The Night Strangers

  Both girls looked up at her.

  “I hadn’t told Cali and Rosemary about the second volume,” Anise said, her tone a little clipped.

  “The book talks about it right here,” Garnet said, and she showed Anise and Sage where in the encyclopedia she’d seen that second volume referenced. “See?”

  “Aren’t you the diligent student, Cali,” Anise told her.

  “What does diligent mean,” Hallie asked, oblivious to the slight edge in Anise’s voice.

  “It means she works very, very hard,” Sage explained. “I imagine you do, too.”

  “No, she works harder than me,” Hallie said, and she smiled at Garnet with what Reseda knew was genuine sisterly pride. The pride a twin has in her twin. A lover had once told Reseda that he presumed the bonds twins shared far transcended the more common sibling rivalries. He’d been right. “Dad says she’s going to be a teacher or a professor someday.”

  “Both are worthy aspirations,” said Anise.

  “How is your father?” Reseda asked. She wasn’t as interested in what either child might say as she was in what thoughts would pass through Sage’s head when the woman envisioned Captain Chip Linton. But almost instantly Sage started counting the massive leaves on the hoja santa—which, in a fashion, was itself revealing.

  “Mom is a little worried about him, I guess,” Hallie answered, looking down at a diagram of hypnobium in the book rather than meet her gaze.

  “We all are,” Sage said.

  “Is there anything in particular?” Reseda asked the girl, but carefully she gazed at Garnet as well. “So far, I don’t feel Bethel has been especially healing for him. I know the move to New Hampshire has been hard on all of you.”

  “You do?” Garnet asked.

  “I do. I really do.”

  Garnet seemed to think about this. Then Hallie began to answer: “The other day I caught him talking to someone. I was in the kitchen and Mom was upstairs, and I heard—”

  “Hallie!” said her sister, cutting her off, and she took the girl’s arm. “No!”

  “It’s Rosemary,” the child snapped. “And, yes, I will tell them! Someone has to know! And just because you don’t want to scare Mom doesn’t mean I can’t talk about it!”

  “Go ahead,” Reseda said. “Tell me.”

  “The other day I caught him talking to himself,” Hallie said, and then she took a deep breath. “He was in the basement near that weird door, and it was like he was talking to me or Cali. But he wasn’t, because we weren’t with him. We had been upstairs. And another time I found him sitting in the den with my dolls, and it was like he was inventing a game with them for us. But again, he wasn’t. He was all alone.”

  “They’re my dolls, too,” Garnet said, and she shook her head.

  “And I think …”

  “What do you think?” Reseda asked.

  “I can tell Mom thinks he might have killed Dessy.”

  “Do you think he did?” Sage asked, bending over with her hands on her knees.

  “I don’t know. Mom started to say something about maybe taking her body to the veterinarian so he could tell us what happened, but Dad just wanted to bury her. And the ground was just soft enough now that we could.”

  “Is there more?” Reseda said.

  Hallie nodded. “I guess.”

  “Tell me. You can.”

  “Well, he’s gone from being kind of spacey since the accident to being really cheerful one second and then really angry the next. But he never gets mad at us. He just gets mad. He also has headaches, and I know they’re getting a lot worse. Mom doesn’t want us to know, but I’ve heard them talking. And he has some really bad pain in his side.”

  “He’s depressed,” Anise said. “That’s all. And he should be depressed. What kind of man would your father be, if he weren’t?”

  “Is that your way of comforting the children, Anise?” Reseda asked.

  “It’s my way of comforting everyone,” she said, and then the whole room seemed to grow quiet, except for the gentle hiss of the humidifier. Sage counted soundlessly, moving her lips, and the girls thought of their father, and Anise merely smirked. And then Garnet’s head cleared, and she looked at all three women around her but directed her question at Reseda.

  “Can I ask you something?” the girl said.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “What are the potions in the second volume?”

