Nightshade

CHAPTER 3

THE WEEK WENT by.

Bill Hapgood steered his Audi through the gates of Hapgood Farm, slowing the powerful car to a crawl as he made his way up the familiar curves of the long, graveled drive leading to the house. Until this week, this had been the best part of any given day of his life; the time when he left all his problems outside the gates and slipped back into the safe and familiar comfort of the only home he had ever known. It had always been that way: from the time he was a child this house had always been the final refuge from everything.

Once — just once — he had doubted the house’s ability to offer him sanctuary from the world. That had been the day he was in school in Hanover and received the news that the boat his parents had chartered out of St. Lucia had been found abandoned and washed up on Macaroni Beach on the windward shore of Mustique. His parents had vanished. At first he’d simply refused to believe it — he and his parents had been sailing on Penobscot Bay every summer for as long as he could remember, and his father was an expert sailor. But he must have accepted the fact of their disappearance, for when he’d gone home that day, he hesitated before going through the gates, certain that the place would have changed, that it would feel hollow and empty with his parents forever gone.

Instead, to his surprise, it seemed to welcome him even more warmly than ever, and far from finding the house filled with memories that intensified his grief, it gave him comfort instead. It was as if the house, having already known the loss of four generations of Hapgoods, now knew how to deal with death, and the moment he’d passed through the gates of the Farm, his healing had begun.

But over the last week he’d actually dreaded coming home, and as he slid the Audi into the space in the carriage house next to Joan’s Range Rover and shut off the engine, he hesitated before reaching for the door handle, as he’d once hesitated so long ago. Had the car, rather than his home, become his refuge? That was ridiculous! All that had happened was that his mother-in-law had moved in, and even that was only temporary.

Yet as he walked out of the carriage house — converted just over a century ago into a garage to hold the very first car in Granite Falls — he could feel the change. Not that there was anything tangible, anything visible. The house looked exactly as it always had. Lamps had already been turned on against the gathering dusk, but even the light that spilled through the mullioned windows seemed to have lost its warmth, and when Bill stepped through the French doors of what had once been the porte cochere, the change that had been creeping through the house all week was more pronounced than ever.

He called out to Joan and Matt. There was no answer, and as he hung his coat in the hall closet, he knew why: from the second floor he heard Emily Moore’s petulant voice hectoring his wife.

“Not there! It doesn’t belong there! How many times do I have to tell you?”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Bill had started toward the open door to Emily’s room when he heard the old woman’s voice again, and realized the sound was coming from the room next to his mother-in-law’s. He continued down the wide hallway to the door and pushed it open.

Except for the basics — the wallpaper, carpet, and upholstery — the room had completely changed. The four-poster bed, the Queen Anne chair by the window, the Chippendale chiffonier — all were gone, replaced by a cheap set of painted furniture that Bill didn’t quite recognize, though it looked vaguely familiar.

Then it came to him.

Cynthia’s room.

Everything that had been in his wife’s sister’s room — the room that his mother-in-law had always kept in readiness for her long-dead daughter’s return — was now in this room.

In this house.

In his house.

The pictures that had hung on the walls — three original Currier and Ives prints — were gone, replaced with the hodgepodge of posters and snapshots that had been plastered on the walls of the little house on Burlington Avenue.

The Winslow Homer — minor, but original — that had hung over the mantel of the room’s small fireplace had been replaced with the large portrait of Cynthia that in Emily’s house had hung on the wall opposite her beloved daughter’s bed.

And his entire family — his wife, his stepson, his mother-in-law — were all gathered in that room.

“What’s going on?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully modulated so it betrayed nothing of his suddenly churning emotions.

Joan, reacting as if she’d been stung, whirled to face him. The color drained from her face, and her eyes flicked back and forth between her husband and her mother, as if she were unable to decide where her safety lay.

Matt, who was standing on a stool adjusting the portrait of his aunt, dropped to the floor. “We were just helping Gra — ” he began, but Bill cut him off before he could finish.

“I thought we decided all of this would stay where it was,” he said to Joan, still managing to keep his voice from betraying his feelings.

“I know, but Mother — ” Again Joan’s eyes darted toward her mother, who was now glowering at Bill. When his wife spoke again, her voice was trembling. “She said she wouldn’t stay here without Cynthia’s things. They mean so much to her, and I thought — ”

“I see,” Bill said.

Matt, sensing the storm that was suddenly brewing between his mother and his stepfather, slipped out of the room, retreating to his own at the far end of the hall.

Joan tilted her head almost imperceptibly toward her mother. “Can’t we talk about this later?”

