Second Nature Part 14

"You're not going to say a few words on this subject?" Roy said.

Connor had already grabbed his leather jacket. Robin would have had a fit if she knew he was wearing it, rather than his winter coat. She probably would have insisted on mittens and a scarf.

"I'll be back after eleven," Connor said.

"After you've screwed Lydia?" Roy said, real easy, as if baiting Connor was the last thing on his mind.

Connor came back to the table, he towered over Roy, and Roy just had to hope his son would hold himself back.

"Just shut up. All right?" Connor said. "Who I'm with is none of your business."

"I couldn't agree more," Roy said. "It happens to go both ways."

"Are you defending her?" Connor said. "Don't you get it? The whole time they were pretending that nothing was happening." If it had been anyone but Stephen, Connor might not have felt so betrayed. He was just a p.a.w.n, moved around at will--feel this way, feel that way, feel nothing at all. Connor saw his real mistake now. He'd trusted Stephen completely, as he would the family dog. He'd taught him tricks: how to play chess, fix a sandwich, handle a razor without slitting your throat.

Someone else might have been repelled by all the things Stephen must have done just to survive, but Connor had to go and admire him. He'd kept Stephen's secret, he'd run alongside him, down to the Point, until he was too winded to keep up. In return he'd gotten nothing but lies and he'd been played for a fool, too blind to see what was set out right in front of him.

"Take my advice," Roy said now. "Mind your own business."

"You don't know anything about it," Connor said. "You don't even knowwhat he is.

Maybe you think you're talking to a human being when you're talking to him, but you're not."

Connor ran all the way to Lydia's house that night, in spite of the ice and the dread he felt inside. He took the long route, so he wouldn't have to pa.s.s by his own house. He really didn't know what he'd do if he saw Stephen face to face, and he didn't want to know. When he got to Lydia's, Paul Altero answered the door. A lucky break. Connor knew that Mr. Altero had always liked him, and now he managed to have a conversation with Lydia's father, although about what, Connor later couldn't remember. Mr. Altero insisted that he come into the kitchen for a soda, and that meant Connor would have to speak to Lydia's mother, something he usually managed to avoid.

"Is Lydia taking the car tonight?" Mich.e.l.le asked her husband.

Connor still had only a permit, but Lydia had gotten her license, and the Toyota was now the only place she and Connor could have any privacy.

"It's so icy," Mich.e.l.le added.

"She's a good driver," Paul said.

Now Mich.e.l.le turned to Connor, and without thinking he took a step backward and crashed into the refrigerator.

"You moved out," Mich.e.l.le said to him.

Just what he'd dreaded. An actual conversation.

"Your mother must be upset."

"I wouldn't know," Connor said. "You'd have to ask her." That suggestion effectively ended the conversation, just as Connor hoped it would. Still, he was grateful beyond words when Lydia finally came down, already wearing her coat. She smiled at Connor, and since they didn't dare greet each other the way they wanted to, Connor looked down at the floor, he didn't want her parents to see how desperate he was to be alone with Lydia.

"Thanks, Pop," Lydia said when her father handed her the car keys.

As soon as they got into the Toyota, Connor pulled Lydia to him, even though they were parked in the driveway and Mich.e.l.le could have easily looked out the kitchen window and seen them. His arms were shaking, his throat was completely dry. When he was with her he didn't give a d.a.m.n about anything else. He was dizzy with wanting her, he didn't have to think about wrong and right. Lydia threw her head back and laughed, but she was a little panicked by how desperate he seemed.

"Wait a second," she said to him. "We're not in a race."

Connor slouched over to his side of the front seat. Just looking at him, hunched over and filled with longing, Lydia felt herself falling in love with him all over again. She climbed onto his lap, and she kissed him so deeply and for so long that for years afterward Connor would remember the exact thought that kept running through his head as the car idled in the driveway. This will neveY change. That's what he'd thought. Not this.