  “I think he did poison that cat,” Anise told Reseda, once Emily had picked up the girls and taken them home. The two of them were walking from Sage’s greenhouse to their vehicles at the edge of the woman’s long driveway. “I think Verbena and the girls will be much, much safer when he is properly hospitalized—as Valerian suggests.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “I don’t see that sort of unreasonable malevolence in the captain. I think the cat just ate something that did her in.”

  “I’m not sure Valerian would agree. And she’s the doctor.”

  “But she’s not his doctor.”

  “She will be.”

  “I don’t think a hospital can treat what ails him.”

  “And that is?”

  Already Reseda regretted saying as much as she had. She didn’t trust Anise. The woman wasn’t necessarily dubious of Reseda’s work as a shaman, but she also craved the tangibility that came with a tincture. She saw magic largely in plants. But, then, Reseda wasn’t fully confident in her own diagnosis, either, since it was based only on very limited observation and what one of the pilot’s daughters had told her. Moreover, she herself had stood in Sawyer Dunmore’s crypt and felt nothing. Nothing at all. It didn’t seem likely the captain was possessed by the Dunmore twin who had been killed. “I’m honestly not sure,” she said finally. “I just don’t think he should be institutionalized.”

  Anise shrugged. They had reached her truck, and the rusty front door groaned when she yanked it open. Before climbing in Anise added, “We will do this, Reseda. You know that, don’t you? You can’t stop us. We will try again.”

  “Because they’re twins,” she said.

  “Yes. And because of what they’ve endured.”

  “Do you know which one?”

  “I don’t. Not yet. But I will.”

  “No good ever comes from that second volume.”

  “Not true,” Anise said, settling into her seat and staring down at Reseda from the full height of the truck cab. “I may be vegan, but just the other day I whipped up something absolutely magic with a field mouse.” Then she turned the key and the engine roared to life. She barely missed Reseda’s toes as she sped down the driveway.

  “He simply doesn’t agree that hospitalization is the right course,” Valerian told John Hardin, as they sat across from each other at his kitchen table. “I don’t know Michael well, but I know his type.”

  “Even after the captain killed the girls’ cat?” John asked, sipping his coffee. He could tell that Valerian, like his wife, did not approve of coffee. But he viewed it as his only vice. Besides, he had yet to find a tea he enjoyed half so much. “He really doesn’t think the man poses some sort of danger to his family?”

  “So it would seem. But, then, he doesn’t believe the captain poisoned the animal.”

  “Well, Verbena does.”

  “And that’s something. Nevertheless, he called me today to tell me he’s going to report me to the State Board of Medicine. He’s going to suggest that I have some … some sort of agenda … for wanting the man committed.”

  “Well, you do,” John said, and he allowed himself a small smirk. As he hoped, it seemed to cheer the young woman a bit. “So, hospitalization isn’t really the recommended protocol?”

  “Of course not!”

  “No arguable gray area?”

  “None.”

  “Well, you’re the doctor. I’m merely a lawyer. But sadly, in addition to getting you in a wee bit of hot water, this could be a bit of a cause célèbre, couldn??
?t it? Given the captain’s history and that ditching in Lake Champlain, arguing over his competency could draw more attention to us than any of us desire.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me: In your opinion, would Verbena be able to convince the captain to admit himself to the hospital if Michael were no longer his physician?”

  “Absolutely,” she answered. “I have no doubt.”

  “So we need Michael gone.”

  “Yes, but we really don’t have the time to convince him to … take care of himself.”

  “Well, that doesn’t matter because I’m not much of a sorcerer. Just had the good sense to marry one. Besides: It’s not as if Anise has managed to convince the captain to take care of himself.”

  “These things take time. And unfortunately, I really don’t have a lot of it.”

  “Everything is so much easier once the captain is committed. Verbena is dependent upon us and enamored with us. There’s a term for that, isn’t there? A psychological term?”

  She nodded. “The Stockholm syndrome. It’s when a captive or a hostage starts thinking well of his or her abductors.”

