“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Candace said with a sigh. Shit.
Ruthie thought again of all her mother’s warnings throughout the years—Never open the door. She thought of Little Red Riding Hood being tricked by the wolf in Granny’s clothes.
Fawn’s eyes got huge. “Are you the police?” she asked.
Candace laughed. “Hardly. Look, I really hate guns. I do. And I’d really hate to have to use it,” she warned, turning to Ruthie, then back to Fawn. “So here’s what’s going to happen: You two are going to tell me everything you can about your parents and Tom and Bridget O’Rourke. You’re going to show me just where you found the wallets and everything else you found with them.”
Ruthie looked at Candace and at the gun, trying to keep a rising sense of panic under control. She didn’t think Candace would actually shoot them, at least not on purpose. But she was obviously a wacko—who knew what she was capable of? “If you hate guns so much, why did you bring it?” Fawn asked.
“Because I can’t leave here without getting what I came for. I really can’t. You need to understand that.” The gun dangled from her right hand, pointed toward the ground. She plucked at her hair with her left.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Ruthie asked.
Candace scowled at Ruthie. “Something Tom and Bridget had, and I think that your mother, wherever she is, has it right now. So I need you to start answering my questions. Okay?”
Neither of them spoke. Fawn looked petrified, and Ruthie’s mind wasn’t working fast enough. She was too busy staring at the gun.
“Please don’t make me point this at either one of you,” Candace said, raising the gun, her finger on the trigger. “So are you ready to cooperate? Because, really, I think we all want the same thing, right? We want to find your mother, don’t we?”
Fawn moved closer to Ruthie, snuggled right up against her. Candace waved the gun at them, pointing it first at Fawn, then at Ruthie. “Don’t we?” she repeated.
“Yes,” both girls sang out. “Yes.”
“Good.” Candace smiled and lowered the gun, looking relieved. “I can see you’re two smart girls. And now that we’re all on the same side, I think we’re really going to get somewhere. I really do.”
Katherine
The snow moved in a furious whirlwind around the Jeep, flying through the air in ways Katherine had never seen. It came down from the sky and shot sideways, the wind blasting it against Katherine’s windshield and over the towering banks on the side of the road. It was as if nature itself was somehow against her getting to Sara’s house.
It was pure stupidity, driving around on such a night, but Katherine had come this far, was already on Beacon Hill Road. She crept along in low gear, clutching the steering wheel, and at last saw the lights of a house down on the right. It was hard to get a good look from the main road in the dark, especially through the blinding snow. Was that the right house? It could be. The driveway was long and hadn’t been plowed recently. But the lights burned bright. Behind the house, she saw the dark outline of a barn.
Just turn around and come back tomorrow, in the light of day, for Christ’s sake. She tried to reason with herself, to talk some sense.
Katherine continued down the road, searching for another driveway, just in case there was another house. Half a mile later, she came to a pull-off on the right. There was a Blazer with Connecticut plates parked there, and footprints leading up a trail into the woods. That must be the path to the Devil’s Hand. It was a hell of a night for a hike. But maybe it was just kids out partying; she imagined them lying on their backs in the snow, passing a joint and a bottle, looking up into the sky, and imagining it was the end of the world. A nuclear winter. Or that they were lost in space, frozen stars falling all around them.
It was something she and Gary might have done back in college—lying in the snow, hand in hand, imagining they were the only two living beings in the universe, astronauts tethered to one another and nothing else.
She did a poorly executed K-turn, nearly getting stuck in a snowbank, then headed back to what must be Sara’s house. As she got to the driveway, she leaned forward, squinting through the snow, trying to get a better look, to see more details, but it was no good.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said aloud, driving on; it was the sensible, grown-up thing to do.
Five hundred feet from the driveway, she pulled over, turned off her headlights, and cut the engine.