One Door From Heaven

answers, a day or two later, Micky had said, What Yd find behind the door is someone waiting to stop me from getting to the next door, someone to keep me out of Heaven.
        What a peculiar thing to say, little mouse. Who would want to keep an angel like you out of Heaven?
        Lots of people.
        Like who?
        They keep you out by making you do bad things.
        Well, they'd fail. Because you couldn't be bad if you tried.
        I can be bad, Micky had assured her, / can be real bad.
        This claim had struck Aunt Gen as adorable, the tough posing of a pure-hearted innocent. Well, dear, I'll admit I haven't checked the FBI's most-wanted list recently, but I suspect you're not on it. Tell me one thing you've done that would keep you out of Heaven.
        This request had at once reduced Micky to tears. If I tell, then you won't like me anymore.
        Little mouse, hush now, hush, come here, give Aunt Gen a hug. Easy now, little mouse, I'm always going to love you, always, always.
        Tears had led to cuddling, cuddling had led to baking, and by the time the cookies were ready, that potentially revealing train of conversation had been derailed and had remained derailed for twenty-two years, until two nights ago, when Micky had finally spoken of her mother's romantic preference for bad boys.
        What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven?
        Aunt Gen's revelation of the correct answer made the question less of a riddle than it was the prelude to a statement of faith.
        Here, now, as she finished brushing her teeth and studied her face in the bathroom mirror, Micky recalled the correct answer-and wondered if she could ever believe it as her aunt seemed genuinely to believe it.
        She returned to bed. Switched off the lamp. Seattle tomorrow. Nun's Lake on Sunday.
        And if Preston Maddoc never showed up?
        She was so exhausted that even with all her worries, she slept- and dreamed. Of prison bars. Of mournfully whistling trains in the night. A deserted station, strangely lighted. Maddoc waiting with a wheelchair. Quadriplegic, helpless, she watched him take custody of her, unable to resist. We'll harvest most of your organs to give to more-deserving people, he said, but one thing is mine. I'll open your chest and eat your heart while you 're still alive.

Chapter 59
        
        UPON FINDING THE PENGUIN in place of the paring knife, Leilani shot to her feet faster than her cumbersome leg brace had previously allowed. Suddenly, Preston seemed to be all-seeing, all-knowing. She looked toward the galley, half expecting to discover him there, to see him smiling as if to say boo.
        The TV-sitcom characters became instant mimes, and no less funny, when Leilani pressed the MUTE button on the remote control.
        A suspicious silence welled from the bedroom, as though Preston might be biding his time, trying to judge the moment when he would be most likely to catch her in the discovery of the penguin- not with a confrontation in mind, but strictly for the amusement value.
        Leilani moved to the transition point between the lounge and the galley. She peered warily toward the back of the motor home.
        The door to the bathroom-laundry stood open. Beyond that shadowy space was the bedroom door: closed.
        A thin warm luminous amber line defined the narrow gap between the door and the threshold. And that was wrong. The amorous side of Preston Maddoc took no inspiration from the romantic glow of a silk-shaded lamp or from the sinuous throb of candle flames. Sometimes he wanted darkness for the deed, perhaps the better to imagine that the bedroom was a mortuary, the bed a casket. At other times-
        The amber light winked out. Darkness married door to threshold. Then in that gap, Leilani detected the faint yet telltale flicker of a television: the pulse of phantoms moving through dreamscapes on the screen, casting- their ghost light on the walls of the bedroom.
        She heard familiar strains, the theme music of Faces of Death. This repulsive videotape documentary collected rare film of violent death and its aftermath, lingering on human suffering and on cadavers in all stages of ravagement and corruption.
        Preston had watched this demented production so often that he'd memorized every hideous image to the same extent that a stone-serious fan of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock