Brood (27 page)

S
he trusts them this much—she allows them to ride in the back of the rented car. They are sound asleep anyhow, sprawled and snoring, entwined with each other. What harm could they do?

And what she saw them do…they did it for her.

They have already tried to make their case to be dropped at Pelham Bay. Their friends are there—or at least nearby. Cynthia did not give it a moment's thought. She just kept driving north. She has about four hundred miles to go. If she drives hard, she can make it in about seven hours. When a little bit of light will still be lingering.

Soon she is out of the city. Over the RFK, onto the thruway, onto I-95. Connecticut. All those dear Yankee towns, like picture postcards pinned to the bulletin board, right through the tall steeple that stands in the center of each of them.

At one point, Adam awakens. “Where are we going now?” he asks.

“You just rest,” she says. “Leave this to me.”

“We're sorry, Mom,” he says. “But he was hurting you.”

“He was going to rape you,” Alice adds. She is still lying down; her eyes are still closed. Her stomach is distended with her awful meal.

“I know, kids. I know.” She sees a cop car pulled off on the right side of the road, half hidden by a cluster of blue spruce. Looking for speeders. What a laugh…

Through Connecticut, angling through Massachusetts, slicing through Vermont, and now they are in New Hampshire. She stops for gas, bathroom breaks, snacks—granola bars for her, and the kids want beef jerky and energy drinks.

They stink of blood.

She refuses to tell them where they are going. All she will say is “Someplace you can be safe from the world, and the world can be safe from you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Alice demands, her voice rising, turning dark red.

“From now on,” Cynthia says, “if there are any questions being asked, I will do the asking. You understand me? I am your mother, and your job is to listen to me.”

“I'll kill you,” Alice says rather casually.

It terrifies Cynthia, but she manages not to let it show.

The evening is a dark royal blue. A quarter moon rocks gently in a sea of stars. They are in the middle of New Hampshire, climbing Mount Washington. The headlights of the rented car sweep over a sign that reads Use Low Gear, Stop Occasionally to Cool Brakes. Her heart is pounding—it may be caused by the thin air, though she doubts it.

“Where are you taking us, Mom,” Adam says.

“Remember when I told you about this place? How one day we'd go see it?”

“Where the wind is?” asks Adam.

“That's right. Where the wind blows nearly three hundred miles an hour.”

“What's so great about that?” asks Alice.

“I don't know, honey,” Cynthia says. “It just is.”

Even in the depths of summer, the landscape looks chilly, almost barren. Of the few trees, half of them have already begun to change color.

She hasn't seen another car or a sign of human life in half an hour. Without warning, Cynthia suddenly pulls the car off to the side of the road.

She reaches down into the well of the front seat and pulls up their backpacks. She has filled them both with changes of clothes, snacks, matches. She tosses one to Adam, the other to Alice.

“Okay, kids,” she says. She hopes her voice has an element of encouragement in it. “Hop out.”

She gets out herself, taking the car keys with her, just in case.

She waits for them, and eventually they open the back doors, first Adam and then Alice. There is a wind—it's not three hundred miles per hour, but it's considerably more than a sweet summer breeze.

“Mom?” Adam says, his voice trembling.

“I don't have a good choice here, Adam.”

“You never seem to,” says Alice.

“That's true, Alley-Oop. I never seem to. But what am I going to do? Turn you in to the police? Let you roam the city? The best I can do here is put you someplace where maybe, maybe maybe maybe, you can make lives for yourself in the wild and stay out of trouble and live whatever kind of life you are able to live.”

Oh, shit. This is the last thing she wanted. She has started to cry.

“Maybe you've got a shot, huh?” Cynthia says, trying to force her voice through the web of tears. “I have to give you that chance. I want to. I couldn't bear to see you locked up. Or hunted down. And I couldn't bear your hurting another person.”

“Did you
want
that guy to rape you?” Alice asks, her mouth twisted defiantly.

“I want you to understand something, kids—”

“Mom, please,” Adam says. “You're not going to leave us
here?
”

“Fuck she's not,” says Alice.

“Mom, come on, really,” says Adam. “It was so totally not our fault.”

“I know that, Braveheart,” Cynthia says, suppressing a sob. “I really do. And I want you to understand that I don't blame you. You didn't ask for this. Not any of it.”

“We're going to die out here,” Alice says. “You know that, don't you?”

“I don't think you will, Alley-Oop. You're strong and you're swift and you're very, very smart. If you leave the humans alone, no one will bother you. And right now, no one knows you're here and no one's nearby. You just have to keep it that way.”

“Sounds like you've got it all figured out.”

“We just have to do the best we can.”

“What about the house?” Alice says. “It's ours.”

“The state will probably seize it. If I can sell it, I'll get you the money. I'll put it in an account under your names and send you the information. Every year on New Year's Day, look in the
New York Times,
and if I can sell the place, I will put a little ad in the real estate section. It'll say ‘Wanted, House for Three People in Sargeants, New Hampshire.' If you see that, you call me. And I'll tell you how to get the money.”

“This is not happening,” Alice announces. She makes a move to get back into the car, but Cynthia clicks the remote, and the doors are locked.

The three of them stand there in silence.

“I'm sorry,” Cynthia finally says.

“We're sorry too,” says Adam.

“We didn't do anything,” says Alice. “We saved you.”

“It's just too dangerous,” Cynthia says.

“For who?” asks Alice.

“For all of us,” says Cynthia. “For everyone.” She opens her arms. First Adam and then Alice slowly enter her embrace. She kisses the tops of their heads, their soft, silky hair. She feels their hands on her. It's no use. She does not have the strength to hold back her tears. And they do not have the strength to hold back theirs.

With a suddenness that catches the twins unawares, Cynthia disengages the locks of the car and gets in, quickly locking the doors behind her. She starts the engine and puts the transmission in gear. Slowly, she starts to roll away.

The twins frantically beat their little hands against the car's windows.

“It's not our fault!” Alice cries.

“Mom, come on, please,” cries Adam.

Cynthia presses her lips tightly together and grips the steering wheel so hard, it feels as if her hands will break. The road curves before her, leading down and down into the darkness below. She glances in the rearview mirror. The twins are standing there, watching her leave. And then one of them—from this distance, she can't tell if it's Adam or Alice—sees something off to the left. An animal. A deer, perhaps. Maybe something larger. Cynthia looks straight ahead for a second to make sure she does not steer herself off the side of the mountain, and when she looks back in the rearview to check on the twins, they are already gone. Gone, gone, like a cool breeze, gone.

I am glad to have this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge New York attorney Emily Goodman for her generous and patient explanations of certain questions regarding the law that arose while I was working on this story.

Chase Novak is the pseudonym for Scott Spencer. Spencer is the author of eleven novels, including
Endless Love,
which has sold more than two million copies to date, and the National Book Award finalist
A Ship Made of Paper.
He has written for
Rolling Stone,
the
New York Times,
The New Yorker,
GQ,
and
Harper's
.
Brood
is his second novel as Chase Novak.

Breed

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