Sweet After Death

by Valentina Giambanco

  “How . . . how did you find me?”

  “Your brother,” she said, and she turned to the tunnel. “Come, let him see you.”

  For a moment something thumped in Samuel’s heart, and then Jonah shuffled forward. He glanced at Samuel and then looked away.

  “Jonah . . . ,” Samuel said.

  “We went to the farm this morning to speak to your father,” Madison said. “He said that you ran away, but after he was gone Jonah told me that he knew where you were.”

  “You knew? About the cave?” Samuel said.

  Jonah nodded.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Two years.” Jonah’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Samuel thought of all the times that Jonah could have caught him but had let him be. “How did you find out?”

  “I followed you once.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “It was your secret.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jonah shrugged. “I didn’t think you wanted anyone else to know.”

  Madison turned around in the stone room and her gaze fell on the painted figures. They shifted and danced in the dusty light.

  “You did this?” she said to Samuel.

  The boy nodded. It was eerie and beautiful.

  Things were catching up with Samuel faster than his mind could compute them. “Jonah, was it you who gave me the bread when I was in the lonely place?”

  Madison was not sure what the lonely place was, but Jonah nodded and pointed at a candy wrapper on the dirt floor. “I put the candy where I knew you would find it.”

  Jonah was almost as big as Luke, but he seemed to take up no space at all. His gaze had looked blank the first time Madison had seen him in the barn, only because Jonah’s light came from a place very far from the surface.

  “Where’s Papa gone?” Samuel said to Madison.

  “I’m very sorry, Samuel, but your father has been arrested. He lied about your mother running away and the divorce, and we think he hurt her.”

  Samuel nodded. It was a surprise, and yet it wasn’t.

  “I think he killed Caleb too,” he said.

  It took them two days. They succeeded only because of a combination of hints, clues, and scraps of memories from Seth, Joshua, and Jesse, who had seen their father return from a particular place around the time their mother had disappeared. Nobody liked to go there because the clearing was haunted by the spirits of the dead Jackknife miners.

  In the soft March soil the officers from the County forensic lab found human remains—one male and one female. They would later be identified as Caleb and Naomi Tanner.

  They would never know for sure, but it was possible that Caleb had confronted his father about his mother’s true fate and the man had made sure he wouldn’t tell anyone else.

  Slowly the Tanner children had begun to talk, and they had much to say. When they finally believed that their father was not coming back—Madison explained to them that he hadn’t made bail—Seth and Joshua had found two axes in the tool shed and had taken apart a small hut near the barn. Madison didn’t ask them why, but it seemed to please the others.

  Samuel and Jonah spent a lot of time doing farm chores together. When the social worker told them that the remains had been found, they guided the others to the cave and showed them Caleb’s handprint.

  There had been no crying and no immediate manifestation of grief at the news. But Madison could tell that the pain was there; they had just never been allowed to express it.

  “How did you manage to get into Ludlow from here?” Madison said to Jonah one afternoon.

  They were sitting on the porch as Samuel walked the little boy, sitting on the mare, around the paddock.

  “There’s a shortcut,” Jonah said. “It takes about an hour, if you know the way.”

  The Tanner farm looked as austere and spartan as before, and yet there were changes in the air. Through the open doors and windows the tenderness of spring had found its way into the very building.

  “Why did you visit the town?” Madison said after a while.

  Jonah avoided eye contact, but his answers were always direct. “I wanted to see what the people were like.”

  “And your father never found out?”

  “Sometimes I sleep in the barn.”

  “And what were the people like?”

  “They didn’t look like killers and thieves,” Jonah said, and then added, “except for one.”

  Madison held up the picture from Ben Taylor’s driver’s license. “Do you know this man?”

  Jonah nodded.

  “Where do you know him from?”

  “He shot the doctor and set fire to his car.”

  “I’m sorry you saw that, Jonah.”

  “I tried to help.”

  “I know.”

  It had been Jonah’s blood they had found near the car.

  “The doctor came here and he argued with Papa about us.”

  “Yes,” Madison said. “You asked him for help, didn’t you?”

  Jonah nodded. “And he sent help,” he said. “He sent you.”

  Madison had spent a lot of time at the farm in the last few days, but the social workers had suggested that she might need to withdraw before the children became too attached to her.

  Madison had agreed.

  They would stay in touch through Joyce, but it was time to go.

  “I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Joyce Cartwell said.

  “You’ll be fine. They’re eager to meet you,” Brown said.

  They had just driven through the gate and had almost reached the clearing.

  “They have a lot of catching up to do, you know,” Brown continued.

  “I know.”

  “A friend of their father faked the homeschooling records.”

  Joyce sighed.

  “And their knowledge of the wider world is extremely limited. Tanner told them that they shouldn’t trust anybody. It’s miraculous that they’re as sane as they are.”

  Leaving Ludlow for the second time was different because Madison didn’t know when she would come back.

