The Wrong Man

29

Hi, Michael. I miss you. I love you. Come save me.

He could hear Ashley’s voice speaking to him, almost as if she were sitting in the passenger seat of his car. He replayed the words over and over in his mind, giving them different inflections, one time pleading and desperate, another time sexy and inviting. The words were like caresses.

O’Connell imagined himself on a mission. Like a soldier maneuvering through mine-infested territory, or a rescue swimmer diving into turbulent waters, he was heading north, crossing the Vermont border, drawn inexorably toward Ashley.

In the darkness, he ran his fingers over the gashes on the back of his hand and his forearm. He had managed to staunch the bleeding from the bite in his calf with gauze from a cheap first-aid kit he kept in the glove compartment. He was really goddamn lucky that the dog hadn’t grabbed his Achilles tendon and shredded it. His jeans were ripped, and, he suspected, they were streaked with dried blood. He would have to replace them in the morning. But all in all, he thought, he had come out on top.

O’Connell reached up and flicked on the car’s overhead light.

He looked down at his map and tried to do the calculations in his head. He knew that he was less than ninety minutes away from Ashley. This estimate even allowed for a wrong turn or two when he got onto the rural roads leading to Catherine Frazier’s home.

He smiled inwardly and again heard Ashley calling to him. Hi, Michael. I miss you. I love you. Come save me. He knew her better than she knew herself.

Cracking open the window slightly, he let some crisp air into the car, trying to cool himself down. O’Connell believed there were two Ashleys. The first was the Ashley who had tried to get rid of him, who had seemed so angry, so scared, and so elusive. That was the Ashley that belonged to Scott and Sally and the freak, Hope. He frowned when he thought of them. There was something truly sick and perverted about their relationships, and he knew that Ashley would be far better off when he had rescued her.

The real Ashley had been the Ashley across the table from him, drinking and laughing at his jokes, but mesmerizing as she slid along the route of loose invitation. The real Ashley had connected with him, both physically and emotionally, in a way far deeper than he had ever thought possible. The real Ashley had invited him into her life, even if only briefly, and it was his duty to find that person again.

He would set her free.

O’Connell knew that the Ashley her parents and lesbian stepmother thought existed was a shadow Ashley. The student, artist, museum-drone Ashley was all fiction, created by a bunch of wimpy, liberal, middle-class nonentities who only wanted her to be like them, to grow up and have the same stupidly insignificant lives they did. The real Ashley was waiting for him to arrive like some fairy-tale knight and show her a different life. She was the Ashley who longed for adventure, an existence on the edge. The Bonnie to his Clyde, an Ashley who would operate right beside him, outside the rules of life. That she was reluctant, afraid of the freedom that he represented, was only to be expected. The excitement that he was bringing to her was bound to be frightening.

It was just a matter of showing her.

Michael O’Connell smiled to himself. He was confident. It might not be easy. It was likely to be tricky. But she would eventually see.

Feeling a renewed sense of excitement, O’Connell punched at the gas and felt the car leap forward. Within a few seconds he was out in the left-hand lane, accelerating hard. He knew there would be no one to stop him. Not that night.

Not far to go, he thought. Not far to go, at all.

Hope let the night wrap around her, cloaking her misery in shadows. She had let Sally drive home. Hope’s silence seemed pale, ghostlike, as if she were only some spectral part of herself.

Sally had the good sense to simply steer the car and leave Hope alone with her thoughts. She felt a little guilty that she didn’t feel as bad as she probably should have. But thoughts were rushing toward her, and as awful as the loss of Nameless might be, how he died and what that all meant were far greater considerations. She had an undeniable need to take some action, as she tried to piece together what had really taken place that night.

The car crunched to a halt in their driveway, and Sally said, “I am so sorry, Hope. I know what he meant to you.”

