Second Nature (26 page)

All that night Stephen listened to the wind through the broken windows. It was a sound he recognized, and it made him feel homesick in some deep, awful way. In the morning he changed his clothes; he showered and shaved and took some scissors to his long hair. He might as well look like other men, at least until he was gone. He ate half a package of crackers, the kind Old Dick preferred, even though they tasted like sand. It wouldn’t do him the least bit of good to get sick or weak now, not when he had so far to go, not when the snow along the ridgetops would already be deep and thick, slowing him down, it was true, but also covering his tracks.

“You let him go back to the carriage house?” Stuart said when he came to see Robin. He’d brought along a basket of corn muffins Kay had baked and two bags of groceries they’d shopped for off the island, at a Grand Union on the North Shore. “With the way feelings are running around here? You don’t think that’s dangerous?”

Robin had been up since dawn, but she hadn’t bothered to dress and was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants she’d slept in.

“He’s not my puppet,” Robin told her brother. “I don’t tell him what to do. Was I supposed to throw myself across the door and force him to stay?”

“He shouldn’t have left,” Stuart insisted. “There’s something wrong with these people. They want a monster. They won’t be satisfied until they have one.” He grabbed a corn muffin and ripped it in two. “Kay could sell these. They’re better than the ones at the bakery.”

Stuart reached for a pot of jam and happened to see Robin’s unguarded face. She was so pale it almost seemed possible that the monster he’d spoken of had just appeared at the back door.

“Robin,” Stuart said.

“I’ll make coffee.” Robin went to the stove for the kettle, but Stuart followed her.

“You think he might have done it,” Stuart said.

“You’ve always liked to tell me what I think,” Robin said. She filled the kettle and pleated a paper towel into quarters. It was cheaper than using coffee filters but for some reason folding it made her feel like weeping.

“Stephen doesn’t fit the profile.”

“There you go,” Robin said. “You do know everything.”

“He is not obsessive-compulsive, he has absolutely no violent history, no sexual perversions—unless you want to correct me on that—no abnormal aggression.”

“And no alibi,” Robin said.

“They’re wrong about Stephen,” Stuart said. “He didn’t kill that girl.”

“You’re so sure of yourself,” Robin said. “Aren’t you the person who lives in a shack and has a nervous breakdown at the drop of a hat?”

Stuart put his corn muffin into the sink, uneaten. “I don’t deserve that.”

“No,” Robin said. “You don’t.”

“I was fired,” Stuart told her. “Asked to resign.”

“That’s it,” Robin said. “I’ve ruined everything.” She turned, so that Stuart wouldn’t see her cry.

“Stop it,” Stuart said. “I wasn’t certain I was ever going back. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite certain of anything.”

Stuart put his arms around Robin, then politely busied himself with pouring hot water over the ground coffee, while Robin wiped at her eyes and blew her nose. People really could be one way outside, when inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed. Robin and Stuart had their coffee, lightened with evaporated milk, but they were careful to speak only of the weather, which the meterologists swore would be warming in less than twenty-four hours. They’d done this when their father died and they’d sat on the living room couch in their Miami apartment, knees touching, as they waited to hear their fate. They’d done it on the plane years later, returning to Florida for their mother’s funeral. They’d become experts when it came to cold fronts and cumulus clouds, novices still when it came to speaking about real pain. Stuart had once had a patient, a teenaged girl who refused to eat anything but small portions of mashed potatoes. When he’d realized she thought of them as clouds, and that she was obsessively listening to the radio for weather reports, he felt such tender affection for her that he’d asked to be taken off her case. He didn’t have the heart to make her face her pain; he’d spent most of his last session with her discussing the lack of rainfall in the Southwest. As it was, when Stuart was leaving Robin’s he suggested that she wear a scarf if she went outside, since the wind-chill factor was high, and that advice alone nearly made Robin burst into tears. She knew what he’d meant by it, and she kissed his cheek before he left.

“Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be alone,” Stuart said, considering her through the storm door.

“Stop worrying about me,” Robin told him. “Thank Kay for the muffins.”

