Saturday, July 16, 1994

Saturday, July 16, 1994

12:46 a.m.

Misty Chen hears her son return, just as she heard when he left. Nothing gets past her in this house. Not anymore. Gone are the days when Johnny would sneak out unnoticed, scurrying off into the night to poison himself. By the time she realized what he'd been doing, it was too late, and Johnny was gone.

Now she's become the eyes and ears of the house, seeing everything, hearing everything. It's why she moved across the hall not long after Johnny died, leaving the bed she'd shared with her husband. In her grief, she could no longer be distracted by his tossing, turning, and snoring.

She needs quiet.

To pay attention.

To listen for the small changes that occur when someone in the house is doing something they shouldn't. Which Russ is doing right now. Creeping through the kitchen and tiptoeing up the stairs.

Misty charts his progress based on the sound of his footfalls. The creak means he's reached the third step. The groan indicates he's now at the sixth. She hears a swoosh—Russ turning at the landing—before two more creaks, the second an octave higher than the first. The last two steps.

She doesn't leave her bed until she hears the groan of the floorboard right outside Russ's room. As he closes his bedroom door, Misty opens hers, intent on learning what her son has been up to. When he left his room, the sound woke her from a dead sleep, so loud in her mind it was like cannon fire and not a boy stepping on a faulty floorboard. She sat up in bed, ears alert for every telltale noise, as Russ went downstairs, then outside, then in and out again.

Misty knows most mothers would have immediately followed. Russ is ten. He has no reason to leave the house in the middle of the night. But Misty learned her lesson with Johnny. The more she openly pried, the sneakier he became, until his actions were all but invisible to her. She won't repeat that mistake with Russ. It's best to let him think she's not paying attention, when in fact she sees everything.

She knows, for instance, that he was out in the woods today with his friends and returned upset about something. That he was moody all night. She's certain it involves the Marsh boy.

As she creeps downstairs, Misty knows to avoid all the things that alerted her to Russ's movements. Groaning floorboards skipped, creaking stairs averted. In the kitchen, nothing is amiss except for a knife incongruously sitting on the counter.

The sight of it sends alarm bells clanging through her thoughts. What on earth had Russ been up to?

Misty examines the knife, relieved to find it clean of food and—her main concern—blood. The very idea that her Russell could stab someone fills her with shame for thinking it. He's a good boy, but she's had enough parent-teacher conferences about Russ's anger issues to know they're a problem. They even started sending him to therapy once a week, not that it seems to be doing much good. The knife in her hand is proof of that. The reason her son felt compelled to grab it—and what he intended to do with it—are less clear. Rather than ask Russ about it, she decides to monitor the situation for the next few days. Maybe whatever was going through his head has passed. Maybe it was nothing to begin with.

Satisfied with her plan, Misty washes the knife, dries it with a paper towel, and hides it under her bed. She goes to sleep blissfully unaware of what's to come.

How, in just a few hours, she'll hear about the slashed tent next door and the missing Barringer boy.

How she'll instantly know Russ had something to do with it, that he used her best knife to slice through the tent, that he might have used it to do even worse.

How she'll never mention her suspicions to anyone, including her husband and her son, preferring ignorance to knowledge for the first time in her life.

How she'll vow to do whatever is necessary to help Russ get better, whether it be more therapy or additional attention or just taking it easier on him than she did his brother.

How, once word gets out that the police will be searching every house on Hemlock Circle for a potential weapon, she'll remove the knife from its hiding place and bury it deep in her garden. Deep enough that no one will ever find it. So deep that she will eventually forget it's there.

But on the night she covers the knife with dirt, Misty will think of Johnny and how, having already lost one of her sons, she refuses to lose another.