THE WOMAN ON THE OTHER side of the glass stared out at the man and the boy. Her face was a question mark, echoed by the sheet of paper she held up in both hands.
Do I know you?
The man gave a nod. “I’m your son.” He raised the boy up in his arms. “And this is your grandson, Henry.”
The violet eyes sparkled and shone, and she mouthed the last word back to them slowly, as if she were afraid to let it go for fear it wouldn’t come back. Tucking her chin, she lifted the crayon and wrote:
Grandson?
“That’s right.” His voice was gravelly, unsteady. “We came to get you out of here, Mom.”
Apprehension in her face now, mixed with realization and a glimmer of familiarity. Her hand moved for the crayon again:
Your name is Scott
“That’s right,” he said.
I remember another boy. Owen?
“I’m sorry,” Scott said. “He’s dead.”
She blinked, mouth open, then closed again, clamping tight.
“He died saving Henry’s mother, Colette McGuire.”
A white-hot streak of horror shot across Eleanor Mast’s face, as if a dam had broken deep within her. The crayon started jerking across the page again, slashing out words until they crowded the page, an outpouring that Scott couldn’t read until she flipped the tablet around and thrust it against the glass.
Curse won’t end—alive in her—with us always—alive in her—no hope—house in the woods—the black wing—no doors—no windows—lives on in stories—
“It’s okay.” Scott put his hand through the narrow slot and touched his mother’s hand, holding it gently until she stopped writing and looked at him, tears in her eyes. “I think it’s going to be okay.” He thought about how the wing had fallen silent that morning, how the sound of inhuman laughter suddenly ceased. How everything had just stopped.
He had looked up at the nearest corner, where the walls and ceiling came together in a crisp, three-cornered edge.
He and Henry had gone back out there, through the woods to the house. The manuscript had still been there on the floor, exactly where he’d left it. Scott gathered it up with his laptop and the painting and the book Owen had found upstairs in the house and an old poster for a play that Grandpa Tom had written. Without a word between them, he and Henry had taken it all outside, dropped it on the ground, doused it in lighter fluid, and burned it, waited until it was nothing more than smoke and ash. He remembered the windless day, how the smoke had gone straight up into the sky, and how they had driven home afterward, neither one of them talking.
“You’re leaving here soon,” Scott told her. “I want you to come home with me and Henry. You don’t have to worry about anything.” Eleanor’s hand twitched across the page.
Can’t live here anymore. In this town.
“I’m not talking about here,” Scott said. “I’m talking about Seattle. That’s on the other side of the country. If you want to try.”
His mother reached for the crayon and then put it down and gazed at him. Scott put his arm around Henry’s shoulders, felt the boy holding himself upright, alert and vigilant, watching his grandmother’s mouth turn into a cautious smile. Her voice was rusty, hoarse from lack of practice, but he recognized it instantly.
“Yes,” she said.
SONIA WAS WAITING for them in the parking lot, and Scott could see her looking at Henry’s expression, trying to decide how to proceed. “How was it?”
“All right.”
“Will she be ready to come out when her court order gets reversed?”
“I hope so,” Scott said, and held his nephew’s hand. He had been on the verge of making up something more upbeat for the boy and realized it wasn’t necessary. Henry had already been exposed to the good and the bad, the extremes of human behavior, and diluting the truth now on his account made no sense at all. So he instead just repeated it, as much to himself as Sonia. “I hope so.”
THEY DROVE BACK to Milburn, passing the Bijou on the way through town. Scott glanced at Sonia and knew what she was thinking. Colette had barricaded herself inside her house since the day she’d been rescued from the ice, choosing instead to receive visits from the sheriff and various health care providers, psychiatric and otherwise. He had seen her only at funerals since that day, three of them—Owen’s, Earl Graham’s, and her husband’s. Each time she had been escorted by a silent New York attorney and Lonnie Mitchell. Afterward, when Scott asked the sheriff whether Colette was being charged for anything that had happened to Earl, Mitchell had given him a long, hard stare and pointed at the lawyer in the long topcoat. “You know what that means?” Mitchell growled. “That means, don’t ask.”
So Scott didn’t. He had enough on his plate already—court documents that needed to be signed for his mother’s release, arrangements for Henry to start school in Seattle. There was something else, another matter whose presence he’d become aware of when Sonia stepped out of the passenger seat in front of Earl Graham’s junk emporium and looked back at him with questioning eyes. Although neither of them said anything, Scott knew what he said next would make all the difference.
“Any idea what you’re going to do now?”
“Me?” She shrugged, her breath steaming between them like the ghost of words unspoken. “I’m getting out of this town, that’s for sure.”
“Any particular destination in mind?”
“I’ve heard it’s nice out west.”
“We’ve got some good law schools,” he said.
Sonia smiled. “You’re going to be busy out there. You’re used to being alone, and now you’re going to have your mother and Henry, plus your job…”
Scott nodded. “Sounds like I could use some help.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“I’m not so worried about Henry, but my mom … she’s going to take a long time to feel safe again. She’s going to want some answers. I’ll do my best, but it would be nice to have you there.”
Sonia seemed to understand. Whether or not she actually did, he wasn’t sure, but there would be time to clarify that later, and time for his mother as well, and her questions. Sometime, somewhere, Scott knew someone would tell her the whole story. If the time was right, it might even be him.
In his family, there might never be enough doors or windows, but there would always be stories.