by Katrina Leno
She stopped just in time. One of the panes of glass in the mudroom door—one that had been replaced that day—was shattered. The floor was littered with glass, and there was a rock in the middle of all the pieces. She bent down and picked it up.
Someone had thrown a rock through the window.
That was why all the windows had been broken; someone was using them as target practice.
Angrier now, she knew she shouldn’t risk it, but she picked her way carefully through the mess of glass, standing on barefoot tiptoes as she made her way to the door. She fumbled with the lock and pulled the door open hard, almost throwing herself back with the effort.
The cold hit her like a slap, and she pushed her body out into the night and strained to see anything in the immaculate darkness of the night.
Nothing, nothing—
Wait!
Movement, the sound of laughter, an exclamation of surprise—“Oh shit!”—more laughter and feet running away, two or three or four shadowy figures darting across the backyard.
“I’ll call the police!” Jane screamed into the dark. “If you come back, I’ll call the police!”
Silence.
Anger coursed through her body like a thing with weight, with substance, fiery hot and burning underneath her skin. She took a step out into the backyard, knowing she should go back inside, knowing she couldn’t catch whoever it was, couldn’t even see where they had gone—
Another step and the wind whipped her long hair around her face so violently that it tangled and knotted.
Another step, even though she couldn’t see anything, even though the darkness was so complete out here she could barely register her own hand held in front of her face.
She couldn’t think, she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than her anger, the sharp cut of it, the way adrenaline made her fingertips tingle.
But then—a light?
She turned back to the house, expecting to see Ruth in the mudroom, about to yell at her to come inside, but no.
The mudroom light was still off.
But upstairs—
Upstairs there was a light on.
And as she watched, a hand pressed itself against the glass of the window.
And then the light went off.
And everything was dark again.
Someone was in the house.
Who had a little curl
Someone was in the house.
Jane’s entire body was on fire; her heart was beating so rapidly in her chest that she thought it might burst. It seemed to pulse in time to one panicked thought that kept running through her mind:
They’re inside they’re inside they’re inside.
Whoever had thrown the rock through the window was just distracting her so someone else could slip past her into the house.
Her body felt frozen in place, unable to move.
But not frozen in fear…
Frozen in anger.
Motionless in rage.
She was going to go upstairs. She was going to hurt them.
But then the mudroom light had turned on and there was Ruth, looking sleep-rumpled and confused, blinking to wake herself up.
“Honey? What happened to the window?”
Jane couldn’t reply. She couldn’t speak. She still couldn’t move. How had she gotten back in the mudroom? Wasn’t she still outside?
“Jane, what—oh my god. Honey, oh my god. Don’t move! Your feet!”
Somehow, that broke the spell. Jane looked down at her feet and saw tiny rivulets of blood branching out from underneath them. The glass. She was standing in glass, and she hadn’t even felt it.
“Mom,” she croaked, finding her voice again. “Someone broke the window. And someone is inside. I think… someone came inside.”
“What is the door doing open? Were you out there?” Ruth’s face changed. “Jane—you weren’t trying to go after them, were you?”
“No, I just… There was another light. And… and a hand. Upstairs.”
But even as she said it, Jane doubted herself. She hadn’t been standing far enough away from the door for someone to sneak past her. Had she even seen anything at all? Or had her brain played tricks on her, feeding off the intensity of the moment to create the next thing to panic about?
“Honey, it’s just the wiring. I’ll go unplug everything tomorrow. We’ll have an electrician come in. We need to get you out of there. Don’t move. There should be a broom in here—” Ruth opened a tall cabinet and pulled out a broom and dustpan. “Jesus, it’s everywhere. Don’t move.”
Ruth began sweeping the glass to the side, carefully brushing it away from Jane’s feet. She cleared herself a path to the door and pulled it shut, locking it. She put her hand up and gently touched the broken pane of glass.
“Did you see who did it?” she asked.
“It was too dark.”
“I heard yelling,” Ruth said. “And then I rolled over and you weren’t there. Fuck, it scared me. You should have woken me up or called 911.”
“There’s no service, remember?”
“I’ll call the phone company. We’ll get a landline. And we’ll go to the cell phone store and ask about our options. And—oh shit. Are you crying? What am I doing? We need to look at your feet. Can you lift up your foot, honey?”
Jane placed a hand against the wall and lifted up her left foot. Ruth was wearing socks; she pulled one of them off and used it to gently brush the sole of Jane’s foot, sweeping tiny shards of glass away.
“Okay,” she said. “The other one.”
Jane lifted her other foot and Ruth repeated the process.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Ruth said. “Fuck, the blood scared me, but… It’s just a couple scratches. Can you walk? Can you make it to the kitchen?”
“There’s nobody upstairs, right? There’s nobody in the house?” Jane asked. Her brain felt fuzzy, like she was coming out of a dream, waking up from a nap she’d only been half-asleep for.
“There’s nobody in the house, honey,” Ruth said quietly, putting her hand on Jane’s cheek. “Come into the kitchen, okay?”
Jane followed Ruth down the hallway and into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table as Ruth disappeared and returned a minute later with rubbing alcohol and bandages.
