Maggie Shayne - Wake to Darkness

No, it was only him. And he saw more than the mask she wore, the positive-thinking public persona. He saw through the cynic she thought she was to the real Rachel. And it made him want to see her even more.

A door slamming downstairs reminded him that he wasn’t alone. It was the weekend, and his nephews, who usually showed up on Friday nights, had been delayed an extra twelve hours due to his trip into the city to see Rachel. They would not be put off any longer.

“Uncle Mason!” Joshua yelled. “Aren’t you up yet?”

He rolled onto his side and blinked at the clock. 8:30 a.m. Kids had no respect for sleeping in. Flinging back the covers, he sat up, gave his head time to adjust to being vertical, then shouted back, “I’ll be right down.” He needed a shower, but in the meantime he pulled on pajama bottoms, a T-shirt and a pair of nice thick socks, because his old farmhouse had cold floors. Giving his hair a rudimentary flattening with his hands, he headed downstairs.

Jeremy was in the living room, on the sofa, already manning the Xbox controller. His expressionless eyes were glued to the TV screen, and his brown hair was even longer than it had been last weekend. He refused to get it cut.

“Hey, Jer,” Mason said.

“Hey.”

Nothing, not a flicker. It was par for the course with Jeremy lately. Only a little over four months since his father had shot himself in the head in Mason’s apartment. Two and a half months since the teen had busted into a remote cabin where a madman was about to kill both Mason and Rachel. Jeremy had picked Mason’s gun up off the floor and shot the bastard dead. Just like that. He hadn’t even hesitated. The kid was depressed over the loss of his father, traumatized over having killed a man.

Mason scuffed into the kitchen where Marie had a pot of coffee brewing, and was taking mugs from the cupboard. She looked his way as he entered and smiled, but her eyes were dead, too. Like Jeremy’s. Her smile was fake. Forced. Her baby girl had been stillborn a few weeks ago. Her husband had killed himself three months before that. The woman was so destroyed he thought a stiff wind would knock her over. But she was putting on a brave face for her boys’ sakes, doing the best she could. It validated for him yet again that he’d done the right thing by hiding Eric’s suicide note. The family was barely holding on as it was. Imagine how much worse it would be if they knew that their beloved husband and father was a serial killer.

“Sorry we got here so early,” Marie said. “Josh was in the car with his backpack an hour ago. I put him off as long as I could.”

“It’s fine. I should have been up by now.”

“It’s your downtime. You know you could skip a weekend if you wanted.”

“And do what, sleep till noon and stare at the walls all day? Nah. I need these guys around to keep me from going to pot.”

Once again she smiled because she was supposed to. Her eyes remained stark. Dark circles under them told him she wasn’t sleeping. Her pale skin and sunken cheeks told him she probably wasn’t eating right, either.

How did you know when a grieving wife or son moved from ordinary mourning into a dangerous depression? Where was the line? He was going to have to find out.

The coffee was done, so he took the mugs from her and filled them. “Sit down, Marie. I’m cooking you some breakfast.”

“We already ate.”

“They did. You didn’t. Bacon and eggs, whaddya say?”

She shook her head, but accepted the filled mug and sank into a kitchen chair, holding it between her hands as if she was cold. He spotted Joshua running past the window, red parka, knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top like a character from South Park. He’d taken one of the plastic toboggans from out in the barn. Mason had bought them right after the first snow. Josh was heading up the hill out back with it.

“He loves it here with you,” Marie said. She’d slugged back half the coffee, though it was piping hot.

“I love having him.” Her boots were still on, making puddles under her chair. He frowned. “Are you in a hurry, Marie?”

She followed his gaze and shook her head. “No, just absentminded. I’m sorry about the floor.”

“I’m not worried about the floor. I’m worried about you.”

She met his eyes, but quickly shifted hers away. “Some of my girlfriends are taking me out shopping today. They think it’s time I...got over it. I just don’t know how they think that’s possible.”

“It has to be possible,” he said. “Marie, we all miss Eric, and I know you’re devastated about the baby.”

“Lilly. Her name was Lilly.”

He knew that. It was engraved on the headstone with the little angel above the plot right next to her father’s.

A dozen platitudes came in and out of his mind, things he’d read in Rachel’s books. But he didn’t say any of them, because he thought Marie needed to hold on to her grief a little bit longer. And that was okay. “You have a right to your pain, Marie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Thank you for that.”

“When you’re ready to start to heal, though, you put your focus on those boys. They’re just as precious as they were before all the losses you’ve suffered. They need you to come back to them.”

She thinned her lips and nodded as if she was hearing him, but he didn’t think she was. “I appreciate you picking up the slack in the meantime.” Then she pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

She headed out the door to her car and took off—a little too fast for the road conditions, in his opinion. He’d had a set of studded snow tires put on for her, though, so she should be all right on the road.

But she wasn’t all right emotionally. He knew that.

He carried his coffee mug through the house to the back, passing Jeremy again on the way. He was as morose as his mother. Poor kid. But Mason kept going into the back room, the coldest room in the little farmhouse, which had no real purpose and would, he thought, make a great woodworking shop if he ever followed his intention to learn how to do that sort of thing. Right now it was a catch-all area for anything he didn’t know what to do with. He passed the piles of junk, opened the back door and hollered out to Josh, “I’m making breakfast. You hungry?”

Joshua was at the bottom of the hill, picking himself up out of the snow and preparing to head up again for another ride. He hollered, “Come out and sled with me!”

“I need food and a shower, and then I’ll sled with you.”

“Awwwwl-riiiight.”

“So you gonna eat?”

“How long?”

“Half hour?”

“Okay.”

“That’s about six more trips down the hill, Josh. Count ’em off and come on in, okay?”

Josh nodded and started back up the hill at a pace that made Mason smile. No question. The kid was going to try to get in ten. At least. Mason headed back into the living room, stopped behind the sofa and put both hands on Jeremy’s shoulders to be sure he had his attention. “I need to take a shower. Ten minutes, tops. Keep an eye on your brother, okay?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t look away from the TV screen.

“Jeremy, that means put the controller down, get up, walk to the window and check on him at least three times while I’m gone.”

“He’s eleven.”

“That’s not an answer. Come on, Jer, help me out here.”

“All right, I’ll check on him. Jeeze.”

Mason closed his eyes and prayed for patience. The kid had lost his father, his baby sister and, for all intents and purposes, his mother, he reminded himself. Add to that the typical brooding of a seventeen-year-old male, and you had a recipe for frustration that couldn’t be beat.