by Grant, Ann
But I couldn’t help myself and eventually I met Ben’s eyes. His face gazed out from the page, clear-eyed, intelligent, warm. My Ben, my best friend, my love, the man I’d planned to marry. The memory of that nightmare night gripped me. I couldn’t finish the article and began to sob. Then I screamed and threw the couch cushions across the room.
Chapter 10
“Here’s the black dress,” I told Karin that afternoon. “I forgot to pick it up from the cleaners. And here’s the watch.” I handed her the dress in a dry cleaning bag and put the watch on the coffee table.
Karin broke into a smile. “Oh, wow, thanks. I love this dress. It’s perfect for the photo.” Her gold earrings matched her gold ballet slippers. Karin and I were twins, but she’d inherited every single strand of decorating DNA.
“You can keep it, too. I don’t want it anymore.”
“You’re sure? It’s beautiful.” She lifted the dress out of the plastic bag. “You don’t want this? I mean, it’s gorgeous and it has a jacket and everything.”
“I’m tired of it.” The dress was bringing the whole funeral back, so I took the watch out of the box to keep my face from giving me away. “Look at this. They did a good job on the inscription.”
“Nice.” Her eyes grew huge. “Oh, my God, what happened to your hands?”
I pulled the gloves down over my raw wrists. “Some bleach. I had a reaction.”
“Oh, my God, and you’re trying to cover them up.” She gingerly lifted one of my gloves and cringed. “Bleach did that? Amy, they look horrible.”
“I know. They’re awful. I had an allergic reaction.” I tugged the glove down.
“Does it hurt?” Her eyes were full of pity.
“Yeah, a little bit, but they’re okay. They’ll clear up.”
That was it. I couldn’t take the way she was looking at me and so I left. The sharp ache in my hands was really bothering me by the time I started up the Camaro. The ache had changed over the last hour to a pressure that ran through my bones and up my fingers until even my nails hurt. I peeled off the gloves before I swung into the street. My wrists looked about the same, bruised and purple, but my hands seemed swollen now, unless I was imagining it.
Five miles down the Fairfield Road I had a terrible thought. What if the probe was poisoning me?
I made a U-turn and headed to the Walmart on the far end of Gettysburg. Rain hit the windshield. I’d just pulled into the parking lot when the storm broke wide open and pounded across the asphalt.
Covering my face, I ran for the doors and pushed through the sea of shoppers to the crowded pharmacy aisles. An antibiotic cream might work, or a cream with aspirin, or even a burn ointment. I grabbed a box of homeopathic drawing salve for splinters, boils, and insect stings. Maybe it would take the swelling down. I could try them one by one.
Loaded down with tubes and boxes, I cut across the aisle and almost collided with an old man in denim overalls who smelled like cough medicine and greasy hair ointment.
My heart thudded.
It was him. The farmer from the photo in the paper. My gaze glommed onto the gouge in the side of his skull. The monstrous dent started behind his left ear, rose to the crown of his head, and looked like a huge tire had rolled over his face and kept on going, taking half his brains with it. The farmer’s dull eyes met mine.
“You’re Joe Goode,” I blurted.
“That’d be me,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“My boyfriend was on his way to interview you when he had the car accident.”
He focused on me as if seeing me for the first time, and raised an elephant-hide finger. “I seen that light come at him.”
My heart almost stopped. “What’re you talking about?”
“I seen it come across the ground.”
“You seen nothing,” snapped a broad-bodied woman in a blue wool coat who appeared out of nowhere with a pharmacy bag in her hand. She had to be his wife. They had the same worn out faces. She shoved her big body between Joe Goode and me, but the old man managed to grab my sleeve.
“I seen it come at him,” he said again.
“You seen nothing.” She tried to pry his hand off my arm.
“I seen it, and I heard them whispers in the pasture.”
“And shit and two is eight and a fart’s a fraction.” The woman glared at me. “He don’t want to talk to you.”
“I heard them whispering at me.”
“We’re not standing here all day talking nonsense.” She dragged him out of the pharmacy into the crowd at the cash registers. Stunned, I went after them, but in nothing flat I’d lost them and turned in a complete circle. Where did they go?
Whispers. The old man had heard them on his own land.
I dumped my stuff, ran outside, and stood in the rain, trying to spot the farmer and his wife in the lot. A red pickup truck peeled out toward York Road. When it swung toward the light, I saw them in the front seat. I’d never catch them. The signal changed and they were gone.
Numb, I ran in the store, bought the creams and salves, and hurried to the Camaro, soaked from head to foot, my mood as black as the sky.
