Read Online Darkness peering by Alice Blanchard - Free Book Online Page A

say, something wise or
profound, but the words eluded him. How did you explain to a
sixteen-year-old that it hurt to look into his eyes because he reminded
you of your own shameful past?
    Nalen examined the notepad, its top page ripped across the midsection,
the small, torn-away portion located in the lower right-hand corner.
Had Melissa been inside Billy's car? Had this notepad been on the
floor of the car? Had Billy startled or scared her, compelling her to
break away and run into the field? Had Billy pursued her there?
    Now the house shook with wind and his breath quickened as he tore the
top page out of the yellow lined pad, balled it up and

    took it downstairs with him. Holding the paper over the kitchen sink,
he lit it on fire, then ran the cold water, watching ashes swirl down
the drain. Everything hurt. His brain felt broken. He thought of his
father, pinned beneath the wreckage of his police cruiser after a
high-speed chase gone bad. Had his father in his dying moments
realized he'd let his son down? Did he admit to himself he'd caused
damage? Did he think of death, in those last few precious moments, as
a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands'?
    Nalen went outside and crossed the darkened backyard into the alfalfa
field, sweet and legume-smelling. He scaled the rusty barbed wire
fence and sat on a low stone wall facing the swamp, where gentian and
wood sorrel grew on the spongy bog surface. Every once in a while, he
brought Billy down here with him, and they'd count the stars in the
great big sky and try in vain to hold a conversation. In the distance,
beneath a brilliant cheese-colored moon, he could make out the
windswept fir-clad ridges of the surrounding mountains, and closer and
all around these fields and jumbled boulders, the black dense woods.
    What a brutal night, stars nailed to an indifferent sky. He took the
cat bell out of his pocket and flung it as far as he could into the
swamp. He thought he heard the rustling of the upland lady fern as the
cat bell landed, but it could've been his imagination. The wind picked
up, a dull roar in his ears, and he drew his service revolver. Perhaps
some other persevering do-gooder would find Billy guilty of murder, but
it wasn't going to be him. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, and
suddenly it occurred to him that he'd lived his entire life as if
someone were holding a gun to his head.
    You ready?
    He remembered many years ago putting his arms around his wife and
feeling her pregnancy, her waist thick with new life. She eventually
gave him a son. And now his son looked at him as if he were a
stranger.

    He shut his eyes. His wife sank against his chest, her flesh much
weaker and softer than it gave the impression of being. "I'm sorry,"
he told her, imagining her bruised and hurting all over. He didn't
want to hurt anyone. He'd never had an extramarital affair. He'd
never wanted another woman. His body was in perfect health.
Maddeningly alive. Blood coursing through his veins, lungs expanding
and contracting, heart pounding ... thub-dub ... thub-dub ... You
ready?
    He listened to the wind, the horrible lonely sound of it. His hands
were steady. He placed the cold barrel in his mouth, gazed for a
moment at the stars, the brightest ones representing the people he
loved most in this world--wife, daughter, son. And when the stars
became smears of light, he pulled the trigger.

    DETECTIVE RACHEL STORROW WAS ON HER WAY HOME WHEN
    the call came in. "Possible forty-five," the dispatcher's voice
blurted between hisses of static, and Rachel's hands gripped the wheel.
A forty-five meant a corpse.
    She made a U-turn in the middle of Pumpkin Run Road, tires chirping as
she headed back across town. She'd spent the better part of the day
knee-deep in garbage, looking for the gun a victim claimed her husband
had shot her with. He confessed he'd thrown his Saturday Night Special
in the town dump, but they