Full Dark, No Stars

so close? You can’t see anything worth looking at that way.

How old had she been? Four? Five? Too young to explain that it wasn’t her reflection she was interested in, anyway—or not primarily. She had been convinced that mirrors were doorways to another

world, and what she saw reflected in the glass wasn’t their living room or bathroom, but the living room or bathroom of some other family. The Mat-sons instead of the Madsens, perhaps. Because it was similar on the other side of the glass, but not the same, and if you looked long enough, you could begin to pick up on some of the differences: a rug that appeared to be oval over there instead of round like over here, a door that seemed to have a turn-latch instead of a bolt, a light-switch that was on the wrong side of the door. The little girl wasn’t the same, either. Darcy was sure they were related—sisters of the mirror?—but no, not the same. Instead of Darcel en Madsen that little girl might be named Jane or Sandra or even Eleanor Rigby, who for some reason (some scary reason) picked up the rice at churches where a wedding had been.

Lying in the circle of her bedside lamp, drowsing without realizing it, Darcy supposed that if she had been able to tel her mother what she was looking for, if she had explained about the Darker Girl who wasn’t quite her, she might have passed some time with a child psychiatrist. But it wasn’t the girl who interested her, it had never been the girl. What interested her was the idea that there was a whole other world behind the mirrors, and if you could walk through that other house (the Darker House) and out the door, the rest of that world would be waiting.

Of course this idea had passed and, aided by a new dol (which she had named Mrs. Butterworth after the pancake syrup she loved) and a new dol house, she had moved on to more acceptable little-

girl fantasies: cooking, cleaning, shopping, Scolding The Baby, Changing For Dinner. Now, al these years later, she had found her way through the mirror after al . Only there was no little girl waiting in the Darker House; instead there was a Darker Husband, one who had been living behind the mirror al the time, and doing terrible things there.

A good one at a fair price, Bob liked to say—an accountant’s credo if ever there was one.

Upright and sniffin the air —an answer to how you doin that every kid in every Cub Scout pack he’d ever taken down Dead Man’s Trail knew wel . A response some of those boys no doubt stil repeated as grown men.

Gentlemen prefer blondes, don’t forget that one. Because they get tired of squeezin…

But then sleep took Darcy, and although that soft nurse could not carry her far, the lines on her forehead and at the corners of her reddened, puffy eyes softened a bit. She was close enough to

consciousness to stir when her husband pul ed into the driveway, but not close enough to come around. She might have if the Suburban’s headlights had splashed across the ceiling, but Bob had doused

them halfway down the block so as not to wake her.

- 8 -

A cat was stroking her cheek with a velvet paw. Very lightly but very insistently.

Darcy tried to brush it away, but her hand seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. And it was a dream, anyway—surely had to be. They had no cat. Although if there are enough cat hairs in a house,

there must be one around somewhere, her struggling-to-wake mind told her, quite reasonably.

Now the paw was stroking her bangs and the forehead beneath, and it couldn’t be a cat because cats don’t talk.

“Wake up, Darce. Wake up, hon. We have to talk.”

The voice, as soft and soothing as the touch. Bob’s voice. And not a cat’s paw but a hand. Bob’s hand. Only it couldn’t be him, because he was in Montp—

Her eyes flew open and he was there, al right, sitting beside her on the bed, stroking her face and hair as he sometimes did when she was feeling under the weather. He was wearing a three-piece

Jos. A. Bank suit (he bought al his suits there, cal ing it—another of his semi-amusing sayings—“Joss-Bank”), but the vest was unbuttoned and his col ar undone. She could see the end of his tie poking out of his coat pocket like a red tongue. His midsection bulged over his belt and her first coherent thought was You really have to do something about your weight, Bobby, that isn’t good for your heart.

“Wha—” It came out an almost incomprehensible crow-croak.

He smiled and kept stroking her hair, her cheek, the nape of her neck. She cleared her throat and tried again.