Chris Bohjalian - The Night Strangers

“Okay, you’re Garnet. Fine. Not a big deal,” Hallie reassured her sister, and Garnet seemed to calm down. They would each take an armful of dolls, and then they would each take an armful of the dolls’ furniture. In two trips they would have cleared the greenhouse of what Anise considered the childish things. “Anise, we’ll be right back, okay?” Hallie said.

Anise nodded, and Hallie turned back to her sister, expecting to see her rounding up more of their toys. But she wasn’t, she was just standing there, her gaze stonelike, and Hallie knew instantly that the girl was in the midst of a seizure. Her eyes were open but absolutely oblivious to the world they were taking in. She was standing perfectly still, holding the American Girl doll named Addy in her arms; she might have been mistaken for a wax model of Garnet Linton, except for the reality that Hallie could see her sister breathing slowly and evenly.

“Garnet?” she said, but only because she felt she had to say something. She knew her sister wouldn’t respond. “Garnet?”

And, just as she expected, her sister didn’t say a word. And so Hallie gently removed the doll from her arms and took Garnet’s hands in hers. Then she sat her sister down on the ground where she was, the dry dirt warm, and knelt beside her.

“What is she doing?” Anise asked. The woman was towering over the twins, and Hallie couldn’t tell what to make of her tone.

“She’s not doing anything,” she answered. “At least nothing on purpose. But she has these seizures. It’s a brain thing.”

“An illness?”

“Sort of. I don’t understand it really. But my mom and dad have tried to explain it to me. It has something to do with how the synapses fire in her brain. Sometimes they just fire like crazy all at once, and it’s like when a computer freezes.”

“And you know what a synapse is, Rosemary?”

“No, not really. All I know is that it has something to do with the way the nerves communicate and the brain sends messages to the body.”

“And her brain has… a problem?”

“It’s not a problem. It’s just how she is.”

“You likened it to when a computer freezes. I’d say that constitutes a problem.”

“She hasn’t had one in a really long time.”

“Interesting.”

Hallie looked up at Anise, annoyed that this was how the woman was going to respond. Hallie knew there was nothing to be done and that eventually Garnet would come out of it. She knew that her sister wouldn’t stop breathing and her heart wouldn’t stop beating. But whether it would be ten minutes or an hour until she was back was always a mystery, and so she hoped her dad would return any second now from the hardware store. Meanwhile, the idea that this grown-up who’d never before seen one of her sister’s seizures wasn’t fretting-not insisting that they call 9-1-1 or leave right away for the hospital-was disappointing. No, it was more than that: It was irritating. Weren’t these plant ladies supposed to care about her and her sister? Weren’t they supposed to be freakishly motherly and doting?

“She’s going to be fine, you know,” she said to Anise, unable to mask the disgust in her voice.

“This happens with some frequency?” Anise asked.

“I told you: No. This is only the third time it’s happened here in New Hampshire.”

“Three times in two months?”

“They’re usually not that common.”

“And she takes… pills?” the woman asked, the word pills spoken as if it were an obscenity.

“Yes. But they’re not perfect.”

“Pills never are.”

Her mother had made a joke a week earlier about how some of the women here were not especially enamored of modern medicine, and now Hallie understood what she’d meant a little better. “There’s nothing we should do but stay with her,” she said after a moment.

“You mean watch her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To make sure she doesn’t wander off.”

“Does she do that when she has one of these seizures?”

“She never has. But the doctors say she could. Like a sleepwalker.”

Finally Anise squatted beside the two girls. “Rosemary?” she said, questioning Hallie though she was staring straight at Garnet’s slack face.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any problem like this?”

“No.”

“You’re fine?”

“Uh-huh. And Garnet is, too. She-”

The woman put her finger to Hallie’s lips. “Cali when you’re with us. Remember? Her name is Cali.”

“And Cali is, too,” she went on. “She just has this… this thing.”

“But you don’t have it.”

“No.”

“Well, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For telling me. Someone had to. We had to know. And now we do.” Then she stood up and started to unpack the cartons of seedlings as if absolutely nothing was wrong in the world. “You always want your ingredients to be flawless,” she added, apropos of nothing, as Hallie sat alone on the ground with her sister.

Y ou sit on the couch in the den with Emily beside you and feel her entwining her fingers in yours. Emily has asked the girls to run along to their rooms upstairs to play or do homework, but you would not be surprised if they are sitting on the stairs right now and trying to listen. If you were ten years old and a pair of state troopers had appeared yet again at your house, you would want to know why.

At first you had presumed this was about Sawyer Dunmore’s bones and the crypt in the basement you opened. Then you thought it might have something to do with the recent death of Hewitt Dunmore in St. Johnsbury. You were completely mistaken in both cases, and the reality of why they are here this evening-interrupting you and Emily as you prepared dinner-has left you a little shaken and stunned.

“I understand you only knew Dr. Richmond professionally and hadn’t even been one of his patients all that long,” the older of the pair is saying, his hands on his knees as he sits forward in the easy chair. His badge says R. PATTERSON, but you cannot recall whether he told you his first name was Roger or Rick. He has an immaculately trimmed mustache the color of copper-a more restrained version of your own daughter’s red hair-and occasionally he lifts one of his hands and abstractedly runs a finger along it. The younger trooper is clean-shaven, which makes their age difference even more pronounced. You peg the older of the troopers to be somewhere around forty and the younger to be a mere twenty-five. The younger trooper is taking notes as you speak, while the older one listens. “But did he ever say anything that might be helpful in our understanding of what’s happened to him?”

You have noticed that they do not say “his death.” He is merely missing. The other day his car was found about two miles from his house, the doors locked, and no one has seen him since. He did not show up at his office that day or the next or see any of the patients on his schedule. The troopers clearly presume that a crime has occurred, but at the moment they do not know this for sure.

“No,” you tell them. “Mostly we talked about me.” You offer a small, wan smile.

Although she is not a defense attorney, Emily has already told the troopers that, if she thinks a question is inappropriate, she is not going to allow you to answer it. They have assured the two of you that you are not a suspect in the doctor’s disappearance; they are only, to use the older trooper’s words, nosing around at the moment, and they saw that you were among his patients.

“Can we ask you why you were seeing Dr. Richmond?” Patterson asks. But before you can respond, Emily squeezes your hand.

“There is no reason to answer that, sweetheart,” she says, her voice gentle, though her gaze is intent. She looks at you squarely in the eyes.