The Fall of Never(78)

She grinned. He suddenly reminds me of Josh, she thought…then quickly chased the thought away.

“I heard about the hunters,” he said, “but I know nothing about them. And what does that have to do with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, really.”

“So what is it? Nerves?”

“I guess so.”

“Well…promise to let me in once you figure out what’s going on, all right?”

She smiled. “Promise.”

“All right. Hey—you want to know a secret?”

“Hmmm?”

He winked. “I think your housekeeper’s cheering for us.”

“She thinks I’m lonely,” Kelly said.

“Well,” Gabriel said, “is she right?”

“And she thinks you’re a godsend.”

“Well then,” he said, “she must be right.”

“Eat your salad,” she told him.




That night, she awoke to a noise. Covered in sweat and breathing heavy, she sat up stiffly in bed—and caught movement in the dark, at the opposite end of the room.

Someone stepped out of her bedroom, closing the door behind them.

“Who’s there?”

She pulled back the blankets and swung her legs to the floor. When she stood, her world seemed to cant to one side, as if in an attempt to shake her off balance. She thought she could hear footsteps creaking down the hallway outside her bedroom. She moved quickly to the door and pulled it open— —and saw Becky’s bedroom door close at the other end of the hall.

The hallway was dark, but Becky’s bedroom door was awash in the white-blue moonlight issuing from the bank of windows that made up the opposite wall. Beyond that, the hallway was a confusing channel of closed doors and, at the end, a pit of black winding stairs.

There was a light on in Becky’s room. Kelly caught movement from inside through the crack at the bottom of her sister’s bedroom door.

Becky!

She dashed across the length of hallway and nearly drove herself into the framework of the door. She grasped the knob with an unsteady hand and turned it— It didn’t turn.

It was locked.

As if swatted by an invisible hand, she took a step away from the door and simply stared at it. She fisted her right hand and knocked twice against the door.

She heard someone moving on the other side of the door.

“Becky? Honey, open the door. Becky, it’s Kelly. Open the door, sweetheart.”

It’s Kelly, her mind echoed in an imaginative impression of her sister’s voice. Who’s Kelly?

“Becky?”

The stairs at the end of the hall creaked.

Fear suddenly hit her, sharp and incensed.

That’s where the dead girls go, she thought, recalling her dream.

A glimmer of moonlight briefly illuminated what appeared to be tiny pale stones lined up on the banister—tiny white stones with eye sockets and teeth. But they were there and then gone, having never existed.

It’s all in my head, she thought. She felt her entire body begin to shake and knew that she was very near collapse, very near the end of the line. She’d suffered through three years at an institution, a loveless marriage and divorce, and had not tamed but at least managed to coexist in New York City…and now her batteries were finally about to die, to burn themselves out. All along, she’d been thinking that she was strong, that she could overcome, that things got better when you decided to make them get better. But no, she’d been wrong. Because nothing got better. Not really. Things kept locked away and forgotten just kept perpetuating themselves until there was no more room in the closet. And then there was nothing left but for those things to blow up.

I’m blowing up, she thought.

And insanely, she thought of Collin. More specifically, she recalled making love to Collin—and Collin making love to her—and the way they moved in bed together, the way he touched her and how she understood that maybe things weren’t perfect but they weren’t bad, either. He’d touch her and she’d shudder and sometimes force him to squeeze her in his arms. And after the truth of his infidelity was disclosed and they continued to make love, he’d felt the same to her—which was wrong. He should have felt different, she knew, should have felt like an immediate stranger, but he didn’t and it was almost as if his affair had never happened. And she knew it. And he knew she knew it. And it didn’t seem to make any difference to either one of them. Not for a while, at least. And although it made no sense at the time, she seemed to zone in on it now and single that moment out as the initiation of her breakdown. It was like proof, like the foreshadowing of an unavoidable mental collapse. What type of woman makes love to a man fresh from another’s bed? What type of wife?

Someone was on the stairwell, hiding in darkness. Kelly could almost hear breathing.

“Beck—”

The latch on Becky’s bedroom door popped and the door creaked open an inch. Kelly felt her heart leap in her chest and nearly threw herself backward across the hallway. She brought a hand up to touch the door. It shook badly. She couldn’t control it—couldn’t make the hand go back to her side. Her hand reached out and pushed against the cool wood of the door. Inside, the light had been turned off. And had it ever really been on?