"It's the white meat," Gerald informed him. "White meat is always dry." He patted Margaret's hand, who smiled thinly. Then he lumped mashed potatoes onto a bit of meat from the gristly end, and forked it into his mouth.
They ate in silence a few moments, the only sound the clink of cutlery on dinnerware, and the occasional smack of lips.
"How's that… uhh… What is it you're working on again, Owen?"
Owen finished chewing, sure Gerald was only faking interest and had deliberately waited for him to have food in his mouth, like an overeager server in a restaurant.
"He's doing the new wind farm, up past Streetsville," Lori said for him.
"Right, the turbines." He sipped his ginger ale, probably wishing he'd added scotch to it. "Aren't those things supposed to be dangerous? I heard something about that."
"Don't believe everything you hear, Dad."
"Wind-turbine syndrome," Owen said. "It's only been documented by a handful of scientists going under the assumption that infrasound is damaging to the brain. Chronic sleep loss, headaches, etcetera. I mean, who knows? The ones we're using are sound-dampening, so we're hoping to cut down on these incidents, whether they're real or just perceived."
"I'll tell you what the real headache is," Margaret said. They all awaited her next words, while she scraped up the last of the corn from her plate. "Shop talk at the dinner table."
They finished in silence. When Margaret brought out the pumpkin pie, she spotted Lori fiddling with the necklace Owen had bought her twenty-some-odd years earlier. She dropped the pie plate on the table. It struck heavily, rattling the salt and pepper shakers, the undercooked pie filling sloshing in its crust.
"What on earth is that… thing?"
Owen took a closer look, wondering what had troubled her. She'd known about the unicorn pendant since a few days after Christmas that year. Lori hadn't been able to keep it a secret for long. But the faded unicorn dangled from its chain. Between her fingers was a new pendant: this one a shiny crucifix.
"You don't like it?"
"I most certainly do not."
Lori wore a smirk, baiting their mother. He remembered the last time they'd played Lori's game, finding the Bible in their mother's closet. It was the last time he'd gone into his mother's room when she wasn't home. Something about that closet had both intrigued and repelled him, but he'd never been quite sure what had made him so ill at ease, considering the contents of the shoebox had been just a water-damaged Bible and a bunch of old pictures of people he didn't know. He'd wanted to forget all about it, and though it had often nagged at him when he'd passed her room on the way up the stairs to his own, or the bathroom, he'd successfully pushed it out of his mind elsewhere.
"Maybe I've had a religious awakening. Anyway, it's just a symbol. What's so bad about it?"
"Just take it off at the dinner table!" Margaret's thighs struck the table, shaking it again, startling everyone seated around it. She composed herself, smoothed the tablecloth, and sat. "I've put up with your silly Rastafarian hair and your incense burning; I should at least be able to eat in my own house without feeling uncomfortable. There. I've said my peace."
"Better listen to your mother," Gerald muttered, and sipped his ginger ale.
"Fine," Lori said, lifting her "Rastafarian hair" to unclasp the chain. She tucked the necklace and both of its pendants into her hoodie pocket.
After dessert, while Gerald and Margaret sat silently, watching an old black-and-white movie on Turner Classics, Owen followed Lori upstairs. "Why were you baiting Mom like that?"
She turned at the top of the steps. "She'll get over it."
"That's not the point. You know she hates that stuff."
"Does she?" She lowered her voice, peering over his shoulder at the stairs. "Don't you ever wonder why Mom has a Bible? About who all those people were in those pictures Mom keeps in her shoebox? Why she never talks about anything that happened before I came along?"
He made note of that: how she'd said "keeps," in the present tense, and decided to leave it alone. Accusing her of going into their mother's closet would only exacerbate the rift that had formed between them in her latest absence. "Mom's old life is her own business. If she doesn't want you dredging up her past, you should probably just leave it alone."
She fixed him with a look of concern. "Don't you ever wonder about your dad?"
