Page 111 of Middle of the Night

To listen for the small changes that occur when someone in the house is doing something they shouldn’t. Which Russ is doing right now. Creeping through the kitchen and tiptoeing up the stairs.

Misty charts his progress based on the sound of his footfalls. The creak means he’s reached the third step. The groan indicates he’s now at the sixth. She hears a swoosh—Russ turning at the landing—beforetwo more creaks, the second an octave higher than the first. The last two steps.

She doesn’t leave her bed until she hears the groan of the floorboard right outside Russ’s room. As he closes his bedroom door, Misty opens hers, intent on learning what her son has been up to. When he left his room, the sound woke her from a dead sleep, so loud in her mind it was like cannon fire and not a boy stepping on a faulty floorboard. She sat up in bed, ears alert for every telltale noise, as Russ went downstairs, then outside, then in and out again.

Misty knows most mothers would have immediately followed. Russ is ten. He has no reason to leave the house in the middle of the night. But Misty learned her lesson with Johnny. The more she openly pried, the sneakier he became, until his actions were all but invisible to her. She won’t repeat that mistake with Russ. It’s best to let him think she’s not paying attention, when in fact she sees everything.

She knows, for instance, that he was out in the woods today with his friends and returned upset about something. That he was moody all night. She’s certain it involves the Marsh boy.

As she creeps downstairs, Misty knows to avoid all the things that alerted her to Russ’s movements. Groaning floorboards skipped, creaking stairs averted. In the kitchen, nothing is amiss except for a knife incongruously sitting on the counter.

The sight of it sends alarm bells clanging through her thoughts. What on earth had Russ been up to?

Misty examines the knife, relieved to find it clean of food and—her main concern—blood. The very idea that her Russell could stab someone fills her with shame for thinking it. He’s a good boy, but she’s had enough parent-teacher conferences about Russ’s anger issues to know they’re a problem. They even started sending him to therapy once a week, not that it seems to be doing much good. The knife in her hand is proof of that. The reason her son felt compelled to grabit—and what he intended to do with it—are less clear. Rather than ask Russ about it, she decides to monitor the situation for the next few days. Maybe whatever was going through his head has passed. Maybe it was nothing to begin with.

Satisfied with her plan, Misty washes the knife, dries it with a paper towel, and hides it under her bed. She goes to sleep blissfully unaware of what’s to come.

How, in just a few hours, she’ll hear about the slashed tent next door and the missing Barringer boy.

How she’ll instantly know Russ had something to do with it, that he used her best knife to slice through the tent, that he might have used it to do even worse.

How she’ll never mention her suspicions to anyone, including her husband and her son, preferring ignorance to knowledge for the first time in her life.

How she’ll vow to do whatever is necessary to help Russ get better, whether it be more therapy or additional attention or just taking it easier on him than she did his brother.

How, once word gets out that the police will be searching every house on Hemlock Circle for a potential weapon, she’ll remove the knife from its hiding place and bury it deep in her garden. Deep enough that no one will ever find it. So deep that she will eventually forget it’s there.

But on the night she covers the knife with dirt, Misty will think of Johnny and how, having already lost one of her sons, she refuses to lose another.

THIRTY-TWO

The lights of the patrol car carrying Russ cast a multicolored glow over Hemlock Circle. I stand in the front yard, watching the exterior of the Chens’ house shift from red to blue to searing white and back again. The light begins to fade as the car slowly pulls away from the curb, a uniformed officer behind the wheel. In the passenger seat next to her is Ragesh. Russ occupies the backseat, gaze fixed on the back of Ragesh’s head, his expression dazed.

I imagine I look the same way standing here on the lawn. Shell-shocked and spent, with blood still drying on my hands and shirt. I always assumed that, if I were to ever learn what really happened to Billy, I’d feel relieved. That the burden of ignorance would be lifted. That with closure would ultimately come healing. Instead, I only feel sadness. Rather than one lost friend, I now have two.

Because I don’t believe what Russ said about simply slashing the tent and walking away. It’s too convenient, too dependent on the idea that someone else entered the lawn and saw a golden opportunity to take Billy. The odds of that being the truth are a billion to one.

Ahead of the cruiser is Detective Palmer’s vehicle, leading the way for what’s sure to be another long night. Following those two vehiclesis a CR-V carrying the two Mrs. Chens—Jennifer and Misty. Neither woman looks at me as the car leaves the driveway. The only person in the car who acknowledges my presence is Benji, relegated to the backseat like his father. Unlike Russ, Benji is turned around, staring out the back window, offering a single wave before the car exits Hemlock Circle.

Watching it go, I can’t help but think that I’ve just ruined Benji’s life. Ironic, seeing how his father has ruined mine—twice. First, by coming into the tent and taking Billy. Second, by pretending for thirty years that he didn’t.

With both cars gone, I turn my attention to the rest of Hemlock Circle. Others have come outside to watch the unfolding drama. Ragesh’s parents, Mitesh and Deepika, stand at the end of their driveway. Two doors away, Fritz and Alice Van de Veer linger on their front stoop. All of them look my way, their stares accusatory.

This is my fault.

I couldn’t stop digging, and now life on Hemlock Circle has been disrupted once again.

I am no longer welcome here.

Once the Patels and the Van de Veers have returned indoors, someone emerges from the house that sits between them.

Ashley.

She leaves the front door wide open as she sprints across the cul-de-sac. There’s a frantic edge to her voice as she calls my name. “Ethan, have you seen Henry?”

“No,” I say, caught off guard by the question. One, has Ashley not noticed what was happening at Russ’s house? Two, why would she think Henry is with me? “He’s not at your house?”

“I thought he was,” Ashley says. “I thought he was in his room, reading or something. But when I went up to check on him, he wasn’t there.”

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