Hush by Anne Frasier Page B

she
was aware that someone was pounding on her apartment door.
    "What's going on in there?"
    Chicago, she thought fleetingly. Who would
have thought someone would come to the aid of a stranger in
Chicago?
    She fought to pull the fingers from her neck,
but the man was strong, his hands locked to her like talons, all
muscles and trembling tendons.
    The light in her head flashed one more time,
then came darkness, a deep, black darkness that swallowed her, that
was beyond dreaming, beyond the deepest sleep. Before she lost
consciousness completely, she felt something hot and wet and sticky
on her chest, and she smelled the metallic scent of blood.
    Ivy shut the Madonna Murders case file. She
put a hand to her face and realized she was shaking. Her skin was
cold and clammy even though it had to be above eighty degrees in
the apartment.
    What was she doing here?
    Pretending that she had come back to catch
the murdering bastard? People spent entire lives fooling
themselves. Talking about the things they were going to do,
discussing their Big Plans. When all they were really doing was
trying to get by day to day. Because the truth was, people had to
have something to dream about, to hold as sacred, even if it was
something they would never accomplish.
     

Chapter 7
    It was 2:00 A.M. in Shady Oaks. Fake antique
street- lamps followed the curve of the sidewalk in perfect
symmetry. The sprinkler systems were going, and if Ethan Irving
stood in the right spot, lining things up just so, he could see a
small rainbow that would never reach the sky. Beneath the
rolled-out lawns that had come from a sod farm a hundred miles away
lay cornfields that had once been timberland where Indians had
roamed and hunted.
    People talked bad about the suburbs, but
Ethan liked the comforting murmur of life just beyond his bedroom
window, liked where he'd grown up, mostly because it was the only
thing he'd ever known, at least the only thing he could really
remember. But every once in a while he hated it for its lack of
personality. Genericville. He sometimes felt that if he had the
guts to get out of there, he'd never come back. Not once he saw the
rest of the world. But Genericville was safe. He'd hung around with
the same bunch of kids most of his life. Problem was you always had
to be the person they expected you to be. And the older you all
got, the more you fell into old roles when you were together. Ethan
had long suspected that when friends were with other people they
were different. They showed growth—an expanded, wiser version of
their former selves.
    With his headphones on and Walkman turned up,
filling his head with the sound of the Smiths, Ethan moved down the
middle of the street, the soles of his sneakers slapping against
asphalt that still held the heat of the sun. He slowed when he got
to the Carter house. John and Lily Carter. A couple in their mid-
twenties. They'd moved in two years ago, and Ethan had had a little
crush on Lily ever since. He talked to her sometimes. She must have
been lonely, because she always seemed glad to see him. She was
supporting her husband while he went to school and brought women
home when Lily was at work.
    Lily wanted to have a baby someday. She'd
even planted an apple tree in the front yard for the kid.
    "Everybody needs an apple tree to climb,"
she'd explained.
    Ethan had helped her plant it. She'd dug deep
so the roots wouldn't have to work as hard to take hold, and as she
dug, she found a perfect arrowhead. She'd tried to give it to
Ethan, but he wouldn't let her. She should save it for the kid—if
she had one.
    Here she was, planning for the future, while
her husband went behind her back, ruining all her plans. She just
didn't know it yet. Was that the kind of crap that happened to
everybody? Lily was nice. Beautiful. Why wasn't her husband happy?
Was anybody ever happy? Really?
    Ethan thought too much. That was his problem.
Words, ideas, eating away at him. He didn't like it, this thinking.
He envied