The Overnight Guest(25)

They came back down the stairs and Wylie fed another stick of wood into the fireplace. The boy had a funny way of turning his body to the side and watching what was going on around him out of the corner of his eye as if trying not to be noticed. Wylie straightened the blankets on the sofa, Tas jumped up, turned around three times, and settled into one corner. This time she didn’t reprimand him.

Wylie went to the kitchen to get the boy a glass of water. He had to be hungry too. She dug through the cupboards and found a box of Cheerios and filled a bowl. She took the dry cereal and the glass and found the boy curled up next to Tas on the sofa, thumb in his mouth.

“You should drink something,” Wylie said, holding the glass of water toward him, but tight-lipped, he turned his head away. “Okay,” Wylie said, setting the glass and bowl of cereal on the coffee table. “Help yourself when you’re ready.”

The boy’s eyes grew heavy, and soon his breathing matched Tas’s; they were asleep.

Wylie checked her watch. How could it be only midnight?

Outside, the storm had worked itself into a frenzy. The wind bayed angrily, and the snow scoured the windows. Wylie kept looking outside, hoping to see the woman coming toward the house, but all she could see were froths of white. After a while, she gave up. The woman either found help on the snowed-in road, which was unlikely, or she succumbed to the weather.

Wylie retrieved her manuscript and folder filled with crime scene photos from upstairs and considered pouring herself a glass of wine but settled on coffee. She tried to read but kept looking at the sleeping form nestled on the sofa. Who was he? Someone else had to be out there looking for him.

Periodically, she checked the landline but was met with the same silence. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to talk to someone.

Not to just anyone. Wylie wanted to talk to her son. She wanted to apologize for just taking off. She had been so frustrated with him, so tired of the arguments, of Seth pitting her ex-husband against her. And when he took off that night and didn’t come home—that was pure torture. She didn’t know where Seth was, who he was with, didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

Wylie had taken the easy way out as a parent. Seth’s words had hurt her so much. He hated her, wanted to go live with his father. Wounded, she used finishing her book as an excuse, came to this sad, lonely place. Wylie left her son and only God knew what it would take to mend their relationship.

At that moment, she would have been content to talk to Seth about school and his friends, but that was impossible. Now Wylie was the lone caretaker of another child—one she was ill-equipped to tend to.

The storm raged, the shadows shifted, darkened. She checked her watch; 1:00 a.m. Wylie hated these quiet moments. It felt like the entire world was asleep except for her. The moment the dove-colored light peeked between the edges of the curtains, she would relax. She would close her eyes, and for just a moment, she would be like everyone else.

Wylie awoke to the creak of floorboards. She blinked sleepily to find the child sitting on the floor next to the fire, his back to her.

Something fell from the boy’s fingers and fluttered to the floor. Photos of throats slit open, broken teeth, empty eye sockets. Oh, no, Wylie thought. He had found the crime scene photos. The boy stumbled to his feet and he ran from the room. Wylie jumped from the sofa to follow him. He barely made it to the bathroom before his stomach tilted and heaved and bile, hot and sour, erupted from his mouth.

The boy retched until there was nothing left in his stomach.

“You shouldn’t have seen those,” Wylie said from just outside the darkened bathroom. “I’m so sorry. They’re for my work. I’m a writer.”

The boy climbed into the small space between the wall and the toilet and covered his face with his hands.

Wylie lingered in the doorway for a moment, and when it was clear that the boy wasn’t going to come out of the bathroom, she returned to the living room.

How could Wylie adequately explain what those awful images were for? There were no words. He thought she was a monster, and any chances of getting the boy to trust her were now lost.



14


August 2000

From her hiding spot in the field, Josie fought the urge to run. He could be lying in wait, poised to pounce the minute she moved. So Josie waited. She waited for something to happen, for someone to help, to come to find her. She kept willing her father or mother to push their way through the stalks, but they didn’t appear.

The clouds evaporated, and the moon stared garishly down at her. Josie kept time by its slow crawl across the sky. She fought back nausea, afraid that if she vomited, the person with the gun would hear her retching and discover her location. She couldn’t keep the tears from falling though, her body convulsed with silent sobs until her head pounded and jaw ached from forcing back the screams.

Josie shivered despite the heat of the night. The wound in her arm had stopped bleeding, but she could feel the nubby buckshot embedded in the fleshy part of her tricep.

She had stayed on her feet for as long as she could, but her muscles began to seize. The mosquitoes feasted on her bare skin, their bites like a thousand pinpricks. She finally crouched down, sat back on her heels, pulled her arms into her T-shirt and over her knees. The pain in her arm was a drumbeat. Miserable, Josie sat there like a plump corn flea beetle waiting for daylight.

With every soft rustle of the corn, her heart would boomerang from terror to hope. Someone had to have heard the gunshots. Sound traveled for miles through the countryside. Surely, someone would have heard the pop of gunfire, become alarmed and called the police. She half expected her father to appear, hold out his hand to help her up and take her home. But he never came. No one did.