Well? Are you coming in or not, mouse? my father would say when I hesitated in the doorway.
The taste of dust hits the back of my mouth like a hand reaching down my throat and I cough. There’s only one lamp in the room, the heavy brass banker’s lamp with the green glass shade. It’s been so long since I’ve been in here that the bulb could well have burned out. I have to venture several feet in darkness from the wedge of light at the door to the lamp.
Caleb loved to play a game called Lava in which you pretended the floor was a boiling pit of magma that would instantly melt your flesh down to the bones. You had to navigate through the house by stepping from one piece of furniture to another. That’s what it feels like to step from the wedge of light into darkness, like my flesh will turn to jelly, but I do it, reaching out to find the lamp . . .
Something cool brushes against my outstretched hand.
The one escape clause in Lava was the lifeline. You could toss a rope (we used the gold silk cord from one of my mother’s bathrobes) to a stranded partner and he or she could walk it like a tightrope across the perilous lava field. That’s what this feels like, even though I know it’s just a draft of cold air from the uninsulated windows that need to be recaulked.
I step across the dark expanse and reach for the lamp. My hand brushes against something and I hear a clear musical chime that reverberates in my chest. It’s only the scales, I tell myself as I work my hand down from the smooth glass shade to the hard brass knob that turns the light on. The bulb crackles and flickers, threatens to go out, then steadies weakly into a pool of pale green light.
I haven’t been in this room in months. Dust lies everywhere, like pond scum, coating the thick leather blotter, the desk, the glass-fronted bookcases, the cracked leather chair. I trail my finger in it as I come around the desk, tracing a spiral pattern like some Celtic charm against ghosts. I use my sleeve to wipe off the seat of the chair and sit down, the old leather creaking, and then I reach across the desk to still the glass scales that hang from the bronze statuette of Justice that sits at the center of my father’s desk. She’s part of a pen set representing the state seal of New York that was given to my father by the New York State Bar Association on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his judgeship. There’s a plaque between her and another figure, Liberty: Liberty and Justice, my father would say when I sat in his lap and played with the scales, you can’t have one without the other. Which confused me sometimes, because so often my father’s brand of justice involved revoking some bit of liberty.
I turn away from the figures on the desk to look at the tall glass-fronted bookcase. My eyes immediately go to the seam in the wall behind the case where there was once a door, but I make myself focus on the case, trailing my hand over the dust-coated glass doors until I come to the fifth shelf from the floor. I rap the glass twice, giving any mice fair warning, and pull the glass door up.
The books are dustless behind the glass, their tooled leather spines as cool and clean as dried bones. I find what I’m looking for on the far right of the shelf, a tall slim book bound in blue the color of a summer night’s sky with silver lettering the color of starlight. An Astral Mythology: A Child’s Guide to the Night Sky. It’s an 1890 first edition of a translation of the third century B.C. writer Eratosthenes. According to my antiquarian friend in Hobart it’s worth several thousand dollars. I could have the roof fixed with the proceeds. Or replace the windows. Or buy a new boiler for Sanctuary.
It will be perfect for the boy.
I get up to go, reaching for the lamp, and notice a pattern in the dust—a random splatter of dots that might be the footprints of mice or a new constellation in the night sky. It’s all how you look at it, my father would say. Some people look up at the night sky and see random scatter, others read stories in the chaos. That’s what I do when I adjudicate a case. I make sense out of chaos.
I turn the light off before I can start reading stories in the dust and walk quickly out of the office, locking the door behind me. I go back into the kitchen and lay the book on the table, then take the muffins out of the oven and put them to cool on a metal rack beside the book. I can hear the thump of the washing machine finishing its cycle, so I go into the mudroom, pull out the sweatshirt and towel, put them in the dryer, and then fish out the knife. It shines clean and cold in the first rays of dawn coming in through the window. I slide it under a pile of blankets stacked on the dryer.
Dulcie stirs and stands by the door. I let her out and step outside for a moment. The storm has passed and the sky is lightening in the east, an orange glow that reflects off the newly fallen snow. There’s nothing better than a clear morning after a snowstorm, and I am filled with an unaccustomed sense of hope, of things beginning. I’ll tell the boy I found his knife and ask him if I can keep it. For safekeeping, I’ll say. I’ll tell him that whatever he and his mother did to get away is their business. The only thing that matters is that they’ve gotten away.
I go back inside. Feed Dulcie. Put on the kettle. Turn on the radio. While the water is boiling I hear the muffled voice of the news announcer. One of the reasons I love this NPR station is that the newscasters speak in such subdued murmurs I can usually tune them out, but this morning a word snags my attention. Ridgewood. The town on Alice’s bus ticket.
As I listen, sunlight swells over the window ledge above the kitchen sink, staining the pitted porcelain and scarred wooden counter a lurid blood orange. A body’s been found in Ridgewood, New Jersey. A man in his thirties, stabbed to death in his home.
Chapter Five
Alice
I WAKE UP to the touch of a hand stroking my cheek. It’s such a gentle touch, so tender, that I don’t want it to ever stop. I keep my eyes closed, let myself slip back to sleep. I can feel a breath on my face, lips brushing my ear, then a whisper—
He’s coming.
I open my eyes. I’m alone in the yellow room, sunlight warm on my face. That must be what I felt. Davis never touched me like that and Oren isn’t here.
Oren isn’t here.
I bolt upright, fully awake now, and tear into the little closet where he’d gone to sleep. No Oren. His backpack is gone too.
He’s coming.
I hear the echo of that dream whisper. Had it been a warning? I step out into the hallway and hear the whisper again, only now it’s coming from downstairs. I stand at the top of the stairs and listen, my heart skittering around in my chest like a hunted rabbit, and make out the singsongy murmur of the woman and then Oren. I can’t hear what he’s saying but I can tell by the happy lilt in his voice—when did I hear that last?—that he’s all right. No one has come in the night to take him. And if Davis had—I put my hand on my chest to calm my heart—he wouldn’t have left me sleeping. Besides, Davis isn’t coming.
I walk back down the hall to find the bathroom. It’s at the end of the hall and it’s as big as my bedroom at home. It’s got one of those old-fashioned tubs with creepy claw feet. No shower. I splash water on my face, pee, and then go exploring. That aw-shucks harmless-spinster crap is as good a cover as any for something dark and twisted inside. I knew a caseworker once—looked sweet as candy, cubicle full of cat pictures, dressed like your grammy—who was fired because she liked to pinch little boys’ behinds when no one was looking.