I kept my eyes closed, my head against the window.
"Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Is there someone she knew? It's better she doesn't stay out there, running, hiding."
I shook my head. I didn't know. I couldn't even imagine.
"Her mother is in shock. Dr. Bloom had to give her a sedative. You can just imagine the commotion around the house," she said.
"Where . . . did it happen?" I asked.
"From what I understand, Darlene found his body just inside Karen's bedroom doorway. She had been down to Middletown shopping, and by the time she returned, Harry had closed the drugstore and gone home."
When we drove into town, I saw all the police cars still parked in front. There were village, town, and state police vehicles and officers standing around talking. Another policeman was out in the street moving traffic along. I glanced at the house and closed my eyes again.
After we pulled into our driveway, I practically jumped out of the car before my mother brought it to a stop. I ran for the house.
"Zipporah!" she called to me, but I went inside and ran up the stairs to my room.
I closed the door quickly behind me and folded myself into a sitting position on the, floor beside my bed. I heard my mother coming up the stairs. She knocked on the door.
"Zipporah?"
"Leave me alone for a while. Please!" I cried.
"I want to be sure you're all right before I go to work, honey."
"I'm all right. I'm all right."
"Daddy will try to be home for dinner:'
"I'm all right," I said again. "Tell him it's okay."
She didn't move for a few moments, and then she said she would call from the hospital. I heard her walk back to the stairway, descend, and leave the house. I rose, went to my window, and looked out to see her car going down the road. The silence in the air around me was so heavy I had trouble breathing.
Why did this happen? Why didn't she wait for us to put our plan into action? I sat there sulking. The house was so quiet I felt it was sulking along with me.
Then I suddenly heard a met
hodical gentle rapping from above. It was like Morse code or something I listened. It stopped and started again. Daddy was always worrying about rats or field mice getting into the rafters. We had pest-control people service the house periodically, and there were traps set in every dark and dank corner. I had yet to see a rodent in the house.
There it was again, gentle rapping, too much in a pattern to be the random noise of any rodent. I rose slowly, listened, and then walked out of my room and looked at the short stairway that led up to the attic. Slowly, I approached and listened and started up the stairs. I opened the attic door and gazed into the long, wide room. Afternoon sunshine flowed freely through the uncovered windows, capturing the dust particles that resembled golden flies floating aimlessly in the shaft of light.
Nothing moved. The rapping had stopped. I stood there thinking, remembering so many happy afternoons up there with Karen in our nest, and I had turned to leave, when I heard her call my name.
It was almost as if a ghost had whispered it. I saw no one when I turned back. Perhaps I had imagined it, but then a shadow suddenly came to life and took her form. She stepped out into the better-lit area, and my heart seemed to bounce under my breast along with a rush of ice water through my veins.
"Karen?"
"Yes, it's me. I'm sorry," she said. "I had nowhere else to go."
7 Confession in the Attic
"I climbed up the fire escape on your house and through the window," Karen said before I could ask.
Our house was practically the only residence in Sandburg that had a fire escape. All the tourist houses and hotels were required to have them.
"What happened?"
She walked to the leather sofa and sat with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, staring down at the floor. I closed the attic door and joined her.