Rushing back to the window, Charles could see that the men were yelling and whooping with laughter. Slowly they walked back down the drive pushing and shoving each other into the snow. At the base of the driveway and after several vociferous arguments, the men climbed into the two cars. With horns blaring they drove off into the night, heading north on Interstate 301 toward Shaftesbury.
As abruptly as it had been broken, the wintry silence returned. Charles let out a long breath. He put down the shotgun and took Cathryn’s hands in his. “Now that you’ve seen how unpleasant it is, perhaps it would be better for you to go back to your mother’s until this is over.”
“No way,” said Cathryn, shaking her head. Then she broke away to tend to Michelle.
Fifteen minutes later the Shaftesbury police cruiser skidded up the driveway and came to a sudden stop behind the station wagon. Frank Neilson hurried from the front seat as if he were responding to an emergency.
“You can just get right back inside your car, you son-of-a-bitch,” said Charles, who had come out on the front porch.
Frank, standing defiantly with his hands on his hips and his feet spread apart, just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t need me.”
“Just get the fuck off my land,” snarled Charles.
“Strange people this side of town,” said Frank loudly to his deputy as he got back into the car.
Morning crept over the frozen countryside, inhibited by a pewter-colored blanket of high clouds. Charles and Cathryn had taken turns standing watch, but the vandals had not returned. As dawn arrived Charles felt confident enough to return to the bed in front of the fireplace and slip in next to Cathryn.
Michelle had improved considerably and, although she was still extremely weak, she could sit up, courageously managing to smile when Charles pretended to be a waiter bringing in her breakfast.
While he drew some of his blood and again tested his T-lymphocytes for signs of delayed hypersensitivity to Michelle’s leukemic cells, Cathryn tried to make their topsy-turvy house more livable. Between Charles’s equipment and reagents, Michelle’s bed, and the king-sized mattress, the living room was like a maze. There was little Cathryn could do there, but the kitchen soon responded to her efforts.
“No sign of any appropriate reaction with my lymphocytes,” said Charles, coming in for some more coffee. “You’re going to have to give me another dose of Michelle’s antigen later today.”
“Sure,” said Cathryn, trying to buoy both her own and Charles’s confidence. She wasn’t sure she could do it again. The thought alone gave her gooseflesh.
“I must think of some way to make us more secure here,” said Charles. “I don’t know what I would have done if those men last night had been drunk enough to storm the back door.”
“Vandals are one thing,” said Cathryn. “What if the police come, wanting to arrest you?”
Charles turned back to Cathryn.
“Until I finish with what I’m doing, I have to keep everybody out of the house.”
“I think it’s just a matter of time before the police come,” said Cathryn. “And I’m afraid it will be a lot more difficult to keep them out. Just by resisting, you’ll be breaking the law, and they might feel obligated to use force.”
“I don’t think so,” said Charles. “There’s too much for them to lose and very little to gain.”
“The stimulus could be Michelle, thinking they need to recommence her treatment.”
Charles nodded slowly. “You might be right, but even if you are, there’s nothing else to be done.”
“I think there is,” said Cathryn. “Maybe I can stop the police from looking for you. I met the detective who’s handling the case. Perhaps I should go see him and tell him that I don’t want to press charges. If there are no charges, then they would stop looking for you.”
Charles took a large gulp of coffee. What Cathryn said made sense. He knew that if the police came in force, they could get him out of the house. That was one of the reasons he’d boarded up the windows so carefully; afraid of tear gas or the like. But he thought they probably would have other means which he hadn’t wanted to consider. Cathryn was right; the police would be real trouble.
“All right,” said Charles, “but you’ll have to use the rental van in the garage. I don’t think the station wagon has any windshield.”
Putting on their coats, they walked hand in hand through the inch of new snow to the locked barn. They both saw the charred remains of the playhouse at the pond’s edge and both avoided mentioning it. The still-smoldering ashes were too sharp a reminder of the terror of the previous night.
As Cathryn backed the van out of the garage, she felt a reluctance to leave. With Michelle ostensibly feeling better and despite the vandals, Cathryn had enjoyed her newly found closeness with Charles. With some difficulty, since driving a large van was a new experience, Cathryn got the vehicle turned around. She waved good-bye to Charles and drove slowly down their slippery driveway.
Reaching the foot of the hill, she turned to look back at the house. In the steely light, it looked abandoned among the leafless trees. Across the front of the house, the word “Communist” was painted in careless, large block letters. The rest of the red paint had been splashed on the front door, and the way it had splattered and ran off the porch made it look like blood.
Driving directly to the Boston Police Headquarters on Berkeley Street, Cathryn rehearsed what she was going to say to Patrick O’Sullivan. Deciding that brevity was the best approach, she was confident that she’d be in and out in a matter of minutes.
She had a great deal of trouble finding a parking spot and ended up leaving the van in an illegal yellow zone. Taking the elevator to the sixth floor, she found O’Sullivan’s office without difficulty. The detective got up as she entered and came around his desk. He was dressed in exactly the same outfit as he’d had on twenty-four hours earlier when she’d met him. Even the shirt was the same because she remembered a coffee stain just to the right of his dark blue polyester tie. It was hard for Cathryn to imagine that this seemingly gentle man could muster the violence he obviously needed on occasion for his job.
“Would you like to sit down?” asked Patrick. “Can I take your coat?”
“That’s okay, thank you,” said Cathryn. “I’ll only take a moment of your time.”
The detective’s office looked like the set for a TV melodrama. There were the obligatory stern photos of some of the police hierarchy on the chipped and peeling walls. There was also a cork bulletin board filled with an assortment of wanted posters and photographs. The detective’s desk was awash with papers, envelopes, soup cans full of pencils, an old typewriter, and a picture of a chubby redheaded woman with five redheaded little girls.
O’Sullivan tipped back in his chair, his fingers linked over his stomach. His expression was entirely blank. Cathryn realized she had no idea what the man was thinking.
“Well,” she said uneasily, her confidence waning. “The reason I came is to tell you that I’m not interested in pressing charges against my husband.”
Detective O’Sullivan’s face did not alter in the slightest detail.
Cathryn looked away for a moment. Already the meeting was not going according to plan. She continued: “In other words, I don’t want guardianship of the child.”
The detective remained unresponsive, augmenting Cathryn’s anxiety.
“It’s not that I don’t care,” added Cathryn quickly. “It’s just that my husband is the biological parent, and he is an M.D., so I think he’s in the best position to determine the kind of treatment the child should receive.”
“Where is your husband?” asked O’Sullivan.
Cathryn blinked. The detective’s question made it sound as if he hadn’t been listening to her at all. Then she realized she shouldn’t have paused. “I don’t know,” said Cathryn, feeling she sounded less than convincing.