Praying for Sleep

later.”
    “Still.”
    “I guess I’m talking about what you feel when people are together again, people who knew someone who’s gone.”
    Owen was tired of speaking about the spirits of the dead. He sipped his wine and told his wife he’d scheduled a business trip for Wednesday. He wondered if he could get a suit cleaned in time for his departure. “I’ll be staying through Sunday, so if—”
    “Wait. Did you hear something?” Lis turned quickly and looked at the dense mesh of lilacs that cut off their view of the back door of the house.
    “No, I don’t think I . . .” His voice faded and he held up a finger. He nodded. She couldn’t see his expression but his posture seemed suddenly tense.
    “There,” she said. “There it was again.”
    It seemed like the snap of footsteps approaching the house from the driveway.
    “That dog again?” Lis looked at Owen.
    “The Busches’? No, he’s penned in. I saw him when I went for my run. Deer probably.”
    Lis sighed. The local herd had feasted on over two hundred dollars in flower bulbs over the course of the summer, and just last week had stripped bare and killed a beautiful Japanese-maple sapling. She rose. “I’ll give it a good scare.”
    “You want me to?”
    “No. I want to call again anyway. Maybe I’ll make some tea. Anything for you?”
    “No.”
    She picked up the empty wine bottle and walked to the house, a fifty-foot trip along a path that wound through topiary, pungent boxwood and the bare, black lilac bushes. She passed a small reflecting pond in which floated several lily pads. Glancing down, she saw herself reflected, her face illuminated by the yellow lights from the first floor of the house. Lis had occasionally heard herself described as “plain” but had never taken this in a bad way. The word suggested a simplicity and resilience that were, to her, aspects of beauty. Looking into the water tonight she once again prodded her hair into place. Then a sharp gust of wind distorted her image in the water and she continued toward the house.
    She heard nothing more of the mysterious noise and she relaxed. Ridgeton was among the safest towns in the state, a beautiful hamlet surrounded by wooded hills and fields that were filled with kelly-green grass, huge boulders, horses bred for running, picturesque sheep and cows. The town had been incorporated even before the thirteen states considered unionizing, and Ridgeton’s evolution in the past three hundred years had been more in the ways of earthly convenience than economics or attitude. You could buy pizza by the slice and frozen yogurt, and you could rent Rototillers and videos but when all was said and done this was a walled village where the men were tied to the earth—they built on it, sold it and loaned against it—and the women marshaled children and food.
    Ridgeton was a town that tragedy rarely touched and premeditated violence, never.
    So tonight when Lis found that the kitchen door, latticed with squares of turquoise bottle glass, was wide open, she was more irritated than uneasy. She paused, the wine bottle in her hand slowly swinging to a stop. A faint trapezoid of amber light spread onto the lawn at Lis’s feet.
    She stepped around the thicket of lilacs and glanced into the driveway. No cars.
    The wind, she concluded.
    Stepping inside, she set the bottle on the butcher-block island and made a perfunctory search of the downstairs. No evidence of fat raccoons or curious skunks. She stood still for a moment listening for sounds within the house. Hearing nothing, Lis put the kettle on the stove then crouched to forage through the cabinet that contained the tea and coffee. Just as she placed her hand on the box of rose-hip tea, a shadow fell over her. She stood, gasping, and found herself looking into a pair of cautious hazel eyes.
    The woman was about thirty-five. She had a black jacket over her arm and wore a loose-fitting white satin blouse, a short, shimmery skirt, and lace-up boots with short heels. Over her shoulder was a backpack.
    Lis swallowed and found her hand quivering. The two women faced each other for a moment, silent. It was Lis who leaned forward quickly and embraced the younger woman. “Portia.”
    The woman unslung the backpack and dropped it on the island, next to the wine bottle.
    “Hello, Lis.”
    There was a moment of thick silence. Lis said, “I didn’t . . . I mean, I thought you were going to call when you got to the station. We’d pretty much