communities.”
“Yeah, well, they’re safe.”
The gate is locked. Standing before the high privacy fence, Henry can’t see anything or anyone to appeal to, no intercom or guard post. Open sesame , he thinks. Surely there must be a hidden security camera, or motion sensors. Someone will probably be coming any second. He wonders how his mother gets around here, she who hasn’t had a car in twenty years. They must have some kind of van service.
The place is dead quiet, no sound of anyone approaching.
“This has got to be wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “I just can’t imagine what she’d be doing living here. It’s way too expensive.”
“Hello?” Ruby calls through the gate. “Hello? Anybody home?”
After a few minutes of no response, Henry says, “Nah. It’s ridiculous that they don’t have a buzzer of some kind…”
“I know. How can they not have a guard on duty? How do delivery people get in and out?”
“It must be one of those systems where the residents get an electronic key, a remote control thing like a garage door opener.” So much for visiting his mother. Guiltily tempted by the possibility of another day’s reprieve, Henry sighs, “Well, what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Wait a while longer, I guess. Eventually somebody’s got to come along who can open this gate. Visitor’s Policy or not, we’re going in. No way I came all this way for nothing.”
They wait for ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour, as it gets fully dark and all the automatic lights of the complex come on. Periodically, Ruby shoots a few minutes of footage, just to illustrate the time lapse.
“This is getting absurd,” she says, watching the playback on her tiny LCD screen. “I knew we started out too late. We’re losing the light.” Abruptly she stands up and shouts, “HEY! SOMEBODY! COME AND OPEN THE GATE!”
Moxie awakens with a start, crying.
“Shh! Jesus!” Henry says to his wife. “You’re gonna have them calling the cops on us.”
“Good. Let them. I’m sorry , but I’m really getting pissed off. How can they just leave people out here like this? We have a baby!” She rattles the gate. “LET US IN!”
“Calm down. Let’s just go, it’s stupid. These fogies are all inside having dinner. We’ll call the condo office in the morning. That’s what we should have done in the first place.”
“God,” Ruby says, trying to pacify her daughter. “It’s just so frustrating …”
“I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. At least it’s all downhill from here. Come on—I bet we can get back to the hotel in half the time it took us to get here.”
Reluctantly, Ruby agrees, and they start away.
“Wait a minute,” Henry says, looking down into the now pitch-black tunnel of foliage at roadside. “What about taking the paved road back? Why do this path again?”
“Because we know where it goes. God knows where that road leads to—we could walk miles out of our way. Look at those mountains.”
“I don’t think so. It’s got to go back to Avalon, and it’ll be much easier with the stroller. We might even meet up with somebody who could give us a ride.”
“Yeah, the Manson family. More likely we’ll get hit by a car in the dark—there’s no shoulder.”
“Yes, but—”
“Honey, I’m just not up to another expedition tonight. Could we just do it the same way as before? Please?”
Henry sighs, “All right,” and takes up his end of the stroller.
It is worse than he feared—so dark they can barely see where they’re putting their feet; so dark they can’t see each other’s faces. Henry has never been particularly afraid of the dark, but he does have great anxiety about screwing up—so how did he and Ruby wind up carrying their wiggly, whining daughter between them down a steep mountain trail in fog and total darkness? One turned ankle, one misstep, and they could all break their necks.
“I wanna walk !” Moxie hollers, jouncing
Michelle Betham
Peter Handke
Cynthia Eden
Patrick Horne
Steven R. Burke
Nicola May
Shana Galen
Andrew Lane
Peggy Dulle
Elin Hilderbrand