Now that her body was calming down, Jane could feel her feet. They stung, like a dozen little fiery pricks.
And there was another pain—a stinging on her right knuckles that had nothing to do with what had just happened. A phantom sting from years ago. She squeezed her eyes closed as Ruth took a cotton ball of rubbing alcohol to the soles of her feet, and suddenly she was six years old again, and the boy next door had taken the white LEGO horse from her.
“That’s mine,” she’d said. “If you want to play, you can have the brown one.”
She’d held it out to him helpfully, but he’d kicked it out of her hand. It went flying across the driveway. He had refused to give the white horse back.
The next thing she remembered, she’d been standing over him. He was writhing around on the driveway, holding his nose. He’d dropped the white horse. Jane had bent over and picked it up.
Her hand stung.
She’d looked down at it, surprised to find it bleeding in one spot, the rest of her knuckles red and raw.
Underneath her, the boy had finally managed to get to his feet. He’d stood up and run home.
The anger had left as quickly as it had come. It had gone with the punch, as if that physical act had been enough to dispel it from her body.
Of course the boy had told his mother, who’d called the house and gotten Greer on the phone.
Greer had sat Jane down on the couch and she’d begun to cry. Through her tears, she had protested that the boy had deserved it.
“I have no doubt about that,” Greer had said. Jane’s father had always been fair, willing to listen and reason. “I’ve always thought he was a little punk. But, Jane—you can’t go around punching all the punks in the world. First of
all, it’s not right, and it’s not the way to solve your problems. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jane had said quietly.
“And second of all, you’ll end up doing more damage to your hand than you’ll do to them. Just look at it.” And he’d taken her hand gently in his and turned it knuckle-side-up, so they could both see the tiny cut and the raw redness of her skin. He’d kissed her softly on the back of her wrist.
Jane could feel that kiss now, as plainly as if Greer were standing over them in the kitchen, watching as Ruth cleaned Jane’s feet. She rubbed her knuckles as he faded away again, until the only thing remaining was the sharp absence of him—the place where he had been and wasn’t anymore. The place where he would never be again.
She wrapped her arms around her stomach.
“Does it hurt?” Ruth asked.
“Not really. Just stings.”
Ruth raised a hand and touched Jane’s cheek. Jane hadn’t even really registered it, but she realized now she was crying.
“I miss him,” Jane whispered. “And I hate him for leaving us.”
Ruth leaned the broom against a wall and wrapped her arms around her daughter.
“Oh, honey. I miss him and I hate him, too. And I think that’s okay, for now.”
Jane woke up late the next morning, to sunshine streaming in through the windows, to the smell of coffee. For once Ruth was up before her. Jane stretched and groaned a little—she was exhausted, and nights on the floor weren’t doing her back any favors. She wiggled her toes and flexed her feet, looking for any pain, but felt nothing. The cuts had been small, and Ruth had been diligent in cleaning them.
It had taken her hours to fall back asleep.
Ruth had made them tea after covering up the broken window with cellophane. They’d built up the fire again and sat in front of it, sipping the tea and trying to relax.
“I’m sure it was just kids,” Ruth had said. “Kids who probably thought this house was still empty. You must have scared the shit out of them, Jane, chasing them into the backyard like that. They won’t be back.”
Jane pulled herself out of her sleeping bag and grabbed a sweater from the couch—it was one of Ruth’s, an old fisherman’s sweater, oversize and soft. She pulled it on and ran her fingers through her hair, tangled and messy from the night.
She stood up carefully, testing her weight on her feet. They hurt a little, but nothing unbearable. She made her way into the kitchen slowly, stepping lightly, expecting to find Ruth with a cup of coffee, but she wasn’t there. So she wandered around the first floor, peeking into different rooms, finally reaching the foyer, where she paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.
She couldn’t quite bring herself to go up there.
If Ruth was right, and there was some sort of faulty wiring, it still didn’t explain the shadow Jane had seen. It didn’t explain the hand pressed against the windowpane last night. But in the morning light, she really wasn’t sure she’d seen a shadow or a hand at all. Probably the light had just flickered. Probably her imagination had been on overdrive. Probably it was what Ruth had said before—grief is different for everyone—and for Jane, it was making her see things, making her imagination run wild. And, she reminded herself, there was no way someone could have snuck into the house behind her back. It was just the adrenaline. She knew from personal experience—adrenaline did strange things to your body, to your brain. It made your own mind a thing you couldn’t trust anymore.
She shook her head and moved on.
She made her way to the mudroom. The galoshes that had been there were gone. She squinted out the shattered window but didn’t see Ruth anywhere. But the dead bolt was unlocked, so Jane slipped a pair of tennis shoes on, opened the door, and stepped outside.
It was a mild day, with almost no breeze.
Jane took a deep breath. It smelled like pine trees, like a scented candle they used to burn during Christmastime in California, when it was eighty degrees outside and the Santa at the outdoor mall must have been sweating buckets underneath his suit.
Her feet protested a little more as she walked into the backyard, but the air felt good in her lungs. She took a deep breath through her nose. It smelled kind of amazing, actually, like pine and wood and dirt. Los Angeles never smelled like that.
