She had read Sarah’s list, Pete realized, and knew that the next item was to check for roof leaks. He knew there were a few up there, dripping into little plastic garbage cans that Kate regularly carried down and emptied into the slop sink in the mudroom. Patching those leaks was one of this year’s projects.
Kate was scared, Pete could tell, but doing her best to keep a lid on it. This warmed and comforted him. Her forge-ahead attitude in adverse situations had always been a source of inspiration; it was one of the qualities he loved most about her. He could see the fear swimming through her beautiful brown eyes, but she was clearly not going to let it take over the controls.
“We’ll get things done faster if we work as a team,” she added.
“Good idea. Thanks, sweetheart.”
He handed her the supplies he was carrying and went to the closet in the main hallway, where they kept their “linens ’n things,” as Kate liked to say. He grabbed a stack of towels from the top shelf — not the good towels they used in the bathrooms, but rather the threadbare, retired towels that had been demoted for use as impromptu drop cloths, car polishers, or table coverings when Cary did a project that required paint or glue or whatever.
Pete went up the steps three at a time. In the second-floor hallway, he grabbed the dangling cord with the little wooden ball on the end and pulled the stairs down, hearing the steel springs issue a wobbly, metallic groan. Tossing the towels up into the dark, rectangular orifice, he climbed into the attic with much less caution and more speed than usual. The fold-out steps had always felt cheaply made to him, as if the hinges might give way at any moment.
The attic wasn’t much, although more than a crawl space. Pete couldn’t quite stand up all the way; if he did, the top of his head would press against the long wooden beam where the two angled sides of the roof came together. But there was more than enough room to get around in a low crouch. The Soameses had built a small city of boxes on either side, with a clear path up the center of the space. The rain was particularly noisy here, and Pete shuddered at the thought that the only thing keeping him from being drenched in a radioactive downpour was a thin layer of rotting shingles nailed over sheets of aging plywood.
The only light in the attic was a bare-bulb fixture with a pull-string. Just as he grasped the bob, Pete saw something that made his heart freeze. At the end of the cleared pathway, horizontal lines of muted light sliced through in the darkness.
The exhaust fan…
It had been installed by the previous owners as a way of expelling excessive summer heat. Pete and Kate had gone a step further and, working together one Saturday afternoon, connected it to a thermostat so they wouldn’t have to keep running upstairs to turn it on. Then, in their anal-retentive zeal, they oiled the pivot points on the louvered vents to make them turn more easily. Now those vents were rising and falling with every gust.
Pete grabbed one of the towels and used it to cover his nose and mouth, wondering how much of the floating poison he’d already inhaled. Then the obvious occurred to him, and he flicked on the power switch that overrode the thermostatic control. The vents wavered open as the fan roared to life. That should blow it back out, he thought, and keep it out.
One leak at a time, Pete thought. He stacked boxes under each of the drips, first moving the garbage cans out of the way. When each box-tower just touched the angled roofline, he stuffed towels under each leak until those spaces were tightly packed. He realized this was a temporary and wildly imperfect solution, but it would have to do for now.
Finished, he poured the liquid from three garbage cans into a fourth, intending to dump it all down the second-floor toilet. He struggled to keep his abject terror at bay as he went back down the folding steps, cradling the three-quarters-full plastic can against his chest. It required the discipline of a lifetime to shove back the unspeakable image of the hinges giving way, the steps collapsing, him crashing to the floor, and the deadly contents of the can spilling all over his face.
He flushed the toilet five times, then lifted the bathroom window just enough to throw the can out. It would land in the backyard, he knew. And it can damn well stay there.
Before he could go downstairs and see how Kate made out with the other air conditioner, the door to Cary’s bedroom opened and the boy stepped out.
“Hey, big guy,” Pete began. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you before. I didn’t mean to.”
Cary shrugged but didn’t make eye contact. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, and I really am sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He smiled. “Let’s talk more about this later. I want to get your thoughts on it. But right now I have to go see if Mom needs my help, okay?”
A nod. “Sure.”
Pete turned and started down the stairs, then stopped and spun back. He still had the all-is-well smile on his face, but it was taking a supreme effort to keep it there.
“By the way, what did Mark say?”
Cary was looking down at his phone, and Pete could tell by his thumb movements that he was playing a game of some sort.
“I couldn’t get him,” Cary said plainly. “I think his phone’s turned off.”
12
Mark Soames sat in the apartment’s tiny kitchen thinking what he always did when he was here—It’s so depressing. Colonial-style cabinets, peeling floral wallpaper, and a stained porcelain sink… this place always gave him a sinking feeling of hopelessness.
“Do you want something to drink?” his host inquired. Sharon was a remarkably pretty girl of eighteen, a strawberry blonde with soft features and a nicely proportioned figure that was obscured by an untucked, half-buttoned denim shirt. Mark assumed the untucking and half-buttoning was done so as not to put any unnecessary pressure on the growing baby bump beneath.
“Sure,” he said, “Cherry Coke, please.” He went to reach for his cellphone, tucked in its usual place in his front right pocket. It was an unbreakable habit now, checking it every five minutes or so. Then he pulled his hand back when he remembered he’d turned it off to make ignoring his father that much easier.
Sharon opened the fridge and said, “No soda. There’s water, nonfat milk, orange juice, and apple juice.”
“No soda? Really?”
“No,” she said.
“Wow, since when?”
“Since now.”
“Okay then, orange juice is fine.”
Sharon set the container on the counter, and Mark’s heart broke when he saw that it was just about empty. I should’ve guessed that. I should’ve said, “Nothing for me, thanks.” She opened one of the outdated cabinets to retrieve a small glass, and Mark caught sight of the meager contents within — a handful of other glasses and what appeared to be a sugar bowl. Nothing else.
There was only enough juice to fill the glass halfway, and when she brought it to him he had to fight the urge to scream, “No, please — just keep it!”
After tossing the container into a recycling bucket, Sharon sat down. Mark was watching her closely now, trying to see through the facade, but she was determinedly impassive. Her eyes were trained on the window over the sink, which was receiving a thorough cleansing by the storm.
Countless memories had been forged in this room, times when the two of them sat at this table just like they were now. Party after party, drink after drink, smoke after smoke. The jokes, the laughs. They’d known each other since they were toddlers, and her sense of humor had always been one of her most attractive qualities. She had a particular fondness for dirty poems and a possibly related gift for rewriting the lyrics of any song on the fly, usually altering them from PG-13 to triple-X.