He stepped around the mess and headed towards the back door. On the adjacent wall was a stainless steel key tidy, and he ran his hand through the suspended row of keys in search of the one that would start the Land Rover. He unhooked keys he barely recognized and threw each one of them to the floor in disgust. Even when Kate was out of her mind, she’d still had enough sense to fuck him over one last time. She had taken the key to the Land Rover and left him without the means to fight for his own son. He pictured Kate, shoving Billy into McCray’s truck, the damn thing reeking of oil and chicken shit, and felt a red-hot surge of loathing behind his left eye for the woman he used to love.
He slammed his hand into the key tidy and listened to the dull ringing of the steel. It sounded like it was marking time, delineating the horror that had passed from the retribution that was yet to come. He stood for a moment, thinking. He remembered the day they had bought the Land Rover, how hot it had been, how excited Billy was to ride up front with his dad. He remembered it being such a good day because he’d spent the first part of it fucking Maggie Ensworth on her dining room table. She had screamed so hard in his ear when she came he’d had trouble hearing for the rest of the week. Then he, Kate and Billy had collected the car; he recalled the insincerity of the salesman—Matty or Micky, a name the man had butchered to try and convey his easygoing nature that Hopewell had instantly balked at—and remembered how the man’s forced hospitality had almost driven them away. But they had bought the car and collected it on the day that Hopewell had fucked two separate women within an hour of each other: the one he had married and the one he actually liked. It had put a smile on his face that no potbellied, oily salesman was likely to wipe off, no matter how irritated Hopewell might be by the man’s name. He had signed the necessary papers, shaken the grinning idiot’s hand, and reverently accepted the keys. Two of them. One that he and Kate had agreed to always keep on the key tidy. The other one stored away in his study in a wooden box.
He tried to remain calm. Kate had been sufficiently resourceful to take the key from the tidy; but would the bitch also have had the sense to take the spare? Hopewell stumbled from the kitchen and veered into his study, reaching for the wooden box even as he pushed through the door. He opened the lid, looked down, and allowed himself a brief smile.
Kate had been meticulous in her planning, he thought; she just hadn’t been meticulous enough.
* * *
At last, Billy had fallen asleep. The steady rumble of the truck’s engine and the soft orange glow from the dashboard had first calmed then sedated him, leaving him sprawled across the backseat, his head in his mother’s lap.
For a while they had driven through the darkness in silence, no one feeling comfortable enough to speak. Kate’s breathing had been harsh and quick, her thoughts utterly disorganized, turning on the dual dilemma of her son’s safety and her husband’s pain. She listened to Billy’s shallow breath and wondered, not for the first time, what harm she had brought upon her family; what the last hour might have done to her son.
Jasper McCray turned in his seat and stared at the boy.
“Best he sleep it off,” he said. “Ain’t no good for him to be thinking on it so soon. Too fresh.”
He looked briefly at his wife and then returned his eyes to the road. Kate sensed a stiffness in him, and she wondered how much he was already regretting taking them on.
“You should try and sleep too, Kate,” Alison McCray said, turning her face to peer between the front seats. “You’ve a lot to consider tomorrow, hon. You need to be rested.”
Kate smiled at her, but wanted to scream. She doubted she’d ever be able to rest again. She had destroyed her son’s life and permanently blinded her husband. What would Alison have her do? Just close her eyes in the back of this shitheap of a truck and measure life’s bounty in the stars? Was that the answer?
To look to the heavens and search out the answer in the unquantifiable blackness of space? The image led swiftly to a vision of Jimmy’s gaping eye socket, the memory of the darkness she had stared into almost forcing the repressed scream from her throat. There was no answer in the stars; no easy answer to this mess anywhere. She had brought upon herself a shadow that would stay with her forever. A shadow that was already beginning to shape what she would become.
She stared from the window of the truck and looked upon the shifting blur of gray shapes, flattened by the darkness into nothing more than irregular profiles, arrangements that she suspected she should already know. She closed her eyes. This was what her marriage had become, she realized: an impression of something she barely even recognized.
