In the Blink of an Eye (17 page)

How many does she have left?

How many will he witness alone, longing for the woman he's loved from the moment he laid eyes on her when she was merely fifteen?

She was a beautiful girl, with thick golden hair in a pompadour high above her forehead, the way all the girls used to wear it then. She had a tiny waist, emphasized by the full skirts and broad-shouldered blouses that were so in style in those years after the war. The New Look, they called it. All the girls in their Bronx neighborhood were wearing it, but Rupert only had eyes for Nan.

He was in his early twenties, but he didn't tell her that. Not at first. There was a lot he didn't tell her. She had enough to worry about, the oldest daughter in an impoverished household with eight children and a widowed mother.

It was so easy for Rupert—who had also been born in poverty—to spoil her. He knew from experience how much any treat was appreciated when you had nothing.

Nan's face always lit up when he gave her something, even if it was the smallest of gifts—a pack of chewing gum, a bouquet of daisies. He took great pleasure in making her smile.

He still does.

Swallowing hard, Rupert lowers the white Venetian blinds and turns away from the window.

He reaches past the bottles of medication and the baby monitor on the nightstand and switches on a bedside lamp.

“I have to go out for a short time, Nan,” he says reluctantly. “Will you be all right alone?”

She barely nods.

He senses her fear.

She's worried that something will happen while he's gone.

To her.

Nothing will happen, Nan. You'll be here when I get back. Just as you always have been.

“I'll be right home again,” he promises. “Fifteen minutes.”

He considers that. How long can it possibly take? Paine Landry will most likely be grateful for the offer.

“Maybe only ten minutes,” he amends, and walks swiftly to the door.

L
EANING AGAINST A
streetlight with a cigarette between his lips, Edward Shuttleworth feels in the back pocket of his jeans for a book of matches he's certain he picked up earlier, at the White Horse Tavern. It isn't there.

He reaches into the other back pocket, then checks both his front pockets and the one on his gray T-shirt. Nothing.

He curses softly, wondering how the hell he managed to leave the car without a light. It's parked back on Dale Drive outside the grounds, and he's not in the mood to hike all the way back through Leolyn Woods before he can smoke a freaking cigarette.

He removes the pack again from its usual place in the turned-up sleeve of his T-shirt, takes the butt from his mouth, and slides it back in with the others. Only three left. He'll stop for more on the way back to Jamestown.

Edward sighs, frustrated by the wasted trip. Twenty miles' worth of gasoline—no, forty round-trip—and all for nothing. That piece-of-shit car of his is a real gas guzzler, too. Not like that little red rental job parked a few yards away, at the curb in front of his stepmother's house.

He arrived here twenty minutes ago, just as the guy and his kid were getting out of it loaded down with packages.

Lousy timing.

Or maybe it was lucky timing.

After all, if he had arrived a few minutes earlier, he'd have been inside when they came home.

They would have caught him off guard.

They might even have seen him.

Well, not the kid, he cracks to himself, his thin lips tilting into a smirk. She's never going to see him, or anything else, for that matter.

When he saw them go into the house, he backed up to this streetlight and stood watching, thinking they might just drop off the packages and leave again. But after they disappeared into the house, lights went on, one after another, downstairs and up.

Yeah, they're staying put for a while.

Well, he can come back tomorrow.

No, not tomorrow. Tomorrow he's working a paving job down in Bradford. It's a Sunday—time and a half.

So he'll come back Monday. With any luck, the place will be empty.

If it isn't—well, he'll figure out what to do then.

S
ITTING CROSS-LEGGED ON
the floor of her room, Dulcie carefully places an oblong bead—a purple one—into the compartment with the other purple beads. She has a lot of sorting to do before she can start on that bracelet for Julia. She's decided to make a necklace, too—if she has enough beads. If she doesn't, maybe they can buy more at Wal-Mart. Unless Margaret buys them at a special store back home. Maybe the beads at Wal-Mart all have smooth edges.