Of course he wondered. All he'd ever known of him was what his mother had told him over the years, and it hadn't been much: that he was a strong and determined man, a "great mind," that he'd loved them "fiercely," but he'd "wandered off" when Owen was five. He'd wondered why his father had left them, left him. He'd wondered what he looked like now. If he was still alive, or dead, or had run away from the law. It was hard to know how not to grow up like his deadbeat father when he knew so little about him. "No," he said. "I don't think about it. It doesn't concern me."
Lori gave him a hard look, her blue eyes glistening so that Owen thought she might be about to cry. "Don't lie to me, Owns." Her voice was unnaturally quiet.
"I don't care, Lori. Honestly, I couldn't give a shit if the man was dead."
Her lower lip quivered. She turned from him, storming off to her bedroom and slammed the door. After a moment of indecision, Owen followed.
"What's all that racket up there?" Margaret called from below.
"Nothing, Mom!" He thumped softly on Lori's door. "Lori, I'm sorry, okay? I don't even know what I did, but I'm sorry."
"Forget it," he heard her say, her voice muffled.
He leaned his forehead against the door, wondering why things couldn't be like they'd been when they were kids. Wondering why they had drifted apart. But he knew it had probably been his fault. He'd always been distant and indifferent. Lori had brought the best out of him, but that had been a long time ago, in a different life. They were adults now. They were very different people.
Owen pushed himself up from the door. He turned from her room, about to head back downstairs, when Lori's sniffle brought him back. "Do you remember that ghost you saw when we were kids?" she said, her voice tremulous. "You always called it my ghost, but it was never mine."
He answered weakly, "That was a long time ago, Lori."
"No. No, it really wasn't. He's been following you your whole life, you see, and you don't even know it. You don't even care enough to wonder what that means."
"No," he said. He felt something close to tears. "I don't."
Lori said nothing more. A moment later, she came out with her giant backpack slung over her shoulders, cinched at the waist.
"Where are you going?"
She scowled at him. "I thought you didn't care." She pushed past him, heading for the stairs.
"Don't leave, Lori."
Her footsteps thudded down the steps.
"Lori…" He stayed put, having followed Lori and her crazy whims too many times in the past. "Come on, Lori."
She reached the first floor, and disappeared around the corner into the living room. Owen, still standing at the top of the stairs, heard Gerald protest her leaving.
"I've got somewhere I need to go," she said. "The bus leaves in an hour."
"Where are you going?"
"I'll call you when I get there. Love you, Mom, Dad."
She stepped out through the archway, blowing them kisses from the foyer. Owen hadn't moved from the top of the stairs when she looked up from the open front door with a forlorn expression.
Owen merely shook his head.
Lori's shoulders sagged. She pressed her lips together, resolute. Then she turned and walked out the door, pulling it shut behind her. He let her go.
PAR† 3
HOLY GHOSTS
CHAPTER 10
Burnt Offerings
1
OWEN WOKE WITH THE SUN in his eyes. He'd slept through the night with no two o'clock wakeup call, and he felt well-rested for the first time in months. Rolling over, he expected to find Jo asleep beside him, but the other side of
the bed was empty and cold, the sheet flipped back like the dog-eared page of a paperback.
Must have left while I was sleeping. I guess I should be glad she came inside at all, considering the way I found her.
She'd led him by the hand to the bedroom, where they'd lain in each other's arms, two desperately lonely souls enjoying the warmth of each other's bodies, the rush of blood in their veins. They'd breathed, without speaking, to the night music drifting in through the window—the lonely cry of the loon, the chorus of frogs, the far-off drone of a motorboat echoing across the lake—and had eventually drifted asleep.
Owen drew his arms behind his head and lay in a warm place on the pillow for a moment, thinking about everything that had happened the past few days. The stories, the mysteries, the revelations, the friends made and lost, friends found again, the sudden, tragic departures. He'd lived more in the last week than he had in the last several years. If he made it out of Chapel Lake alive, he'd be sure to make a lot of changes back home.
