The Probable Future

Now, stepping into the woods again, he felt at home. He kept going until he reached the Table and Chairs; amazed by the rock formation, fascinated by the many shapes nature invented, he took from his backpack the newspaper he’d swiped from Laurie Frost’s doorway and the lunch he’d brought with him, a ham sandwich fixed by the maid at the motel in Medford where he’d stayed last night. In exchange for the sandwich, and a free room, he’d left the model of Cake House behind; it had been a gift for the four-year-old daughter the maid had no choice but to bring to work with her in the mornings, since she hadn’t the money for a baby-sitter. Why shouldn’t he leave it for the child? He didn’t need the thing anymore; he had it committed to memory by now, every brick, every stone, every bit of glass.

When he was done with his lunch, he tidied up so that he wouldn’t leave a trace. He always left the woods the way he’d found them; he liked the way things looked when there hadn’t been human intervention. Frankly, he stayed away from human things. It was sheer luck that he stumbled upon the shell of the old laundry shed, the one Will had all but destroyed so many years ago. Still, the huge core of the chimney remained, and the fireplace would give him shelter. He stood inside of it and immediately felt at home. Seeing one of the bricks was missing, he put his hand inside and drew out a small portrait. There’d been a photograph in the hallway he’d noticed the day Will let him in. Her hair had been blond then but this was the girl he wanted to get rid of. He was sure of it. Once he dispatched this meddler who had seen what he was about to do before it happened, there’d be no one to connect him to the crime, not that his ex-girlfriend hadn’t deserved it, not that they all hadn’t got what was coming to them, not that he’d had a single restless night of sleep since she’d said her last words to him: How can you do it? How could your love have come to this?

THE KNOT

I.

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL SATURDAY MORNING when it happened, so bright Will had woken at the very first light. He was off running earlier than usual, at a little after 5:00 A.M., when the town was still sleeping and only the birds were available to keep him company. At 5:30, the garbage trucks began to lumber through town, stopping first at Hull’s Tea House, where the new kitchen helper had set out the trash neatly in barrels the evening before. Liza was awake, of course, baking blueberry scones, watching out the window for Will to run by at some point on his route, as he did every day, sometimes leaving a newspaper on her back step, sometimes a handful of violets in a paper cup, sometimes a note with a single word: You.

Elinor Sparrow was always awake at this hour. She didn’t have much time to waste, and her sleep came in fitful periods of napping. Now, when she managed a few hours of restless sleep, she always dreamed of snow. Jenny, bombarded by her mother’s dreams, had a whole series of snow paintings set out on her dresser and window seat. In the past few days she had gone through so many tubes of titanium white that Mavis Strickland, who stocked the pharmacy’s small art supplies section, suggested Jenny order directly from the distributor.

But Jenny needed more than white. Snow could be blue, she had realized, or violet, or the palest pink. It could be an integral part of one’s life: her love for Matt was like a snowstorm, sudden, insistent, leaving her breathless. Stella’s hair when it was cut had most surely fallen like snow all over Liza’s bathroom floor, in an endless blinding whirl. Snow was the flour in the kitchen at the tea house as it was sifted into a bowl or the laundry flakes when Jenny washed her mother’s sheets; it was the rice pudding Jenny brought upstairs on a silver-plated tray, one of the few foods Elinor could still keep down. Stars like snow dusted the black night. Snow in the dust motes as rays of sun streamed in through the library window. Snow in the rattle of the last dead arm attached to the oak tree on the corner of Lockhart and East Main, a huge, rotten branch, still uncut, the paper-thin leaves shaking like the air before a storm, before the utter quiet, before whatever came to pass. Snow gathered in the petals of the peach trees, which bloomed throughout town all at once, pink-white flower-ice that smelled of the summer that would soon arrive. Little wonder there were so many words for snow in some languages, the way there was a litany of possible expressions for love or sorrow, or the many varieties of rain Elinor had named.

There were endless sorts of lies, as well, and Stella Sparrow Avery told one more. A last little lie that wouldn’t hurt anyone. Poor Liza had actually brought some oatmeal cookies and a glass of milk to Stella’s room, for she had come to have a heart-to-heart. Upon hearing footsteps on the stairs, Stella had drawn the covers up to her neck, hoping to be left in peace, but Liza could not be dissuaded and Stella lay there, trapped, as Liza asked her questions about her feelings. Did Stella mind if Liza was involved with her father? Should they wait? Or perhaps they should see a therapist in North Arthur together and discuss the new configurations in their life?