She pauses at the top of the stairs, gripped by the fear that something terrible has happened downstairs, that she will go down and find blood, bodies, a massacre, Jayne and Emily brutally murdered. Her head pounds. She sits on the top step. “Jayne?” she calls. She feels frightened in a way she hasn’t done since she was a child. The raw terror of being afraid of an intruder in the dark.
She stands up, takes a few steps, peers down. The movement makes her headache worse. But she sees Emily’s shoes in the hall and remembers. Emily went to the farmhouse and Jayne, well Ruth can’t remember, but perhaps Jayne went after Emily, or with her.
The images of their corpses don’t recede completely, but she feels a little reassured. She’s pretty sure it’s a reliable memory. It makes sense.
And if Jayne is out searching, Ruth ought to make herself useful. She should go out and search, too, though perhaps that’s not a good idea. She has a child to get home to and the storm is the biggest she thinks she’s ever experienced. If they’re out there, she dreads to think what state they’re in. At the very least she should make sure that she seems sober when they get back. Her head is troubling her most. Surely, Jayne won’t mind if she looks for painkillers in her stuff. They know each other well enough.
She checks Jayne’s washbag, and finds just a toothpaste and toothbrush, damp from having been used earlier. Jayne’s deodorant, an unfussy brand, is out on the side. No medication. There must be some somewhere, Ruth thinks. Jayne always has a first-aid kit. They’ve had to use it before on weekends away. For cuts, scrapes, and hangovers. She turns to Jayne’s bag. The side pocket is empty. She unzips the main compartment.
Ruth’s head snaps up at the sound of something screaming outside, a swift, shrill sound that dies into a moan. It chills her. She strains to hear more, but only registers the low whistle of the wind wrapping itself around the barn. The windows rattle and judder in Jayne’s room, as it seeks a way in. The scream came from a something, not a someone, Ruth tells herself. It was definitely animal. Her head and heart pound in unison, crescendoing.
Jayne’s bag is sparsely packed, everything folded and tucked into place with military precision. No excess included, Ruth notes and feels as if Jayne’s neatness is rebuking her for her own haphazard packing.
She grabs the metal object and yanks it out of the bag before she feels its weight, interprets its shape, or understands its power. When she sees what she has in her hand, she screams and drops it.
Her chest heaves as she stares at it. That, she realizes, was a very dangerous thing to do.
Jayne’s gun lies still on the bedroom rug, pointing toward the door. It’s small, what Ruth would think of as pistol-sized, though she knows nothing about guns and has no idea how to check if it’s loaded or safe. She’s never handled one. They’ve always struck her as malevolent objects, even their appearance loaded with menace.
Why has Jayne brought a gun here? Why does she even have a gun? Ruth’s mind races, trying to find answers. It sobers her up, but not completely. Nothing makes sense.
Except.
What if Jayne has been playing the puppeteer this weekend? What if she wrote the letter? Could she have wanted to scare them? What if she has some other terrible act in mind, some final act to which the letter is just a prelude?
But why? Jayne’s rock steady, a port in a storm. She and Mark are so well suited, so stable. What possible reason could Jayne have to do something like this?
An answer settles in Ruth’s mind and as soon as it does it feels inevitable, obvious, the same way her suspicions about Toby aren’tnew, but have been shoved under the carpet for too long as suspicion built.
Ruth has always wondered how Jayne worked for so long for military intelligence and emerged with no signs of trauma. It’s obvious from what they don’t say about their time in the military that Jayne and Mark were involved in some difficult and secretive operations. She knows they did tours in Libya and Afghanistan.
But what if, Ruth wonders, I haven’t been looking closely enough at my friend? Is Jayne’s measured demeanor, her calm, the way she wields rationality almost like a weapon, is it all hiding some serious mental instability?
The world snaps back into place. John doesn’t just recognize what he can see, but the tree and the fork in the path relate to one another once again and relate to the rest of his land, to his destination. He knows where he is and where he needs to go. The farmhouse. Home. Maggie.
“Come on,” he says to the girl. He’s forgotten her name, but he’s certain that she needs him, that he’s helping her.
Her shaking has worsened. It’s more of a tremor, coming from deep within her. Whether the cause is pain, or cold, it doesn’t much matter. It’s dangerous. Shock can take you as quick as anything else. He’s lost livestock that way.
His relief when the farmhouse comes into view is as strong as he’s ever felt, yellow light from the kitchen window as close to a guiding star as he’s ever seen up on the moors.
“Oh, dear God, you poor thing,” Maggie says, her arms outstretched to take the young woman from him. Birdie sniffs and backs away, tail low, submissive. Concerned. No barking. She senses, as well as he does, when something is wrong and he’s afraid that wrong thing is him.
“She’ll be all right,” he says, not because he knows but because it’s what he’s hoping.
He shuts the door behind them. It’s a relief to be out of the storm. He takes off his coat and boots and by the time he joins them in the kitchen, he’s not exactly sure who the young woman is and why she’s here in his home. He wonders what her name is. But she looks as if she needs help, and Maggie is providing it. That part of it makes perfect sense to him.
But he can’t shake a sense of dread and a crawling feeling of guilt. But for what, he’s not sure. Perhaps it’s to do with the girl?
“Why’s she here?” he asks Maggie.
“Not now, John,” she says. The look on her face breaks something in him.
Responding to the warning in Maggie’s voice, he leaves the room quietly to let her tend to the young woman. She’ll know what’s right. Maggie is the kindest person he’s ever known.
In the boot room, he stands, head hanging. He hardly has the energy to take off his boots. When he sits heavily on the bench something in his pocket clunks against it.
He reaches in to see what it is and finds a phone. It’s wet and clearly broken and it’s not his. He has no idea why he has it or who it belongs to.
