John Saul: Nathaniel

"Laura?" Janet echoed, in a voice that sounded dazed even to herself. "Who's Laura?"

Amos frowned, his eyes clouding. "Mark's sister. Until she got married, this was her room." He paused a moment, then, as if he felt an explanation was necessary, spoke again. "I was going to turn it into a den, or a study. I just never got around to it."

Janet gazed at the room, taking in its details with apparent calm, while she frantically searched the corners of her memory for the information she knew must be there, that had somehow slipped away from her.

The name Laura meant nothing to her.

The whole idea of Mark having had a sister meant nothing to her.

But that was ridiculous. If Mark had had a sister, he must have talked about her sometime over the years. She'd simply forgotten. Some kind of amnesia, maybe: somehow, during the last few hours of shock, it must have been driven from her mind.

"It's just fine," she said at last, careful not to let her voice betray her confusion. She glanced around the room once more, this time forcing herself to concentrate. There was nothing special about the room; it was simply a room, with a bed, a chair, a nightstand, and a dresser. A chenille bedspread covered the slightly sagging mattress, and there was a braided rug covering most of the pine floor. Ill-fitting curtains hung at the window, and an image of a Sears catalog suddenly came into Janet's mind. A second later, she made the connection: the curtains were identical to the ones she had had in her own room when she was a little girl, the ones her mother had ordered from the Sears catalog, in a size close to, but not quite right for, the windows. Her mind churned on, and the rest of the memories flooded back, the memories she'd deliberately suppressed, hoped never to look at again:

The fire, when the old house she'd been born in had burned to the ground, consuming everything she loved- her parents and her brother, too-leaving her to be raised by a series of aunts who somehow had always found reasons to pass her on to someone else until, at last, she'd turned eighteen and gone to live by herself in New York. A year later, she'd married Mark.

And now, once again, here were those mail-order curtains, bringing back those memories. She sank onto the bed, one hand reflexively coming up to cover her eyes as she felt them fill with tears.

"Are you all right?" she heard her father-in-law ask. She took a deep breath, then made herself smile.

"I'll be fine. It's just that-that-"

But Amos Hall stopped her. "Lie down for a little while. Just lie down, and try to go to sleep. I'll take care of Michael, and later on we'll talk. But for now, just try to get a little sleep." Taking the boy firmly by the hand, Amos left the room, closing the door behind him.

For a long time, Janet lay on the bed, trying to make herself be calm, trying to put the memories of the past to rest and cope with the problems of the present.

Laura.

She would concentrate on Laura.

Somewhere in her memory, there must be something about Mark's sister, and if she concentrated, it would come back to her. It just wasn't possible that Mark, in their thirteen years together, had never mentioned having a sister. It wasn't possible…

And then the exhaustion of the last hours caught up with her, and she slept.

Michael stared in awe at the room his grandfather had shown him into. It was a boy's room, its walls covered with baseball and football pennants. Suspended from the ceiling were four model airplanes, frozen in flight as if they were involved in a dogfight. Over the bed there was a bookshelf, and Michael could recognize some of the books without reading the titles: identical volumes sat on his own bookshelf back home in New York. "Was this my father's room?" he asked at last.

"This is all the stuff he had when he was a boy," his grandfather replied. "All these years, and here it is. I suppose I should have gotten rid of it, but now I'm glad I didn't. Maybe I was saving it just for you."

Michael frowned, regarding his grandfather with suspicious eyes. "But you didn't know I was coming."

"But you would have, wouldn't you?" Amos countered. "Someday, wouldn't you have come to visit your grandparents?"

Michael shook his head. "I don't think Dad wanted to come here. I don't think he liked it here."

"Now what makes you say a thing like that?" Amos asked, lowering himself onto the studio couch that served as a bed, and drawing Michael down beside him.

" 'Cause every time I asked him if we could come here to visit, he said maybe next year. That's what he always said, and whenever I told him that's what he said last year, he always said he'd only said maybe. So I guess he never really wanted to come, did he?"

"Maybe he could just never find the time," Amos suggested.

Michael shrugged, and drew slightly away from his grandfather. "He always took us on a vacation. One year we went to Florida, and twice we went camping in the mountains." Suddenly he grinned. "That was neat. Do you ever go camping?"

"Not for years. But now that you're here, I don't see why we couldn't go. Would you like that?"

The grin on Michael's face faded. "I don't know. I always went camping with my dad." He fell silent for a moment, then turned to look up into his grandfather's face. "How come my dad died? How come he even came out here without bringing us with him? Or even telling us he was coming?" Anger began to tinge his voice. "He said he was going to Chicago."

"And he went to Chicago," Amos replied. "Then he came here. I don't rightly know exactly why."

Michael's eyes narrowed. "You mean you won't tell me."

"I mean I don't know," Amos said gruffly, standing up. He paused, then reached down and took Michael's chin in his rough hand, forcing the boy to face him. "If you mean I'm not telling you something because I think you're too young to know, then you're wrong. I don't hold with that sort of nonsense. If a boy's old enough to ask a question, he's old enough to hear the answer." His hand dropped away from Michael's face but he continued to regard his grandson with an unbending gaze. "I don't know why your father came out here," he said. "All I can tell you is that he got here yesterday, and last night he died."

Michael stared at his grandfather for a long time, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quavering. "But how come he died? He wasn't sick, was he?"

"It was an accident," Amos said shortly. "He was in the barn, up in the loft. He must have tripped over something."

The suspicion came back into Michael's eyes. "What?" he demanded.

Amos stiffened slightly. "I don't know-nobody does. Anyway, he fell off the edge of the loft, into the haybin."

Michael frowned. "What's a haybin?"

"On a farm, you keep the hay in bales up in a loft. Then, when you want to feed the animals in the barn, you pitch some of the hay down from the loft into the haybin."

"But how far is it?"

"Maybe ten feet."

Michael's frown deepened. "I fell that far once, and all that happened was that I twisted my ankle."

Amos hesitated, then spoke again. "But you didn't fall onto a pitchfork, did you?"

Michael's eyes widened. "A pitchfork?"

Amos nodded. "It's a big fork, with four tines. It's what you use to move hay around with. It was lying in the bin, and your dad fell onto it."

Suddenly Michael was on his feet, his face contorted with fury. "No! That's not what happened!" His voice rose as his angry eyes riveted his grandfather. "My dad didn't fall-he wouldn't have! Somebody must have pushed him. Somebody killed him, didn't they? Somebody killed my father!"

Michael's fists came up, ready to begin pummeling at his grandfather, but Amos reached out, putting one large hand on each of Michael's forearms. As his strong fingers closed, Michael found himself held immobile.