Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Helen clasped her hands together in a prayerful pose, then pelted her chest softly with them. Her gaze was fastened on the July sheet of a calendar that hung on the pale yellow wall next to the door: a serene view of a country cottage, its perennial border abloom with daylilies, daisies, and black-eyed Susans. The idyllic setting was so at odds with her life that Helen closed her eyes and looked away, as if she'd stumbled across a mangled body.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself, then came up with a tiny smile of dismay. "He's ... ah ... he's run away, Aunt Mary. You remember that weird scare over the Satanism? Well, it's back. Someone killed a cat that belonged to a little girl that Becky baby-sits and—"

  "Oh my lord. They think Russell did that?"

  "No, actually it's even dumber than that. They think Becky did it."

  The elderly woman stared blankly at her niece; it was too early in the morning for such drama. Helen felt a surge of protectiveness for her aunt, sitting there puffy-eyed and shivery in the early morning sun. But she had no choice; there was no one else to cover the phone.

  Fearing one of her aunt's memory lapses, she asked gently, "Did you understand what I said?"

  "But ... then why did Russell run away?"

  "Ah. Good point," said Helen with a wan look of her own. "I said some things yesterday."

  Her hurtful words fell back down over her like concrete blocks, crushing her spirit. "And Russell took them personally."

  She stood up, aching to be on her way, but paused and said, "You know the movies where the sidekick runs in front of the bad guys to draw their fire away from the people he loves? That's what Russ is doing."

  He's pleading guilty to please the mob.

  "The poor thing," said her aunt, drawing her robe around her more closely. She looked so terribly, terribly tired. "Where would he have gone? Not far?"

  "No father than the mall, anyway," said Helen lightly. She knew that to Aunt Mary, running away meant hiding out in a friend's basement all day.

  She was determined not to alarm her aunt any more than she had already, so she added, "I'm just afraid he'll get stuck somewhere without carfare and call home. So if he does, be sure to get an address and tell him not to move, would you? And meanwhile, I'll keep checking with you. We should have this all worked out by the end of the day. You know how temperamental kids can be."

  ****

  Seventy-two hours later, what was left of Helen's world was being methodically dismantled.

  Every cop in the city, every trooper in the state was on the lookout for Russell Evett, a black-haired, green-eyed cop's kid with two pierces in his ear and a great grin, if one of them was lucky enough to see it.

  He wasn't dead. That was the big, overwhelming thing. He'd called Scotty—that hurt—and told him to pass the word that he was okay. The call had been quick, Scott said; Russ had been afraid it would be traced. That was another blow: her son, acting like a fugitive from her.

  But she cheered herself with the news that he was alive and hopefully not far from home: Boston was her best guess. Helen loved Boston; but the thought of Russell roaming its streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few dollars in his pocket was nothing short of terrifying. She sent Becky and a couple of her friends to search for him in the Cambridge area, which Russ knew pretty well, while she stayed home coordinating the search in the manner of a military campaign, with a private investigator as her aide-de-camp.

  But despite the army of friends, relatives, and mercenaries that surrounded Helen, the plain truth was that she herself was under seige: The Open Door was teetering on the brink of collapse. After the cat episode, another dozen or so parents panicked and fled the summer program; classes were now down to less than half their original size. A teacher gave notice. The cook quit. The afternoon person simply didn't show.

  All of the rest of the staff, as well as the remaining parents, were ready and willing to rally around Helen—but she wasn't there to lead her troops. How could she be, when her son had gone missing?

  It came as no surprise to her when Janet called late on Wednesday morning. "Two reps from the Office for Children are here on an impromptu inspection. Is it possible that it's coincidence?" she asked wryly.

  Smiling bleakly, Helen said, "Be nice to them. We have nothing to hide."

  "I heard Mrs. Dunbar went straight to them after she heard about the cat."

  "That was bound to happen, Janet. You and I discussed it."

  "Well, excuse me, but I don't understand what someone's dead cat has to do with this establishment."

