Outside, the police chief spoke again, saying yes, of course he believed Hope’s story, yes, he did have better things to do, and yes, of course he was still working on Willa’s disappearance. He would find that man; Hope could count on that. He was working several leads right now. He was getting close. But people were still asking him about this expensive car, and the best thing he could do for Hope was prove her innocent of taking bribes. So he would make Dylan admit to giving her the car, and if it turned out she was wrong, he would find out where the car had come from. It would not be difficult. She could count on him to defend her reputation, just like she could count on him to find the man who murdered Willa.
“How come men don’t talk about things?” asked Bree. “How come they just wanna have sex all the time, and never wanna talk?”
Was she trying to shock him? Did she really think that possible? Riley remembered the birth-control pills in Henry’s store and knew he had to tell her something, even if she didn’t really want an answer. She was asking him this question, and he had to respond as if she meant it, and after all, he did have thoughts on the subject. But look at who he was and what he had become. How could he be trusted? Who was he to give advice on anything to anyone?
Riley glanced at his daughter’s profile, her sloped forehead, glistening black hair, curved nose, copper skin—so like a sculptural relief on a Mayan temple, so perfect in his eyes—and he remembered telling the missionary team that they could trust The People; they would be safe. How certain of his facts he had been that day. How self-assured he had been, the almighty Riley, rolling into Hope’s driveway with the lights turned off. Bribery and murder and his little Bree, crying in amongst the bodies.
He had done all that. He and no one else.
Who was he to tell her anything about men and women?
“You should ask your mother,” Riley said.
“Oh sure,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll ask Dylan.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NEAR THE BACK CORNER OF THE LITTLE GROCERY STORE, the old woman applied a price tag to another can of Del Monte kernel corn. Her hair was auburn now and had grown nearly to her shoulders. She had acquired a pair of eyeglasses in Omaha, the lenses clear and undistorted because there was nothing wrong with her eyes, the frames square to underscore that same quality in her face, and thick and heavy on her nose, pressing painfully into the flesh but worth it for the distraction they provided. She had toned down the makeup quite a bit because nearly half the people living in Trask, Kansas, were Mennonites and she desired above all things to go unnoticed, to fit in, to survive.
Trask was not so different from Dublin. Folks in both places lived a simple life, centered on family and work. Life from the ocean, life from the fields, a sea in either case, flowing from horizon to horizon, bountiful or barren as the good Lord willed. The men and women at the controls of hulking combines and rolling lobster boats were hewn from the same rock as far as she could tell, wresting sustenance from the elements on behalf of their less hearty brethren, worn down to the fundamentals by the fundamentals, certain of their standing in the scheme of things.
She too had lived a practical life the last two years in Maine, driven hard from waking to sleeping by the mundane tasks required to serve her charges, much as any farmer or fisherman was moved along by seasons. But they produced a bounty from their fields and fishing, while she had withheld hers. How she envied the secure boundaries of farmers and fishermen, so well established by heritage and law. How she coveted their family ground, their indisputable station among those who went before them, and beside them, and behind. How weary she was of the solitude of exile, of impermanence and dread. How she longed to throw aside the yoke of insignificance and live a life that mattered, as theirs did. Yet in her shameful weakness, still she dared not take the risk.
Willa had drifted into these envious daydreams about her neighbors without a conscious departure from the task at hand—sticking price labels on cans of corn—and so was taken by surprise when someone touched her elbow. With a startled cry she spun to find a boy there at her side, about six years old and three feet tall, the shortness of his stature very common for his people.
Staring up at her with solemn features, he said, “¿Donde esta mi mama?”
In her surprise Willa’s heart threatened to come bounding from her chest, but she forced herself to smile, doing her best to convert a reply from English to Portuguese to Spanish, saying, “No sé, pero vamos a encontrar ella. ¿Esta bien?”
She set out with the child in search of his lost mother, who was soon found on the next aisle over, picking out a loaf of bread.
The woman seemed surprised to hear her language spoken in that northern place. Apparently a migrant farm worker with much Mayan blood, possibly in the country illegally, she paused suspiciously before offering hesitant thanks for this kindness. She then took the boy by his hand and led him away, sternly promising that he would suffer a terrible fate if he did such a thing again, perhaps even including the prohibition of candy.
Watching them go, the mother and child so short and broad and sturdy and brown, Willa Newdale had a sudden, awful memory. She thought of The People, and their own source of sustenance, their sea-like verdant jungle flowing from horizon to horizon, bountiful or barren as the good Lord willed. She remembered her last contact with them, her own terrible fate, walking through the undergrowth with two others from the States, and sudden thuds, gentle moans, the others down and bleeding by the path, impaled on sharpened sticks. She remembered watching as the light went from their eyes. She remembered forgetting to flee, standing over them as if alone, and turning to find Waytee, old Waytee, there from out of nowhere less than half a spear away. She remembered looking at his eyes, twin holes of perfect black in a wrinkled fleshly frame, an enigma, and she with empty hands and without words to beg for life.
