“Cee, I was just worried because you weren’t where I thought you’d be, and then when I—”
“Despite what you may think, the need to emote does not constitute a flaw. Not all of us have the talent of becoming whoever the situation calls for.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said. He tried to calm himself. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I’m not sure how you’d be able to fit anything else into your day beyond holing yourself up in the attic, wandering the house, and driving across the countryside.”
“Is there a reason why all this financial stuff is out?”
“You want to be the one to handle our finances now, Ben?” Caroline asked him. She scooped an armful of papers off the bed and held it out to him. Sheets fluttered to the floor around her.
“I came to tell you that I’m heading to that meeting in the village. Do you feel like anything in particular for dinner? I’m happy to make it. I can stop at the store if we’re short on anything.”
“What makes you think I’m not planning to make dinner myself? Don’t I spend half the day cooking? What else could I possibly do with myself?”
Ben walked back into the hallway. He knew the longer he stood there, the worse it would get. There was no upside in engaging her when all she wanted to do was rage.
“Hopefully it won’t take too long,” he called over his shoulder. He closed the door gently behind him. When she was like this, refusing to argue with her was one of the things that made her the most angry, and he didn’t want Bub to wake up, either.
He blamed himself. That fear that had suddenly gripped him when he couldn’t find her was no less irrational than the fury she had leveled at him. He had raised his voice first. It might have been what woke the Wolf. He never knew what would do it.
Keep up the light, he told himself as he climbed into the Escape. His grandmother’s old saying had crept back into his brain since Ted had reminded him of it. When Grams was dying, Ben had asked her what it meant. He had an idea from the way she’d used it over the years, but he wanted to hear it from her. She was in hospice then, her face heartbreakingly old. When she’d been healthy, her face was wrinkled, every crease a waypoint in the map of her life, but now she’d lost so much weight that her skin was taut, her bright-blue eyes as wide as a child’s. It was as if she were transforming into an angel. Beautiful and only half there. He was trying to get a wise smile out of her with the question, but her mouth tightened and her eyes welled. “You know the right thing, and you know you gotta do it no matter what,” she told him. She grabbed his hand, tears beginning to stream. “No matter what.”
He shook off the image and started the car. Even when Ben was halfway down the gravel path, the Crofts seemed to take up the entirety of his rearview mirror.
19
Caroline took the hill with a vengeance. She slammed the balls of her feet into the turf as she launched herself up the Drop. Her face tightened as the burn in her quads flared into pain, then she pressed herself harder. Bub was napping, and while the baby monitor clipped to Caroline’s waist had excellent range, she ran a loop that never took her far from the house.
She didn’t need to look at her watch to know she was off-pace. If she was more than a minute off, she’d punish herself with something. Having left her personal trainer back in the city along with so much else, Caroline had become her own drill sergeant. Maybe she would do another hundred crunches or force herself to run a lap around the lake. She’d gone up there a few days ago, and the bugs had been terrible. The clouds of gnats went for her eyes while mosquitoes attacked her arms and neck. The shoreline was clotted with the fester of their larva. She didn’t know how Charlie could stand it there.
Though Ben had recently placed limits on Charlie’s exploration of the forest, Caroline still thought the boy spent too much time by himself. He’d always been a quiet child, but every day he seemed a little more remote. He was only eight years old and too young to become a stranger. And it cut her more than she’d admit that Charlie was growing into someone she didn’t recognize. Growing into the kind of person who kept entire pieces of himself hidden. The idea that Charlie was becoming more like Ben made her pump her arms faster.
She wondered if Ben would be painfully careful around her when he returned from the village. Caroline wished, as she always did, that she hadn’t yelled at him. Sometimes she wanted him to scream at her the way she did at him. Sometimes she believed that nothing could be worse than the way his mouth tensed when he smiled at her, curved with pity.