“Of course, dear. She’s right here. What is the matter?”
“He knows! He may be on his way there.”
Catherine inhaled sharply, but kept her wits about her. “Slow down, dear. Let’s take this one step at a time.”
As she said this, she turned toward Ashley, who was standing frozen in the doorway. Hope started to speak, but Catherine heard little. For the first time, she could see abject fear in Ashley’s eyes.
Scott drove red-line hard.
The small car leapt with enthusiasm, easily pushing past one hundred miles per hour. He could hear the engine roaring behind him as the night swept past, a blur of shadows, stately pine trees, and black, distant mountains. What should have taken close to two hours from Scott’s house to Catherine’s he expected to do in half that time. He was unsure whether this would be fast enough. He was unsure what was happening. He was unsure what O’Connell was doing. And he was unsure what the night held. He knew only that some odd, misshapen danger was directly in front of him, and he was determined to throw himself between the threat and his daughter.
As he drove, hands gripping the wheel tightly, he was almost overcome with images from their past. All the memories of raising a child flooded him. He felt an utter cold, crippling chill within him, and as each mile slid behind him, he could hardly fight off the sensation that he was a mile per hour too slow, that whatever was about to happen, he was going to miss it by just seconds. And so, he jammed his right foot down on the accelerator, oblivious to anything except the need to move quickly, perhaps more quickly than he had ever moved before.
Catherine hung up the telephone and turned toward Ashley. She kept her voice low, steady, and extraordinarily calm. She selected her words carefully, giving them an antique formality. Concentrating on her words helped her fight her growing panic. She breathed in slowly and reminded herself that she came from a generation that had fought much bigger battles than those presented by this fellow O’Connell, and so she layered her words with a Roosevelt determination.
“Ashley, dear. It appears that this young man who seems most unhealthily attracted to you has actually learned that you are not in Europe, but here, visiting with me.”
Ashley nodded, unable to respond.
“I think that what might be wisest is if you were to go upstairs to your bedroom and lock the door. Keep the telephone handy. Hope informs me that your father is driving up here, even as we speak, and that she is also intending to summon the local police.”
Ashley took a step toward the stairs, then stopped.
“Catherine, what are you going to do? Maybe we should just get back in the car and get out of here.”
Catherine smiled. “Well, I doubt it makes sense to give this fellow another shot at us on the road. I imagine he already tried once tonight. No, this is my home. And your home, as well. If this fellow means you any harm, well, I think we’d be better off dealing with it here, where we are familiar with the territory.”
“Well, then I won’t leave you alone,” Ashley said with a burst of false confidence. “We’ll both sit and wait together.”
Catherine shook her head. “Ah, Ashley, dear, that is most kind of you to offer. But I believe I would be far more comfortable waiting here, knowing that you were behind a locked door upstairs and out of the way. Regardless, the authorities should be here shortly, so let us be cautious and sensible. And sensible, right now, means please to do what I ask you.”
Ashley started to protest, but Catherine waved her hand.
“Ashley, allow me to defend my home in the manner I see fit.”
The impact of Catherine’s sturdy use of language was immediate. Ashley finally nodded. “All right. I’ll be upstairs. But if I hear anything I don’t like, I’ll be down here in a flash.” She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by anything I don’t like.
Catherine watched as Ashley bounded up the single central stairway. She hesitated until she heard the distinctive sound of an old-fashioned key in a door lock clicking shut. Then she walked over to a small wood closet, built right into the wall next to the large open-hearth fireplace. Jammed behind fire logs in an old leather case was her late husband’s shotgun. She had not brought it out in years, not bothered to clean it in as long a time, and was not completely certain that the half dozen shells rolling free in the bottom of the case were still capable of being fired. Catherine imagined that there was about an equal chance that the old weapon might explode in her hands if she had to pull the trigger. Still, it was a large, intimidating weapon, with a gaping hole at the end of the barrel, and Catherine hoped that that might be all that was necessary.
She took the shotgun out and sat down hard in a wing chair beside the fireplace. She fed all six shells into the magazine, then cocked the weapon and sat back, waiting, the gun across her lap. The weapon was greasy, and she rubbed her fingertips against her slacks, smearing them with dark streaks. She didn’t know much about guns, although she knew enough to click the safety catch off.
Catherine rested her hand on the stock as she heard the first small sounds of movement, just beyond the windows, closing in on the front door.
She continued to stare out the window, and I could imagine that she was chewing over one thought or another, then she abruptly turned back toward me and asked, “Have you ever actually thought you could kill someone?”
When I hesitated before answering, she shook her head. “That’s probably the answer right there. Maybe a better question for you to consider is how we romanticize violent death.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said slowly.
“Think of all the ways we express ourselves through violence. On the television, or in movies. Video games for kids. Think about all those studies that show that the average kid grows up witnessing how many thousands of deaths? Many thousands. But the truth is, despite all that education, when we are actually confronted by the sort of rage that could be fatal, we rarely know how to respond.”
I let her step away from the window and move back across the room to where she took a seat without replying.
“We like to imagine,” she said coldly, “that we will always know what to do in the most difficult of situations. But in reality, we don’t. We make mistakes. We fall prey to errors in judgment. All our flaws come flooding out. What we think we can do, we can’t. What we need to do is beyond us.”
“Ashley?”
She shook her head. “Don’t you think fear cripples us?”
30
Catherine took a single deep breath and lifted the shotgun to her shoulder, tracking the sounds from outdoors. She counted the steps to herself. From the window, to the corner of the house, past the flowerpots arranged so carefully in a row, to the front door. He will try the front door first, she told herself. Although her tongue seemed swollen, she shouted out roughly:
“Just come on in, Mr. O’Connell.”