The Red Hunter(15)

“I know, baby,” she said. “I get it. But when you lash out at people, you just give them energy, make things worse. When you stay silent, hold your head up, and walk away, you take everything away from them.”

“But isn’t that just like saying it’s okay?” said Raven. “When do you get to stand up to people?”

Claudia sighed. She didn’t have all the answers. Not by a long shot. “Sometimes that is standing up.”

“I want the test, Mom,” her daughter whispered. “I want to know.”

Claudia blinked at Raven, who held her stare like a prizefighter.

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Claudia. “Was today—was it about that?”

Raven shook her head, sighing, as if Claudia were terribly slow.

“Somehow everything is about that. How do you not understand that?”

The headlights of the approaching police cruiser traveled across the walls, saving Claudia from getting into it with Raven. She knew this day was going to come; she thought she was prepared for it. She wasn’t. There was no script for a situation like theirs. People barely even wanted to talk about it.

Claudia stepped out onto the porch and down the steps to greet the officer, who looked like he wasn’t much older than Raven. Really. His unlined face and wide green eyes, his beefy arms made him look like a high school football player. He even had a smattering of acne on his chin. How old did you have to be to be a police officer, actually?

“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m Officer Dilbert. You called about a suspicious noise.”

Yeah, that was right. She was a ma’am. She was nearly forty, young looking, in shape (not skinny, but fit). Still the days of “miss” and “honey,” of the goofy smitten stares at her prettiness? They were fading fast. Not that she cared. Hey, everyone was young for the same amount of time; every girl gets her turn for a blushing youth. And at the end of the day, pretty didn’t seem to be worth very much at all. But Claudia was noticing it lately, how she had almost receded from the stage, from any hope of hotness. After a certain age, women who were trying to look “hot” were really just succeeding at looking sad. Lately, she was going for well-turned-out, elegant, attractive. Which in sweatpants and oversized tee, hair crazed from sleep—nowhere close.

“That’s right,” she said, taking her hair down from the knot at her crown. “Thanks for coming out.”

“I think I saw your problem on the way up the drive,” he said, glancing back at the barn. “That barn door looks like it fell off?”

The millennial way of ending a statement like a question. It annoyed some people she knew, like Martha, for example, who was annoyed by most things. But Claudia didn’t mind it. There was something modest, something gentle about it. It acknowledged the many possibilities of a situation. As if, it looked like the barn door fell off and that’s what made the noise, but, you know, hey, maybe that wasn’t it at all.

Yes, of course, the barn door. Claudia was certain that’s what it was. What else could have made such a bang? Somewhere in her subconscious, she must have registered it otherwise she might have been more afraid.

Claudia walked over to the barn with young Officer Dilbert, him towering, as big as a refrigerator, which was a rather nice quality in a cop. The rain had stopped, but the ground was saturated, the trees around them bending and whispering in the high wind.

There it was, the huge barn door laying flat on the ground. Officer Dilbert removed a big black flashlight from his belt and shined it, moving in close. Claudia could see where the hinges had ripped from the wood, leaving rusted, exposed nails. The latch at the door had ripped completely off, lay on the ground practically dissolving into a pile of rust. The barn was another thing she hadn’t had time for. They’d been there only a month. Which was weird. In a way, it felt as if she had always been there.

“It looks like—and it’s hard to tell because the wood is so old?” he said, moving in closer. “Could someone have pried this off?”

She came up behind him and saw the scratches he was examining. She remembered how it looked that afternoon; even the handyman had noticed it. The one she hadn’t hired on the spot the way she wanted to. She put a finger to the gouges in the wood. There it was, the dark creep of suspicion, the edge of paranoia. But, no. No. He wouldn’t have come back here and done that, just to get the work. No, that was crazy. Or was it? The world was a dangerous place, and she knew that better than most. People did all kinds of unthinkable things, all the time. But he was a nice guy; she could see that. Couldn’t she? And he came highly recommended by Madge.

“Oh, no,” said Claudia. “I don’t think so. It was really needing repair. I put a call in to Just Old Doors this afternoon. They’re coming out early next week.”

He gave a quick nod. “I’ll take a look around just the same if you don’t mind?”

“Of course,” she said. “Thank you.”

He looked very serious as he made his way around the back of the barn, his hand resting on the gun in the holster at his waist. She fought back the urge to tell him what a good job he was doing, very thorough and brave. Why do you always treat people like they’re in kindergarten and you’re the teacher? Ayers had recently asked her, not unkindly really. Actually kind of amused. He’d been down at the school for orientation day. She’d been talking to the principal, complimenting him on something or other. Did she do that? She really didn’t think so. Martha was like that, but surely not Claudia, who really didn’t consider herself an authority on anything.