Willa watched the Indian woman lead her small son to the cash register, and she looked away and did her best to turn her thoughts to work.
Soon enough, the time came to leave. She took a loaf of bread from the shelves for herself, and a box of cereal and a quart of milk, and stood behind a customer in line at the single cash register, examining the small array of sundries on the impulse purchase rack—batteries and rubber bands and nail clippers and the National Enquirer and Better Homes and Gardens. She did not see many of the other magazines one so often found in grocery stores, the ones with covers showing women in low-cut dresses or bikinis. She assumed this was because of the Mennonites. She found it comforting. It implied a distance from the outside world, a distance that did not truly exist, of course, but it was nice to pretend.
After paying cash (credit cards were so easily traced) she donned her coat and packed her purchases into her large purse and slipped the strap over her shoulder and emerged from the small store onto the sidewalk. The late April air was brisk but not uncomfortable compared to Maine. She set out along the one commercial street in Trask, heading west. A pair of teenaged girls passed by on Rollerblades, gliding down the center of the empty street, holding hands, wearing down vests over loose-fitting cotton dresses with long sleeves and hems down to their ankles, the fabric flowing back behind, their hair drawn up in severe buns and covered by little white doily-looking things. Willa smiled at the contrast between the girls’ old-fashioned apparel and their modern in-line skates.
Two blocks later the one-story brick businesses gave way to wooden houses. After three more blocks the sidewalk petered out and she continued along the ragged edge of a gravel road. She soon reached the outer limits of the tiny town, and her apartment in one of three buildings clustered around a treeless asphalt parking lot. Knee-high winter wheat stretched away from the apartments for as far as she could see, countless lush green rows beneath a feverish pink and violet sky.
Willa checked the parking lot and saw no unfamiliar vehicles, having memorized all of her neighbors’ cars and trucks within the first two days. Approaching her apartment she noted the position of the
window blinds, exactly as she left them. She paused at her door to reach into her purse. She felt around the small handgun and found her key and entered. With her fingers on the weapon in her purse, she traversed the single room that served for cooking, dining, and living and went through the door to the one small bedroom. It was clear. She checked the bathroom and slid the rolling closet door aside. When she knew that it was safe she took off her coat and hung it up and pulled the groceries from her purse and carried them back into the front room where she put the milk in the refrigerator, and the bread and cereal in a cabinet. She removed a packaged dinner from the freezer and peeled back the cellophane cover and placed it in the oven. She set the oven to four-hundred degrees, checked the time on her wristwatch, and went to the bathroom to take a shower. Fifteen minutes later, wrapped in a plaid flannel robe with her newly colored hair toweled off but still moist, she sat down to eat.
The apartment had come furnished with a threadbare sofa, a plastic laminate dining table with tubular steel legs, four mismatched chairs, and a low table beside the sofa bearing a ceramic light fixture with a battered avocado-colored shade. Several weeks ago, after cashing her first paycheck at the grocery store where she worked, she had purchased a tiny black-and-white television set and a pair of folding metal tables: one for the television and the other for her dinner. Now she sat on the sofa watching the evening news, the wrinkles of her face sketched in shadow by the television’s pale blue glow.
Everything around the world was normal—bombs in the Middle East, unemployment down, stocks up, motion-picture actors pregnant out of wedlock, politicians at each other’s throats—and then the handsome anchorman said, “We move to our ongoing coverage of a remarkable story out of Milwaukee, where Julia Summers reports on what may well be the medical breakthrough of the century. Julia?”
The image on the television changed. A woman wearing a conservative blouse and dark suit coat spoke directly to the camera. “Connor, the building behind me is the global headquarters for Hanks Pharmaceuticals Corporation, one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers. Yesterday, a high-level source within the Hanks organization revealed that they intend to develop, manufacture, and distribute what he claims is an outright cure for alcoholism.”
Alone in the empty apartment, the old woman let her fork drop to the folding tray. She slumped back against the sofa as the television showed an interview with a well-dressed man with a perfect haircut, tanned complexion, and the varicose nose of a longtime drinker. The man said he had come forward because he could not remain silent while his employer “planned to profit from the misery of millions.”
An internal memo flashed onto the screen, bearing the Hanks Pharmaceuticals letterhead with the title Confidential. One highlighted line on the memo read, A price per unit of $5,000 will be both necessary and viable, given the single-dosage product application and the level of demand.
The television reporter said the actual release of the medicine was several years away, but Willa barely noticed. She thought about the men and women she had left behind, paupers every one of them. She thought about the cots and bunk beds filled with them, the empty stomachs and the empty eyes of them, the utter hopelessness of them. Five thousand dollars might as well have been a billion to them.
Willa thought about the months down in the jungle, the violence, gore, the shouted threats she knew were based in fact—``there is no place to hide; we won’t stop looking; no matter where you go, we’ll find you”—and her blind flight and desperate furtiveness, five years of hiding here and there around two continents, and two more years in Dublin, waiting, hoping for the missionary’s return.
