The button box, snug in its canvas bag, was waiting for her inside.
She felt the short hairs on the back of her neck begin to tingle, and heard that familiar faint whisper of something in the far corner of her brain. She quickly closed up the box, got to her feet and backed away.
This goddamned thing. How I hate it. How I loathe it.
She shivered, listening to the echo of Farris’s voice in the dim silence of the garage, remembering his pale sickly face, scarecrow limbs, rotting and missing teeth.
And then his final words came to her, practically pleading by then: It’s the only place they won’t come for it. You have to try, Gwendy, before it’s too late. You’re the only one I trust.
“Why me?” she asked, barely recognizing the sound of her own voice.
She waited for an answer, but none came. Certainly not God, asking her if she was there when He made the world.
Summoning her courage, she climbed the ladder again and returned the cardboard box to its hiding place on the top shelf. Locking the garage door—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that—she went back inside to the kitchen and poured herself a mug of hot coffee. She sipped it staring out the window above the sink at the snow-covered back yard, once again promising herself that she was going to tell Ryan everything. She was too old and too frightened to go it alone this time around—third time’s a charm, she thought—but it was more than that. She owed her husband the truth after all these years, and it would feel good to finally tell it. Damn good.
But that conversation would have to wait until later tonight.
She had a busy day to get through first.
Every year, bright and early on Black Friday morning, her old friend Brigette Desjardin would swing by the house and pick her up. They’d grab a quick breakfast at the Castle Rock Diner before heading off on a ninety-minute road trip to Portland. Once there, they’d lace up their Reeboks and spend the day braving the overflow crowds at not one, not two, but all three of the city’s massive shopping malls. They usually returned home late in the evening, the trunk and back seat of Brigette’s bright red BMW crammed full with shopping bags and gift boxes, bragging about the great deals they’d gotten and complaining about swollen feet from all the walking and chapped lips from all the talking. And all of the greeting: that, too, because a surprising number of people still recognized Gwendy from her stint in the House. For some of those folks, Gwendy Peterson was practically an old family friend; she’d been part of their lives for that long. Political demi-celebrity aside, Christmas shopping with Brigette was a holiday tradition Gwendy always enjoyed and looked forward to. And she liked people, for the most part.
This year would obviously be a different story. All of a sudden, thanks to the man in the little black hat, she had more important matters to worry about than shoe sales and triple value coupons.
She considered bailing out altogether—in fact, she picked up the telephone and went so far as to punch in half of Brigette’s number, only to hang up. A last-minute cancellation would give rise to more questions than she was prepared to answer. No, she told herself, she’d just have to “suck it up, buttercup,” as her father liked to say.
Ryan had his own Black Friday activities to participate in. First up, a Chinese buffet for lunch with the guys on the bowling team, followed by a three-game, best-average-score-takes-all competition at the Rumford Rock ’N Bowl (the annual winner was awarded a two-foot-high, gold-plated trophy resembling a kicking donkey’s backside; Ryan had taken it home three years running). After bowling, they would head over to Billy Franklin’s bachelor pad where they’d feast on catered Mexican food and watch college football on the big-screen television. Ryan usually rolled home around eight or nine at night suffering from a serious case of dragon breath and immediately rushed upstairs in search of the big plastic container of Tums. He’d spend half the night moaning and groaning in the bathroom and wake up the next morning swearing that he wasn’t going back next year. They could keep their damn trophy. The two of them would have a good laugh about it over breakfast—just toast and a big glass of ice water for Ryan—knowing full well that he didn’t mean a word of it.
So, yes, she decided, she’d suck it up, buttercup, and they’d both get through their respective busy days. Then they’d come home, change into their PJs, grab a bottle of good red wine and a couple of glasses, and rendezvous in the bedroom. And after all these years, she’d tell him everything.
Only it didn’t turn out that way.
Gwendy held up her end of the deal just fine. At first, as was to be expected, she was distracted and quiet. She barely touched her omelet, home fries, and toast at breakfast. Once they got in the car, she found herself staring out the window at the passing countryside, daydreaming about the button box and Richard Farris’s pale, waxy skin. And those perfectly smooth, unlined hands of his; she couldn’t stop thinking about those. She did her best to keep up with the conversation—nodding when she sensed it was appropriate and tossing in the occasional comment or two—but Brigette wasn’t fooled. Halfway to Portland, she turned down the car radio and asked Gwendy if something was wrong. Gwendy shook her head and apologized, claiming she had a lingering headache from the previous night and hadn’t gotten much sleep (at least that much was true). She made a show of popping three Advil tablets and singing along with Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs” when it came on the radio—and that seemed to do the trick for Brigette.
By the time they parked the car and waded into the frenzy, Gwendy actually found herself smiling and laughing. Brigette, with that childlike enthusiasm and goofy sense of humor of hers, had a way of turning back the clock and making the rest of the world melt away. Gwendy often told her husband that spending an afternoon with Brigette Desjardin was a little like stepping into a time machine and traveling back to the late 1970s. Her simple enjoyment of life was contagious.
Both women scored major coups at the first boutique they entered—a half price carryall purse for Gwendy; a pair of knee-high leather boots for Brigette—and that set the tone for the rest of the day. They spent the next eight hours giggling and gossiping like a couple of happy teenagers.
Often—actually more often than she would have expected—Gwendy was approached by men and women who said they were going to vote for her. One of them, an older women with perfectly coifed pink hair, touched her on the elbow and whispered, “Just don’t tell my husband.”
After grabbing soup and salads for dinner at a bursting-at-the-seams Cracker Barrel just off I-95, Gwendy finally made it home at 7:45pm. She immediately shucked her clothes, leaving them in a messy pile on the bathroom floor, and slipped into a warm bubble bath. An hour later, dressed in her favorite silk pajamas Ryan had smuggled home from an assignment in Vietnam, she dozed off on the family room sofa with a true crime paperback laying open in her lap.
Some time later she was awakened by a ringing doorbell. Big dummy forgot his keys, she thought, getting up from the sofa. She glanced at the antique grandfather clock on her way to the foyer and was surprised to see that it was after midnight. Still, she wasn’t worried until she looked into the peephole and saw Norris Ridgewick standing on the porch. Norris, who once upon a time held the title of Castle County Sheriff for almost two decades, had retired a year earlier and now spent most of his days fishing at Dark Score Lake.