Ruin Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  “I said be quiet,” Kurt said from the front of the car.

  “Why?” the boy asked. “How come?”

  Kurt clenched the wheel. He didn’t understand how an instruction to be quiet could generate not silence, but instead an instantaneous response. He wouldn’t have believed that he could have a stupid child—Kurt himself was the son of two doctors—but after less than an hour spent taking care of the boy, he was beginning to wonder.

  He had been a lot smarter at eleven than Tom.

  Kurt had always hated the boy’s name—the boy’s mother had chosen it—and he avoided addressing his son directly as much as possible. But if the boy was to be in Kurt’s care now, then Kurt would need to start using a proper designation.

  “Why do we have to go on a drive?” the boy said.

  Tom, Kurt bade himself.

  “Where are we going? Why isn’t Mom bringing me to school? Where’s Mom?”

  The questions swarmed around Kurt’s head like insects. The boy had an entitled tone, almost as if he were jeering, which made Kurt want to show him how lucky he was. How little the boy or any child was in fact entitled to, and how much they had by sheer accident of birth.

  Kurt had made do with far less.

  He let go of the wheel, but the sight of his hands rolling into fists gave him pause. He didn’t want to do this now, and he took a quick, furtive look around. No one was there, observing a man alone with a boy in a car. That part was working out at least. Not that a father being out with his son in the morning should’ve attracted any attention, but Kurt believed in keeping a low profile. Until the time came to have a high one.

  He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Fifty-five minutes before they were scheduled to meet in person for the first time. Presuming he could get the boy to go.

  “Guess what?” he said, forcing an upbeat note.

  A huff of breath. “What?”

  Still, it was a much more appropriate mode for a response. Father poses a question, son inquires in return. Kurt felt his mood brightening along with his tone. If he could just get rid of the skeptical note in the boy’s voice, he might have the son he’d always hoped for. A smart one, giving pleasure to his parents as soon as his intellect started to become apparent in childhood. The truth was, Kurt’s parents hadn’t exactly seemed to take joy in Kurt’s accomplishments, but that was because both were psychiatrists, trained to be judicious with their emotions, to observe with distance. It hadn’t bothered Kurt; he knew that they felt all the same things regular parents did. They just exhibited what they felt—exhibited, a psychiatric term—in different ways.

  “Well, Tom,” Kurt said, the name stiff as a piece of glass on his tongue, “we get to go on a trip today.”

  Now, when he didn’t want it, there was silence from the back of the car.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “A trip,” Tom repeated, as if the term had gone out of fashion.

  “That’s right. Isn’t that great?”

  Silence again. Kurt unclasped one hand from the steering wheel and turned around, laying his arm along the back of the seat.

  Tom straightened from his slouch. His seat belt cinched his neck.

  “It’s something,” he said. “What about Mom?”

  It occurred to Kurt to lie. It would’ve been easier that way. Just say, Mom will meet us there, and no more of the mosquitoey drone from the backseat that made Kurt want to bang the boy’s head into the windshield.

  But Kurt was smarter than that. He’d gotten into a top liberal arts college, and even if his time there hadn’t ended so well, the admission had been a point of pride for Kurt’s parents. He could remember how they told their fellow physicians, unsmiling, but noting the name of the school and its proclivity for producing people of importance: lawyers, politicians, doctors like themselves. Kurt hadn’t wound up in any of those professions, waylaid by the abrupt end to his school career, but that only meant that his intelligence had never gotten channeled, was still unspent. He could apply it to the challenge of child-rearing, which was turning out to be quite a challenge indeed.

  But perhaps he had an aptitude for it, for Kurt intuited, as surely as if he’d been given predictive charts, that if he lied to the boy now, it would only provoke a crisis on the other end.

  He kept his gaze fixed on the backseat. “Mom will be staying here.”

  Tom’s face popped like a balloon.