She thought about the moment when he had come at last, and the moment when she saw his hopeless look in the mirror and knew her wait had been in vain, for how could he possess the secret she required when he himself remained in desperate need of it? She thought about those next few days and nights, going through the motions even though she could no longer avoid her self-delusion, pretending there had been good reason for delay, withholding on a noble pretense when the truth was more mundane: she had always been a coward.
It had taken a dead look in a mirror and a dead man on the laundry floor to finally make her face that fact, and even then she had equivocated, putting everything into a passing church collection basket, trusting far too freely in the hands of fate. She should have gone to the authorities. Every day of the last seven years had been another opportunity, and every day another failure of her faith. Then had come the final chance, when all the other hopeless ones had come to force it out of him and she had thought to say, “It’s me you want.” But still she had held back, let him go, fleeing yet again, saving herself . . . for what?
She looked around her hiding place, saw the cast-off furniture, the empty walls, the rectangular eye of her shallow electric companion glowing on the dinner tray, and Willa knew her fundamental problem had not changed: her enemy would still kill to keep his secret and he would not stop looking, no matter where she went. Indeed, it was all the more so now. The only change was in the vanished pretext for her silence. Those who could afford the price would be set free; all the others would go down to death so that she could keep her life. Until now there had always been another possibility, a justification for delay—waiting for the missionary, the second portion of the secret, and as she waited, a hope some other means might come. But a five thousand dollar price on sobriety had brought the end of all excuses. It was to be her life or a million others; the choice was unavoidable. She could perhaps survive for ten or even twenty years, hiding in slums and backwater towns before dying of old age in the company of strangers. But she could no longer pretend the cost was hers alone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RILEY DROPPED AN ANONYMOUS CASHIER’S CHECK for one hundred thousand dollars in the collection basket. It was the fifth time he had done so in the ten weeks since Dylan closed the deal. They said it was better to give than to receive, but he felt no joy in the experience, having stolen it in the first place. To get around that scruple Riley sometimes told himself that every offering was originally a gift from God anyway, and if all anybody ever did was give back what the Lord had given, was he any different?
Unfortunately, that logic wasn’t doing any good. According to Riley’s banker in New York, Henry had not cashed a single check so far—more than half a million dollars’ worth of paper in the preacher’s drawer or somewhere, unaccepted—so apparently not all offerings were the same. Maybe after he had given God an even million they would be square. Maybe it would take ten. Or maybe there wasn’t enough money in the world.
Pushing his new eyeglasses higher on his nose, Riley decided not to think about it anymore. He settled in to listen to the sermon as Pastor Henry approached the podium. Thirty minutes later, the lady to his left passed him the Communion tray. It felt strangely heavy in his hands. He stared down at the concentric circles of plastic thimbles, red wine in the center, grape juice around the outside. At least that was the usual way they arranged the blood of Christ. But what if someone made a mistake? What if the wine was on the outside this time? Riley thought about the note he had stolen from the offering basket.
. . . if they ever drink again, the urge will return stronger than ever.
Staring at the juice and wine, Riley remembered the chief of police outside the tent at Teal Pond, asking Hope to explain the Mercedes. He remembered Bree walking away when he couldn’t bring himself to give advice about her boyfriend. He remembered the powder he had piled on a plastic tray at Henry’s Drug Store, the surprising weight remaining even after he was cured, pressing him to poison those who needed healing most. He thought of Dylan Delaney entering Hope’s kitchen without knocking. He thought of his old friend Brice’s last sensation, the caustic taste of rubbing alcohol granting sweet oblivion. And Riley saw the start of everything, the equatorial sunlight slanting through pollen-laden air to illuminate a clearing filled with corpses, and in his hands he saw the multicolored stained-glass
radiance reflected in a dozen little circles on the tray, every color in the universe absorbed into monotonous blood red, everything the same no matter what he did, and suddenly he did not care which one he drank.
Riley closed his eyes, picked a random thimble, and tossed the liquid down.
He set the tray onto the pew beside him and stood and walked out of the church alone, descending the tall steps and crossing town on foot to his garage apartment, where he lay down to take a Sunday nap with the unsatisfying taste of grape juice in his mouth.
The next morning he showered and shaved and dressed himself and went to work the lunch shift at Sadie’s Downtown Diner, where he overheard a couple of the local fellas talking. The men weren’t making any secret of their conversation in the little dining room, so Riley couldn’t help but overhear their comments about Hope. The fella doing most of the talking was named Jim something. He wore a plaid wool cap with earflaps, even though the temperature outside was finally up into the sixties now that it was May. Jim had recognized Riley when he first started working at the diner a few months ago, said he knew him from his days before in Dublin, remembered he had left for Brazil as a missionary and then came back to teach at Bowditch for a little while. The man had asked a few embarrassing questions about the time since then—”where ya been, what ya been doin’”—but Riley had grown used to lying about that.
The Cure Page 16