Maybe Jo could come with me, he thought. Then again, maybe not. She hadn't even been willing to spend the whole night.
Smiling, Owen climbed out of bed and got dressed. The lake had washed away their sweat. He thought he'd be fine without a shower, and he didn't want to step into the bath anyhow. Twisting the sink handle warily, he brushed his teeth, spat into the sink, rinsed out his mouth under the tap.
He smiled at his reflection in the mirror. All the sun he'd gotten on the lake and reading on the deck had given him a healthy look. Lori was still dead, but the smile felt right on his face. He felt born again, not quite in a spiritual way—more that he felt like a new person. A different person. Someone whose decisions and actions might surprise even himself.
The smile remained as he peered down into the living room to find Jo in the recliner, but faltered when he saw the book in her lap. It was Lori's journal, her letters to him. To find Jo reading his sister's words felt like a terrible violation, like someone listening in on a private conversation.
Yesterday, Owen would have reacted in anger. Today, he managed to shrug it off. "You're still here," he said.
Jo raised her head from the journal, closing the book quickly and straightening up as if she'd been caught in the act of something. "I guess you hoped I'd be gone, huh?"
"I'd hoped you'd stay in bed. Make up for lost time." He crossed to her, planted a kiss on her forehead. It occurred to him the last person he'd kissed on the forehead was his mother, after Lori's funeral, but he didn't let the memory sour his mood. "I see you found my sister's journal," he said, sitting beside her on the armrest.
Jo tilted her head up to him with a guilty look. "I hope you don't mind…"
"Why would I mind?"
"I don't know." She set the book on the table beside the unplugged lamp. "It's like reading someone else's mail."
"You probably know most of it anyway. The stuff you don't, what she said about me—"
"The stuff about the sandcastle? It's a helluva lot more complimentary than what she says about me later on," she admitted.
"I haven't gotten that far."
"Where did you leave off?"
"Crouch's visit."
"He visited me, too. The other night."
They both looked toward the journal, then to each other. Neither dared pick it up.
"Do you think he might have come to visit her a second time?" he said. "I mean, could he have been here the night she died?"
Jo let out a heavy breath. "I don't know. Didn't they say she was diving? Had all her gear on?" She shrugged. "I mean, I suppose she could have followed him out there. To the church."
Owen muttered in solemn agreement, wondering if that was what Crouch had wanted him to do the other night.
"What I do know is your sister was right," Jo said, pointing at the journal. "This place is haunted, Owen. All of it. And it's not just the church, it's that lake—you have no idea what it did to us. To this town. It divided us. It tore us apart. The ones who stayed with the church after the Purification, you and your mother, my parents and me—they shunned us, Owen. People literally cross the street when they see me coming, to this day. 'There goes Crazy Jo Dunsmuir. Church runs away from her, even her own parents crash their car just to get away from her.'"
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Honestly."
She shrugged it off. "People die," she said, putting on a good poker face, but she couldn't keep the sadness from creeping into her voice.
"That seems to be a common theme around here."
She chuckled morosely. "You know, the first time I saw Father Crouch after the flood, I was fifteen. He was at my parents' funeral, watching from afar. I thought for sure what people had said was true, that the Blessed Trinity had run away and left us behind, that you and your mother left with them. But when I saw him standing in the trees beyond the tombstones, that's when I knew the Blessed Trinity hadn't run away. Because Father Crouch hadn't aged a day. He was the exact same man who used to bounce me on his knee, ten years before."
Owen couldn't picture the man having ever bounced anyone on his knee. Then again, he couldn't imagine Everett Crouch having ever lived in a single family home with a wife and a young son. Clearly, his father was full of surprises.
"For ten years I wondered what happened to you," Jo said. "I kept thinking you'd come back, and we'd pick up right where we left off. We'd be best friends again, and no one would make fun of me anymore because they'd have to deal with two of us. But when I saw Crouch standing there, white as chalk, as young as the day we left the Trinity, I knew then you were never coming back to save me. Or if you did, it would just make people think I was even crazier." Her eyes grew large as she looked up at him. "You'd died with him, Owen. That's what I believed. And that's when I lost all hope."
