I watch him hang up, hear those two tones again. He lifts the hammer from the counter, leaves the room through a far door.
I gawk at my phone in disbelief, as if it might explain things to me.
And just then, as I look back toward the Russell house, I see her on her front stoop. She stands still for a moment, like a meerkat sensing a predator, before descending the steps. Twists her head that way, then this, then that way again; finally she walks west, toward the avenue, the crown of her head a halo in the sunset.
25
He leans in the doorway, shirt dark with sweat, hair matted. An earbud is plugged into one ear.
“What’s that?”
“Did you hear that scream at the Russells’?” I repeat. I heard him return just now, barely thirty minutes after Jane appeared on the stoop. In the meantime my Nikon has veered from window to window at the Russell house, like a dog snouting out foxholes.
“No, I left about a half hour ago,” David says. “Went down to the coffee shop for a sandwich.” He lifts his shirt to his face, mops up the sweat. His stomach is corrugated. “You heard a scream?”
“Two of them. Loud and clear. Around six o’clock?”
He eyes his watch. “I might’ve been there, only I didn’t hear much,” he says, pointing to the earbud; the other swings against his thigh. “Except for Springsteen.”
It’s practically the first personal preference he’s ever expressed, but the timing is off. I steam ahead. “Mr. Russell didn’t say you were there. He said it was just him and his son.”
“Then I’d probably left.”
“I called you.” It sounds like a plea.
He frowns, takes his phone from his pocket, looks at it, frowns deeper, as though the phone has let him down. “Oh. You need something?”
“So you didn’t hear anyone scream.”
“I didn’t hear anyone scream.”
I turn. “You need something?” he says again, but I’m already moving toward the window, camera in hand.
I see him as he sets out. The door opens, and when it closes, there he is. He trips quickly down the steps, turns left, marches along the sidewalk. Toward my house.
When the bell rings a moment later, I’m already waiting by the buzzer. I press it, hear him enter the hall, hear the front door crack shut behind him. I open the hall door to find him standing there in the dark, eyes red and raw, the blood vessels frayed within them.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan says, hovering on the threshold.
“Don’t be. Come in.”
He moves like a kite, feinting first toward the sofa, then to the kitchen. “Do you want something to eat?” I ask him.
“No, I can’t stay.” Shaking his head, tears skittering down his face. Twice this child has set foot in my house, and twice he’s cried.
Of course, I’m accustomed to children in distress: weeping, shouting, pummeling dolls, flaying books. It used to be that Olivia was the only one I could hug. Now I open my arms to Ethan, spread them wide like wings, and he walks into them awkwardly, as though bumping into me.
For an instant, and then for a moment, I’m holding my daughter again—holding her before her first day of school, holding her in the swimming pool on our vacation in Barbados, clutching her amid the silent snowfall. Her heart beating against my own, a beat apart, a continuous drumline, blood surging through us both.
He mutters something indistinct against my shoulder. “What’s that?”
“I said I’m really sorry,” he repeats, prying himself free, skidding his sleeve beneath his nose. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine. Stop saying that. It’s fine.” I brush a lock of hair from my eye, do the same for him. “What’s going on?”
“My dad . . .” He stops, glances through the window at his house. In the dark it glowers like a skull. “My dad was yelling, and I needed to get out of the house.”
“Where’s your mom?”
He sniffles, swipes at his nose again. “I don’t know.” A couple of deep breaths and he looks me in the eye. “Sorry. I don’t know where she is. She’s fine, though.”
“Is she?”
He sneezes, looks down. Punch has slipped between his feet, grating his body against Ethan’s shins. Ethan sneezes again.
“Sorry.” Another sniffle. “Cat.” He looks around, as if surprised to find himself in my kitchen. “I should go back. My dad’ll be angry.”
“Sounds as though he’s already angry.” I tug a chair back from the table, gesture to it.