“Just like in the movie Saturday,” Charlotte reminded her. “If things get real bad and he goes berserk, kick him between the legs.”
“Oh, yeah,” Em said dubiously, “kick him in his tickles. ”
“Testicles.”
“It was tickles.”
“It was testicles,” Charlotte insisted firmly.
Emily shrugged. “Whatever.”
Mrs. Delorio walked into the family room, drying her hands on a yellow kitchen towel. She was wearing an apron over her skirt and blouse. She smelled of onions, which she had been chopping; she’d been starting to prepare dinner when they’d arrived. “Are you girls ready for more Pepsi?”
“No, ma’am,” Charlotte said, “we’re fine, thank you.
Enjoying the show.”
“It’s a great show,” Emily said.
“One of our favorites,” Charlotte said.
Emily said, “It’s about a boy with tickles and everyone keeps kicking them.”
Charlotte almost thumped the little twerp on the head.
Frowning with confusion, Mrs. Delorio glanced back and forth from the television screen to Emily. “Tickles?”
“Pickles,” Charlotte said, making a lame effort at covering.
The doorbell rang before Em could do more damage.
Mrs. Delorio said, “I’ll bet that’s your folks,” and hurried out of the family room.
“Peabrain,” Charlotte said to her sister.
Emily looked smug. “You’re just mad because I showed it was all a lie. She never heard of boys having tickles.”
“Sheesh!”
“So there,” Emily said.
“Twerp.”
“Snerp.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“It is if I want it to be.”
The doorbell rang and rang as if someone was leaning on it.
Vic peered through the fish-eye lens at the man on the front stoop. It was Marty Stillwater.
He opened the door, stepping back so his neighbor could enter. “My God, Marty, it looked like a police convention over there. What was that all about?”
Marty stared at him intensely for a moment, especially at the gun in his right hand, then seemed to make some decision and blinked. Wet from the rain, his skin looked glazed and as unnaturally white as the face of a porcelain figurine. He seemed shrunken, shriveled, like a man recovering from a serious illness.
“Are you all right, is Paige all right?” Kathy asked, entering the hall behind Vic.
Hesitantly, Marty stepped across the threshold and stopped just inside the foyer, not entering quite far enough to allow Vic to close the door.
“What,” Vic asked, “you’re worried about dripping on the floor? You know Kathy thinks I’m a hopeless mess, she’s had everything in the house Scotchgarded! Come in, come in.”
Without entering farther, Marty looked past Vic into the living room, then up toward the head of the stairs. He was wearing a black raincoat buttoned to the neck, and it was too large for him, which was part of the reason he seemed shrunken.
Just when Vic thought the man was stricken mute, Marty said, “Where’re the kids?”
“They’re okay,” Vic assured him, “they’re safe.”
“I need them,” Marty said. His voice was no longer raspy, as it had been earlier, but wooden. “I need them.”
“Well, for God’s sake, old buddy, can’t you at least come in long enough to tell us what—”
“I need them now,” Marty said, “they’re mine.”
Not a wooden voice, after all, Vic Delorio realized, but tightly controlled, as if Marty was biting back anger or terror or some other strong emotion, afraid of losing his grip on himself. He trembled a little. Some of that rain on his face might have been sweat.
Coming forward along the hall, Kathy said, “Marty, what’s wrong?”
Vic had been about to ask the same question. Marty Stillwater was usually such an easy-going guy, relaxed, quick to smile, but now he was stiff, awkward. Whatever he’d been through tonight, it had left deep marks on him.
Before Marty could respond, Charlotte and Emily appeared at the end of the hall, where it opened on the family room. They must have slipped into their raincoats the minute they heard their father’s voice. They were buttoning up as they came.
Charlotte’s voice wavered as she said, “Daddy?”
At the sight of his daughters, Marty’s eyes flooded with tears. When Charlotte spoke to him, he took another step inside, so Vic could close the door.
The kids ran past Kathy, and Marty dropped to his knees on the foyer floor, and the kids just about flew into his arms hard enough to knock him over. As the three of them hugged one another, the girls talked at once: “Daddy, are you okay? We were so scared. Are you okay? I love you, Daddy. You were all yucky bloody. I told her it wasn’t your blood. Was it a burglar, was it Mrs. Sanchez, did she go berserk, did the mailman go berserk, who went berserk, are you all right, is Mommy all right, is it over now, why do nice people just suddenly go berserk anyway?” All three were chattering at once, in fact, because Marty kept talking through all of their questions: “My Charlotte, my Emily, my kids, I love you, I love you so much, I won’t let them steal you away again, never again.” He kissed their cheeks, their foreheads, hugged them fiercely, smoothed their hair with his shaky hands, and in general made over them as if he hadn’t seen them in years.
Kathy was smiling and at the same time crying quietly, daubing at her eyes with a yellow dish towel.
Vic supposed the reunion was touching, but he wasn’t as moved by it as his wife was, partly because Marty looked and sounded peculiar to him, not strange in the way he expected a man to be strange after fighting off an intruder in his house—if that was actually what had happened—but just . . . well, just strange. Odd. The things Marty was saying were slightly weird: “My Emily, Charlotte, mine, just as cute as in your picture, mine, we’ll be together, it’s my destiny.” His tone of voice was also unusual, too shaky and urgent if the ordeal was over, which the departure of the police surely indicated, but also too forced. Dramatic. Overly dramatic. He wasn’t speaking spontaneously but seemed to be playing a stage role, struggling to remember the right thing to say.
Everyone said creative people were strange, especially writers, and when Vic first met Martin Stillwater, he expected the novelist to be eccentric. But Marty had disappointed in that regard; he had been the most normal, levelheaded neighbor anyone could hope to have. Until now.
Getting to his feet, holding on to his daughters, Marty said, “We’ve got to go.” He turned toward the front door.
Vic said, “Wait a second, Marty, buddy, you can’t just blow out of here like that, with us so damned curious and all.”
Marty had let go of Charlotte only long enough to open the door. He grabbed her hand again as the wind whistled into the foyer and rattled the framed embroidery of bluebirds and spring flowers that hung on the wall.
When the writer stepped outside without responding to Vic in any way, Vic glanced at Kathy and saw her expression had changed. Tears still glistened on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry, and she looked puzzled.
So it isn’t just me, he thought.
He went outside and saw that the writer was already off the stoop, heading down the walk in the wind-tossed rain, holding the girls’ hands. The air was chilly. Frogs were singing, but their songs were unnatural, cold and tinny, like the grinding-racheting of stripped gears in frozen machinery. The sound of them made Vic want to go back inside, sit in front of the fire, and drink a lot of hot coffee with brandy in it.