12
Later, Catherine brought the children into the kitchen, where she laid out chocolate milk and cookies for each of them while Willard sat in his usual place at the head of the table and, speaking carefully to each of them in turn, apologized for what had happened that morning.
Then the entire family got into the car and went to the park for the rest of the afternoon.
No one ever mentioned the episode again. No one ever mentioned Yap, either.
13
For a few days, the atmosphere in the house lightened, ever so slightly. While the kids remained aloof from their father, they didn’t go out of their way to avoid him, either. But they were clearly more comfortable when their mother was around as well, to act as a buffer if…
Catherine and Willard were still demonstrably cool around each other, as well, neither forgetting but neither indulging in further recriminations. Theirs was a patient, hopeful truce. With time, this rift could heal. Maybe.
Until early on the morning of the last Saturday in July.
The kids had gone to bed earlier than usual, for some reason subdued and restrained during the evening, even in their play. They went right to sleep.
Catherine and Willard stayed up until just before midnight, occasionally talking, more often simply sitting next to each other on the family room couch and watching-not-watching television. One might reach out and touch the other’s knee and receive a small pat on the hand. One might lean into the other for a second, then straighten and resume watching whatever program happened to be on.
It felt as if everything would be all right, sooner rather than later.
They went to bed at around midnight, made love for the first time in more days than either could remember-quietly, tenderly, their words of repentance and forgiveness translated into touch and feel and breath and warmth.
Then they slept, facing each other, arms entwined
Catherine woke. She did not jerk into awareness, nor was she startled from sleep-as she had so often been during the past weeks-by the intrusion of one of her children. No one stood by her bed waiting patiently for her to open her eyes. No one cried out in the darkness for her help or her love.
She woke gradually. It was deep night; she could feel that by the stillness in the air, the darkness all around her, the almost oppressive silence of the house.
She lay unmoving in her bed, waiting for sleep to resume, for whatever dream that had carried her away only moments before to return and reclaim her. She heard Willard breathing next to her, lightly, comfortably. She felt his warmth radiating from him and smoothing against her flesh.
But she did not fall asleep. If anything, she grew more awake, more aware. She found herself tensing, listening for…something…
Finally, she rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Willard. She felt around at the foot of the bed and located her robe, pulled it on and cinched the belt around her waist. She stepped into her slippers.
Without turning on any lights, feeling secure with her sense of feel as she trailed one hand along the wall, she moved down the hall to Suze’s room. There was enough light filtering through the window for her to see Suze fast asleep, one arm thrown around her favorite stuffed animal, a grey-striped cat that she had had for so long that it was now flattened and out-of-shape from being used as a pillow. Flat Cat, Catherine called it.
She stepped out and moved on to the back bedroom.
Again, the light from the window was sufficient for her to see, even though the shadows in this room were much darker, blacker than they had been in Suze’s room.
She glanced to the left. Both boys were asleep on the bunks. Will, Jr., was bundled up, almost invisible in the layers of sheet and blanket that muffled him like a cocoon. Burt was, as always, nearly naked, his pajama bottoms pulled up to his thighs and his tops wrinkled just under his armpits. But his head was, also as always, snuggled into his pillow beneath a layer of blanket.
She shrugged. It was a warm night. She wouldn’t bother tucking him in, since he would probably look just like this in the morning.
Sams was curled up on the floor, halfway between the older boys’ bunks and his box bed. His blanket lay across his face.
She stepped over to him and leaned down to pick him up.
The scream of anguish and terror blasted through Willard’s dream, exploding him into the night. For an instant, he couldn’t breathe.
Then the scream repeated, and he was on his feet and flying down the hall toward the back bedroom and Catherine’s hideous, gasping cries.
He spun around the door jamb.
Burt and Will, Jr., sat bolt upright in their beds, their faces screwed up in fright. Both seemed on the verge of shrieking but neither had yet found his voice.
Catherine stood in the middle of the room, cradling Sams’ tightly in her arms.
She turned to Willard. Her face was as white as death, and her voice shook so badly he could barely understand her. When he did, he felt the blood plummet from his face as well.
“Sams is dead! He’s dead! My baby is dead!”
From the Tamarind Valley Times, 5 November 1995:
OFFICIAL END TO VALLEY MYSTERY
The courts moved earlier today to declare Bryan Sydney, the Tamarind Valley real estate executive missing since October, 1989, legally dead. Members of Sidney’s immediate family gathered in the chambers of Judge Martha Feldmann to hear the official declaration which put an end to a seven-year investigation into his mysterious disappearance.
With the ruling, legal claims levied against the now defunct Ace-High Construction and the equally defunct McCall/Sidney Realty will advance to a more abstract level as attorneys for sixteen families…
Chapter Twelve
The Huntleys, Last Week In August 2010
Final Reckoning
1
August passed.
Each member of the Huntley family tried to deal with the fact of death privately, individually.
Suze spent much of her time at home in the far corner of her room, the farthest from the boys’ bedroom, moving her dolls in complex, repeated patterns on the carpet and speaking to them in a voice so faint and fragile that, standing in the doorway and watching her daughter, Catherine could never understand any of the imagined conversations. Suze would retreat to her room as soon as she arrived home from school on weekdays, and frequently not leave it for longer periods than to eat and go to the bathroom on the weekends. Catherine and Willard might try to entice her out-even demand that she join the rest in some activity in the family room, a game or a particular television program-but as soon as their attention strayed from her, she quietly disappeared.
Burt didn’t seem quite so badly troubled. He was willing enough to spent time in the front of the house-perhaps too willing. He would clear a space on the family room floor and play for hours with his army figures, the same ones that Sams had so enjoyed watching in the make-shift tent on Burt’s bunk. He would send army against army, silently destroying formations with a single swipe of his arm or leg, and knocking individual soldiers over by striking them with the base of whichever one he held in his hand.
Will, Jr., preferred the armchair next to the couch in the family room, where he would sit with his dog, Crud, for hours on end, ruffling the dog’s fur or scratching its ears. Sometimes he would simply hold onto the animal, cradling it tightly in his arms. Often, he would almost cry.
Willard became more an automaton rather than a person. He woke at 5:00 am on work days, got ready to leave and let himself out of the house without saying a word, without making any extraneous sounds that might disturb the others. He never called home from work. He never spoke about his work while at home. He began arriving home later and later, sometimes an hour later than usual, sometimes two hours or more, always explaining curtly that “Traffic was bad.” Those words, exactly, never an alteration. “Traffic was bad.”