She listened to the rumble of the engine and glanced down at her son. She ran her hand through Billy’s hair as he slept. His head felt warm and she wondered what horrors heated his dreams. She felt sick at the thought of the lasting damage tonight’s events might have caused; the scars the boy would have to live with as the fatherless years rolled by.
“Alison,” she said, failing to understand why her own voice sounded so distant. Alison’s head appeared between the front seats again, looking concerned. “I don’t know what to…” Kate’s voice trailed off and she looked down into the dark well of the backseat.
“It’s okay, hon,” Alison said. “You don’t have to say anything. Tonight was a long time coming. How you stood it for so many years is beyond me.”
Jasper glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “You don’t got any explaining to do to us nor anyone else. And don’t go thanking us, neither. Getting you and that boy some thinking time is nothing less than the pair of you deserve.”
Kate looked at his eyes in the mirror, fierce and determined in the reflected orange glow, and smiled her gratitude. Alison placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder. It was a gesture of casual tenderness, but it made Kate feel empty, reminding her of the kind of spontaneous love she had always been denied.
“Where are we heading?” she said, keen to drag her mind into the future and further away from the past.
She thought she heard Jasper chuckle quietly to himself. “The same place everyone goes when they need to feel safe,” he said. “Church.”
* * *
Before stumbling outside towards the Land Rover, Hopewell pulled on his jacket, reached for the telephone, and dialled Maggie Ensworth’s home number. He listened to the distant ringing and felt a spark of activity in the dark space behind his left eye: Maggie asleep in bed. Her red hair tousled. A magazine still loosely held in her hand. The image dissipated and the ringing in his ear returned. He shook his head and held tightly to the phone, feeling nauseous. He counted to ten and resisted the urge to puke inside the house.
The ringing stopped and a slurred voice said: “This better be an emergency.”
“It’s me, Mags,” Hopewell said. “I’m on my way over. Me and Kate got into it a little. It didn’t go well.”
He heard Maggie’s voice sharpen and he imagined—or saw—her sit up on the bed. “What the hell happened?”
Hopewell peered into the hall mirror, looking for an answer. “I have no fucking idea,” he said.
“Are you hurt?”
Hopewell laughed, and it sounded hysterical even to him. “My face is a little messed up,” he said. Then, suddenly rediscovering his anger, he added: “She took Billy.”
Maggie didn’t sound particularly surprised. “Do you want him back?” she asked.
“Of course I want the little fucker back! He’s my son.”
There was a pause on the line and Hopewell drew in a long, shallow breath. Maggie waited.
“He belongs to me,” Hopewell said softly. “He’s my boy, damn it.”
“It’s okay,” Maggie said. “I understand. And I’m sure we can sort it out. It’s hardly the first time the two of you have fought.”
Hopewell sighed. “Billy wasn’t the only thing she took,” he said slowly, as if explaining some complex moral code to a child.
“She stole your wallet?” Maggie said.
; Hopewell glanced at himself again in the mirror and saw the ragged black hole that Kate had bestowed upon him, seamlessly blending with the dark interior of the hall.
“No, Mags,” Hopewell said. “She took my left eye. She ripped the fucking thing from my head.”
Another pause; this time Hopewell listened to the sound of his own grim statement reverberating down the line. He thought he could hear Maggie pulling on her clothes.
“I’ll help you find her,” she said flatly. “The boy too.”
Then the phone went dead in Hopewell’s hand.
He discarded the receiver and hobbled out of the house. He dragged himself inelegantly down the drive, climbed behind the wheel of the Land Rover and began driving slowly in the direction of Maggie’s apartment. He had no idea where that old prick McCray had taken his wife and boy, but he had a feeling that, if he probed the cold light that swam in the darkness of the empty socket, their destination, or, at the very least, a nebulous sense of it, would be disclosed in the misfiring synapse of the weeping, absent eye. He didn’t know why this might be so; didn’t even understand if this kind of demented vision would be at all reliable. But he felt a prism of heat and light in his left socket when he focused that flashed pulses of color into his brain, fractured images that he seemed instinctively able to decode: Kate and Billy in McCray’s truck. Billy fast asleep. His head resting in his mother’s lap.
