False Memory

the front porch, muzzle to the jeweled window, the usually quiet Valet began barking.
    Martie dashed into the master bedroom, switched on the overhead light. She started toward the bathroom—but halted when her gaze, as swift and sharp as a guillotine, fell on Dusty’s nightstand.
    In her frenzied attempt to make the house safe, she had thrown out gadgets as innocuous as potato peelers and corncob holders, yet she had not given a thought to the most dangerous item in the house, a weapon that was nothing but a weapon, that did not double as a rolling pin or a cheese grater: a .45 semiautomatic, which Dusty had purchased for self-defense.
    This was one more example of clever self-deception. The Other Martie—the violent personality buried within her for so long, but now disinterred—had misdirected her, encouraged her hysteria, kept her distracted until the penultimate moment, when she was least able to think clearly or act rationally, when Dusty was near and drawing nearer, and now she was permitted—oh, encouraged—to remember the pistol.
    Downstairs in the foyer, Dusty spoke to the retriever through the window in the front door—”Settle! Valet, settle!”—and the dog stopped barking.
    When Dusty had first purchased the pistol, he had insisted that Martie take firearms training with him. They had gone to a shooting range ten or twelve times. She didn’t like guns, didn’t want this one, even though she understood the wisdom of being able to defend herself in a world where progress and savagery grew at the same pace. She had become surprisingly competent with the weapon, a thoroughly customized stainless-steel version of the Colt Commander.
    Down in the foyer, Dusty said, “Good dog,” rewarding Valet’s obedience with praise. “Very good dog.”
    Martie wanted desperately to dispose of the Colt. Dusty wasn’t safe with the gun in the house. No one in the neighborhood was safe if she could get her hands on a pistol.
    She went to the nightstand.
    For God’s sake, leave it in the drawer.
    She opened the drawer.
    “Martie, honey, where are you, what’s wrong?” He was on the stairs, ascending.
    “Go away,” she said. Although she tried to shout, the words came out in a thin croak, because her throat was tight with fear and because she was out of breath—but perhaps also because the murderess within her didn’t really want him to leave.
    In the drawer, between a box of tissues and a remote control for the television, the pistol gleamed dully, fate embodied in a chunk of beautifully machined steel, her dark destiny.
    Like a deathwatch beetle, its mandibles tick-tick-ticking as it quarried tunnels deep within a mass of wood, the Other Martie squirmed in Martie’s flesh, bored through her bones, and chewed at the fibers of her soul.
    She picked up the Colt. With its single-action let-off, highly controllable recoil, 4.5-pound trigger pull, and virtually unjammable seven-round magazine, this was an ideal close-up, personal-defense piece.
    Until she stepped on it while turning away from the nightstand, Martie didn’t realize that she had dropped the car key.
    26
    Falling off a roof, Dusty had not been this scared, because now he was frightened for Martie, not for himself.
    Her face, before she dropped the crowbar and ran away, had been as stark as the face of an actor in a Kabuki drama. White-greasepaint skin, pale and smooth. Eyes darkly outlined, not with mascara but with anguish. Red slash of a mouth.
    Stay away from me! For God's sake, stay away! There's something wrong with me.
    Even above the engine noise, he’d heard her warning, the terror scraping her voice raw.
    Debris in the garage. A mess in the kitchen. Trash can on the back porch, at the open door, stuffed full of everything but trash. He couldn’t extract meaning from any of it.
    The downstairs was cold because the kitchen door wasn’t closed. He found it too easy to imagine that part of the chill resulted from the presence of an icy spirit that had come through another door, one not visible, from a place infinitely stranger than the back porch.
    The silver candlesticks on the dining-room table appeared to be as translucent as they were reflective, as though carved from ice.
    The living room was filled with the wintry glitter of glass bibelots, brass fireplace tools, porcelain lamps. The grandfather clock had frozen time at 11:00.
    On their honeymoon, they had found the clock in an antique shop and acquired it for a reasonable price. They weren’t interested in