Bill hesitated. Fragments of conversations flicked through his head:

His wife’s voice: Nothing I do is ever good enough.

His own: She’s always been that way. That’s one of the reasons she can’t live with us — she’ll destroy this family.

His stepson’s voice: How come she’s so mean to you, Mom?

And once again, his wife’s voice: She doesn’t mean it. She’s just old. And she’s my mother.

Every night that week they’d waited until Emily — and Matt too — had gone to bed, and then tried to talk about it. Or, to be honest, they talked about it the first two nights.

Then they started fighting about it, and no matter how hard each of them tried, the fight had grown steadily more bitter.

This morning at breakfast the atmosphere had been so tense that none of them talked at all. Matt, pleading unfinished homework, had escaped from the house half an hour earlier than he ever left, and Joan, on the pretext of feeding her mother, had disappeared upstairs. But the simple fact was that what he feared had come true.

His home was no longer what it had been all his life, no longer offered shelter and comfort.

Not for him.

Not for his family.

Instead it had become a battle zone under the control of a woman whose disease had robbed her of any regard for anything but the preservation of her own delusions.

Hapgood Farm was no longer his home.

“Maybe we can talk about it a lot later,” Bill finally said, his voice reflecting the sadness and pain in his soul as he answered his wife’s question. “Maybe we can talk about it next week, or the week after. But not tonight. Not if it means going through what we’ve been going through every night this week.”

He left the guest room and went through the master bedroom to his closet. Taking out his suitcase, he began to pack. Twice, he almost changed his mind, almost took the clothes out of the suitcase and hung them back in the closet. But what good would it do? If he stayed, he wouldn’t be able to keep silent, wouldn’t be able to prevent himself from trying to protect his family from the wounds Emily Moore inflicted nearly every time she spoke.

At least if he left — even for just a few days — the two people who meant the most to him would no longer be caught in the jaws of a trap with the teeth sinking in from both directions. Then, in a few days — certainly no more than a week — he and Joan could talk again.

Reluctantly, he finished packing. He paused at the closed door to Matt’s room, wondering if he should try to explain why he was leaving. But even as he stood in the hall outside, he could see the hurt that would come into the boy’s eyes, the hurt that would melt his resolve in an instant. Better just to go, and try to explain it all to Matt tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.

He paused at the door to the guest room too, wanting to see Joan one more time, to put his arms around her and protect her from her mother’s wrath. But as he reached for the doorknob he heard Emily’s strident voice once again. As he felt his fury rise again — a fury he was as helpless to control as Emily Moore was helpless to control either her illness or her tongue — he made himself turn away from the door.

Let them be, he told himself. At least for tonight, don’t put any more pressure on them. Clutching the suitcase tightly, he hurried down the stairs and out of the house that was the only home he’d ever known. As he backed the Audi out of the carriage house a few minutes later, he glanced up to the window of the guest room that had been given over to the memory of the woman who lived only in the diseased mind of Emily Moore. He saw his wife standing in the window, looking down at him. As their gazes held, she shrugged her shoulders helplessly and mouthed three words:

She’s my mother!

Then, without waiting to see what he would do, she turned away.

* * *

MATT TOSSED RESTLESSLY in bed, rolling first one way, then the other, pushing the blankets down, then pulling them up again. Finally he gave up trying to sleep.

Maybe he’d feel better if he went downstairs and got something to eat.

Clad only in his bathrobe — the thick velour one his stepfather had given him for Christmas last year — he slipped out into the hall and headed toward the stairs.

Everything about the house felt different tonight. Part of it was having his grandmother there. At first — the day after the fire — he’d thought it felt different because there was someone besides the three of them in the house. In a few days, he’d told himself, they’d all be used to having Gram in the house, and things would be just like they always were.

It hadn’t happened. Instead, as each day crept by, he felt the tension between his parents growing. They tried to hide it from him, but even though they weren’t exactly fighting, he knew they weren’t getting along.

And tonight his father had left.

Matt had watched him from the window, seen him stow his suitcase in the trunk of the Audi, back the car out of the garage, then look up at the house for a few seconds, and drive away. At first he told himself that his stepfather would come back. He was just angry, and when he got over it, he’d return home. But as the minutes had turned into hours and he’d listened as the big clock at the foot of stairs tolled midnight, he knew his dad wasn’t coming back.

