Iron House

by John Hart

  “Is Abigail my mother?”

  “All right, Michael. All right.” Jessup sighed deeply, gathered himself. “Abigail didn’t run away until she was fourteen. That’s four more years she spent with Arabella Jax. Four years of abuse and deprivation. Four years for Salina Slaughter to take hold. Four years of hell…”

  “Go on.”

  “Arabella Jax wanted daughters, but God had his own ideas, I guess, and gave her two boys, one strong and the other sickly. They were born in the back bedroom of the house you saw. They’d have probably died without Abigail. They slept in her bed. She kept them warm, kept them fed. Protected them.” Jessup shook his head, then pushed on. “Arabella held off for a while, but the day came when she told Abigail to drown them, too. She wouldn’t do it, though, no matter how much Arabella beat her. It went on for two weeks, the beatings and bleeding and denial.”

  Michael felt a sharp pain in his heart. “What are you saying?”

  Jessup nodded at the hurt that was coming. “I’m saying she ran off rather than kill you boys.”

  * * *

  Michael had to walk away from that. Jessup gave him twenty minutes, then paid the check and found him in the parking lot, hands in his pockets as traffic blew past.

  “Abigail is my sister.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know you’re telling me this?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Michael turned, and in his features Jessup saw a road map of grief. “She’s not that poor, broken little girl anymore. She won’t be. She can’t be. This is where she’s strong. This life.”

  “And yet she left us there to die.”

  “A child can only take so much, Michael. You, of all people, know that’s true.”

  “I never abandoned Julian.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “That’s not how it was.”

  “And yet Julian was left alone until Abigail gathered him up.”

  Michael looked away.

  “For what it’s worth,” Jessup said, “she has nightmares about it, crucifies herself with guilt. And don’t forget that she came after you as soon as she possibly could. She found you at Iron House. She tried to give you a life.”

  “This is difficult.”

  “Yeah, no shit.”

  “I’m supposed to keep it to myself?”

  Jessup understood. Telling Michael in the first place had not been an easy decision, but he’d sold his soul on the day he made Arabella Jax scream and beg and spill her guts. It would be nice for something good to come of it.

  “I guess that’s up to you,” Jessup said. “I’m not sure how Julian would take it. He’s half-convinced that what he saw in the boathouse was delusion, but only half-convinced. As a man, he needs structure. He needs to know the people around him are strong enough to watch his back and make a difference. I don’t know that he could handle having a woman like Arabella Jax as his mother. It would be a brutal truth after all the love he’s known.”

  Michael thought about that and decided Jessup was right. Not all cruelties were physical, and his brother would not easily endure such a revelation. “So, Julian doesn’t know the truth, and Abigail doesn’t know that I know?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re asking an awful lot, Jessup. She’s my sister. We’re family. Do you understand how important that is to me? To Julian?”

  “She can’t know that you know. Facing that past would kill her. Knowing you’re aware of what she did, knowing Julian is aware … She barely lives with herself now.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m sorry, Michael. I truly am.”

  Long moments passed, then Michael said, “How did Abigail get here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw the place she was raised. I met her mother…” He stalled at the thought of Arabella Jax being his mother, then shook off the anger and disgust. “How did she go from Slaughter Mountain to the place she is now?”

  “Strength and will and character. I don’t know what happened after she ran away, but she was only twenty-two when the senator met her. By that time, she’d put herself through college and spoke three languages fluently. She was working in an art gallery in Charlotte, and, I swear to God, Michael, you’d think she was fresh out of some European finishing school. She was that polished; that perfect. The senator fell for her overnight.”

  “Did she love him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  The sun slipped low, and Michael felt flush with emotion. Like he was drowning. Like his skin was too tight. “Abigail will always have doubts, you know. The senator died in her room. Julian thinks he saw her in the boathouse.”

  “We can live with doubts,” Jessup said. “It’s the knowing that breaks us.”

  “What about Salina Slaughter?”

  “I can manage Salina.”

  “Yet three people are dead.”

  “Only one thing makes her violent.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A threat against you or Julian. The boys from Iron House. The senator.” Jessup shrugged. “Salina considered them a risk. She’s very protective of you.”

  “You put George Nichols in the lake? Chase Johnson?”

  “To protect Abigail from what Salina had done.”

  “Why did you leave Ronnie Saints in the boathouse?”

  “I didn’t know about Ronnie,” Jessup said. “Didn’t know they were meeting. Didn’t know she’d killed him until Caravel Gautreaux saw you put him in the lake.”

  “Caravel?” That was news.

  “Creeping around in the dark, looking for her daughter, I suspect. She’s too smart to come near the main house, what with the dogs and all; but she saw the body from a distance and called the police. Thought she had a chance to screw Abigail good, like twenty years of hate finally found a chance to let loose.”

  “What is it with those two?”

  “Jealousy. Resentment.” Jessup rolled his shoulders. “Who the hell knows?”

