40

Ashley pushed against the headboard of her bed, placing her feet against the wood, so that she was back to front, feeling the muscles in her legs tighten until they began to shake with exertion. It was what she had done when she was young, when her body seemed to outdistance itself, and she was afflicted with “growing pains,” feeling as if her bones no longer fit into her skin. Sports, running hard in the afternoons, while Hope watched, had helped, but many nights she had tossed and turned in her bed, waiting for her body to grow into whoever it was she was going to become.

It was early, and the house was still filled with the occasional sounds of sleep. Catherine in the next room snored loudly. There wasn’t any stirring from either Sally or Hope, although late the night before, she had heard them talking. The words had been too distant for her to make out, but she presumed they had something to do with her. She hadn’t heard any muffled, hidden noises of affection in some time, and this troubled her. She very much wanted her mother to stay with Hope, but Sally had grown so distant in the past years, she was unsure what would happen. Sometimes she didn’t believe she could handle the emotional briars of another divorce, even one that was gentle. From experience she knew the “amicable divorce” doesn’t really make the internal pain any less.

For a moment, Ashley listened, then slowly let a few tears well up in the corners of her eyes. Nameless had always slept at the end of the hallway on a tattered dog bed just outside the master bedroom, so that he could be close to Hope. But often, when Ashley was young, he had sensed in that magical dog way when something was troubling her, and he would come down, uncalled, nose open the door to her room, and without any fuss take up a position on the carpet by her bureau. He would watch her until she would tell him whatever was bothering her. It was as if by reassuring the dog, she could reassure herself.

Ashley bit down on her lip. I’d shoot him myself, just for what he did to Nameless.

She kicked her feet off the bed and rose. For a moment, she let her eyes meander slowly over all the familiar items of her childhood. On one wall, surrounding a poster board, were dozens of her own drawings. There were snapshots of her friends, of herself dressed up for Halloween, on the soccer field, and ready for the prom. There was a large, multihued flag with the word PEACE in its center above an embroidered white dove. An empty bottle of champagne with two paper flowers in it signified the night her freshman year in college when she’d lost her virginity, an event she had secretly shared with Hope, but not her mother and father. She slowly let out her breath and thought to herself that all the things she could see in front of her were signs of who she had been, but what she needed to imagine was what she was going to become. She went to the shoulder bag hanging from the doorknob to her closet, reached in, and removed the revolver.

Ashley hefted it in her hand, then turned and assumed a firing position, aiming first at the bed. Slowly, one eye closed, she rotated, bringing the weapon to bear on the window. Fire all six shots, she reminded herself. Aim for the chest. Don’t jerk on the trigger. Keep the weapon as steady as possible.

She was a little afraid that she looked ridiculous.

He won’t be standing still, she thought. He might be rushing forward, trying to close the distance between himself and death. She reassumed her stance, widening her bare feet on the floor, lowering herself a couple of inches. She did measurements in her memory: How tall was O’Connell? How strong was he? How fast would he move? Would he plead for his life? Would he promise to leave her alone?

Shoot him in the goddamn heart, she told herself, if he has one.

“Bang,” she whispered out loud. “Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.”

She lowered the revolver to her side.

“You’re dead and I’m alive. And my life gets to go on,” she said softly, to make certain that no matter how troubled the sleep of the others was, they wouldn’t hear her. “No matter how damn bad it might seem, it will be better than this.”

Still gripping the gun, she sidled to the edge of the window. Concealing herself behind the curtains, she peered up and down the street. It was only a little past dawn, a weak half-light slowly bringing out shapes up and down the block of houses. It would be cold, she thought. There would be damp frost on the lawns. Too cold for O’Connell to have spent the night outside, keeping watch.

She nodded and replaced the gun in her satchel. Then she rapidly pulled tights, a black turtleneck, and a hooded sweatshirt from her drawers and grabbed her running shoes. She did not think that she would have many moments over the next few days when she could be alone, but this seemed to her to be one of them. As she tiptoed from the room, she had a twinge of regret, leaving the pistol behind. But she couldn’t really run with it, she thought. Too heavy. Too crazy.

The air was tinged with Canadian cold that had drifted down through Vermont. She closed the front door quietly and pulled a knit cap down over her ears, then took off fast up the street, wanting to get away from the house before anyone could tell her not to do what she was doing. Whatever risk was involved, it rapidly fled from Ashley’s thoughts as she accelerated hard, forcing her heartbeat to warm her hands, going fast enough to leave even the cold behind.

Ashley ran hard, seeming to keep up a rhythm to her thoughts. She let the pounding of her feet turn her anger into a sort of runner’s poetry. She was so fed up with being restricted and ordered around and constrained by her family and by her fears that she insisted to herself that she was willing to take a chance. Of course, she told herself, don’t be so stupid as to not make it difficult; she traveled an erratic, zigzag path.

What she wanted, she thought, was the luxury of acting rashly.

Two miles became three, then four, and the morning’s spontaneity dissolved into a steadiness that she hoped protected her. The wind was no longer cold and burning on her lips and drawn into her lungs, and she could feel sweat around her neck. When she turned and started back toward her home, she felt some fatigue, but not enough to slow her down. Instead, what she felt was an unsettled heat that burned inside her. She scanned the path ahead and suddenly saw movement. She was nearly overcome by the sensation that she was no longer alone. She shook her head and kept moving.

Some eight blocks from her house, a car sliced dangerously close by. She gasped, wanting to shout an obscenity, but kept running.

Six blocks from her house, a loud voice called out a name as she ran past. She could not tell if it was hers, and she didn’t turn to look, but started to move faster.

Four blocks from her house, someone nearby honked a car horn. The sound made her nearly jump out of her skin, and she started to sprint.

Two blocks from her house, she suddenly heard tires squealing behind her. She gasped for breath and, again, didn’t turn to investigate, but leaped from the roadway to the uneven cement sidewalk, broken up by tree roots that had pushed the surface into a ripple of cracks and breaks, like the unsettled surface of the ocean before a storm. The pavement seemed to snap at her ankles, and her feet complained with the difficulty. She ran harder. She wanted to close her eyes and tried to shut out all sounds. This was impossible, so she began humming to herself. She religiously kept her eyes straight ahead, refusing to turn in either direction, like a racehorse with blinders on, sprinting as fast as she could manage toward her home. She jumped across a flower bed and dashed across the lawn, almost slamming into the front door, before she stopped and slowly turned around.