Chris Bohjalian - The Night Strangers

“You can?”

She nods. “I can try. And if I succeed, I want you and your family to move away.”

“Leave this house?” You are surprised by the loyalty you have to the Sheetrock and plaster. To the rooms you have made new and to the rooms that await new wallpaper and paint. You have changed the house dramatically. Made it yours.

“Bethel,” she answers. “The White Mountains.”

“You don’t think we belong here?”

She shakes her head. “I think you belong here too much.”

I n the morning, John Hardin gazed up at the wondrous penumbra of lime green on the tips of the trees: not leaves yet, but waves and waves of buds. That moment when life moves from mere mist to a tangibility that swallows the twigs. It was weeks past the equinox now, and the days were starting to feel pleasantly long. He and Clary were likely to have dinner when it was still light out, which was rather nice, they both agreed. And there had been one last, torrential sugar run the day before. A person could have stood at the top of Mooseback, the squat little mountain just east of Bethel, and seen steam from sugarhouses in all directions. Over the weekend he had taken Verbena and her girls to Claude and Lavender Millier’s sugarhouse to witness boiling firsthand. As John had expected, the Milliers’ son had driven up from Salem for the weekend. And the girls had loved it. Verbena had been positively entranced. Said it brought back memories long dormant of visiting one of her grandmother’s neighbors in the woods near the lake in Meredith.

He was just about to get into his car and drive to the office when he heard the front storm door squeak open and saw Clary walking briskly across the slate to the driveway. Like him, she usually rose and dressed early, even though she didn’t have a law practice to tend to, but they had made love this morning and she was still in her ankle-length red nightgown.

“What did I forget?” he asked her, though her hands were empty.

“Phone call,” she murmured, and he could see the worry on her face.

He nodded. The cordless phone didn’t work this far from its base. He tossed his briefcase onto the passenger seat of his car, thought of the body of the dead psychiatrist that once had lolled there in mangy old blankets, and strolled back to the house. He noticed that there was a perfect line on the grass where the rising sun had melted the frost: The grass was white where it was still masked by the shade from the house and green where the rime had turned to water.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Anise.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

In the kitchen he reached for the phone. “Good morning,” he began, “though I have the distinct sense based on the scowl on my wife’s usually lovely face that you haven’t rung me with good news.” Clary was standing in the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. Her lower lip was quivering with anger; she looked profoundly unhappy.

“I just saw Reseda. She came by my house this morning.”

“Wonderful! I always want my girls to be friends.” He was absolutely sincere in that he did want all of them-the women as well as the men-to get along. But there was also a layer of black humor rippling just beneath the surface of his remark. He knew that Reseda and Anise would never be close, at least not in the way that most of the women were. Reseda was always going to be something of an outsider.

“It wasn’t wonderful at all.”

“No?”

“No, John. It wasn’t. She believes we killed both Hewitt and the psychiatrist. She said the death of the doctor-”

“Not dead, my dear. Only missing.”

“Presumed dead. It’s been a while.”

“And he has, more or less, fallen off the radar. There was nothing on the news last night-again-and nothing in the paper this morning. He had no wife, no children. A deceptively easy man to forget. That sounded rather harsh-certainly harsher than I meant. I’m sorry.”

He heard her sigh on the phone. “Reseda might not let him be forgotten.”

Once more it crossed his mind that in their enthusiasm they had all moved too quickly. The idea had been gnawing at him. The reality was that half the town already thought everyone in their small group was a little nuts. And while he viewed most of what they did as, well, rather a freedom of religion issue-a First Amendment issue-homicide represented an arguably unnecessary part of their practice. It was one thing to risk sacrificing one of the girls. But homicide? Now that was nasty.

“Well, I’m glad she went to you and not me,” he said finally, knowing-as they all did-that Reseda seemed incapable of reading Anise’s mind.

“She will come to you. Reassure me: There is no evidence?”

He chuckled. “Oh my, Anise, there is almost always evidence if you look in the right place. I’m quite sure if the State Police ever checked my car, they would find traces of the psychiatrist. A tiny hair. A piece of skin the vacuum missed. But they would need reasonable cause to search the car. And I tend to doubt any judge would approve a warrant because Reseda pulled a memory from me and went to the police.”

“She wants this over with now.”

“I do, too.”

“I meant something different.”

“I know what you meant. Reseda wants us to leave the twins alone and move on. Accept the inevitability that a person ages and dies. Well, that’s easy for her to say, given that she is still on the smooth side of forty. I’m on the deeply wrinkled side of… never mind. So are Clary and the Messners and the Jacksons. And you are precariously close to that Rubicon.”

“I think we should do it tonight.”

“Interesting. I was just thinking how we may have been moving too quickly. And now you want us to move faster still.”

“Tonight. Before Reseda can intervene.”

He stood a little straighter. He felt himself growing frustrated and shook his head. He had always tried to view Reseda like a daughter. Lately he had even begun to hope that someday she and Verbena-who still, much to his disappointment, insisted on being called Emily-would both be like daughters to him. And if Verbena was like a daughter, then her twins were like granddaughters. And why would he want to hurt one of his granddaughters? He wouldn’t! Really, what kind of man did Reseda think he had become? No, in theory nothing bad was going to happen to either of Verbena’s girls. Nothing at all. There was a risk. Sawyer Dunmore was proof that there was a risk. But look how the tincture had worked! There was every reason to suppose it would work again. It demanded a lot of blood, no question about it, especially given the number of adults who would be present this time and how much of the tincture would be necessary. But both girls were young and strong. And they fit the recipe perfectly: They were twins, they were preadolescent, their blood had been leavened by trauma.

“Intervene,” he murmured, repeating the word. “That would suggest that Reseda shouldn’t be present. That she really is no longer a part of our little group.”

“I don’t think she is.”

The answer made him wistful; he couldn’t imagine proceeding without her-though clearly they would.

“So, should we?” Anise went on. “I really do want us to try tonight.”

“Yes,” he said finally. “Make the arrangements.”

“But I also don’t want Verbena to wind up like her”-and here the old lawyer heard Anise pausing as she chose her word carefully-“ predecessor in that house. I don’t want her to wind up like Tansy.”

“Heavens, none of us do! But maybe that won’t happen to Verbena.”

“I hope not. I rather like her.”

“I do, too. And she’s a very good lawyer. Good, solid work ethic.”

“But if she does lose one of her children…”