Mary Clark: Where are the children?

At four minutes past ten he walked into Wiggins' Market and grunted a greeting as he reached into the refrigerator section for a quart of milk.

Nancy came down the steep staircase precariously balancing an armful of towels and sheets, pyjamas and underwear. On impulse she'd decided to do a wash that could be hung outdoors to dry before the storm broke. Winter was here. It was on the edge of the yard, forcing the last few dead leaves off the trees. It was settling into the dirt road that now was as hardened as concrete. It was changing the colour of the bay into a smoky grey-blue.

Outside, the storm was building, but now, while there was still some weak sun, she'd take advantage of it. She loved the fresh smell of sheets dried outside; loved to pull them against her face as she drifted off to sleep with the way they captured the faint smell of cranberry bogs and pine and the salty smell of the sea – so different from the coarse, rough, dank smell of prison sheets. She pushed the thought away.

At the foot of the staircase she started to turn in the direction of the back door, then stopped. How foolish. The children were fine. They'd been out only fifteen minutes, and this frantic anxiety that was her constant albatross had to be conquered. Even now she suspected that Missy sensed it and was beginning to respond to her overprotection. She'd turn the wash on, then call them in. While they watched their ten-thirty television programme, she'd have a second cup of coffee and look at the weekly Cape Cod Community News. With the season over, there might be some good antiques available and not at tourist prices. She wanted an old-fashioned settee for the parlour – the high-backed kind they used to call a 'settle' in the seventeen-hundreds.

In the laundry room off the kitchen she sorted the wash, tossed the sheets and towels into the machine, added detergent and bleach and finally pushed the button to start the cycle.

Now it surely was time to call the children. But at the front door she detoured. The paper had just arrived. The delivery boy was disappearing around the curve in the road. She picked it up, shivering against the increasing wind, and hurried into the kitchen. She turned the burner jet under the still-warm coffeepot. Then, anxious to get a look at the classified page, she thumbed quickly to the second section of the paper.

Her eyes focused on the blaring headline and the pictures – all the pictures: of her and Carl and Rob Legler; the one of her with Peter and Lisa… that clinging, trusting way they'd always huddled up to her. Through a roaring in her ears she remembered vividly the time they'd posed for that one. Carl had taken it.

'Don't pay attention to me,' he'd said; 'pretend I'm not here.' But they'd known he was there and had shrunk against her, and she had looked down at them as he snapped the picture. Her hands were touching their silky, dark heads.

'No… no… no… no…!' Now her body arched in pain. Unsteadily she reached out her hand, and it hit the coffeepot, knocking it over. She drew it back, only dimly feeling the searing liquid that splattered on her fingers.

She had to burn the paper. Michael and Missy musn't see it. That was it. She'd burn the paper so that no one could see it. She ran to the fireplace in the dining-room. The fireplace… that wasn't cheery and warm and protecting any more. Because there was no haven. there never could be a haven for her. She squeezed the paper together and reached unsteadily for the box of matches on the mantel. A wisp of smoke and a flame, and then the paper began to burn as she stuffed it between the logs.

Everyone on the Cape was reading that paper. They'd know… they'd all know. The one picture they'd surely recognize. She didn't even remember that anyone had seen her after she'd cut her hair and dyed it. The paper was burning brightly now. She watched as the picture with Peter and Lisa flamed, and charred and curled. Dead, both of them; and she'd be better off with them. There was no place to hide for her… or to forget. Ray could take care of Michael and Missy. Tomorrow in Michael's class the children would be looking at him, whispering, pointing their fingers.

The children. She must save the children. No, get the children. That was it. They'd catch cold.

She stumbled to the back door and pulled it open. 'Peter… Lisa…' she called. No, no! It was Michael and Missy. They were her children.

'Michael. Missy. Come here. Come in now!' Her wail heightened to a shriek. Where were they? She hurried out to the backyard, unmindful of the cold that bit through her light sweater.

The swing. They must have gotten off the swing. They were probably in the woods. 'Michael. Missy. Michael! Missy! Don't hide! Come here now!'

The swing was still moving. The wind was making it sway. Then she saw the mitten. Missy's mitten, caught in the metal loops of the swing.

From far off she heard a sound. What sound? The children.

The lake! They must be at the lake. They weren't supposed to go there, but maybe they had. They'd be found. Like the others. In the water. Their faces wet and swollen and still.

She grabbed Missy's mitten, the mitten with the smile face, and staggered towards the lake. She called their names over and over again. She pushed her way through the woods and out on to the sandy beach.

In the lake, a little way out, something was glistening below the surface. Was it something red… another mitten…Missy's hand? She plunged into the icy water as far as her shoulders and reached down. But there wasn't anything there. Frantically Nancy clutched her fingers together so that they formed a strainer, but there was nothing – only the terrible numbing cold water. She looked down, trying to see to the bottom; leaned over and fell. The water gushed into her nostrils and mouth and burned her face and neck.

Somehow she staggered up and back before her wet clothes pulled her down again. She fell on to the ice-crusted sand. Through the roar in her ears and the mist that was closing in front of her eyes, she looked into the woods and saw him – his face… Whose face?

The mist closed over her eyes completely. Sounds died away: the mournful cackle of the sea gull… the lapping of the water… Silence.

It was there that Ray and Dorothy found her. Shivering uncontrollably, lying on the sand, her hair and clothes plastered to her head and body, her eyes blank and uncomprehending, angry blisters raised on the hand that clutched a small red mitten to her cheek.

Jonathan carefully washed and rinsed his breakfast dishes, scoured the omelet pan and swept the kitchen floor. Emily had been naturally, effortlessly neat, and years of living with her had made him appreciate the intrinsic comfort of tidiness. He always hung his clothes in the closets, put his laundry in the bathroom hamper and cleared up immediately after his solitary meals. He even had an eye for the kind of detail that his cleaning woman missed and after she left on Wednesdays would do small jobs like washing canisters and bric-a-brac and polishing surfaces that she'd left cloudy with wax.

In New York he and Emily had lived on Sutton Place on the south-east corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Their apartment building had extended over the F.D.R. Drive to the edge of the East River. Sometimes they had sat on their seventeenth-floor balcony and watched the lights of the bridges that spanned the river and talked about the time when they'd be retired at the Cape and looking out over Maushop Lake.

'You won't have Bertha in every day to keep the wheels spinning,' he'd teased her.

'By the time we get up there, Bertha will be ready to retire and I'll break you in as my assistant. All we'll really need is a weekly cleaning woman. How about you? Will you miss having a car pick you up at the door any time you want it?'