She was close enough to touch Harper, to see the fear in her daughter’s eyes, when the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she fell away into the dark.
CHAPTER 20
Robert Heppler pulled the big Navigator into the empty -LV.driveway and put it in park, leaving the engine running. Nest gave a quick sigh of relief. It was blowing snow so hard that the driveway itself and all traces of tire tracks that might have marked its location had long since disappeared, so it was a good thing he knew the way by heart or they could easily have ended up in the front yard. She stared at the lighted windows of the house, but could see no movement. There were more lights on now than when she had left for the party, so someone must have gotten there ahead of her. She felt a surge of hope. Maybe she was wrong about Bennett. Maybe Bennett was waiting inside.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Robert asked. She shifted her eyes to meet his, and he gestured vaguely. “Just to make sure.”
She knew what he meant, even if he wasn’t saying it straight out. “No, I can handle this. Thanks for bringing us back, Robert.”
He shrugged. “Anytime. Call if you need me.”
She opened the door into the shriek of the wind and climbed out, sinking in snow up to her knees. Criminy, as Pick would say. “Watch yourself driving home, Robert!” she shouted at him.
She got the children out of the backseat, small bundles of padded clothing and loose scarf ends, and began herding them toward the house. The wind whipped at them, shoving them this way and that as they trundled through its deep carpet, heads bent, shoulders hunched. It was bitter cold, and Nest could feel it reach all the way down to her bones. She heard the rumble of the Navigator as it backed out of the driveway and turned up the road. In seconds, the sound of the engine had disappeared into the wind’s howl.
They clambered up the ice-rimmed wooden steps to the relative shelter of the front porch, where the children stamped their boots and brushed snow from their shoulders in mimicry of Nest. She tested the front door and found it unlocked— a sure sign someone was home—and ushered Harper and Little John inside.
It was silent in the house when she closed the door against the weather, so silent that she knew almost at once she had assumed wrongly; no one else was there, and if they had been, they had come and gone. She could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock and the rattle of the shutters at the back of the house where the wind worked them against their fastenings, but that was all.
She glanced down and noticed Bennett’s small bag packed and sitting by the front door. Close by, she saw the damp outline of bootprints that were not their own. Then she caught sight of a glint of metal in the carpet. She bent slowly to pick it up. It was a syringe.
She felt a moment of incredible sorrow. Placing the syringe inside a small vase on the entry table, she turned to the children and began helping them off with their coats. Harper’s face was red with cold and her eyes were tired. Little John looked the way he always did—pale, distant, and haunted. But he seemed frail, too, as if the passing of time drained him of energy and life and was finally beginning to leave its mark. She stopped in the middle of removing his coat, stared at him a moment, and then pulled him against her, hugging him close, trying to infuse him with some small sense of what she was feeling, trying once again to break through to him.
“Little John,” she whispered.
He did not react to being held, but when she released him, he looked at her, and curiosity and wonder were in his eyes.
“Neth,” Harper said at her elbow, touching her sleeve. “Appo jus?”
She glanced at the little girl and smiled. “Just a minute, sweetie. Let’s finish getting these coats and boots off.”