  "It doesn't take much to bring down a preschool," Helen said almost absently. Her mind was on the search. "Janet, when you call, call me on my aunt's line, would you? I need to keep this one free."

  "Anything new?"

  "Not so far."

  Janet's sigh was heavy and unanswerable. Helen knew that her assistant was ready to charge over hot coals for her and the preschool. "Janet? I'm sorry, I truly am, but I have to stay here."

  "Don't apologize," Janet said firmly. "I'd do the exact same thing. It's just too bad, that's all. You and your children don't deserve this. First Hank, now this ridiculous hysteria. And all because of some idle gossip and a tragic coincidence—well, it's not right. It makes me wonder who's running things up there."

  Helen hurried off the phone before Janet's plainspoken sympathy reduced her to weeping. It was hard to read phone books through tears.

  Tears or no tears, one particular phone number kept throbbing in place on her yellow pad. It was the only one Helen hadn't crossed off; the only one she could not bring herself to dial. Her hand hovered over the phone.

  Leave no stone unturned, she told herself. Not even that one.

  The phone rang shrilly as she reached for it, sending her heart cracking against her breastbone. "Yes?"

  "Mom, it's me. We couldn't find him. I'm sorry. We went through every record store, every arcade, every bookstore. We saw a kid go into the Harvard Coop who looked a little like—but he wasn't. We were thinking of maybe checking around the Charles River; you know, where they have those little swan boats?"

  "No. I don't want you driving around Boston after dark. Mr. Merkle will take care of that part. You did your best, honey. Now come home. And drive safely. How was traffic going in?"

  "No sweat. Bobby's a real good driver."

  "I know. Thank him—thank everyone—for me."

  Again she had to hurry off before the tears started up. Becky and her friends—and Helen was amazed to see how many were coming forward—were all trying so hard. Everyone was.

  It made Nat Byrne all the more conspicuous by his absence.

  Helen bit down hard and picked up the phone. He could help or he could go to hell.

  Chapter 26

  Peaches was trying on a ruby necklace, one that had come down to Linda through the Swiss side of her family, when the phone rang. She considered not answering—she'd already spoken with Nat—but it was seven-thirty; anyone who mattered would know that Katie would be in bed, and her nanny at home with her.

  "Peaches? It's Helen Evett. May I speak with Nat, please?"

  Well, well, well. She was swallowing her pride after all. "I'm sorry, Helen," Peaches said, "but he isn't here."

  "Do you know when he'll be back?" Helen asked. Her voice was surprisingly businesslike for a woman whose only son had run away.

  "Nat is out of town."

  "Ah. Of course."

  There was a pause that Peaches didn't bother to fill. By now everyone knew about the cat; everyone was entitled to have reservations about Helen.

  "When will he be back?"

  Ooh. Pushy. Interesting. "Probably by the end of the week. Is there a message I can give him?"

  Peaches heard a sigh. "No," Helen said, not so briskly as before. "I guess he can't do anything."

  It was time to sound concerned. "Really, I'll be glad to give him a message; he checks in all the time when he's away."

  "Yes ...." Another si
gh. It was obvious that she was agonizing over whether to tell Peaches—presumably about her son—or wait for Nat.

  "It can wait," Helen said at last. "Is Katie all right?" she added. "She hasn't been in school since Monday."

  Peaches lied and said, "She's a little under the weather."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Is she running a temperature?"

  "She'll be fine," Peaches said cooly, preempting further discussion.

  Helen got off the phone quickly after that. It was wonderfully convenient. Now Nat wouldn't have to hear about either the cat or the kid until he returned home. By then he'd be tired and glad to accept a glass of wine from Peaches, and happy to relax in the company of his sweet and adorable daughter.

  The rift between Nat and Helen was already wide and deep. With the right presentation, the latest events in the Evett family would seem bizarre at best, abhorrent at worst. Nat would pull Katie from the preschool; Peaches was ready to bet the farm on it.

  She unclasped the ruby necklace from her throat, put it back in its case, and put the case back in the safe. All in all, she really did prefer the emerald.

  Helen laid the phone down as if it were a bird with a broken wing. Whatever feelings Nat had had for her, whatever reforms he'd promised to make for Katie's sake—they were over. He'd gone back to his career the way a man backslides into drink or gambling. And the worst part was, she was the one who'd driven him there.

  Helen stared at the phone, her mind adrift. For the moment, things were almost eerily silent. She began to wander through her shockingly empty house, waiting: for Becky to come, for Russ to call. For some sign, any sign, that her life had reached a low point. She couldn't bear the thought that it might go lower.

  The hardest place to be was Russ's room. Helen paused at the door, then made herself go in. She hadn't been able to bring herself to make his bed or change his sheets, which were still the way he'd left them. She wanted him simply to show up, as if he'd been to basketball practice, and go into his room and crank up the music to some deafening volume. She'd give anything to feel the walls of the house shaking again.

  She stopped in front of Russ's shrine to his father and fingered the trooper's badge that lay propped against the photograph of Hank. It seemed inconceivable to Helen that during all the recent traumas, she hadn't once had a sense of Hank ... being there for her, somehow.

  It was too ironic. A virtual stranger had been able to figure out the trick of crossing the veil and confounding her life; but her husband—the father of their two beleaguered children—was sitting it out on the other side. There was only one man alive who could comfort her—but he was busy making money.

  She sat on Russell's bed, staring blankly for a long time at the picture of Hank, and then she began to cry. It was both her curse and her blessing that no one was there to hear her do it—not Hank, not Becky, not Russell, not Nat. She could wail as loud as she wanted. And she did.

  It was a release that was long, long overdue. Tomorrow—tonight—she would be strong again. But not now. The tears were as vital to her survival as spring rain to a good strong crop.

  When Helen finally heard the front door slam, that's when she hastily wiped her eyes and called out, "Who's home?"

  Because it was always possible that he'd decided to come back. Far stranger things had happened lately.

  "It's only me, Mom," Becky called up. "Sorry."

  "Don't be sorry, dope," said Helen, coming down the steps to hug her daughter. She held her for a long, emotional moment. "Don't you know how glad I am to see you?"

  Helen was glad. In her yellow T-shirt and white shorts— Becky hadn't worn black since Russ left home—the girl was as cheerful a sight to behold as the five-foot sunflowers that looped around the birdbath.

  Becky had brought home half a dozen doughnuts. Helen took the cordless phone over to Aunt Mary's, where the three women drank tea and ate all six pastries while they insisted to one another that Russell couldn't have gone far, because no tollbooth attendant or bus driver would've let him pass—he was a cop's kid.

  No one brought up the possibility of hitchhiking.

  And then it was time to try again to sleep. The nights so far had been endless; but tonight, no doubt because of her good long cry, Helen dropped off at once into an exhausted, dreamless stupor.

  Until the rapping sound.

  ****

  It was a single, sharp crack, nothing at all like the persistent jiggle and knock that had haunted the nights of her spring. Disabled by sleep, Helen sat part of the way up and tried to track the sound. Someone was trying to communicate; she hadn't dreamed it; someone was out there.

  The clock in the hall struck three. There was another sharp crack. This time she heard it clearly. Something was being pitched—or pitching itself—against the windowpane. Fumbling for her flashlight, Helen ran to the window and threw up the sash, then the screen, and hung over the sill. If he doesn't have a key ....

  But it wasn't her lost son who was standing below her window in the misty black of the garden, and it wasn't the prayed-for ghost of Hank Evett. It was flesh and blood that Helen never thought she'd see at the house again, much less standing in the ivy at three in the morning.

  She aimed the flashlight directly down on him. In the narrow beam he looked drawn and haggard, even fiendish, as he squinted in the focused penetration of light. His hair was unkempt, almost wild; the expression on his face was urgent and intense as he called her name in an undertone.

  "What're you doing here?" she asked, shocked by his appearance.

  He gestured to the front porch, signaling her to take him in.