Christmas Day was the coldest ever recorded in the island's short history, and the next day was even worse. It was a good day to stay indoors, preferably in bed, and when evening came, suddenly, as if acurtain had been drawn, it was best to have a hot rum and some leftover turkey and go right back under the covers. Of course, some people had more important things to think about than the weather. Jenny Altero, for one--who'd gotten the hand-st.i.tched stuffed palomino pony she'd wanted for Christmas, as well as a pair of beautiful black boots--simply couldn't sit still.

A note had been dropped into Jenny's desk at school before vacation started, Tim Lester, whose father owned the diner in town and who was a grade ahead, had a crush on her. The note was anonymous, and Jenny didn't know if it was Tim himself or one of his friends who'd written it. But it was male handwriting, of that she was certain, a sloppy scrawl that had sent her reeling.

Her heart had been racing ever since that day, and tonight she planned to do something about it. She washed and dried the supper dishes, she played Pictionary with her father and kissed her mother before she went upstairs at bedtime. Then she waited for her parents to go into their room, and once she heard them turn on the TV beside their bed, she began to put on her eye makeup, with quick, accurate movements, the way Lydia had taught her. She chose her earrings carefully, the pearl ones that dropped like tears. Actually, they weren't hers at all, but she'd taken them from Lydia several months before, in the summer, and by now it seemed reasonable that they should fully belong to her.

As Jenny braided her hair, she took a certain pleasure in tonight's reversal. Lydia, after all, had come home at nine, her French braid untangled, her lips kissed raw, contrite for the first time in ages.

The Toyota had skidded into one of the Feldmans' crab apple trees, splitting it right in half. The front left fender would have to be replaced, and the headlight as well, but not even their mother had had the heart to scream at Lydia, that's how shaken she'd been by the accident. It was the pa.s.senger side of the car that had been dented, and for one sickening instant Lydia had thought Connor was hurt. He'd only been dazed, but Lydia still had wanted to go right home. Mich.e.l.le had given her a few drops of whiskey and a cup of hot tea for her nerves, and now there Lydia was, already asleep in her bed, and it was Jenny who had better things to do.

She pulled on the white sweater and a pair of corduroy slacks, then tiptoed downstairs to the hall closet and grabbed Lydia's coat, which was so much more grown-up than her own pink ski jacket. She closed the front door so quietly she might have been a mouse sneaking out with some Christmas pudding in its cheeks.

As she walked along Mansfield Terrace, she saw that Robin's bedroom light was on, good, there was no need to worry about being caught by her this time around. Jenny knew of at least three other girls who often slipped out after their curfews to go down to Fred's Diner, which never closed before two. They went for the vanilla c.o.kes and the fries, as well as the chance to flirt with Tim, if he was working behind the counter.

TonightJenny hoped these girls would be there, in a rear booth, they probably would think she was fifteen at least. They'd whisper to each other, "Who is she?" as she leaned toward Tim, and when they finally recognized Jenny in Lydia's borrowed clothes and called for her to join them, she'd call back that she was busy, then turn her full attention to Tim.

At this hour of the night the ice along the roads turned to diamonds, and the wind shook the black branches of the trees.Jenny walked quickly, and when she reached the town green the ginkgos moaned and the telephone wires crackled in the cold. She ran all the rest of the way to Fred's, and once she was inside the diner, the sudden heat, from the radiators and the fryers, came as a shock. No one was here, at least not yet, only Fred behind the counter, cleaning up the grill. Jenny went and sat on a stool and ordered a vanilla c.o.ke. She was extremely polite, she was, after all, addressing the father of the boy who might be crazy about her.

"I go to school with Tim," she informed Fred when he brought her the c.o.ke. She was so casual, so cool, Lydia would have been proud of her.

"Isn't he working tonight?"

"He sprained his foot yesterday," Fred told her. "Ice hockey." Jenny thought this over. She hated to imagine Tim in pain, and she was disappointed to have come all this way for nothing. She paid for her c.o.ke and tugged the hood of Lydia's coat over her head, in preparation for the long walk home.

