Abby went into the kitchen, followed by Kitty. She filled a clean glass from the drainer with tap water, took a few sips, and rolled her head to relax the tight muscles of her neck. Her heart raced at the foreign concept of having a sibling—a brother—family of her own to love again. The reality of it didn’t compute. “Come on, Kitty. I have to lie down and get some sleep, or I’ll go crazy thinking about everything.”
After emptying cat food into a dish, Abby made a crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread and ate it on the way to her room. She lay on her bed and stared at the lightning bolt crack on her ceiling for a while, hands under her head.
Jack: Bizarre and strange on one hand, understanding and sweet on the other. Lisa: Messed up several lives, but trying to make amends. Abby wondered if she’d ever given either one of them a real chance to get close.
Abby got up and went to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth, flossed, and brushed again. She pushed aside her bangs to study a small pimple high on her forehead, applying a dab of acne cream to it. After gazing at her eyebrows in the mirror, she rummaged through the box of junk in the medicine cabinet for the tweezers. She plucked several hairs between her brows. Replacing the tweezers she pulled out the nail clippers and cut off a broken toenail. Using an emery board she tried to shape the remainder of her fingernails, then rubbed lavender-scented lotion on her hands and forearms.
She stared at herself in the mirror. “I’m out of things to do, and I’m still not tired.” After a brief inspection, she trimmed her bangs, using the manicure scissors.
With her impulsive makeover complete, she went into the hall and stopped at the newly boarded-up wall covering the hidden stairs. She ran her hands over the perimeter and laid her cheek against the plasterboard, trying to absorb inspiration from the room below. She had trouble imagining slaves hiding in the basement. Who first opened the house to runaways? Leticia and Silas? How did people know this was a safe house? Questions flew through her brain, but no answers, her mind like a game of Olympic Ping-Pong.
In her bedroom Abby threw her robe on the chair and climbed into bed. She picked up a magazine and flipped through the pages, unable to get involved with stories about singers, movie stars, and horoscopes. Instead, Silas and Jack played in the theater of her mind, on constant re-run.
She rolled over and turned out the lamp. After the initial shock of darkness, her eyes adjusted to the ambient light coming in the window from the full moon. She studied the shapes of her furniture, counted squares on the quilt at the foot of the bed, and wiggled her toes as she hummed “Yankee Doodle.”
She tried to get comfortable, instead getting entangled in the covers. Lifting the sheet in the air, it billowed like a parachute before settling in soft creases over her legs. She repeated the lift, billow, settle sequence. Still awake. The old Baby Ben alarm clock on her dresser ticked away the nighttime minutes until it reached two o’clock.
A loud yowl came from outside. Maybe some stud cat on the prowl for a date with Kitty? The thought made her smile, and she closed her eyes, imagining a cat wedding in the front garden, complete with catnip cake, a bouquet of miniature red roses, and Kitty in a tiny white veil. She began to get drowsy, riding the fence somewhere between awake and asleep. The stupor wrapped her in comfort, like wearing her red moose-track robe on a winter night.
Crack.
Abby sat straight up, startled by the sound of—what? A broken tree branch? A car backfiring? The barn roof collapsing?
She threw the sheet off and ran to the front window. The yard, illuminated in the moonlight, showed the outlines of flowers, the fence, silhouettes of trees, but no branch on the ground or headlights nearby.
Crack.
The reverberation seemed to come from behind the house. Abby went to the side window. The barn loomed in the foreground, outlined against the sky, roof intact. The door stood ajar, a sliver of light glowing from within. A shape materialized from the tree line, slinking through the grass. As if conjured from Abby’s dreams, Kitty crept across the yard.
Crack.
Kitty froze in place and remained that way for a heartbeat, then streaked into the barn, tail between her legs. Abby pulled on her robe as she ran out of the bedroom, not knowing what was happening, but sensing something very wrong.
“I’m coming, Kitty.” She leapt down the stairs two at a time, sped across the second-floor landing, down the steps, through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen. The tile floor chilled her bare feet; she skidded on the throw rug by the mudroom door but avoided falling by grabbing onto the doorframe.
