He’s getting closer—I can hear the melody of his whistle, but I can’t make out the tune—so I make a split-second decision. I duck into the barn and press myself against the wall behind the open door. There are two doors, of course, double wide so they can be swung open to admit equipment and animals, and I pick the side that’s open so that I can wedge myself in the sliver of space between door and wall. A smaller back door will be my escape when the time comes, but if he steps inside and turns on the lights, I don’t want Cal to catch me racing through the barn as if I have something to hide. A couple of minutes. All I have to do is keep still for a couple of minutes.
My whole body is pressed tight against the wall, and I can feel the prickle of the splintered boards against my bare legs and arms. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to regulate my breathing, hoping that the wild beat of my heart and the ragged gulp of each inhale isn’t a dead giveaway that I’ve taken sanctuary in the Murphys’ barn.
But after a few minutes I realize that the footsteps I expected have faded away instead of come closer. I hold still and struggle to hear, but I can’t make out a single noise above the songs of crickets and the complaints of the old barn. Turning, I press my face against one of a thousand gaps in the boards and squint into the inky night.
It appears as if Cal has angled away from the barn and is standing near where the driveway curves toward the roadside stand. I can barely make him out, but he’s a moving smudge in the darkness, and as I strain my sight toward where I think he is, I realize that he’s not alone.
Not alone. A thrill of vindication washes over me, but it’s short-lived. If there’s someone out there in the night with Cal, it means that whatever the Tates have been planning is going down. I wasn’t supposed to be hiding in the barn, frozen. I was supposed to be the voice of reason, the one person who could talk sense into them and fix it all. Or, if I couldn’t make everything better, at the very least I could document it. Take pictures, call 911, do something. But I’m not out there. I’m hiding in the barn.
I push myself away from where I’m cowering behind the door and race out into the open. It’s impossible for me to tell who is who—the two figures on the gravel drive are little more than stains on the velvet night—but I assume that the figure closest to the farmhouse is Cal. Either way, neither Cal nor the stranger make any indication that they know I’m there. They’re talking, loudly, animatedly, but I’m too far away and can’t make out the words. Against the backdrop of their argument, the soft scuff of my feet is mere background noise. But just as I’m about to call out to them, one of the figures raises his arm.
There’s a flash, and a crack splits the night. Cal stumbles back. Another flash, another pop, and Cal makes a guttural, bubbling sound halfway between a shout and a cry.
My mind is far behind the animal reaction of my body. Before I can rationalize what I’m doing, I’ve stopped mid-stride and am scrambling backward, retracing the few steps I’ve taken from the sanctuary of the barn. Nature overrules any uncertainty I may be feeling, and pulsing in every pore of my body is a single message: run.
There’s nowhere to go that isn’t out in the open, and I’m hysterical with the thought that I may have already given myself away. But the barn is only a few steps off, and I’ve closed the distance before his body has hit the ground. I know because I hear the heavy thump of his weight against the earth. The groan of his breath as it’s ripped from his lungs.
Oh my God. There are no words for this, no way to make sense of what I’ve just witnessed. I slam against the inside wall of the barn and collapse on the ground with jagged boards at my back. My shoulders sting, and my hip where I’ve landed too hard, but the sensations are meaningless. In the absence of rational thought there is nothing but noise. The white noise of my pulse as it floods through my veins, of the excruciatingly loud scuff of my scrabbling feet on the dirt floor. Of a whimper that must be coming from me and must be silenced.
Shut up. Shut up. Be quiet as whisper. Be soft as sleep.
But Beth is not quiet. I hear her burst from the farmhouse, shouting, but I can’t make out the words. Behind the closed door, the dog is barking madly, the muffled yelp the warning of a siren and just as steady. It’s a cacophony, a riot, a signal fire that lights up the night until another explosion rips through the air.
Then there is nothing but silence. One bullet, and the woman has been hushed. The dog is quiet, too. Maybe Betsy knows. Maybe now she’s whining.