“Did you win?”
She looked up at him, startled to find herself only a foot away.
“I’m walking, aren’t I?”
He chuckled. “No, no. The game.”
“Oh.” She pushed the walker through the doorway. Bookcases made the entrance narrow. His room smelled like ink and old books.
“We lost by three runs.”
“It’s a shame,” he said quietly. “You should always win your last game.”
She stopped near the window. He had a view of the back parking lot. “Who says it was my last game?”
She turned and looked at his room, then. It was filled with books.
A desk covered with papers stood in the center of the floor and a stereo, like the one her granddaughter was so proud of, took up a shelf of one of the bookcases. The bed in the far corner was neatly made and covered with a manufactured spread.
“Would you like to sit?” He pulled a chair back for her. Nell shook her head.
“Tea then?” He reached behind him and plugged in a coffee machine. Cups, canisters, and vials filled with liquid rested beside the machine.
“What are you doing here?” Nell’s question slipped out. He turned sharply to look at her. Nell felt herself blush. “I mean, you don’t look as if you need to be here.”
He smiled and the lines cascaded into wrinkles. “My grand-nephew runs this place. He figures I’m getting too old to live alone.”
“But there are other places to stay if you’re in good health. You don’t seem to need medical care.”
“I don’t yet.” He hooked his thumb in his front pockets and leaned against the door frame. Nell wondered if he’d stop her if she tried to leave. “I’m helping him with some research.”
Nell glanced again at the desk. Some of the papers lying there were covered with the same spiral that was near the door.
“We’re trying to find a way to slow down the aging process,” he said. “You’ve heard of Leonard Hayflick?”
“No.”
“Hayflick is a biologist who found that cells have a clearly defined life span. He figured that the life span was determined by the number of cell divisions instead of chronological age. But some cells deteri-orate before they reach their maximum divisions. And that, some believe, causes aging. Follow me?”
Nell realized she had been staring at him blankly. “Sorry.”
“Let me put it simply,” he said. “Everyone can live to a certain maximum age, but not everyone reaches that age because of physical deterioration. What we’re trying to do is prevent that physical deterioration so that people can live out their entire lives.”
“What is this maximum age?” Nell asked.
Karl shrugged. “We don’t know. But some people have claimed that they were well over a hundred. And I just read about a woman recently whose baptismal records prove she is a hundred and twenty.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“You asked, Nelly.”
Nell’s entire body went cold. She gripped her walker tightly and tried to think of a way she could get out of the room.
He took a step toward her, and she cringed.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I should have let you know right away that I knew who you were. My family stayed in Wisconsin, Nell.
They let me know what was going on in your life. I knew you were here well before I came.”
“What are you going to do?” Her voice trembled.
He took another cautious step toward her. “Well, first, Nelly, I’d like to explain about Bess.”
“No,” she said and her fear was as real as it had been that sunlit July morning when he had clamped his bloody hand against her mouth. “If you don’t let me out of here, I’m going to scream.”
“Nelly—”
“I mean it, Karl, I’m going to scream.”
He opened his hands wide. “You’re free to go, Nell. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it a long time ago.”
She pushed the walker before her like a shield. Her hands were slipping on the metal. As she passed Karl, she didn’t look at him.
The walls seemed narrower and the distance to her room much too short. When she got inside, she closed the door, wishing that it would lock. But she knew that part of her fear was irrational. There wasn’t much a ninety-five-year-old man could do to her here, not in this home filled with bright lights and young nurses. All she had to do was scream and someone would come to her. They didn’t ignore screams in Household 5.
Nell tugs at her knickers. No matter how tightly she ties them, they always stay uncomfortably loose about the waist. She has been reluctant to slide into a base like Chucky tells her to because she’s afraid that if she does her knickers will come off.
She takes the path that goes through Kirschman’s apple orchard.
Mr. Kirschman hates it when the kids take the shortcut through his orchard, but they do anyway.
As she turns the corner to the center of the orchard, someone clamps a hand over her mouth and drags her back against the tree.
The hand is tight and slippery. It smells like iron.
“Nelly, promise not to scream if I let you go?”
The voice is Karl’s. She nods. Slowly he releases her.
“What were you trying to do?”
He raises a grimy finger to his lips. His dark hair stands out in sharp relief to his pale skin. “I don’t want you to go any farther, okay? I want you to go back and get your father right away. Promise?”
Nell nods again. She’s staring at his stained white shirt and she realizes that it is covered with blood. She wipes at her mouth and her hand comes away bloody.
“Nell—”
She turns and starts to run, not realizing until she’s rounded the corner that she’s disobeyed Karl. There, lying across the orchard path, is her sister. Bess’s hair is strewn about her, and her blouse is covered with blood.
“Nell,” it’ll be okay, just—”
Nell screams. Karl is standing behind her. She pushes him out of her way and runs down the orchard path toward home. This time running seems easy although the air still catches in her throat. She can’t hear Karl behind her, and as she nears the house, she knows she’s safe. Karl won’t hurt her, Karl would never hurt her. The only one Karl hurts is Bess, and that is Bess’s fault because she doesn’t listen to Papa and now it’s too late, it’s all too late because Nell has left her there, bleeding and helpless, with Karl, the man who hurts her, the man whose hands are covered with blood.
“Did I ever tell you that my sister was murdered?”
Anna smoothed her already neat skirt and sighed. “Yes, Mother.”
Her tone said, A thousand times, Mother. Do I have to hear it again?
Nell clutched her hands in her lap, trying to decide if she should continue. Anna would never believe her. Even though she was fifty-five, Anna rarely thought about anything more serious than clothing and makeup. And, of course, she had never known her Aunt Bess.
“I saw the man who killed her.”
Anna suddenly became stiff, and her eyes focused on something beyond Nell’s shoulder.
Nell’s heart was pounding. Her oldest, Elizabeth, would have listened. But Bess had been dead for six years. “I think I told you this once,” Nell said. “But the man who killed her — his name was Karl — also killed her fiance, Edmund. And they never caught him.
And it used to frighten me, thinking that someday he’d come back for me.”
“That was a long time ago, Mother.” Anna’s voice had an edge to it.
“I know.” Nell’s fingers had grown cold. “But I wouldn’t be telling you now if it weren’t important.”
Anna looked at her mother full in the face, a deep, piercing look.
“Why is it important now?”
“Because he’s here,” Nell whispered. The words sounded too melodramatic, but she couldn’t take them back. “He’s across the hall.”