Ruin Falls (7 page)

She recalled the paranoia she had felt as they had left to come here;
that pickup truck driver, and even her sparking fear when Reid wandered off. It was almost as if she’d known disaster was coming, but just hadn’t had any idea where to look for it.

Because who would think to look right next to them?

Paul had been trying to get away the whole morning, Liz realized. He had kept checking the clock. Paul wanted to go out—search while she waited back at the hotel in an increasing paralysis of unknowing—so he could do whatever it was he was up to right now.

How had he arranged it? Had his parents come and gotten the children sometime in the night, harboring them till one of them could come back and pick up Paul? It was the most likely order of events Liz could think of.

Other interpretations of her husband’s behavior were coming to her, too.

The way he had lain beside her when Liz woke up in the morning.

She had thought he must be having a bad dream from the way his body twitched and tremored. But now it seemed that he’d been trying to feign sleep, nervous, wondering how this would play out, just waiting for her to stir to consciousness.

Waking her would’ve been suspicious; she would’ve wondered why he had done that when they were finally on vacation and the biorhythms of outdoor life didn’t force an early rise. He would’ve had to lie, make something up about wanting to get on the road, and Paul wasn’t a good liar.

She hadn’t thought he was anyway.

Rage rocked her again.

Another question had taken her up in its hands and was shaking her back and forth.

Not how Paul had done it.

But why?

Before she could pull onto the road again, Liz pawed her cell phone out of her bag.

This wouldn’t come to anything, she knew that, but she was unprepared for just how dead an end she would reach.

Liz dialed Paul’s number, waiting for his message. She heard a robotic
voice instead, nothing like the kind, patient voicemail lady’s. It intoned eight words, the last so unfamiliar that Liz had to call again to be sure she had heard correctly.

You have reached a number that is unallocated
.

It wasn’t as if she’d expected Paul to pick up. After all this, he wasn’t going to just take her call.
Can’t talk now
,
honey, I’ve kidnapped the kids
. But shutting down all service on this number? It wasn’t only Liz—nobody would be able to reach her husband.

There were a hundred necessary things a cell phone was used for each day.

Paul must know that he wasn’t going to have to worry about any of them.

Dear God, what was he planning to do?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

L
iz programmed the town of Junction Bridge into her GPS. Most of the miles were covered by flat, level highway, but she was grateful for the visual of the twisting purple length once she reached the low-lying roads at the edge of the state. They had left the pretty parts of New York behind, not only the mountains, but also the orchards and vineyards and lakes. This was featureless country, consisting of farms that were the cogs and working mechanisms of the country, the inner backbone without which America couldn’t function, but that nobody wanted to examine too closely.

Liz had always been as connected to the land as she was to her own skin, and perhaps because the GPS told her she was getting close to her children and the end of this nightmare, she was able to register a pang of pity as she drove. A few hundred miles to the southeast, and Paul would’ve grown up cradled by lakes; his father would’ve farmed on land that was threaded by vines. A few hundred miles in the other direction, and he would’ve wound up in the mountains where they now lived, endless spires of trees piercing the sky.

Instead he’d been raised in this far corner where a bleakness had settled in, borne of being at the flat, unmarked end of the state. These farms didn’t produce the fruits and frippery that Liz’s gardens did. They supplied the endless rivers of grain that were churned into the products Americans subsisted upon, or went into the bellies of the
animals they ate. Not a pretty business, but an essential one. Liz heard Paul’s voice in her head.

A crueler kind
.

What cruelty lived here? How had Paul become part of it?

A faded sign welcomed travelers to Junction Bridge, a good place to live, work, and play. Liz couldn’t imagine what kinds of play took place here, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of living either. She passed a Laundromat, a boarded-up diner, and a hair salon that operated out of someone’s run-down house, before coming to a gas and repair shop on a lone stretch of road. Liz pulled into the dirt lot and got out of her car. Humidity instantly coated her skin and thickened her throat. Birds wheeled in slow circles, their speed belying the intentness of their flight as they searched for prey amongst the cornstalks.

