When the little kids were gone, Laurie seized his shirt and demanded to know what was going on.

‘It has something to do with what’s growing in the house, I know it does, and if you want me to play hookey and help you, you better tell me what it is, Trent Bradbury!’ ‘Mellow out, I’ll tell you,’ Trent said. He carefully removed his shirt from Laurie’s tight grip. ‘And quiet down. I don’t want you to wake up Mom. She’ll make us go to school, and that’s no good.’

‘Well, what is it? Tell me!’

‘Come on downstairs,’ Trent said. ‘I want to show you something.’

He led her downstairs to the wine-cellar.

Trent wasn’t completely sure Laurie would ride along with what he had in mind – it seemed awfully… well, final… even to him – but she did. If it had just been a matter of enduring a spanking from ‘Daddy Lew,’ he didn’t think she would have, but Laurie had been as deeply affected by the sight of her mother lying senseless on the living-room floor as Trent had been by his stepfather’s unfeeling reaction to it.

‘Yeah,’ Laurie said bleakly. ‘I think we have to.’ She was looking at the blinking numbers on the arm of the chair. They now read

07:49:21

The wine-cellar was no longer a wine-cellar at all. It stank of wine, true enough, and there were the piles of shattered green glass on the floor amid the twisted ruins of their father’s wine-racks, but it now looked like a madman’s version of the control-bridge on the Starship Enterprise. Dials whirled. Digital read-outs flickered, changed, flickered again. Lights blinked and flashed.

‘Yeah,’ Trent said. ‘I think so, too. That son of a bitch, shouting at her like that!’

‘Trent, don’t.’ ’He’s a jerk! A bastard! A dickhead!’

But this was just a foul-mouthed version of whistling past the graveyard, and both of them knew it. Looking at the strange agglomeration of instruments and controls made Trent feel almost sick with doubt and unease. He was reminded of a book his dad had read him when he was a child, a Mercer Mayer story where a creature called a Stamp-Eating Trollusk had popped a little girl into an envelope and mailed her To Whom It May Concern. Wasn’t that pretty much what he was proposing they do to Lew Evans?

‘If we don’t do something, he’ll kill her,’ Laurie said in a low voice. ‘Huh?’ Trent whipped his head around so fast it hurt his neck, but Laurie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the red numbers of the countdown. They reflected backward off the lenses of the spectacles she wore on schooldays. She seemed almost hypnotized, unaware Trent was looking at her, perhaps even unaware that he was there. ‘Not on purpose,’ she said. ‘He might even be sad. For a while, anyway. Because I think he does love her, sort of, and she loves him. You know – sort of. But he’ll make her worse and worse. She’ll get sick all the time, and then… one day…’ She broke off and looked at him, and something in her face scared Trent worse than anything in their strange, changing, sneaking house had been able to do. ‘Tell me, Trent,’ she said. Her hand grasped his arm. It was very cold. ‘Tell me how we’re going to do it.’

They went up to Lew’s study together. Trent was prepared to ransack the place if that was what it took, but they found the key in the top drawer, tucked neatly into an envelope with the word study printed on it in Lew’s small, neat, somehow hemorrhoidal printing. Trent pocketed it. They left the house together just as the shower on the second floor went on, meaning their mom was up.

They spent the day in the park. Although neither of them spoke of it, it was the longest day either of them had ever lived through. Twice they saw the beat-cop and hid in the public toilets until he was gone. This was no time to be caught playing truant and bundled off to school. At two-thirty, Trent gave Laurie a quarter and walked her to the phone booth on the east side of the park.

‘Do I have to?’ she asked. ‘I hate to scare her, especially after last night.’ ‘Do you want her in the house when whatever happens, happens?’ Trent asked. Laurie dropped the quarter into the telephone with no further protest.

It rang so many times that she became sure their mother had gone out. That might be good, but it might also be bad. It was certainly worrisome. If she was out, it was entirely possible that she might come back before…

‘Trent, I don’t think she’s h…’

‘Hello?’ Mrs. Evans said in a sleepy voice.

‘Oh, hi, Mom,’ Laurie said. ‘I didn’t think you were there.’

‘I went back to bed,’ she said with an embarrassed little laugh. ‘I can’t seem to get enough sleep, all of a sudden. I suppose if I’m asleep I can’t think about how horrible I was last night…’ ‘Oh, Mom, you weren’t horrible. When a person faints, it isn’t because she wants to…’ ‘Laurie, why are you calling? Is everything okay?’

‘Sure, Mom… well…’

Trent poked her in the ribs. Hard. Laurie, who had been slumping (growing smaller, it almost seemed), straightened up in a hurry. ‘I hurt myself in gym. Just… you know, a little. It’s not bad.’

‘What did you do? Jesus, you’re not calling from the hospital, are you?’ ‘Gosh, no,’ Laurie said hastily. ‘It’s just a sprained knee. Mrs. Kitt asked if you could come and bring me home early. I don’t know if I can walk on it. It really hurts.’ ‘I’ll come right away. Try not to move it at all, honey. You could have torn a ligament. Is the nurse there?’

‘Not right now. Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be careful.’

‘Will you be in the nurse’s office?’

‘Yes,’ Laurie said. Her face was as red as the side of Brian’s Radio Flyer wagon.

‘I’ll be right there.’

‘Thanks, Mom. Bye.’

She hung up and looked at Trent. She drew in a deep breath and then let it out in a long, trembly sigh.

‘That was fun,’ she said in a voice which was close to tears.

He hugged her tight. ‘You did great,’ he said. ‘Lots better than I could have, Spr – Laurie. I’m not sure she would have believed me.’

‘I wonder if she’ll ever believe me again?’ Laurie asked bitterly.

‘She will,’ Trent said. ‘Come on.’

They went over to the west side of the park, where they could watch Walnut Street. The day had turned cold and dim. Thunderheads were forming overhead, and a chilly wind was blowing. They waited for five endless minutes and then their mother’s Subaru passed them, heading rapidly toward Greendowne Middle School, where Trent and Laurie went… where we go when we’re not playing hookey, that is, Laurie thought.

‘She’s really humming,’ Trent said. ‘I hope she doesn’t get into an accident, or something.’ ‘Too late to worry about that now. Come on.’ Laurie had Trent’s hand and was pulling him back to the telephone kiosk again. ‘You get to call Lew, you lucky devil.’

He put in another quarter and punched the number of the History Department office, referring to a card he had taken from his wallet. He had barely slept a wink the night before, but now that things were set in motion, he found himself cool and calm… so cool, in fact, that he was almost refrigerated. He glanced at his watch. Quarter to three. Less than an hour to go. Thunder rumbled faintly in the west.

‘History Department,’ a woman’s voice said.

‘Hi. This is Trent Bradbury. I need to speak with my stepfather, Lewis Evans, please.’

‘Professor Evans is in class,’ the secretary said, ‘but he’ll be out at…’

‘I know, he’s got Modern British History until three-thirty. But you better get him, just the same. It’s an emergency. It concerns his wife.’ A pointed, calculated pause, and then he added:

‘My mom.’

There was a long pause, and Trent felt a moment of faint alarm. It was as if she were thinking of refusing or dismissing him, emergency or no emergency, and that was most definitely not in the plan.

‘He’s in Oglethorpe, right next door,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll get him myself. I’ll have him call home as soon as…’ ‘No, I have to hold on,’ Trent said.