After Stuart had driven away, Robin stored the groceries he’d brought her, then wrapped Kay’s corn muffins in foil. She made buttered toast and sat down at the table, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat breakfast. She carried her dishes to the sink and told herself she’d be absolutely fine, but that wasn’t the truth, and she knew it. It wasn’t just that she missed Stephen terribly or that she felt she’d betrayed him, for reasons she still didn’t understand. She was sick to her stomach, as she had been every morning for the past three weeks. Only, this time when she went to the bathroom to vomit, she stayed there on her knees for a long while, just as she had when she knew she was pregnant with Connor, and she didn’t get back on her feet until she was certain she’d be able to stand.

 
 
 
They met just before dawn, when the birds were still asleep and the men in the patrol had all gone home to soak their frozen toes in tubs of hot water and crawl into their beds. Stephen got to the cemetery first. He stayed crouched down low until he heard footsteps, then he quickly rose to his feet. Matthew Dixon was having a hard time climbing up the hill. When he reached the top of the incline his face was blotchy and he’d just about run out of steam.

“I wasn’t sure you’d really show up,” Matthew said. “When I was a kid I wouldn’t even walk through the gates, let alone do it in the dark. It still kind of gives me the creeps.”

They were standing in front of Old Dick’s grave. The sweeping view of the island, from the beaches to the bridge, was nothing now but a black blanket, except for the cluster of lampposts set around the town green.

“Did you find out anything for me?” Stephen asked.

All fall semester Matthew had made certain that he had no classes before ten; he wasn’t used to being awake this early in the day, and his eyes looked swollen. Still, he grinned as he pulled a disk from the inside pocket of his parka. Stephen looked away when he saw that Matthew had printed WOLF-MAN across the disk.

“It’s all here,” Matthew said. “You know, I really envy you.”

“Don’t,” Stephen told him.

“No, really, I’m serious.” When Matthew spoke, great puffs of smoke rose into the air. He moved his weight from foot to foot and turned up his collar. “I’ll bet the cold doesn’t even bother you. I’ll bet nothing bothers you.” Matthew sat down on a wrought-iron bench that Old Dick had ordered from England during his first year on the island. Black swans were coiled along the back of the bench. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” Matthew had lowered his voice. “I’m just interested in knowing what your most frequent prey was.”

Stephen looked at him, confused.

“What you killed most often to eat,” Matthew said.

“Beetles,” Stephen said.

“No way.” Matthew grinned. “Not little squiggly bugs.”

“You found out exactly where I came from?” Stephen asked, impatient. From this vantage point on the hill he could see that the lights around the green were growing dim; by sunrise they’d have turned off automatically.

“I pretty much have it pinpointed. I rolled the graphics in three-D from every single angle till I got it right. Information is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, which is why I’ll keep this file.”

Matthew put the disk back in his pocket and unrolled the printout of the map. For an instant he hesitated, perhaps only to see the craving on Stephen’s face; then he handed it over. Stephen folded the map, placed it in the pocket of his black overcoat, and shook Matthew’s hand.

“I really owe you,” Stephen said. “I know that.”

“Let’s have the truth,” Matthew said. “It wasn’t just beetles.”

“No,” Stephen said.

“I saw you that night with the deer. I know you wanted to kill it.” Matthew pushed his hair out of his eyes, then shook his head. “You really held yourself back. I wish you hadn’t.”

The birds in the quince bushes around Old Dick’s grave began to wake with their first tentative songs. To the right and the left grew hedges of boxwood, and in the spring there would be daffodils and sweet ivy.

“When you first get them and they’re too surprised to fight back? That’s the best part. You understand that,” Matthew said. “I can tell.”

Stephen didn’t move, but inside his coat, inside his skin, he felt as if something were crawling along his spine. This was the moment when he began to pay attention to everything: the movement of the wind in the branches, the last star disappearing above them, the way Matthew chewed on his bottom lip when he grew excited. It was easy to tell what men wanted to hear, even Matthew, who was breathing too hard, the way he had when he first climbed the hill.

“I understand,” Stephen said.

