Blue Heaven Part 4

Your mom broke her word.

Your mom drank too much wine with Tom after you and William went to bed and invited him up to her bedroom. He swore he'd get up early and be out of the house by the time you and Willie got up. He promised!

But she could hear Annie reply that Monica had sworn she'd never let a man-a stranger-into the family unless it meant they'd really have a father. Annie didn't ask for the vow; Monica had volunteered it. Now she'd betrayed her own children with this man. How could she let herself do it? How could she ever fix things?

Annie was tough and smart beyond her years. The girl was grounded in bedrock and would forgive her eventually. But she wouldn't forget. Willie, though, poor Willie. This was the kind of thing that could scar a child, send him down the wrong path. A breach of trust was a serious thing. Dashed expectations were just as crippling. She'd give anything if only she could somehow erase Willie's memory of the morning when Tom joined them at the breakfast table.

And Tom's way of dealing with it was to say, "Things happen, Monica."

He was an idiot, and it would be easy to blame him for what had happened. But she was the one who'd brought him into their home.

"I need to be alone and wait for my children," she said. "They are probably the only thing I've ever done right."

He responded by visibly softening, and approached her, wrapping his arms around her. She remained stiff, refusing to give in to his physicality. With his grip on the back of her head, he pushed her onto his hard shoulder.

"I'm sorry, honey," he said, cooing into her hair. "They're your kids, so they're important to me, too. Of course you're worried about them."

"I'm sorry, too, Tom," she said. Sorry she'd ever met him.

As he hugged her she opened her eyes and saw her reflection in the gla.s.s door of the microwave oven. She was still slim, blond, with oversized eyes and a wide mouth, and an overbite most men liked. She knew she didn't deserve her looks; she had done nothing to earn them. It was the fault of genetics that she looked ten years younger than she was. She wanted to push away and run somewhere. How could he not read her in the slightest?

Tom was talking, saying, "I'd like to think you consider me one of the things you've done right."

She didn't respond, hoped he wouldn't press her for an answer. He didn't.

"It's not often we're alone without your kids here, honey," he said. "We could, you know, use this time just for us."

Of course, she knew what he meant, but she couldn't believe he'd said it. She could feel him getting hard against her. He had moved his hips so his erection rubbed her abdomen.

She looked at the clock above the stove-5:45.

"Tom ..."

He didn't let go.

"Tom," she said, pushing away with more force than necessary, alarmed at the revulsion she felt for the same man who had been in her bed the night before, "why don't you go home now? I need to talk with Annie and William. You shouldn't be here. You've done enough for today."

A shadow pa.s.sed over his face, and his eyes looked harder than she could ever remember them.

"Okay," he said, flat. "I'll get out of your sight."

She didn't correct him.

"This is all about not taking Willie fishing?" he asked. "Is that what this is about?"

What had she ever seen in him? she wondered. How could she have ever let his looks and steady job cloud the fact-the glaring fact-that he was a self-absorbed a.s.s?

"Go," she said.

Tom rolled his eyes, started to say something, but stopped himself. "Later, then," he said, heading toward the mudroom and the back door. "You know, it's hard to walk when you get me all riled up like this."

"Don't ever come back," Monica said, her tone flat. "It's over. It's so very over."

He snorted and shook his head in disbelief. "And I came here to apologize."

Turning back to the stove to check the lasagna, she said, "No, I don't think so." The cheese was bubbling and turning brown. She reduced the heat to keep it warm.

"Hey," Tom yelled from the mudroom. "That little b.i.t.c.h took my fishing rod and vest!" He filled the doorframe, his face red, his lovely mouth contorted.

"What?"

"That's a six-hundred-dollar Sage fly rod," he said. "I've got hundreds of dollars of flies in my vest. And the little b.i.t.c.h took it."

It was as if the two bulbs in the overhead light had been replaced with red ones. She looked at him through a curtain of deep crimson, thinking she had never seen such an ugly man before.

"Leave," she said, her voice rising into a screech, "and just keep going. Don't you ever come back in my house!"