Not my dad, Matt reminded himself as he paused outside the closed door to his grandmother’s room. He’s only my stepfather. But the words did nothing to make him feel better: no matter what he called him, Bill Hapgood was the only father he’d ever known. Even now, ten years later, he could still remember how frightened he felt the night after his mother had gotten married and they’d come to live here. The house had seemed so huge, with so many rooms, that at first he was afraid to sleep by himself in his own room. For as long as he could remember he’d had nightmares at night — terrifying dreams that he could never quite remember in the morning — but at least in his grandmother’s house he had known his mother was right in the next bed, ready to hold him if he got too scared. But in this house his mother would be way down the hall, and he’d be all by himself in a room that was bigger than his grandmother’s living room. But that first night his stepfather had come in and told him about how this used to be his room, and that there was a special knight — named the Night-Knight — who always protected him while he slept. Matt had lain in bed listening as his stepfather told him all about the Night-Knight, and finally fell asleep.

And it had worked. The Night-Knight had kept the nightmares at bay, and the next morning while they were eating breakfast, Matt looked shyly up at his stepfather.

“Will you be my dad?” he’d asked, doing his best not to let anyone see how scared he was. What if his stepfather said no?

But his stepfather hadn’t said no, and from then on, everything had been fine. He’d never been frightened again, during the daytime or at night. And even when he’d gotten old enough to understand that the Night-Knight existed only in his imagination, the nightmares had never come back.

But tonight his dad had left, and everything about the house felt different.

He went downstairs to the kitchen, poked around among the leftovers, and finally ate a dish of ice cream. It was weird sitting by himself in the kitchen, because usually when he was worried about something and couldn’t sleep and came down to get something to eat in the middle of the night, his dad would show up too, and the two of them would sit there talking until they’d worked out whatever was bothering him.

But tonight he was by himself, and there was no chance his dad would come to talk to him.

Shit!

Leaving the empty ice cream dish on the sink, he started back up the stairs. When he got to the top, he paused, listening. Behind the closed door to her room, Matt could hear his grandmother muttering to herself. Though the words were indistinct, her voice droned on and on, and he had the feeling that even though he couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, she was talking to someone.

His mother?

He moved closer.

But it wasn’t from his grandmother’s room that he was hearing the voice — it seemed to be coming from the room next door.

He made his way silently to the room adjoining his grandmother’s.

The old woman’s voice was clearer now, but he still couldn’t distinguish the words.

Reaching out, he placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

He pushed the door open just far enough to peer into the room.

Though none of the lamps were on, the moon was glowing just brightly enough to let him see the interior of the room. His grandmother was standing in front of the fireplace, staring up at the portrait of his aunt.

Her lips were moving, and though her voice was low, Matt could distinguish some of her words: “… time to come home… need you… help me… come home, Cynthia…”

“Gram?” Matt asked uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

No response.

He hesitated. Should he say something else? But then, as he was trying to decide what to do, his grandmother slowly turned and her eyes, barely visible in the moonlight, fixed on him.

“Joan’s bastard,” she whispered. She took an unsteady step toward him, her eyes flashing venomously. “Damn you…”

Recoiling from his grandmother’s curse, her words ringing in his head, Matt pulled the door closed and hurried back to his room.

He shut his own door too, against the sound of his grandmother’s muttering, but it was still audible from the room down the hall, and he couldn’t deafen himself to the last words she had spoken to him.

Joan’s bastard… Joan’s bastard… The words resounded in his mind, taunting him.

Dropping his robe on the chair in front of his desk, he slid naked into his bed and pulled the covers tight.

Still his grandmother’s voice tortured him: Damn you… damn you…

Her curse echoed in his mind and he clutched the covers tighter still, willing the hateful words away.

At last, hours later, he slept.

Once, he awoke, and for a moment thought he smelled a strange scent in the air, a scent that seemed to trigger some deep memory from his childhood, from before he had come to live in this house. But even as the strange, musky aroma filled his nostrils, he dropped back into his restless sleep.

That night, for the first time since he left his grandmother’s house when he was five years old, the nightmares of his childhood came back to torture him.

Nightmares from which neither his stepfather nor the Night-Knight could now defend him.

* * *

THE CLOUDS HANGING over granite falls were nearly as dark as Matt’s mood, and the morning looked every bit as cold as the house felt. Turning away from the window, he eyed his bed — still rumpled and tangled from his restless night — and felt an uncharacteristic urge to creep back into the warmth and comfort of the blankets. They had offered no solace last night, though, and even as the impulse flitted through his mind, he knew that retreating to the bed would accomplish nothing. After pulling on his clothes, he put his books in his backpack, added what little homework he’d managed to get done last night, and went down to breakfast.

Except there was no breakfast.

The kitchen was as cold and cheerless as the rest of the house.

