John Saul - Nightshade

After a few years, though, she’d stopped walking the few blocks into the village, letting Joan do the shopping for her. Joan only lived a little more than a mile from the edge of town, and it wasn’t as if she had much else to do. She didn’t work, not like Emily had. Emily Moore had kept going to her job as a cashier at the drugstore right up until the day the Rite Aid people had taken over and let her go. She’d even looked for another job, but by then the sickness had been starting, and she just couldn’t do it. After that, she’d had to let Joan and Bill take care of her.

But she hadn’t liked it — she hadn’t liked it at all. Not that her daughter Joan did a very good job helping out, either. Even though she tried, Joan had never been able to clean her house quite the way Emily liked it, and as for the shopping — well! Most of the time she didn’t bring Emily half the things she wanted, and there were always other things that Emily was absolutely certain she hadn’t asked for. Well, at least Joan didn’t try to make her pay for all those things anymore. Emily had set her straight on that right away. “Don’t you look at me like I’m crazy!” she’d told Joan the first time she’d found all the wrong things in the grocery bag. “And don’t think I’m going to pay for all this, either!” She’d brushed aside the list Joan had shown her, too. All it did was prove that Joan had learned how to copy her handwriting, which at least explained why there was money missing from her checking account every month. Joan had lied about it, of course, but that hadn’t surprised Emily at all.

After that, she’d started hiding money in her house, where Joan wouldn’t be able to find it. Then Joan had tried to trick her by offering to hire someone to “help” her. Emily had known right away what that was about — Joan just wanted to get someone into her house to hunt for her money! But Emily hadn’t fallen for it. It wasn’t long after that that she’d seen people — people that looked sort of familiar, but to whom Emily couldn’t quite put any names — walking by her house, spying on her. After one of them waved to her — just like he knew her! — Emily had started keeping the curtains closed.

Then they’d started coming to her door, talking to her like she was supposed to know who they were. She’d shut the door in their faces, and after a while, when she stopped answering the door at all, they stopped coming. But she knew they were still watching her, so she stopped going out of the house.

She liked that much better, because she no longer had to worry about anything. And she wasn’t alone either, not really.

She still had her memories, and after a while it wasn’t like they were memories at all. Sometimes, when she was fixing supper she’d make enough for two, and set out a place for Cynthia, too. She had a dim memory of Joan telling her that Cynthia wasn’t coming home, but Emily had known that wasn’t true — it was just another of the ways Joan was always trying to trick her. Besides, Joan had always been jealous of her sister, ever since she was a little girl. So Emily simply ignored what Joan said, certain that Cynthia had just gone away for a little while, and would be back any day now.

So she stayed in her house, and after a while one day seemed just like another, and one week blended into the next, and the months and the seasons and the years all ran together.

And Emily waited for Cynthia to come home.

Today, though, something was different.

Something didn’t quite feel right.

But what was it?

She peered dimly at the frying pan that was sizzling on the front burner, in which a quarter of an inch of oil was already bubbling. She tried to remember what she’d been intending to do with the skillet and the hot oil. Make breakfast?

She wasn’t sure. In fact, she wasn’t really certain what time it was. But it was light out, and she was hungry, so it must be morning.

Then, from the front of the house, she thought she heard a sound.

Cynthia!

She must finally have come home!

The frying pan immediately forgotten, Emily pushed through the swinging door that led to the little dining room that was furnished only with a worn oak table so small that even if you crowded it, you couldn’t get more than six people around it. Not that anyone ever sat around it anymore, and it was certainly big enough for herself and Cynthia.

Emily hurried through the dining room into the little foyer, and eagerly opened the door, certain Cynthia would be on the porch, ready to accept her mother’s hug.

But the porch was empty except for the pile of newspapers that Emily never bothered to bring into the house anymore. Frowning, she looked out into the street, but all she saw was a man in a blue uniform, carrying a leather bag. As he raised his hand to wave at her, Emily quickly shut the door.

Another one of Joan’s spies.

Then she knew!

Cynthia had her own key! She’d come in by herself and gone up to her room!

* * *

IN THE KITCHEN, the oil in the frying pan bubbled, then began turning black as curls of smoke rose from its surface.

* * *

EMILY STARTED TOWARD the stairs, but paused as she sensed something vaguely amiss. Something in the air? But even as her nostrils caught the first faint fumes drifting in from the kitchen, her old eyes fell on the threadbare brocade chair that stood just inside the archway leading into the parlor. Now how had that happened? Hadn’t it just come back from the upholsterers, covered with the bright, colorful material Cynthia had picked out the day before she’d gone on her trip? She’d have to speak to the upholsterer about the shoddy material they’d used!

But that could wait. Cynthia finally coming home was far more important than any chair!

The original reason she’d paused at the foot of the stairs having vanished from her mind as completely as if it had never been there at all, Emily hurried up the stairs and into the front bedroom. “Cynthia?” she called. “Oh, it’s so good to finally have you…”

Emily’s voice faded into silence as she realized the room was empty.

Her clouded eyes searched the room. “Cynthia?” she whispered. “Cynthia, when are you coming home?”

* * *

THE OIL IN the frying pan burst into flames just as the breeze outside caught one of the lace curtains that hung on each side of Emily Moore’s kitchen window. The breeze fanned the flames higher, the fire licking at the flimsy material as a beast might taste its prey before leaping to consume it…

* * *

EMILY MOVED INTO the room on the second floor, her eyes falling on the photograph of her older daughter that hung on the wall exactly where she and Cynthia had placed it when they’d picked it up from the photographer the week after Cynthia’s eighteenth birthday.

The beautiful gown Cynthia wore in the portrait still hung in Cynthia’s closet, along with all her other clothes.

The book she’d forgotten to take with her on her trip still lay open, facedown on her nightstand.

Everything was exactly as she had left it —

How long ago?

A week?

A month?

Surely no longer than that.

And she’d be home any day now! Of that, Emily was absolutely certain.

She moved slowly around the room, touching the objects on Cynthia’s vanity table, all the perfume and lipstick and eye shadow and mascara that Cynthia loved so much.

Every one of them was in its place, waiting for Cynthia.

She opened one of the drawers of Cynthia’s bureau, her trembling fingers caressing the soft cashmere of the sweater that lay within, her eyes oblivious to the depredations of the moths and the yellowing of the fraying fabric.

She closed the drawer and let her eyes sweep over the room one last time.