“So despite the hardships in your life…it’s easier for you because you know you’ve left your grandchild and great-grandchild behind?” Laney said.
“Well, of course,chérie! They’re my joy. If not for them, it would be better if I’d never passed this way.” Tears came to Angela’s eyes. Thank goodness Gramma Marie hadn’t lived to see Corey’s death.
“What has been the hardest thing, Mrs. Toussaint?” Laney said.
“The worrying,” Gramma Marie said. “I thought the worrying would drive me to my death, but the devil must want to keep me here to worry me some more.”
“What has worried you most in your life?”
There was a long pause, and the hum on the tape returned for a moment before she spoke again. “That others would suffer for my pride,” Gramma Marie said. “I couldn’t bear it. That’s why I’ve stayed here all this time, to tend after my mistake. I say prayers every morning. Two hours every morning. Prayers are the water I need to put out the fire.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, just think of a forest floor after a wildfire’s put out. The flames are gone, the ones you can see, but the ground’s still hot because it’s smoldering underneath, buried. A poke could set it off to roaring again.Cher, worrying about that poke will follow me to my grave! God willing, my grandbaby will be stronger than I was. I hate leaving such a burden for her—I wish I could carry it myself—but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see a hundred and three. That’s how long I’d have to live to put it out for good. That’s how far my words carried, all the way to a new century. But I’ll be living in this ring, you can best believe. I’ll be with her when it’s time, I pray to Jesus almighty.” Gramma Marie sighed. “I think I’m tired. Would you mind coming back another day?”
“No!” Angela cried, sitting upright in the wooden seat. Listening to her grandmother’s last words, she’d hunched over the tape player so closely that her chin nearly rested against it. But the tape didn’t heed her. Almost immediately, the voices clicked away, and the hum filled her ears. Her fingers fumbling, Angela pushed the button to fast-forward the tape, but it was silent to the end. The second side was silent, too. Gramma Marie was gone.
Shit. Angela wanted to throw the bulky cassette player across the room, and overturn the table for good measure.“Why didn’t you tell me?!” she shouted. She hadn’t felt so angry at any dead person since the day she found her mother at the kitchen table. Dominique had left her alone, with no way to fend for herself, and so had Gramma Marie. “Why didn’t you give me achance?”
She’d never heard a word of it. Nothing about daily prayers. Nothing about a fire. Nothing about how Gramma Marie expected her to be the one to finally set everything right. Angela listened to the recording twice more, trying to see her way through the fog of her grandmother’s words.
I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see a hundred and three,she said.
Gramma Marie had been ninety-two when she died in 1990. If she’d lived to be a hundred and three, she would have died in 2001. The year Corey died. What was supposed to have happened?
Angela had just slipped the cassette tape into her purse when Laney knocked on the door and peeked inside. Her unkempt hair fell into her face. “Is something wrong?” Laney said.
“Yes,” Angela said, on her feet. “But it’s my problem, not yours. I have to borrow this tape. Go home today, Laney. Close up and get some rest. You need it.”
Laney didn’t move right away. Her eyes fixed on Angela’s. “My brother in Salem’s been dying for me to visit. This would be a good time for a trip, wouldn’t it?” she said.
Gently, Angela brushed Laney’s chin with her palm. “Yes, a very good time. Laney?”
“Yes?” The woman looked hopeful, as if Angela had a golden answer.
She didn’t, but she had something to share. Not the whole of it, not yet. But pieces.
“Call me if you get a stomachache,” Angela told Laney. “Call me right away.”
Laney Keane, who had heard the piano start playing itself at the Fourth of July party just before Corey died, didn’t need any further explanation. She nodded fervently. “I’ll call you from Salem,” she said. “By the time I go to sleep tonight, that’s where I’ll be.”
The Leahy family was packing up a minivan backed up to the trailer doorway. Angela idled on the road in front of their property, watching the purposeful procession of children hauling open boxes, household items, and toys out of the house at a clip that wasn’t frantic, but wasn’t slow either. Someone had made the last-minute decision to leave right away.
Sean’s aunt saw her first, and turned over her shoulder to say something to Sean, who was wearing a tan baseball cap turned backward. After glancing toward Angela’s vehicle, Sean wiped his hands on his jeans and began making the long walk down his dirt driveway, until he stood at her car window. Once there, he stared back at his family, his hands hooked into his pockets.
“Taking a trip?” Angela said.
“Few days, maybe,” Sean said. By the look of the packing, that couldn’t be true. A liar to the end, she thought. Sean was the only piece of Corey still here, and he was leaving. Angela was relieved for his family’s sake, but she felt abandoned. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been relying on the hope that he would tell her something. Anything.
“I need you, Sean,” she said.
“Yeah, probably. But Andres and Tonya need me more.”
“I think I know a way to protect you.”
For the first time, Sean met her gaze. His eyes were scathing. “Youthink?”
Angela couldn’t answer him. Instead, she peered back at his property, toward the corral and stables, which looked empty. “Where are the horses, honey?”