  Kurt couldn’t deny the small lick of pleasure that gave him. “That’s right,” he said, as remote and detached as his own parents had been. Maybe they too had felt charges of emotion inside. Maybe they had just kept them hidden.

  Kurt’s mother had been addicted to true crime novels throughout his childhood. They were the one thing he could recall provoking any sort of light or heat from her. He could still see his mother, sitting in her chair by the living room window, lips slightly parted and breath coming fast as she turned each page. After his mother had gone up to bed, Kurt would look at these books, reading with a blend of fascination and disgust. There was a man called the Shoemaker who had gone on killing sprees, taking along his own son to help massacre the women.

  Kurt refocused on the boy in back. His eyes were very wide, though dry.

  “Your mother has been in charge for a long time,” Kurt said, still in that tone of cool remove, whose effectiveness he now understood. The boy was docile, no longer making demands, nor even asking any questions. Tom. The name was growing on Kurt.

  He reached out and chucked his son under the chin, choosing to ignore it when Tom flinched. “Now it’s my turn.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  He had made his escape after asking Bissell to wait while he used the bathroom, the cop who had babysat Liz all day explained, walking the two of them down to the lobby. Liz was having trouble catching her breath. She felt as if she had been plunged into a cold, depthless sea. She kept stopping, putting a hand on her chest, or the inside of the elevator, even just the wall to steady herself. Then she would bend over, trying to see if that brought air down into her lungs.

  “Ma’am?”

  She was a ma’am now.

  “Do you need me to call someone?”

  Who was there to call? Her husband? High, hysterical laughter frothed, which Liz squelched. If she allowed herself to feel all that she was feeling now, she would be no use to anyone, certainly not her missing children.

  How could Paul have done this to her? Taken the children she had loved, and cared for, and nurtured every day, starting even before they were born. Not to mention the fact that the terror had nearly killed her. Was still killing her, although now she could at least tell herself that as horrible as things were, they didn’t amount to the one case she had been trying to run from all day, ever since the moment she had woken to find Reid and Ally gone.

  Paul had tried to prevent her from envisioning such a terrifyingly lethal scenario. But rather than easing any small part of her fury, this recollection only heightened it. The fact that he had offered assurance as if it were a hypothetical, when all along he knew he was speaking the truth, struck her as hideously cruel.

  Bissell was waiting downstairs. Locating Paul shouldn’t take long, he said to the other cop. There was an APB out for their car. His voice seemed to come from many yards away; Liz could barely make out what he said. But she focused on the part about finding Paul. Because once they did that, Liz wasn’t sure if she’d fall upon her husband in fury or relief.

  Another of the local police force, a policewoman with a take-charge frown, entered through the sliding doors. She let in a spongy rush of heat, and also something else. The realization that this wasn’t going to be so easy.

  Rage crested inside Liz again.

  “That green Altima you wanted a BOLO on,” the female cop announced.

  Bissell emerged from his corner to gesture the policewoman on.

  “It’s still in the lot.”

  Liz stood with the babysitting cop in the conference room where she and Paul
had first been questioned. Water bottles, coffee carafe, chairs, all still waiting to be used by phantom attendees. Also missing was Bissell, who didn’t seem to be involved with their case anymore.

  There was no case.

  Liz could hardly believe it. “My husband kidnapping my children isn’t a case?” she demanded. “Isn’t a crime?”

  The babysitting cop pulled a chair into place and took a seat, indicating that Liz should do the same. “This isn’t a kidnapping,” he told her. “Some states might handle it differently, but in New York we don’t get involved in domestic disputes.”

  Liz heard the hiss of the words as she took in their meaning. There was no one to help.

  “There’s nothing more we can do.” The cop had the grace to look away. “It’s not even a custody situation, in which case there’s a protocol in place. You and your husband are still married, not even separated.”

  A taut, tense silence drew out.

  The cop turned back toward her. “Was there anything?”

  Liz frowned.