She reaches for another bead and runs her fingertips over it. This one has a raised ridge around the middle.

Blue.

She can hear Daddy in the bathroom down the hall. She keeps hearing a clanking sound, like a metal tool banging against a metal pipe, and he's been swearing a lot. Sometimes he does it under his breath, but other times he does it right out loud. She hears everything anyway.

He's trying to put a shower head over the bathtub.

Another bead.

Smooth and round.

Red.

“Dulc, I have to go down to the basement to see if I can find a different wrench,” Daddy calls, his feet already descending the stairs. “I'll be back in a second.”

“Okay.”

An oval bead.

Green.

A flat-topped bead.

Gold.

Dulcie looks up suddenly. Someone is in the room.

“Daddy?”

But it isn't him. She didn't hear his footsteps coming back up the stairs.

She didn't hear anything at all.

It's just a sense that she isn't alone.

“Who's there?”

An image flits into her mind. A face. So pretty . . .

Dulcie remembers faces. Dimly, but they're there. Stored in her memory. When Daddy reads to her or describes things to her, those memories of her distant, sighted days help her mind to see what he's seeing.

She remembers colors, too.

Now, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she zeroes in on the picture her mind's eye has conjured.

Blue eyes . . .

Light yellow hair . . .

“Is that you?” she asks aloud, addressing the presence. “Am I seeing you?”

Yes.

The answer is little more than a whisper inside Dulcie's head.

This is how it always happens. This is what happened that night in her room, when Gram was there.

And earlier, when she was in the kitchen and Daddy and Julia were in the cellar. At first, she was certain she had heard someone knocking on the door, and a man's voice calling out. But when she found her way to the hallway, she realized someone was inside the house. By the stairs. And it wasn't a man.

It was a woman. Or a girl.

Whoever it was had stolen Dulcie's book. Whoever it was thought that was funny. The laughter echoes in Dulcie's head again—or maybe she's hearing it now. Maybe whoever is here with her in her room is still laughing about that.

Then, with a sudden chill, Dulcie realizes it isn't laughter after all.

Somebody is crying. Hard, and loud. The way Dulcie cried when Daddy told her Gram was dead.

She can see the pretty face with the light hair. And tears are coming out of those big blue eyes. They're so sad.

“What's the matter?” Dulcie asks, reaching out in front of her, waving her arms, thinking she might encounter a person.

There's nothing but emptiness.

Yet the room isn't empty.

She's
still here.

Crying.

Frightened.

Dulcie can feel her fear.

Goose bumps pop up on her own bare arms below the short sleeves of the new summer top Julia helped her pick out. Dulcie hugs herself, rocking back and forth, afraid.

Not for herself.

For
her.

Now there are words in Dulcie's head along with the pitiful wails. Words that are screamed in a shrill, panicky voice.

No!

Stop!

Help!

There is music, too. Faint at first, but it seems to grow louder with the shrieks, until it explodes in Dulcie's head along with one piercing scream . . .

Only to be silenced abruptly.

“I'm back, Dulcie,” Daddy calls, and she hears his heavy footsteps on the stairs once again.

She opens her mouth, struggling to find her voice.

“Dulcie?” He sounds worried. She hears him coming down the hall, toward her room.

“I'm fine,” she calls back to him.

“How's it going with the beads?” he asks, nearer now. Not muffled. She knows that he's poking his head in the doorway.

“Okay.”

“I can't find the right kind of wrench. Looks like I won't be able to take a shower again tomorrow. I have to go back to Wal-Mart.”

Dulcie tries to focus on what Daddy's saying. “But I thought you said we were going to go for a ride to that place where you used to live.”

“Chautauqua. I did say that, didn't I?”

“You said Julia can come, too. Remember? And she said she will.”

