The Candle by Ian Rogers Page A

over—long over.
    She pulled up the baggy cotton boxer shorts she was wearing, the ones with the Peterborough Petes’ logo on them, and reflected that her days of sexy lace underwear from I See France, the lingerie store downtown, were over, too.
    This is where I ended up
, she thought as she ambled out into the dark hallway.
This is where life has taken me
.
    It wasn’t as bad as she made it out. She had a satisfying marriage to a man she was still in love with, they had no major financial concerns, and they were both healthy. There were no kids because they had planned to wait until Tom’s first novel put them on easy street, and when it didn’t, they decided that the window had passed and, really, would it be such a tragedy if they didn’t have kids? They had a house that was paid for, a car that was only three years old, and a large nest egg for their steadily approaching retirement.
All of these things have brought me here
, she thought, walking down a dark hallway to the living room where they watched a lot of movies but not much living really took place.
    * * *
    Tom tried to get back into his book, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was distracted by vague feelings of guilt. He felt a bit like a guy who had taken a girl out on a date, then told her, no, he wouldn’t walk her home, even though it was dark out. Like a bit of a louse, if he was perfectly honest.
    But it was just their living room, he reasoned. Nothing scary about that. He listened for Peggy’s footsteps, which should have been audible on the old hardwood floors, but he didn’t hear anything.
    All of this over a stupid candle.
    “Peggy?”
    The house was an old Colonial, and even the cat, who weighed a whopping seven pounds, made the boards creak and pop as he padded around. It was not a house where you could sneak up on someone undetected; they could hear you coming a mile away. It had even gotten so he could tell, just by the different groans and creaks, exactly where someone was headed, from the living room to the kitchen, from the bedroom to the bathroom. The sounds had become as much a part of the house as the smell of oats from the Quaker factory across the river that wafted in through the open windows when the wind was blowing right.
    From where he was lying in bed, he could see only a small sliver of hallway through the open doorway. The bedroom was located at the very back of the house; the living room was at the front.
    He looked over at the clock on the nightstand and tried to figure out how long she’d been gone. Two minutes? Three? Surely not as long as five minutes. Long enough, he figured, to walk into the living room, check to see if the candle was still burning, and if it was, blow it out.
    “Peg?”
    No reply.
    She’s screwing with me
, he thought.
She’s not answering because she’s pissed off
. Soon he’d hear the creaking floorboards and she’d stroll into the room and slip back under the covers as if nothing was wrong.
    Fine, let her be that way. Two can play that game.
    He picked up his book again. He tried to read.
    Thirty seconds passed. It felt like thirty minutes. Tom closed his book with a clapping sound that seemed extraordinarily loud in the silent room.
Silent house
, he corrected.
Why is it so quiet
? He was so distracted that he had forgotten to put in his bookmark. He swore under his breath and jerked back the covers. He was sliding out of bed when he heard the sharp, unmistakable sound of a woman screaming.
    His first panicked thought was that it was Peggy. That’s why she hadn’t answered him. Something was wrong. Had someone broken in? His guilt was no longer vague; it was as solid as the obstruction that had formed in his own throat and kept him from calling out.
    But the scream hadn’t come from the house. No, he was sure of that. Tom’s gaze flicked toward the bedroom window. It had come from outside.
    It wasn’t Peggy, he told himself,
assured
himself. It was someone in the house next door, or