It seemed to Hope that those were the first soft words she’d heard from her partner in months. She breathed in deeply and wordlessly got out of the car and walked across the lawn, fallen leaves kicking up around her feet. She stopped at the front door and took a second to examine it before she turned back to Sally. “Not here,” she said with a deep sigh. “Unless whoever it was can pick a lock, which he probably can. But someone, like one of the neighbors or a delivery guy or someone, would have seen him out front.”

Sally had joined her. “Around back. By the basement. Or maybe one of the side windows.”

Hope nodded. “I’ll check the back. You check the windows, especially over by the library.”

It did not take Hope long to find the shredded doorjamb. She stood for a moment, simply staring at the shards of wood that littered the cement basement floor. “Sally, down here!”

There was only a single bare overhead bulb, which cast odd shapes into the musty corners of the old house’s basement. Hope remembered that when Ashley was young, she was always scared to come downstairs alone to do her laundry, as if the corners and cobwebs hid trolls or ghosts. Nameless had been her preferred companion on those occasions. Even as a teenager, when Ashley knew she was far too sophisticated to believe in such things, she would collect all her too-tight jeans and skimpy underwear she didn’t want her mother to know she was wearing, then grab a dog biscuit and hold the basement door open for Nameless. The dog would clatter eagerly down the stairs, making enough of a racket to scare away any lingering demon, and wait for Ashley, already sitting, his tail sweeping half-moons of enthusiasm on the floor.

Hope turned when Sally came down the stairs. “This is where he got in.”

Sally eyed the splinters and nodded. She stepped aside as Hope moved past her.

“Then he would have come up the stairs. He probably had one of those little miniflashlights. Then into the kitchen.”

“That’s where Nameless must have heard him. Or smelled him,” Sally said.

Hope took a breath. “Nameless liked to wait for us in the vestibule, so he would have reacted to the sound behind him and known right away it wasn’t you or me or even Ashley coming home.”

Hope glanced around the kitchen. “This is where he made his stand,” she said softly. Last stand, she thought to herself. She could see the old dog, the gray hairs on the back of the neck raised, worn teeth bared. His home, his family. No one was getting past him, even if his eyesight was weak and his hearing almost gone. Not without paying a price, this she knew. She coughed back some more tears and dropped down to the floor, inspecting the area carefully. “See,” she said after a few seconds. “Right here.”

Sally looked down. “What is it?”

“Blood. Got to be blood. And not Nameless’s either.”

“I think you’re right,” Sally said. Then softer: “Good dog.”

“But whoever it was that broke in, what was he looking for?”

This time it was Sally who inhaled sharply. “It was him,” she said quietly.

“Him? You mean…”

“The creep. O’Connell.”

“But I thought…you said he was out of our lives. The private eye told you…”

“The private eye, Murphy, was killed. Murdered. Yesterday.”

Hope’s eyes widened.

“I was going to tell you, right when we got home.” Sally didn’t need to continue.

“Murdered? How? Where?”

“On a street in Springfield. Execution-style, or so the paper said.”

“What the hell does ‘execution-style’ mean?” Hope asked, her voice rising.

“It means someone walked up behind him and put two small-caliber bullets into the back of his brain.” Sally’s voice was cold, mingling detail with fear.

“You think it was him? Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I can’t tell. A lot of people hated Murphy. Any one of them…”

“We’re not interested in anyone else. I mean, do you think…” Hope stared down at the splatters of blood on the floor. “So, it might have been anybody in Springfield. But you think this break-in was…”

“Who else?”

“Well, it could have been any burglar. It’s not like it’s unheard-of in this neighborhood.”

“It’s still pretty unusual. And even when there is a break-in, it’s usually just teenage kids, anyway. This doesn’t feel like that. Do you see anything stolen?”

“No.”

“Then who else?”

“If it was O’Connell, that means…”

“He’s back after Ashley. Obviously.”

“But why here?” Hope finally said.

Sally shuddered. “He was searching for information.”

“But I thought Scott had invented this story and sold it to the creep. You know, Italy. Studying Renaissance art. Long gone and out of reach.”