  Michael pushed thoughts of Caravel Gautreaux from his head, felt all the things he’d learned. He had a sister he could never acknowledge, and a long-dead brother he would never have the chance to meet. He had choices to make, and a mother he might very well kill. “How did you learn about Salina Slaughter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tracked down Arabella Jax; you learned all this.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know about Salina Slaughter in the first place?”

  “Ah…”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Oh, shit.” Jessup walked away, shaking his head. He stopped a few feet away, stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at the sky.

  “Jessup…”

  “She torments me. It amuses her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Salina comes to me at night. I slept with her twice before I knew it was her. I thought it was Abigail. I told her I loved her. I thought … you know.”

  “But it was Salina?”

  Jessup sighed, unhappy. “My life’s been hell ever since.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Cool mist hung in the gorge as Michael turned the Rover onto the steep, muddy track that led to the creek where his brother had been drowned. The sun was below the ridge but rising, the morning still and gray as he rolled in, quiet. There were no license plates on the car, nothing to identify him. A few dogs lifted their heads, but they seemed as worn and uncaring as everything else.

  Michael touched the gun beside him. He’d killed a lot of people over the years, but had never done so in anger or hate.

  That was about to change.

  He’d tried to move on after meeting with Falls, tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw a dead brother and Julian broken; saw Abigail as a child in that cold and filthy house of horrors. He saw them as they could have been, then as they were, and it was like a wall of spinning mist, like he could stretch out
a hand and touch a storm of ruined lives. Even now, the scope of her depravity confounded him. In a lifetime defined by violence and the code of violent men, Michael had never seen a soul as poisoned as his mother’s. There was no restraint to her selfishness, no boundary. She’d made one child kill another, laughed about it.

  And now the bitch was going to pay.

  * * *

  He moved deeper into the gorge, found Arabella Jax in bed and put the muzzle against her forehead. She woke clear-eyed and nasty. No confusion. No doubt about the gun in her face. “I told you no lies,” she said.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Her eyes rolled left, but Michael had already moved the shotgun. The room smelled of mildew, festering leg. Michael felt cold, quiet rage as he looked down on the woman who’d brought him into the world, then left him in the woods to die.

  “Give me a cigarette,” she said.

  Michael pushed the barrel hard against her forehead, and the fear came out in her. Her mouth opened wide, fingers hooked in the sheets. “You drowned a baby in that creek,” Michael said. “I want to know where he’s buried.”

  A sly look spread on her face, wheels turning. “What’s it to you?”

  Two seconds passed. “He was my brother.”

  She processed that fast, eyes moving up him and then down. “Am I supposed to get all weepy, now?”

  “You should probably get ready to die.” Michael thumbed the hammer, but she shrugged off the threat.

  “I heard somebody found you boys. They wrote about it in the paper.”

  “You could have just drowned us.”

  She laughed a bitter laugh. “There may not be a hell, but I don’t plan on taking chances. That’s Abigail’s job.” She pushed up in bed, as if daring him to pull the trigger. “I guess you know her after all, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Michael stepped back. “Get out of bed.”

  “Get me a cigarette.”

  Michael dragged her out of bed. She hit the ground with a thump, then stood, shaking and angry. There may have been fear left somewhere, but Michael couldn’t see it. He snatched a robe off a chair, flung it at her. “Put it on.”

  “You ain’t gonna shoot your own momma.”

  “Put it on.”

  “Outside of that cocksucker Jessup Falls, I ain’t met a man yet with the strength to squeeze a grapefruit, let alone a trigger. If you were that kind of man, I’d be bleeding already. I’d be—”

  Michael made her bleed. He whipped the gun and hit her hard enough to knock her down on the bed. A red line oozed on her cheek; after that, she cooperated. The robe went on, fuzzy slippers that used to be pink. She took a cane off the back of a chair and limped outside, slow and stunned and wary. Light was beginning to filter down, and the hollow yellowed out as they followed a narrow footpath around the shack and then into the woods. She looked back twice, then said, “You going to kill me?”

  “Maybe I’ll break your legs and leave you out here to die.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Thinking about it.”

  They walked for five minutes, forest pushing in. She stumbled once, and caught herself. “Where’s the other one?”

  “Other what?”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Just keep walking.”

  They came to a place where a beech tree rose up, ancient and gray-skinned and proud. On its bark, someone had long ago carved a cross above the initials RJ. The carvings had stretched as the tree grew; now they were wide and rough, barely legible above a patch of smooth ground. “Well, there you go.” She waved a spotty hand. “Satisfied?”

  The markings had been carved deep, and when Michael touched them he knew that Abigail had been the one to put them there. He tried to see her as she must have been, ten years old and bone thin, straining hard to make the lines of the cross so straight and true. “What was his name?”

  “Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me or I put a bullet in your head.”

  Her lips pursed, and she said, “Robert.”

  “Robert.” He touched the markings again and looked at his mother. “What did he look like?”

  “Trouble with a big damn T.” She waved a hand. “All you boys did.”

  Michael felt new rage. “You should have gone away for this. You should have fried.”