  “Well, I like to believe she would think highly of us no matter what. I think most of the time we’re rather good eggs.”

  “John, sometimes I just can’t tell when you’re pulling my leg or being deadly serious.”

  He reached across the table and squeezed her arm. “This time? I am being deadly serious,” he answered, smiling, and his eyes had the twinkle she loved.

  That night Emily skimmed through the local phone book. Even though it was but a fraction as thick as the one back home in Pennsylvania, there were still nearly two columns of people named Davis. Fortunately, there were only two in Bethel and only one Rebecca. Paul and Rebecca Davis. Clearly this was the woman who had buttonholed her at the diner in Littleton soon after they arrived in New Hampshire. While the girls were doing their homework she phoned her. That afternoon, Anise and Sage had each tried calling her Verbena, just as John Hardin had earlier in the week. Meanwhile, Valerian Wainscott wanted to institutionalize her husband. And so now Emily decided that she needed another opinion about these self-proclaimed herbalists. She wanted to speak with someone who, clearly, wasn’t one of them.

  A man answered the phone at the Davis household, and she introduced herself to him. She said she was Emily Linton and she was hoping to speak to Becky Davis. Although she was quite sure she heard the woman in the background speaking with that high school–age son she had mentioned at the diner, Paul Davis said his wife wasn’t home. But he said that she would call Emily back in the next day or two.

  “Would you like my work number?” she asked.

  “We know your firm,” he said, an edge to his voice that hadn’t existed when he first answered the call.

  “That’s right,” Emily said simply. “Your wife mentioned that she knew I worked with John Hardin.”

  “We all do,” he told her, and then added curtly, “Good night.”

  You wonder: These days, does Emily ever fall into a sleep so deep that she will not remember her dreams in the morning and no mere rustle will wake her? You know what she thinks about you. You know what they all think. The women. Their husbands. You know what they all believe.

  The truth is, now whenever you climb from beneath the sheets—before you have even thrown your feet over the side of the bed onto the cold wooden floor of your bedroom—Emily is awake.

  Chip? she will murmur, and then she will ask you where you are going.

  Oh, just getting an Advil, you will reassure her, and sometimes that has indeed been the case, because sometimes Ethan or Ashley or even Sandra has joined you in your bedroom in those smallest, darkest hours of the night. Other times you have simply gone to the bathroom. Either way, Emily will sit upright in bed and await your return. You know she is listening carefully to the sound of your footsteps along the corridor and awaiting the sound of the bathroom door closing and opening. If your toes so much as touched the steps to the third floor and Hallie and Garnet’s bedrooms, she would be out of your bed like a shot.

  The result is that those same demons that have you contemplating the deaths of your own children have you contemplating her death as well. She has no idea that you have brought Tansy’s knife upstairs, none at all. Right now, you could lie on your stomach and drape your arm over the side of the mattress, dangle it casually as if you were getting a massage, and find the knife held to the inside wall of a horizontal slat with one wide piece of duct tape. Or you could simply smother Emily. The original Desdemona—Shakespeare’s, not yours—died that way. And, in fact, your Emily once played Desdemona and she was remarkable. You were able to rearrange your flight schedule that month so you could be in the audience opening night, and you may never have been more proud of her as an actress than when you witnessed her final scene with Othello. You watched her die at the hands of her husband.

  You have to hope it will never come to that in real life. You have to hope you can resist. But the physical pains grow worse, as does Ethan’s incessant prodding. If you ever hurt either Emily or your girls, you know that next you would kill yourself. That has always been clear.

  And so once more you contemplate the knife you have brought to your bed. Perhaps you should simply use it upon yourself first and ensure that nothing happens to Emily or Hallie or Garnet. This time, instead of plunging it into your abdomen—trying, in some way, to eradicate the pain you already are feeling—you should slash your wrists. Long cuts along your forearms, from your elbows to the wrinkles at the palms of your hands.