Sally shook her head. “We don’t know,” she said coldly. “We have no idea what O’Connell knows, or what he thinks, or what he’s learned. Or what he’s done. We know Murphy was killed and we know Nameless was killed. Are the two the same? We’re the ones in the dark.” She sighed, then clenched her fists and pushed one up against her head in frustration. “We don’t know anything for sure.”

Hope looked down at the floor and thought she saw another droplet or two of blood, by the door leading into the house. “Let’s look around for a minute, see if we can trace his steps.”

Sally closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall for a moment. She gave out a long, slow breath. “At least there’s nothing here that would tell him where she is. I was really careful about that.” Opening her eyes, she continued, “And Nameless, just fighting him, you know, the way he did, that was probably more than enough to chase the son of a bitch out of here.”

Hope nodded, but inwardly she was less sure. “Let’s just look around.”

Another splatter of blood was in the hallway leading into the small library and television room.

Hope let her eyes sweep about, searching for telltale signs that O’Connell had been in here. When her eyes fell on the telephone, she gasped and took a step forward. “Sally,” she said quietly, “look there.”

Several crimson blood drops were on the telephone.

“But it’s just the phone…,” Sally started. Then she realized that the red message light was blinking. She pushed the playback button.

Ashley’s cheerful voice filled the room.

“Hi, Mom, and, hi, Hope. I miss you. But I’m having a great time with Catherine. We’re heading out to dinner, and I was just wondering if I could sneak down there in the next couple of days. Catherine will let me borrow her car, you know, maybe pick up some warmer clothes? Vermont is beautiful during the daytime, but at night, it’s getting chilly, and I’m going to need a parka and maybe some boots. Anyway, that’s the idea. I’ll talk to you later. Love ya.”

“Oh my God,” Sally blurted. “Oh no.”

“He knows,” Hope said. “He knows. For sure.”

Sally rocked back and spun around, her face stricken, her heart frozen in fear.

“That’s not all,” Hope said softly. Sally followed her eyes to a bookcase. The second shelf was filled with family pictures-of Hope and Sally, of Nameless, and of all of them with Ashley. There was also an elegant shot of Ashley, caught in profile, hiking in the Green Mountains, just as the sun was setting, the luckiest of pictures. It was a favorite of theirs because it captured her right at that wondrous transition from child to adult, from braces and bony knees to grace and beauty.

The picture usually occupied the center of the shelf.

It was no longer there.

Sally choked and grabbed at the phone. She dialed Catherine’s number, then stood helplessly as it rang over and over, without answer.

Scott had chosen that night to drive over to one of the other nearby colleges and attend a speech by a constitutional rights scholar from Harvard Law School, who was giving a presentation as part of a lecture series. The topic had been the history and evolution of the rights to due process. The speech had been genuinely lively. He was energized, and when he stopped on his way home to pick up some chicken lo mein and beef and snow peas at a Chinese restaurant, Scott was looking forward to the remainder of the evening, alone with student papers.

He reminded himself to call Ashley at some point that evening, just to check in, see how she was, see if she needed some cash. He was a little uncomfortable that Catherine was footing the bill for Ashley’s stay. He thought he should find some equitable financial understanding, especially because he was a little unsure how long Ashley would have to be there. Not much longer, surely. But still, she was probably something of a burden. He didn’t really know whether Catherine was wealthy. They had only met once or twice, on blessedly brief, overly polite occasions. He did know that she was fond of Ashley, which made her basically okay in his book.

The lo mein had started to drip through the paper bag when he came through the door and heard the telephone ring. He dumped it on the kitchen counter and grabbed the phone.

“Yeah, hello?” he said abruptly.

“Scott, it’s Sally. He was here, he killed Nameless, and now he knows where Ashley is and I can’t reach them on the phone.”

Her voice burst over the line, the words rushing toward him.

“Sally, calm down,” he said. “One thing at a time.”

He could hear his own tones. Calm. Reasonable.

