FOUR

Allie Schapiro lay in bed with Niko, watching him sleep. The candle on her nightstand had burned down nearly to the bottom and begun to dim, but the flame endured. In the flicker and gutter of the candlelight, he looked so handsome that her heart swelled and she could barely breathe. The windows rattled in their frames and the storm blew so hard that the house shook with its fury. She’d never taken the wind chimes off the back deck when winter arrived and now she strained to listen for their frantic music. Earlier she had heard the chimes clearly but now they had been silenced; the wind had blown them down.

Beneath the comforter she was warm, so she knew that the goose bumps that kept prickling her flesh came not from the cold but from the memory of making love with Niko earlier in the night. Just the thought sent a delicious shiver through her that hardened her nipples and ignited a fresh yearning at her core. She reached out under the covers and ran a hand along his thigh.

Gazing at him, her heart so full, she slid her hand out from beneath the comforter and touched his face, caressing the contours and shadows of his deep, olive skin and feeling the stubble on his chin. He had long, beautiful eyelashes that she envied.

As she studied him, Niko opened his eyes. A tired smile touched his lips.

“You should be sleeping,” he said.

Allie cupped his cheek with her hand, bent in, and brushed his lips with hers.

“It was a good night, wasn’t it?” she said.

“The beginning or the end?”

She glanced away, blushing a little, surprised that he could make her feel shy after all that they had shared, and all that they had done together.

“Both,” she admitted. “But I meant earlier, with the kids.”

Under the sheets, Niko placed a hand on the curve of her hip, trailing his fingers along her skin.

“It was perfect, Allie. Dinner was wonderful. And it was great to see the kids relax around each other, and with the two of us together. It all seemed so … normal.”

“Normal is nice,” she said.

“Normal is very nice,” Niko replied.

Once the power had gone out, Jake and Isaac had insisted that they had to eat all the ice cream in the freezer to keep it from melting, even though they’d had no idea how long they would be without electricity. Another night Allie would have refused, but she had not wanted to disrupt the playful atmosphere. While she and Niko had poured glasses of Shiraz and watched the storm through the slider that led to the deck, the kids had sat at the kitchen table and polished off whatever had been left of three different pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Fortunately, even that sugar had not kept them awake terribly late. Without lights or television, they were all asleep by eleven o’clock. Allie and Niko had given it forty minutes to make sure they weren’t going to stir and then he had taken her to bed.

Skittish and paranoid, worried that one of the kids would come to the door and find it locked and know what was going on inside, it had taken her a while to relax. Niko had been patient with her, had used his hands and his tongue and his words to wonderful effect, and in time she had forgotten all about Jake and Isaac and Miri. Other than Isaac, they were old enough to know what it meant for an adult couple to sleep in the same bed—or what it could mean. Niko assured her that they wouldn’t want to think about it, and she hoped he was right.

“You know what this means,” he said now, still tracing his fingers along her leg, and then moving his hand up, slipping it beneath the soft cotton of her T-shirt.

“No.” She searched his dark eyes. “What does it mean?”

“We can’t pretend this is just dating anymore,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “We’re all here together. A couple. With the kids under one roof, it feels like a family. They may not put labels on it, but they’ll feel it.”

Allie smiled, becoming shy again. The night had given them both a glimpse into what life would be like in the future, with all their children together in one house, and maybe another child that would be theirs together.

“What about school?” she asked. “People are going to talk. And what about Angie? You know she’s going to be a total bitch when she—”

“She’s already a bitch,” Niko said. “If she tries to make life difficult, I’ll handle it. I just didn’t want to deal with the fallout until I knew what this was.”

“So what is it, then?” she ventured, gazing boldly into his eyes.

“This?” he said. “This is the real thing.”

*   *   *

Cradled in dreams of summer, Jake tried to cling to sleep. But he heard his name whispered again and again and felt himself being jostled and even before he opened his eyes he knew Isaac must have had a nightmare. He reached out and slapped his brother’s hands away.

“Go back to sleep,” he murmured.

“Jake, please … get up,” Isaac whined. “I’m scared. Jake, come on.”

More than anything, it was the way Isaac’s voice broke on that last word that made Jake open his eyes. The brothers had shared a room ever since Isaac had been big enough to sleep in a bed instead of a crib and there had been many times when his little brother had woken him after a nightmare, needing to pee but afraid to go out into the hallway by himself. More than a year ago, Jake had stopped accompanying Isaac into the corridor, forcing him to brave the trip on his own, but after the first couple of times Isaac had stopped asking; but even on the worst of those evenings, when the nightmares had been particularly terrifying, Jake had never heard this tone in his brother’s voice.

Something was wrong.

“Jake, they’re out there.”

Troubled, Jake rubbed sleep from his eyes and looked up at his brother. The power was still out so he didn’t have the familiar glow of his clock to tell him just how late it was, but not a hint of daylight showed outside the windows and the blizzard still raged, so he knew it wasn’t even close to morning.

“What are you talking about?”

