Cause Of Fear. Robert Ross
like to fish. Josh really wants to try it. I’m going to bring it up with him again tomorrow if the weather clears up—”
But she finds she’s talking to air. Geoff has hurried out of the room.
The rain finally starts letting up late in the afternoon. The mall idea fell on deaf ears. Geoff has become engrossed in grading his student papers, hunched over a pile in the study, that damn urn beside him, still burning. Julia has begun preparing dinner in the kitchen, and although Linda had wanted to make it herself, she makes no effort to confront the old woman again.
And Josh remains coloring in his pad at the dining room table.
“The rain’s stopped,” Linda tells the boy. “Maybe you might want to go outside and play.”
He doesn’t respond.
“What are you drawing, Josh? You’ve been so intent all afternoon.”
For the first time Linda takes notice of the boy’s work. There are dozens of sheets torn out from his pad scattered at the foot of his chair and under the table. What Linda notices first are the colors: only yellows, oranges, and reds. As she lifts one of the sheets to look at it, she glances at Josh’s crayon box. All of the so-called cool colors—the blues, greens, and purples—remain untouched, their points still sharp. But tiny stubs of red and yellow crayons litter the floor.
“What are these, Josh?”
They’re all the same: some kind of a figure—a bird, from the looks of it—surrounded by red, orange, and yellow scribbles. Linda picks up another sheet and then another. Some of the scribbles are rush jobs, but others are carefully rendered, colored in solidly. The look like—
Flames.
“What are these, Josh?” Linda repeats again, quieter now.
The boy doesn’t answer. He’s drawing on a new sheet now: the same birdlike figure, its head raised, two wings at its side, pointing upward on the page.
Linda’s suddenly aware of Julia standing behind her.
“The boy has talent, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Linda says. “I think Josh probably has many talents.”
“Dinner will be ready soon. I’m making lamb chops. I hope that meets with your approval.”
Linda turns to look at her. “Lamb chops will be fine.”
Julia smiles.
“Tell me,” she says to the nanny. “Do you know what these drawings are?”
“Not exactly. But the bird—it was a symbol his mother always used. She had a pendant in that shape, didn’t she, Josh?”
“My mother’s coming home,” Josh says in response, not looking up from his drawing.
“And these lines,” Linda says, indicating the yellow and red scribbles. “What are they supposed to be?”
“I’m not sure I know, Miss. Maybe you should ask Master Joshua.”
Linda turns to the boy. “Well,” she tries. “What are they, Josh?”
“My mother’s almost here,” he says.
Julia just smiles and returns to the kitchen.
The night is quiet. Earlier the crickets had been busy, but as the night went on they stilled their chatter, and now only the soft steady tick of the grandfather clock in the hall is all that Linda can hear.
Geoff sleeps soundlessly beside her. She’s wide awake, feeling cold and uneasy.
Gabrielle Deschamps had been a fascinating woman. Geoff has only told her a little, but Linda’s pieced in the rest through conversations with Jim and Lucy Oleson and others from the campus. In the beginning, Geoff and Gabrielle were madly, deeply, dazzlingly in love—or at least, Geoff was with her. Gabrielle, everyone agreed, kept her most private thoughts to herself. But there was no disguising the passion she had for certain things: academic debate, ancient history, travel, beautiful clothes, stunning jewelry, men. She was an impetuous flirt; no man was safe from her charms. Sit down at a table with her and she’d home right in, finding a man’s eyes, touching his hand, taking hold of his spirit. She’d find his weakness, his vanity, and then she’d prick it, ever so skillfully, making the man hers in mind if not in body. It drove Geoff crazy with jealousy. It only made Gabrielle laugh.
“Borderline personality,” Megan had diagnosed at hearing the description. Her husband, Randy, is a psychologist, so Megan thinks she has all the answers. “Gabrielle was a disaster waiting to happen. Geoff should be glad she’s gone.”
But is he? Linda looks over at him, sleeping peacefully. She’s glad his nightmare seems to have passed. A good night’s rest, some sunny weather, and they’d make up tomorrow for what they missed out on today.
Linda knows she’s no great beauty like Gabrielle was. She’s seen the photographs. How alive Gabrielle had seemed. Always laughing, always posing for the camera. She puckers up for a kiss in one; in another, she pushes up her breasts, accentuating her cleavage. There’s a shot of her on some Mediterranean island—her honeymoon with Geoff, which took them from Rome to Greece to Egypt—where she looks like a sun goddess: iridescent blond-white hair, glowing golden skin, her face lifted to the skies.
“She walked out on him,” Megan has reminded her, whenever Linda has gotten insecure, threatened by the memory of her predecessor. “Remember that. He found her in bed with a teenager! They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, what’s even worse is a man whose ego has been wounded. If Geoff ever felt anything for her, believe me, sweetie, it evaporated pretty quickly when he found her boning some pimply paperboy.”
And how many others? Linda knows that’s what Geoff wonders. How many others had she cheated on him with? Those men she’d dazzle at college parties. The students she’d tease when they came to the house seeking extra help from Geoff. How many did she seduce once Geoff was out of sight?
And Josh? Could they be sure he was Geoff’s? He looked nothing like his father, so fair and blond and soft and pretty like his mother.
But no. Linda won’t allow herself to think that way. She’s seen the bond between them. She’s seen the love, the connection between father and son. The way Geoff will hoist Josh on his shoulders and carry him across campus. The way they wrestle on the living room floor, Josh reduced to a giggly bowl of little-boy jelly. The way the boy will look at his father, his eyes filled with awe, with love, with a sense of who he will someday be.
Geoff has started to snore slightly.
Linda sits up in bed. She’s wide awake. It was such a strange day. The weather. Geoff’s mood. That urn. Those drawings of Josh’s.
She stands, slipping into her robe. But the events of the day aren’t the reason for his sleeplessness. There’s something else. Something amiss. Something she can’t quite put her finger on.
Josh. She needs to check on Josh.
She pads down the hallway silently. At the boy’s door, she pauses. Downstairs she can hear the grandfather clock chime twelve. Midnight.
Linda pushes open Josh’s door, careful not to wake him.
He’s not in his bed.
That’s what she felt was wrong. Josh—he’s gone.
She hurries downstairs, hoping she’ll find him back at the dining room table, coloring with the last tiny chunks of red and yellow crayons. But he’s nowhere to be found. She looks around the room frantically.
The front door. It’s ajar.
Linda hurries to the front steps. “Josh!’ she whispers into the still-dark night. The only sound is the soft swaying of pine trees in the breeze. “Josh!”
In the moonlight she makes him out: a tiny figure in the driveway, staring