The Pact Read online

Gus looked out the picture window in the living room to the neat path that ran between their house and the Golds'. This time of year, it was gilded with pine needles and damp with frost. She saw a light on upstairs in Melanie's bedroom; then, she tiptoed up to check on Kate, who'd heard the news of Emily's death that afternoon. As she'd suspected, her daughter had fallen asleep crying.

  Gus flung her coat over her shoulders and ran down the path, letting herself into the Golds' kitchen. There was no sound, except for the loud ticking of a cuckoo clock. "Melanie?" she called. "It's me." She started upstairs, poking her head into the bedroom, the computer room. Emily's bedroom door was closed; Gus made the conscious decision not to check inside. Instead she knocked on the other shut door, the bathroom, and she slowly swung it open.

  Melanie was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. At Gus's entrance she glanced up, but did not register surprise.

  Now that she was there, Gus had no idea what to say. It seemed stupid, suddenly, to be the one to offer comfort when she was so closely tied to the pain. "Hi," Gus said softly. "How are you holding up?"

  Melanie shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "The funeral's Monday. We went to the mortuary."

  "That must have been awful."

  "I didn't pay attention," Melanie said. "I can't stand Michael right now."

  Gus nodded. "Yeah. James fought the doctor who wanted Chris signed into a psychiatric ward, because it's a blight on the family name."

  Melanie looked up at her. "Did you see this coming?" she asked, and Gus did not pretend to misunderstand.

  "No," Gus said, her voice breaking. "If I had, I would have told you. And I know you would have told me." She sank down on the edge of the bathtub. "What could have possibly been so awful?" she whispered. She was thinking the same things, she knew, that Melanie was: Chris and Emily had grown up with love, with wealth, with each other. What more could they have needed?

  Melanie grabbed the edge of the toilet paper and fed it through her fingers like a seam. "Michael brought this horrible outfit to have Em buried in," she said. "And I took it away. I wouldn't let him use it."

  Gus stood up, relieved by the thought of something to do. "We have to find her something, then," she said. She took Melanie's hand, tugging her upright, and led her to Emily's room. She turned the doorknob as if she wasn't scared to death of the memories that would come at her.

  But it was still simply, wonderfully, Emily's room. A teenager's shrine to Gap clothing and perfume oils and snapshots of Gus's own son. Melanie stood uncertainly in the center of the room, ready to bolt, while Gus ferreted through the closet. "How about that turquoise blouse she wore for the school picture?" Gus asked. "Her eyes looked so beautiful in it."

  "It's sleeveless," Melanie said absently. "She'd freeze to death." As Gus's hands stilled among the hangers, Melanie covered her mouth. "No," she moaned, her eyes brimming with tears.

  "Oh, Mel." Gus gathered her friend into her arms. "I loved her, too. We all did."

  Melanie pulled away and turned her back. "You know," Gus said hesitantly. "Maybe I could ask Chris. He would know better than either of us what she wore to make herself feel good."

  Melanie did not respond. What had the detective told the Golds? And more importantly, what did they believe? "You do know Chris loved her," Gus whispered. "You know he would have done anything for Em."

  When Melanie swung around, she looked completely unfamiliar. "What I know about Chris," she said, "is that he's still alive."

  THEN

  Summer 1984

  This time, Gus dreamed she was driving down Route 6. In the back of the Volvo, Chris was ramming an action figurine against the buttress of his car seat. Beside him, face obscured by the angle of the rearview mirror, was the baby. "Is she drinking her bottle?" Gus asked Chris, the big brother, the copilot.

  But before he could answer, a man knocked on the window. She smiled and rolled it down, ready to give directions.

  He waved a gun under her nose. "Get out of the car," he said.

  Shaking, Gus turned off the ignition. She stepped out of the car--they always told you to get out of the car--and she threw the keys as far as she could, to the middle of the next lane.

  "Bitch!" the man yelled, diving for the keys. Gus knew she had less than thirty seconds. Not enough time to unlatch both car seats, to drag both children out, to get them to safety.

  He was coming at her again. She had to make a choice. She scrambled for the rear door latch, sobbing. "Come on, come on," she cried, jiggling the latch on the infant seat and pulling the baby into her arms. She raced to the other side of the car, Chris's side, but the man was already revving up the engine and she watched, hugging one child, while the other was spirited away.

  "GUS. GUS!" She came awake sporadically, and tried to focus on her husband's face. "You were whimpering again."

  "You know," Gus said breathlessly, "they say that if you whimper in your sleep, you're screaming in your dream."

  "Same nightmare?"

  Gus nodded. "This time it was Chris."

  James hugged his arm around Gus and rubbed the skin of her enormous belly, feeling the bumps and ridges that would be knees, would be elbows. "This isn't good for you," he murmured.

  "I know." She was soaked in sweat; her heart was going a mile a minute. "Maybe I ... maybe I should see someone."

  "A psychiatrist?" James scoffed. "Come on, Gus. It's just a nightmare." He gentled his tone, adding, "Besides, we live in Bainbridge." He pressed his lips against her neck. "No one's going to carjack you. No one's going to steal our kids."

  Gus stared up at the ceiling. "How do you know?" she asked quietly. "How can you be so sure that your life is the one that's charmed?" Then she padded down the hall to her son's room. Chris slept sprawled across his bed, his body flung wide as a promise. He slept, Gus thought, with the conviction of someone who knows he is safe.

  THE SUMMER HAD BEEN unusually hot, something Gus attributed not to El Nino or to global warming but to Murphy's Law, since she happened to be in the middle of her second pregnancy. Every morning for the past two weeks, as the temperature had climbed to eighty-five degrees, Gus and Melanie had taken the children to Tally Pond, a town-run swimming hole.

  Chris and Emily were at the water's edge, their heads bent together, their bare limbs tangled and brown as cider. Gus watched Emily muddy her hands and hold them tenderly to Chris's face. "You're an Indian," Emily said, the streaks of her fingers leaving war paint on his cheeks.

  Chris bent down to the water and scooped up two palmfuls of mud. He slapped his hands onto Emily's bare chest, trailing dirt down over her belly. "You too," he said.

  "Uh-oh," Gus murmured. "Guess I ought to break that habit early."

  Melanie laughed. "Mauling girls, you mean? With any luck, by the time it matters, his objects of attention will choose to wear their bikini tops."

  Emily bounced back from Chris, squealed, and took off at a run down the narrow beach. Melanie watched them disappear behind a promontory. "I ought to go get them," she said.

  "Well, you'll certainly get there faster than I would," Gus agreed. She tilted her head back and dozed off until the sand trembled with the pounding of feet, and she blinked up to find Emily and Chris standing in front of her, absolutely naked.

  "We want to know why Emily has a giant," Chris announced.

  Behind them, Melanie came into view, holding the discarded bathing suits. "A giant?"

  Chris pointed to his penis. "Yeah," he said. "I have a penis, and she has a giant."

  Melanie smiled benignly. "I brought them back," she said. "You play wise woman."

  Gus cleared her throat. "Emily has a vagina," she said, "because Emily's a girl. Girls have vaginas, boys have penises." Emily and Chris looked at each other, speaking volumes.

  "Can she buy a penis?" Chris asked.

  "No," Gus said. "You get what you get. It's like Halloween candy."

  "But we want to be the same," Emily whined.

  "No, you don't,"