The Hour Before Dark Read Free Page A

world.”
    Brooke had slept late—’til two.
    She hadn’t even thought about where our father had gone. It was not unusual for him to be inspecting parts of the property or running his errands in town in the afternoon. She had made some eggs, toast, and coffee, but would not eat them because she said she had an upset stomach from the night before. She left a plate of eggs and toast out on the kitchen table, thinking that her father might be back at any moment from his errands and would want a snack.
    She thought it unusual that he had not already made a pot of coffee earlier in the day.
    Even so, he might’ve gone to have coffee at Croder-Sharp-Callahan, where he could talk women and weather with Percy Shaw and Reg Miller, both of whom spent their lives at that lunch counter having what Brooke called their Old Salt conversations. She had warned her father several times that if he hung out with them, he would grow old before his time and then no woman would have him.
    Brooke took the dogs out for a walk down to the woods.
    She guided them back up to the dirt road that ran from the back of the property up to the main road. She saw Paulette Doone and her husband, Ike, in their truck on the way to get groceries in the village. Paulette had mentioned that the lights were out in half the island because of the storm. “Won’t be back on ‘til six. Maybe eight,” Paulette said.
    “Maybe ten,” Ike said.
    Brooke had mentioned that her lights came back up sometime after midnight.
    The Doones lived in the Cape Cod house set back from the road. Paulette asked if the Captain (although my father had been anything but a captain, he was known as the Captain or Cap by the villagers since he’d been a boy) needed his favorite kind of candy from the store, or a prescription from Hempstead Apothecary (because she knew he’d had a bad cold all week). Brooke had asked if they could pick up some Halls Mentholyptus and maybe some kind of over-the-counter inhaler, something to help his sinuses. Brooke mentioned the barometric pressure and was generally furious that the cabin by the pond had flooded. Paulette mentioned Jesus and God and being saved, which is something that she never seemed to tire of bringing up, no matter how rude Brooke got in return. Paulette felt that Brooke was agitated (as she informed the police chief when asked). Paulette even called her “heated” later to her husband, but Ike privately thought that Brooke had seemed radiant, as if she were in love, with a rosy complexion and bright eyes. Paulette had interpreted this as something bad, because she felt that Brooke was a dangerous woman to the married women on the island—and Paulette elbowed her husband whenever he glanced at their attractive neighbor for too long.
    Brooke told Paulette that she thought her father might be in the village, at the lunch counter talking storms and boats and the upcoming winter festivities in the village.
    “I wouldn’t mind a movie,” Brooke added.
    Paulette had glanced at Ike, and then nodded. “Sure, we can go by the video store. Any particular one?”
    Brooke had asked for one with Matt Damon or the Harry Potter movie if it was in. Paulette had blanched at the mention of “that movie that promotes witches” but felt that there might be an old-fashioned movie like The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur that Brooke might enjoy more.
    “If we see the Captain, we’ll drag him home,” Paulette had told her.
    “If you see him, tell him we’re having chili tonight,” Brooke had said. “Hormel’s. And corn bread if I can find any corn flour. Can you pick me up some in town? I might be out. Chili’s always better with corn bread. Or spoon bread. Something with corn. He wants shepherd’s pie, but I won’t make it three nights in a row. He can cook his own supper if he wants what he wants.”
    “Ike is like that, too,” Paulette said. Her burly and often-sullen husband gave a grunt at that. Paulette mentioned to Joe Grogan