The Waterfall. Carla Neggers

brightened. “Does that mean you’ll give me money?”

      “A little, but I meant window-shopping. It’s also very expensive.”

      Her daughter was unamused. “If I have to sit next to J.T. on the plane, I’m inspecting his pockets first.”

      “I expect you to treat your brother with respect, just as I expect him to treat you with respect.”

      Madison rolled her eyes.

      Lucy tried her lemonade. It was a perfect mix of tart and sweet, just like her fifteen-year-old daughter. Madison untucked her legs and flounced inside, the sophisticate trapped in the sticks, the long-suffering big sister about to be stuck on a plane with her little brother.

      Lucy decided to give her the weekend to come around before initiating a discussion on attitude and who wouldn’t get to do much driving until she changed hers.

      She put her feet up on the porch rail and tried to let the cool breeze relax her. The trip to Wyoming made no sense. She knew it, and her kids at least sensed it.

      The petunias needed watering. She looked out at her pretty lawn with its huge maples, its rambling old-fashioned rosebush that needed pruning. She’d just gone to town with her fifteen-year-old behind the wheel, inspected a can of worms and dealt with her daughter’s John-Boy/Anne of Green Gables martyr act and a bullet on her car seat.

      The Widow Swift at work.

      Lucy drank more lemonade, feeling calmer. She’d managed on her own for so long. She didn’t need Sebastian Redwing’s help. She didn’t need anyone’s help.

      * * *

      J.T. permitted his mother to help him pack after dinner. Lucy kept her eyes open for firearms, bullets and secret antisocial tendencies. She found none. His room betrayed nothing more than a twelve-year-old’s mishmash of interests. Posters of Darth Maul and peregrine falcons, stuffed animals, Lego models, sports paraphernalia, computer games, gross-looking superheroes and monsters, way too many Micro Machines.

      He didn’t have a television in his room. He didn’t have a computer. Dirty clothes were dumped in with clean on the floor. Drawers were half open, a pant leg hanging out of one, a pair of boxers out of another.

      The room smelled of dirty socks, sweat and earth. A dormer window looked out on the backyard, where she could still see evidence of the digging he and Georgie had done.

      “You didn’t bring your worms up here, did you?” Lucy asked.

      “No, me and Georgie freed them.” He looked at her, and corrected, “Georgie and I.”

      She smiled, and when she turned, she spotted a picture of Colin and J.T. tacked to her son’s bulletin board. Blood rushed to her head, and she had to fight off sudden, unexpected tears. The edges of the picture were cracked and yellowed, pocked with tack holes from the dozen times J.T. had repositioned it. A little boy and a young father fishing, frozen in time.

      Lucy smiled sadly at the image of the man she’d loved. They’d met in college, married so young. She stared at his handsome face, his smile, his tousle of coppery hair. It was as if she’d gone on, propelled forward in time, while he’d stayed the same, untouched by the grief and fear she’d known since the day his shattered father had knocked on her door and told her that his son—her husband—was dead.

      The searing pain and shock of those early days had eased. Lucy had learned to go on without him. So, in their own ways, had Madison and J.T. They could talk about him with laughter, and remember him, at least most of the time, without tears.

      “You can pack the extra stuff you want to take in your backpack,” Lucy said, tearing herself from the picture. “What book are you reading?”

      “A Star Wars book.”

      “Don’t forget to pack it.”

      She counted out shirts, pants, socks, underwear, and debated whether to bother looking in the cellar and the garage. J.T.’d had nothing to do with the bullet in her car.

      She set the clothes on his bed. “You’re good to go, kiddo. Can you shove this stuff into your suitcase, or do you need my help?”

      “I can do it.”

      “Don’t forget your toothbrush.”

      She went down the hall to her daughter’s room. The door was shut, her music up but not at a wall-vibrating volume. If Madison needed help, she’d ask for it. Lucy left her alone.

      Her own bedroom was downstairs, and on the way she stopped in the kitchen and put on a kettle for tea. She’d pack later. It was an old-fashioned, working kitchen with white cabinets, scarred counters and sunny yellow walls that helped offset the cold, dark winter nights. The biggest surprise of life in Vermont, Lucy had discovered, was how dark the nights were.

      She sank into a chair at the pine table and stared out at the backyard, wondering how many nights Daisy had done exactly this in her sixty years alone. A cup of tea, a quiet house. The Widow Daisy. The Widow Swift.

      It was dark now, the long summer day finally giving way. Lucy could feel the silence settle around her, the isolation and loneliness creep in. Sometimes she would turn on the television or the radio, or work on her laptop, write e-mails, perhaps call a friend. Tonight, she had to pack. Wyoming. Good God, she really was going.

      She made chamomile tea and took her mug with her down the hall to the front door, locked up. Shadows shifted on the old wood floors. She had no illusions the ancient locks would stop a determined intruder.

      A sound—the wind, maybe—took her into the dining room.

      She hadn’t touched it since moving in. It still had the old-fashioned button light switch for the milk-glass overhead, Daisy’s faded hand-hooked rug, her cabbage-rose wallpaper, her clunky dining room set. A 1920s upright piano stood along one wall.

      A breeze brought up goose bumps on Lucy’s arms.

      Someone had opened a window. Again.

      The tall, old windows were balky and difficult to open. Since she almost never used the dining room during the summer, Lucy didn’t bother wrestling with them. She’d meant to have them looked at before the good weather, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

      She felt along the wall with one hand and pressed the light switch. It had to be a kid. Who else would sneak into her house and open the windows?

      Light spilled into the room, casting more shadows. It could be a great room. One of these days she’d have the piano tuned, the rug cleaned, the wood floors sanded and oiled. She’d hang new wallpaper and refinish the table, and have family and friends over for Thanksgiving. Even her father-in-law, if he wanted to come.

      The floor seemed to sparkle. Lucy frowned, peering closer.

      Shards of glass.

      She jumped back, startled. The window wasn’t open. It was broken, its upper pane spider-cracked around a small hole. A triangle of glass had hit the floor and shattered.

      Lucy set her mug on the table and gingerly touched the edges of the hole. It wasn’t from a bird smashing into her window, or an errant baseball. Too small.

      A stone?

      A bullet?

      She spun around, her heart pounding.

      It couldn’t be. Not twice in one day.

      She saw plaster dust on the chair next to the piano, directly across from the window. Above it was a hole in the wall.

      Holding her breath, Lucy knelt on the chair and reached up, smoothing her hand over the hole. The edges of the wallpaper were rough. Plaster dust covered her fingertips.

      The hole was empty. There was no bullet lodged there.

      She sank onto her hands and knees and checked the floor. She looked under the piano. She flipped up the edges of the rug. She could feel the hysteria