Page 14 of The Midnight Hour
At least I’ve shed the stubborn ten pounds that had stuck around my middle for the last five years. Thanks to a diet of dried meat and meals like cattail porridge, I’m wiry and lean, verging on positively stringy. I’ve had to hold my shorts up with a piece of twine; my hips jut out like a supermodel’s, without any of the accompanying gloss or glamor.
When Sam and Daniel come back a little while later, they have no rabbit, although they’re hopeful there will be something in the snares tomorrow. Daniel is quietly approving of Ruby’s industry, rumpling her hair, and is rewarded with a shyly beaming smile. Mattie sidles out of the truck and comes up to me as I get out the plates for dinner.
“Honestly, Mom, you aresoembarrassing,” she hisses. “I could totally tell what you were thinking!” Her face is flushed, her tone melodramatically indignant. “AsifI’d have Kyle for my boyfriend! Comeon!”
“Okay,” I reply cautiously, but she is already flouncing away.
I shake my head as I catch Daniel’s bemusedgaze.
“What was that about?” he asks.
“Typical teenaged drama,” I reply with a smile, and he laughs, a soft sound that makes me ache because it reminds me of how we used to be, finding humor amid the hardness, sharing each other’s thoughts, not even needing to say them out loud. I want that Daniel back, even though I’d been so angry at him for hiding so much from me—the loss of his job, the second mortgage, our house being given back to the bank. None of that matters now. I just want to see my husband smile. I want to laugh with him; I want to feel his arms around me. We’ve barely touched since he returned with Sam; I’m not sure we’d even know how.
Over the next few days, however, I start to get glimpses of how Daniel and I used to be, and, more importantly, how wecouldbe. The warm weather holds, and the days are full of gathering plants, picking berries, grinding seeds into flour, and boiling what still look like weeds to me for whatever purpose Ruby has determined. Daniel and Sam come back with two rabbits, and the next day Kyle, who still moves gingerly, wincing at the pain in his shoulder, is most definitely on the mend, and even manages to catch three small brook trout. We fry them up nice and crispy, picking through the tiny bones for the succulent bits of flesh.
It’s not really enough food, but we all act like it is, because we all need a break from the anxiety, the fear and even the hunger. This feels, almost, like a vacation, even though it is anything but. The future looms in front of us, enormous and uncertain, but for a few days everybody is willing not to think about it.
Phoebe sticks close to Mattie, who has taken on all mothering duties; the little girl far prefers my daughter to me. I tell myself I don’t mind, but part of me does.I’mthe mom, I think,except of course when it comes to Phoebe I’m not, and I’m not sure I even want to be.
In the midst of all this busyness, there are surprisingly, and thankfully, moments of both joy and grace. We all go swimming, and Daniel even fashions a rope swing from the branch of a basswood that hangs over the stream that Mattie and Sam both jump on, while Kyle watches, not willing to risk injuring his shoulder. Daniel surprises us all by agreeing to have a try. Watching my husband sail out over the water with a holler makes me laugh; it really is starting to feel like a vacation. As he emerges from the stream, shaking the droplets of water from his hair, he smiles at me.
That night, Daniel and I lie tangled together in our tent, with Sam and Kyle sharing the other one, the girls in the truck. Daniel puts his hand on my stomach like a question, and then, when I let out the tiniest of sighs, slides it upward. I arch into him, craving the feel of his arms around me, the comforting solidness of his body, although as I hold him I realize that, like me, he has become wiry and lean. His lips brush my hair. As we move together, neither of us speaks.
The next morning I’m still lying in my sleeping bag, the sun streaming through the crack in the tarp, turning the makeshift tent into a sauna, when I hear it—the sound of a motor, a distant purr, barely audible. I’m out of the tent in seconds, wild with panic, fired with purpose. Daniel, I see, is half-dressed, rifle in hand. No one else is awake.
“A car?” I ask in a low voice, and he nods.
“Or something.”
“How close?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
We both dress quickly as the sound of the engine, wherever it is, fades in and out. First it seems to be coming from the east, then the west. It feels as if we are being circled; perhaps it’s going around the main road that rings the park. There’s noreason to think they’ll find us; we drove across a field and parked in the woods. We haven’t seen a sign of anyone in all the time we’ve been here.
And yet the sound of the engine drones on.
My skin grows clammy and my heart rate, which has leveled out these last few days, picks up its panicked pace.We were so happy here, I think,so briefly. Why does it have to end?
As the noise of the vehicle, whatever it is, continues, Daniel and I decide to wake up the others just in case. The dazed sleepiness of early morning is replaced by instant alertness and a focused kind of panic. Ruby gathers our food supplies, and Kyle and Sam pack up the tents, Kyle moving slowly thanks to his shoulder. Mattie, with Phoebe on her hip, tosses the sleeping bags into the back of the truck. The sound of the engine is getting louder, fading out less. Whoever it is, they’re definitely getting closer.
Are they looking for us?
Daniel, Sam, Kyle, and I all act as lookouts, while the girls are ready to go, sitting in the truck.
“I can shoot, too,” Mattie argues, but I shake my head, firm, as I guide her inside.
“Phoebe needs you.”
My daughter doesn’t argue with that; the little girl’s arms are wrapped around her neck.
Daniel crouches behind the open door on the driver’s side of the truck; Sam is perched in the fork of a nearby birch tree. I stand on the other side of the truck, half-hidden by the bumper. Kyle is behind a thicket of sumac. He’s not healed enough to hold a rifle but Daniel, Sam, and I are all armed, our rifles trained on the stretch of open meadow we drove across to get to this hidden woodland by the stream, our brief oasis in this desert world.
The grass that had been flattened by the truck has sprung up now; there’s no way to know anyone was here at all, and yetwe can hear the steady hum of a vehicle, growing louder with every second, and yet barely audible over the rush of blood in my ears. It’s as if theyknowwe’re here, hidden by the trees, yet how could they?
Then a vehicle comes into view—a gleaming black SUV, like something from the Connecticut suburbs. It bumps along the meadow straight toward us, and my finger twitches on the trigger.
I’m not going to make the same mistake twice, I tell myself, and yet, if I hold back, will it be too late? Whoever is driving the car can’t be a friend. They’re coming right at us. Theymusthave been looking for us, I think, even though that doesn’t make sense—and this car doesn’t look like it came from Corville. It has New York state plates, for one, and, as it turns, I see, incongruously, a bumper sticker that states the owner of the car is aProud Parent of a Haldane Middle Schooler.