  “Anything to make you think …” He paused. “Even something small that may’ve passed unnoticed at the time. But now, in hindsight, might occur to you.” He looked more closely at her. “Something that could’ve made your husband want to take away your children.”

  The words hit her like single, small blows.

  The cop seemed to subside. “Listen, I contacted a buddy of mine on the Junction Bridge force.”

  She recognized it as the name of the town they’d been headed to.

  “As a favor to me, he’s gonna take a drive up. Look around. Maybe have a talk with Mr. and Mrs. Daniels.”

  Her in-laws. It took Liz a beat to realize what was called for.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate that.”

  The cop withdrew a card from his wallet. “I’ll call you if anything comes up. And you feel free to check in, too.”

  “Thank you,” Liz said again. “I will.”

  She rose. Her legs felt rigid, and she had to flex her fingers. Too many days not spent crouching over the soil had a way of making her stiff. She’d always preferred squatting to sitting.

  Which was lucky because she had the feeling that she wouldn’t be sitting still anytime soon. Liz waited until the cop left before plunging into the steamy cauldron outside, sky an electric blue sheet overhead. She got into their car and drove off.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Imagining the level of cold, pure calculation that had driven Paul all morning—complacent in the knowledge of their children’s safety while terror beat circles around Liz—made her insides flare with fury.

  Who was this man she’d married? Liz couldn’t comprehend him, a person who’d been like a part of her, who had in fact become a physical part of her. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing a stranger stare back. Or a monster.

  The food the cop had coaxed her to eat a thousand hours ago threatened to come back up. She lowered the car window and spat out bitter-tasting fluid. The afternoon air wrapped itself around her face like a terrycloth turban. She couldn’t hear anything for the buzzing hive in her head, and she wrestled the car over to the side of the road. An accident now would slow her down. And if something happened to her, Reid and Ally would be left forever in Paul’s care.

  His care.

  What had he whispered in her ear?

  The kids are going to be fine.

  Liz’s nails dug into the steering wheel with such force that they made dimples in the plastic. She forced herself to unhook her fingers, and they ached in the relaxing.

  She recalled the paranoia she had felt as they had left to come here; that pickup truck driver, and even her sparking fear when Reid wandered off. It was almost as if she’d known disaster was coming, but just hadn’t had any idea where to look for it.

  Because who would think to look right next to them?

  Paul had been trying to get away the whole morning, Liz realized. He had kept checking the clock. Paul wanted to go out—search while she waited back at the hotel in an increasing paralysis of unknowing—so he could do whatever it was he was up to right now.

  How had he arranged it? Had his parents come and gotten the children sometime in the night, harboring them till one of them could come back and pick up Paul? It was the most likely order of events Liz could think of.

  Other interpretations of her husband’s behavior were coming to her, too.

  The way he had lain beside her when Liz woke up in the morning.

  She had thought he must be having a bad dream from the way his body twitched and tremored. But now it seemed that he’d been trying to feign sleep, nervous, wondering how this would play out, just waiting for her to stir to consciousness.

  Waking her would’ve been suspicious; she would’ve wondered why he had done that when they were finally on vacation and the biorhythms of outdoor life didn’t force an early rise. He would’ve had to lie, make something up about wanting to get on the road, and Paul wasn’t a good liar.

  She hadn’t thought he was anyway.

  Rage rocked her again.

  Another question had taken her up in its hands and was shaking her back and forth.

  Not how Paul had done it.

  But why?

  Before she could pull onto the road again, Liz pawed her cell phone out of her bag.

  This wouldn’t come to anything, she knew that, but she was unprepared for just how dead an end she would reach.

  Liz dialed Paul’s number, waiting for his message. She heard a robotic voice instead, nothing like the kind, patient voicemail lady’s. It intoned eight words, the last so unfamiliar that Liz had to call again to be sure she had heard correctly.

  You have reached a number that is unallocated.

