*
As she drove the last stretch home, Holly remembered the first time Jack had run away from her. Before the accident, in June of his seventh year, they had driven to a pick-your-own farm and orchard as a Sunday outing. It was the edge of high season, so Tim stayed home to take care of the tourists and summer people, and it was just the two of them. Mother and son gone for strawberries. One moment they were together in the fields, bent low and hunting for red to fill their waxed cartons, and the next moment Jack had vanished. She had been daydreaming, thinking perhaps of strawberry-rhubarb pie or shortcakes for dessert, and when she looked up from the riot of leaves, she could not see any sign of him. He had been scooped up from the earth, plucked from her side. It took a minute to register that he had slipped away without a word. She wound her way through the rows asking the other pickers if they had seen her son, a little boy, a quiet boy, a broken boy who had wandered off. The strawberries had been sown on the bottom flat land next to a small rise, and one party of searchers joined her, while another party struggled up the incline. A blond-haired girl in pigtails and gingham shorts spotted him first. She called out to Holly from the crest of the hill, pointing to a spot far off in the distance. Holly jogged to her and saw the figure in a field, small as a toy. He did not move the whole time she ran toward him, calling out his name, for he had found a quartet of sheep huddled together on the farm, staring back at him and bleating their protests. “See what I made, Mom,” he said, and she chalked it up to some random thought buzzing around his brain. When she threw her arms around him, it was like hugging a wooden soldier. The other searchers were bewildered by the sudden appearance of the sheep in the meadow, but she thought nothing of it at the time, just glad to find the little lost boy.
See what I made. Holly recalled his words as she and Tim drove through the virgin snowscape, the yards of the beach houses and summer homes covered white, the pines shagged with ice, everything blank as paper and deathly silent. Was he saying that he made those sheep? The dream house appeared suddenly through the trees, and she saw at once the picture was askew. Zigzag tracks crossed the yard, madcap trails churned through the snow. She lurched the Jeep into the driveway.
From across the street came a series of loud barks. A big white dog paced along a trench it had made in the snow, threatening them from the Quigleys’ yard.
“Good God,” Tim said. “That’s the white shepherd I saw in the back of Pollock’s car.”
She nearly jumped back in the driver’s seat. “I thought you said it was dead.”
The dog seemed unable or unwilling to give chase, as though bound by an invisible chain. Keeping the Jeep’s hood between it and herself, she sidled around to help Tim manage the snowy driveway. Because of his sore back, he needed to lean on her in order to shuffle through the snow.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Tim asked, pointing to the mudroom’s door, open and swinging on its hinges. They stopped to inspect the jamb and the splintered wood at the lock.
“Something’s been at it,” Holly said. “I’ve got to check on the boys.” Leaving Tim to fend on his own, she rushed into the house. A lick of water ran down the center of the slab floor, and a pair of cross-country skis lay in an X she had to step over. Coats and hats and boots were jumbled in a heap next to the kitchen step, and the inner door was broken, too. She called to them and entered the room, shocked by the mess. Muddy footprints dotted the linoleum and one of the chairs lay on its back, two legs off the ground. An overturned glass on the counter dripped milk down the face of a cupboard. Papers were strewn everywhere, some torn in half and others ruined with sandy water marks. Moving quickly through the empty space, Holly called for the boys again, glancing at the windows smudged by dirty hands. When no answer came, she stuck her head in the opening to the mudroom and saw her husband straining to pick up a mangled scarf and hang it on a peg. He moved as though he was old and riddled with arthritis.
“They’re not here, Tim. What’s happened to them?”