Then I put my hands back on the handlebars and make my turn at the fruit stand. Singing again, as loud as I can, each line caught by the wind and carried off over my shoulder, little snatches of melody, bits and pieces from Desire.
I hear the dog before I see him, three fine bright barks devolving into a growly canine coughing fit, cough/bark, cough/bark, then just cough, cough, cough as Houdini limps with determination from behind that shed out to see me.
“Here, boy,” I say, and my heart swells just looking at him, loping and shuffling along toward me across the slight roll of the farmland.
The autumn corn is halfway through its harvest, half the stalks still burdened, half tilting, barren. There’s a pumpkin patch I hadn’t noticed before, in a dirt corner just to the right of the front porch, green winding vines and fat orange globes. Two of the women are up on the porch, two of the daughters or daughters-in-law, sitting on hard chairs in their long dresses and bonnets, sewing or knitting, working on blankets for the winter. They rise at my approach and smile nervously and take each other’s hands, and I ask politely if I might speak to Atlee, and they go to fetch him.
Houdini ducks in and out of my footsteps, snorfeling at the dirt, and I bend and scratch the white fur behind his head, and he growls low and contented. Someone’s given the guy a bath. Someone trimmed his fur, too, combed out all the bugs and burrs. He almost looks like he did when I met him, puckish little creature scampering around the filthy home of a drug dealer on Bog Bow Road. We look at each other and I smile, and he smiles too, I think. You thought I was gone, too, didn’t you, Hen? You did, huh? Or not. Who knows? You never know what a dog is thinking, not really.
Atlee Miller doesn’t ask after the outcome of my investigation, and I don’t volunteer any information. We exchange nods and I point to the wagon.
“I brought back your jackhammer. Thank you.”
He waves one hand. “Not sure I’ll need it.”
“My sister—she thinks we might all live. Somehow. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to bring it back.”
“Can’t hurt,” says Atlee, and he nods. “Can’t hurt.”
We’re talking quietly out on the lawn. I can see the rest of the family behind him, the kids and the teenagers and the aunts and uncles and cousins, framed in the big windows of the house, reacting to my return.
“I thought I might stay for lunch,” I say. “If you’ll have me.”
“Oh, sure,” he says. Maybe even the hint of a smile somewhere in the gray of his beard. “Stay as long as you want.”
In the busy hour before lunchtime I am mostly a silent presence in the house: the tall stranger alone in a corner like furniture. I smile politely at the women, make funny faces at the little boys and girls. I do not experience, as I had feared, any unwelcome rush of memory, no bloody moving pictures behind my eyelids. The house smells like bread. The children are giggling, carrying precarious trays of cutlery out from the kitchen. One of Atlee’s sons has hurt his back farming, and so when there is difficulty in wrestling a heavy wooden table out from the kitchen, I get up and lend what strength I have.
We sit then for lunch. I have a seat right next to one of the children’s tables, by one of the largest windows, wide and square, no curtain, a full view of the sky.
As the food is brought out, my courage suddenly drops out of me, and just for one awful minute my heart feels loose and floating and my hands start to tremble and I have to hold myself frozen by force of will, watching that big window, wide and square. I allow myself the last brief possibility that it will after all have been a dream, and that when I close my eyes tightly and open them again everything will be as it was—and I even try it, squeeze them shut like a child, press my knuckles into the lids, hold the pose until starbursts dance to life inside my eyelids. When I open them again Atlee’s daughters and sons and their wives are bringing out the meaclass="underline" stewed vegetables, braised rabbit, bread.
Atlee Miller bends his head and the room grows still as all of them silently pray over the food, the same as the last time, and the same as the last time I leave my own eyes open. I look around until I find her, and there she is, at her seat at one of the children’s tables, young Ruthie with the strawberry braids, her eyes open like mine are open. Her face is pale and she sees me seeing her and I hold out my hand to the kid. I stretch my long arm and hold out my hand to lend her my courage and she holds out her hand to lend hers to me, and we clasp hands and look at each other as the sky begins to glow, and Atlee keeps his head down and the room continues in silent prayer.
I hold Ruthie’s hand and she holds my hand, we sit like that, giving each other strength, like strangers on a crashing plane.
Acknowledgements
This book, and this series, was built on a lot of input and help from a lot of smart and kind people, starting with forensic pathologist Dr. Cynthia Gardner, astronomer Dr. Timothy Spahr, and my brother, Andrew Winters.
Thanks to my wife, Diana; to my parents and her parents.
To early readers Nick Tamarkin and Kevin Maher; to everybody at Quirk Books, especially Jason Rekulak and Jane Morley; to Joelle Delbourgo and Shari Smiley and Molly Lyons.
To Don Mattingly of Mattingly Concrete; Katy and Tim Carter and their chickens; planetary scientist Professor Don Korycansky at UC Santa Cruz; everybody at the Concord, New Hampshire, Police Department, especially Officer Ryan Howe and Lieutenant Jay Brown; Detective Todd Flanagan at the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office; Russ Hanser; Danice Sher (PA), Dr. Ratik Chandra, Dr. Nora Osman, and Dr. Zara Cooper; and Amish experts Professor David Weaver-Zercher and Professor Steve Nolt.
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