How he was seeing such things he had no idea, nor did he have the inclination to dwell upon it. The fact that he had retained a connection to his family, no matter how indefinable, was enough to drive him on.
He stared hard through the windshield at the wash of the headlights and thanked the Lord that there were hardly any other vehicles on the road. His depth perception had been horribly compromised and, while he seemed to have gained something dark and inexplicable with the loss of his left eye, he was finding the simple task of driving almost beyond him. He had already clipped two wing mirrors of stationary cars he hadn’t even been aware of. He guided the Land Rover into the middle of the road and prayed for a drop of luck. If the roads remained deserted for the rest of the drive, he’d be fine. His head was starting to ache and the cavity of his left eye was leaking pus onto his cheek. He wondered how close he was to passing out. He slumped over the steering wheel and tried to control his racing thoughts. If his luck was out—and on this night, of all nights, he had no reason to suspect otherwise—he’d be spotted careening across the road by a police patrol vehicle and the game would be up. He just had to hope that the worst the night had to offer had already been inflicted. That somehow—more by serendipity than design—he would get to Maggie Ensworth’s apartment before his body collapsed.
* * *
The door to the rectory was opened by a large man wearing a full-length dressing gown and slippers. His hair was dishevelled and his face was creased. Like crumpled paper, Kate thought. He was trying desperately hard not to look annoyed.
“Hello, Mike,” Jasper said. “You still believe in that Samaritan crap? We need a little help.”
The large man looked at him for a moment, still bleary-eyed, and then smiled and reached out to embrace him.
“Will I regret it?” he asked, hugging Alison and helping her inside.
“Only from this moment on, I suspect. The first minute was kinda nice there. Almost like a reunion.” The two men smiled at each other and Kate glimpsed a thread of history stretching back further than either man probably cared to recall.
Jasper moved to one side in the porch light and waved her forward.
“Kate, this is Father Mike Hedley, a good friend of ours. Mike, this here’s Kate Hopewell.” He paused for a moment and then added, “She’s had quite an eventful night.”
Father Hedley shook Kate’s hand; her trembling fingers were engulfed.
“You’ll be safe here,” he said, trying to reassure her with a smile. “Come on inside. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me everything you think I need to know.”
Kate stopped and looked back at the truck.
“We have a little baggage,” Jasper explained. “He’s asleep on the backseat.”
Father Hedley looked towards the truck, his eyes unreadable.
“Would you like me to collect him for you?”
Kate remembered how easily her hand had been swallowed up in his and nodded without saying a word.
“Try not to disturb him, Mike,” Alison said from within the rectory. “The poor mite needs his rest.”
“I’ll tag along too,” Jasper said, following Father Hedley down the gravel path. “If he wakes up in the arms of this big bastard, he’s liable to scream the damn church down.”
Kate watched the two men walk towards the truck, one towering over the other, and wondered what she had done to deserve such kindness. She thought that if either man had seen the damage she’d inflicted upon her husband, they might not be inclined to such acts of generosity. Especially Father Hedley, whose calling surely precluded him from indulging anyone with a recent history as unforgivable as Kate’s.
She watched the dark outline of the priest open the rear door of the truck, bend low, and effortlessly scoop Billy up in his arms. The boy looked as fragile as an injured bird, and for a brief second she felt a terrible urge to stand in the porch and weep as these two gentle men transported her son to safety on her behalf.