"He'll be home all day tomorrow," Fred told her, as if he were a mind reader. Jenny had just been wondering how on earth she could make contact, when school would be out for another week.

"I could visit him," Jenny said. She hoped she didn't look as fl.u.s.tered as she felt. She crossed her fingers for luck.

"I'll tell him," Fred said.

Jenny was so excited she could barely speak. She'd wear her new black boots. She debated about bringing the palomino pony, she knew Tim rode down at the stables, but he might think her Christmas present was too babyish. No, she'd bring him cookies, that's what she'd do. She'd stop at the bakery on the way to his house.

"Great," Jenny said. She had a big grin on her face, but even Lydia might not have been able to control that. "I'll see him tomorrow.

I'll come by at ten."

Tim waited until eleven-thirty, and when Jenny didn't show he went down to the bridge to meet his friends for hockey, since his sprain wasn't as bad as his parents had thought. It was a gorgeous day and the ice was perfect, and none of the boys paid any attention to the siren that echoed across the frozen bay. And later in the afternoon they were still far too involved in their game to notice what looked like a red sack beneath the bridge where the willows grew, where you could scare yourself if you weren't careful. They played on for hours, until their toes and fingers were nearly frozen solid, and not one of them had the slightest idea that Tim's father had been the last one to seeJenny Altero alive, and that he'd been too busy wiping down the counter to see or appreciate her last beautiful smile.

The search parties were still out in the frozen blue twilight with a pack of dogs borrowed from the state police. But long before they found the body, with the throat so neatly slit, Mich.e.l.le Altero knew her daughter would never come home. She knew it early that morning, when she opened Jenny's bedroom door to find that the bed hadn't been slept in. Paul had been crazy with worry and had insisted on going out with a band of neighbors to hunt through the marshes. Mich.e.l.le hadn't said a word as he'd pulled on his fishing boots and grabbed the big flashlight out of the hall closet. She did nothing more than nod when he told her not to worry, and she'd let him kiss her good-bye, but as soon as he'd gone out, she went inside the hall closet and closed the door. Shecrouched down among the boots and the umbrellas, and cried so hard she thought she'd dissolve, right there on the floor.

If Lydia hadn't come to take her out of the closet, Mich.e.l.le might have stayed there forever. Instead, she let herself be led to the couch, where she sat holding Lydia's hand, the stuffed palomino pony on her lap. She didn't move a muscle, she didn't say a word--not even yes or no when Lydia tentatively asked if she wanted a cup of tea--but at a little before nine that night, Mich.e.l.le suddenly sat bolt upright and began to tear out her hair. She pulled out fistfuls and made a gurgling noise in her throat, and Lydia had to restrain her and rea.s.sure her again and again, "It's all right."

U R E But of course it wasn't. Down at the bridge, at the instant when Mich.e.l.le began to tear at herself, Stuart and Kay came to sit on a wooden bench so they could lace up their skates. Stuart wore an old woolen hat Kay had dug out of a box in her bas.e.m.e.nt and an ancient down parka, and Kay had on a camel-colored coat and a pair of leather gloves Stuart had ordered for her from L. L.

Bean. They hadn't gone skating together in the moonlight for more than twenty years, and it was a much colder activity than they'd remembered.

Once on the ice, they were clumsier than they'd remembered as well, and had to hold on to each other for support.

And just as Stuart was beginning to hit his stride, and had let out a whoop, Kay signaled him over, then grabbed his arm. Out in the marshes the search dogs were barking, and the sound echoed above the frozen bay.

The moon was huge and white and circled by a halo of frost.

"What's wrong?" Stuart said. His face looked healthy from racing along the ice. "Are my knees creaking? Am I too old for this?"