  “And if there was justice in the world, I’d be living rich or holding that gun. But that ain’t the world God made. Now…” She thumped the tree with her cane. “You seen it. You said your piece. Now, give an old lady a few dollars or go on and get the hell out.”

  “Did you say justice?”

  “You heard me.”

  Michael felt the gun in his hand and it felt like the hand of God, like the universe rolled back to show the meaning of poetry and purpose. This woman had made him a killer so that he might one day kill this woman. It was a circle so perfect it smelled of providence. The gun came up and it was light in his hand. Mountain air tasted fresh in his throat. He could kill her now and bring closure to what remained of his family. Abigail would be free, Robert’s death avenged. Justice for the boys he and Julian had been.

  “Do it,” she said.

  He stared into her eyes, and saw nothing.

  “Fucking do it!”

  But even as the trigger creaked under his finger, Michael pictured Otto Kaitlin, who’d raised him to be better than the things he did. He thought of Elena, and the man she wished him to be, then of his own child and the father it deserved. He thought of the future he wanted.

  The gun came down.

  “I knew it, you pussy.” She spit on the dirt. “You limp-dick, red-assed cocksucker.”

  Michael looked at the ravaged leg and unrepentant eyes, the cracked lips and bitterness. “I hope you live a very long time,” he said, and walked away.

  He made it fifteen feet before she called after him. “Did Abigail tell you your real name?”

  Michael looked back, momentarily undone as spite spread on his mother’s face. It was an orphan’s ultimate question. Who are my parents? What is my name?

  “She didn’t tell you Robert’s name, so I’m guessing she didn’t tell you yours, either. She didn’t, did she? Selfish little brat.”

  “We’re done here.” Michael started walking. She raised her voice.

  “Whatever they named you at that orphanage ain’t the name God will know you by! That name comes from me!”

  Leaves slapped at his face. The ground was smooth and damp.

  “A momma leaves a mark when she names a child!”

  Michael turned. “I want nothing from you.”

  “What about your father’s name? You want that?” Michael raised the gun, pointed it at the soft place beneath her chin. “We already know you don’t have the guts.”

  Michael put a shot past both sides of her head, the bullets so close and fast they lifted hair.

  She froze, mouth open and dead silent. Michael said, “Next one goes in your right eye.” She risked a step back, and Michael matched her movement, the forest very green around them. “No one would miss you. No one out here would even care.”

  Arabella held perfectly still, a cigarette smoldering between two fingers. Behind her, the gulley dropped off forty feet, water creaming white at the bottom. “You want your real name or not?”

  “Not.”

  “Then you’re nothing.”

  “I disagree.”

  “You have nothing.”

  “I have eighty million dollars,” Michael said. “I have a brother and a sister, a family of my own.” He dropped the hammer on the gun, slipped it under his belt. “What do you have?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Two days later, the last reporters left Chatham County. The police were finished with Abigail and Julian; the feds were gone, headlines fading as bodies were buried and the investigation moved north. Late-morning sun slanted through Julian’s window as he stood before the tall mirror and finished
knotting a silk tie. His suit was pressed and dark; he was anxious.

  “May I come in?”

  Abigail stood in the open door, a half-smile on her face.

  “Sure.”

  She crossed the room and stood beside him, peering into the mirror. “So serious,” she said.

  “Don’t.”

  “So thin.”

  “Please.”

  “I’m sorry.” She moved in front of him, adjusted his tie and then ran fingers down his lapels. “You’re right. It’s just that the world has been so serious. We should be the opposite. You’re safe. You’re well.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  He was pale and terribly thin. The suit hung from his frame. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t know.” Julian held very still, eyes large and wounded as he studied his image in the mirror. “I feel … divided.”

  “You don’t mean…?”

  She was thinking of his schizophrenia, so Julian shook his head. “Not like that, no. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  She peered up, worried for him, frightened of a world that, to her, looked so thin beneath his feet. It had always been like that, soft words and troubled looks, the conviction he would melt as slow and sure as newsprint dropped on an empty sea. He shook his head, unwilling to talk about it. “I’m nervous, I guess.”

  “Your name is known in forty countries,” Abigail said. “You’ve sold millions of books. I’ve seen you speak to a room of thousands…”

  “This is different.”

  “Why?”

  Urgency gave weight to her question. The moment stretched, and Julian felt a connection between them, a bond that was real and strong and dark with things unsaid.

  “It just is.”

  It was a child’s answer, and he knew it. Yet, how could he explain that this was not about knowledge or strength or the man he’d set out to be? No matter what he accomplished, he would always be the boy from Iron House. He would always feel hunted and exposed, a half step too close to shadowed corners. He could bury such feelings for a while, but there was only so much dirt in the world. And that was the problem. For as wonderful as Michael’s presence was, it reminded Julian of secrets and shadows, of roots in loose soil and the unforgivable thing he’d done. He was everything his mother said, yet had stabbed a boy in the throat and let his brother take the blame.