  "Yes. Wait," she whispered, although she felt she must be dreaming. She threw down the flashlight and, without taking the time to grab a robe, ran down the stairs and swung open the door.

  The man who stood before her was not the man from whom she'd fled. He looked thinner, older, worn with care—a carbon copy, she thought, of her own suffering. She was baffled; he hadn't lost a son. And then she realized he had, and—like her—so much else besides. "Oh.. . Nat," she said in a voice wrenched by emotion.

  He caught her in his arms and held her fast, as if he were afraid someone was going to snatch her away. "Helen ... Helen, I'm sorry. Oh my love, I'm so sorry," he said hoarsely, over and over. His breath felt warm on her night-cooled skin. After all these nights: he was so real. It was a measure of her love for him that she didn't know or care what he was sorry about; she only cared that they shared the heartache.

  "Nat, I'm so glad—oh, Nat, that you're here," she said, shutting her eyes, absorbing the reality of him. He was a dream come true. She was ecstatic at his return; if one dream could come true, than so could another.

  Through the thin gauze of her cotton gown she could feel that his clothes were damp from the night air. "I thought you were away ... that you were never coming back to me," she said in joyful confusion.

  "Let's go inside," he said. "You're shaking like a leaf."

  He closed the door and she led him by the hand to the denim sofa in the family room, where she curled up against him, her arm looped across his chest, her cheek pressed over his heart. This was the important thing, to feel him there, to know he was there. All else could wait.

  "Tell me everything," he said simply.

  She said, "When did you find out?"

  "I got back a couple of hours ago," he told her. "Peaches wasn't expecting me until tomorrow; she was asleep. I was glancing through my mail and saw an envelope from Rhea Lagor. I remembered her—I remembered her son—from my first visit to The Open Door. It's not every day I get a train engine thrown at me. So I opened the letter and read it.

  "It was incomprehensible," he said. "Something about an eviscerated cat and animal worship and would I be willing to attend a meeting of concerned parents. Apparently she'd tried to leave a message through Peaches, but Peaches told me—when I woke her up to ask her what the hell was going on—that Mrs. Lagor was a nut and she'd assumed I wouldn't want to
be bothered. Which was at least partly true.

  "So then," he said grimly, "I got Peaches's version. And now I want your version, the true version. I love you, Helen. I'm so sorry I wasn't here for you." He stroked Helen's hair away from her cheek. "Forgive me, and tell me what happened. And then we'll find Russ."

  Overwhelmed by his simple declaration of faith and love—and hope—Helen told him everything, beginning with the call from Anna's mother to Becky. From Becky's reaction of horror to her own frustrated outburst, from Russell's note after the night of hate calls to her indifference to the collapse of her preschool, she told him everything.

  She tried hard to stick to the facts; to keep emotion out of her voice as she did so. But by the end of her account, tears were rolling unchecked down her cheeks.

  "I'm sorry," she said, trying to brush them from his shirt. "I'm just an emotional mess right now."

  "That's all right. When you're ready." He held her close, and kissed the top of her head, and stroked her hair, and waited in silence for her to become more calm.

  Eventually Helen sighed deeply; she was in control again. "What did Peaches say?" she murmured.

  He shrugged off the answer. "It doesn't matter."

  "She told you she believes it all, didn't she."

  "It truly doesn't matter, Helen. I'm not interested in what she believes. All Peaches knows is what she hears. Never mind her now," he said, dismissing her in a voice that was surprisingly harsh.

  Immediately he apologized and dropped his voice back down. "I don't want to wake Becky."

  Helen burrowed more deeply against him. "Becky asleep is anyone else in a coma," she said, smiling. She yawned herself; her eyelids were becoming heavy. It would be so nice to nod off in his arms, right then, right there. In the morning she just knew everything would be back to normal.

  "And so you threw some stones against my window," she said dreamily. "Instead of using the phone. I'm glad."

  "I didn't want to alarm your house. I was out, I was walking around. I—my original plan was to call you first thing in the morning. I went to bed. But then ...."