  “Chip?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Were you having a bad dream? One of your plane dreams?”

  “No. I wasn’t even asleep. I was wide awake.”

  “You were?”

  “I was.” You pull your legs out from under the sheets and feel her sit up in bed. You knew she would.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Just getting an Advil.”

  And then you walk to the bathroom, leaving the door open so she can hear exactly what you are doing. She can hear the mirrored cabinet door with its small squeal and she can hear the rattle of the red pills in the plastic bottle when you shake three more tablets (yes, that is how many you will take now; sometimes you even take four) into the palm of your hand. When you return to bed, her head is on her pillow, but you can tell that her eyes are open. She is alert. Vigilant. But, of course, she is not as vigilant as she thinks she is. She has no idea that on the other side of the bed—her side of the bed—Ethan Stearns is watching her. He is watching you both. And your head? It now feels like it will explode, and, despite those three Advil, you shut tight your eyes against the pain, grimacing into your pillow in the dark.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Michael Richmond flipped the windshield wipers on the car to a faster speed because the rain was relentless and navigating the tortuous two-lane road up the hill to his A-frame was proving a challenge. The thermometer on the dashboard said it was thirty-eight degrees, so he wasn’t worried about the rain turning to sleet or this stretch of road becoming a long sheet of black ice that glistened in the light from his car’s headlamps. But it was nearly ten-thirty at night and he was sleepy, so he sat back against the seat to concentrate and took another sip of his Red Bull. (Valerian, he had to assume, did not approve of Red Bull.) Then he grasped the steering wheel with both hands.

  He kept thinking about Valerian’s appalling and absolutely irresponsible belief that Chip Linton should be institutionalized. There was something going on with the captain, there was no doubt about that, but the answer wasn’t confinement in the state hospital. It made absolutely no sense, no sense at all. “The person in this write-up in no way resembles my client,” he had told Valerian.

  Tomorrow he was going to contact the Board of Medicine. He considered whether his anger was reasonable and decided it was. Valerian had overstepped her bounds and, worse, was going to try to convince a f
undamentally sane man to commit himself. He knew also that she was going to pay: He was going to go after that lunatic’s license.

  “Michael,” she’d replied at one point when, yet again, they were arguing, “he may have stuck a knife in his stomach. He has phantom pains that are off the charts. He may have poisoned the family cat. He went berserk over a coal chute door.”

  “And that door turned out to be a crypt,” he had answered, though he knew this really didn’t exonerate Chip. The man hadn’t known the Dunmores buried their son there. And so quickly he’d added, “He’s calm and reasonable now, and we don’t know if he poisoned the cat—and we probably never will. Imagine if we were discussing whether the man was competent to stand trial: Well, perhaps he wasn’t competent the night that Molly Francoeur was over at their house and he hurt himself. But you know as well as I do that a person can become competent. And he is definitely competent right now.”

  Though they had argued for nearly thirty minutes—their third debate over the past five days—it was clear that she wasn’t going to budge. And neither was he.

  Up ahead he saw a vehicle pulled off to the side of the road with its hazard lights flashing, and he thought about what a miserable night it was to have car trouble. He slowed as he approached and saw the car was a new-model hybrid and there was a person in a hooded yellow slicker standing beside it, waving at him with a flashlight. He coasted to a stop ahead of it, wishing his sheepskin coat was waterproof or he kept an umbrella in the backseat. But there was nothing to be done about that now, and so he braced himself for a foray into the chill rain and climbed from his car.

  He saw that the individual was a tweedy, athletic-looking older man with a great shock of Robert Frost–like white hair and wire-rimmed eyeglasses, now spotted with rain. He guessed the fellow was in his late sixties or early seventies.

  “Thank you so much,” the gentleman said, and Michael realized that he was shouting to be heard over the wind and the rain.

  “Not a big deal. What’s the problem?” he asked. The guy must have been desperate to stand out here in the storm.