Fifteen minutes later she turned onto Telluride Drive and saw her house halfway down the block, on the other side of the street.
She stopped walking and stared at it.
Though it looked just the same as it always did, there was something different about it this afternoon.
Even from here it looked sort of empty.
Moving more slowly, the strange queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach getting worse every second, she continued toward the house, then stopped again when she was directly across the street from it.
Suddenly she wished she'd gone over to Erica's after all, or let Erica come home with her. Standing on the sidewalk, staring at the house, she had a lonely feeling.
But that was dumb, she told herself. She wasn't a baby, and she'd come home lots of times to find nobody home. And there would always be a note, stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet, telling her where her mother was and what time she'd be home.
But of course, before,Chivas would always be there, and he was lots of company for her.
Today,Chivas wouldn't be there.
Tears flooded her eyes, but she resolutely wiped them away with the sleeve of her coat. Finally she trudged on across the street and up the walk to the front door.
Her feeling that the house was empty was even stronger now. She started to reach into her pocket for her door key, then a tiny voice in her mind told her to try the door.
It was unlocked. She frowned and pushed it open.
Usually when the door was unlocked it meant her mom was home.
But today the house still had that funny empty feel to it.
"M-Mom?" she called out as she stepped into the foyer, leaving the door standing open behind her. "It's me! Is anybody home?"
Her voice echoed back to her, and when there was no reply, her vague feelings of worry closed in on her. If there wasn't anybody home, how come the door was unlocked?
She told herself that nobody in Silverdale ever locked their doors, but she still knew that her family always did.
She went to the kitchen and dumped her book bag on the table, then searched the refrigerator for a note.
There was none.
Her first impulse was to call her father at work and ask him where her mother was, but she decided not to. She was only supposed to call her father if it was a real emergency, like the house was on fire, or someone was sick, or something like that.
Just because her mother hadn't left her a note didn't mean anything was really wrong.
She opened the refrigerator, her eyes scanning its contents as she tried to decide if she wanted to eat something, then closed it as she realized she wasn't hungry at all.
Pursing her lips, she went to the back door, parted the curtains and looked out into the backyard.
And for the first time she saw thatsomethingwas wrong.
The door to the rabbit hutch was standing wide open, but inside she could see the rabbits allsquinched up together.
That was strange, because whenever they had a chance, the rabbits always tried to escape from their cage, slipping through the door whenever anybody opened it.
She rememberedChivas again, and a chill ran through her.
She shivered as she opened the back door and stepped out once more into the chilly afternoon. She zipped the jacket all the way up to her chin, but it did no good, for as she reluctantly crossed the lawn toward the rabbit hutch, her whole body seemed to turn cold.
Kelly was standing silently, tears running down her face as she stared at the limp corpses of the rabbits, when she felt a hand touch her shoulder.
She jumped with the unexpectedness of the touch, then looked up, expecting to see her mother. When she recognized Elaine Harris and saw the look of strain on her face, she knew that something was, after all, terribly wrong.
"I'm afraid there's something I have to tell you, Kelly," Elaine said, gently leading the little girl back toward the house. Kelly moved stoically, her feet feeling leaden, certain she already knew what Mrs. Harris was going to tell her.
She listened silently as Elaine Harris slowly explained that her parents and her brother were dead. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on Elaine, and she struggled to control the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
"It was a terrible accident," Elaine finished, repeating the words her husband had spoken to her only a little while ago, words that she had no reason to doubt. She slipped her arms around Kelly and tried to hold her close, but the little girl's body felt stiff. "We don't know what happened, and I'm not sure we'll ever find out. But your mommy and daddy were trying to help your brother. He-Well, he was sick, and they were taking him to the hospital."
Finally a sob shook Kelly's body and she slumped against Elaine.
Elaine said nothing for a while, but simply held Kelly close, her own eyes flooding with tears as she felt the child's acceptance of what had happened. "It's going to be all right," she assured Kelly. "Your Uncle Jerry and I are going to take care of you, and you'll never have to worry about anything."
She held Kelly for another moment, then gently disentangled herself from the little girl and started leading her out of the house. "Let's go now," she said softly. "We'll go over to our house and come back and get your things later. All right?"
Kelly, her mind numb, nodded mutely as Elaine took her through the house and out the front door. But then she paused, tugging at Elaine's hand until Elaine stopped walking.
Kelly turned and looked back at the house.
She knew deep in her heart that she was never going to see her family again.
The image of the house began to swim crazily as tears flooded her eyes. Then, once more, she turned away.
Sharon was breathing hard and her whole body had turned into a mass of aching muscles, but still she trudged onward. Ahead of her on the trail, Mark seemed to be tireless, striding ahead, pausing every now and then to wait for her to catch up. But even when she could go no farther and had to sit down for a few minutes to catch her breath, he'd kept moving, hurrying back down the trail or moving off it entirely, always searching for a spot that would give him a view of the valley. Each time he found such a spot, he would stand and stare like a frightened animal, his eyes searching the terrain below, looking for signs of the hunters they both knew must be coming after them.
When they'd arrived abruptly at the end of the road several hours ago, where there was nothing but a large parking lot at the base of a ski lift, Sharon's heart had sunk. She should have gone the other way, sped through Silverdale and headed down the valley. Now they were trapped. For a moment she was tempted to turn around, but Mark seemed to read her mind.
"We can't go back," he told her. 'They'll block the road and we'll never get through."
"Well, we can't stay here, either," Sharon replied, but Mark was already out of the car, staring up at the mountains.
"Up there," he said at last. "We'll have to hike out."
He began rummaging in the back of the station wagon, but the only thing he found that would be of any use at all was a worn blanket that looked as if it hadn't been used for anything but spreading on the ground for picnics over the past dozen years. Worn and thin, and filled with fragments of grass and leaves, it would offer little protection against the cold of the night, but it was better than nothing. With the blanket tucked under Mark's arm, they had set off.
For the first few miles they moved quickly, but as they climbed steadily upward, Sharon began to tire.
Mark, on the other hand, felt his body quickly begin to respond to the exercise. His legs seemed to take on a rhythmic stride of their own, and as he climbed the steep trail, his body began to sweat as his system struggled to keep his body temperature in equilibrium. Finally he felt the last remnants of the headache fade away, and he kept moving, breathing deeply. When his mother eventually called out to him that she had to rest, he turned back to face her without thinking.