If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  “It could be millions, Bea. You’d better be sweet to her,” he would say.

  For that reason and so many others, I didn’t tell Hank the whole truth. I put the inheritance in a secret account and used it to buy the house behind ours and fill it full of survival supplies. I did tell Hank that I inherited some money. I spent a couple of grand to take us on a trip to a casino, and I put fifty thousand in savings.

  “I thought the old bat would be good for a whole lot more,” Hank said.

  “Hank Crenshaw! Shame on you for talking that way about my aunt.”

  I could rely on Hank not to notice much of anything around home, especially whatever I was doing. He left for work each morning before dawn, even on Saturdays, and returned after dark. He watched TV, ate dinner, and went to bed by 8:30. He felt like a drudge, and he acted like one—oblivious. Plus, he had no reason to suspect me of anything, so he didn’t look for it. Easy-peasy to hide things from Hank, at least for a while.

  I fought with myself over it, but in the end, I didn’t tell Hank that I’d inherited nearly two million dollars after taxes. What the man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I filed our tax return online that year and made sure Hank never saw it. I figured if he ever had the need to know, I could always tell him when the time came. He was already angry with me anyway. How much angrier could he get?

  Still, I couldn’t help but fret. I covered up my lies by bottling my emotions and putting more distance between Hank and me. What I felt guilty about was the coldness that grew between us.

  Here in the lap of Four Seasons luxury, I waited until ten and got the grandkids up. We ordered a sumptuous room-service breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, grits, biscuits, gravy, waffles, orange juice, and for me, a half-pot of fresh coffee with the creamiest cream. Best coffee I ever had.

  The TV reception was fuzzy—strange for such a fancy hotel. The news was full of reports on the train wreck and littered with solemn officials expressing sorrow over the loss of life and property—two trainmen dead, a house plowed down, although no one had been home. No houses had burned, other than the flattened one. The officials assured us that neighborhoods near the wreck were perfectly safe. The chemicals—unnamed chemicals—that the train was carrying had all burned off and should not be a source of concern.

  Right.

  After we ate, I let the kids swim in the hotel pool. If the other people in this family were partying up in Dallas, we could darn well party in Austin, too.

  But I was worried about Harry. He was stuck outside in the rancid air. I’d meant to fill his food and water bowls after supper, but I couldn’t remember if I’d done it.

  “Hey, kids,” I said, after they’d swam for a couple of hours. “Y’all come back to the room. I’m going to see about Harry. I’ll pick us up some burgers on the way back. We’ll stay here again tonight.”

  From the moans and groans coming out of those kids, one would have thought I’d sentenced them to the gulag.

  “There’s nothin’ to do here!” Milo said when we got back to the room.

  “I need to get on your computer,” Tasha groused.

  “But Nana,” Keno pointed at the TV, “they said it should be safe to go home today.”

  “I don’t believe them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they never tell the truth about poisons in the environment. They’ve been lying about it my whole life.”

  The kids looked so unhappy that I sat down to think. I wanted to be home, too, so the kids could have space to be away from each other. They were getting antsy, and so was I. Plus, the luxury here was starting to feel slightly obscene.

  I dialed the City’s non-emergency number.

  “You know,” I told them, “on TV they’re saying people who evacuated from the train wreck can go home today. We evacuated, and I need to know how you’re so sure that it’s safe. What was in that train, anyway?”

  “Chemicals, ma’am.”

  “I know that. What kind of chemicals?”

  “I don’t have that information.”

  Big surprise. “So, did two trains crash into each other, or was it a derailment?”

  “A derailment.”

  “Well, how come the train derailed?” I asked, and Keno gaped at me.

  “I’m not allowed to speculate, ma’am.”

  “Okay, then I will,” I said. “Was there a problem with the tracks?”

  “Can’t say for sure. It doesn’t appear so.”

  “Alright, did something go wrong with the switching signal?”

  “That’s a distinct possibility, ma’am.”

