Chapter 22. Alice
ALICE
Alice jumped up, spilling her tea on the table, and rushed to the front door. As she flung it open, she found her father standing in the driveway with his shotgun raised and aimed at the garbage can.
“We got ’em!” he shouted.
“What are you doing?” Alice yelled. “Put that down!” She hurried over to James, who stood wide-eyed next to his grandfather, and wrapped her arms around him as she pulled him away from the garbage can.
The rest of the dinner party gathered on the front porch, and Cait appeared from the cottage door— so that’s where they went —to scoop up Poppy, who was hysterical. Luke followed after her.
“My God, Dad,” Cait said. Then, looking around, she added, “Where’s Augustus?”
“Mummy?” Augustus said from the front door. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to go outside?”
“Stay there,” Cait said to him.
“He hurt the raccoon.” Poppy sobbed, burying her face in Cait’s shoulder.
“He had rabies,” James said. He was unsure of himself but trying to act tough, and that made Alice even angrier at her father.
“We don’t actually know that,” Cait said to James.
James turned to his grandfather for confirmation, but Robert just lowered the muzzle toward the ground and stared at the garbage can.
“Let’s put down the gun,” Kyle said as he stepped off the porch. He held out his hands, but Robert stood stock-still with the shotgun in his grip.
Was he in shock?
No one moved. The whole scene looked like one of her father’s train dioramas. Everyone frozen eternally in time.
Alice looked up at the attic window. Finn hadn’t come down to see what was happening, but she figured he was probably wearing his headphones and playing a video game.
Nora started to walk down the porch steps, but Maggie stopped her.
“Robert,” Nora said from the top step, “are you not well?”
“Where’s the raccoon?” Father Kelly asked, standing next to Nora and Maggie.
James squirmed out of Alice’s arms and pointed to the green plastic garbage can. There was a single tattered hole, and the air smelled like burnt paper. “He got stuck and”—he glanced at Poppy and lowered his voice—“Papa shot him.”
Poppy wailed again.
Alice’s stomach turned.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Father Kelly asked.
Everyone stopped to listen. Alice braced herself for the sound of the poor creature whimpering, but there was nothing.
Suddenly, Robert called out to James, “Topher, lift the lid!”
There was a moment of confused silence as though, Alice thought, they were all waiting for her father to correct himself, to take it back. When he didn’t, Alice said, “Dad?” But he didn’t seem to hear her.
“Go on,” he said to James, and gestured toward the can.
James turned to Alice in a panic. “Is he calling me Topher?”
Alice didn’t know if her father had mistakenly referred to James as Topher or genuinely believed he was addressing him. “Dad,” she said, again, warily, “that isn’t Topher. That’s James.”
“Bobby,” Nora said. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”
Alice hadn’t heard her mother call her father that in years. It was a nickname she’d used when they were younger. If he walked by and pinched her waist or stole a kiss, she’d slap his hand and say, “Oh, Bobby!”
Finally, Robert looked up at them. His face was red, and his hands trembled. He shifted his attention back to James and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You just—” He stopped and let out a long exhale that billowed his lips.
Alice waited for someone, anyone, to do something. Then it hit her that they were all waiting as well.
Finally, Kyle inched closer to her father, hands still out before him, the crunch of snow beneath his steps echoing in the strange quiet of the day. He will keep us safe , she thought, regretting their argument just moments before, like he always does .
“Robert,” Kyle said in a voice so tender and steady, it nearly made Alice cry. “The gun.”
Robert looked down at his hands. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Yes.” And then he let the shotgun slide through his fingers as though, it seemed to Alice, it was made of air, and it slammed onto the pebbled driveway and fired off another round.
There was a collective scream, and Alice heard herself yell “No!” as she huddled over James and pressed him to her chest. When she looked up, she saw snow flurrying from the sycamore by the garage, where the bullet had landed.
Her knees nearly buckled in relief when Kyle retrieved the shotgun and said, “It hit the tree. Everyone’s okay. ”
Alice grabbed James’s face and smooshed his cheeks, smothering him with what felt like every cell of motherhood she had left. After checking the gun to make sure there were no more shells, Kyle placed it back in the cottage and then ran over to hug Alice and James.
Robert sat on the porch step. His white hair, yellowed along the sides, stood straight up as though he’d been electrocuted. His face was drained of color now, ashen against the bright snow, and his thin lips looked even thinner.
Alice sat next to him.
Cait brought Poppy up to the porch, then sat on the other side of their father. “Are you hurt?” she asked him.
Robert examined his hands. “I don’t think so.” Then he turned to Alice with an expression that made him look like a frightened child, and with quivering lips, said, “I don’t know why I called him Topher.”
Alice wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, Dad.”
He nodded, and his hazel eyes glistened with tears.
Now he no longer reminded Alice of a child—he was an old man.
His cheeks were hollowed. Her mind flashed to a hike he’d taken her on somewhere in the Catskills decades ago.
She must have been about sixteen, because it was near the time Topher disappeared in Mexico City, and no one could track him down.
It was a clear day, but when she and her father reached the mountain summit, they were swiftly immersed in a fog so thick they could barely see a few inches ahead.
He guided Alice to sit on the ground, and as quickly as the fog appeared, it vanished.
Alice had been paralyzed with fear, but her father sat there in awe.
After a moment, he clapped his hands and stood, saying, “It’s not every day you get caught up in a cloud. ”
Without speaking, Alice and Cait reached for either side of their father’s upper arms to help him stand.
“Come on, Dad,” Alice said. “It’s cold out here.”
He shifted his gaze upward, past them, toward the sky. “It is,” he said, and shivered.
As they walked back inside, a police car pulled into the driveway with its lights flashing.
Alice guided her mother from behind by the back of her shoulders, the boniness of her slender body adding to the unease. Everything felt vulnerable, breakable.
“A neighbor probably called about the gunshots,” Kyle said. “I’ll talk to him.”
The officer opened his door and stepped out. He regarded Kyle standing by the garbage can, then turned to the rest of the family on the porch.
“We’re sorry, Officer,” Kyle said. “We had an incident with a rabid raccoon, but it’s all taken care of. We didn’t mean to disturb anyone. You can look in the garbage if you’d like to check—”
The officer shook his head. “I’m not here about a gunshot,” he said. “Are you the family of a boy named Finn?”