The Eyes of Darkness Read Free Page B

he wanted to move into the den so he wouldn’t be able to hear them bickering. She and Michael hadn’t yet begun to raise their voices to each other; their disagreements had been conducted in normal tones, sometimes even in whispers, yet Danny probably had heard enough to know they were having problems.
    She had been sorry that he’d had to know, but she hadn’t said a word to him; she’d offered no explanations, no reassurances. For one thing, she hadn’t known what she could say. She certainly couldn’t share with him her appraisal of the situation: Danny, sweetheart, don’t worry about anything you might have heard through the wall. Your father is only suffering an identity crisis. He’s been acting like an ass lately, but he’ll get over it. And that was another reason she didn’t attempt to explain her and Michael’s problems to Danny—she thought that their estrangement was only temporary. She loved her husband, and she was sure that the sheer power of her love would restore the luster to their marriage. Six months later she and Michael separated, and less than five months after the separation, they were divorced.
    Now, anxious to complete her search for the burglar—who was beginning to look as imaginary as all the other burglars she had stalked on other nights—she opened the door to Danny’s bedroom. She switched on the lights and stepped inside.
    No one.
    Holding the pistol in front of her, she approached the closet, hesitated, then slid the door back. No one was hiding there, either. In spite of what she had heard, she was alone in the house.
    As she stared at the contents of the musky closet—the boy’s shoes, his jeans, dress slacks, shirts, sweaters, his blue Dodgers’ baseball cap, the small blue suit he had worn on special occasions—a lump rose in her throat. She quickly slid the door shut and put her back against it.
    Although the funeral had been more than a year ago, she had not yet been able to dispose of Danny’s belongings. Somehow, the act of giving away his clothes would be even sadder and more final than watching his casket being lowered into the ground.
    His clothes weren’t the only things that she had kept: His entire room was exactly as he had left it. The bed was properly made, and several science-fiction-movie action figures were posed on the deep headboard. More than a hundred paperbacks were ranked alphabetically on a five-shelf bookcase. His desk occupied one corner; tubes of glue, miniature bottles of enamel in every color, and a variety of model-crafting tools stood in soldierly ranks on one half of the desk, and the other half was bare, waiting for him to begin work. Nine model airplanes filled a display case, and three others hung on wires from the ceiling. The walls were decorated with evenly spaced posters—three baseball stars, five hideous monsters from horror movies—that Danny had carefully arranged.
    Unlike many boys his age, he’d been concerned about orderliness and cleanliness. Respecting his preference for neatness, Tina had instructed Mrs. Neddler, the cleaning lady who came in twice a week, to vacuum and dust his unused bedroom as if nothing had happened to him. The place was as spotless as ever.
    Gazing at the dead boy’s toys and pathetic treasures, Tina realized, not for the first time, that it wasn’t healthy for her to maintain this place as if it were a museum. Or a shrine. As long as she left his things undisturbed, she could continue to entertain the hope that Danny was not dead, that he was just away somewhere for a while, and that he would shortly pick up his life where he had left off. Her inability to clean out his room suddenly frightened her; for the first time it seemed like more than just a weakness of spirit but an indication of serious mental illness. She had to let the dead rest in peace. If she was ever to stop dreaming about the boy, if she were to get control of her grief, she must begin her recovery here, in this room, by