The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley

Author:Carla Buckley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Dysfunctional families, Epidemics, Fiction, Suburbs, Suspense, Thrillers, Suspense fiction
ISBN: 9780440245094
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 2010-02-09T12:19:50+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

WHERE WERE THEY?

Ann stood on the patio and watched Libby’s house. A wet smokiness blew across from the still-smoldering house behind her. Soot peppered the snow about her. She shivered.

Maybe Libby was driving up to her parents’ adobe house surrounded by beige sand and purple mountains. She was lifting Jacob from his car seat and handing him to her mother, happy to be home. “Merry Christmas,” Libby was saying, and Smith was putting his arm around her. They were all trooping inside.

Ann thought about pulling into her own parents’ driveway. The front door would bang open and her parents would stand there grinning, the lights on the Christmas tree glowing gaily in the room behind them. Maddie would leap about, and Kate would come close for hugs. Her dad would insist on carrying in the suitcases. Ann would scold him and shoo him away. She stopped herself.

Her parents weren’t home. They were still in Charlottesville. Assuming they’d made the trip successfully. Of course they had. Beth was smart. She was clever and determined. She’d let nothing stand in her way.

Not knowing was the hard part. There were so many things she didn’t know. She was marooned in silence. It pounded against her eardrums. It mocked her as she watched out the windows for signs of life. Who knew what was happening in the hospitals, the medical labs, other towns and cities? She didn’t even know what had happened next door.

Her mother, her sister, her best friend, they were all gone. There was no one left.

She stepped back into her kitchen and locked the door.

“Where is it?” Kate yelled from somewhere upstairs.

“Say please!” Maddie sang from the family room.

The girls were at it again. Ann could feel a headache punch its way between her eyes. She turned and saw Peter bringing down the first-aid bin. Fear stabbed her. “Who’s sick?”

“I’m just seeing what we have.” He pulled things out and stood them on the counter. “Do we have any more cough syrup?”

He was taking inventory? He’d never been one to track the mundane. That sort of thing had always been Ann’s domain. Now that there were no stores or gas stations, maybe he’d begun to realize their limits. She didn’t know if this reassured or worried her. “There’s some in the girls’ medicine cabinet. Why?”

Stomping footsteps upstairs.

Maddie called out, “Did you check the toilet, Kate?”

“Mom! Maddie flushed Owl down the toilet!”

Aghast, Ann marched into the family room, where Maddie sprawled across a chair, her book in her lap.

“Did you?” she demanded.

“She took all my crayons, Mom, and broke them into pieces.”

Ann tipped back her head and stared at the ceiling. “Did you flush Owl down the toilet?”

Maddie licked her lips, then leaned forward to whisper, “No, Mom. I didn’t. But don’t tell her.”

“Ann?” Peter called from the kitchen. “I can’t find a thermometer.”

“Honey,” she said to Maddie, “it’s terrible she broke your crayons, but you just can’t take Owl away.”

Maddie stuck out her lower lip, thinking, then lifted a shoulder and let it drop.

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