Seventh Heaven

Seventh Heaven by Alice; Hoffman Page B

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Authors: Alice; Hoffman
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and moved inside her, and stopped thinking altogether, and when he woke up he was crying.
    He went into the bathroom and washed his face, but after that he was afraid to go back to sleep. He got dressed and made himself a cup of instant coffee. He couldn’t drink it, so he went to check on his children, and then he returned to the bedroom, took his gun from the night table, and went out to his car.
    The sky was still dark when he parked outside Louie’s Candy Store. The morning newspapers were being delivered.
    â€œGeez,” Louie said when Hennessy came in, carrying a bundle of newspapers. “You’re the early bird.”
    Hennessy sat down at the counter and had a cup of real coffee. He thought about all those people asleep in his house. He had no idea whether he even liked his wife and his children. He couldn’t remember what song Ellen had been singing to herself when he came home from the hardware store, or what excuse Stevie had given when he’d been asked why his bedroom window was wide open the morning after Halloween or why, if he’d gone to sleep right after his bath, his fingers were black as coal.
    Hennessy wasn’t due down at the station house for a few hours and he couldn’t go home, so he took a slow drive through the neighborhood. The leaves were all gone and the trees looked like black sticks against the blue sky. A black cat darted out across Harvey’s Turnpike, and Hennessy wondered whether this meant the cat had crossed his path. Just to make certain, he made a left turn before he reached the spot where the cat had crossed. He kept his speed down, and at a quarter to six he found himself on the edge of the development. He pulled over and parked across from the house where he’d been called in to the domestic. He still felt as if he were in some kind of dream, because if he’d been thinking he never would have come here. His tongue was thick, and his stomach was sour, and the back of his neck felt as if someone had stuck pins into it. With the heater turned off, the car was cold, but Hennessy stayed there, parked. The men on the block came out of their houses and left for work; the children all walked to school. By eight thirty no one had yet come out of the house Hennessy was watching, so he got out of his car and walked across the street.
    His bones felt bruised from sitting in the car for such a long time. He went up the steps and knocked on the door, and when no one answered he hopped off the stoop. He went to the living-room window and peered in, but even before he rubbed a circle in the dirty glass and looked in, he knew the house was empty.
    A woman from the house next door had come out on her lawn and was staring at him.
    â€œAre you the realtor?” she called.
    Hennessy straightened up and walked through the bushes. “A friend of the family,” he said.
    â€œReally?” the woman said. “Well, they’re not here. They moved to New Jersey.”
    â€œThat explains it,” Hennessy said.
    â€œThree weeks ago,” the woman told him.
    Hennessy thanked her and walked across the lawn. He was late for work now, so he started his car and made a U-turn and headed for Harvey’s Turnpike. But before reporting in, he stopped at a drugstore and bought a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He uncapped the bottle and took a long swig, then flipped open his glove compartment and threw the bottle inside. He had just been a little too late, that was all. And why that should make him feel so terribly sick, why that should make him want to step on the gas and drive as far as he could get, he had no idea.

4
    THE THIEF
    T HERE WAS BLACK ICE ALL OVER the streets. You couldn’t see it, but it was there, waiting for you to step off the curb. Car doors froze shut, tree branches cracked and fell onto the lawns, traffic lights were so encrusted you couldn’t tell red from green or stop from go. On Dead Man’s Hill there was a thin

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