“Boarded.” Sean blinked, his eyes glassy. “I might have to sell Sheba. I’m not sure.” He reached into his back pocket, finding a crumpled piece of paper, which he gave to her. Angela’s heart danced, until she saw he’d only written a telephone number. “Can you give that to the sheriff if you see him? Tell him I’m sorry I had to take off. I was trying to stick it out, swear to God. I wanted Andres and Tonya to have a real home for once, one place they could remember. That was my dad’s whole dream, but that’s all turned to shit. Anyway, we’ll be in Boston. For now.”
Something had scared the life out of this boy, Angela thought. Something had scared him from uttering a word of what he knew.
“I’m glad you were Corey’s friend, sweetheart,” Angela said, touching his face. “I don’t know what happened to you two, but he had more happiness in his last few weeks because of you and your family. That means a lot to me. I’ll never forget you for that.”
Sean nodded, gazing stubbornly at the clay road beneath his feet. Sean kept his voice steady. “I’m real, real sorry about…” His face changed, coloring. “You know.”
“I know,” Angela said. “Be safe. Take care of your family.”
“Yeah, same to you. Be careful. Stay strong, Mrs. Toussaint.”
Suddenly, Sean leaned into her window and kissed her cheek. The affectionate gesture caught her so off-guard, Angela nearly jumped. She’d forgotten how potent her emotions were, bound up inside her in so many intractable knots. She would have to leave a great deal of herself knotted away if she was going back into Gramma Marie’s house today. She’d been carrying her knots a lot longer than the past few days, or even since Corey’s death. Sometimes knots felt like all she was.
“Corey could be a pain sometimes, but he really loved you, Mrs. Tous-saint,” Sean said. “He was just pissed about you and his dad being so far apart. It might not look like it, but I know he didn’t want to die. Things aren’t always what they look like, understand?”
She nodded. It might be a clue, or just a platitude. “I know. And thank you for saying so.”
Sean patted her driver’s door, his good-bye. Unspoken words twisted his face for a moment, then he waved solemnly and turned to run back toward his house, where hi
s brother and sister were waiting. Angela watched Sean jog up beside them, playfully slapping the side of his brother’s head. The boy leaped toward Sean’s legs, trying to tackle him, before Sean shook him off, pulling free. The girl let out a laugh, a peal of pure glee that nonetheless sounded almost desperate. Maybe that was her first laugh since her father’s death, Angela thought. She prayed it wouldn’t be the girl’s last.
“Safe journey,” she whispered, for herself as much as for them.
Angela pulled up twenty yards and parked her rented Explorer in front of the stone steps that had awed her since she was young, the steps that led up to her grandmother’s castle. She gathered the supplies she’d bought in Longview that morning: a digital camera, blocks of clay, Magic Markers, a small stack of orange posterboard, hammer and nails. She’d walked into the Fred Meyer store, allowing herself to be carried aimlessly through the aisles, stopping when she sensed she should. Only part of her had been thinking at all. The rest, she hoped, had been the hand of someone trying to help her. Gramma Marie? God? Maybe even Corey. She liked that idea.
She would take all the help she could get.
Angela stared up at Gramma Marie’s house, unguarded by the fallen walnut tree, and she had to remind herself that she had once loved this place. The house looked plain and grim, all of its imperfections flagrant: the broken attic window, the mangled lawn where the tree had been, the fading paint. She couldn’t understand why that man had wanted to buy this house in the first place, luring her back to Sacajawea. Everything she’d believed she’d loved about the house felt like the worst kind of lie. She wished she’d bought some cans of kerosene, too. Gasoline.
“You just give me one more good reason,” Angela said to the house from the road, “and when I am finished with you, I will burn you to the fucking ground. Don’t think I won’t.”
With the warm hood of her car serving as a tabletop, Angela began writing a message on the posterboard with the thick tip of a black Magic Marker. Writing slowly, she revealed everything she knew, everything she could think to share:
DO NOT ENTER THIS PROPERTY!!!
COREY HILL DIED HERE 7-4-01.
ART BRUNELL WAS HERE 2 DAYS BEFORE GLENN DIED.
RICK LEAHY HERE 1 WEEK BEFORE HE DIED.
ALL HAD STOMACHACHES.
DOES YOUR STOMACH HURT? CALL 555-2969.
The warning sign was a flimsy gesture, and the constant drizzle would make the ink run, but it was a beginning. She’d already told the Everlys to stay away from her house, so she would tell everyone else. Angela posted one sign on the stone wall at the foot of the steps from the road, one to the cedar tree beside the path leading to The Spot, one to the roadside corner post of the Leahy fence, and the last to the front door her grandfather had built. The orange posters radiated, impossible to miss.
People couldn’t say they hadn’t been warned.
Long after the sound of her hammering had stopped, Angela’s heart had stolen the hammer’s rhythm, pumping in a frenzy. She stood on the front porch with her bag of supplies, trying to find the courage to go inside. She might get sick. She must be crazy to think she wouldn’t. Whatever soul-stealing illness was infesting Sacajawea, she could hardly get closer to it than in Gramma Marie’s house. It had been living here for at least two years, enjoying its privacy. Angela clasped her hand, feeling the ring in place on her finger. Corey had found the ring right on time, or she would have been lost, too. She would be dead by now. Angela knew that like she knew her own name.