  “So, can we go home today or not?”

  “Not today. Probably tomorrow.”

  “But on TV, they say—”

  “Our assessment has changed.”

  “Can I at least get my dog? He’s running out of food by now.”

  “You didn’t bring your dog with you?”

  “No, I forgot him, and they wouldn’t let me back in. Stupid of me, I know, but you shouldn’t punish my dog for that. At least let me in to get him.”

  “Ma’am, the police have been instructed to keep everyone out. No exceptions.”

  I almost yelled at the woman, but instead I muttered, “Thank you,” and hung up.

  Milo and Tasha kept complaining. I fled to Dan’s Hamburgers, hoping to pacify the grandkids with heaps of lip-smacking local junk food.

  Lounging around the hotel gave me too much time to think. I worried about the train wreck, chemical poisons, and Harry until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I needed to go home so that I could sneak into my secret house to make room for more deliveries while Hank was in Dallas. It was so rare to have him out of my hair, and now I couldn’t take advantage of it. I felt fairly confident that I was ready for any catastrophe that might befall us, short of war on American soil. But I was fanatical about checking and rechecking everything, and I was forever thinking of new things to stock up on.

  I had a crafty way of fixing up and stocking that house. I bought it in the name of a trust I registered in Delaware. I hired a property agency to oversee the work I had done and the deliveries of goods, and I communicated with the agency under a false name by email only. I didn’t keep documentation on paper or even on my computer. I stored it on the cloud, and carefully deleted the cookies and history every time I left the website.

  Under the property agency’s supervision, I had a deep hole dug in the second house’s backyard a few years ago, during the four weeks Hank was gone to a family reunion and camping trip out in West Texas at Big Bend. The grown kids and grandkids met Hank out there. I begged off on going with them because of my heart. It was a lonely month for me, but perfect cover.

  I had the hole in the ground divided in half. In one half, they installed an enormous, cistern-style water tank to store rainwater runoff from the house’s guttering system. The tank filtered and stored more than ten thousand gallons of water, which could be accessed with a hand pump inside a locked closet in the garage.

  In the other half of the cavernous hole, they built a cellar. I set it up like an old-fashioned, fully-stocked fallout shelter—except it was hidden, with its ventilation going into the house’s ductwork. It even had a composting toilet. Below the living space, they put a root cellar for crops, wine, and booze. Our neighbors were in a tizzy about what might be going on with all the construction, but I just acted like I didn’t know any more about it than they did.

  When the cellar and cistern were complete, I had the yard re-covered with rich, loamy soil. The agency paid an organic gardener to grow potatoes and other root vegetables, and to harvest the food and store it in the cellar, which you could enter only through the pantry of the house.

  “What the hell happened in that backyard behind us?” Hank hollered after he’d done his post-vacation pacing across the territory of our yard.

  “They built something underground, I think.”

  “What kind of something did th
ey build?”

  “How the hell would I know?” I was getting agitated, too.

  “Bea, didn’t you look?”

  “No. I figured it was none of my business.”

  “Well, I don’t like it! It’ll mess up the drainage in our yard.”

  Such an old fuss budget, Hank Crenshaw.

  If Hank didn’t stop his sudden prying, he might untangle my carefully woven web of deceit. This made me exceedingly nervous. He would go ballistic unless I could keep my secrets until the day, God forbid, when we needed those supplies. Then maybe he’d be grateful. Not in his nature, I know, but I could dream—dream for Hank to be grateful, I mean, not for a cataclysmic event.

  I visited the second house in the middle of the night while Hank slept. I could always count on him to sleep like the dead and to be unaware of me slipping out the back door.

  I thought I was prepared to support my family off the grid on a largely vegetarian diet without power or cars for a couple of years, but of course I wasn’t. I was certainly the most prepared person I knew of, but after what came next, no one was handing out prizes.

  When my plans were mostly complete and I had retired from insurance work, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria wreaked so much havoc that the costs couldn’t be fully calculated. Around the same time, California caught fire—again.

