The Night Strangers (33 page)

“Cali, really. It’s a doll,” Anise scolded her. “You are ten years old. Isn’t it time to—forgive me—stop thinking like a child and reasoning like a child? Isn’t it about time you put aside your childish ways?”

Hallie was pretty sure the quote came from the Bible, but she couldn’t have begun to explain the context or the meaning or why Anise had decided to cite it. She had a vague sense that the woman was using it ironically: Anise had meant what she said, but quoting the Bible was almost a joke to her.

“I like that doll,” Garnet said. “I like all my dolls.”

“You’re too old—”

“I’m not too old! I’m ten!” She motioned at Hallie with her hand. “We’re ten!”

“It’s okay,” Hallie said, hoping to calm her sister. “We’ll bring the dolls inside and put them back in the den. They probably shouldn’t be out here in the greenhouse anyway. I’ll take a couple and you take a couple. Anise, is that okay? We’ll bring them to the den or even upstairs to our bedrooms, and it will just take a minute. Cali and I will—”

“And I’m not Cali! I’m Garnet! I don’t want to be Cali!” Suddenly she was shouting, and Hallie could see from the corner of her eye that Anise was more intrigued than angered by the outburst. She seemed to be studying the two of them, almost curious. She had no intention of jumping in as a grown-up.

“Okay, you’re Garnet. Fine. Not a big deal,” Hallie reassured her sister, and Garnet seemed to calm down. They would each take an armful of dolls, and then they would each take an armful of the dolls’ furniture. In two trips they would have cleared the greenhouse of what Anise considered the childish things. “Anise, we’ll be right back, okay?” Hallie said.

Anise nodded, and Hallie turned back to her sister, expecting to see her rounding up more of their toys. But she wasn’t, she was just standing there, her gaze stonelike, and Hallie knew instantly that the girl was in the midst of a seizure. Her eyes were open but absolutely oblivious to the world they were taking in. She was standing perfectly still, holding the American Girl doll named Addy in her arms; she might have been mistaken for a wax model of Garnet Linton, except for the reality that Hallie could see her sister breathing slowly and evenly.

“Garnet?” she said, but only because she felt she had to say something. She knew her sister wouldn’t respond. “Garnet?”

And, just as she expected, her sister didn’t say a word. And so Hallie gently removed the doll from her arms and took Garnet’s hands in hers. Then she sat her sister down on the ground where she was, the dry dirt warm, and knelt beside her.

“What is she doing?” Anise asked. The woman was towering over the twins, and Hallie couldn’t tell what to make of her tone.

“She’s not
doing
anything,” she answered. “At least nothing on purpose. But she has these seizures. It’s a brain thing.”

“An illness?”

“Sort of. I don’t understand it really. But my mom and dad have tried to explain it to me. It has something to do with how the synapses fire in her brain. Sometimes they just fire like crazy all at once, and it’s like when a computer freezes.”

“And you know what a synapse is, Rosemary?”

“No, not really. All I know is that it has something to do with the way the nerves communicate and the brain sends messages to the body.”

“And her brain has … a problem?”

“It’s not a problem. It’s just how she is.”

“You likened it to when a computer freezes. I’d say that constitutes a problem.”

“She hasn’t had one in a really long time.”

“Interesting.”

Hallie looked up at Anise, annoyed that this was how the woman was going to respond. Hallie knew there was nothing to be done and that eventually Garnet would come out of it. She knew that her sister wouldn’t stop breathing and her heart wouldn’t stop beating. But whether it would be ten minutes or an hour until she was back was always a mystery, and so she hoped her dad would return any second now from the hardware store. Meanwhile, the idea that this grown-up who’d never before seen one of her sister’s seizures wasn’t fretting—not insisting that they call 9-1-1 or leave right away for the hospital—was disappointing. No, it was more than that: It was irritating. Weren’t these plant ladies supposed to care about her and her sister? Weren’t they supposed to be freakishly motherly and doting?

“She’s going to be fine, you know,” she said to Anise, unable to mask the disgust in her voice.

“This happens with some frequency?” Anise asked.

“I told you: No. This is only the third time it’s happened here in New Hampshire.”

“Three times in two months?”

“They’re usually not that common.”

“And she takes … pills?” the woman asked, the word
pills
spoken as if it were an obscenity.

“Yes. But they’re not perfect.”