The coffee maker — the one he’d given his dad for Christmas last year, that measured the beans, ground them, then brewed the coffee to be ready at whatever time was required — hadn’t been set last night. Matt reached out to push the manual start button but stopped short of actually pressing it. As he turned on the gas burner under the old teakettle, he told himself that the coffee maker would take too long, and that there wasn’t that much difference between fresh-ground and instant, anyway. But once again he knew the words weren’t quite true.

It was his dad’s coffeepot, and he should have been there to start it himself.

Fuck him! Matt thought, shutting off the burner and starting the coffee maker. If it was so easy for him to just walk out, why should I care?

The machine came to life, gears turning as it shifted beans into the grinder, blades clattering as the beans were pulverized. While the coffee began to brew, Matt rummaged through the refrigerator. Usually they had bacon and eggs for breakfast, but as he stared at the slab of bacon and the dozen fresh eggs, he had no appetite for any of it.

Cold cereal was a much better match for his mood this morning.

He had a cup of coffee, ate the cereal, and was just putting the bowl and spoon into the dishwasher when his mother finally appeared. Her skin was so pale — her face so drawn — that Matt knew at once she hadn’t slept any better than he had.

Mother and son eyed each other, both waiting for the other to speak, neither quite sure they wanted to know what the other was thinking or feeling.

The silence built like a wall between them. It was finally Joan who breached it. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice betraying the fragility of her nerves.

“Are you?” Matt countered, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

His mother hesitated, then shook her head. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

Matt’s eyes shifted from Joan to the coffee maker. “Do you think Dad’ll come home this afternoon?” he ventured as he refilled his cup and poured one for his mother.

Once again the chasm of silence widened until it threatened to engulf them while Joan tried to decide what to say. Her first impulse was to try to reassure him, as she had when Bill Hapgood first came into their lives eleven years ago. But then she remembered that he was not a little boy anymore. “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

Suddenly Emily’s voice could be heard drifting down from the floor above. Though her words were indistinct, both of them heard the anger in her tone. Joan flinched, and the hot coffee slopped out of the cup onto her hands. “I’d better go up and see what she wants.”

His mother started toward the door. “Maybe Dad’s right,” Matt said, and though his voice was soft, his words stopped Joan short. “Maybe Gram shouldn’t be here. Maybe you should let Dad find a place for her.” He saw a flicker of something in his mother’s eyes. Fear? Anger? He couldn’t be certain, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.

“No,” she said. “She’s my mother and I have to take care of her.” Then she was gone and he could hear her hurrying up the stairs as his grandmother called out again.

Matt drained his coffee, picked up his backpack, and went out into the cold morning, walking quickly down the long driveway. Kelly Conroe was waiting for him by the mailbox, just as she always did, but as he came out the gate her usually sunny smile faded.

“Matt?” she asked, unknowingly echoing the words he’d asked his mother a few minutes earlier. “Are you all right?”

He fell in beside her, taking her hand in his own. They’d been going to school together almost as long as they could remember, first waiting for the grade-school bus at the stop halfway between the Hapgood house and the Conroes’, then riding their bikes, and then, when they got to high school, walking. It wasn’t until last spring that they started holding hands, and though neither Matt’s parents nor Kelly’s had said anything, both of them were sure that their mothers, at least, were already speculating on the future possibilities, happily ignoring the fact that since Kelly was planning on going to medical school and Matt was toying with becoming a lawyer, whatever “future possibilities” there might be were at least eight or ten years away.

“My dad left last night,” Matt told her.

Kelly stopped short. “What do you mean, he left?”

Matt suddenly felt annoyed with Kelly. “You know — left?”

“But why?” Kelly asked.

“Why do you think?” Matt demanded, his voice harsh. “Because of my grandmother moving in.”

“But he’s coming back, isn’t he?”

Matt dropped Kelly’s hand. “How should I know?” He hesitated. Then, as the rain that had been threatening began to fall, all the feelings that had been building in him through the night poured out. “It’s not like he told me if he’s coming back or not! He didn’t say anything at all. There wasn’t even a fight, or anything.” The whole story of what had happened the night before tumbled from his lips.

“He’ll come back,” Kelly decided when Matt was finished. They were in front of the school, and the first bell rang as she spoke. “I mean, your dad’s not going to leave just because — ”

Matt’s eyes, as stormy as the sky, fixed on her. “He’s not my dad, remember? He’s only my stepfather. So who cares if he comes back? I don’t!” Turning his back on her, he hurried up the front steps and into the shelter of the school.

Kelly, oblivious to the rain, watched him go.

You care, she thought. You care if he comes back.