Vin pale ou, cher.Come talk to me.
The front door was locked, which relieved Angela. If it had been unlocked, she might not have been able to make herself go inside, primed for a violation before her first step.
The door open, Angela reached for the foyer light, turning on the bright chandelier.
And her foot halted in mid-step.
Dried brown leaves were strewn across the foyer in a thick layer. The Oriental rug and floor beneath them showed only in a random patchwork through the mass of dead leaves. Leaves stretched back to the wine cellar, covered the steps leading to the second floor. Leaves had buried the living room, settling like camouflage across the piano keys. As Angela stared at the mess, a single leaf floated from upstairs, landing on the telephone table in the foyer like paper, in front of Gramma Marie’s photograph. Angela’s heart scuttled in her chest, an animal looking for escape. Her heartbeat nearly cut off her breath.
“Sonofabitch,” Angela said.“Who are you?!”
No more leaves fell in front of her, as if by silent agreement to wait until she was gone. Angela dreaded the sound of something scurrying beneath the leaves, but it never happened. So far, the house was quiet, waiting her out. Breathing raggedly, Angela shuffled through the crackling leaves to the library windows. In here, too, leaves had invaded the room, blanketing the books on the shelves, making a new pillow in the seat of her reading chair. Each of the three long, white-trimmed windows along the library’s south wall were locked tight, Angela saw after pulling up the shades. She crossed the foyer to go to the living room, a catastrophe she wouldn’t allow herself to look at fully. She flung herself through the French doors to check the dining room’s coved windows, which were also closed.
The leaves hadn’t flown in from outside. She hadn’t thought so, but she wanted to be sure.
There were leaves inside the china cabinet, overflowing from teacups and glass candy dishes. More leaves hid the dining room table, the black and white kitchen tiles, the tabletop in the breakfast nook, the shelves of the butler’s pantry. The house looked like a ruin, as if there had been no roof to obstruct the leaves in years.
Suddenly, Angela realized why she’d bought a camera.
Methodically, she took pictures, keeping her eye behind her camera’s viewfinder as leaves crunched beneath her running shoes, marking her every step. The sight wasn’t as frightening when she observed the house through her camera, she realized. Everything she saw was confined in a tiny, boxed image, erasing her presence. Angela walked with her eye pressed behind the camera even when she wasn’t taking pictures.
Upstairs was more of the same, as dense as a forest floor. There were leaves in the hallway, leaves in her bedroom, and, of course, leaves in the bathroom. Angela couldn’t see any remaining mud as she surveyed the bathtub with her camera, but there were wet black leaves clinging to the bathtub, as if pasted in place. Angela snapped pictures, scene by scene.
Only then did she realize she’d been talking to herself for some time. Or not to herself.
“Is this supposed to scare me?” Angela said as her flashbulb lit up the bathroom, flaring in the bathroom mirror. “You’re gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than this. It doesn’t get worse than the Fourth of July. Hear me? This isn’tshit.” She almost believed her own bravado. Holding the camera tightly, she kept her hands from shaking. Rage overwhelmed her fear.
“My mama was sitting dead in the kitchen when I came home from school, where she’d been sitting since seven in the morning on a hot May day—and I meanhot, like ninety-five degrees hot—and you think this shit is gonna scare me? You thinkthis shit is gonna run me off like that li’l scared boy next door? You messed upbad this time. ’Cause I’m gonna get you. You hear me? I’m gonna make you sorry you ever found out where I live. You’re gonna be sorry you ever heard my gramma Marie’s name. And you’redamn well gonna be sorry you ever touched my son.”
Angela’s face shook, silent tears tracing her cheeks as she gazed at Corey’s bed, shrouded in dead leaves. “I’m gonna send you straight back to whatever part of Hell you crawled out from,” Angela whispered, and snapped another photograph.
Back downstairs, Angela was trembling so much that there were intervals where she had to try to stand completely still, to let the attacks pass. It was hard to remember her reasons for coming back here, and she panicked each time she forgot. Sheneeded something from this house. Maybe Gramma Marie could find her best when she was here. The camera helped her feel b
etter, because she had a job to do. Had she photographed every part of the house? The man at Fred Meyer had told her the camera’s computer could take photographs from now until doomsday.
Angela remembered the wine cellar.
She was mad at herself for the coil of fear that tightened her muscles, making her pause for a full minute before she could make herself touch the doorknob. Of course, this was how it wanted her to feel, she thought. It enjoyed her fear. Well, fuck it hard.
To prove she could, Angela turned the doorknob and pulled the cellar door open.
The darkness gaping down the stairs was sudden and disconcerting, a repository of imaginary images. Angela yanked on the light. Her arm had weighed a full ton if it weighed an ounce, but she had done it. The light came on, and the darkness obeyed, vanishing.
Angela put her face behind the camera again.
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