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They had to drill behind four pictures on the east side of the corridor before they struck first wood-lath and then insulation behind the plaster… and as they were re-hanging the last picture, they heard the out-of-tune snarl of Lew’s elderly Porsche turning into the driveway. Brian, who had been in charge of hanging this picture – he could just reach the hook on tip-toe – dropped it. Laurie reached out and grabbed it by the frame on the way down. A moment later she found herself shaking so badly she had to hand the picture to Trent, or she would have dropped it herself.
‘You hang it,’ she said, turning a stricken face to her older brother. ‘I would have dropped it if I’d been thinking about what I was doing. I really would.’
Trent hung the picture, which showed horse-drawn carriages clopping through City Park, and saw it was hanging slightly askew. He reached out to adjust it, then pulled back just before his fingers touched the frame. His sisters and his brother thought he was something like a god; Trent himself was smart enough to know he was only a kid. But even a kid – assuming he was a kid with half a brain – knew that when things like this started to go bad, you ought to leave them alone. If he messed with it anymore, this picture would fall for sure, spraying the floor with broken glass, and somehow Trent knew it.
‘Go!’ he whispered. ‘Downstairs! TV room!’
The back door slammed downstairs as Lew came in.
‘But it’s not straight!’ Lissa protested. ‘Trent, it’s not…’ ’Never mind!’ Laurie said. ‘Do what Trent says!’
Trent and Laurie looked at each other, wide-eyed. If Lew went into the kitchen to fix himself a bite to tide himself over until supper, all still might be well. If he didn’t, he would meet Lissa and Brian on the stairs. One look at them and he’d know something was going on. The two younger Bradbury children were old enough to close their mouths, but not their faces. Brian and Lissa went fast.
Trent and Laurie came behind, more slowly, listening. There was a moment of almost unbearable suspense when the only sounds were the little kids’ footsteps on the stairs, and then Lew bawled up at them from the kitchen: ‘KEEP IT DOWN, CAN’T YOU? YOUR MOTHER’S TAKING A NAP!’
And if that doesn’t wake her up, Laurie thought, nothing will.
Late that night, as Trent was drowsing off to sleep, Laurie opened the door of his room, came in, and sat down beside him on the bed.
‘You don’t like him, but that’s not all,’ she said.
‘Who-wha?’ Trent asked, peeling a cautious eyelid.
‘Lew,’ she said quietly. ‘You know who I mean, Trent.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, giving up. ‘And you’re right. I don’t like him.’
‘You’re scared of him, too, aren’t you?’
After a long, long moment, Trent said: ‘Yeah. A little.’
‘Just a little?’
‘Maybe a little more than a little,’ Trent said. He winked at her, hoping for a smile, but Laurie only looked at him, and Trent gave up. She wasn’t going to be diverted, at least not tonight. ‘Why? Do you think he might hurt us?’
Lew shouted at them a lot, but he had never put his hands on them. No, Laurie suddenly remembered, that wasn’t quite true. One time when Brian had walked into his study without knocking, Lew had given him a spanking. A hard one. Brian had tried not to cry, but in the end he had. And Mom had cried, too, although she hadn’t tried to stop the spanking. But she must have said something to him later on, because Laurie had heard Lew shouting at her. Still, it had been a spanking, not child abuse, and Brian could be an insufferable cheese-dog when he put his mind to it.
Had he been putting his mind to it that night? Laurie wondered now. Or had Lew spanked her brother and made him cry over something, which had only been an honest, little kid’s mistake? She didn’t know, and had a sudden and unwelcome insight, the sort of thought that made her think Peter Pan had had the right idea about never wanting to grow up: she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. One thing she did know: who the real cheese-dog around here was. She realized Trent hadn’t answered her question, and gave him a poke. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Just thinking,’ he said. ‘It’s a toughie, you know?’
‘Yes,’ she said soberly. ‘I know.’
This time she let him think.
‘Nah,’ he said at last, and laced his hands together behind his head. ‘I don’t think so, Sprat.’ She hated to be called that, but tonight she decided to let it go. She couldn’t remember Trent ever speaking to her this carefully and seriously. ‘I don’t think he would… but I think he could.’ He got up on one elbow and looked at her even more seriously. ‘But I think he’s hurting Mom, and I think it gets a little worse for her every day.’ ’She’s sorry, isn’t she?’ Laurie asked. Suddenly she felt like crying. Why were adults so stupid sometimes about stuff kids could see right away? It made you want to kick them. ‘She never wanted to go to England in the first place… and there’s the way he shouts at her sometimes…’
‘Don’t forget the headaches,’ Trent said flatly. ‘The ones he says she talks herself into. Yeah, she’s sorry, all right.’
‘Would she ever… you know…’
‘Divorce him?’
‘Yes,’ Laurie said, relieved. She wasn’t sure she could have brought the word out herself, and had she realized how much she was her mother’s daughter in that regard, she could have answered her own question.
‘No,’ Trent said. ‘Not Mom.’
‘Then there’s nothing we can do,’ Laurie sighed.
Trent said in a voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear it: ‘Oh yeah?’
During the next week and a half, they drilled other small holes around the house when there was no one around to see them: holes behind posters in their various rooms, behind the refrigerator in the pantry (Brian was able to squeeze in and just had room to use the drill), in the downstairs closets. Trent even drilled one in a dining-room wall, high up in one corner where the shadows never quite left. He stood on top of the stepladder while Laurie held it steady. There was no metal anywhere. Just lath.
The children forgot for a little while.
One day about a month later, after Lew had gone back to teaching full-time, Brian came to Trent and told him there was another crack in the plaster on the third floor, and that he could see more metal behind it. Trent and Lissa came at once. Laurie was still in school, at band practice. As on the occasion of the first crack, their mother was lying down with a headache. Lew’s temper had improved once he was back at school (as Trent and Laurie had been sure it would), but he’d had a crackerjack argument with their mother the night before, about a party he wanted to have for fellow faculty members in the History Department. If there was anything the former Mrs. Bradbury hated and feared, it was playing hostess at faculty parties. Lew had insisted on this one, however, and she had finally given in. Now she was lying in the shadowy bedroom with a damp towel over her eyes and a bottle of Fiorinal on the night-table while Lew was presumably passing around invitations in the Faculty Lounge and clapping his colleagues on the back. The new crack was on the west side of the hallway, between the study door and the stairwell.
‘You sure you saw metal in there?’ Trent asked. ‘We checked this side, Bri.’ ‘Look for yourself,’ Brian said, and Trent did. There was no need of a flashlight; this crack was wider, and there was no question about the metal at the bottom of it. After a long look, Trent told them he had to go to the hardware store, right away.
‘Why?’ Lissa asked.
‘I want to get some plaster. I don’t want him to see that crack.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘And I especially don’t want him to see the metal inside it.’
Lissa frowned at him. ‘Why not, Trent?’
But Trent didn’t exactly know. At least, not yet. They started drilling again, and this time they found metal behind all the walls on the third floor, including Lew’s study. Trent snuck in there one afternoon with the drill while Lew was at the college and their mother was out shopping for the upcoming faculty party.