Isaac tugged on his shirt, urgency in his blue eyes. “Come see.”

Huffing his frustration, Jake threw back his covers and dragged himself out of bed.

“I heard scratching at the window,” Isaac began. “I know you’ll say it’s just the tree and that’s what I thought first, too. It creeped me out but I knew it was the branches. The wind’s so strong and I knew it was just scratch-scratch, y’know? Only then I started really listening to the wind and it was mostly going in the other direction and the scratching kept going and so I looked up and … I saw something.”

His voice dropped low, quiet and scared.

“Like what?” Jake asked, yawning, shuffling across the floor in his socks. He always wore socks to bed; they made him feel safe.

“Like a face,” Isaac said, unwilling to look at him.

“Oh, bullshit,” Jake muttered. “Ike, you know better than that.”

“Don’t swear,” Isaac said, concerned about the profanity despite his fear. It always got under his skin when Jake cursed, which was half the reason Jake did so.

Jake went to the window but could barely see anything through the snow that had accumulated on the screen. A tiny drift had formed on the sill, building up against the outside of the glass. No way Isaac could have seen anything through this, he thought, although as he looked more closely he realized that the visible part of the screen—between the snow-clotted portion below and the shade that blocked the upper half of the window—was only frosted with snow. He could make out the storm outside and saw that it had begun at last to wane. The wind had lessened and the snow fell more or less straight down instead of being driven sideways.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

He almost added that he was going back to bed, but then he saw that Isaac wouldn’t come any closer to the glass and he understood that his brother would not let him sleep until he had been more thoroughly reassured.

Jake tugged on the shade and it rattled upward. With a soft cry, Isaac jumped back from the window, staring as if he expected that same face to be staring in at them.

“Nothing,” Jake said. “There’s nothing out there, Isaac. Now go back to bed.”

Dissatisfied, Isaac stared at the carpet. “I won’t be able to fall asleep.”

“I don’t care,” Jake said curtly. “Seriously. You just lie there if you have to, but there’s nothing out there, little brother. Don’t wake me up again.”

He went back and flopped into his bed, dragging the covers over himself as Isaac stood there and kept staring at the window.

“Go to bed, Ike.”

*   *   *

Isaac said nothing. He glanced over at Jake once, twice, a third time, but it was clear that his big brother had no intention of doing anything. And maybe there was nothing to be done, nothing out there in the storm at all, but he knew what he had seen, and whatever was or wasn’t there now, something had been there before. He’d seen that face.

Mustering up his courage, holding his breath, Isaac went to the window and looked out into the falling snow, searching the stormy sky for any sign of the owner of the white eyes that had peered through his window. He looked into the snow-laden branches of the tree that stood off to the right, but he saw no sign of anyone hiding among those bare, skeletal sticks.

Then he glanced down at the yard and saw them—a trio of figures darting around in the falling snow, several feet off the ground, as if they were dancing on the wind. They seemed to vanish and reappear with each gust, hiding behind the veil of falling snow and then emerging once more.

Isaac sucked in a shuddery breath, pressing his forehead to the cold glass. His heart sped up again as he was breathing in tiny gasps. His throat felt as if it was closing up and his lips went dry. It couldn’t be real—had to still be a dream—but if he was dreaming, how could he feel the damp, icy cold of the window against his skin? He’d had to pee since he had climbed out of bed and now the urge became terrible.

“Jake,” he whispered, afraid that somehow they would hear him.

“Whaaaat?” his brother said, groaning, without turning over in bed.

Isaac began to tremble. He’d thought they might vanish completely but they were still out there. His breath frosted the glass and he felt like crying.

“There are monsters in the yard.”

“Go to bed, Isaac. There’s no such thing as monsters.”

His eyes welled with tears. Yes, there are, he wanted to say. But he knew the tone in Jake’s voice. Sometimes they were best friends—they did everything together—and sometimes Jake treated him like they were worst enemies, like everything Isaac said or did, even breathing the same air, was stupid and babyish. Isaac wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t a baby anymore and when Jake treated him that way he usually just gave it right back to him … but it hurt so much. Tonight, none of that mattered. Tonight, Jake had to listen.

“Come look,” Isaac said.

“Go to bed.”

“Jake—”

“I’m not kidding, Ike. I already told you. No monsters. No faces at the stupid window. You heard a branch or just the snow hitting the glass. Go to sleep or I swear to God I’m going to pound you.”

Isaac thought about screaming, considered going across the hall to wake Miri. He could go to his mother’s room but Niko was there and it made him nervous, thinking about bothering them. And the longer he looked out the window, watching those figures slipping through the storm, the more he thought they weren’t just dancing … they were playing. There were four of them now, and if they were playing, maybe they weren’t monsters after all. Not really.

The snow had built up on the screen so much that he could not see very well and the frost of his breath on the glass had made it worse. Isaac pulled back and wiped at the condensation, then bent to peer outside again.

They were gone.