  Much was still uncertain: Betty Dennen had been told the name of the man who had killed her husband, but not the real reason why. She hadn’t been told that two people in the Witness Protection Program had been pursued from Boston to Ludlow by a son seeking to avenge the betrayal of his father and his own abandonment.

  Lee Edwards and Andrew Howell had decided to stay and keep their identities, and Andrew had told Polly the truth—or a version of it. He told her that he had testified against a brutal murderer and that’s why he could never go back to Boston, and Polly had believed him. Madison, on the other hand, had read the court papers and knew that Andrew Howell might very well be the man who had killed the messenger. There was no way to know for sure.

  In due time Jeb Tanner would be found guilty of two counts of murder in the first degree, and would be sentenced to life without parole. His defense attorney had tried to get him to accept a murder in the second degree charge and avoid a trial, but he was unsuccessful. The jury took three hours to return a unanimous verdict, and Joyce Cartwell was there to see it.

  Robert Dennen had brought them to Ludlow and he had led them to the Tanner children. Madison didn’t want to forget him in the turmoil of the Ben Taylor case: she didn’t want to forget how the doctor’s quick thinking, that night in the clinic, had helped them to discover the truth about those hidden lives.

  Jonah, Madison knew, would not forget.

  Chapter 53

  Alice Madison lay on the grass in her backyard with her eyes closed. The ground was warm with April sunshine and the air smelled sweet. She had been back for a week, but her mind was full of Ludlow.

  Brown was frequently in touch with Joyce, and the news was good: twenty-year-old Abigail had stepped up to lead the clan, and the others were happy to work together and stay on the farm. The only one who appeared lost was th
e oldest, Luke, because Jeb Tanner had gotten his talons into him the deepest.

  Samuel was learning to read and write, and had spent a day in the diner with Joyce.

  Baby steps.

  Inside a coat pocket Madison had found the black feather from the Tanner farm, and it was still on her dresser.

  Brown had seemed lighter since they returned, and that was good enough for Madison. They had not spoken at length about the shooting or the fire or anything else. They had both been there, they knew what happened. They didn’t need to hash it out. Every day that she saw him across the desk, she was grateful that her hand had been steady and her aim true.

  Madison fell asleep, and when she woke up the sun had dipped behind Vashon Island and Nathan Quinn was sitting next to her on the grass. He had taken off his suit jacket and his tie, and his black eyes were on the water.

  “I’d like to tell you a story,” she said.

  “I like stories.”

  “You might not like this one.”

  “Are you in it?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then,” Quinn said, “it’s all I need.”

  Chapter 54

  John James Walker managed to get himself out of the ditch because he was pissed off and determined, and no little grunt was going to get the better of him. He couldn’t move very fast at first, but—having stashed his backpack in a safe place—he made his way down the trail, tracking the small footprints that would lead him straight to the boy and the rifle.

  He had been worried for a second there—not that the kid would shoot him on purpose, no, but that he would blow his head off by accident. The man grinned a little . . . that would be lesson number three, once he’d gotten the kid back. He hadn’t realized that he would enjoy the company of that little squirt as much as he did, but teaching him had been like the best times in the army.

  Walker hobbled down the trail until he reached the recreation area. The boy would be looking to find other people to spill his guts to, no question about it. He heard the voices and kept himself in the shadows—far enough to be safe, close enough to see. He took out his binoculars.

  Day campers, he muttered to himself, five adults and seven kids. Walker examined the children who were the right age and height. His boy was not among them, and it seemed the families were just packing up to leave. No, he was definitely not there: of the seven kids, four were girls and only three were boys—dark-haired and younger than his own recruit. Just then, one of the girls glanced in his direction, a quick glance sideways that nobody noticed. She had looked exactly at the spot where someone coming down from the trail might be stopping. A skinny blonde girl, wearing a pink top, who was laughing at something someone said.

  Walker had not spent much time around kids—frankly, his sisters’ bored him to tears—and he couldn’t say how old this bunch was, or what grade they attended. But he did notice the little girl, and she was the exact same height and weight and coloring as his boy. She glanced again in his direction. Bright eyes in a sun-freckled face. Follow me and I’ll shoot you dead.

  The man studied the child. No, it wasn’t possible. It was just not possible.

  The sound of slamming car doors and engines starting up brought him back, but they were already driving off, already disappearing down the lane, already gone.

  His bad leg faltered and Walker held on to the tree trunk for support. His anger was snake-fast and toxic. It was unlikely, but feasible, that the kid could have been picked up by another group and had been whisked off to a rangers’ station or something. And his rifle had disappeared with the kid.

  Walker counted to ten, and then to ten again, because he was angry enough to tear a chunk out of the tree with his bare hands, and anger would get him nowhere. He closed his eyes and leaned his face against the rough bark, rubbed it against the coarse texture.

  It was the way things worked: the world always takes stuff away from you, if you let it. And he’d had such plans for that boy.

