Last to Know: A Novel(10)
Still awake for some reason at three in the morning, too much talk of boys, no doubt, Madison unearthed a Kit Kat chocolate bar from her hiding place under the mattress. Rose did not allow candy in their rooms, worried about their teeth, but of course they had found a way around that rule, and anyway were dutiful about the tooth-brushing after. Madison cracked it into two and handed half to her sister.
“Look how nice I’m being to you,” she said, lying back against the pillows and taking a giant bite of the chocolate, which crunched satisfactorily in her mouth.
“Only because I’d tell on you if you didn’t,” her twin retorted.
Giggling, the girls sank back against their pillows, then all of a sudden the tall windows overlooking the lake, which had been left open to catch the breeze, shimmered rosy-pink. They jerked upright, staring at this phenomenon as it darkened to coral then to a fiery red. And then came the explosion that rattled the entire house, shattering their windows, sending the cat hissing under the bed and the dog out the door and down the stairs, with the twins, screaming, after it, and their brother Roman not far behind.
7
Evening Lake, 3 A.M., Diz Osborne
Eleven-year-old Diz Osborne was sitting on the branch of the fig tree that stretched almost all the way to his bedroom window. The tree, he’d decided, must be thirty, maybe fifty years old, broad in the trunk like the prow of an old sailing ship except with sprawling solid branches and enough footholds and grips to accommodate a snoopy little kid like him. It was the end of summer and he couldn’t sleep. TV was forbidden, his iPad confiscated, and there was nothing to do but crawl out on his branch and contemplate the silent night.
Much earlier that evening though, around sevenish, just as dusk was falling, there had been a ruffle of “excitement” when he’d observed through his ever-present binoculars the blond girl from the lake house opposite emerge stealthily from her own window. He’d wondered why she had not used the door, then decided obviously she did not want to be seen. She was holding two large plastic bags, carrying them carefully in front of her.
Diz had watched her run, crouching low, to the narrow strip of shore, climb into the small boat beached there, place the bags in the stern, then row her way across to the island a couple of hundred yards away where he’d observed her get out, take her plastic bags, and disappear into the bushes.
She’d emerged a short time later without the bags and gotten back into the boat. Pushing off, she rowed expertly, with hardly a rustle of water, he’d noticed admiringly, back to the coarse sandy shore where she beached the craft. Diz had watched her walk back to her house, keeping to the cover of the trees, and climb back in through the kitchen window.
At the same time, something else, a movement, had made him glance back at the island. Surprisingly, he’d seen a man there. He couldn’t quite make out who the man was, but now he was carrying the white plastic bags. Diz watched him wade to a waiting dinghy and row slowly out of sight.
At the time, Diz had wondered what the two were up to, what was in the bags, whether they’d had a secret rendezvous. He’d shrugged it off. Girls were a mystery. It probably had something to do with sex. It always did. At least with his sisters it did.
Actually, even though it was now 3 A.M. it wasn’t totally silent. Not many people knew it but there was always something doing at night. No hooty owls and dumb country stuff like that, but a lot of slithering and grunting went on when the rest of the world was safely asleep in their beds. Voles rustled through the grass escaping the talons of the silent, watchful owls; rats scratched in the wooden boathouse, shredding it to bits, his father complained, but then his father was always complaining about something these days. More interestingly, a set of badgers gleamed in the dark like they were headlamps, making Diz wonder how they could not expect to be noticed by other, more predatory creatures.
Just went to show you, he thought, picking another fig off the tree and shoving it, whole, into his mouth so that the juices slid out the corners and ran down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand, bored. And then he saw a light go on in the downstairs window at the house across the lake.
He checked the time again. Three A.M. Immediately alert, he grabbed the binoculars strung around his neck. Curious, Diz had been observing the family for the past few weeks, though he had never met them. He knew that his own mother, Rose, who almost always liked everyone regardless, did not approve of the way the girl’s mother dressed, flashily, in too-short shorts and too-tight tank tops and always with her oversized white sunglasses. Too sexy for her own good, he’d heard his sisters comment the other night when he’d been out here on his tree branch which was conveniently close to their bedroom window. Not that he spied on them, just snickered when they talked boys and stuff. Were all sisters as stupid as his, he wondered, and decided probably all girls were. Though not the one who came with the woman across the lake, and whom he had observed earlier that evening, rowing to the island and back. Now she was quite something.
Tall, skinny as a snake, long pale hair that hung straight to her shoulders and swung when she walked, which was always right behind the cheap blonde he guessed must be her mother. “Walk, Goddammit,” he’d heard the mother snarl when the girl dawdled to look at the horses grazing in the field or the red-tail hawk flying overhead, or something equally important and anyhow probably the reason she was on vacation there, to enjoy nature, etc., like the rest of them. The woman had a hard mouth and narrowed eyes, and something about her gave Diz the impression she drank. Unlike his dad, who Diz knew was drinking. Diz guessed Wally was considered good-looking and very probably attractive to women, which might be the reason now, in the middle of the night, he saw his father rowing back across the lake from the direction of the woman’s house. Shit! It couldn’t be! His dad wouldn’t do that, and not with her! God, he could never tell his mom, never tell anyone, not even his older brother, Roman … Wait, though, could that be Roman? Hiding in the trees, watching his father? Why didn’t Roman call out, a simple “Hi, Dad, what’s going on?” What was going on, anyway?