CHAPTER THREE
Though she went to bed early that night, Janet Hall did not go to sleep. She sat up, staring out over the moonlit prairie, her robe drawn tightly around her as if it could protect her from her own thoughts. For a while she tried to concentrate on the stars, laboriously picking out constellations she hadn't seen so clearly since her childhood, but then, as the night wore on, her thoughts bore in on her.
It wasn't just his sister Mark had never mentioned.
There was a farm, too.
All along, there had been a farm.
Painfully, she made herself remember all the talks they'd had, she and Mark, all the nights-nights like this-when they'd sat up talking about the future.
For Janet, the future had always held a farm.
Nothing concrete, nothing real. For Janet, the farm of her dream was something from a child's picture book-a small place, somewhere in New England, with a whitewashed clapboard house, a bright red barn with white trim, an immaculate barnyard populated with hens and tiny fuzzy chicks, the whole thing neatly fenced off with white post-and-rail. There would be stone walls, of course, old stone walls meandering through the pastures, but the borders, the limits of her world, would be edged in white. And there they would live, their small family, released at last from the congestion of the city, their senses no longer dunned by the smells of garbage and exhaust, the sounds of jackhammers and blasting horns, but expanding to the aroma of fresh-mown hay and the crowing of roosters at dawn.
All idyllic, all a dream, and all of it, always, gently derided by Mark. All the reasons why it was impossible, all the excuses that they continually debated: They were city people, though they both had been born in the country, and New Yorkers by choice, Mark would insist; choices could still be made, Janet would counter. Mark was a teacher, not a farmer; there were colleges in New England, everywhere you looked-he could still teach, and they could hire someone to run the farm. Michael was happy in his school, Mark would point out; children change schools all the time, and there's no proof, Janet would argue, that city schools are better than small-town schools.
In the end, however, it had always come down to the one argument for which Janet had no answer.
They couldn't afford a farm, couldn't manage to save enough even for a half-acre in the suburbs, let alone a farm.
Now, Janet realized that it had all been a lie. From the day they were married, the lie had been between them, and she had never felt it, never faintly suspected it. There had even been times when Mark had seemed to join in her dream.
They had been in Millbrook, and they had come around a curve in the road, and there, spread out before them, was Janet's dream. It had been Mark who had noticed it first; Janet had been studying a map, trying to match the route numbers to the street names that seemed to be posted only every five miles and then changed with every village they passed through. Suddenly Mark had stopped the car and said, "Well, there it is, and even I have to admit that it's pretty." She'd looked up, and across a pasture that sloped gently away from the highway, she had seen her farm- white clapboard house, red barn, white post-and-rail fence, even a stream, dammed to form a millpond. And it was for sale.
They'd talked about it all weekend, even going so far as to investigate the possibility of Mark's finding a job in Poughkeepsie. But in the end, on Sunday night as they drove south on the Taconic Parkway, they'd faced reality.
They had no money, and they couldn't buy the farm without money.
But it had been a lie. And Mark had known it was a lie.
What else was there? How much had this stranger with whom she had spent thirteen years of her life kept hidden from.her? What else would she find as the days went by and she learned more about the man she had married?
Anna. Had Mark known his mother was confined to a wheelchair? It seemed impossible that he hadn't, and yet it seemed equally impossible that he had never said anything to her about it. But he hadn't.
When Janet had asked her mother-in-law about it just before coming upstairs that night, Anna had only shrugged, a look of philosophical resignation in her eyes. "I suppose he must have known," she'd said. "It happened after he went away, but I think Laura must have told him about it."
"But he never heard from Laura," Janet had protested. "He never even talked about her. Until yesterday, I didn't even know Mark had a sister."
Anna's eyes had flickered with pain for a moment. "You have to understand," she'd finally said. "There were some things Mark just wanted to shut out of his mind. He always did that, even when he was little. I remember he had a puppy once-a little black shepherd- but it got sick, and Amos had to put it down. Afterward, I tried to talk to Mark about it, but he wouldn't admit the puppy'd ever even existed. Just shut it out completely." She sighed, weariness spreading across her features. "I suppose that's what he did when he left Prairie Bend. Shut us out, just like that dog."
"But why? Why did he leave?"
And for that, there had been no answer. "It doesn't matter anymore," was all Anna would say. "It's all in the past. There's no use dredging it up now. It would only cause pain." She'd looked beseechingly at Janet. "I've had enough pain, dear. Can't we leave this alone?" Then she'd held out her arms, and Janet, her throat constricting with feeling, had leaned down, clumsily embracing this fragile woman she hardly knew.
As she sat in the darkness that night, trying to concentrate on the stars, Janet felt the props of her life slipping away from her, felt the rock of trust she'd always had in Mark dissolving into sand. Already, it was slipping through her fingers, leaving her with nothing to cling to.
By the time the horizon edged silvery-gray with dawn and she drifted into an uneasy sleep, Janet's grief over the death of her husband had begun to change into something else. An odd fear had begun to pervade her, a fear of what else she might discover about Mark, what other secrets might have lain hidden from her during all the years of her marriage.
When she awoke several hours later, she could feel a difference in herself. It was as if uncertainty had gathered around her, crippling her. She lay still for a long time, unable to make up her mind to get up, unsure whether she could face the day.
She closed her eyes for a few moments, and suddenly she saw an image of Mark's face, but his features were slightly blurred, and there was something in his eyes-a secretiveness-that she'd never seen before. And then the image changed, hardened and sharpened into the visage of Amos.
His eyes were clear, his features strong. And he was smiling at her, offering her the strength she could no longer get from Mark or find within herself.
She rose from her bed and went to the window. Below her, in the barnyard, she watched Michael feeding the chickens. A moment later Amos emerged from the barn, and as if feeling her gaze, looked up; she waved to him; he waved back to her.
And then the nausea hit her. Turning away from the window, she hurried to the bathroom, threw up in the toilet, and waited for the sickness to pass.
What's going to happen to us ? she wondered a few minutes later as she began dressing. What's going to happen to us now?
Ryan Shields pedaled furiously through the village, then east on the highway toward his grandparents' farm. He didn't slow down until he'd made the turn into the driveway, but by the time he got to the front yard, he was coasting, his feet dragging in the dust as makeshift brakes. He came to a dead stop, expertly dropped the kickstand with one toe, then balanced on the leaning bike, his arms crossed, only his slouching posture preventing the bike from tipping over. It was a technique he'd learned only a month ago, and it had quickly become his favorite pose. He cocked his head, squinting in the brightness of the sun, peering at the house. "Hey! Anybody home?"