"Oh, I'm coming back," he shouted. "I'm coming back for my rod and vest, G.o.ddammit."

"LEAVE!"

For a second, she thought he would come back in after her. But he stayed within the doorjamb, veins popping on his neck and at his temple. Without turning her head and looking, she noted the block of knives on the counter next to her hand.

"Monica," he said, "you're a pretty good f.u.c.k. Not great, but good. You've got a nice mouth. But you'll never get any man to stay around here as long as you've got that little b.i.t.c.h here. And that mama's boy, Willie."

It felt as if she had grabbed one of the knives and plunged it into her own chest. She gasped for air.

"GET OUT!" she screamed raggedly.

He shook his head, glaring at her, and went out the door, slamming it behind him.

She put her face in her hands and sobbed, calling him every name she could think of, feeling her heart break, terrified by the fact that she didn't know where her children were and she was utterly alone now.

Knowing it was her fault they were gone.

Friday, 6:15 P.M.

WHAT ANNIE had noticed first, as they'd driven up the road toward Mr. Swann's house, was the smell. Something ripe and bold coursed through the pine-scented air, and it got stronger as they neared his home in the thick trees. He had allowed them to get off the floor once he'd turned from the service road onto his private two-track drive, and Annie had seen what it was that made the odor: hogs.

"There's my family," Swann said, smiling. "They know Daddy's home."

"Look at the pigs," William said, leaning over Annie toward the open window of the pickup. "Man, they're excited."

When the hogs saw the red truck coming, they squealed and ran about in their pen, racing up and down a sloppy track, splashing through coffee-with-cream-colored puddles. Annie counted at least twenty hogs, maybe more. One was huge, tan and bristly, and looked to be the size of a small truck. She didn't know hogs could get that big.

"The big one's name is King," Swann said, winking as if he a.s.sumed she knew who King was, which she didn't. "I named him after a guy who gave us a lot of trouble once. King won me a blue ribbon at the Pend Oreille County Fair this summer."

"He's awesome," William said. "I bet he can eat a lot."

Annie had stopped trembling, although she still felt numb. She couldn't wrap her mind around what she and William had seen at the campsite. Was it possible the man who was shot was still alive? No, she thought, it wasn't. The image of those men standing over him and firing again and again would never leave her. The eyes of the Driver locking on to her own sent a spasm through her, even now.

"Are you okay?" William asked, feeling her shiver.

"Yes," she said, not interested in the hogs the way he was. How could he be interested in hogs after what had just happened? Boys were different, all right. Even William.

Swann had thumbed a remote control, and one of three garage doors had opened. Slowing to a crawl, he'd parked inside. Annie had started to open her door when Swann had said, "Wait just a minute."

She'd waited inside until the door had closed, and watched as Swann had walked back to the window in the garage door and looked down his road. Apparently satisfied that no one had followed them, he'd said, "Okay, you can come out now, kids."

SWANN'S HOME was clean and light, with one big room after another. It was as unlike her mother's house as it could be, Annie thought. He was alone, with his family of hogs, and except for the kitchen and the den, the house seemed not to be lived in at all. There were photos of Mr. Swann in his police uniform above the fireplace, and a framed set of medals and ribbons. Other than that, the walls were bare.

He opened a bag of cookies and poured two gla.s.ses of milk and set them on the table, saying, "I'm not used to much company way back here."

Annie wondered if her mother had ever been in the house before, when they were briefly together.

"Just stay here," Swann said. "I need to go make a couple of calls. Eat up. There's more milk in the fridge if you want it."

"Are you going to call our mother?" Annie asked, while William fished three cookies out of the bag.

Swann's expression darkened and became serious. "Not immediately," he said. "If those men figure out who you are-and they might real quickly-the first thing they'll do is go to your house. If your mother knows you're here, she'll probably tell them, or they'll make her tell them. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

Annie felt herself nod yes, felt the cold ball of fear knotting in her stomach again.

