Page 9 of Middle of the Night

Ethan’s mother looks to his father. A wordless exchange in which he knows they’re debating how much to tell him. It ends with his father nodding and his mother saying, “They no longer need me.”

Even though the strain in her voice makes it clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, Ethan needs to know more. She’d started the job in May—forcing an adjustment that was huge for a kid accustomed to his mother being around before and after school and all day during thesummer. The first time Ethan came home from school to an empty house was both scary and exhilarating. Sure, he was only alone for an hour. And yes, he’d ended up watching TV and eating Goldfish crackers like he always did. But much like closing his bedroom door each night, that small bit of freedom made him feel more grown up.

Second in his thoughts, but equally important, is the fact that with his mother being home all day now, there’ll be no need for his babysitter, Ashley. To Ethan, that is worse than losing his freedom. It means he probably won’t get to see Ashley at all for the rest of the summer. And helovesseeing her.

“Are you going to get another job?”

“I don’t know.” His mother picks up a piece of bacon, considers eating it, gives it to Barkley instead. “We’ll see.”

In Ethan’s experience, that almost always means no. But he’s not ready to drop the subject.

“I think you should,” he says. “Or maybe ask for your old job back. Maybe you can do something else there.”

“This is for the best,” Ethan’s mother says, using another favorite euphemism for no. “Besides, I don’t want to go back there.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t really talk about it.”

Ethan’s father lowers the newspaper again. “Can’t or won’t?”

“It’s complicated,” his mother says as she carries the skillet to the sink and fills it with water. A stalling tactic even Ethan knows won’t work out. Fred Marsh is persistence personified.

Sure enough, his father waits until the faucet stops running before saying, “You told me you were let go because of budget cuts. What’s so complicated about that?”

Rather than answer, Ethan’s mother grabs a Brillo pad and starts to scrub.

“Joyce, what aren’t you telling me?” his father says. “Did something happen last night?”

At the sink, Ethan’s mother nods toward Barkley, who’s at the sliding door to the patio, snout against the glass. “Take him outside,” she tells Ethan. “He probably needs to pee.”

Ethan, staring at the half-full plate in front of him, starts to argue but thinks better of it. Something weird is going on with his parents.

“Go on, sport,” his father adds. “Just for a minute. Breakfast will still be here when you get back.”

Ethan opens the door and Barkley zooms outside, his tail bouncing as he tears through the yard, scattering birds. Ethan follows, the patio’s sun-warmed paving stones hot beneath his bare feet. In the cooler grass of the lawn, he finds the stick he and Barkley played with the day before.

“Here, boy,” he says, immediately drawing Barkley’s attention. “Fetch!”

He tosses the stick high into the air, watching it spin as it arcs across the lawn and lands on the edge of the woods that border the backyard. Barkley romps after it as Ethan glances toward the house. Inside, his parents sit at the breakfast table, caught in mid-argument. Seeing them like that tightens the knot of worry in Ethan’s stomach.

Divorce is another one of his vague fears, although less abstract than the others. He’s seen what happens when parents split. Three years earlier, the house next door had been occupied by Ethan’s former best friend, Shawn. When his parents got divorced, their house was put on the market and Shawn was forced to move to Texas with his mother. Ethan hasn’t heard from him since.

He worries the same thing could soon happen to him, even though neither of his parents seems too angry as he watches them through the patio door. His father’s sporting the Professor Look again, which Ethan knows comes with many meanings. Curiosity. Impatience. Frustration.

His mother’s expression is easier to read. She simply looks sad.

Ethan turns away, facing the rest of the yard. He spots Barkley stillat the edge of the woods, the game of fetch forgotten. Instead, his dog peers into the trees, body rigid. When he growls, it sounds so unlike Barkley that it sends a chill down Ethan’s spine.

“What’s wrong, boy?” he says. “What do you see?”

It must be a squirrel, he thinks. Or one of the other animals that emerge from the woods at all hours of the day. Ethan can only remember one other time when his dog growled—at Fritz Van de Veer during the Fourth of July picnic, for reasons no one could understand.

“Come here, boy,” Ethan says, trying to coax his dog away from whatever’s in the woods. When that doesn’t work, he goes to Barkley, crossing the yard to the point where freshly mowed grass meets the forest’s edge. A clear line of demarcation. Past it, the woods stretch for miles, interrupted only by an access road that cuts through it.

Recently, Ethan’s been allowed to venture with Billy to the road, about a mile away, but no farther. Which is fine by him. He has no desire to go beyond it. It’s not that he’s scared, exactly. He’s just never felt the need to explore the woods any farther, mostly because he already knows what’s there. Lots of trees. Lots of rocks. Oh, and the Hawthorne Institute, which Ethan knows nothing about beyond the fact that it exists and that he’s not allowed to go there.

“Stay away from that place,” his mother once told him during an autumn walk in the woods.

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