fist into the air. Suddenly, yanking Sarah free of the bush, he brought his fist down on her. Sarah screamed then, and turned to look up at her father.
Elizabeth stayed hidden behind the log, watching the scene before her with a strange detachment Suddenly it had all seemed to be far away from her, not connected to her. She suddenly no longer saw her sister and her father, but two strangers, a little girl and a man, and the man was beating the child. And it seemed to have no effect on Elizabeth at all. She simply crouched there, watching it unfold before her.
When Sarah finally lay still, Elizabeth saw herfather straighten up, and she could barely recognize him. There was a vacant look in his face, and his black hair, usually so neatly brushed, hung in damp strings around his face. He looked around wildly, then down at the child at his feet She heard a sob wrack his body, then watched as he picked Sarah up and began carrying her across the field toward the house. She stayed perfectly still until her father, still carrying her sister, had disappeared through the front door. Then she stood up and moved slowly to the spot where her sister had lain. She looked once more toward the house, then turned and began making her way through the woods toward the embankment.
When she had returned to the house an hour later, the doctors were there, and they had taken Sarah away. Her father was nowhere to be seen, and her mother was hysterical. Mrs. Goodrich had finally noticed her, and asked her where she had been. She said she had been for a walk. Down by the quarry. It was the only thing she had ever said about that afternoon, and it was the only thing she would ever say about it.
Elizabeth continued to stare at the ceiling, and when, much later, she heard the click of her parents’ door, she slept.
Jack lay in bed, but he still didn’t sleep. He remembered what he could remember.
He remembered the doctors coming, and he remembered them putting Sarah in the ambulance. He remembered Rose coming home, and he remembered that someone had given him a shot.
They had flown Sarah to a hospital, a hospital far enough from Port Arbello that no one would ever have known what had happened to Sarah. She had been there for three months, and the doctors had been able to repair her body. The ribs had healed and there were no longer any scars on her face.
But they had not been able to repair her mind. When she had come home from the hospital, she had been changed She was no longer the bright elfin child she had always been. She no longer laughed, or ran through the house. She no longer shouted, or played in the field.
She was quiet. She neither spoke nor laughed, and when she moved she moved slowly, as if something were holding her back.
Occasionally, she screamed.
She seemed to be frightened, but she learned to tolerate the presence of her mother. She was never left alone with her father.
She responded only to Elizabeth. She would follow Elizabeth whenever she could, and if Elizabeth could not be with her, she would sit quietly and wait But that wasn’t often.
Elizabeth was usually with her. Except when they were in school, Elizabeth spent most of her time with Sarah—reading to her, talking to her, not seeming to notice that Sarah never talked back. Elizabeth played with Sarah, never losing her patience when Sarah’s interest wandered, always finding something new to distract Sarah from whatever was going on in her mind.
The doctors said that Sarah could recover someday, but they didn’t know when it would be. Since they didn’t know exactly what had happened to Sarah, and nobody seemed able to tell them, they weren’t entirely sure how to treat her. But someday, they were sure, Sarah would be able to remember what had happened to her that day, and face it. When that day came, Sarah would be all right again. But until that day, Sarah might do anything. Schizophrenia, they said, was unpredictable.
4
Rose Conger stared across the breakfast table and wondered for the twentieth time how her husband could drink so much and never show the effects of it.
Had he been less engrossed in his morning paper, Jack would have noticed the look of annoyance on Rose’s face as she studied his own. At forty, he looked