Inside, he could feel his heart, his breathing, his head, all spinning and accelerating, as if he were dropping suddenly through a sullen, windswept sky.

Ashley and Catherine walked slowly through Brattleboro back to Catherine’s car, coffees in hand, observing a row of artisans’ studios, hardware stores, outdoor-gear outlets, and bookstores. It reminded Ashley of the college town where she had grown up, a place defined by the seasons and their modest pace. It was hard to feel uncomfortable or even threatened in a town that bent over backward to accommodate differing points of view.

It was a twenty-minute drive from the town out into the countryside where Catherine’s house was nestled between hills and fields, isolated from the neighbors. Catherine made Ashley drive, complaining that her eyesight wasn’t nearly as sharp at night as it once was, although Ashley figured that she just wanted to enjoy her latte in peace. Ashley was happy to hear the older woman go on this way; there was something fierce about Catherine. She wasn’t willing to allow any of the aches and pains of aging limit anything she did, as long as she got to rail against the process.

As they drove, Catherine gestured toward the road ahead. “Don’t nail some deer. Bad for the deer. Bad for the car. Bad for us.”

Ashley dutifully slowed the car and took a glance in the rearview mirror. She could see a set of headlights coming up fast behind them. “Someone seems to be in a hurry.”

She tapped her brakes once, just to make sure that the car behind them saw their lights.

“Jesus Christ!” she burst out.

The car behind them had roared up to their rear bumper, closing the distance with a screech, tailgating them, only inches back.

“What the hell?” Ashley shouted. “Hey, get back!”

“Stay calm,” Catherine said coldly. But she had dug her fingernails into the seat.

“Stop it!” Ashley shouted as the car behind them suddenly flicked on its high beams, filling up the interior with light. “God damn it, what are you doing?”

She could not see who was in the car, nor could she make out the make and model. She seized hold of her steering wheel as they maneuvered down the isolated country road.

“Let him pass,” Catherine said, keeping as much alarm out of her voice as she could. She pivoted in her seat, trying to look out the back, but she was blinded by the headlights and restricted by her seat belt. “Just pull to the side, first place you see. The road gets a little wider up ahead.” She was trying to remain calm at the same moment that her head was calculating rapidly. Catherine knew the roads in her community well; she was trying to think ahead, trying to envision how much space they might have.

Ashley tried to speed up, just to gain some separation, but the road was too narrow and twisted. The car behind them accelerated, keeping pace. She started to slow down.

“What the hell does he want?” she shouted again.

“Don’t stop,” Catherine said. “Whatever you do, don’t stop. Son of a bitch!”

“What if he hits us?” Ashley asked, to prevent herself from screaming.

“Just slow down enough so he goes by us. If he hits us, hang on. The road forks right, a mile ahead, and we can take that turn and head back towards town. It’ll take us towards the fire station, and maybe the cops, too.”

Ashley grunted in agreement.

Catherine did not tell Ashley that nearby Brattleboro might have twenty-four-hour police, ambulance, and fire service, but her little town relied on the state police after 10 p.m. or volunteers, who had to be summoned by radio. She wanted to check her watch, but was scared to release her grip on the handholds.

“Up there, on the right!” Catherine cried out. She knew there was a small turnoff a quarter mile ahead, designed to give school buses just enough room to turn around. “Head for that!”

Ashley nodded and pushed down on the gas once again. The car behind them jumped with them, sticking close as Ashley swerved the car onto a small dirt patch by the road She tried to move suddenly enough so that the car behind them would have no choice but to pass.

Except it didn’t.

Both women heard the squealing sound of brakes, and the screeching noise of tires complaining against the highway.

“Hang on!” Ashley shouted.

Both braced for impact, and Ashley crunched her foot down on the brake. The car was immediately enveloped in a cloud of dirt and dust, and they could hear gravel pinging off the undercarriage and spitting into the nearby trees.

