John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

"Gotcha!" Kim cried out, raising the little girl high over her head and tipping her up so that Molly was peering almost straight down. Molly feigned outrage at being snatched off her feet, but her giggles got the better of her, and a huge grin spread across her face.

"Down!" she cried. "Wanna get down!"

"Oh, you do, do you?" Kim asked. "Okay, fine!"

Releasing her sister, she let Molly drop in free fall before closing her hands around the little girl's waist once more.

"Don't do that!" Janet cried out as Molly uttered a shriek far more of delight than fear. "I swear, you'll give me a heart attack!"

"She loves it," Kim replied, swinging her sister around, then lowering her to the floor.

"Again!" Molly cried, trying now to shimmy up the legs of the very same person she'd been trying to escape only seconds before. "Do it again!"

"After supper," Kim told her. "And if you're very, very good, I'll let you help me wash the dishes." Giving Molly a gentle nudge toward the kitchen door, Kim opened the cupboard that held the luncheon china Janet's mother had given her for a wedding present. "You don't need anything more formal for a few years, dear," Janet could still hear her mother saying, and she'd certainly turned out to be right. "Is Pa going to be here for dinner?" Kim asked.

Janet heard the same tension in Kim's voice that she'd caught a few minutes before in Jared's. "I'm not sure," she said carefully, maintaining the fiction that all was well within their family. "But let's set a plate for him. I know he'll be here if he can make it." Kim shot her a quick glance that Janet had no trouble reading: You mean if he's sober enough! But like Jared, Kim didn't push the issue. "We'll give him a few more minutes," Janet said.

But it was far more than a few more minutes before Ted came home that evening, and when he did-a little after eleven-his face was flushed, his step unsteady, and his eyes bloodshot from the long hours of drinking. Janet was alone in the living room, trying to concentrate on one of the books she'd gotten from the library that afternoon. Molly had been tucked into her crib hours earlier, and Kim and Jared had escaped the heat and uneasiness in the house by going to a movie. When Ted didn't call out to her as he came through the back door, Janet's suspicion that he'd been drinking all evening was confirmed. Steeling herself to cope with the argument that was surely coming when he finally appeared in the living room, she set the book aside.

"I quit that stinkin' job today," Ted announced without preamble as he confronted her, a beer clutched in his right hand.

Janet felt a sinking sensation in her stomach: she knew that whatever she said would be the wrong thing, but not saying anything at all would be even worse. "Did someone offer you something better?" she asked, choosing her words carefully, and keeping them free of any inflection that might trigger Ted's temper.

He dropped onto the sofa, his free hand landing on her thigh. "Just couldn't take Frank Gilman any longer. Man's a dumbass!"

"Well, I'm sure you'll find something else," Janet offered, but even through his drunkenness, Ted recognized her ploy.

His eyes narrowed to puffy slits, and his hand tightened on her thigh. "Don't patronize me."

Janet's mind raced, remembering the night two years ago when Ted came home even drunker than this, and decided he wanted to make love to her. She'd tried to put him off, but it hadn't worked, and rather than fight him, she'd given in.

It had been a horrible night for her. When she discovered she was pregnant, she'd toyed with the idea of getting an abortion, but only for a moment. And when Molly was born, Janet knew she'd been right. But she didn't want it to happen again. "I'm very tired, Ted," she began, but Ted only leered.

"Then let's go to bed."

She cast around in her mind for something else-anything to put him off-when the phone rang. The surprise of it startled Ted as much as Janet. His hand fell away from her leg as she stood up to answer it, thoughts of some accident to Kim and Jared already leaping into her mind.

"May I speak to Ted Conway, please?" a woman asked.

There was an official-sounding tone to the voice that raised Janet's apprehensions even further. But whatever news this caller possessed, Ted was in no condition to deal with it.

"This is Mrs. Conway," she replied.

"I'm sorry to call you so late," the woman said, and Janet's fear ebbed slightly. Surely no one would apologize if it was about her children, would they? "This is Lucille Mathers, from the Willows in St. Albans?" Janet felt the worst of her fears instantly abate. It wasn't the kids-it was Ted's aunt. "I'm calling about Cora Conway," the woman went on, confirming Janet's thought. "I think your husband should come down here."

Janet's mind raced. Right now? St. Albans was 140 miles southeast of Shreveport; even if they left right away, they wouldn't get there until three in the morning. And given Ted's condition… "How bad is she?" Janet asked. The last time she'd talked to the people at the Willows, Cora had been in a semicomatose state, and her condition hadn't changed in several months.

"I'm afraid it's not good," Lucille Mathers replied. Very quickly she added, "I don't think she can last more than another day." A pause. Then: "She wants to see your husband. If it's at all possible-"

"Tomorrow," Janet said, making an instant decision.

"We'll leave early in the morning, and we should be there by eleven. Can you tell her that?"

"Of course," Lucille Mathers replied. "We'll look for you in the morning, then."

Hanging up the phone, Janet told Ted about Cora's request. As she talked she wasn't sure he was even listening, but when he spoke, his tongue thickened with the liquor he'd consumed, she knew he had.

And she knew it was the alcohol that was replying to her, not her husband. At least she hoped it was.

"Why the hell should I go see Aunt Cora?" he demanded. "She's crazy as a loon, and always has been. What am I supposed to do about her?"

"For God's sake, Ted!" Janet snapped. "She's dying, and you're the only family she's got!"

"So?" Ted replied. "What's she ever done for me?" Then, before Janet could answer him, his head dropped down onto the sofa and his eyes closed.

Janet was tempted to leave him exactly as he was and go to bed, but remembering that Jared and Kim hadn't come home yet, she changed her mind. Let them at least think he'd been sober enough when he came home to get himself into bed, she decided.

Shaking him hard, she finally got him to wake up just enough to let her guide him into the bedroom. A second later he was unconscious again, sprawled out on the bed in his clothing, snoring loudly.

No more, Janet thought as she lay beside him an hour later. Though Jared and Kim had come in and gone to bed and, undoubtedly, right to sleep, she herself was still wide-awake, listening to Ted's heavy breathing.

Something was going to have to change.

She couldn't live this way any longer.

None of them could.

Jared and Kimberley didn't have to glance at each other over Molly's head to understand that both of them were thinking exactly the same thing: How come we've never been here before?

The long drive southeast from Shreveport had been made in silence, the kind of silence that strained everyone's nerves, as if a bomb were ticking somewhere in the car, and each of them was nervously waiting for it to explode. Both the older children had held their breath when their mother offered to drive so their father could sleep, but Ted contented himself with a deep scowl in his wife's direction, and the observation that "I drive better dead drunk than most people do stone sober."