Several times that afternoon they looked out of Erskine’s third-floor window, and once she thought she saw his car parked directly across the street, but it was already growing dark by then and it was hard to be sure. And on the way home she kept looking nervously around, trying to spot him, but she was unsuccessful.
She kept wanting to tell Erskine the thought that had come to her, that Jeffrey Channing might be her father. But she was afraid he would think she was demented. And she was having more and more trouble deciding how she felt about the man. If he was her father she wished he would stop playing tag in his car and come right out and talk to her, and if he wasn’t her father she wished he would disappear altogether, because then he was either working for Roberta or was some free-lance pervert and she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
The other thing that bothered her was Veronica. Veronica still hadn’t come to school, and somebody said something about her being in the hospital for tests. Something about her blood, and maybe it was nothing, but on television programs whenever anybody went into the hospital for routine blood tests you knew they were going to die of leukemia or something equally horrible before the hour was out. And if she and Erskine hadn’t had that stupid conversation about killing people she’d just be vaguely sorry for Veronica, if indeed there was something seriously wrong with her, but they had had that conversation, and the two people they mentioned were Graham and Veronica, and Graham had a ruptured spleen and Veronica had whatever she had, and it was creepy.
Really creepy.
She drifted to the music, reached for her flute, put it aside without sounding a note. She glanced at the portrait, then heard something that made her tune down the volume on the tape recorder.
Roberta and David. In conversation, their voices raised to an unusual level.
She turned the music up again, deciding to ignore them. But something made her go to her door and open it. She could hear them a little better now. She hesitated, then walked silently to the staircase and went down halfway, seating herself on a step.
She heard Roberta insist that they have the conversation some other time, that David was drunk. She heard David say loudly that he wasn’t drunk, that no one could blame him for drinking anyway.
She heard Roberta protest that the child would hear. She heard David reply that the child had a name, that the child’s name was Ariel, and that a decent mother would call her child by name. Besides, he added, Ariel wouldn’t hear anything. She was playing her flute, and couldn’t Roberta hear it?
They were both silent for a moment, and Ariel listened to the tape of her music. You could hear it clearly.
Then she heard Roberta say that she could hear the music, all right, if you wanted to call it music. And then there was a long exchange that she couldn’t follow, and then she lost interest and thought of returning to her room, and then abruptly David was shouting again, accusing Roberta of having an affair with... Jeff Channing.
Ariel was stunned. She tried to listen to what was said next but her head was reeling and she had trouble taking it all in. There was a lot said, a lot shouted, but the one thing that stayed with her was David’s accusation. Roberta and Channing, Roberta and Channing — her head was spinning with it.
Then he wasn’t her father. He was Roberta’s lover. But maybe he was both, maybe he had started sleeping with Roberta after he had tracked down the Jardells and found they adopted his daughter. Maybe...
The possibilities suggested themselves infinitely. She stood up, felt dizzy for a moment, then managed to turn and make her way silently up the stairs. Roberta and David continued their argument below her but she was no longer able to pay them any attention.
If he was her father, why did David think he was sleeping with Roberta?
If he was Roberta’s lover, why was he following Ariel?
She couldn’t begin to make sense of it.
The argument left Roberta drained, exhausted. It ended inconclusively, of course, with David returning to his study while she stationed herself in front of the television set and waited for him to go upstairs to bed. When he finally did she gave him time to pass out, then made herself watch another reel or two of the late movie. She was tired, could have fallen asleep at any time after the argument, but the longer she stayed awake the greater the chance of sleeping uninterrupted until dawn.
Just for insurance, she took an extra Valium before retiring.
And woke up in the middle of the night in spite of everything. Woke from a sound sleep, woke with no warning, and saw the woman in the corner of the room.
Her features were a little more sharply drawn this night, as they had been on her second appearance before Caleb’s death. And she was carrying something, and just before she vanished she turned toward Roberta, and the object she was holding flashed. Roberta couldn’t tell what it was, only that it flickered brightly at her.
Then the woman was gone.
Roberta felt herself drawn back into sleep. She was tired, had awakened incompletely, and still had the drug circulating in her bloodstream. She wanted to lie down and drift off.
Something made her get out of bed. She walked to Caleb’s room and stood outside the closed door. Her hand was reaching for the doorknob when she glanced to her left and saw the sliver of light underneath Ariel’s door.
She strode the length of the hallway, flung the door open. Ariel was sitting stark naked on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap. A candle was burning on her night table below the portrait she’d dragged down from the attic.
The child seemed to be in a trance. It took her a long moment to react. Then she recoiled, folding her arms in front of her little breasts, shrinking away from Roberta.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Roberta said. “What’s the matter with you? What do you think you’re doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s this crap with a candle?”
“I—”
“And you’re naked. You’ll freeze, Ariel. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Put out that candle. Get some pajamas on and go to sleep. Do you hear me?”
The child stared at her. She looked helpless and confused, Roberta thought, and for a moment the impulse came to reach out to her, to hold her and hug her and tell her everything would be all right. But she couldn’t do it and the moment passed.
“Put out that candle,” she said. She swept out of the room, drawing the door shut after her. On the way back to her own room she paused just long enough to take a pill. Just one pill this time.
Twenty
Six years earlier there had been a rash of break-ins in Charleston Heights and environs. Somewhere in its course Elaine Channing had become nervous about being home alone at night, and Jeff had decided she ought to have a gun around the house. He didn’t suppose she’d be very likely to use it, but felt it might give her a feeling of security.
The gun he’d bought was a .25-caliber automatic, nickel- plated, a tiny gun that could slip easily into a pocket or evening bag without causing a bulge. Elaine had refused to have anything to do with it, and it had stayed ever since, fully loaded, in the bottom left-hand drawer of the leather-topped kneehole desk in the living room, along with the original box of shells and a spare clip. The drawer was locked to keep the gun out of the children’s hands — Greta had been only three when it was purchased — and the key in turn was kept in the center drawer, in a little box with postage stamps and paper clips.