Catherine threw one hand up to shield her face, and Ashley thrust herself back in the seat as the car skidded on the loose-packed dirt. Ashley spun the wheel into the skid, just as her father had taught her, seizing control before they slammed into an embankment. The rear end fishtailed for an instant, but Ashley was able to subdue it, wrestling with the wheel. She looked up, expecting to see the car behind them roar past, but she saw nothing.

The car shuddered and stopped, and Ashley pivoted, expecting headlights and collision.

Catherine slammed back in the passenger seat, bumped her head against the window, grunting hard. “Hang on!” she yelled again, expecting another impact.

But all that greeted them was silence.

Scott listened to the empty ringing, knowing no one was picking up the line.

The first thing he told himself was not to read too much into the failure to connect. They were probably just out for a meal and not yet home. Ashley was something of a night owl, he reminded himself, and more than likely she’d enlisted Catherine in a late showing at a movie theater, or maybe a drink at a bar. There were dozens of reasons why they could still be out. Do not panic, he told himself. Getting hysterical for no real reason wouldn’t help anyone or anything and would only irritate Ashley when they did manage to reach her. And probably irritate Catherine, as well, because she wasn’t the sort that ever liked being thought of as incompetent.

He breathed in sharply and called his ex-wife back.

“Sally? There’s still no answer.”

“I think she’s in danger, Scott. I really think so.”

“Why? Why this time?”

Sally’s head was filled with some perverse equation: dead dog times dead detective, divided by splintered doorjamb, multiplied to the missing photograph power. And it equals…But instead she said, “Look, a bunch of things have happened. I can’t fill you in, but-”

“Why can’t you fill me in?” Scott asked, as pedantic as ever.

“Because,” Sally spoke between gritted teeth, “every second we delay could prove-”

She didn’t finish. For a moment, the two of them were silent, the gulf between them cavernous.

“Let me speak with Hope,” Scott said abruptly.

This took Sally by surprise. “She’s right here, but-”

“Put her on.”

There was a momentary telephone fumbling before Hope picked up the line. “Scott?”

“I can’t get through, either. Not even the answering machine.”

“She doesn’t have one. She believes in making people call her back.”

“Do you think-”

“Yes, I do.”

“Should we call the police?” Scott asked.

Hope paused. “I will. I know most of the cops up there, sort of. Hell, a couple of them were high school classmates of mine. I can get one of them to drive over there and check on things.”

“Can you do this without making too much of an alarm?”

“Yes. I can simply say I can’t reach my mother and she’s elderly. They all know her, and it shouldn’t be a problem for them.”

“Okay. Do it,” Scott said. “And tell Sally I’m on my way up there. If you reach Catherine, tell her I’m going to show up there later tonight. But I’ll need directions.”

As Hope spoke, she saw that Sally was pale, her hands shaking. She had never seen Sally so scared, and this unsettled Hope almost as much as the shapeless night that engulfed them.

Catherine was the first to speak. “Are you okay, Ashley?”

And Ashley nodded, her lips dry and throat almost closed, not trusting her voice. She felt her racing heartbeat return to normal, and she said, “I’m fine. What about you?”

“A knock on the head. That’s it.”

“Should we go to the hospital?”

“No. I’m okay. Although I seem to have spilled my six-dollar cup of coffee all over myself.”

Catherine unfastened her safety belt and opened her door.

“I need a breath of air,” she said briskly.

Ashley reached over and shut off the engine. She, too, stepped out into the night. “What happened? I mean, what was that all about?”

Catherine was staring back down the road, then she turned and looked up in the direction they were traveling. “Did you see that bastard go by us?”

“No.”

“Well, I didn’t see what happened to him either. I wonder where the hell he went. I hope he spun out into the trees, or over some cliff.”

Ashley shook her head. “I was trying to keep control.”

“And a fine job you did,” Catherine said, her voice regaining a steadiness that reassured Ashley. “Indeed, NASCAR quality. Those guys have nothing on you, Ashley, if I may point out the obvious. Very dicey situation, handled expertly. We’re still here, and there’s not even a dent in my nice, almost new car.”