With her momentum stopped, Abby hesitated. What had spooked Kitty? Something—or someone—had made the noises she’d heard. At night they were isolated between the empty bike trail and a section of woods. Should she get help? If Lisa hadn’t already awakened, she must have taken a sleeping pill. Anxiety built on indecision; she chewed on a nub of fingernail. At least she could bring Kitty inside.
Abby opened the back door, wincing at the metallic grating of the old hinges. She tiptoed across the splintery porch floorboards, then eased down the steps. Avoiding the gravel walk she stepped into the damp grass. Soon the bottoms of her pajama pants slapped wet and heavy against her ankles. She shivered at the dampness creeping up her body.
“Ouch.” Abby stepped on a jagged rock as she approached the barn. She stopped, like a kid playing freeze tag.
The night remained deathly still—no breeze, no insect sounds, even the river on mute. The humid air signaled the possibility of a storm somewhere nearby. Moonlight illuminated the everyday things around Abby, making them indistinct, dark things lightened, light things darkened. When nothing responded to her outburst, she scurried across the open space, formulating a plan. Circle the barn. Avoid the trees. Check things out. Go in the barn. Grab Kitty. Back to the house. Breathe.
Abby reached the barn and snugged up against it, the back of her robe snagging on the rough wood. Her breath came in short puffs that matched the rapid thuds of her heart. She edged around the perimeter of the building, pausing often to listen. At the rear corner, she hesitated; once she rounded the bend she would be out of sight of the house and sandwiched between the empty barn and a line of trees.
She shivered. Jack should be inside. Her brother. Not an empty structure. Nothing to fear. Abby took a deep breath, the phrase “Take a cleansing breath” from an exercise class popped into her mind. She stopped, listened, and turned the corner. Rustling bushes and the snap of a stick came from the woods. She stood, rooted to the spot, straining to see through the dark. A shape appeared, then two, then three. Abby realized she had been holding her breath and exhaled as the two does and a fawn continued to feed.
She imaged what it would have been like to sit at the breakfast table tomorrow morning with her dad, laughing with him about her idiotic nighttime adventure. Then she realized her mental picture had them at the oak table in the kitchen at this house, not the old house. Startled, Abby understood she had a thought about her father that didn’t involve death, pain, or sorrow, one that didn’t hurt at all. Silas had done that for her. In giving her his love, he’d released her pain.
Moving away from the shelter of the barn wall, she sauntered into the level, grassy corridor between the barn and trees. The cool grass on her bare feet, her toes like white minnows in the moonlight, and the stillness were peaceful. Until she stepped on something unyielding, cold, and uncomfortable. She bent down and dragged her fingers through the grass. They closed on a small cylinder. She scooped it up and held it close to her eyes, straining to see in the dim light.
Short, hard, open at one end, closed at the other. Roofing hardware? Abby dropped it in her robe pocket and took two more steps, hurting her heel. She picked up an identical metal object and dropped it in with the first. When she stood, she noticed an odd, metallic odor in the air, where normally she smelled the scent of cow manure from a nearby farm.
Arriving at the barn door, she hesitated. But too bad if Jack woke up; she needed Kitty. “Here, Kitty, Kitty …” Abby whispered into the barn.
Abby slid between the barn doors into the soft, lantern-lit interior. The dirt floor, firm and dusty with bits of old straw, made an odd contrast to the damp grass and rough stones outside. She tiptoed forward looking for Kitty, sighing when she felt the touch of downy fur against her ankle.
When she bent over to pick up the cat, the objects from her pocket fell out. They rolled across the floor through the dust and came to rest against the edge of the first stall. She shrugged and scooped Kitty up. The wink of light against metal in her peripheral vision stopped her.
With Kitty under one arm, she bent down and retrieved the identical cylinders, opening her palm to study them. With a sharp intake of breath, she released the cat. Bullets? She dropped one back in her robe pocket and held the other up in the air between her fingers. What type of a gun used a bullet this size? That had to be the sound she’d heard—but who would fire a gun in the middle of the night?
Abby’s breathing accelerated. Her hands became slick with sweat, even though they were cold and numb. Her heartbeat reverberated inside her skull. The damp hem of her pajamas made her shiver. Her mind screamed: Danger, get out.
She turned to flee to the house for help, safety, Mom. Instead she ran into a solid wall of hot flesh. And experienced a sharp, pungent, metallic taste from the hand covering her mouth.