Liz filled up the car at the pump, then turned to see a man coming out of the garage, wiping his hands on a grease-streaked rag.

“Help you with anything else today?” he asked.

Liz shielded her eyes from the sun. Sweat prickled under her arms, and a hot wind made the sheaves of corn rustle. “I was wondering if you could tell me how to find the Daniels place.”

For a moment, it didn’t seem as if the man was going to answer. Perspiration had darkened the bandanna on his head, which he pulled off and wrung out before nodding. “Got a pen?” He was looking into her car now, at the GPS that continued to display its silly purple line. “That thing isn’t going to be much help out there.”

Liz was grateful for the scrawled list of directions as she drove into a tangle of roads even more undistinguished than the ones that had brought her here. She was getting close to her children now; she had to be. It felt as if they’d been parted for nine years instead of nine hours. Sweat ran down her back, tickling, itchy, and she lowered the temperature in the car.

Look for three red flower buckets
.

Liz spotted them, filled with a sun-scorched grouping of blossoms, some farmwoman’s attempt to add a carefree note to her husband’s hardworking spread. Rudbeckia, Liz thought for the second time in
as many days. How did a farmwoman not know that black-eyed Susans could withstand almost anything so long as they had a regular sprinkling of water?

Then take Yarrows Road on your right
.

Liz turned.

It’ll be the fourth dirt road you come to after that
.

The car was engulfed in a plume of dust. Liz nearly spun out as the road jogged, but she fought to correct, unwilling to lose even scant seconds making it back from the flattened grasses at the shoulder. Despite the sealed cabin of the car, Liz could detect a bestial odor outside. She spotted spindly-legged cows in a picked-over field, their coats patchy and thin.

The farmhouse appeared on a rise, and Liz braked. She parked the car on a slope in front of the house and got out amidst a wake of dust, which as it settled gave rise to a man’s form. Not Paul, but an older, hardened version of him.

Paul exuded competence and reliability; he was someone you wanted to trust, believe in. At least he had been, Liz thought, with a sharp crimp in her throat. This man also had a mane of forcefulness about him, but you didn’t so much want to obey him as feel compelled to. Her father-in-law seemed to dominate without moving a muscle.

He wore jeans and a checked shirt whose color had long since been lost. His arms were folded across his chest.

The fact that he was out here, waiting, proved her hunch—her one and only lead—and Liz went almost faint with relief. The air that entered her lungs felt like it came out of a steam room, and still it was the most refreshing elixir she’d ever sampled.

“Elizabeth,” her father-in-law said. “They’re not here.”

“No,” Liz said. “I mean, yes. Yes, they are.”

Silence.

“They have to be.”

Still nothing, and Liz was filled with a howling fury.

“They have to be!”

She rushed her father-in-law, who held her back with the palm of one hand.

“I said they’re not here,” he repeated.

“But you knew I’d come!” Liz cried. “You’re not surprised to see me! So you must know what Paul has done!”

The logic of it seemed impeccable, even to her fevered mind.

Her father-in-law stared down into her eyes with his own flinty ones. “You’ll do best now to leave,” he said.

He took three long strides away from her, mounting the steps of his porch.

“Matthew!” She’d spoken her father-in-law’s name on only a handful of occasions. At their wedding. The few times he’d seen the kids.

The kids.

Rage that had plumed inside her began receding, leaving a solid, leaden weight as heavy as the saturated air. Sweat and tears bathed her eyes, stinging like needles. She’d been so sure. Certainty had been the only thing enabling her to keep going these last couple of hours; keeping her tethered to the earth at all. Why would Paul have suggested this trip if not to bring Reid and Ally to his childhood home, at least use his parents as allies in his desertion? Theories had begun to take shape in her mind during the drive: loosely formed, unarticulated. Paul had decided that living away from his roots amounted to depriving the children of something, but didn’t believe Liz would allow them to leave Wedeskyull. Or else her husband’s interest in survivalism had gone further than Liz ever suspected, and the culture out here was a better fit, as was the broader breadth of the land.