  Finally, politicians started talking about climate change and even made a few weak plans to try to slow it down.

  It was far too little and much too late.

  In our shamefully fancy hotel suite with its marble floors and pricey furniture, the kids and I settled in to munch junk food and watch movies on demand. Not a great viewing experience, since the TV kept cutting out. I thought about calling the front desk to complain, but electronics seemed to be messed up in general, so I didn’t bother.

  At last, I got the chance to relax with my grandchildren, laughing at the movies, cheering and booing the characters. Such fun to see the kids enjoy themselves so much.

  Milo got over-excited and went to get some ice. Just when I wondered why he was taking so long, a clatter arose in the hallway, along with a loud yelp. We rushed out to find Milo rubbing his knee next to a knocked-over pedestal table and a sea of spilled ice. Other hotel guests came out and gave Milo and me dirty looks.

  “Milo! What are you doing?”

  “Balancing the ice bucket on my head. I didn’t see the—”

  “Get back in here. I’ll call the desk.” I kicked ice against the wall and threw a couple of towels on the spill. Such a handful, this kid.

  We settled back down to watch choppy movies. Keno noodled on his iPad, and Milo played Angry Birds on his phone. While Tasha texted, I wove her thick mane of chestnut hair into an elegant French braid, then I made one for Mazie as well, although her hair was yellow and fine and straight as a board. Still, her braid looked lovely, until she messed it up when she fell asleep with her head in my lap.

  I never did find out who won that football game up in Dallas.

  THREE

  SUNDAY MIDDAY, city authorities finally gave permission for evacuees to go home. We were able to enter my neighborhood from the east on an empty but smoky Dittmar Road, heading toward the railroad crossing several blocks down. But as I drove over a rise, the wrecked train loomed in front of us. The kids gasped, and I hit the brakes.

  The site swarmed with people in white hazmat suits—full suits with face-shields and respirators. Blackened trees and shrubbery outlined the scene, adding to its starkness.

  Fire engines, hazmat trucks, and police cars were stacked up across Dittmar four or five deep, most with emergency lights flashing. And beyond those vehicles was a steaming pile of mangled freight cars. Huge plumes of water arced from fire engines into the wreckage, sending up frightening clouds of hissing steam.

  I threw my SUV into reverse. A man in a hazmat suit trotted toward us, wielding a stubby stop sign. I rolled down my window to talk to the man, but he waved us away.

  The neighborhood air burned my nose and made my eyes water, setting my pulse to pounding. Tiny black dots of ash floated in the air, almost too small to see. My lungs started to wheeze, and I felt my throat closing up. Breathing this toxic stew was extremely dangerous for me, with my asthma and bad heart, and it couldn’t be good for the kids either.

  “Kids, this air is bad. We can’t stay. Let’s get Harry and whatever else we need then go back to the hotel.”

  “I can’t believe they told us we could come here,” Keno said.

  “I want to stay.” Tasha scowled at me.

  “Tasha, the air’s making me sick. I can’t stay.”

  The neighborhood creeped me out—so smoky and eerie. Our subdivision was almost upscale, with one- and two-story houses, three-car garages, and quarter-acre yards. Some houses looked buttoned up, with no cars in their driveways. But a few families were pulling in and unloading, and other houses seemed re-occupied—lights on inside, folks mowing lawns, coming and going every which way.

  People were going to stay here with all this ash in the air? Whether or not they thought the air was poisoned from spilled chemicals, any fool should’ve known that breathing air full of ash was bad.

  The Belding house had a slew of cars out front and country music blasting from inside. Sort of matched the rusty engine and decrepit motorcycle camouflaged by the weeds in their yard. They must have been partying all weekend. I’d known some very smart rednecks in my life, but these folks were rednecks with no sense.

  I pulled into my driveway. “Kids, get my laptop from the living room, and get Grandpa’s from the desk upstairs. Then come straight back to the car.”