Kay came close to him and hid her face in his parka. As soon as Stuart looked past her he saw that something had been wrong with the ice all along and they hadn't even noticed. Blood had seeped through the water beneath the ice and turned it deep red. The beams of light he and Kay had seen in the woods weren't moonlight reflecting off the ice but flashlights and lanterns. He helped Kay back to sh.o.r.e, then shouted as loud as he could until at last people in the search party heard him, although once they approached, the dogs refused to set foot on the red ice, and they pulled at their leashes, then fell silent all at once.

Because Stuart was a doctor, George Tenney called him over as he and Woody Preston knelt beneath the bridge. Stuart calmly examined the girl, but afterward he realized he'd been crying the whole time, and that night he went home with Kay and they held each other tight, while outside the wind grew so fierce it tore the new shingles off the roof of the fisherman's shack down on the icy beach.

It might have been Woody Preston who began the talk of an animal, one who knew exactly how to slash a throat in the most efficient manner, a predator so quiet it could come up behind its victim before she had the chance to run.

"I wouldn't write about any animals in your report," Roy advised him.

"Unless you want to be fitted for a straitjacket." All the same, the rumor grew, so that by midnight most people had locked themselves in their houses. Jeff Carson went down to his bas.e.m.e.nt and got out the rifle he hadn't used for twelve years, not since he'd gone hunting with his cousins in upstate New York and shot two swans he'd believed to be wood ducks. The Feldmans set out broken bottles on their front stoop,any creature that took a step toward their door would have its feet cut to b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons.

It fell to George Tenney and Woody Preston to speak to the family, and George told Woody in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut, especially about his animal theory. Mich.e.l.le Altero said nothing at all, she had cried so many tears that she seemed completely drained.

The girl's father, Paul, was so slow to answer even the most simple questions--who her friends were, whether he'd known she had been to Fred's Diner the night she disappeared--that George felt like a heel just for being in their house.

Lydia stood in the doorway of the living room, her arms and legs crisscrossed with jitters, she could hardly stand up straight.

She was in her nightgown, with her hair loose, and she'd already thrown up five times. The strange thing was, she was the one who felt like a ghost, so weightless it seemed possible that any minute she would rise up through the living room ceiling.

"You haven't noticed anything unusual in the last few days?"

George Tenney was asking in his deep, sad voice. "Any strangers?"

Lydia closed her eyes. Her skin felt much too cold. She had a curious sensation up and down her spine, as if she were growing completely numb.

"Anything suspicious at all?" George Tenney asked.

That was when Lydia told them about the Wolf Man. The secret she had kept all these months, a silly secret she'd thought, which no one would much care about, now seemed crucial. Lydia saw everything clearly at that moment. This was all her fault.

"I told you it was an animal!" Woody Preston said. "I swear there were claw marks," he managed to add before George told him to just keep his mouth shut.

"I felt sorry for him," Lydia said. The numbness was spreading, all over her body. "Connor said he'd be locked up if anyone found out who he was."

Paul Altero put his head in his hands and wept, but Mich.e.l.le stood and went to Lydia. When she reached her daughter, Mich.e.l.le had to lean up against the wall or she would have fallen to the floor in a heap.

Lydia didn't need her mother to tell her that the wrong daughter had been taken from her, Lydia already knew that. She knew it all night, as she heard her parents weeping. She knew it in the morning, when she heard someone knocking at the front door. Lydia found herself hoping that whoever had done this to Jenny had now come for her as well. She went downstairs in her nightgown, her feet bare, and opened the door to find Connor, his shirt unb.u.t.toned, his hair wild from sleep. Roy had told him aboutJenny as soon as he'd woken, and he'd run all the way to Mansfield Terrace.

"Lydia," he said. His voice broke as he spoke her beloved name.

"I'm sorry."

He held her to him, but she was like a piece of ice.

"They'll find the person who did it," Connor said. He wished he couldwrap his arms around Lydia and carry her far from this dangerous earth, someplace where it was just the two of them, where terrible things never happened and nothing ever changed.