The police hadn’t said anything about a light. They told me that Ben went off the road and died when the car caught on fire. His body was so badly burned they identified him by his dental records. The terrible phone call from Ben’s editor came back to me, the quake in his voice, the late hour, the faint scream of the ambulance I hadn’t placed, not knowing that Ben was dying in a ditch.
A light coming at him. A light from where? From the Grasslands. Ben had died in front of the construction site.
* * *
Trying to hold myself together, I sped out of the lot and drove across town to a florist on Washington Street, where I bought flowers for Ben’s grave. They wouldn’t last long in the rain, but I wanted him to have fresh flowers.
I wound through the streets to St. Thomas Aquinas, a stone church that had stood on the edge of the battlefield long before the Civil War. The townspeople had used most of the churches as makeshift hospitals during the war and St. Thomas had been in the thick of the action. A plaque on the sidewalk in front of the church described how the floor had run red with blood where the wounded lay between the pews.
I pulled the heavy door open and walked to a small chapel in the corner. No trace of the trauma from the war remained. The place had a timeless, hushed atmosphere that brought me a small measure of peace every time I came there.
Dozens of candles flickered in front of a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I dropped three dollars in the donation box, lit a candle for Ben, and said a silent prayer. Ben had been a Catholic, the religion he was born into, so every week I lit a candle in his memory. I’m a lapsed Buddhist, my family’s religion, which threw up roadblocks for a wedding in the Catholic Church, but we were working through it.
I left the church, unlatched the wrought iron gate to the cemetery, and made my way to his grave. The rain pounded against my face as I pushed the flower holder into the soft earth. When I stood up, I touched the gravestone where the rain streamed over the letters in his name.
“Something’s happening to me,” I wept. “My hands are changing. I wish I could talk to you.”
The rain mingled with my salty tears. What would Ben have done in my shoes? He was a journalist. He would have returned to the island to search for a name, a sign, anything to identify the place. He would have gone after John Savenue regardless of the personal consequences.
But Ben wasn’t on earth anymore. I was on my own.
I wiped the rain off my face, ran to the Camaro, and decided to look for Luna’s leash and collar to take my mind off my misery. The rain was washing the snow away, so I should be able to see them on the ground. I peeled out of town toward the battlefield. The houses and traffic gave way to miles of woods and open fields.
After a few miles, my cell phone rang. I grabbed it off the seat.
“Amy, it’s me,” Mike said, sounding like he had a b
ig announcement.
I braced myself for more hovering. “What’s up?”
“Well, you know, I want to apologize if I was in your face.”
“Oh, no, you weren’t.”
“I was just worried about you.”
“It’s okay, I understand.”
“How are your wrists?”
I lifted my sweatshirt sleeves and stared at my purple wrists and swollen hands. They actually looked like they were bulging, or maybe it was just the daylight. Horrified, I slipped the sleeves down.
“They’re fine,” I lied.
“I’ve got something for you, a present.”
My insides jolted. “That’s nice of you, but I don’t need a present.”
“It would mean a lot to me,” he said, sounding disappointed. “You’ve been down and I thought it would cheer you up.”
“Oh.” I crossed the Emmitsburg Road and entered the battlefield again. The woods deepened. “Well, sure, that’s sweet of you. The thing is I’m not at home right now. Just give me an hour, okay?”
I put the phone down and drove on toward Devil’s Den. A present. What did that mean?
The parking lot was empty, which I’d expected on a stormy winter day. I steered the Camaro past the grim boulders, up the winding road to the top of the hill, past the lone oak, and through the woods. I didn’t want to pull off and end up trapped in the mud, so I parked the Camaro on the road just before the pavement took a sharp right turn. The road was one way, so anybody coming after me would see the car.
No umbrella. I stuffed the keys in my jeans and sprinted under the trees.
The rain had turned the field we’d crossed earlier into a swamp. I waded out, balancing on rocks, didn’t see anything, and decided to climb the boulder strewn hillside. I couldn’t remember exactly where Luna had broken free or where we’d caught her. Everything looked different in the rain. Maybe this whole thing would turn out to be a complete waste of time, but I was going to give it my best shot.
The rain struck my face and pelted the trees as I scrambled over the rocks. No red in sight. The leash and collar had to be somewhere.
I thought I might be able to spot them if I climbed high enough, so I scaled a mossy embankment, lost my footing at first, and made it to the top, where I was shocked to see a man on the other side.
Chapter 11
I held my breath. He was only about fifteen feet away, but he didn’t see me. The man wore a hooded olive green rain slicker and was bending over in the weeds, collecting something. Feathers. What the hell was he doing collecting feathers in a freaking rainstorm?