“I know. But she has to go to her church first. So you and I will find a hardware store first thing in the morning. Then we'll come back here and get Julia and go to Chautauqua. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Finish your beads and then we'll find something to eat for dinner. Maybe I can boil some elbow macaroni. We have butter to put on it. And then it'll be bedtime. It's getting late.”

Dulcie nods.

She doesn't want to go to bed.

Because sooner or later,
she's
going to come back.

It isn't that Dulcie's afraid of her.

No.

Remembering the aura of fear, and the crying, and the screams, Dulcie realizes that she's afraid
for
her.

R
UMMAGING THROUGH THE
cluttered wooden pantry cupboard beside the humming refrigerator, whose door he just closed in frustration, Lincoln Reynolds can't find a thing to eat. What is all this stuff, anyway?

He surveys the shelves, stooping his six-foot-four frame to see the lower few. Canned vegetables and soup. Cereal. A box of crackers that's been open for months and has just crumbs left in the bottom. And countless cylindrical plastic bottles filled with spices and herbs—not the brands that cost four bucks in Shur-Fine, but the cheap kind that are only ninety-nine cents over at Wal-Mart.

In this household, there never has been money to spare on brand names.

Lincoln begins taking the containers down one by one, lining them up on the scarred red laminate countertop. There are three open containers of oregano. Two of cinnamon. And what the heck is cream of tartar? A waste of space, that's what it is.

What does he need all this stuff for, anyway? He never cooks, unless you count warming a can of chicken noodle soup or chili on the old gas stove. Corinne was the one who did all the cooking. She even made chicken soup and chili from scratch. Said it was cheaper that way.

Lincoln rubs his tired eyes, realizing that she's been gone almost a year and he hasn't even cleaned out the cupboards yet.

Hasn't got used to doing the grocery shopping yet, either. That's why there's nothing good to eat at nine o'clock on a Saturday night when that take-out pizza he ate for dinner has long since been replaced with an unsatisfied rumbling in the pit of his oversize stomach.

He's hungry, damn it.

He could go for some of those chocolate snack cakes Corinne used to buy him. Or some peanut butter smeared on crackers. Or a bag of chips.

Lincoln glances again at the row of spices on the countertop, then crosses the room and takes the plastic trash container ftom the cupboard beneath the sink. He carries it over, positions it under the counter, and with one movement, sweeps all the spices and herbs into it.

There.

Now at least he'll have room to fill the cupboard with snacks. If he can afford to buy them, the next time he makes a trip over to the supermarket in Cassadaga.

He doesn't like to go there very often. Even now, after all these years of living a few miles down the road, in Sinclairville, going into Cassadaga brings back memories he'd rather keep buried.

Memories of Kathy.

Lincoln scowls and looks down at the trash basket, now brimming with discarded plastic bottles he'll never use.

Not without a woman around the house.

Lincoln liked being married. It felt natural, having a wife.

They never were able to have a family. They wanted children. They tried to have children. But it just didn't happen. Back then, when he and Corinne were first married, things were different than they are now. Now you hear about people going to special doctors, and having tests, and going to all sorts of crazy extremes to have babies.

Back then, there were no test tubes or sperm or egg donors. At least, not that Lincoln and Corinne ever heard. Even if there had been options, they wouldn't have been able to afford fancy medical treatments. Hell, they barely would have been able to swing baby shoes and formula if they were fortunate enough to conceive a child.

But they weren't.

They simply accepted their childless state and moved on, financially unable to adopt, either. That wouldn't be the same anyway, Corinne thought. She wanted a baby of their own, or no baby at all.

It wasn't as though they had to dwell on their situation. There was always too much to keep them busy, so that they fell into bed, exhausted, every night after sundown and dragged themselves out every morning with the rooster's crow at the first light of dawn.

It wasn't easy, running the farm Lincoln had inherited from his parents. But he and Corinne managed to squeak by, as his parents had. They made a good team.

A better team than he and Kathy would have made.

That's what he's spent the last few decades trying to convince himself.