The Darkest Evening of the Year

nor did she, for the circumstances and his eyes and his lurid sneer were phrases in an infinite sentence on the subject of motive and violence.
    Fast he was, and brutal. He hit her, and she rocked backward, the knobs of bureau drawers gouging her back. But she held on to the purse.
    He clubbed her with one fist, striking at her face but hitting the side of her head, and she fell to her knees. But she held on to the purse.
    Grabbing a fistful of her hair, Michael hauled her to her feet, and she was conscious of no pain, so totally was she in the thrall of terror.
    She saw the knife then, how big it was.
    He was not ready to use the blade, but twisted her hair to turn her, and she turned like a helpless doll.
    When Michael shoved her hard, she stumbled away from him and fell, and almost struck her head against a dresser. But she held on to the purse.
    She tore at the zipper of the purse, reached within, rolled onto her back, and worked the double action as she had been instructed.
    The shot shattered something, missing Michael, but in shock he shrank from her.
    She fired again, he fled, and as he passed through the doorway between the bedroom and hall, he cried out in pain when the third shot nailed him. He staggered, but he did not go down, and then he vanished.
    In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, killing is not murder, hesitation is not moral, and cowardice is the only sin.
    She went after him, certain that he was not mortally wounded, determined that he would be.
    Into the hallway, light spilled from Nickie’s room.
    In the clockworks of Amy’s heart, the key of terror wound the mainspring past the snapping point, and the scream that came from her was silent, silent, her lungs suddenly as airless as the world around her seemed to be, a vacuum in a vacuum.
    With the pistol in both hands and held stiff-armed before her, she went into Nickie’s room, and Michael was not there.
    He had been there earlier, and what Amy saw was aftermath, a sight from which she reeled in horror and in instant crippling grief, a sight that almost compelled her to put the pistol in her mouth and swallow her fourth shot.
    But if in that moment she did not care whether she sent herself to Hell, she was determined to send him there.
    Into the hall, down the stairs, she seemed not to run but fly, and in the entry hall found the front door standing open.
    Impossible that she was still alive, that she was not dead from her own ardent wish to be dead, and yet she moved out of the house, across the porch, down the steps, into the night.
    To the east, beyond the house, the concentrated light beamed out from the high lantern room, as powerful and silent as her still-silent scream, warning sailors in transit on the deep Atlantic.
    Because its arc was constrained to 180 degrees in respect of inland dwellers, the lighthouse failed to brighten the night here in the west. Only a faint ghost pulse of its sweeping beam played upon the snow, so weak that it could quiver up no shadows.
    Scanning the night, seeking Michael, she could not see him—and then did. He was running for the woods.
    She squeezed off her fourth shot, and sea gulls thrashed into flight from the eaves of the high catwalk of the lighthouse, flew west in confusion, but then over her head wheeled east and high into the sky.
    Michael was beyond the reach of the pistol, and she ran after him, holding her fire until she had gained ground.
    She closed on him as she knew she would, because he was wounded and she was not, because he ran in fear and she ran in fury.
    As Michael reached the woods, Amy fired again, but he did not fall, and the trees crowded around him and welcomed him into their dark.
    Now it seemed to her that this was a fulfillment of her sweet girl’s dream, Nickie’s dream that she would be lost in the woods. Her father had not only taken her life but her soul, and he would cast it away in the forest, where she would wander forever, barefoot and afraid.
    Crazy as that thought was, it compelled Amy ten steps into the woods, twenty, until she halted. Before her were a thousand pathways through the night, a maze of trees.
    She listened but heard nothing. Either he was laying for her in this labyrinth or he had fled far enough along a trail he knew that she could not hear him running.
    Were he lying in wait, she would risk being taken by surprise, because she might kill him anyway, in the struggle.
    If on the other hand he had gone deep into the woods, if he had