“Everybody’s gone,” he said. “We’re alone, Ellie.”
He sat on the bed and took her fevered hands in his — small hands, work-hardened hands, good hands, busy hands; through all the years of their marriage they had never been idle until now.
“Get her up, get her busy,” Doctor Miller had said. “Don’t let her lie there and brood about it. Make her angry, make her cry, make her feel something. She needs to cry. If she doesn’t, she may drift away from us into a world of unreality.”
But Ellie Crossman hadn’t cried — not since that night.
“Ellie,” said Ed Crossman. “Do you hear me, Ellie?”
Her eyes stared at him blankly.
He shook her gently. “Ellie, I want to talk to you. We’ve got a lot to do, a lot to decide.”
She looked at him. “Why?” she asked. “What does anything matter?”
“You can’t give up,” he said. “We’ve got to go on living and the sooner we get at it the better for both of us.”
Ellie closed her shadowed eyes. “I don’t care any more, Ed. She was all we had. There’s nothing left.”
“I know how you feel... she was my daughter too. My life. Everything.” The words were hollow dust in his mouth. He said, “I want to do something that is very hard for me. Right now, this afternoon, and I need you. I need you with me where you’ve always been.”
“Not today, Ed. Let me be.”
“Today, Ellie, while I have the strength. Tomorrow bitterness may be too much a habit. I want to go see Steve and Alice.”
Her body jerked and tensed, her fingers dug into his hands, her eyes blazed at him. “Why?” she cried. “How can you forget? How can you even speak their names?”
Ed Crossman shook his head. “It wasn’t their fault, Ellie. You can’t blame them any more than you can blame yourself. None of us knew what was going to happen. If we’d stayed home, if we hadn’t left her alone... None of us knew there was any danger — in this house, in this quiet street, in this peaceful town. Who could think... It was one of those stupid, senseless things, without reason or meaning. We can’t live the rest of our lives blaming ourselves — or blaming anyone.”
He stood up and crossed the room to the front window. He looked down on the dry front lawn and suddenly it was spring and long ago. The grass was green, the flower beds blazed with color, and children played with shrill laughter in the golden sunlight. He remembered the day so long ago and so long forgotten — Steve’s son, Carl, standing by the hedge, his still eyes watching, his dark face frowning.
Had Ed felt a cold premonition even then? The vision was so real that he felt again the swelling half-awed pride he had known that day as he had watched his chubby, blonde-headed little daughter. So beautiful and perfect she had always been to him...
His eyes lifted now to the squat brown house across the street, and the happy voices were silent, the withered lawn empty and cold.
A car came slowly down the street and clattered up the opposite driveway. A small man got out of the car and stood a moment leaning against it. His thin body was stooped and aged and the wind sent his wisps of dark hair flying.
Ed Crossman turned from the window and spoke to his wife. “Steve just came home and I’m going over there. Come along, Ellie. They’re still our friends. They’ve got awful trouble.”
The woman moaned and covered her face with her hands. “What’s their trouble compared to ours? Our child is dead! I hate them, Ed. I’ll hate them as long as I live and I don’t want to ever see them again. How can you be so... so... unfeeling?”
The man rubbed the side of his face. His big hand shook. He said slowly, “Ellie, I know I’m asking a lot. Too much, maybe. But look at it this way. If the kids were sick or got hurt in an accident, wouldn’t you and Alice comfort each other? If our Joanie died and Carl was terribly injured wouldn’t you do all you could to help Alice?”
The woman turned on the bed and stared at him with burning eyes. “It’s not the same, Ed.”
“No,” the big man agreed heavily. “It’s worse. Our pain and sorrow are clean things and all our memories of our daughter are tender and good. But think of Steve and Alice. What will they have to remember all the rest of their lives? Come with me. Please, Ellie.”
The woman shook her head and buried her face in the bedclothes. Ed Crossman covered his wife with a blanket and went out of the room and down the stairs.
The wind was cold and damp on his face when he reached the street. There was a feel of fog in the air, and a trace of rising mist paled the thin light of the sun. Ed Crossman walked slowly through the rustling leaves. How Joanie had loved to tumble in the big leaf piles! How she had shrieked with delight as she raced the falling leaves, her eyes blue as the sky, her yellow curls flying. It was as if the recent years had never been, as if he remembered her most vividly as a child. Sometimes she seemed to skip beside him, her small warm hand clasping his. In these moments his crushing sense of loss was so great that it seemed unbearable.
He stood before the brown house. The windows were dark, the shades drawn, the porch leaf-littered. With leaden feet he climbed the porch steps. He was sweating coldly. Beyond the closed front door some malevolent presence seemed to lurk. He knew it was only his tortured mind that made it seem so, but it was with the greatest difficulty that he forced himself to raise his hand to the knocker.
He tapped gently. No answer. He struck the knocker more firmly. This house where he had always come and gone almost as though it were his own had become an unfriendly thing.
The house remained coldly silent. Almost with relief he turned away. And turning, he heard the savage chuck-chuck of a hoe in the back yard. He went down the steps and around to the back.
Steve Parkson was wielding the tool with violent slashing strokes as he dug into the earth of his vegetable garden.
Ed Crossman watched him a moment, then called his name.
The small man swung around. He had been crying and the pale light glinted on his thin, tear-streaked cheeks. He stared at Ed with incredulous eyes and his face twisted in an anguished grimace. Then their hands met.
Steve Parkson said huskily, “You didn’t need to come, Ed. I know how you must feel and, God, I can’t blame you. I can’t believe it’s happened. It’s a damn dream, a nightmare. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and... and I’ll see Carl and Joanie...”
“I know, Steve, I know.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we’d had other kids. But I guess it wouldn’t matter. It’d be the same. I got to talk to someone. You, Ed? You want to talk? You got time?”
“I’ve got time, Steve.”
The men sat on a stone bench in the fading sunlight. Behind the back-yard fence and out of the wind the sun had a faint warmth. They were silent for a time, each buried in his own thoughts.
“I went to see the boy today,” Steve Parkson said with a shuddering effort. “They got him in a cage like an animal. He walks up and down, up and down. He said he’s sorry and if I saw you I was to tell you he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean to hurt Joanie. He said something just sort of snapped. He loved her. I guess he always did, even when they were kids, only it was play then.”
“If he loved her,” Ed Crossman cried, “how could he kill her?”
“I don’t know, Ed. I don’t know.” Steve Parkson pounded his fist on the stone bench. “I tried to raise him right, teach him right from wrong. I guess I’m not much of a teacher. I figured if I just loved him enough he’d come out okay. Inside I knew there was something wrong. He was such a quiet boy but he had a temper — he always did even when he was a little kid. You know how it is, you can’t believe there’s anything wrong with your own kid. Other people’s kids, yes — but not your own. Sometimes he was such a good boy. Helped his ma, helped me. And always when I’d see him growing so big and handsome and strong, it was like a flame warming me, my pride in him. I loved everybody because he was my son.”