"They already have," Lydia said. "I told them about the Wolf Man.

" When Connor let go of her and stepped back, Lydia didn't move at all.

The wind came in the front door and blew at the hem of her nightgown.

"You told them about Stephen?" Connor couldn't believe she would do this. "It was a secret."

"Is that all you care about?" Lydia said. "My sister's dead and all you can think about is your secret."

"He didn't do it," Connor said. "I mean, I know him. He would never do anything like that, and now they're going to think he did. All because of you."

Mich.e.l.le came down the stairs just as Lydia slapped Connor. She hit him hard, and the imprint of her hand would remain on his face for hours.

Even after it did disappear he'd be able to feel it, as if he'd been marked for life.

"You piece of s.h.i.t," Lydia said. She was so cold she could barely move her mouth, her toes and the tips of her fingers had begun to turn blue.

"You pathetic creature."

Connor blinked, she couldn't possibly be saying what he thought he was hearing. Lydia gave him a push, and he lurched back over the threshold.

"Lydia," he said. "Please."

Lydia looked him right in the eye, she had no idea that she was shaking, or that her mother had come up behind her. Who had she thought she was to find happiness, to even think she might have a right to it?

"What a mistake you were," Lydia said. "A mistake from the very beginning."

She slammed the door, and she didn't care if he stayed out there pounding on it all day and all night. She turned and found herself in her mother's arms, the only place she wanted to be.

"Baby," Mich.e.l.le whispered to her, as she stroked Lydia's tangled hair, just as if she'd been the daughter who deserved to be here on this winter morning all along.

When they came for him, Stephen was reading one of Old d.i.c.k's books, a collection of stories so lovely and strange he knew he'd have to read them again. He had learned to like coffee and had made himself a pot, fixing the French-roast beans with the hand grinder Ginny had always used. He was nearly halfway through "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"

when he heard the tires on the gravel driveway. In spite of the cold, he had the windows open and his shirt off, since the temperature inside houses always seemed much too warm.

They allowed him to put on his black coat and his boots before they drove him down to the station. It was Woody Preston who tried to put him in handcuffs, and Stephen panicked just at the sight of them. He would have struck Woody, he might have gone to the open window and jumped, if George Tenney hadn't intervened.They were only taking him in for questioning, after all, it was routine after the Altero girl's murder. But when they got to Main Street, Stephen saw that a crowd had already gathered on the green, men in parkas and heavy leather gloves waited to get a look at him as he was led from the car, as if they'd be able to tell, just by the sight of him, whether he was guilty or not.

The room they took him to had gla.s.s on two sides, but the windows were barred, and Stephen didn't like that one bit. After he'd sat down, he tried not to look directly at any of the officers, since they were six and he was one. He knew when to back down and when to fight and when it was best to act as though you were already defeated. Just a few friendly questions, that's what they told him. There was nothing that officially attached him to a crime, not even a legal reason to search him.

Roy was in the back of the room. He wasn't one of the ones who was asking Stephen questions, instead, he leaned up against the wall and drank coffee. It was impossible to tell whether he was enjoying this, although Stephen believed he must have been. Here were his buddies, his friends, demanding to know where Stephen had been the previous night between ten and two, and Stephen was at their mercy. When he said he'd been reading, some of them exchanged a look, although Roy didn't blink.

After that they wanted to know strange things: how many times he'd spoken to Jenny Altero, whether he'd been to Fred's Diner, whether, when he'd lived in the woods, he'd killed deer with his bare hands or maybe used a knife to slit their throats. He accepted a cup of bitter coffee and answered as best he could, but he stopped talking to them when Woody Preston asked if he'd ever tasted human flesh.

They'd already decided something for themselves, with or without his answers.

George Tenney went to get himself some coffee, then stood next to Roy.

"The stuff those kids found over at Poorman's Point," George said. He had his back to the rest of the guys to make certain that they wouldn't overhear. "Those animals. Their throats were all slit. Maybe that was him, too."