Dylan couldn’t give him that. In fact, if such a life could be lived in this world, the likelihood was that it could be enjoyed only by characters in books.
In the downstairs hall, the mirror by the front door shattered. If memory served, it had been broken with the vase that had stood on the small entry table.
From the living-room doorway, Jilly called to Dylan, ‘He’s going upstairs!’
‘Let him go. I know what he does. Sacks the master bedroom and steals Mom’s jewelry… I guess to make it look like a robbery. Her purse is up there. He empties it, takes the money from her wallet.’
Jilly and Shepherd joined him, gathering behind the long-ago Shepherd in the long-ago corner.
This was not where Shep had been found on the night of February 12, 1992. Dylan wanted to remain in this time until he knew if Shep had been spared bearing witness to what was yet to come.
From upstairs echoed the hard crashes of drawers being pulled out of the bureau and thrown against the walls.
‘Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad,’ said the younger Shepherd, and the older Shep, armoring himself against a scary world and perhaps speaking also to his ten-year-old self, said, ‘Shep is brave, Shep is brave.’
After a minute, the noises of destruction ceased upstairs. Proctor had probably found the purse. Or he was loading his pockets with her jewelry, none of which had great value.
Head bowed in his posture of eternal supplication, the younger Shep moved out of the corner and shuffled to the dining-room door, and the older Shep closely followed him. Like processional monks, they were, in a brotherhood of the genteel estranged.
Relieved, Dylan would have followed them anyway, but when he heard Proctor’s footsteps thundering as hard as knocking hooves on the stairs, he stepped after his brother more quickly, pulling Jilly with him, out of the living room.
Ten-year-old Shep rounded the table and returned to his chair. He sat and stared at his puzzle.
The golden-retriever puppies in the basket revealed a moment of peace and charm that couldn’t possibly exist in this violent fallen world, that must instead represent a glimpse into a burrow in the Wild Wood.
Shepherd stood across the table from his younger self, flanked by Jilly and Dylan, watching.
In the living room, Proctor began to overturn furniture, tear paintings from the walls, and smash bibelots, further developing the scenario that would lead the police away from any consideration that the intruder might have been other than a common drug-pumped thug.
Younger Shep selected a piece of the jigsaw from the puzzle box. He scanned the incomplete picture. He tried the fragment in a wrong hole, another wrong hole, but inserted it correctly on his third try. The next piece he placed at once. And the next, faster.
After the loudest of the crashes, the living room grew quiet.
Dylan tried to focus on the gracefulness with which ten-year-old Shep turned chaos into puppies and a basket. He hoped to block from his mind images of the final bit of scene-setting in which Proctor must be now engaged.
Inevitably, he failed.
To suggest that the initial intentions of the murderous intruder had included rape as well as robbery, Proctor would tear open Blair O’Conner’s blouse, popping the buttons from throat to belt line. To suggest that the victim had fought back before she could be sexually assaulted, and that she’d been shot accidentally during a struggle or on purpose by a man enraged when rejected, Proctor would tear at her bra, snapping one shoulder strap, jerking the cups below her breasts.
With these indignities committed, he came into the dining room, flushed from his exertions.
If ever Dylan had been capable of murder, this was the moment. He had the will, but he did not have the way. His fists were less than smoke to Proctor here. Even if he’d come with a revolver from his own time, the bullet would drill Proctor without shredding one filament of flesh.
Stopping just inside the doorway, the killer watched ten-year-old Shep at the table, oblivious of his audience. He blotted his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Boy, do you smell my sweat?’