Read Online Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay - Free Book Online

certainly look forward to that,” I said.
    “Okay then,” he said. For an acclaimed author and former English professor who should know a thing or two about irony, Conrad seemed strangely oblivious to sarcasm.
    “I’ll tell Ellen you called,” I said, and hung up.
    By nightfall, things seemed to be settling down, but it would be a stretch to say things were back to normal. I wondered whether life around here would ever really be normal again. But Ellen and I did pull together a dinner—nothing too fancy, a salad and burgers on the barbecue—and the three of us did sit together at the table to eat.
    There wasn’t a lot of conversation, however.
    Ellen told me to take it easy after dinner, go watch TV or read the paper, she’d clean up. I wondered if what she really wanted was for me to leave her alone in the kitchen. I left for a few minutes, then wandered back in on the pretext of making some coffee, and saw an almost empty wineglass next to the sink, where Ellen was standing. She was reaching for it when I said, “Hey.”
    She jumped, and as she turned knocked the glass into the sinkful of hot, soapy water.
    “Jesus,” she said. “Don’t do that. Especially now.”
    “You okay?”
    “I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. I mean, Jesus, no, I’m not fine. Who could be fucking fine?”
    I took the long-stemmed glass from the water, set it on the counter. “It might get broken,” I said, “in there with the regular stuff.”
    Ellen looked at me. “I was just taking the edge off.”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “It’s been that kind of day,” she said. “If there ever was a day I’m entitled to a drink, this is it. At least I’m not smoking again.”
    I nodded and went back to the living room.
    The police told us they’d be leaving someone at the scene around the clock for the next few days. There was a black and white car parked up by the highway, and police tape still surrounded the Langley house, as if pranksters had toilet-papered the place, but neatly, and with yellow tissue.
    The police presence didn’t make it any easier for Ellen to get to sleep. She went through the house several times, checking doors and windows. She asked me to do a check of the shed, standing on the back-door step while I went round the truck—the cops had finally let me bring my rig in from the highway—and examined the building where I kept my mowers and tools and other incidentals, including my old artwork.
    “All clear,” I said, stepping back into the house, not mentioning that our property was surrounded by trees, and that if someone was watching us, he’d hardly need to use the shed to hide himself. The number of places where one could hide seemed limitless.
    We got into bed, and Ellen tried reading for a while but finally put her book aside. “I keep going through the same paragraph over and over again,” she said, “and haven’t the foggiest idea what I’ve just read.”
    I wanted to say something along the lines of “Rereading Conrad’s book, are you?” but managed to hold my tongue. “Not easy to focus at the moment, is it?” I said.
    She shook her head, placed the book by the base of her bedside lamp, reached up and twisted the knob to turn it off. I got under the covers and we both stared at the ceiling for a while. I don’t know for how long, but I must have finally fallen asleep, because I was having that dream, where I’m on the lawn tractor, climbing a hill that’s getting steeper and steeper, until the front end of the mower lifts off the ground and starts going over my head and—
    Ellen jabbed me in the side, sometime around midnight, and I awoke with a start.
    “What?” I said. “The smoke detector?”
    “No, not that!” she whispered urgently.
    “What?” I said, my heart instantly pounding.
    “I heard something.”
    “What? Where?”
    “A door. I heard a door downstairs.”
    “Maybe you dreamt it.”
    “No,” she said. “I was already awake. I haven’t been able to get to sleep