Buck
felt his heart thunder in his chest like the time he and his brother
had been caught by the sheriff smoking weed in the woods. The
logical part of his mind knew that it was probably just Roger walking
through the door, but the irrational part of his mind, the part that
jumped at shadows in the dark, envisioned Emma's stocky figure
bursting through her bedroom door, yelling at him and Shirley Sue for
sharing the couch past midnight. He felt his pulse slowly dial back
when he looked in the direction of the noise and saw no sign of
Emma's writhing bathrobe nor her wild, sleep twisted hair.
Buck
realized that he was watching the adjacent room with the intensity of
an owl tracking its prey. He heard the front door creak shut,
followed by the clomping of shoes working their way down the wooden
floor of the mudroom. Shortly thereafter, Roger passed into the arch
which connected the living room and mudroom, with Sarah on his heels.
Under his eyes were bags of exhaustion, illuminated by the dim light
generated by the flashing cathode-ray tube across the room. Roger
and Sarah's movements were stiff and mechanical as they walked as
though they had spent the last hour doing squats or running on the
treadmill. Buck wasn't sure if it was just the light, but he though
they both looked a little pale.
“Hey
Roger. Hey Sarah,” Buck said in a voice that hovered above a
whisper. “Welcome back.” Buck studied his brother's face.
Behind Roger's eyes he caught a glimpse of something. Fear. His
pupils were dilated and his face was indeed pallid. “Somethin' the
matter?”
“We
ran into our old friend Aura,” Roger said. “And she tried to
kill us.”
Sarah
and Roger walked into the room. Sarah sat down in Emma's recliner,
and Roger plopped down on the loveseat on the other side of the
living room.
Roger
and Sarah launched into their alleyway encounter. Buck sat rapt,
eyes wide with disbelief.
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