He goes out of the bedroom with the poker. Cheryl senses a new, unpleasant charge in the air that prickles against her skin, compelling her to flee. Instead, she scurries after Roger like a nervous hunting dog. As they climb the narrow staircase to the attic, she sees a flickering form pass against the wall beside her, inches from her face. The shape, flat and phosphorescent, sweeps upward as Roger reaches the top of the stairs.
No sound comes from Cheryl’s throat as he steps along a ceiling joist and raises the poker to the ceiling. Her scream emerges just as the rafters buckle. In the suspended moment before the crash, it seems as if someone has pulled a string, dropping the beams at a neat, choreographed diagonal. The next moment, Roger is sprawled upon the floorboards, pinned at the leg.
Dead. Martyred. Cheryl stands paralyzed on the stairs, awed by the swiftness of judgment.
Her husband lifts a hand. “Go,” he chokes. “What are you doing?”
As she rushes down through the house, electrified air spangles the back of her neck. Outside, her cloak blows open and she stumbles through the snow in her chemise. The shimmering shape appears again beside her, skimming close upon the snow, licking at her heels, tripping her. She scrambles over Cannonfield Road and falls through the door of her own house. The power is still out, the telephone dead. Upstairs, her children grumble awake.
Amos, thank heaven, is able to find a signal on his cell phone, and within moments an ambulance and fire engine arrive at the Slater house with spinning lights. A brigade of brawny, yellow-suited men storms the attic and lifts the mighty beam from Roger’s leg. For the moment, no one asks who he is, why he is here.
Cheryl lets Rebekah drive the Jeep to the hospital. Amos sits in the passenger seat, Cheryl in the back.
“We were just turning off the water,” she mumbles in a flat voice, although no one has asked. “We just went in to make sure it was turned off. We were just turning off the water.”
They are fortunate, the doctors say, that Roger escaped with just a broken tibia. They will need to introduce a metal rod to align the bone, and he may walk with a permanent limp. His chair-making, at least, will not be affected.
“You look like a wounded soldier,” Cheryl tells him, patting his cast.
The questions come now, in an avalanche. A police detective questions them at the hospital. Cheryl answers, holds fast to her story. They were turning off the water. A neighborly favor. They did not forcibly enter, but came in with a key. They were doing what they hoped their own neighbors might do, had they been away from their home in a storm. They had gone to the attic to investigate animal sounds.
And the drainpipe? The windows?
“Strange, yes. We thought so, too.”
A blue tarp appears on the roof of the Slater house like a draped flag. Cheryl feels a nervous thrill each time it catches her eye through the window. It is an emblem of her victory—its healing presence the result of her actions alone. The house will be saved now, it is certain. Regardless of the cost, she has won. The Aston Martin pulls into the driveway one morning while she is at her button work. Her hands pause in midair as she watches from across the street, waiting for the car doors to open. She notices that she is holding her breath. After several moments, the car slides back out of the driveway and creeps away down Cannonfield Road.
The following week, the commission holds a special meeting with the homeowners about repairing the Slater house under its guidelines. Cheryl sits quietly at the table and lets Edward Drayton preside. The owners are what she’d pictured—the woman lithe and manicured, the husband skittish in modern glasses. They sit, as so many others have sat, on the flimsy folding chairs facing the oak table.
Cheryl is aware of the uneasy glances of the other commission members. The serenity she feels is that of a warrior who has completed her work, laid down her bayonet. Barbara Underhill and Gordon Cassava, Richard Darch and Lori Hatfield will never hear the shrill call of liberty the way she has, will never swim the current of history.
The homeowners have chosen not to press charges. They could easily have sued, Roger reminds her, for trespassing and vandalism. They could have fingerprinted the window sashes and drainpipe if they wanted. Perhaps deep down, Cheryl thinks, they know better than to do so. Perhaps they hear the boot-drop of Ezekiel in their dreams.
Edward Drayton announces that the commission’s structural engineer has been contacted and will begin consultations without delay.