  The hikers would still be where he’d left them, which was a comforting thought. They would be a welcome distraction from his rage; he needed to stay frosty and plan his next move. The past few days had been a revelation, and a whole new future had opened up to him: he would find another apprentice, a young one who’d do as he was told. The country was full of them, after all—lost kids who needed to learn things they didn’t teach in school. And no one taught the kind of skills John James Walker taught.

  The man pushed off from the tree and hobbled back toward the trail. He’d pick up his pack and try to be back to the hikers’ camp by dawn. He didn’t have a rifle anymore, but there was plenty a capable man—a well-trained man—could do with a sharp knife.

  The morning after the missing little girl had been found by the Portland family, the ranger who had spoken to her tidied away the paperwork of the case. Whatever the father might say, it was pretty remarkable for a twelve-year-old to travel all the way from Friday Harbor to Mount Baker by herself and survive in the wilderness alone for a whole week—his own beloved daughter couldn’t even make it to the mall without being dropped off with spending money and a pickup time. It seemed the kid had a temper on her as well—good luck to the grandparents, he thought.

  A knot of young men and women burst in, and the ranger looked up.

  “There’s a man with a rifle . . .” The woman was in her twenties, sunburnt and puffing under a massive backpack, “. . . and he’s going to shoot people.”

  They must have been running all the way.

  “I need you to take a breath and tell me exactly where you’ve seen this man,” the ranger said.

  The month before, they’d had a bomb scare—an old car battery left under a fern—and the month before that, a dead body at the bottom of Riley Lake—a particularly ugly log with a shirt snagged on it.

  The girl gulped a cup of water from the cooler. “We’ve been camping not too far from the Ridley Creek trail, and yesterday I found this in my journal . . . we got caught in the rain, and just made it back.”

  She pushed a battered notebook into the ranger’s hand and opened it at the last page.

  “I had left it out overnight, a couple of days earlier, and since then I hadn’t looked at it.”

  The ranger’s eyes traveled across the scribbled page.

  “Is this true?” he asked, even though he didn’t need to.

  The girl nodded.

  The handwriting was rushed, but perfectly legible.

  A man has tracked you for two days. He has a rifle.

  He watched you skinny dipping today and he said that he would like to see you try to survive on the mountain with nothing but the skin you were born with. He forced me to steal your red canteen and I’m really sorry.

  Please leave as soon as you can. Please leave as soon as you read this.

  I don’t know his name but I think he’s crazy I’m

  It looked as if the writer would have added more, but had been disturbed.

  The ranger reached under his desk. “Is this it?” he said, holding out a red canteen.

  The girl gaped at him. “How . . . ?”

  “I need to make some calls . . .”

  They had little to go by, except for a sketchy physical description and the fact that the man might, or might not, limp. And might, or might not, have been a vet. In essence, they had nothing. What they did know, though, was that the man’s rifle was hidden somewhere inside a rotting log—and that, everything considered, had to be the blessing of the day.

  After putting out a hopeless park-wide alert, the ranger dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and called a Seattle number—the kid should know her message had been found.

  Alice had never been to Seattle. The relationship between her mother and her mother’s parents had been strained, for reasons that the girl knew nothing about. And yet now those reasons seemed to matter not at all as Alice—asleep in the back of her grandfather’s BMW—traveled toward Elliott Bay.

  Every few minutes the man�
��s eyes strayed to the little girl lying on the back seat, as if he could not quite believe what he saw in the rearview mirror. He had called his wife from the rangers’ station to tell her that they’d drive through the night to get back. He couldn’t bear the thought of Alice having to bed down in some unfamiliar room in a motel along the way, not after her last week. He had called his wife to tell her that her granddaughter was coming home.

  Maybe Alice would tell him why she had run away, maybe she would not. He wouldn’t press her for it. The mistakes made with his own daughter were carved into his heart, and this little girl—who looked so much like her—would never again feel that she needed to cut and run.

  Alice woke up and straightened up on the seat. The road was following the soft turns of a deep green hill and to their right the water of the bay was a pool of red-gold and mist. She had slept for hours and was not entirely sure that she was awake.

  “Almost there,” her grandfather said.

  The road was empty and the neighborhood still and, for the first time since leaving the rangers’ station and stealing a quick hug from her father, Alice was nervous. What if her grandparents didn’t like her? What if they thought there was something wrong with her because of everything that had happened in the last seven days? And what if there really was something wrong with her?

  Alice pressed her brow against the cool glass. She was tired and hungry, and her thoughts felt fuzzy. She wondered if this was the place where her mother had grown up. Her thoughts chased each other in circles until her grandfather turned right into a sloping driveway.

  Alice held her breath.

  The house, tucked away and invisible from the road, seemed to emerge from the very trees; it was stone, brick, and wood. Behind it the girl glimpsed a green lawn that rolled into the flat water.

  “Do you like to kayak?” her grandfather said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, I’ll find you a life jacket in the shed. Kids kayak around here all the time.”

  Her grandfather busied himself with her bag and unlocking the door, his hands suddenly clumsy. The inside of the house was shady, and a breeze blew through the rooms from the open French doors.