Maggie's face looked distorted, her jaw and the deep sockets of her eyes illuminated by the light she held over the table.
"How your parents showed you the fire exits at every theater and every place you stayed, how they taught you what to do. Like I was a bad parent!"
The beam of her flashlight bobbed and glittered off the knives on the table.
"Like it was my fault that Melanie died!"
She picked up a wood chisel, a four-inch point with a sturdy handle. I glanced upward. There were six more rungs to the catwalk, but just one more would allow me to reach up and grasp it.
"Your parents told Liza it was Melanie's fault for hiding when the baby-sitter called her." Maggie's voice kept rising. "They should have told Liza how wicked she was, how she killed someone, how she murdered my daughter!"
"Liza was only four years old," I protested. "She didn't understand the consequences."
"Liza took from me my greatest treasure!" Maggie cried out, then lowered her voice. "Last summer I took back. I wrote the note she thought Mike had sent. I knew Liza would slip out, even wait for him till I could be sure she and I were alone. Finally I had justice. Your parents and I were even, each left with one child. Then you came." She took a deep breath. "I liked you, Jenny. I felt… motherly toward you, when I didn't know who you were."
"We can work things out, Maggie," I said. "We can get help for you and me, for our families-" "Don't you listen?" she exploded. "No one can help me! No one can end for me that night I watched you being helped down the ladder, watched you and Liza and the baby-sitter. I waited on the street, clutching Brian's little hand." Maggie's voice grew hysterical. "I watched and I waited for Melanie. I'm waiting still!"
The abrupt shift of the flashlight warned me. I pulled myself up one more rung, then felt the impact of her rushing against the ladder. I flung my hands upward, grasping the edge of the metal walk as the ladder was dragged out from beneath me. It crashed onto the stage.
"Flashlight, flashlight," Maggie called from below, like a small child calling a pet-or an adult totally unhinged. "Where are you, flashlight?"
High above her I dangled in darkness. My left hand was useless. I hung by my right. She found the light and shined it up at me. I pulled back my head to study the structure of the catwalk, a suspended strip of metal lace. My shadow flickered over it like a black moth.
"It's almost over, Jenny," Maggie said, her voice growing eerily soft. "Sooner or later, you will let go. Everyone lets go, except me."
There was a ridge along the catwalk's edge, the thin piece of metal my fingers grasped, then a large gap between that and a restraining bar. I knew I had to swing my legs onto the narrow walkway, but my right hand was slick with sweat. If I swung my body hard, my hand would slip off. I hung from one arm, looking down at Maggie.
"Sooner or later."
"Maggie, I'm begging you-" I stopped midsentence. I had felt the catwalk vibrate. I grasped the metal harder, but my grip kept slipping. My hand rotated, my palm sliding past the thin ridge.
"Hold on, Jenny!"
Mike's voice. He must have climbed the wall rungs. His footsteps shook the catwalk.
The base of my fingers suddenly slid past the edge. I tried to tighten my grip, but felt the rim of the catwalk moving toward the tips of my fingers. I was hanging by the tips-I couldn't hold on. "Mike!"
A hand swooped down.
The theater went black.
I've fallen, I thought; I've blacked out. But Mike's fingers were wrapped tightly around my wrist. Maggie had turned off the flashlight.
"Other hand! Give me your other hand, Jenny!"
"Where are you? I can't see."
"Here. Right above you."
"I can't grip with this hand. I hurt it: " "Hurt it where?"
"My wrist."
Mike's fingers groped for mine, then moved quickly and lightly past my injured wrist and halfway down my forearm. Now he gripped hard.
"I'm lying on my stomach," he said, "and have my feet hooked around the walk. I'm going to pull you up."
He tried, but it was impossible from that angle.
"I can swing my body, swing my feet," I told him, "if you hold on tight. Don't let go."
He grasped my arms so fiercely I knew I'd have bruises. I swung my legs and hips as if I were on a high bar, till I caught hold of the walk with my feet.
With Mike's help I clambered up the rest of the way.
He pulled me close and wrapped his arms tightly around me. I couldn't stop shaking.
"You're okay, Jen. I've got you."
I clung to him, burrowing my head into his chest. He reached with one hand to touch my face, then quickly put his arm around me again, as if he had sensed my panic when he let go. Instead of his hand, he used his cheek to smooth mine.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"Where is she?" I whispered. "Where's Maggie?"
"Don't know," he answered quietly. "Stay still. Listen."
There was a long minute of silence, then a sudden banging noise.
"The door," I said. "She's at the door at the bottom of the steps. She can't get out that way. It's chained."
"Chained?"
"From the inside," I told him. "How did you get in?"
"I tried the doors, everything was locked, so I came through Walker's window."
"Did you cut the power?" I asked. No.
"Then someone else is in the building."
He was silent for a moment. "Brian?"
"I don't know."
"Stay here," Mike instructed and carefully disentangled himself from me. "I'll see what's up."