Ashley smiled, despite the anxiety that still echoed within her. “My father used to take me down to Lime Rock in Connecticut and book us time on the big track in his old Porsche. I learned a lot from him.”

“Well, not exactly the standard father-daughter outing, but one that has turned out to be valuable.”

Ashley took a deep breath. “Catherine, has something like that ever happened to you before?”

The older woman was standing by the side of the road, her eyes searching through the darkness. “No. I mean, sometimes when you putter around on these narrow, winding roads, some high school kid will get frustrated and zoom past on a blind turn. But that guy seemed to have something else in mind.”

They climbed back into the car and strapped themselves in. Ashley hesitated, then coughed out a few words.

“I wonder if, you know, the creep who was pursuing me…”

Catherine leaned back hard in the seat. “You think the young man that caused you to leave Boston…”

“I don’t know.”

Catherine snorted. “Ashley, dear, he doesn’t know you’re here, and he doesn’t know where I live, and it’s damn hard to find anyway out in the middle of nowhere. And it seems to me that if you go through life looking over your shoulder and assigning every bad thing that is out of the norm to this creep O’Connell, or whatever his name is, then you won’t have much of a life at all.”

Ashley nodded. She wanted to be persuaded, told herself to be persuaded, but agreement came slowly.

“Anyway, the young man professes to love you, Ashley, dear. Love. I fail to see what nearly driving us off the road has to do with love.”

Again, Ashley remained silent, although she thought she knew the answer to that question.

They drove the remainder of the trip in relative silence. There was a long gravel-and-dirt drive up to Catherine’s place. She hoarded her privacy within her four walls, while she blustered and badgered everyone in the community outside her home. Ashley stared at the dark house. It had once been a farm, dating back to the early 1800s, and Catherine liked to joke that she had updated the plumbing and the kitchen but not the ghosts. Ashley stared at the white clapboard and wished they’d remembered to leave some lights on inside.

Catherine, however, was accustomed to the dark welcome and launched herself from the car. “Damnation,” she said abruptly. “I hear the phone ringing.”

She grunted loudly and added, “Too damn late for phone calls.”

Ignoring the night, confident in her understanding of every dip and ridge on the walkway to her front door, Catherine left Ashley scrambling behind her. Catherine never locked her doors, so she burst inside, flicking on the lights as she made her way to an ancient rotary-dial phone in the living room.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Mother?”

“Hope! How nice. But you’re calling late.”

“Mother, are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, why?”

“Is Ashley with you? Is she okay?”

“Of course, dear. She’s right here. What is the matter?”

“He knows! He may be on his way there.”

Catherine inhaled sharply, but kept her wits about her. “Slow down, dear. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

As she said this, she turned toward Ashley, who was standing frozen in the doorway. Hope started to speak, but Catherine heard little. For the first time, she could see abject fear in Ashley’s eyes.

Scott drove red-line hard.

The small car leapt with enthusiasm, easily pushing past one hundred miles per hour. He could hear the engine roaring behind him as the night swept past, a blur of shadows, stately pine trees, and black, distant mountains. What should have taken close to two hours from Scott’s house to Catherine’s he expected to do in half that time. He was unsure whether this would be fast enough. He was unsure what was happening. He was unsure what O’Connell was doing. And he was unsure what the night held. He knew only that some odd, misshapen danger was directly in front of him, and he was determined to throw himself between the threat and his daughter.

As he drove, hands gripping the wheel tightly, he was almost overcome with images from their past. All the memories of raising a child flooded him. He felt an utter cold, crippling chill within him, and as each mile slid behind him, he could hardly fight off the sensation that he was a mile per hour too slow, that whatever was about to happen, he was going to miss it by just seconds. And so, he jammed his right foot down on the accelerator, oblivious to anything except the need to move quickly, perhaps more quickly than he had ever moved before.

