‘Will you come with me, Shepherd?’
‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad.’
‘What does that mean, Shep? What do you want?’
‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad. Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad.’
By the third time he recited this mantra, he had synchronized his words to those of ten-year-old Shepherd in the corner, and the resonance between them revealed the words that the younger Shep was murmuring as he rocked. ‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad.’
Jilly didn’t know the meaning of this, and she didn’t have the time to get involved in one of those long, circuitous conversations with Shepherd. ‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad. We’ll talk about that later, sweetie. Right now, just come with me. Come along with me.’
Somewhat to her surprise, without hesitation, Shep followed her out of the living room.
As they entered the study, Proctor used the computer keyboard to smash the monitor. He shoved the entire machine off the desk, onto the floor. He exhibited no glee, even winced at the mess he’d made.
Drawer by drawer, he quickly searched for diskettes. He found a few, stacked them aside. He tossed the other contents of the drawers on the floor, scattering them widely, evidently hoping to create the impression that the person or persons responsible for the death of Dylan’s mother had been ordinary thieves and vandals.
File cabinets in the bottom of the study closet contained only paper records. He dismissed these at once.
Atop the file cabinets were double-wide diskette-storage boxes: three of them, each capable of holding perhaps a hundred diskettes.
Proctor snatched diskettes out of the boxes, tossing them aside in handfuls without reading labels. In the third box, he found four diskettes different from the others, in canary-yellow paper sleeves.
‘Bingo,’ Proctor said, bringing these four to the desk.
Holding Shep’s hand, Jilly moved close to Proctor, expecting him to cry out as if he’d seen a ghost. His breath smelled of peanuts.
The yellow sleeve of each diskette blazed with the word WARNING! printed in red. The rest of the printing was in black: legalistic prose stating that these diskettes contained private files protected by lawyer-client privilege, that criminal and civil prosecution would be undertaken against anyone in wrongful possession of same, and that anyone not in the employment of the below-referenced law firm would automatically be in wrongful possession.
Proctor slid one diskette out of its sleeve to read the label. Satisfied, he tucked all four into an inner jacket pocket.
Now that he had what he’d come for, Proctor played vandal once more, pulling books off the study shelves and slinging them across the room. With flapping pages, the volumes flew through Jilly and Shepherd, dropping like dead birds to the floor.
* * *
When the computer crashed off the study desk, Dylan remembered the mess in which parts of the house had been found that February night long ago. Thus far he had remained at his mother’s side with the irrational hope that even though he had been unable to save her from the bullet, he would somehow spare her from the indignity yet to come. The racket in the study forced him to accept that in this matter, he was indeed as helpless as his brother.
His mother was gone, ten years gone, and all that had followed her death remained immutable. His concern now must be for the living.
He didn’t care to watch Proctor engaged in set-dressing. He knew what the ultimate look of the scene would be.
Instead, he went to the corner where ten-year-old Shep rocked back and forth, murmuring. ‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad.’
This was not what Dylan might have expected to hear his brother chanting, but it did not mystify him.
After the complete works of Dr. Seuss and others, the first story for older children that their mother read to Shep was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Shep had so adored the tale of Rat, Mole, Toad, Badger, and the other colorful characters of the Wild Wood that he had insisted she read it to him again and again during the year that followed. By the time he was ten, he’d read it at least twenty times on his own.
He wanted the company of Rat, Mole, and Mr. Toad, the story of friendship and hope, the dream of life in warm and secure burrows, in deep lamplit warrens, in sheltered glades, wanted the reassurance that after fearful adventures, after chaos, there would be always the circle of friends, the firelit hearth, quiet evenings when the world shrank to the size of a family and when no heart beat in a stranger.