Page 14 of Nightwatching

“You’re my tough little guy. And you’re kind, too. You can be both at the same time,” she’d tell her teary-eyed son in the wake of his grandfather’s eviscerations.

The space between visits allowed her to pretend the older man didn’t exist for months at a time, a relief that untensed her jaw joints, let her hatred go dry. But there was no more pretending after hearing, “Stage four. Aggressive but operable. Years left, with luck and proper care.”

She’d tasted bitter resentment at the news. Because just like her husband, her first reaction wasn’t concern over his mother’s coming pain, fright, and even death. No. Her first thought was that she didn’t want to deal with her father-in-law, the way he would inevitably pull all gravity in his direction.

This isn’t about him. Or you.

At her husband’s urging, they looked at real estate close to the senior living community where her in-laws were ensconced, outwhere suburban met rural. They’d discussed moving before—the kids were getting big, good schools, room to play—but the cookie-cutter suburban homes they’d toured had never been enough to lure them out of the city. Then, not so unusually for New England, on a meandering street of large properties populated by nineteenth-century farmhouses, 1980s split-levels, and pre-crash McMansions, they discovered a blackened center chimney colonial, built in 1722, situated on five acres of open pasture rimmed by woods, complete with its own graveyard.

Everything proportional but nothing square. Wrinkled window glass distorting the outdoors to the flux of water. No floorboard the same width, same length. No stair level. Unique, beautiful, worn.

Of course you like it. It’s as marked as you are.

Yes, the house was creaky, impractical, hard to heat. Yes, she and her husband were both nervous about the caregiving ahead. But the prospect of being part of the home’s history, patching its broken places, gave her a purpose for moving apart from her mother-in-law’s illness.

So they bought it. They moved. They dedicated themselves to helping her mother-in-law while they slowly made the house their own.

And now the wood, brick, and mortar of the house’s innermost refuge was all that stood between her and the intruder.

6

After the swish of the door, the destruction of her daughter’s creations, the man’s footsteps faded.

A locker-room reek hit her, and she realized it was the smell of her own sweat. That she was still sweating while miserably trembling with the freeze of the hidden place was yet one more bit of unreality. The children were the only warm thing in the world, bodies nuzzling close against her. Their hummingbird hearts vibrated in their tiny chests. Her mouth filled with dust and terror as she imagined the man with an ear to their wall, listening.

He might be in the office. He might be right on the other side of the paneling.

You can’t know that, don’t be ridic—

Then came the distinct crackle of the weakest floorboard in the house, worn so thin over the centuries that every time she put a foot on it she’d think,You’ll have to replace that, it’ll only get worse.

That floorboard was at the entrance to the office. The man’s unseeable presence crawled through her heart, her blood.

How thick is this wall? Just simple pine boards, the decorative paneling nailed over it. Yes, the hidden door’s surround was about an inch deep when you crawled through, maybe a little more.

An inch of wood between us and him.

Another step, then quiet. She tried to picture what he was doing. Taking in the details of the room. Looking for where they could behiding. Rifling through the file drawers. Going through the prints her husband stored in the oak map chest, the larger ones rolled in the corner, the framed patent illustrations and photos of the vacant highways, the empty cities on the walls. Maybe he was sitting in the armchair. Taking a load off. Having a breather.

A light twang traveled clear and warm through the wood of the wall. He’d brushed the strings of her husband’s guitar, propped on its stand next to the desk. Not accidentally, either, but the way a person who knows how to play a guitar did when they saw one. She imagined his flat thumb on the strings. Intimate. It forced her eyes closed. A thousand happy memories of her husband’s firm, strong hands traveling those strings, those same sounds, and here was this man, claiming it, capsizing all that beauty.

“Hello?” he said.

The children rustled in surprise, as if out of habit they wanted to answer and were resisting. She choked on her own spit and shock. Her thoughts ran in panicked circles, and her bones felt empty as a bird’s.

He knows we’re here!

“Hello?” he said again, louder.

How?

“Shhhhh,” she said to the children, so low she wasn’t sure if they’d hear her.

“I see you,” he said, voice a singsonging lilt.

No, no, no.

Her daughter groaned into the robe, muffled. Her son started to quietly cry. She rubbed his back, shushing under her breath.

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