Catherine hung up the telephone and turned toward Ashley. She kept her voice low, steady, and extraordinarily calm. She selected her words carefully, giving them an antique formality. Concentrating on her words helped her fight her growing panic. She breathed in slowly and reminded herself that she came from a generation that had fought much bigger battles than those presented by this fellow O’Connell, and so she layered her words with a Roosevelt determination.

“Ashley, dear. It appears that this young man who seems most unhealthily attracted to you has actually learned that you are not in Europe, but here, visiting with me.”

Ashley nodded, unable to respond.

“I think that what might be wisest is if you were to go upstairs to your bedroom and lock the door. Keep the telephone handy. Hope informs me that your father is driving up here, even as we speak, and that she is also intending to summon the local police.”

Ashley took a step toward the stairs, then stopped.

“Catherine, what are you going to do? Maybe we should just get back in the car and get out of here.”

Catherine smiled. “Well, I doubt it makes sense to give this fellow another shot at us on the road. I imagine he already tried once tonight. No, this is my home. And your home, as well. If this fellow means you any harm, well, I think we’d be better off dealing with it here, where we are familiar with the territory.”

“Well, then I won’t leave you alone,” Ashley said with a burst of false confidence. “We’ll both sit and wait together.”

Catherine shook her head. “Ah, Ashley, dear, that is most kind of you to offer. But I believe I would be far more comfortable waiting here, knowing that you were behind a locked door upstairs and out of the way. Regardless, the authorities should be here shortly, so let us be cautious and sensible. And sensible, right now, means please to do what I ask you.”

Ashley started to protest, but Catherine waved her hand.

“Ashley, allow me to defend my home in the manner I see fit.”

The impact of Catherine’s sturdy use of language was immediate. Ashley finally nodded. “All right. I’ll be upstairs. But if I hear anything I don’t like, I’ll be down here in a flash.” She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by anything I don’t like.

Catherine watched as Ashley bounded up the single central stairway. She hesitated until she heard the distinctive sound of an old-fashioned key in a door lock clicking shut. Then she walked over to a small wood closet, built right into the wall next to the large open-hearth fireplace. Jammed behind fire logs in an old leather case was her late husband’s shotgun. She had not brought it out in years, not bothered to clean it in as long a time, and was not completely certain that the half dozen shells rolling free in the bottom of the case were still capable of being fired. Catherine imagined that there was about an equal chance that the old weapon might explode in her hands if she had to pull the trigger. Still, it was a large, intimidating weapon, with a gaping hole at the end of the barrel, and Catherine hoped that that might be all that was necessary.

She took the shotgun out and sat down hard in a wing chair beside the fireplace. She fed all six shells into the magazine, then cocked the weapon and sat back, waiting, the gun across her lap. The weapon was greasy, and she rubbed her fingertips against her slacks, smearing them with dark streaks. She didn’t know much about guns, although she knew enough to click the safety catch off.

Catherine rested her hand on the stock as she heard the first small sounds of movement, just beyond the windows, closing in on the front door.

She continued to stare out the window, and I could imagine that she was chewing over one thought or another, then she abruptly turned back toward me and asked, “Have you ever actually thought you could kill someone?”

When I hesitated before answering, she shook her head. “That’s probably the answer right there. Maybe a better question for you to consider is how we romanticize violent death.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said slowly.

“Think of all the ways we express ourselves through violence. On the television, or in movies. Video games for kids. Think about all those studies that show that the average kid grows up witnessing how many thousands of deaths? Many thousands. But the truth is, despite all that education, when we are actually confronted by the sort of rage that could be fatal, we rarely know how to respond.”

I let her step away from the window and move back across the room to where she took a seat without replying.

“We like to imagine,” she said coldly, “that we will always know what to do in the most difficult of situations. But in reality, we don’t. We make mistakes. We fall prey to errors in judgment. All our flaws come flooding out. What we think we can do, we can’t. What we need to do is beyond us.”

“Ashley?”

She shook her head. “Don’t you think fear cripples us?”