The Narrows(33)

“Those storms we’ve been having,” she said, her voice wavering. “The creek has been flooding and the Narrows are like rapids, Ben. And I keep thinking about that boy that was found down by the—”

Ben placed his hand atop hers, silencing her. “Matthew knows to keep away from the Narrows, Wendy. Right?”

She nodded.

“Chances are he’s at some friend’s house. Sometimes parents don’t realize when their kids are upset and want to rebel. Maybe you guys exchanged a few words and he wants to make you worry for a night.”

“I’ll tan his hide,” she uttered, suddenly crying and laughing at the same time.

“I’ll stop by the Dandridge house when I leave here. Maybe Matthew’s friend Dwight lied to your daughter and he’s spending the night over there. Or maybe he’s at another friend’s house.”

“He…he doesn’t really have many other friends.”

“Could you write down some names of the friends he does have? I’ll check in with each of them.”

“Okay,” she said, rising from the table and going to one of the kitchen drawers. “Thank you, Ben.”

She returned to the table with a pad and pen and began writing. Ben watched her write as he sipped some more coffee. He was trying not to let his uneasiness show. Brandy had said Matthew had been watching TV around eleven o’clock last night. In his head, he was doing the math, wondering if the boy would have had enough time to make it from his house out to Full Hill Road by midnight. It was a long shot, sure, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Maggie Quedentock insisting that she had hit a boy with her car.



2



It had been twenty-four hours since Maggie Quedentock’s incident on Full Hill Road and Evan still hadn’t noticed the damage to the Pontiac.

She had arrived home last night from the scene of the accident at around two in the morning. Under the spray of a hot shower, she’d curled into a fetal position and cried, partially for the fear that still lingered in her from the accident and partially because of what she had done with Tom Schuler. After the shower, she’d dressed in a knee-length nightshirt then slipped between the cool sheets of the bed. The bedroom window was cracked open, allowing a cool autumn breeze to infiltrate the bedroom. Evan’s shift wouldn’t end until six—he’d be working the nightshift at the plant over in Garrett for the next two weeks—and she’d struggled to find sleep before she heard the VW Beetle rumble into the driveway.

As it turned out, sleep did find her, but it came in fits and starts. Images from earlier that evening bled together to form a grotesque diorama of flickering motion pictures. Several times she awoke, believing she was still making love to Tom Schuler—she could actually feel his calloused hands running sloppily over her body, could actually smell the alcohol on his breath and the cologne he wore. Other times, she relived the accident on Full Hill Road, only this time with the slow motion of a frame-by-frame analysis—the darkened roadway, the swerve of headlights cutting through the night, the sudden, bright image of a small, frail figure darting out from the darkened shoulder into the bright glare of the car’s headlights. She’d jerked the wheel and spun the car around in real life…yet in her dreams she continued to plow forward, running the child down. Sometimes she felt the car rumble over the child’s body. Other times, the child was thrown up over the hood, slamming against the windshield, blackening Maggie’s world.

At one point she awoke, her throat sore from possibly crying out in her sleep, and a film of sweat coated her flesh. From the partially open window she thought she heard movement out in the bushes. She got up and checked but could see nothing. There were black clouds stretched across the moon and the fields were like pits of tar yawning all the way out to the foothills of the mountains. Terrified, she closed the window and got back into bed.

Evan got home around six thirty in the morning, lumbering through the semidarkness of the house in his careless, noisy way. She feigned sleep when he crawled into bed beside her without showering or even brushing his teeth.

At ten in the morning, after a night of fitful sleep laden with nightmares, Maggie got up, leaving her husband snoring in bed, dreaming the dreams of the blissfully ignorant. Outside, the sky was overcast. Clouds the color of gunmetal hung low to the ground, and a soupy mist collected in the valley between the mountains. Had they owned a garage, Maggie would have salted the Pontiac away within it, and perhaps her anxiety would have been a little lower. But they did not have a garage and the Pontiac was parked around back. She’d possessed the foresight to park backward in the dirt turnabout, the rear of the vehicle facing the house. Looking at it now from the bank of living room windows, Maggie wondered how she was going to explain the accident to her husband. It was only a matter of time before he discovered it.

Evan had slept until four or so in the evening before staggering from the bedroom in search of something to eat. Maggie was pretending to read a Heather Graham novel in the kitchen when he came in. She looked up and smiled at him, overly friendly. Evan didn’t seem to notice.

“How was work?”

He grunted and went immediately to the refrigerator. He was wearing pajama bottoms and a sleeveless undershirt, his muscular, tattooed arms exposed. At forty five, Evan looked like he could have been a decade younger.

“Let me fix you something to eat.”