The Things That Keep Us Here

  His gaze shifted to a point behind Ann. “Hey, cutie. What’s your name?”

  “Mom?”

  Oh my God.

  “Kate, get back into bed,” Ann said. “Right now.”

  Where was the second man? He was no longer standing there by the cabinets. She swung her gun and the bearded man thrust his hands up.

  “You’re not going to shoot me in front of Kate here, are you? You don’t want your little girl seeing that.”

  “Where’s your friend?” she hissed. “Mom.” Kate’s voice trembled.

  “I told you to go back to bed.” Where the hell was that other guy? “Mom, there’s someone else here.” Kate’s voice, high with fear. Footsteps shuffled in the front hall. They were coming at her from two directions.

  “Kate, get behind me.”

  She turned so that her back and Kate were against the wall. The shadowy shape of a man slid across the dining room toward them. One in the kitchen, one in the dining room. The one in the kitchen was closer. And there was nothing standing between him and her, nothing to impede her aim.

  Shotgun barrels come in three sizes. Thirty-inch, twenty-eight-inch, twenty-six-inch, going from tighter to wider spread. This is a twenty-eight. Pretty good for hunting, but up close, it doesn’t matter. Up close, you’ll get your target.

  “You’re shaking,” he said. “Bet you’ve never shot someone before.”

  She gripped the barrel with her left hand and squinted at the little rectangular chip protruding from the barrel’s tip. She lowered the muzzle to the man’s crotch.

  He took a step toward her. “Think you can do it?” he challenged softly. “Kill someone at close range?”

  She heard Kate’s panicked breath behind her.

  She would shoot him. She would.

  “I’m not even carrying a knife.” He opened his jacket and showed her the empty pockets. “See?”

  He was unarmed. Could she shoot an unarmed man?

  Then he lunged. Kate shrieked.

  Ann depressed the trigger and heard the empty click. What? She pressed the trigger again. Her heart dropped. Nothing.

  Laughing, he reached over and grabbed the barrel. “Works better if you have the safety off.”

  Ann stared at him. Now he had both hands on the barrel and he was close. She could smell the perspiration and staleness of him. He grinned at her.

  She leaned back, the metal biting into the flesh of her palm. If she could just reach the safety.

  “Bill,” said the other guy.

  Dog tags jangled.

  The bearded guy looked sideways. A brown furry blur leaped toward him, and he flung up an arm.

  A deafening blast.

  For Immediate Release

  FLU VACCINE TO

  BE DISTRIBUTED

  —————

  Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Andrew Ward announced today the distribution of a vaccine for H5N1 influenza. The vaccine will be distributed to all fifty states and U.S. territories and possessions in doses according to individual population. Two doses per individual will be necessary.

  Persons receiving the first innoculations will be those involved in the production, distribution, and administration of the vaccine; hospital staff, police officers, and emergency response personnel; key government officials; utility and communication workers; and those involved in food manufacturing and distribution. These persons are asked to report to their places of employment with proof of identification.

  The second group to be vaccinated will be healthy individuals aged two to sixty-four years with no associated risk factors. These vaccinations will be given in hospital clinics. People are asked to bring photo identification.

  HHS Press Office

  EPILOGUE

  DAD ALWAYS SAID, THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE more they stay the same. As I get older, I begin to see the truth of that.

  The phone rang as I was going out the door. I punched the button on the wall. “Mom?” At eight in the morning, smack-dab in the middle of her studio time? Something was up.

  Her voice floated to me from the speaker. “Hi, honey.”

  I pictured her walking through the kitchen, speaking into that hopelessly ancient cordless phone. I had no idea how she even managed to get batteries for it. Maddie and I had tried to talk her into updating, but Mom said it was foolish to rely on electronics.

  “I know you’re on your way to work, Kate, but I wanted to make sure you haven’t forgotten about Friday.”

  Like that would ever happen. I knew what Friday was—the one day we all made sure to get together, besides the holidays. “I’ll be there. Frank’s coming, too.”

