Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“There’s a curve ahead,” she said.

“I see it,” Julia answered, and she signaled and swung the car out, and the nightmare began.

The milk truck filled the road, filled the sky, appeared monstrous and metallic as the small sports car rounded the bend. Kate could see the face of the driver as his eyes opened wide, could hear the terrifying bleat of the truck’s horn, an explosion of sight and sound. “Oh my God!” Julia said beside her and wrenched the wheel of the car, skidding into a tight sharp turn as the sleek silvered sides of the truck rumbled past in a horn-blasting rush of air and sound and reflected sunlight, the name of the milk company etched itself into her mind, black letters on the silver truck, the car swerving in a screech of burning rubber, the milk truck gone, the car Julia had passed swinging by on the left, the small Alfa rumbling into a ditch, she thought she heard Julia say, “Renato,” and then the countryside was silent again. She sat still and silent, trembling, unable to speak. The other car hadn’t even bothered to stop. The truck had not turned back. She sat trembling and hating them. She could hear birds chirping in the woods alongside the road. The Alfa was tilted at an angle, the front wheel in the drainage ditch. She suddenly realized she was covered with a cold sweat.

“Mrs. Regan?” she said. She had spoken too softly; her voice was barely a whisper. She turned her head. Julia was sitting erect behind the wheel, as if in shock, staring through the windshield.

“Are you all right?” Kate asked.

Julia did not answer. Her hands clung to the wheel tightly. She kept staring through the windshield.

“Mrs. Regan?” Kate said.

She turned on the seat.

“Mrs. Regan?”

She reached out to touch her.

“Mrs. Regan?”

And then her hand touched Julia’s shoulder, and the scream burst from her mouth in terror as Julia fell over in seeming slow-motion, bending stiffly from the waist as Kate’s hand touched her, falling onto the wheel, her forehead hitting the wheel with a dull hollow thud.

“ Mrs. Regan! ” she screamed, and knew she was dead, knew those staring eyes meant death, and was suddenly gripped with a cold knifing fear and a desperately urgent need to get out of that small car. She threw open the door and stumbled into the ditch. Her eyes wide, she ran blindly into the woods.

The experts in death surrounded the small car, two state troopers, a reporter from the Talmadge Courier , and Dr. Milton Anderson, who arrived in his automobile and pushed his way through the crowd and pronounced Julia Regan dead after looking at her for only an instant.

“What do you make of it, Doc?” one of the state troopers asked.

“I couldn’t tell for certain without an autopsy,” Milt said. “I imagine it’s a coronary, though, sudden shock, insufficient blood supply to the heart, that’s my guess.”

“Skid marks all over the road,” the second trooper said. “She yanked that wheel over in a hell of a hurry.”

Milt nodded. “She did everything in a hell of a hurry,” he said.

“Saved the girl’s life, though.”

“What girl?”

“Found this on the seat of the car.” The trooper held out a handbag. “There’s a junior driver’s license in it.”

“Whose?”

“Katherine Bridges,” the trooper answered. “That the woman’s daughter, Doc?”

“No,” Milt said. “She only has a son. We’ll have to notify him.”

“You want to take care of that, Doc? There’s one thing I hate, it’s calling up somebody whose—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“We better start looking for this girl,” the second trooper said.

“I’ll call in for the meat wagon,” the first trooper said.

That’s the way it ends, Milt thought. Rich or poor, full or empty, they call in for the meat wagon.

Darkness came to Talmadge suddenly and swiftly, because black is the color of nightmares. A high wind rose, blowing in off the ridges, penetrating the woods where Kate lay huddled to the ground, cold and frightened. She had no idea what time it was. She knew only that the sun seemed to vanish suddenly, the way it had this morning just before the thunderstorm, completely and swiftly abandoning the sky, and that darkness had followed immediately afterward. She lay in the darkness and whimpered and remembered the lifeless staring eyes of Julia Regan, her face turned sidewards on the wheel, death staring at her inside the tiny automobile, and again she shivered and tried to tell herself she would not go crazy.

But she knew she would. She knew before this day was ended she would lose her mind, and she lay huddled against the ground, feeling the cold wind rushing over her back and her legs, convincing herself she would, knowing she would, until the subtle line between reality and fantasy finally merged, and she wandered through a half-believed insanity, constructing images that were terrifying, almost play-acting a maniac, and then wondering if she had already gone insane, and then telling herself she was completely sane, and then knowing, believing, that crazy people always thought they were perfectly normal, and listening to the wind, and shuddering, and hearing the myriad sounds of night, the insects in the woods, the cars rushing by on the highway, sounds that seemed magnified, a moonless night, and darkness everywhere, the resounding darkness of horror, her flesh was cold, her mind reverberated with the events of the day, sunlight and rain, music and cacophony, the bitter argument, her mother cold and forbidding, her mother, her mother, her mother, she knew she was going crazy.

David, she thought suddenly.

And, thinking of him, all else rushed out of her mind, as if some powerful sucking wind had drawn everything down into a tiny funnel, drawn everything out of her mind to leave it white and blank, with first the single name appearing there on a white blank screen, David, and then the name fading, and the image of David replacing it. A new rush of thoughts followed the image, lucid and clear, his mother was dead, they would have notified him, he would have come up to Talmadge, he was here somewhere, he needed her.

This was the thought.

He needed her.

She got to her feet. She wiped her face. Her blouse was torn, and she had lost one shoe somewhere in the woods, but she stood up and tucked the ends of her blouse into her skirt, and she took off the remaining shoe, and she thought David needs me , and she began walking. She knew instinctively where he would be. She knew because everything suddenly seemed so clear to her, as if the single thought David needs me had erased the confusion of the morning and the bitter uncertainty and frustration of the afternoon, and the frightening terror of the monster milk truck and the wide staring eyes of the dead woman on the seat beside her. She knew where he would be, and she went there instinctively.

There was a single light burning in the house on the edge of the lake. She walked directly to the front door, but she did not knock. She opened the door and walked into the house. She passed a mirror in the hall, but she did not look into it.

He was sitting in the living room with the furniture covered with sheets, facing the window that overlooked the lake. The lamp burned next to his chair. He was sitting quite still, looking out over the lake, when she entered the room barefoot and soundlessly. He did not look up. She did not call his name. She went directly to his chair, and she sat on the arm of it, and he turned to her and looked up into her face, and she reached out gently with one hand and touched the back of his neck. With the other hand, she began unbuttoning her blouse, almost unconsciously, button by button, the hand at the back of his neck softly resting there, the other hand unbuttoning the blouse in a steady inexorable motion, and then she brought his head to her breast. She kept her hand on the back of his neck and gently, tenderly, she brought his head to rest on her breast, cradled there, and she said nothing. She simply held him to her breast with her hand on his head.