain. The phone continued to vibrate and chirp while he crawled across a floor littered with dirty laundry and trash. Just as he groped for the phone, it fell silent, going to voice mail. Less than fifteen seconds later, he heard Pete’s cell scream in the opposite room. He rolled onto his back, let his phone tumble from his grasp, and fell back into a dizzying post-bender slumber, because there was no better cure for a hangover than sleep.

But he jerked awake a second later, Pete’s voice cutting through a killer guitar solo. “Man,” Pete said. Clyde peeled his eyes open, then squinted despite the room being mostly dark. Pete steadied himself against the doorjamb, his face a mask of postdrink nausea. “Fuck, wake up, dude,” he said, daring to release the doorframe before stumbling headlong toward Clyde’s currently vacant bed.

“Get off my bed, man,” Clyde groaned.

“Get up, dude,” Pete replied.

“I’ll get up if you get off my fucking bed, man. You don’t do that.”

Pete forced himself off the mattress, wobbly on his feet. “Do what? Listen, hey…”

Clyde crawled back across his floor, climbed onto his bed, and immediately collapsed face-first into his pillow.

“Clyde.” The name was nearly a whine. “We’re fucked, buddy. Totally fucked.”

A muffled syllable drifted from the folds of Clyde’s sheets, a “what?” squelched by a pillow in dire need of replacement—its body shapeless and flat, its sham stained with hair grease and sweat.

“Hey, did you hear me?” Pete kicked at one of Clyde’s still-shoed feet. Without warning, Clyde rolled over and launched the dirty pillow at his roommate with surprising force. Pete stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a pile of clothes before his shoulder caught the wall. After regaining his footing, he said, “Guess what?”

“What?” Clyde asked begrudgingly.

Pete ambled over to Clyde’s window, shoving the curtain aside to reveal the darkness of the morning. Fat flakes tumbled past the glass.

“Aw,
shit
,” Clyde hissed, then clapped his hands over his face. This was just what they needed. They hadn’t partied in nearly a week, holding out as the meteorologist fumbled every forecast. They’d finally had enough, ending up at the liquor store, where, lo and behold, there was a sale on thirty-sixers of brew. Deeming it a sign from God himself, they proceeded to get epically plastered while playing Xbox and listening to Metallica’s
Master of Puppets
on repeat. And now it was
snowing
.

“We got called in,” Pete announced, holding his fist up to his mouth, fighting back a diaphragm-rattling belch. “Side roads off the highway,” he said. “We’ve got an hour.”

“What time is it?” Clyde murmured, trying to sit up.

“Four thirty.”

“Goddamn.” He winced against the taste of his own mouth. “Coffee?”

“I’ll make some,” Pete said. “I need some fucking Tylenol.”

Clyde sighed unsteadily, then pulled his hand down the length of his face before letting it fall to the bed. He was tempted to call in, but the resident road crew was small, and that would leave the others high and dry. Clyde liked to think of himself as loyal—not the kind of guy to screw over the other guys on the team.

Dragging himself into the bathroom, he leaned over the sink and splashed cold water onto his face. He was still dressed from the night before, so all he had to do was grab his coat and hat and charge into the snow. Clyde’s plowless pickup was parked just yards from the house. It was a pain in the ass to detach the plows after every use, so the boys took turns—one truck would be street ready while the other was left with plow and chains. It saved them a hell of a lot of time on mornings just like this, mornings when the wind was so cold it made their bones ache and their eyes sting. Clyde winced against the chill as he marched toward his pickup, his head throbbing, his brain swollen, his stomach sour. He had to pause next to the front fender, anticipating the inevitable as sickness curdled at the back of his throat, but after a few deep breaths, he regained his bearings and climbed inside the cab.

He drove around to the back of the house, headlights cutting across the darkness, illuminating Pete’s old Chevy and the self-built carport next to it where they kept all their gear. Clyde’s plow was parked beneath the lean-to structure, bright yellow paint chipping off ten-gauge steel. He had helped his dad paint it decades before, just before Christmas. His mother had picked out the color—yellow being her favorite. Parking so that his high
beams shone against the carport’s shoddy construction, he rolled down his window and stuck his head into the cold, expertly lining up the truck so that the plow would slide into place. Satisfied with his position, he cranked the stereo and reached into the glove compartment for a smoke. Despite his pounding headache, music helped wake him up, and at the moment being awake was more important than being comfortable.

Lighting his cig, he sucked in a lungful of smoke and slid out into the predawn darkness, snowflakes glittering along the sides of the carport that would more than likely collapse in on itself before next winter. He busied himself at the pickup’s front bumper, Slayer coiling through his open door. When the CD paused between tracks, a low-octave moan caught his attention. He raised an eyebrow, jamming his arm into the truck to crank down the music. A shadow cut across the wooded backyard, Clyde catching the movement from the corner of his eye. “Hey, Pete?” Another moan sounded in reply, and Clyde couldn’t help but grin. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, looking back down to what he was doing, his cigarette dangling from the swell of his bottom lip. “You want to hand me the socket wrench from the tool chest?”

The moaning continued, only to be cut short.

Clyde glanced up, blinded by the high beams, unable to see a thing beyond the truck’s front bumper. “Pete?”

Nothing.

He sighed, took another drag off his cigarette, and flicked it into the snow. “You suck at holding your liquor, man,” he said. He stepped out of the headlights and could hardly see a thing. His eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness, but all he could make out were the windows of the house—illuminated from the inside out—and the interior of his truck, brightened by the weak glow of the dome light above the dusty dash. He ducked inside
the truck, turned up the music to a low roar, and stepped around to the bed of the pickup. Stopping next to the toolbox mounted flush against the back of the truck’s cab, he shoved the heel of his hand against a push-button lock, sending one of the box’s two metal lids bouncing upward on its spring. A tiny light blinked on, Clyde’s menagerie of tools glittering in the anemic yellow glow. He rifled through the mess, haphazardly shoving his precious gear this way and that.

“Socket wrench, socket wrench,” he mumbled, as though chanting the tool’s name like a mantra would make it spring from the pile of chrome-plated metal. “Son of a…” It was nowhere to be found, and Clyde’s mind bounced to the last time he couldn’t find a piece of equipment. Pete had borrowed his Dremel tool, and it had been Clyde who had found it in the tool chest on the back of Pete’s truck. He slammed the lid of his box closed and marched across the yard toward Pete’s Chevy, nearly tripping over a fallen branch on his way. He cursed beneath his breath as he regained his footing, grabbing the branch by its brittle wood and tossing it aside.

The branch came back at him, landing just shy of his boots.

“Pete?” Clyde blinked, squinting into the dark. “Hey, stop fucking around, man. Where’s my ratchet?”

Nothing.

“Whatever,” he muttered, popping Pete’s toolbox open, and there it was, the tool Clyde was looking for. “You know, I don’t care if you use my shit,” he announced, grabbing the wrench and turning back to his own truck. “But it sure as hell would be nice if you’d put stuff back where you found it. It’s called common courtesy.”