“Pills never are.”

Her mother had made a joke a week earlier about how some of the women here were not especially enamored of modern medicine, and now Hallie understood what she’d meant a little better. “There’s nothing we should do but stay with her,” she said after a moment.

“You mean watch her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To make sure she doesn’t wander off.”

“Does she do that when she has one of these seizures?”

“She never has. But the doctors say she could. Like a sleepwalker.”

Finally Anise squatted beside the two girls. “Rosemary?” she said, questioning Hallie though she was staring straight at Garnet’s slack face.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any problem like this?”

“No.”

“You’re fine?”

“Uh-huh. And Garnet is, too. She—”

The woman put her finger to Hallie’s lips. “Cali when you’re with us. Remember? Her name is Cali.”

“And Cali is, too,” she went on. “She just has this … this thing.”

“But you don’t have it.”

“No.”

“Well, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For telling me. Someone had to. We had to know. And now we do.” Then she stood up and started to unpack the cartons of seedlings as if absolutely nothing was wrong in the world. “You always want your ingredients to be flawless,” she added, apropos of nothing, as Hallie sat alone on the ground with her sister.

Chapter Seventeen

Y
ou sit on the couch in the den with Emily beside you and feel her entwining her fingers in yours. Emily has asked the girls to run along to their rooms upstairs to play or do homework, but you would not be surprised if they are sitting on the stairs right now and trying to listen. If you were ten years old and a pair of state troopers had appeared yet again at your house, you would want to know why.

At first you had presumed this was about Sawyer Dunmore’s bones and the crypt in the basement you opened. Then you thought it might have something to do with the recent death of Hewitt Dunmore in St. Johnsbury. You were completely mistaken in both cases, and the reality of why they are here this evening—interrupting you and Emily as you prepared dinner—has left you a little shaken and stunned.

“I understand you only knew Dr. Richmond professionally and hadn’t even been one of his patients all that long,” the older of the pair is saying, his hands on his knees as he sits forward in the easy chair. His badge says
R. PATTERSON
, but you cannot recall whether he told you his first name was Roger or Rick. He has an immaculately trimmed mustache the color of copper—a more restrained version of your own daughter’s red hair—and occasionally he lifts one of his hands and abstractedly runs a finger along it. The younger trooper is clean-shaven, which makes their age difference even more pronounced. You peg the older of the troopers to be somewhere around forty and the younger to be a mere twenty-five. The younger trooper is taking notes as you speak, while the older one listens. “But did he ever say anything that might be helpful in our understanding of what’s happened to him?”

You have noticed that they do not say “his death.” He is merely missing. The other day his car was found about two miles from his house, the doors locked, and no one has seen him since. He did not show up at his office that day or the next or see any of the patients on his schedule. The troopers clearly presume that a crime has occurred, but at the moment they do not know this for sure.

“No,” you tell them. “Mostly we talked about me.” You offer a small, wan smile.

Although she is not a defense attorney, Emily has already told the troopers that, if she thinks a question is inappropriate, she is not going to allow you to answer it. They have assured the two of you that you are not a suspect in the doctor’s disappearance; they are only, to use the older trooper’s words, nosing around at the moment, and they saw that you were among his patients.

“Can we ask you why you were seeing Dr. Richmond?” Patterson asks. But before you can respond, Emily squeezes your hand.

“There is no reason to answer that, sweetheart,” she says, her voice gentle, though her gaze is intent. She looks at you squarely in the eyes.

You shrug. “I don’t mind,” you tell her. And then you turn to the troopers: “I am being treated for depression and PTSD. As you might have heard, I lost an airplane.”

“Yes, sir, we did know that,” the trooper says. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

There is an awkward pause; there was a flippancy to your tone that you hadn’t expected when you started to open your mouth.

“Did he ever mention any enemies?”

“No.”

“Any personal problems of his own? I know you were talking about the things on your mind, but did he ever relate them to something going on in his life?”

You grimace involuntarily at a sudden pain in your side, the wince traveling all the way down your arm to your fingers. Emily turns to you, and you nod you’re okay. Then you gaze at Ashley as she stands on the brick hearth by the woodstove. At the moment she seems oblivious to you and Emily and these two state troopers. She is uninterested in dolls or a playmate. She is focused solely, almost quizzically, on the long, daggerlike triangle of metal fuselage on which she is impaled, the piece of your airplane that has sliced through the side of her abdomen. She is fingering the smooth, blue edge, careful to keep her fingers from either the point or the pieces of muscle and stomach and rib that garnish the jagged lip. You find yourself wondering: Was there water in her lungs when they did the autopsy? Or had the metal killed her instantly?