Owen smoothed the hair on the back of her head. "I'm here now," he said. She gave him a weak smile, took his hand in hers and tucked it into her lap.
"For a long time I believed I was in love with you," she said, and mocked herself in the voices of her bullies: "'In love with a dead kid, what'll Crazy Jo think of next?' But I was just obsessed with the idea of you. You were my White Knight."
Owen nodded thoughtfully. "Now you're mine," he said, and grinned.
"Ha. I guess that's true, isn't it? Don't get any crazy ideas, Owen. Crazier than all the rest of this, I mean."
The two of them laughed. Their laughter died quickly.
"After the funeral," she said, "I guess I traded you in for another obsession. Pete Jebson taught me how to dive. He's always been a good friend to me. My only friend. He believed me when I said you all were dead. He told me he sees them, too. Mostly in his dreams, but once…"
"Once, what?"
"He was the one who found my parents," she said.
Owen took a seat across from her on the couch and watched her intently.
"It was right near his house on the county road where it happened. He was putting in a new mailbox—they still delivered door-to-door back then, now they've got everyone in boxes at the post office. Jeb was hammering his mailbox into the dirt when my parents drove by. They were driving really slow with their windows down, he said, singing 'Old-Time Religion,' you know, the one that goes 'Gimme that—'"
"I know it," he said, sparing her from singing it.
She offered a shy smile of gratitude before continuing. "They were driving really slow, like I said, singing that song at the top of their lungs. Jeb recognized their car long before they passed. It was pretty easy to spot, probably the only Lada left in existence in North America around that time. It was only the two of them singing, but someone was in the backseat, and at first he thought it was me."
"It wasn't you."
Jo shook her head. "No, I wasn't there," she said, looking at her hands.
"It was Crouch."
She agreed silently. "Jeb said if he hadn't had the mailbox there to hold him up he would have fallen over out of pure shock. Sitting there in the backseat was a man
he hadn't seen in ten years, who hadn't aged a day, smiling out at Jeb while my parents drove by singing spirituals at the top of their lungs. Only he said, 'In a kind of religious fervor,' which sounds like my parents one-hundred percent, even after we'd left the church.
"They thought they'd gotten away, Owen. But Crouch was just biding his time. Good things come to those who wait. Isn't that what the Bible says?"
"I think it's from something else. Like how the thing about give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish he'll eat for a lifetime is usually thought to be from the Bible, but it's actually—" She was looking askance at him. "What?"
"You sure took a lot more from Sunday school than I did."
"Sorry. It's been coming back. Go on."
She eyed him to be sure he was through interrupting. Then, "Jeb heard the tires squeal, and then a loud crash. They were barely going twenty, but he knew it was a pretty steep drop down to the marsh, and it gets deep out there on the county road since they put in the dam. He ran out there in his work boots. They were still singing, he told me, 'Still rejoicing even while they were dying,' he said, while he ran toward the car. Then their voices just stopped."
Jo licked her lips. It seemed like she wouldn't go on, but she gathered herself, and continued. "They'd gone about a kilometer up the road while Jeb stood frozen at the end of his driveway, holding himself up by his mailbox. When he got to where their tires peeled-up on the asphalt, the car had already sunk up to the back doors, half buried in wild rice shoots as tall as him. He climbed down to the ditch, just about slipped all the way down in the soft gravel and twisted up his ankle. When he got one of the back doors open, all this brown water came rushing out. Crouch wasn't there in the backseat anymore. My parents still had their seat belts on. He said they were smiling."
He'd whispered in their ears, Owen thought. He'd filled their minds full of his black filth, full of his poison. Maybe he made them think it was their own idea, so they'd go on believing their suicide was righteous until the very end.
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