But if Paul wasn’t on the farm? Then where in this whole world could he be?

Breath escaped her, a slow, unstoppable leak. Liz sagged onto the dirt, pebbles beneath her knees, her hands splayed out on the gritty ground. Her body grew moist, lathered all over from the heat. With her children gone, all law had ceased to apply. The planetary spin could reverse; the earth might come loose from its moorings and simply float away. Reid and Ally were out there somewhere, and it was an upheaval so complete that Liz couldn’t imagine ever standing upright again.

Matthew reached for the handle of the screen door. It gave off a dull metal glare under the punishing sun, and Liz squinted at it, bleary-eyed and lost.

What next? She couldn’t formulate so much as a step.

The door opened, and a woman stepped onto the sun-faded slats of the porch. It was hard to make her out at first, so well did she blend in with the rest of the landscape. Her hair and skin were dusted and worn; she looked like a small, furred creature.

“Matthew?” Her voice, when it emerged, was timorous.

Liz was still on her hands and knees on the ground. Her father-in-law kept her in his sights without making a move to help her.

“Please,” Liz’s mother-in-law said. “Let her come in.”

Liz’s eyes were arid, unblinking as she followed Matthew’s broad back into the sun-blasted farmhouse. Almost five o’clock, and the yellow orb hardly seemed to be sinking. At least the humidity was starting to lift, taking with it a low, level bank of clouds. Inside, the house felt close, fans stirring the air listlessly. The house was as spotless as picked-clean bones. Not an object out of place, nor a single dust mote floating in the shafts of sun. The floorboards were bleached bare, the walls washed in light.

Liz took a seat on a faded sofa. The sheers on the window offered little screen from the scalding light. After a few minutes the aroma of coffee arose, and Liz’s mother-in-law returned, head lowered, holding two cups. She offered the first to Matthew, who accepted it without a word, regarding Liz as he drank.

“I didn’t know how you took it,” her mother-in-law said, a note of apology in her tone as she held out a cup to Liz.

Liz set it aside, untouched. “Where are they?”

Her mother-in-law looked at her.

Matthew placed a hand on his wife’s arm. “Mary.”

Liz’s gaze shot from one to the other. “What aren’t you telling me?” She was aware of how suspicious she sounded, almost paranoid. On the other hand, her in-laws had to be keeping something from her. There was a reason Paul had chosen to come to Junction Bridge.

Had he been back to this place at all? Was the hotel the closest he’d actually come?

Neither of her in-laws spoke.

There was a low, loose terror inside Liz, like an animal that had
escaped. If she couldn’t lasso it, get it under control, she would be clawed to pieces. She needed direction, someone to tell her what to do. But she had no idea who that would be.

She cursed Paul for putting her into this state. He’d always been the man with the answers, but the flip side of that meant that he had the power to cast her into total darkness.

The brilliant light in here hurt her eyes, and she blinked. Liz had made the extent of her helplessness clear without mustering any sympathy from Matthew. If being at the farm was to yield anything, it would have to be because Liz accomplished it herself.

Paul had never been close to his parents. He’d moved away after high school, wound up attending the same college where he now taught, and as far as Liz had known, never looked back.

Until planning this vacation.

Her gaze roved around, hunted, hungry, and her nose tickled at the blend of scents. Coffee, the slightly stale odors of an old house, and something fresher, like wood. Liz sneezed, blocking her face, and when she opened her eyes, the front door came into sight. It had been left open, the screen door the only barricade against the heat.

Liz’s words pierced the hush of the room. “What’s that?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

L
iz got up, trance-like, to drift across the floor. Whatever she’d seen, or thought she had seen, wasn’t obvious. It wavered in and out of clarity as she walked. But when Liz arrived at the entrance to the farmhouse and slid her hand down the doorjamb, she knew that she’d been right.

There was a dark scuff mark, a bruise on the otherwise pristine paint. And underneath it was a gouge in the surface, explaining the smell of newly exposed wood. There had been a disturbance in this aged home, every other inch of it smoothed and worn over, and a recent one at that.