"I need to make a couple of calls," he said again. He was one of those adults who thought he had to overexplain and overenunciate, as if she and William were an alien species. "There are a couple of guys I know who might have a little bit of an idea what is going on. I don't want to put any of us in more danger than we are now, including your mother."

"Are you going to call the sheriff?" Annie asked. "They'll want to know what happened."

Swann looked at her for a few moments before answering. "After I get a little more information, I'll call the proper authorities," he said.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"You'll just have to trust me on this," he said, padding down the hallway to, she presumed, his office. She heard the door close, and the sound of a lock being thrown. Why did he feel it was necessary to do that? she wondered.

She turned back to her brother. "How can you eat?"

"I'm hungry," he said, spewing crumbs across the tabletop.

AFTER A few minutes, Annie left the table and washed her hands and face in the kitchen sink. As she dried her face with a dish towel, she looked out the window and watched the sun drop from beneath the clouds and flash a brilliant wink before plunging into the tops of the trees. It would be dark soon. She didn't want to be in Mr. Swann's house in the dark, but she wasn't sure why she felt that way.

The house was still and quiet, something their own home never was. She could hear the hogs grunting outside and the trill of a bird from somewhere in the shadows. Inside, there was only the rhythmic crunching of William finishing off another cookie.

"You should wash up, too," she told William, noticing how filthy his fingers were.

He shrugged a nonresponse and continued eating.

"Mr. Swann is nice," William said. "I'm happy he picked us up."

Annie nodded toward the photos above the fireplace in the living room. "He's a policeman, too."

"He probably has a few guns around here," William said. "I wonder if he'll show them to me?"

"Why do you want to see his guns?"

William arched his eyebrows. "Guns are cool."

Annie glared at him. "Didn't you see what guns did today? To that poor man?"

"That's why we need 'em. So that won't happen to us."

"Oh, brother." She didn't want to argue about this.

"I'm ready to go home, though," William said, sitting back. "When do you think he'll take us home?"

Annie looked down the hall at the closed door. "I don't know."

"Maybe we should knock," William said.

Annie shook her head. "I need to find the bathroom," she said.

"Hurry back," William called after her.

She paused at the closed office door as she went down the hall. She could hear Swann's voice inside. It was deep, but she couldn't make out any words, as if he were deliberately speaking softly.

The bathroom was at the end of the hallway. She turned on the lights and shut the door. Like the rest of the house, it was spare and spotless. The only thing on the wall was a fake old sign that said baths cost a nickel and shaves cost a dime. Even the towels were folded neatly and hung over the bar. She thought she could see why Mr. Swann and her mother probably hadn't gotten along.

She looked at herself in the mirror and was shocked at how pale and wild she looked. Her blond hair was tangled, with bits of leaves in it. Her eyes stared back from hollows. Her clothes were crusted with dried mud. There was a scratch across her cheek she didn't remember getting, and it hadn't hurt until just that second, when she saw it. Now it stung.

When she was through, Annie left the bathroom as quietly as she had entered it. Mr. Swann's bedroom was dark and large, and she peeked in. His bed was made neatly, and there were no clothes on the floor.

Even though she knew she shouldn't, she stepped into the room and looked around. The walls were bare except for several framed photos over a dresser. A phone was on a nightstand next to the bed, and she stared at it. What if he was talking to the sheriff? Or her mother?

The phone seemed to draw her, and she put her hand on the receiver. She knew it was wrong, but she wanted to know who he was talking to. As slowly as she could, she lifted the receiver and covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

"You've got him with you now?" Swann asked someone.

"Wrapped up tight," the other man said. "Leakproof packaging." Swann chuckled nervously.

Who was this, Annie wondered. What did it have to do with anything?

"Everybody's with you?" Swann asked.

"Almost," the man said. "I'm waiting on Gonzo to get back."

"I hope he doesn't take too long. I don't know how long I can keep them entertained."

Annie's eyes shot open wide. Keep them entertained.

"Yeah, I know. Wait, I think I see his car now."