He blinked and looked again, craning his neck left and right to see if they had gone into a neighbor’s yard. It surprised him to realize that he was a little sad, and he unlocked the window and forced it open. The storm had swelled the frame and he had to work at it, the wood squealing a little.

“Ike, what the hell?” Jake murmured. “Close the damn window.”

Isaac ignored him, reached out and tapped some of the snow off the screen. He leaned on the windowsill and pressed his face against the screen as the wind gusted past him and the frigid cold invaded his bedroom. The sheer blue curtains billowed to either side but he ignored them, scanning the night and the storm.

“Goddammit!” Jake snapped. Isaac heard him whip back his covers and climb out of bed, heard him grunting as he stormed across the short distance between them. “It’s freezing out there!”

“Well, duh,” Isaac said, still searching the yards on either side and across the street, forcing the screen a little, trying to get a better look around. “It’s a freakin’ blizzard.”

“Isaac,” Jake said, his voice full of menace.

Jake grabbed his brother’s arm. Isaac tugged uselessly at his grip, turning toward him as that familiar fraternal anger blazed up.

“Let go!”

“You had a bad dream,” Jake insisted. “And if you saw anything outside that wasn’t just your imagination, it was Mr. Pappas walking his dog. Nobody else would be walking around out there in the middle of the night.”

“It wasn’t Mr. Pappas,” Isaac said softly, glaring at him.

“Then who—” Jake began, but his words cut off.

His gaze had shifted. Isaac saw that Jake wasn’t looking at him anymore but staring past him, at the window, and the terror blooming on his face made Isaac spin toward the window just in time to see the blue-white figures rushing through the storm, long arms reaching forward, long fingers and hands and forearms sliding through the screen as if it weren’t there at all, sifting through in a spray of ice crystals and shadows.

Frozen fingers clutched at him, cut his skin, turned his bones to rigid ice, and then they pulled. Isaac hit the screen face-first, his arms coming after. His back scraped the underside of the open window and he flailed his arms, trying to grab hold. A hand grabbed his ankle and only then did he hear the screaming. His own voice, and his brother’s.

The tug on his ankle lasted only a moment, long enough for him to be twisted around, to glance back inside his room and see Jake grasping at empty air, screaming his name.

And then he was falling.

*   *   *

Allie burst into Jake and Isaac’s room with Niko and Miri only steps behind. She staggered to a halt, staring at the horrid tableau before her. Jake stood beside the window, tears in his eyes and a scream dying on his lips. The window was open but the screen had fallen out. Snow whipped into the room, not much but enough that she could see prints on the carpet where Isaac had been standing moments before. The snow was already melting, the prints disappearing.

“Oh my god,” she heard Niko say behind her.

Then she heard herself shrieking the same words as she rushed to the window and looked out, praying she would not see the thing she feared most. But there Isaac lay, twenty-five feet below and not moving.

Jake said something but Allie could not hear him. She turned and bolted for the door, felt Niko try to take her arm and heard his soothing voice but tore free of him and ran out and down the stairs. She flung the front door open, hearing their footfalls behind her but not slowing, not waiting. Barefoot, bare-legged, she plunged into the knee-deep snow and forged a path to the place where Isaac had fallen, telling herself with every step that the snow had broken his fall, that it was so deep and soft it would have been a gentle landing.

The window screen stuck out of the snow like a cleaver jutting from a butcher’s block.

Numb, she came upon Isaac and saw right away that it had not been a gentle landing. Her baby boy had broken when he fell. His left leg and his neck were turned at impossible angles. His face was turned up toward her and she saw the panic and fear etched there and felt a cry of grief rip her up inside as it forced its way from her lips.

She dropped into the snow and picked him up, cradling him as she had done on so many nights when he had a fever as an infant. Isaac had been a sickly boy.

“Mom, please!” Jake pleaded behind her. “Come back inside! The ice men will get you! Please!”

Allie barely heard him.

Then Niko was there, one hand on her shoulder, and she glanced back and saw Jake and beautiful Miri standing together in the open doorway, crying and shivering, each also broken in his own way. Allie laid her head back against Niko’s chest and released a sob that became a wail.

“We need help,” Niko said. “I hear a plow over on Salem Street. The phones aren’t working and I can’t get a signal on my cell. I’m going to run and flag the guy down. He’ll have a radio. He’ll…”

The words trailed off. Allie had heard them but wasn’t listening, didn’t care, couldn’t feel anything other than the grief that tore and gnawed and ripped at the cavity inside her chest where her heart had been.

Niko ran back into the house and she heard him talking quickly with Jake and Miri, heard something about shoes and pants and frostbite. Niko rushed out again moments or full minutes later, she could not be sure. Jake called to her, still begging her to come inside.

But Allie could only sit and watch the snow begin to accumulate in the hollows of Isaac’s eyes. The wind had dropped to almost nothing, turning the blizzard into a gentle snowfall, and the night had begun to lighten to a gray dawn, all of Coventry covered in ice and snow.

Miri called out to her father, crying for him to come back.

But he never would.