Matthew threw his arms up to the sky and made a noise deep inside himself. “To talk to someone who knows how I feel is incredible. It’s like a relief or something. You know?”

Stephen nodded, just the way Matthew wanted him to. Today would be warmer, Stephen could feel it already, and when the ice began to melt, the air would turn foggy and white. There was often a thaw at this time of year, and the turn in the weather could surprise some people and catch them off guard.

“You were taught,” Matthew Dixon said. “I had to learn it all by myself, step by step. And I did everything right, until the mistake at the end, when it was the wrong girl.”

The wind shifted slightly. Stephen kept his hands in his pockets; he didn’t take his eyes off Matthew.

“I can control it,” Matthew said. “I know I can. Lydia just messed things up. That won’t happen next time.”

Next time, Matthew confided, he wouldn’t leave anything to chance. He’d go get Lydia. No one would suspect someone with the courage to knock at her door. He’d ask for her help with a dog who had been hit by a car, and since she liked to pretend she was generous, she wouldn’t deny him. He would guide her to the cemetery.

“The perfect place,” he confided to Stephen.

When they arrived, and there was no dog to be seen, he would tell her it must have crawled into the bushes. It was injured, too desperate to fend for itself. And she’d call to the poor thing, and she’d whistle for it, and that was when Matthew would get her.

He came a little closer to Stephen now. “You choose who you’re going to kill carefully, don’t you? You plan it all out.”

Stephen didn’t blink. “Whatever runs,” he said. Stephen’s voice was thick, but Matthew didn’t seem to notice.

“Whatever asks to be chased.” Matthew had whispered, as if afraid that the birds might overhear. “Just the way she’s asking for it.”

There was a thin line of light at the bottom of the sky. The footprints Matthew had left as he climbed up to Old Dick’s grave were already disappearing as the ice melted. Matthew was talking softly about Lydia, how she thought she was too good for everyone, how she stared right through people and thought no one could ever tell her what to do, but Stephen was thinking about another set of footprints he’d once overlooked, tracks through the woods that were set much too close together. That’s what rabies could do, make it more and more difficult for a wolf to walk straight, because its rear legs would wobble. But it had been spring, and the tracks had been left in the damp earth, then covered with the moss that grew overnight, and Stephen hadn’t spotted them until it was too late. It hadn’t been a hard winter, and the spring had been even easier. Stephen hadn’t been hungry for a while, and he may have grown lazy, but whatever it was, he’d been careless enough not to pick up the scent of the lone wolf who had come into their territory. Or maybe the wolf had been extraordinarily silent, as if his sickness had given him the power of deceit with one hand as it stole away his life and health with the other.

Stephen was at the stream when he felt another presence. He raised his eyes, slowly, the way he’d been taught, and there was the wolf, right in front of him, a male who was all gray, except for his black muzzle, and who was already looking at something that wasn’t there. Lone wolves had come into their territory before; some they’d chased away easily, some they’d had to fight; one female had remained with them until she died of old age. Stephen stayed where he was, waiting for a sign of what was to happen next. The lone wolf’s ears were already flattened close to his head and his tail was raised. He licked at his lips, though he couldn’t have been thirsty; the stream was right in front of him, and all he needed to do to drink was lower his head. The sickness was the only thing that drove him; a wolf tied up in such agonizing knots was capable of anything. It was as if he had swallowed a bolt of lightning whole and was now electrified from mouth to tail.

The wolf began his charge slowly, through the ferns that grew alongside the stream. Stephen felt his own fear rising up through his skin, but he’d forced himself not to run, to keep his fear in check to make certain that the lone wolf wouldn’t smell it. The sick wolfs mouth was open, so wide it seemed the jaws had been forced apart by wire; his breath was hot and foul. Beneath his unsteady feet, the ferns broke in two. When he made his attack, Stephen was ready, but the lone wolf was propelled by the lightning inside him. Stephen knew that if he rammed his fist into the wolfs throat, it would be nearly impossible for him to bite down with full pressure. But the lone wolf clawed at him so savagely he cut right through to the bone; Stephen’s thigh was split open. Right then, he began to see the white light in front of his eyes.