Chapter 9 — Before Dawn

What happened next was David's fault and also not his fault.He had gone back inside for the last bag — the one with his work laptop, which he'd left in the kitchen. Nora was outside with the children. She had put the children in the car. She was waiting.Two minutes passed.Three."Where's Dad?" Owen said.Nora went back in.She found the kitchen empty. The bag was on the counter. The kitchen was undisturbed.She found the staircase.She found the upstairs hall.She found the attic door.It was open.Not much. A few inches. The darkness of the staircase behind it, a thin cold breath of air, and from somewhere above, a sound that she later could not describe except as the sound of something that had been waiting for a very long time letting itself feel relieved."David," she said. Her voice was very controlled.From above, on the attic stairs, she heard his footstep."I heard something," he said. His voice floated down from the darkness, strange and distant, like hearing him through water. "I heard someone in trouble up there. I couldn't just—"She had heard those words before. Eleanor Hargrove had told them to her."Come down," she said. "Right now. Come down and don't touch anything."A pause."It's fine up here," he said. "Come see."And she knew — with the absolute clarity of someone who has been told exactly how this goes — that she could not go up those stairs. That the invitation, in that flattened voice, was the mechanism. That the attic door standing open was the hinge on which everything turned."David Calloway," she said. Loud, clear, his full name. "You come down these stairs right now."Silence.Then, slowly, his footstep. One step. Another. The creak of each stair. She stood at the bottom and did not move and did not look away from the rectangle of dark.He came out.He looked the same. Entirely, completely the same — his face, his eyes, the expression of a man who had just done something slightly embarrassing."What did you see?" she said."Nothing," he said. He sounded confused. "Just the attic. Old stuff. I don't know why I went up—"She closed the door. Dropped the latch. Took his hand."Don't let go," she said. "Don't let go of my hand until we're in the car."He didn't.