  “Wonderful. We’ll have a full house. Six o’clock okay?”

  Mom lived an hour away. I’d have to leave the lab early. “Fine. Does Jacob need a ride?”

  “Your uncle Mike’s picking him up.”

  I felt a prick of alarm. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s only a two-hour drive to campus, and it’s early in the day.”

  “Still.” The strangest things could set my uncle off. A song on the radio, the smell of sugar cookies baking.

  “I know,” Mom said. “But Mike will be careful. And he needs that time alone with Jake.”

  “All right.” I had to stop the oldest-sister routine. Mom wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. That was one thing you could say about her. That was one thing that never changed, no matter how everything else went topsy-turvy.

  “Oh, and Kate. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  I could hear the smile in her voice. “What kind of surprise?” She was selling the house, getting remarried? Moving away? But not all surprises were bad ones. I had to remember that.

  “Oh, you’ll find out.” Her tone was playful.

  Surprises meant change. I wasn’t good with that. I thought of it as upheaval. I hoped this surprise was a minor one, one that would barely register on my Richter scale.

  WE DIDN’T STAY AT THE CABIN LONG, ONLY TWO YEARS, LONG enough for Mom to be certain things had returned as much as they ever would to normal. But I always had the same reaction pulling into the driveway now as I’d had back then when we finally returned home. Trepidation.

  The Guarnieris’ old house was gone now, toppled timber by timber, brick by brick, into ruins. People had come and salvaged the bits. Nature reclaimed what little the scavengers left behind. Maddie and her friends called it the haunted house, and though I ridiculed them, I never liked to walk past it at night. I was always sure I glimpsed Jodi’s ghost flitting between the tangled grass and gnarled tree trunks.

  Other neighborhoods had their haunted houses, too, the surprising gaps where a house had once stood and been lost when the owners had gone. You’d be driving down a street or walking along the sidewalk and there before you would rise a mailbox to a house that no longer existed, or a front path that wandered nowhere. Frank smiled encouragingly at me and swung open the car door. “Ready?”

  Maddie was already there. I saw her blue car pulled off to one side, heard the whoops of laughter coming from the fenced yard. Barney the Third came bounding around the corner, barking and wagging his tail. Black-and-white where Barney the First had been cream and milk chocolate, but Mom had picked him out of all the others at the animal shelter, and she was right. He had the same spirit.

  I bent down to rub his ears. He licked my face. Good old Barney was in there, somewhere.

  Uncle Mike swung open the front door. “Katydid! Thought I heard your car pull in.”

  He stood there, the light shining behind him. The shape of his shoulders and the way he cocked his head … It all came flooding back, sucking my breath away with it. Dad. Mom saw it, too. I’d noticed her looking at him with an odd expression, the sudden sadness collapsing her face.

  “Uncle Mike, you remember Frank.”

  “Sure, sure.” He grinned at Frank with genuine affection and pounded him on the shoulder. Frank had that effect on pe
ople. He was quiet, but his constancy shone through. Frank was a person you knew instantly that you could rely on, a person you could trust, as much as you could trust anyone. “You’re the fellow who’s going to save the world.”

  “I hope to, sir. With your niece’s help.”

  “Well, we sure need saving.” Uncle Mike put his hand on my arm and drew me forward. “Don’t just stand there, Katy. Come on in.” He shut the door behind us and I felt a little dizzy.

  I could never step into the front hall of this house without remembering walking in as a fifteen-year-old, smelling wet soot and ash, seeing the spray of black bullet holes across one wall, hearing the crunch of broken glass beneath my shoes.

  Mom had sucked in her breath and Maddie had crowded in behind me that day, an impossibly bright sunny morning. We’d followed Mom from room to room, our footsteps echoing across the empty spaces. In the two years we’d been gone, people had broken into our house, stolen things, burned furniture, ripped curtains from the windows. Mom stood there for a silent moment, taking it in. Her gaze alit on the wisp of a bird’s nest dangling in the spokes of the chandelier above. “Well, girls,” she’d said. “It looks like we had a few visitors while we were out.”

