Thursday, October 18
The Day Before
Heath’s breakfast dishes were already cleared from our room. My plate, still covered, waited on the table.
I yawned. The clock said it was past ten—which was hard to fathom. I hadn’t slept this late in years. I nestled farther under the covers, warm and contented, until a wave of nameless anxiety washed over me. I bolted up, remembering last night.
The fog. All those dead birds.
When my brain had finally registered what I was looking at, I’d bitten back my screams and run back to the house. I’d woken Heath and told him what I’d seen. He explained that it was probably a coyote or some other predator that had gotten after them, that I should try and get some sleep, and he’d tell Cerny about it in the morning. I was so distraught I’d almost told him about the Sinatra song I’d heard in the hallway. But I stopped myself. Something told me it wasn’t a good idea.
Maybe it was the fact that Luca and I had been together when we’d heard the song—sneaking around the house like some kind of detective duo—and Heath might misread the situation. Or maybe I worried he was beginning to doubt my stability. Last night, as I’d ranted about the dead birds, the expression on his face had seemed so patient. So completely unconcerned, like dead birds in the yard were an entirely normal situation, and he was merely allowing my neuroses to spin themselves out.
He’d held me until I’d finally fallen asleep, which hadn’t been until around three in the morning, reassuring me that everything was fine. His voice had remained calm. The voice of reason in the midst of my hysteria.
I returned to bed and drifted back to sleep almost instantly. When I awoke again, light in the room had shifted, and the room shimmered in the cold. I burrowed deeper under the blankets and looked up at the ceiling, at the unseen camera that was, no doubt, recording me. I felt the tension creeping back into my neck and shoulders. I needed to run. I needed to sweat, to feel my heart swelling and pounding like it was going to explode. To feel my jaw ache with the lack of oxygen, taste the trace of blood in my mouth.
I rolled over and looked at the clock. One forty. I cursed aloud. Glenys and I were supposed to meet at two thirty at the top of the mountain, that’s what we’d agreed at the creek yesterday. She’d be glad to hear I’d finally talked to Heath and told him everything about Chantal. And she’d probably want to hear the story too. I owed her that much. If it wasn’t for her, I didn’t think I would’ve ever been brave enough to come clean with Heath. If I threw on clothes now and sprinted up the mountain, I’d only be a few minutes late.
I pulled on running tights and a zip-top, then inspected the meal under the cover. The eggs had gone cold, but the bacon was still good and the fruit too. I pulled apart a biscuit and stuffed a flaky half in my mouth. At the nightstand, I stopped. My earrings and ring were gone, probably swept to the floor in the chaos of last night. I peeked under the table, but the floor was bare. I’d just have to search for them later. I popped a beanie and gloves on and stepped into the empty hall. It was freezing. The temperature must’ve dropped fifteen degrees since yesterday.
I glided down the front staircase and across the foyer, ducking into each of the front rooms for a quick check. No one was in the library, dining room, or salon, but as I retreated to the rear of the house, I could hear voices in the doctor’s office. I stopped and let them roll over me. In a strange way, the sound of humans talking was the most warming, comforting sound in the world. Life went on, didn’t it? On and on and on.
In the kitchen, Luca was bustling around, chopping, mixing, sliding pans into ovens. He turned when I came in, and at the sight of him, my stomach executed a flip-flop. He reciprocated my smile—the spontaneous, easy grin filled his eyes with light and the space around us with electricity. He handed me an apple from a bowl on the counter.
“Thanks,” I said. “I guess you saw I slept through lunch.”
He shook his head. His face had turned somber and he was watching me intently, like he expected me to say something.
“I know, I know, no hablas, although I can’t help wondering if it’s just a put-on.”
His gaze didn’t waver, his eyes that shade of hazel that looked green in one light, gray in another. It was strange. It was as if he was trying to send me a message, but I was too boneheaded to decipher it.
“Or you really can’t speak English,” I forged on. “And I’m just being an utter asshole. In which case, my sincerest apologies, and thank you again for the apple. I’ll try not to miss dinner.”
He nodded once, then moved to the sink and started to clear the dishes. I beat a hasty exit.
The backyard matched my mood—serene and golden in the afternoon sun. From my vantage point, it looked like the birdhouses down in the garden were deserted and the lawn clear. The air around me was sharp with a smell of smoke, though, and I wondered if there was a fire on the mountain.
Or one started in the woods behind the house, maybe, to dispose of the birds’ bodies.
Feeling unsettled, I turned and headed for the mountain trail. The cold air burned my lungs, but I welcomed the pain. The faster I went, the more alive I felt. I was bursting with the endorphins and the anticipation of seeing Glenys. If I hurried, I wouldn’t be late.
I wiped my fogged lenses and checked my watch. Two thirty on the dot. I walked to the edge of the limestone slab where the cliff dropped away and breathed in the clean, cold air. No trace of Glenys up here, nor of any smoke. Maybe the smell had come from a campfire or someone’s chimney.
I stretched, did a couple of yoga poses, which would’ve cracked Lenny up if she could’ve witnessed it—me, the dedicated runner who couldn’t even be bothered with more than a cursory stretch before I started off. I checked my watch again. Twelve minutes had passed and still no Glenys. She could’ve forgotten, but it seemed unlikely. It wasn’t as if there was a schedule of activities to get swept up in.
After another twenty minutes or so, I headed back down the mountain, trying not to worry. I ticked through the possible reasons she hadn’t shown up. Maybe I’d inadvertently offended her. Maybe she’d had a particularly rough therapy session, and it had wiped her out. I remembered how distraught she’d looked outside the barn yesterday. I wondered what she’d seen in there that had set her off. Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything. Maybe it had just been a private spot where she could grieve, away from the camera in her room.
But suddenly it occurred to me—she’d obviously unlocked the chain on the barn doors. There’d been a huge padlock on it, for God’s sake.
I caught a sapling, stopping myself midstride.
How did she manage to open it?
The question was a valid one, even if I didn’t want to ask it. Even if it made me uncomfortable. As much as I wanted to deny it, none of what I’d experienced this week was normal. Not the locked Nissan, the Sinatra song, the arguing voices, the dead birds. The list of strange, unexplained things was getting longer by the minute. And now this: the barn-door chain, roped and padlocked for me, but not for Glenys.
I’d read enough self-help books to know what I was doing was called catastrophizing. But what if this was an actual, real-life catastrophe? Sometimes they did happen. Sometimes the signs were all there, right before something went terribly wrong. And the people who didn’t heed the warnings—who didn’t evacuate or board up their windows or brace themselves for the storm—were usually the ones who got swept away.
“This is not normal,” I said aloud. And broke into a run.
At the bottom of the trail, I charged toward the barn. On the doors, the chain hung limp. Unlocked. I ducked inside, waited for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. There were a couple of grimy, cobwebby windows up high in a loft area that let in what light was left of the day. It made the space look extra spooky—the set of a play, before the actors walked onstage and brought it to life. I wrapped my arms around my torso and surveyed the space.
The collection of sheet-draped furniture I’d seen, the day I’d first peeked through the cracked doors, filled the far-left corner of the barn. I approached it and gingerly lifted the corner of one sheet. A small bed, twin size. I pulled at the sheet and let it settle to the dirt floor. The bed was a simple light-wood four-poster with a chipped headboard. A set of old-fashioned springs rested on the slats.
I drew the sheet back over the bed, then moved to the next piece of furniture. A school desk, one of those old-fashioned all-in-ones, with a green metal seat and wood desktop that lifted up. It had a narrow groove at the top, for a pencil. I ran my fingers over the surface. It was scratched up pretty good. Maybe it had been Cerny’s. He had mentioned growing up here. How the fiery fiends had frightened him. How much mischief they’d kept him from.
The light through the high windows was fading fast. It was getting late. I dragged the desk over to the nearest one, angling it so the beam of light hit it at just the right angle. The surface of the wood was scarred over its entire surface. Someone had been busy . . . and not with their lessons. I squinted. I picked out the letter H. Then an A and a V. An E and N.
Haven?
I felt my way along the surface, identifying each subsequent letter. “O, P, I, T, Y, S, O . . .” I shook my head. Went back to where I started. Felt the scratches there. “I,” I said and furrowed my brow. “IHAVENOPITYSO . . . What in God’s name?” I shook my head again, hard, clearing the cobwebs. “I have no pity,” I murmured. Ran my fingers over the letters again. “I have no pity so . . .”
I imagined Matthew Cerny, a small boy with floppy blond hair, carving this phrase into his desk during his lessons. What a strange thing for a child to carve. How desolate.
“Daphne?” I heard behind me, and I whirled. Even in the gloom, I recognized the voice. Heath. And then I saw the knife, lying on the floor of the shed, just beside his feet.