Beyond Midnight (14 page)

No calls. It was disappointing. Helen was about to go upstairs and cut the electric cord to Russell
'
s amplifier into tiny pieces when the phone rang. It was Alexander
'
s mother, still upset over the Thomas-The-Tank-Engine episode in the lobby of the preschool.

"
I
'
ve decided that Alexander won
'
t be coming back for the summer session,
"
Mrs. Lagor said firmly.
"
In the first place, we
'
ll be away the whole time.
"

"
Oh, but—
"
They weren
'
t doing any such thing. Mr. Lagor was a contractor; summer was his peak season. But Helen could hardly point that out, so she said,
"
I
'
m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Lagor. But we
'
ll be looking forward to seeing Alexander again in the fall.
"

There was an utterly meaningful pause before Mrs. Lagor said,
"
I
'
m not sure about fall. I think Alexander should stay home until kindergarten.
"

Which was the exact worst thing for the overprotected child.
"
I see,
"
Helen said. Very carefully, she laid out her argument against the idea.
"
It
'
s true, some children are better off at home until then,
"
she said.
"
If they have siblings or neighborhood friends close in age to play with, then staying at home can be every bit as enriching as attending preschool; in fact, more so.
"

But Alexander was an only child and Mrs. Lagor was very aloof. Helen hoped the disadvantages would be obvious to her.

Apparently not. Before Helen could pursue her case further, Mrs. Lagor said vaguely,
"
Don
'
t worry, I
'
ll be sending you a letter,
"
and hurried off the phone.

Poor Alex. She
'
s going to hold on to him until they pry him loose with a crowbar.
And yet, Helen could hardly blame the woman. She herself had to fight an almost constant urge to keep her own kids under lock and key. It was a scary world out there.

Helen was halfway up the stairs when it hit her. She now had room for Katie Byrne in the summer session. It seemed too good—and too
eerie—to be true. After all the
h
and
wringing, after all the back-and-forthing between Nathaniel Byrne and her, all it had taken was one quick phone call and suddenly Katie was safe.

Safe?

Helen frowned as she pounded on Russ
'
s door with loud and empty threats, then retraced her steps down the hail to her bedroom.
Safe from what?

She opened the door to her room and went in, intending to change into jeans and a shirt, but stopped dead in her tracks and sniffed.

Perfume. The smell of
Enchantra
pervaded the room, distinct and overbearing, as if someone had spilled the bottle that stood on her old walnut bureau. The pearlized decanter was round and roly; Helen had knocked it over herself in the past. But the stopper had never fallen out, which is what had to have happened for the scent to be so strong.

She picked up the bottle and checked it: The stopper was still in hard. Annoyed without really knowing why, she went back to Russ
'
s bedroom, banged on the door, and opened it. Russ was now under his headset; she motioned him to take it off.

"
Were you in my room earlier?
"

His green eyes went blank.
"
Whuffor?
"

"
Someone spilled my perfume.
"

"
Well, it wasn
'
t me,
"
he said, snorting.
"
Ask the ditz.
"
That was a little more logical, but only just. Helen knew that her daughter would never use
Enchantra.
Becky preferred younger, lighter scents. For that matter, Helen never used it, either; it had been a gift from her aunt. She threw open a window, despite the chill, and
then
called her daughter upstairs.

Becky walked in and made a face.
"
Whoa, Mom—go easy on that stuff.
"

"
You weren
'
t in my
Enchantra?
"
Even as the words left Helen
'
s lips, a small dim bulb seemed to go on in the cluttered closet of her mind.

Becky was plainly puzzled by the question.
"
Why are you asking me?
"
she said, picking up the bottle.
"
You
'
re the one who reeks.
"

"
I
'
m not wearing
Enchantra,
"
Helen said bluntly.

Becky pulled on the stopper, which made a little
puh
sound as it came out.
"
In tight. It couldn
'
t have evaporated.
"
She bent her face close to the embroidered linen that covered the bureau top.
"
I don
'
t smell anything there.
"

"
Right,
"
said Helen tersely.
"
It
'
s in the air around us.
"

Becky spied the open window.
"
Oh—well—if you
'
re gonna leave the window wide open
...
.
"
She walked over to it, parted the lace curtains, and took a deep breath, testing the outside air.
"
Nothing,
"
she said, baffled, and turned around to face her mother.
"
Definitely, it
'
s in this room.
"

So was the knocking. And the jiggle. And the cold rank smell of the sea.