  Mom held the shotgun by her side. We’d grown used to seeing her with it. We slept in the same room with it, and when we ventured into town, we always kept it hidden between the front seats. But she’d needed it only that one time, that last night when I thought she’d killed that man, and, worse, killed Barney.

  Barney had been fine. The stranger hadn’t fared as well.

  He’d lain there groaning on the floor. Barney growled and barked, snapping at him every time he rolled. I stood there pressed against the wall, horrified by the sight of so much blood. In the moonlight, it gleamed like black paint.

  Mom had aimed the shotgun at the other man. “Take him and get out,” she’d said in the coldest voice I’d ever heard her use. The sound of it frightened me. The tall skinny man had darted forward out of the shadows and bent to drag his buddy away. The injured man had howled with pain as his body bumped down the porch stairs. I hated to admit it, but it’d felt good hearing him scream.

  We never did find out what happened to either of them. Mom stood there watching for long after they disappeared into the darkness, holding the gun, and then she turned to me.

  “Kate,” she said. “I need you to start loading the car.”

  Her voice had gone back to normal, but she had changed.

  It took a while to rebuild, but Uncle Mike helped. He showed up one day, scaring the daylights out of me when he loomed across the threshold, but it turned out Mom had been in touch with him over email. She’d come running down the stairs and threw her arms around him. “I was hoping you’d come.” She’d wept tears of joy and kissed both his cheeks. “We’re a family now,” she’d told him. At the time, I’d bristled, thinking she meant he completed our family. Now, of course, I know that we completed his. His wife was gone, and his son, Mikey, whom I only sort of remembered. He’d liked toy cars and playing in the sprinkler. Or maybe it was Jacob I was remembering. Memory could be funny that way.

  “Everyone’s out back,” Uncle Mike said. “Jake went out for ice, but he’ll be back any minute.”

  We walked through the kitchen. Here was where the biggest changes were. Mom had torn out all the wood flooring, installed heated pipes, and laid down terra-cotta tile. The old furniture was gone, replaced by leather and iron filigree pieces that one of her artist-colony friends had made. Brightly colored serapes hung alongside the windows. A fire blazed in the fireplace though it was a warm October evening. There were other changes, too, that were less visible—the huge generator in the garage, the solar panels on the roof.

  Bowls of food sat on the kitchen table. A leafy salad, red and yellow apples, bunches of grapes. There was more food still on the counter. A platter of cheeses, a bowl of avocados, a bristling pineapple. I knew without looking that the pantry was filled top to bottom with boxes and cans. The refrigerator was stocked with milk and vegetables, the freezer neatly packed with meat.

  My brother-in-law was pulling something from the oven. One of Mom’s old pots, battered and black-bottomed. Maddie and I had bought her a new set a few Christmases ago, but we’d never seen her use it.

  “Always amazes me that this thing still works.” Alan shut the oven door with a bent knee. He came around the kitchen island and gave me a bear hug. His shirt was bright red, and his tie was yellow.

  Exuberant as ever. And had he lost a little weight? Maddie was always after him to exercise. “Smells wonderful, Alan.”

  He pumped Frank’s hand. “I’m trying out something new. Let me know what you think.”

  Uncle Mike lifted a glass from the counter. “How ’bout I get you two something to drink.” He put a hand on the counter to steady himself. He’d already started, then.

  Mom had told me he didn’t used to drink. I hoped he’d been sober when he’d gone to pick up Jacob.

  “Maybe later,” I said, and Frank nodded.

  Maddie was back by the swings with her kids. She waved, and I waved back. Mom was sitting on the patio, looking over at where the birch tree once stood. Lightning had taken it down a few years back. I showed up one afternoon to find Mom in the backyard, struggling to lift a burlapped sapling into its place. It had taken both of us and old Dr. Singh from across the street to manage to get it situated. Mom rose as we stepped out. Her embrace was full-on, the way it always was. She smelled the same, too—sun-baked cotton and roses.

  I held her a moment longer than necessary. The gate creaked behind us. “Katie!”

