Along the Watchtower by Constance Squires

Author:Constance Squires
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

The first night her mother was away, Major Collins told Lucinda he was going to drive into the village and have a few drinks with some of his troops. After Erin and Jacob went to bed, Lucinda decided to have some drinks herself. She had tried alcohol a couple of times, once at a Hail and Farewell her parents had dragged her to because they were afraid she’d have a seizure if they left her at home, and once on a ski slope when a stranger handed her a paper cup of glühwein as if she’d ordered it. Tonight she got trashed on her parents’ peppermint schnapps. By the end of the evening, the bottle was almost empty and Lucinda sprawled on the couch, her eyes closing over the television image of an American flag waving in the breeze above the words THE ARMED FORCES NETWORK HAS SIGNED OFF.

She woke when the grandfather clock in the entryway began chiming discordantly. The usual quarter-hour chimes never woke her; she was used to the sound, but this racket broke her drunken sleep and she lay terrified, watching as a dark figure crept into the hallway. Whoever it was had bumped into the clock—evidently a stranger to the layout of the apartment—and was carrying a flashlight. She watched as the figure opened the linen closet in the hall. From the couch she watched, trying to think of a plan and wondering where the hell her father was, as the figure bundled two heavy wool blankets under his arm and closed the closet. She heard the front door close and footfalls echoing down the stairwell.

Lucinda slipped along the hallway in her socks and tipped open the blinds of a window that looked down onto the parking lot in front of their building. She saw her father, unmistakable under the streetlight, slide back into his car, handing the blankets to someone sitting in the passenger seat. Something bright glinted in the streetlight on the person’s lap. Something round with ears. She recognized it: she was looking at the big brass owl clasp of Leanne Murdoch’s brown leather purse. For a minute, Lucinda was surprised it wasn’t Erin’s swim coach. That one she knew about. But it was Leanne Murdoch, wife of Dan Murdoch, mother of Tina Murdoch. Dan was a general contractor, a civilian. He wore a beard, Leanne wore Birkenstocks, and they lived in a two-story house that shared a backyard with Lucinda’s apartment building. Their daughter, Tina, an angry, square-jawed girl who made a point of not learning how to distinguish rank from uniforms, went to school with Lucinda. They weren’t really friends, but they had, on two recent occasions, shared a joint in the girls’ restroom.

Lucinda wished Tina were with her to witness her mother reaching over and kissing Lucinda’s father. Then Lucinda could have clocked Tina in her big jaw, then run downstairs to give her father and Leanne Murdoch a good thrashing. But Tina wasn’t there, and Lucinda didn’t move.

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