Jonah awoke at the table with a shudder, as if from a Van Winklean sleep. The whole house vibrated as the train thundered past outside. Shadows crawled out from the corners to shroud the kitchen in a smoky darkness. Drooling, his mind muddy, he looked up, surrounded by empty wine cooler bottles, head bludgeoned by cheap booze.
He sat up in the ghostly gloam, perplexed. The kitchen seemed a cold, mysterious, spectral approximation of his house with none of the warmth of home.
What time was it?
He shoved his chair back to stand and lost his balance, cracked his head on the stove handle as he crashed to the floor.
He lay there, bewildered. The plastic owl clock on the wall, with its glowing, shifty eyes meant to be comical, but which now seemed grotesque, showed 6:32. The second hand ticked ominously with the loud metallic snap of a revolver’s hammer being cocked over and over again.
It couldn’t be 6:32.
Rebecca and Sally should have been home two hours ago. Wherever they were, they were together. If Sally had been at a friend’s house, she’d have walked home before dark. She didn’t like the dark. Who did? And if she’d been invited for dinner, she’d have called. So she had to be with Rebecca.
Jonah stood, knocking over the chair.
Favoring his injured ankle, he limped to the living room window and pulled back the curtain as though his daughter and wife might be standing out on the front lawn, locked out of the house and waiting mutely for him to let them in.
They were not.
The 1979 Gremlin with the dented fender he’d never had repaired—keeping the insurance check to buy Sally clothes—was parked where he’d left it.
Rebecca and Sally had to be at one of Rebecca’s friends’ houses, and Rebecca had not called to let him know because . . .
Because she was still bruised by last night?
He tried to remember the specific words said the previous night but conjured nothing but distorted voices, like those of a lingering nightmare.
He dialed Rebecca’s closest friend, twisting the long phone cord around his forearm as the phone on the other end rang.
A woman, frazzled, answered: “Martins’ residence.”
“Laura. It’s Jonah.”
“Oh.”
“I’m looking for Rebecca.”
Laura shouted: “Put that down!” Then, her voice tattered: “Sorry. She’s not here.”
“Was she there earlier?” He twisted the phone cord more tightly around his forearm.
“Haven’t seen her. Put that down. Jonah, really I—”
He thanked her and hung up and dialed another friend. And another. And another.
No one had seen Rebecca. Or Sally.
Jonah’s head screamed from the wine coolers. He phoned the last and least of Rebecca’s friends.
“You okay?” the woman said. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I don’t know where they are,” Jonah whispered, though his voice seemed to detonate in the quiet kitchen.
“They’ll turn up. Call Laura Martin. I’m sure—”
“I called. I called them all. You’re the last.” He thought he heard her suck in air.
“They should have been home”—he glanced at the owl clock; the only light now in the dark kitchen was the clock’s ominously glowing hands—“nearly three hours ago.”
“Why are you just calling now?” the woman’s tone was laced with accusation.
“I was working,” Jonah snapped. “I thought—” His arm felt deadened and engorged. He looked down at it. He’d wound the cord violently around his forearm and strangled the blood flow. His hand was a swollen, pulsing, sickly purple.
“I need to go,” he said.