Father Hedley began walking back down the path, the gravel crunching quietly underfoot. He held Billy with such disarming delicacy, Kate wanted to surrender her son to it for as long as possible; to allow the boy a fraction of the tenderness she was ashamed to admit he had too often been denied. As Father Hedley approached, Kate marvelled at how weightless the child seemed, locked in the cradle of his arms, and a weak, exhausted part of her wondered what it might be like to rest there, just for a frozen moment, as the insistent world ticked by.
“Thank you,” she whispered as he carried the boy into the rectory. The priest smiled and ducked his head beneath the door. She saw that Alison had already dimmed the lights so as not to awaken her son and she considered again, not for the first time tonight, exactly why she had been graced with such sympathetic companions; what accommodating force had first drawn, then gently tethered them to her hand.
“Come on, lass,” Jasper said, guiding her towards the soft light of the rectory. “You’ve a story to tell.”
Kate looked at the dark fields surrounding the church and listened to the brawl of the wind. It sounded like it was whispering her name.
* * *
When Maggie Ensworth opened her apartment door, she saw the black vacuum of Jimmy Hopewell’s left eye and failed to suppress a scream.
Hopewell ushered her inside quickly and closed the door. Maggie had a hand to her mouth and seemed to be physically trying to stifle her revulsion.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” she managed. “What the hell did she do?”
Hopewell held his bad eye to the light; even as he stood on the brink of collapse, his contempt was barely held in check.
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain,” he said. His voice was no less chilling than the swollen bubble of pus that had developed around the outer rim of his eye. He looked like he’d stumbled off a battlefield, Maggie thought, his face raked by shrapnel; the worst of it digging out one of the only two features on his unremarkable face worth preserving.
She leaned towards him, braced herself to support his weight, and led him into the front room.
“We’ll get it cleaned and dressed,” she said, suddenly assuming control of the situation. “Have you taken anything for the pain?”
Hopewell closed his eyes, shook his head. He looked relieved to finally be in her arms.
“Then we’ll take care of that, too.” She eased him onto the couch and arranged a large cushion behind his head. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned five minutes later with a wooden tray. She had piled it high with supplies: a glass of water, a bottle of pills, a first-aid kit, scissors and clean tow
els.
“Lie back,” she said.
Hopewell rested his head against the cushion. Maggie placed the tray on the carpet and knelt on the floor beside him. She handed him the water and gave him three white pills.
“Swallow.”
She opened the first-aid box and began rooting through it. She placed a number of items on a white towel she had laid on the floor beside her. Hopewell could see bandages, cotton wool and lotions, as well as a number of sealed instruments in clear packaging.
“No more pain,” Hopewell said. “It might be better just to leave it.”
“That seems a little unlikely.”
Maggie returned to the kitchen and reappeared moments later with a bowl of steaming water and a bottle of antiseptic. Hopewell had already closed his good eye and was beginning to drift. He was picturing Kate and thought he could see a flickering silhouette of her in the dull space where his optic nerves were misfiring. She was sitting in a room with an open fire. The window behind her was stained glass.
“This might sting,” Maggie said, drawing him back from the wavering image of Kate. She held a ball of cotton wool to the mouth of the antiseptic bottle and tipped it upside down. She then applied the sterilized wool to the inflamed socket and cleaned the area as gently as she could.
Hopewell sucked in a deep breath and gritted his teeth. He could feel the solution eating away at the secreted matter distending his skin. He could also feel Maggie’s long fingers probing at the circumference of the hollow pit, and he found himself admiring her resolve. Her face bore the harrowed expression of a woman drafted into duty against her will. As her fingers made fleeting contact with the attenuated tissue around the wound, he wanted to ask her if she could feel anything; a kiss of cool air, maybe, grazing her hand, as though it had been inadvertently turned towards a vent. Hopewell imagined her fingers recoiling from the displaced air; could sense Maggie’s fear as she tended the edges of the eye. He wondered if she appreciated, just as Hopewell himself did, that something within the cavity was emitting a faint pulse. As though the shaft of darkness narrowed to a second sight, deep down, where a shadow was beginning to stir.
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