Where Are the Children? Read Online Free PDF Page A

forcing the last few dead leaves off the trees. It was settling into the dirt road that now was as hardened as concrete. It was changing the colour of the bay into a smoky grey-blue.
    Outside, the storm was building, but now, while there was still some weak sun, she'd take advantage of it. She loved the fresh smell of sheets dried outside; loved to pull them against her face as she drifted off to sleep with the way they captured the faint smell of cranberry bogs and pine and the salty smell of the sea - so different from the coarse, rough, dank smell of prison sheets. She pushed the thought away.
    At the foot of the staircase she started to turn in the direction of the back door, then stopped. How foolish. The children were fine. They'd been out only fifteen minutes, and this frantic anxiety that was her constant albatross had to be conquered. Even now she suspected
    that Missy sensed it and was beginning to respond to her overprotection. She'd turn the wash on, then call them in. While they watched their ten-thirty television programme, she'd have a second cup of coffee and look at the weekly Cape Cod Community News. With the season over, there might be some good antiques available and not at tourist prices. She wanted an old-fashioned settee for the parlour - the high-backed kind they used to call a 'settle' in the seventeen-hundreds.
    In the laundry room off the kitchen she sorted the wash, tossed the sheets and towels into the machine, added detergent and bleach and finally pushed the button to start the cycle.
    Now it surely was time to call the children. But at the front door she detoured. The paper had just arrived. The delivery boy was disappearing around the curve in the road. She picked it up, shivering against the increasing wind, and hurried into the kitchen. She turned the burner jet under the still-warm coffeepot. Then, anxious to get a look at the classified page, she thumbed quickly to the second section of the paper.
    Her eyes focused on the blaring headline and the pictures - all the pictures: of her and Carl and Rob Legler; the one of her with Peter and Lisa . . . that clinging, trusting way they'd always huddled up to her. Through a roaring in her ears she remembered vividly the time they'd posed for that one. Carl had taken it.
    'Don't pay attention to me,' he'd said; 'pretend I'm not here.' But they'd known he was there and had shrunk against her, and she had looked down at them as he snapped the picture. Her hands were touching their silky, dark heads.
    'No ... no ... no ... no ...!' Now her body arched in pain. Unsteadily she reached out her hand, and it hit the coffeepot, knocking it over. She drew it back, only dimly feeling the searing liquid that splattered on her fingers.
    She had to burn the paper. Michael and Missy musn't see it. That was it. She'd burn the paper so that no one could see it. She ran to the fireplace in the dining-room. The fireplace . . . that wasn't cheery and warm and protecting any more. Because there was no haven . there never could be a haven for her. She squeezed the paper together and reached unsteadily for the box of matches on the mantel. A wisp of smoke and a flame, and then the paper began to burn as she stuffed it between the logs.
    Everyone on the Cape was reading that paper. They'd know . . . they'd all know. The one picture they'd surely recognize. She didn't even remember that anyone had seen her after she'd cut her hair and dyed it. The paper was burning brightly now. She watched as the picture with Peter and Lisa flamed, and charred and curled. Dead, both of them; and she'd be better off with them. There was no place to hide for her ... or to forget. Ray could take care of Michael and Missy. Tomorrow in Michael's class the children would be looking at him, whispering, pointing their fingers.
    The children. She must save the children. No, get the children. That was it. They'd catch cold.
    She stumbled to the back door and pulled it open. 'Peter . . . Lisa . . .'