"
I know that, Becky,
"
Helen said in a pale echo of irony. She tried to shake away the unease that was ambushing her routinely nowadays.
"
What I don
'
t know is why.
"

They were standing in the most open area of the room, between the four-poster bed and the oak armoire that dominated one wall. It was where they
'
d stood two nights ago when Helen lost it in front of her daughter, and her daughter lost it in front of Helen. Surely Becky remembered.

The girl went over to a far corner of the bedroom and sniffed.
"
Maybe I don
'
t smell it after all,
"
she said in an edgy, hopeful voice.
"
We need another opinion.
"

She left the room and returned in a few seconds with her irritated brother in tow.
"
Do you smell anything?
"
she asked Russ.

"
Yeah. Girls.
"
The boy shrugged out of her grip and escaped back to his room.

Becky whispered,
"
Do you think we were broken into?
"
The blood had drained from her face, leaving her a wan version of her former self.

"
There
'
s no evidence of it,
"
Helen said as she turned on the brass swing-out lamp above her bed. She wanted light. Lots of it. The deepening twilight would soon be night.

"
Could someone have a key?
"

"
Only Aunt Mary has a key.
"

"
She could
'
ve been here!
"
said Becky.
"
She could
'
ve been cleaning your room or looking for something or, I don
'
t know, just wandering. She
'
s getting really weird.
"

"
She
'
s just the same as she
'
s always been!
"
Helen said sharply.

"
Oh, Mom. She
'
s not. She can
'
t remember anything very well and she gets flustered all the time. Yesterday when I came home from school she was in the yard sitting on the bench with a trowel in her lap. She called me over and said, ‘What
'
s this thing? I used to know.
'"

Helen made an impatient tisking sound and said,
"
Everyone forgets the name of something once in a while.
"

"
It wasn
'
t just the name she forgot,
"
said Becky.
"
She didn
'
t know what the trowel was
for—
and
she
'
s been a gardener all her life! I wasn
'
t going to tell you because I know how much she means to you,
"
Becky confessed.
"
But that was before this bit.
"

Helen was caught between two agonies. She could assume that the
"
bit
"
was the work of her beloved aunt or she could assume. . . something else entirely. Neither suspicion could possibly lead anywhere satisfying.

She swore under her breath, then sighed and put her arm around her daughter as she led her out of the bedroom.
"
Look
...
honey
...
don
'
t mention this to anyone
for now
, okay? Or about Aunt Mary. Just don
'
t say anything to anyone about anything. Let me look into this. There has to be a simple explanation.
"

Helen could see how relieved Becky was to be let off the hook of responsibility. She was still a kid, for all her apparent maturity.
"
I
'
m glad you
'
re being so normal about it, Mom,
"
she said, kissing her mother on the cheek.

She took off and Helen was left to figure out what a sixteen-year-old considered
"
normal
"
in a mother. One thing was certain: She couldn
'
t let Becky know she was upset, much less afraid, of the unexplained events around them. One more disaster like the night before last, and Becky would lose confidence in her mother altogether. A wall would go up, and there they
'
d be: just another mother and daughter who couldn
'
t communicate. Helen had managed to stay standing—emotionally speaking—after her husband had been gunned down. Now was not the time to trip and fall.

Throwing a second window open, Helen shivered and hurried out of the room. She closed the door behind her with the thought that whatever was inside would eventually go outside, and then she went downstairs to make dinner for Russ and her.

She wanted to call Nathaniel Byrne at once with the good news about the opening at the preschool, but two things were stopping her: one, it was the dinner hour, and she suspected that they let the machine take their calls; and two, she wasn
'
t all that sure that Katie
'
s father would consider an open slot at
The Open Door to be good news.

****

At eight o
'
clock that evening the phone rang at the Byrn
e
mansion. Peaches picked it
up. It was the director of The
Open Door, Helen Evett, whi
ch didn't surprise her at all.
So she was right. There
had
been sparks.

Her voice was deliberately cool as she said,
"
How can I help you, Mrs. Eve
tt
?
"
It was an idle question. The point of the call was all too obvious; Helen Eve
tt
was going to muscle Katie into her preschool.