B
ecky Davis never did call Emily back, so Emily decided to phone her. But this time she called the woman at work, remembering from their one cryptic conversation in the diner that Becky had said she did something at Lyndon State College. From the school’s automated phone system, Emily learned that the woman worked in the library. There Emily asked to speak to Becky Davis.

“Speaking.”

“Oh, I didn’t recognize your voice,” Emily said.

“Who’s this?”

“Emily Linton.”

There was a long pause at the other end, and Emily could imagine the woman sitting a little straighter in her chair. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, perhaps, the way Emily knew she herself did when she was in the midst of a phone call that she found either stressful or unpleasant. “What do you want?” she asked finally.

Emily took a breath. Becky sounded far less friendly than she had at the diner. “Well, I’m not sure. Tell me: How was your parents’ visit? Didn’t you tell me they were coming up from North Carolina for a bit?”

“That was a long time ago. They’ve come and gone.”

“Okay.”

“Are you at your office?”

“I am,” said Emily.

“You’re calling me from the law firm,” Becky said, unwilling to hide a small wave of incredulity.

“Why is that a problem? It’s not like our phones are bugged or you and I are about to share state secrets. It’s—”

“Fine. You’re in John Hardin’s office. I get it. My husband told me you called the other night. What do you want?”

“I’m honestly not sure. When you introduced yourself to me at the diner, you were very nice. But you also kept talking about
them
, and you called
them
the herbalists. And then you left when you saw Alexander Jackson coming into the diner. Clearly you knew who he was. I didn’t at the time, but I do now. He’s married to Ginger. What was it you wanted to tell me that day about
them
—about the herbalists? Can you tell me now?”

“Have you ever been inside John Hardin’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice the pictures?”

“Do you mean the paintings? No, I—”

“I meant the family photographs!”

“What about them?”

“He doesn’t age! Clary doesn’t age! At least it seems that way. It’s not … natural. It’s …”

“It’s what?”

“And where is your husband’s doctor? His psychiatrist?”

“You mean Valerian? Well, she’s at—”

“Valerian? You know who I mean. Michael Richmond. He sometimes skied with my husband. They were friends.
We
were friends. Where is he now?”

“Look, I know something is going on. That’s why I’m calling. I have a house with bones in the basement, Hewitt Dunmore is dead, Michael is—”

“He’s dead, too. My husband and I are sure of it.”

“You were telling me about the photos in John and Clary’s house. Can you—”

“Really, there’s nothing I have to tell you. I love Bethel and I love my family and I think it’s great that you’re here.”

“Becky, please,” Emily said. But she heard a click and the line went silent.

“Everything okay?”

She looked up, and there was Eve, the firm’s young paralegal, standing in her doorway and looking a little concerned.

“I’m fine,” she answered.

“You looked like you’d seen a ghost,” Eve said.

“Nope.”

“If you need something, you’ll ask?”

“Tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“Why is your name Eve?”

“I seem to be rather talentless when it comes to plants. I seem to have the opposite of a green thumb,” she said with absolute earnestness, and then she continued on her way down the corridor.

“I
t’s for the best,” Valerian said to Emily later that afternoon, sitting across the desk from Emily in her office. John leaned against the wall, ever the sage, avuncular presence. “And it’s not for long.”

“I just don’t know,” Emily said. “I’m not sure Michael would have agreed.”

Valerian turned around and looked up at John. “Do they know anything more about Michael’s disappearance? The police, that is?”

He sighed wearily. “No. I haven’t heard a thing, I’m sorry to say. And while I like to believe he’s just—what did that South Carolina governor once do?—disappeared to be with some hypnotic young siren in South America, I think we can’t help but suspect the worst.” He shook his head, looking uncharacteristically morose. “We like to believe we’re exempt from that sort of violence here in the White Mountains. Apparently, we’re not.”

“I want to think about it some more,” Emily said finally. “I don’t want us to broach this subject with him just yet. Okay?”