  I stepped back and turned to see my little brother standing there, tall and tan and … beardless. “You got rid of that thing.”

  He rubbed his chin ruefully. “Yeah. It wasn’t the girl magnet I figured it’d be.” He dumped the bag of ice into the cooler by the table and came over to wrap his long arms around me. I stood on my tiptoes to hug him back.

  Of course he wasn’t William. He couldn’t ever be William. He was blond, for one thing, and his eyes were brown. He had dimples that Maddie and I would kill for and a devilish streak that landed him in predicaments only a studious application of his charm could wrestle him from, but he shared our history and loved our mom just as much as we did. If that wasn’t family, what was?

  “Hey, Mom,” he said. “I ran into Connie Nguyen at the store. She said to say hi.”

  Mom smiled. “She’s a nice girl.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Mom was always trying to set him up.

  “Mom says you’ve been behaving yourself this semester,” I said. His grin widened. “Okay.”

  I groaned and punched him lightly on the biceps. “If Mom gets another call from the dean …”

  Laughing, he shook Frank’s hand. “Good to see you.”

  “Likewise.” Frank smiled. “So, how’s that film-editing course coming along?”

  “Man, you should see the setup they’ve got.” He pulled out a chair, and Frank sat down beside him, both of them immediately immersed in terms the rest of us had no prayer of following.

  I rolled my eyes and Mom smiled. “Go say hi to your sister. I’ll stay here and visit with my boys.”

  My boys, including Frank. See? Everyone liked him. That didn’t seem to make it any easier.

  Maddie perched on the rim of the sandbox, watching little Petey smack a shovel up and down. Kayla crouched by the swings, poking at something on the ground. She saw me and squealed. “Aunt Kate! Aunt Kate!”

  “Hi, pumpkin.” I waved and sat down beside my sister.

  Maddie looked up at me and grinned. “She’s made you a picture.”

  “Great.” I kept a collection of Kayla’s drawings. I teased her that they were my retirement plan. Kayla had recently graduated to oil pastel, Mom had told me, adding that it was an early medium for a five-year-old. The art genes had clearly passed down through the maternal line.
Except for me. I could barely draw a stick figure.

  “How’s your gallery exhibit coming?” I said.

  “We’ve got a critic from Chicago coming for the opening.” Maddie dug her bare toes into the sand. Petey reached over and bashed her foot with the plastic shovel. “Ouch.” She yanked her foot back and rubbed her ankle.

  “Wow, he’s gotten big.”

  “The doctor says he’s ninety-fifth percentile in height.”

  “Takes after Alan, then. He sure didn’t get it from our side of the family.” We shared a smile.

  Kayla called from the swings, “Give me a push, Aunt Kate!”

  “Okay,” I called back. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She nodded and wriggled her bottom onto the wooden seat.

  “Mom say anything about a surprise to you?” I asked Maddie.

  She nodded. “I have a feeling it’s more for you than for me or Jacob.”

  I groaned. “Not another big fat hint about setting a wedding date.”

  Maddie looked across the yard to the patio where Mom and Uncle Mike sat, laughing at something Jacob had just said. Frank was leaning back, arms crossed, looking pleased. “How are things between you two?” she asked.

  “Good, I guess.” Push and pull. I teetered on the wall, Humpty Dumpty–like. Sometimes it seemed so simple, like when Frank and I sat reading before a fire or when I watched him sleep. Why not? Then when I caught him looking at me that way, his heart so open and bare, I clenched deep inside and knew I’d gone as far as I could.

  “He won’t wait forever.” My sister’s voice was gentle.

  I shrugged and looked down at the baby, trickling sand into a bucket, his plump face crinkled into a ferocious frown.

  “Oh.” Maddie’s voice changed, and I looked up to see her wearing a puzzled expression.

  “What?” I turned to follow her gaze back to the house.

  “Kate! Maddie!” my mom called. “Someone’s here to see you.”

  A figure stood beside her. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes and saw that it was a tall, slim woman.