  It wasn’t as if she’d expected Paul to pick up. After all this, he wasn’t going to just take her call. Can’t talk now, honey, I’ve kidnapped the kids. But shutting down all service on this number? It wasn’t only Liz—nobody would be able to reach her husband.

  There were a hundred necessary things a cell phone was used for each day.

  Paul must know that he wasn’t going to have to worry about any of them.

  Dear God, what was he planning to do?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Liz programmed the town of Junction Bridge into her GPS. Most of the miles were covered by flat, level highway, but she was grateful for the visual of the twisting purple length once she reached the low-lying roads at the edge of the state. They had left the pretty parts of New York behind, not only the mountains, but also the orchards and vineyards and lakes. This was featureless country, consisting of farms that were the cogs and working mechanisms of the country, the inner backbone without which America couldn’t function, but that nobody wanted to examine too closely.

  Liz had always been as connected to the land as she was to her own skin, and perhaps because the GPS told her she was getting close to her children and the end of this nightmare, she was able to register a pang of pity as she drove. A few hundred miles to the southeast, and Paul would’ve grown up cradled by lakes; his father would’ve farmed on land that was threaded by vines. A few hundred miles in the other direction, and he would’ve wound up in the mountains where they now lived, endless spires of trees piercing the sky.

  Instead he’d been raised in this far corner where a bleakness had settled in, borne of being at the flat, unmarked end of the state. These farms didn’t produce the fruits and frippery that Liz’s gardens did. They supplied the endless rivers of grain that were churned into the products Americans subsisted upon, or went into the bellies of the animals they ate. Not a pretty business, but an essential one. Liz heard Paul’s voice in her head.

  A crueler kind.

  What cruelty lived here? How had Paul become part of it?

  A faded sign welcomed travelers to Junction Bridge, a good place to live, work, and play. Liz couldn’t imagine what kinds of play took place here, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of living eit
her. She passed a Laundromat, a boarded-up diner, and a hair salon that operated out of someone’s run-down house, before coming to a gas and repair shop on a lone stretch of road. Liz pulled into the dirt lot and got out of her car. Humidity instantly coated her skin and thickened her throat. Birds wheeled in slow circles, their speed belying the intentness of their flight as they searched for prey amongst the cornstalks.

  Liz filled up the car at the pump, then turned to see a man coming out of the garage, wiping his hands on a grease-streaked rag.

  “Help you with anything else today?” he asked.

  Liz shielded her eyes from the sun. Sweat prickled under her arms, and a hot wind made the sheaves of corn rustle. “I was wondering if you could tell me how to find the Daniels place.”

  For a moment, it didn’t seem as if the man was going to answer. Perspiration had darkened the bandanna on his head, which he pulled off and wrung out before nodding. “Got a pen?” He was looking into her car now, at the GPS that continued to display its silly purple line. “That thing isn’t going to be much help out there.”

  Liz was grateful for the scrawled list of directions as she drove into a tangle of roads even more undistinguished than the ones that had brought her here. She was getting close to her children now; she had to be. It felt as if they’d been parted for nine years instead of nine hours. Sweat ran down her back, tickling, itchy, and she lowered the temperature in the car.

  Look for three red flower buckets.

  Liz spotted them, filled with a sun-scorched grouping of blossoms, some farmwoman’s attempt to add a carefree note to her husband’s hardworking spread. Rudbeckia, Liz thought for the second time in as many days. How did a farmwoman not know that black-eyed Susans could withstand almost anything so long as they had a regular sprinkling of water?

  Then take Yarrows Road on your right.

  Liz turned.

  It’ll be the fourth dirt road you come to after that.

  The car was engulfed in a plume of dust. Liz nearly spun out as the road jogged, but she fought to correct, unwilling to lose even scant seconds making it back from the flattened grasses at the shoulder. Despite the sealed cabin of the car, Liz could detect a bestial odor outside. She spotted spindly-legged cows in a picked-over field, their coats patchy and thin.