She became aware of a strange sound—a metal-on-metal sound, like a giant pair of scissors opening and shutting.
She closed the mudroom door and walked toward the fountain.
The sound grew louder. She looked back toward the house, which was large and cold-looking in the morning light. The windows were all dark. Most of the curtains on the second floor were drawn closed. It wasn’t a very welcoming house. Jane couldn’t blame her mother for leaving; she didn’t understand what kind of a person chose to live in a house like this. Too many rooms, too many chimneys, too many windows.
And that sound again. What was that sound?
She turned back around and finally saw Ruth, at the very edge of the lawn, near the rosebushes. She wore jeans and a flannel, and her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head. The galoshes came up almost to her knees. She was wielding a giant pair of garden shears, and she was attacking the rosebushes with a singular purpose, cutting down great chunks of perfectly healthy plant.
She was standing in a heap of oranges and pinks and reds; the colors stood out in stark contrast against the gray of the morning.
Jane started walking toward her. “Mom?” she said, when she was close enough.
Ruth looked up with a start. Her eyes were strange, like she was in a trance; she shook her head, and they slowly came into focus.
“Morning. I couldn’t sleep.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Just a little pruning.”
“Pruning? You’re murdering these things.”
Ruth laughed. All the strangeness was gone from her eyes now. She just looked tired and weary. She brushed some hair back from her face. “They would have died in the first frost. It’s a miracle they’ve made it this far. The plants will come back stronger in the spring if they’re properly cut back now.”
Jane had no idea if this was true or not, and if it was, she had no idea how Ruth knew that. Ruth hated gardening. She hadn’t even owned a trowel back home. And she certainly didn’t seem to be taking much care with the process. She was hacking away at random, leaving some bushes with no more than an inch or two of green pushing through the soil.
“How are you feeling? How are your feet?” Ruth asked.
“Not bad, surprisingly.”
“You know what helps foot injuries?”
“What?”
“Pancakes. We need pancakes. I hope Sam’s is still open. It was my favorite diner when I was your age. The best chocolate-chip pancakes I’ve ever had.”
“Let me go get dressed.”
“All right, go on. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Hurry up! You made me hungry.”
Jane started back toward the house. As she passed the fountain again, she heard the whoosh of the shears’ blades as Ruth resumed her frantic cutting.
For some reason, the sound made her skin crawl.
Sam’s Diner—a little place on the main square of Bells Hollow—felt like walking straight into the 1950s, with an old-fashioned counter to the left, an actual jukebox in a far corner, and the daily specials written on a vintage green chalkboard. They waited a few minutes for a red vinyl booth, then ordered chocolate-chip pancakes, a side of fries, and an egg scramble loaded with cheese and veggies.
When the food arrived, Jane cut herself a bite of pancake and dipped it in the syrup.
“Holy. Shit.”
“I know,” Ruth said, popping a fry into her mouth. “I can honestly say, one thing I missed about this place was Sam’s.”
“Is there actually a Sam?”
“There was! He was a hundred years old when I lived here. I’m sure he’s not around anymore. But his legacy lives on.”
They ate in silence for a while. The diner was busy around them; every time a booth cleared, it was filled again immediately. The counter was taken up by old men reading newspapers, groups of kids eating breakfast sandwiches, and one mother reading a romance novel as her baby slept in a car seat by her feet. It was warm and smelled amazing, and Jane couldn’t help thinking, Greer would have loved this place. He would have been one of the men at the counter, reading a newspaper, drinking eight cups of coffee one after another, eating sourdough toast spread with too much butter.
Jane flinched. Those memories—those visceral, sudden memories—appeared without any warning, like a slap to the face, and left her reeling in sadness, the smell of phantom sourdough toast almost suffocating her.
“What’s up?” Ruth said softly, somehow sensing this, reaching across the table to take Jane’s hand briefly.
“Oh, just nothing. Just… He would have loved this place. You know.”
Ruth smiled sadly. “Yeah, I know.”
And for a moment, he was almost at the table with them, stealing bites of pancake, ordering a third cup of coffee, spreading butter on toast. Jane let him sit with them for a moment before pushing him away again, because he wasn’t here, because he’d never be here again.
“Okay,” Ruth said. “I’ve been very patient. Tell me a little bit about your first day?”
“Oh, it was fine. I mean, it wasn’t anything special.”
“I know it’s all been such a big change. I’m just proud of you for keeping it together.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I reached out to some old friends yesterday. One of them, Frank, owns a construction business. He said he could use some accounting help, so I’m going to lend a hand. Just three days a week to start, but maybe it will turn into something more.”
“Really? That’s amazing. And you were worried you wouldn’t find a job.”
“It’ll be good. Keep me busy. And we need the cash.”
Ruth ate another fry. Jane finished the last bite of the egg scramble, then let her gaze wander around the diner. It was still packed, and there were a few small groups of people waiting for tables. The counter seats were all filled, and Jane noticed an older man sitting at the very end, his stool swiveled so he was facing the direction of their table. Although most of his face was hidden by a newspaper he held, his eyes were visible over the top of it. And Jane swore he kept looking up at them, shifting his vision from her mother and back to her.
