“Because the keys,” he muttered to himself.
After he’d hung up the phone with Abe, the keys to his Toyota had been sitting at his elbow, right there on the kitchen table, though he always hung them on the hook by the door.
39
Ashley walked through the woods crying, not bothering to stifle her anguish as she pushed the bike, the back rim so bent it barely turned. Her hands trembled, the scrapes on her elbows seeped, and she wanted to curl into a little ball and cry until Grandma Patty appeared with a cup of apple juice and a story about how she’d once lost something she’d treasured too, but somehow it all turned out okay.
Except Grandma Patty was dead, and the bike Ashley had been saving for, for over a year was destroyed, and it wouldn’t be okay.
She leaned the bike against a tree and walked toward the raccoon den. She could hold the babies at least. That would be something.
As she moved closer, goosebumps prickled along her arms. She wanted to stop. The den didn’t look right. The board that kept the babies from falling out had been ripped away. The gaping black hole into the hut was dark and ominous.
She started to run, stopping a few feet away, her hands going to her mouth.
She could see blood splashed across the interior, blood on the little yellow blanket Sid had brought from home.
“No,” she shrieked as her eyes registered the pile of gore and fur.
They no longer looked like raccoons. They’d been crushed, mangled. Protruding from the grisly heap, she saw one tiny black paw.
She stepped back, her head slowly rotating from side to side as if her body couldn’t accept what her eyes insisted was true.
She backed into a tree and flopped down, putting her face into the leaves and wailing.
“Noo!” she howled.
The rain, as if God had truly heard her anguish, splattered in fast heavy droplets.
It mingled with her tears and the dirt, and soon she lay in a puddle of muck.
It was all too much, first Starfire and now her raccoons. She wanted to kick and thrash and hurt someone.
Had Travis killed them, or had it been the monster in the woods?
In that moment, the monster didn't scare her. Let him come, she thought. Let them all come. She wanted to punch and tear at the face of whoever had murdered the baby raccoons.
It had been human; she knew that. An animal couldn’t have gotten into the tree and ripped the board away.
As she lay crying, her body shaking with the grief and shock of the previous hour, a tiny whimper drifted up from the leaves.
She sat up and perked her ears, for a moment hearing only the falling rain.
It came again, a mewling sound.
She crawled on hands and knees to a thick fern beneath the tree that had held the raccoons. She reached into the leafy plant, searching. Her fingers brushed against something soft and damp.
Peeling back the glossy leaves, she saw him.
Alvin teetered closer to her hands, his little mouth opening as he released another chittering cry.
“Oh, Alvin,” she cried, sweeping him up and clutching him against her chest.
He trembled beneath her fingers, and she pressed her face into his sodden fur.
She held him and rocked back as the rain slowed to a drizzle.
“HONEY, ARE YOU AWAKE?”
Ashley opened her eyes. A slant of light snaked through her cracked bedroom doorway.
She started to sit up, but then remembered Alvin tucked close to her beneath the comforter. She reached down and brushed his spine. He wriggled against her hand.
Her mom opened the door all the way. More light poured through.
“Hi, baby,” she said. “Can I come in?”
Ashley nodded and used the hand not clutching the raccoon, to rub at her sleepy eyes.
Ashley’s mother walked in and sat on the edge of the bed, resting her hand on Ashley’s leg.
“I saw the bike,” her mom said, her face pinched. “What happened?”
Ashley started to explain, to release an ugly litany of insults against Travis and his friend.
Instead, a gurgling sob rose from her guts. She burst into tears.
Her mother’s own pain deepened in the grooves of her forehead.
“Oh, honey,” she said, scooting closer and taking Ashley in her arms. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. You were so excited about that bike.”
Ashley, forgetting she was supposed to keep the raccoon hidden, pulled Alvin out and revealed him to her mother.
“And…” she sputtered between sobs. “Someone killed the raccoons, all of them except this one. Crushed them.”
She put the raccoon up to her cheek. He nuzzled his wet little nose against her.
Ashley’s mom eyed the creature wearily.
“Where did he come from?” Rebecca asked.
“I have to keep him, Mom,” Ashley said, her words blurring through her cries. “I’m all he has.”
Ashley’s mother stroked her daughter’s hair. She looked again at the raccoon and her face softened.
“Shh, it’s okay, honey. We don’t have to talk about this tonight.”
Ashley nodded, continuing to cry onto Alvin’s back.
Her mom helped her recline, fluffing the pillow beneath her head.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
She disappeared and returned a moment later with a cup of apple juice in Grandma Patty’s favorite mug, a little white and red speckled cup with a heart painted on the side.
Ashley sipped the juice as she watched Alvin wobble across the bedspread.
Ashley’s mother petted his back with a single finger. “He’s tiny,” she said.
Ashley nodded, thought of his brothers, and felt a wave of fresh tears course down her face.
“What if I bring in Bernard’s old cat bed? The raccoon could sleep in that.”
Ashley started to shake her head no.
“He can still sleep on the bed,” her mother added quickly. “That way you won’t squish him if you roll over.”
Ashley blinked at Alvin, and after a moment nodded.
“Okay. But he’s staying on the bed.”
Rebecca went out and retrieved the tattered blue pet bed that had belonged to their now dead cat, Bernard. Bernard had died when Ashley was eight. She’d built a rock pile on his grave. She and Grandma Patty had painted the rocks in shades of blue and purple. Grandma Patty had even painted mice on a few of the rocks. Ashley had tried to paint her own mice, but they’d turned out like purple blobs with tails.
Ashley lifted Alvin into the cat bed and left her hand curved around his fragile body.
“My lover of wild things,” Rebecca murmured, stroking Ashley’s hand.
Ashley rolled onto her side, her tears mostly dry now and a trickle of embarrassment at her outburst sneaking in.
Her mom rubbed her back. “Do you want to tell me about the bike?” Rebecca asked.
“In the morning, Mom,” she murmured, closing her eyes.
MAX CARRIED PERCY into his house and laid him on the couch. He sat in the chair across the room, leaving the lamp on, watching and waiting.
At midnight, the man stirred and then again at two followed by twice more in the four o’clock hour. Sometime around dawn, Max dozed off, and he woke to find Percy watching him. His face was drawn and his eyes were bloodshot, but Max knew right away the man was lucid.
Percy looked around. “Where am I?” he asked.
Max sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked at his watch. Quarter to nine in the morning. In the center of the floor lay Heart of Darkness.
Percy followed Max’s gaze. He stared at the book for a long time.
“Have you read it?” Max asked.