Leaving the case of brushes, Katherine stepped away from the art table with the strange little book clenched in her hand. She crossed the living room, grabbed the cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table, curled up on the couch, turned back to the very beginning of the book, and continued to read.
Ruthie
“It’s definitely loaded,” Buzz said, holding the gun they’d found under her mother’s floor. He kept his index finger off the trigger, resting it along the metal barrel. They were sitting side by side on her mom’s bed. Ruthie was holding a bottle of beer. Buzz had put his down on the bedside table, where it sat abandoned and sweating. Ruthie was worried it would leave a ring in the wood, a telltale sign that they’d been there. She put the bottle on the floor and wiped off the tabletop with her sleeve.
It was ten o’clock, and Fawn was sound asleep. She’d had a fever of 102. Ruthie had been giving her Tylenol every four hours to keep it down. She’d even made up a brew of some of her mother’s tea with feverfew and willow bark and had Fawn drink it. Once Fawn was asleep, she called Buzz and asked him to come over. He brought a six-pack of beer.
“See? Here,” Buzz said, and held out the gun to show her the inner workings. “The cylinder holds six cartridges. Six shots. It’s an older gun, but it’s a real beauty, and it’s in good shape. Your mom’s kept it cleaned and oiled.”
“Are you sure?” Ruthie asked, still unable to believe that her mother would even touch a gun.
“Well, someone has. And this is her bedroom, right? It’s not so unusual, really, for a woman living alone out here with her kids to want some kind of protection. My dad sells more handguns to women than men.”
Ruthie shivered, but moved in for a closer look. “So how’s it work?”
“Simple,” Buzz said, eyes all lit up. He was loving this—the chance to be an expert in something. Buzz’s dad ran Bull’s Eye Archery and Ammo out on Route 6. Buzz had grown up around guns and had been hunting since he was eight years old. “What we have here is a Colt single-action revolver. This is the safety latch. You want to push that back. Then use your thumb to pull down on the hammer until it clicks. After that, you just aim and pull the trigger. The trigger releases the hammer, and the gun fires.”
Buzz turned the gun in his hand. “If you want, we can try it out tomorrow. I can show you how to fire it.”
Ruthie shook her head. “My mom would kill me.”
He nodded and put the gun back into the box carefully, respectfully.
“I still can’t believe she just disappeared like this,” he said, taking off his baseball cap and running a hand through his close-cropped hair.
“I know,” Ruthie said. “It’s not like her. She’s a little odd, but she’s so…dependable. Stuck in her ways. She barely ever goes to town, and now she’s gone and vanished off the face of the freaking earth. It doesn’t make sense.”
“So what’s your plan? I mean, if she doesn’t show up?”
“I don’t know.” Ruthie sighed. “I had been thinking that I’d call the cops if she wasn’t back by tonight, but then we found this stuff. Now I truly don’t know what the hell to do. What if she’s caught up in something…illegal?”
Buzz nodded. “Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t call the cops. Finding the gun and wallets—it does make you wonder.”
“I know,” Ruthie said weakly. It seemed impossible—the idea that her mild-mannered, herbal-tea-loving, middle-aged mother was involved in something criminal.
What else didn’t Ruthie know? What else might be uncovered if she did call the police?
Buzz was a quiet a minute. “Maybe it’s the aliens.”
“Goddamn,” Ruthie spat. “I amsonot in the mood for any alien theories right now.”
“No, no, really. Alien abduction. It happens all the time. They suck them up in these tractor beams and do experiments and probe them and shit, then let them go, sometimes miles from where they were taken, memories wiped clean. And you know what me and Tracer saw out in the woods, not even a mile from your place.”
Ruthie remembered the shadowy woods, the rocks jutting up like teeth that made her feel as if she were on the verge of being swallowed up.
“Come on, Buzz. I could use a little sanity here.”
“Okay. But can I just point out something kind of obvious?”
Buzz asked.
She shrugged, but didn’t protest.
“Well, do you ever think about the way you guys live? You know, you’re kind of cut off from the world out here—barely any visitors, unlisted phone number, no-trespassing signs everywhere.”
“You know my mom. She’s a total hippie freak,” Ruthie said. “My dad was the same way, too. That’s why they moved out here from Chicago when I was three. They didn’t want to be a part of the machine. They wanted to go back to the land, live this happy hippie utopian dream with chickens and an herb garden and fresh whole-grain bread.”
“What if it’s more than that?” Buzz asked.