  We piled out, and I unlocked the house. “I’ll get Harry,” I said.

  “I’m coming, too.” Milo ran ahead to the backyard gate, hollering, “Harry!” Mazie screamed for the dog from the front yard and scampered our way.

  I expected Harry to be barking by now, but he wasn’t. Milo rushed into the backyard, but no dog came to greet him.

  “Harry! Where are you?”

  While the kids ran around calling Harry, looking in the side yards, behind bushes, under the shed, I slipped through a slit in the waist-high hedge and into the yard behind mine—my secret house—hollering for Harry. He often escaped to this yard. Was he holed-up and hurt somewhere?

  “Nana! We can’t find him!” Milo called from the hedge, his face hardened with worry. Mazie flapped her hands and starting crying.

  “I can’t find him either,” I said, panicking. “Milo, run around the block and holler for him.” The boy shot to the side gate, and Mazie sobbed louder. “Come over here, Mazie. You can look under the shed and under the house.”

  “Okay,” she said, sniffling while she came through the hedge. “Harry!”

  Milo shouted from east of us, “Harry! Harry!” his voice getting harsher and more frantic. I pointed at places for Mazie to crouch down and look.

  “Harry!”

  Within minutes, Milo was back outside my yard, hollering louder and shriller. Then, I heard frantic barking, and Harry came streaking around the corner, almost knocking Milo over in excitement. Relief brought tears to my eyes.

  “Harry!” we cried. Mazie and I rushed to the big chocolate Labrador while he licked Milo soggy.

  “Good dog, Harry.” I ruffled his ears. “You must be hungry and thirsty. I’m sorry I forgot you.” Apparently, he’d already forgiven me. He pawed at me and made happy-dog noises, then licked Mazie to pieces while she giggled. “Harry, let’s get your food and leash and get out of here.”

  He let out a loud cough and wagged his tail. Milo took hold of Harry’s collar. No way he was letting Harry escape again.

  Two more sets of neighbors pulled into driveways across the side street while we headed to my back door. And the wind was kicking up. Good. It might clear the air.

  “Tasha? Keno? Are you guys ready?” I hollered as we came inside. Mazie ran up the stairs, chattering at Tasha about the hunt for Harry, who was wolfing food
and water from his indoor bowls.

  “I’m getting Grandpa’s laptop,” Keno said.

  “I’m checking my Instagram,” said Tasha.

  “You can do that on your phone. Get on down here!”

  “K, but I gotta get shampoo. Hotel shampoo is gross.”

  “Just hurry up.”

  I grabbed Harry’s dry kibble, some canned dog food, and a can opener from the kitchen. I found his extra set of bowls, then rummaged through a drawer for his leash.

  As I loaded Harry’s stuff into the car, the Gonzales family next door pulled a van into their driveway. A flock of kids debarked, lugging bags and their brown Cocker Spaniel. I waved to Mrs. Gonzales, and she looked puzzled, probably wondering why I was loading up when they were unloading. I stepped toward her to talk, but my cell phone rang in my pocket.

  “Where have you been, Bea?” Hank said, when I picked up.

  “Driving home, but the air is bad. We’re leaving again.”

  “Where the hell can you go?”

  “To a hotel, I assume.” Rats. We couldn’t go back to the Four Seasons if Hank was on his way home. I should have thought of this already. “I’ll call you when we get settled.”

  “We’re almost to Waco. Traffic is crazy from the game,” he said, “but it’s moving fast, so we’ll be home in a couple of hours.” White-knuckle Texas driving on I-35 worried me sick. “Wait at the house, Bea, and I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

  I wanted to tell Hank I was perfectly capable of figuring things out, but I didn’t feel like explaining myself.

  “Maybe I’ll take the kids to Tres Amigos for lunch,” I said. “If we’re not home when you get here, we won’t be long.”

  “Those kids don’t need to eat out.”

  “You guys have been eating out all weekend. I’m taking the kids out, too.”