“Absolutely,” Valerian said. “Let’s revisit the idea later this week. I’m seeing your husband tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have a better sense of what we should do after that.”

Y
ou replace the empty battery in the drill with the charged one, grab four long screws, and drop into place another new step on those rickety back stairs behind the kitchen. It takes about a minute because you measured twice and cut once. You like that expression.

Inside this back stairway, you have found that you do not hear the birds. It feels as if there are more of them here than there were in West Chester. This is probably a delusion. There were plenty of birds in Pennsylvania. But the cheeps and coos and trills sometimes seem to surround you here when you walk between the house and the carriage barn or when you stroll down the long driveway to the mailbox on the road into Bethel. You do not hate the birds. You blame them—but you do not hate them. At least this is what you tell yourself, struggling to be reasonable. You wish you could talk to Michael about this distinction between blame and hate, but you can’t.

You have come to suspect that the women were involved in Michael’s disappearance, just as you have come to suspect that they were involved in Hewitt Dunmore’s death. But you can’t see why or how. You have the sense now that they are plotting something involving you, and that Emily is complicit. She seems to be seeing more of Valerian. There are phone conversations that end abruptly when you enter a room or descend the stairs to the first floor. Emily brought home some papers from work, and when you aimlessly wandered into the kitchen and saw her reading them, she thrust them into her briefcase.

This morning Ethan visited you soon after Emily and the girls had left for the day, and he told you in no uncertain terms that your suspicions were accurate: Emily is becoming one of them. People don’t tell you things, but you are aware that secrets are rising like distant thunderclouds. A new name for Emily and new names for your daughters. When were they planning on telling you? It is possible that Emily already is one of them. Just look at the plants that have appeared in your greenhouse. Her greenhouse. The
girls’
greenhouse. Ethan tried to reassure you that all of the pain you are experiencing will stop once Ashley gets a playmate—your guilt, too, will melt away—but you told him you would rather live with the pain and the guilt and the debilitating sense of failure. He reminded you that it wasn’t a question of character. It was a question of strength. And he was stronger. The fact was, someday the two of you would do it together. It was inevitable. Think back to the evening when Molly Francoeur was over for dinner and a playdate. Or that night when you tiptoed up to the third floor with Tansy’s knife. You would do it, he told you. You would.

Meanwhile, outside the house the birds dart among the trees—the evergreens and the maples and the mountain ash alike—and savor their return to the north. Even the geese are back now. But at least they have the kindness to steer clear of your yard.

Y
ou have three more steps to repair on this back stairway when you hear someone calling for you from the front hallway, a woman, and you believe it is Reseda’s sultry voice. So, you adjust the collar of your denim shirt, smooth your hair, and emerge into the kitchen.

“Well, Reseda, this is a surprise. Lovely to see you,” you say. You hadn’t realized how sunny it had become while you were working in the dark of that back staircase.

She stares at you in that slightly odd, inquisitive manner that had led you to presume initially that hers was a mind that tended to wander. You have since decided that nothing could be further from the truth. It’s almost as if she can read a person’s mind. But of course she can’t. No one can really do that.

“What home improvement am I interrupting this morning?” she asks. She is wearing a waist-length black leather jacket and jeans.

“The back stairs. I have no idea if we’ll ever use them, but you never know. A fire exit, maybe. So, I’m repairing the scarier-looking steps.”

“Do you have a couple of minutes?”

You motion toward the deacon’s bench where once the family cat would sleep, and Reseda unzips her jacket and sits.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I am very, very sorry about Desdemona,” she says. “That was her name, right?”

“Thank you. It was a bit of a blow,” you admit, taking the ladder-back chair across from her. You wonder: Does she think you killed the cat, too? It’s so clear that Valerian does. And Anise. And, perhaps, even your own family. And yet you didn’t. At least you don’t believe that you did. These days, you seem capable of almost anything.

“Cats—and dogs—poison themselves all the time. It wasn’t your fault,” she says evenly.

“Thank you. You want some tea?” Somehow you know she doesn’t drink coffee. Did you learn this when you were at her house for dinner, or is it merely a suspicion that all of these herbalists prefer tea?

“No, but you’re kind to ask. I want you to tell me something.”

“Sure.” You realize you have folded your arms across your chest. You try to casually bring them onto the kitchen table.

“Tell me about the voices,” she says.

“The voices?”

“Who are you talking to when you’re alone?”