His tail dropped and the fur on the nape of his neck had risen slightly as an uncertain growl bubbled in his throat.
"Hey,fella, don't you recognize me?" Mark asked. He squatted down, andChivas, dropping low to the ground, had slunk forward, sniffing warily at Mark's outstretched hand.
"What's wrong with him?" Sharon asked.
Mark reached out and scratched the dog's neck, then grinned up at his mother.
"I'm supposed to be at school, and I bet I smell really weird after a night in the hospital. I probably smell just like the vet's office, and you know how he hates that."
Sharon had all but forgotten the incident until dinnertime, when Mark, who had been closeted in his room most of the afternoon, had come down to the dining room table. Throughout dinner Sharon noticed that Kelly seemed unusually subdued. Several times she caught her daughter eyeing Mark surreptitiously, her expression puzzled. It wasn't until the two of them were alone in the kitchen, washing the dishes, that Sharon finally asked Kelly about it.
"I don't know," Kelly had said, gazing up at her mother through serious-looking eyes. "He just looks sort of different, I guess."
"Well, of course he does," Sharon replied. "He's got a black eye and a bad cut."
"I don't mean that," Kelly protested. "It's just the way he looks. He's just not the same."
That was the real reason behind her argument with Blake, Sharon decided now, as she sat staring into the fire. She'd tried to tell him about it, tried to explain what had happened withChivas and what Kelly had said after dinner, but he'd brushed it all aside.
"Of course Mark's different," he'd said. "He got beat up and bandaged up, and even if the injuries didn't change him, you can bet the fight did. You don't get pounded the way he did without it changing you inside."
"But it's not inside," Sharon had insisted. "Chivassaw it, and Kelly saw it, and I think I can see it, too. He's just not the same as he was."
In the end she hadn't been able to put her finger on just what it was about Mark that had changed, and finally she'd given up trying to make Blake see what she herself couldn't describe. If the truth be known, she finally admitted to herself, perhaps there really was nothing at all. Perhaps she wanted to see something, simply to justify her anger toward Blake for having sent Mark to Ames without talking to her about it first.
She took a deep breath and stood up, making an almost physical effort to shake off the last vestiges of her anger and her vague, indescribable misgivings. Certainly Mark had seemed perfectly happy all day, and not the least concerned about his hours at the sports center. If anything, he had actually enjoyed them. So why should she keep on fretting?
She poked at the fire, settling the burning log well back against the fire wall, then arranging a screen on the hearth. Going downstairs, she saw Kelly standing at the living room window, gazing wistfully out at the snow. Reading her mind, Sharon smiled at her daughter. "Want to go for a walk in it?" she asked.
Kelly's eyes glowed eagerly. "Can we?"
"Come on," Sharon replied. Several minutes later, bundled up in the parkas Sharon had purchased only a few days earlier, mother and daughter stepped out into the snowy evening. The flakes were large and fluffy, and as they started down the sidewalk, the cold air stung their cheeks and they were quickly enveloped in the gentle silence that always comes with the first snow of the year.
Kelly reached out and took her mother's hand. "I love it here," she said, gazing around in happy wonder. "Aren't you glad we moved?"
Sharon said nothing for a moment, then the peacefulness of the snowfall overcame her as well.
"Yes," she said. "I guess I am."
Yet even as she said the words, she wondered.
CharlotteLaConner shivered as she gazed out at the snow slowly building on the front lawn. Under normal circumstances she would have been thrilled to see it, for it meant the skiing season was almost upon them, and that Christmas- always her favorite season-was just around the corner. Tonight, though, the whiteness outside only reflected the chill she was feeling in her own soul, and at last she turned away from the window to face her husband. Her eyes, she knew, had turned an angry bloodshot red, and her cheeks were still stained with tears.
"But it's not right," she pleaded once more. "I'm his mother, Chuck. Don't I have a right to see him?"
ChuckLaConner, the memory of his son's distorted features still etched deeply in his mind, forced himself to look directly at Charlotte as he once more repeated the story he and Ames had agreed upon late the night before. He rationalized to himself that at least she would be spared having to see what Jeff was turning into. Better she should live in ignorance than have that terrible image engraved on her heart forever. "It wouldn't do you, or him, any good," he said once more. "Char, he wouldn't even recognize you."
"But it's not possible," Charlotte whimpered, cowering away from his words as if she'd been struck. "I'm his mother, Chuck-he needs me!"
"He needs rest," Chuck insisted. "Honey, I know it seems crazy, but sometimes these things happen. Jeff's been under a lot of pressure lately-"
"And is that my fault?" Charlotte suddenly flared. "I wanted him to quit the team, remember?"
Chuck swore silently to himself. Remember? How could he forget? The argument had gone on almost every day since she'd gone to visit that boy in the hospital, and he still hadn't been able to convince her that whatever had happened wasn'tJeffs fault. Then he realized that perhaps there was a way to turn her own words against her and once and for all put an end to this discussion. "Did it ever occur to you that your nagging might have contributed to what's happened?" he asked, deliberately putting an icy edge on his words. As she recoiled, he repeated to himself yet again that all this was for her own good.
Charlotte dropped limply onto the sofa and stared at him bleakly, "is that what he said?" she asked in a hollow voice. "That all this is my fault?"
Chuck licked nervously at his lips. "Perhaps not in so many words," he temporized. "But what it comes down to is, for the moment the best thing we can do-both of us-is let the doctors take care of Jeff. And it's not forever, honey," he went on. "After a while, when he gets better…"
He let the words trail off. Part of his mind told him that he had just told his wife an outright lie; Jeff was never going to get better. But there was another part of him that wanted to believe that somehow Marty Ames would come up with a solution to the terrible thing that was happening to their son.
The important thing right now, though, was to keep Charlotte from finding out exactly how bad Jeff's situation was. Of course, he would never forgive himself for what had happened, never forgive himself for enrolling Jeff in a medical program that carried any risks whatsoever, no matter how slight they might have been.
He'd lost his son. He'd understood that in the dark hours before dawn this morning, when Marty Ames had finally let him see Jeff. His first instinct had been to turn on Ames, to strike out at the man who had done this. But in the end, as always happened with him, reason had prevailed. He'd come to understand that in the final analysis it was he himself who was culpable, he who had made the final decision to allow Jeff to be treated with Ames's experimental compounds.
He'd wanted it to work so badly, wanted so much for Jeff to be like all the other boys-especially like all the other boys in Silverdale-that he'd deliberately shut his mind to the possible side effects of Ames's treatment.