It was only three days later that they heard from Ralph Brentner that Nadine had moved in with Harold Lauder. At that, Larry's face seemed to tighten, but it was only for a moment. And although Lucy disliked herself for it, Ralph's news made her breathe a little easier. It seemed it must be over.
She went home only briefly after seeing Larry. She let herself in, went to the living room, and lit the lamp. Carrying it high, she went to the back of the house, pausing for just a moment to let the light spill into the boy's room. She wanted to see if she had told Larry the truth. She had.
Leo lay asprawl in a tangle of bedclothes, dressed only in his undershorts... but the cuts and scratches had faded, disappeared altogether in most cases, and the all-over tan he had gotten from going practically naked had also faded. But it was more than that, she thought. Something in his face had changed - she could see the change even though he was asleep. That expression of mute, needful savagery had gone out of it. He was not Joe anymore. This was just a boy sleeping after a busy day.
She thought of the night she had been almost asleep and had come awake to find him gone from her side. That had been in North Berwick, Maine - most of the continent away now. She had followed him to the house where Larry lay sleeping on the porch. Larry sleeping inside, Joe standing outside, brandishing his knife with mute savagery, and nothing between them but the thin and sliceable screen. And she had made him come away.
Hate pounced on Nadine in a surging flash, striking up brilliant sparks as if from flint and steel. The Coleman lamp trembled in her hand, making wild shadows leap and dance. She should have let him do it! She should have held the door for Joe herself, let him in so he could stab and rip and cut and puncture and gut and destroy. She should have -
But now the boy turned over, and moaned in his throat, as if waking. His hands came up and batted the air, as if warding off a black shape in a dream. And Nadine withdrew, a pulse beating thickly at her temples. There was still something strange in the boy, and she didn't like the way he had moved just now, as if he had picked up her thoughts.
She had to go ahead now. She had to be quick.
She went into her own room. There was a rug on the floor. There was a single narrow bed - an old maid's bed. That was all. There was not even a picture. The room was totally devoid of character. She opened the closet door and rummaged behind her hanging clothes. She was on her knees now, sweating. She drew out a brightly colored box with a photograph of laughing adults on the front, adults who were playing a party-game. A party-game that was at least three thousand years old.
She had found the planchette in a downtown novelty shop, but she dared not use it in the house, not with the boy here. In fact, she had not dared use it at all... until now. Something had impelled her into the shop, and when she had seen the planchette in its g*y party box, a terrible struggle had gone on inside her - the sort of struggle psychologists call aversion/compulsion. She had been sweating then as now, wanting two things at the same time: to hurry out of that shop without looking back, and to snatch the box, that dreadful g*y box, and carry it home with her. The latter wish frightened her the more, because it did not seem to be her own wish.
At last, she had taken the box.
That had been four days ago. Each night the compulsion had grown stronger until tonight, half insane with fears she didn't understand, she had gone to Larry wearing the blue-gray dress with nothing on underneath. She had gone to put an end to the fears for good. Waiting on the porch for them to get back from the meeting, she had been sure she had finally done the right thing. There had been that feeling in her, that lightly drunk, starstruck feeling, that she'd not properly had since she had run across the dew-drenched grass with the boy behind her. Only this time the boy would catch her. She would let him catch her. It would be the end.
But when he had caught her, he hadn't wanted her.
Nadine stood up, holding the box to her chest, and put out the lamp. He had scorned her, and didn't they say that hell hath no fury - ? A scorned woman might well traffic with the devil... or his henchman.
She paused only long enough to get the large flashlight from the table in the front hall. From deeper inside the house, the boy cried out in his sleep, freezing her for a moment, making the hair prickle on her scalp.