He put the feathers in a canvas bag, but when he opened it I could see it was full of more feathers and something else, old bones and a scrap of fur, maybe a dead animal that a car had flattened on the road up to the hill. Disgusting.
I’d crossed paths with a nut.
He was also clutching something red.
Luna’s collar and leash.
Fear swept through me. I wasn’t going to argue with a wacko in a deserted place. The collar wasn’t worth it. I was going to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. I inched back and was about to slide off the embankment into the brambles when the man looked up.
It was John Savenue. He stared at me. He looked the same, blond hair and good-looking face, the same cold taunting eyes.
It took all my strength to break away from his stare, scramble down the embankment, and run through the underbrush toward the car. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough. The mud was too thick. It sucked at my boots. Maybe he had a weapon like the hunter on the island and at any moment I would hear a thock that would take off half my head. I slipped in the mud, wrenched my boot out with both hands, and struggled across the soggy ground.
The field was too long. I wasn’t going to make it.
I stumbled over the stone wall by the woods, banged my knee, ducked under the low branches, and looked back. John Savenue had climbed down the embankment. He’d thrown the canvas bag full of dead stuff over his shoulder and was lurching over the ground.
He was coming after me and closing the gap.
I made it to the road. No remote door opener for the classic car. With a gasp, I struggled uphill, reached the Camaro, dug in my pocket for the keys, dropped them on the pavement like an idiot, and scooped them up with the key ring dripping wet and plastered with leaves.
The key wouldn’t fit. It was upside down.
John Savenue reached the road. He was racing up the hill now. Shaking, I managed to climb into the car and slam and lock the doors seconds before he caught up with me.
The storm pummeled the car. He stood right outside my window with his dead eyes and mocking smile while the rain ran down his slicker. “You have something that belongs to me,” he said through the glass.
“I don’t have anything of yours,” I yelled and tried to start the ignition.
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t, and you have my dog’s collar.”
He dangled the leash and collar in the air with a six-fingered hand. “Here, you little bitch. Just step out of the car and take them.”
I slammed my boot on the gas and took off up the hill. The road twisted. My heart was pounding so fast I thought I might black out. The bastard didn’t have a car, at least not nearby, but I kept my eyes glued to the rearview mirror until I reached the Emmitsburg Road, half-expecting to see him flying after me like a ghoul.
* * *
Still looking over my shoulder, I sped into Professor Wu’s driveway, put the Camaro in the garage, and left the Prius out. Once I made it into the house, I checked the doors and changed into dry jeans and a black sweater.
Picking up bones and feathers and dead animals in the rain. An absolute psycho.
Out of nowhere the doorbell rang. My blood froze. I crept to a window that overlooked the front of the house and held my breath. Mike. I’d forgotten all about him. Shaking my head, I spread some of the medicine I’d just bought over my ugly wrists and hid my hands in a pair of gloves.
“Hey, Amy,” he said when I opened the door. He had two tall cups of coffee and a bag of pastries. Turkish coffee, my favorite, from July Thunder. “I picked up some coffee for us and some cranberry scones.”
“Smells wonderful. What do I owe you?”
He shook his head. “This is on me.”
“That’s a nice present.”
“No, I have something else for you.”
“Let me get my purse then. You paid last time.”
“No, no, this is on me.”
“Well, okay, but no more,” I told him. We took the scones and coffee into the living room. The storm made the house so gloomy that I drew the drapes and turned on the lamps.
“Here’s my little gift.” Mike handed me a small rectangular package wrapped in silver paper with a thin silver ribbon. Alarm bells went off. The package was the size of a jewelry box.
“Mike, I don’t need a gift.”
An eager tenderness filled his face. “It’s just something I want you to have. Go ahead. Open it.”
Standing there under his gaze, I struggled in my gloves to unwrap a small box covered with navy blue cloth. I was right. It was a jewelry box. A pearl necklace on a thin gold chain lay inside on a bed of white silk. The single pearl gleamed with a soft luster.
“It’s beautiful.” My uneasiness quadrupled. The necklace had to be an expensive antique. “I don’t think I’m the right person for this. I don’t wear jewelry.”
“Well, I want you to have it. There might be someplace you can wear it. Try it on.”
I took the necklace out. “I don’t know, Mike.”
“Here, let me help you.” He fumbled with the clasp, lifted my long hair, put the necklace around my throat, and smoothed my hair over my shoulders. “You have such beautiful hair.”
More alarm bells went off, but I walked over to a small wall mirror and stared at the necklace. It was the kind of delicate jewelry an older woman might wear to an imp
ortant dinner. Not exactly my style.
“Is it an heirloom?” I asked.
That same eager tenderness passed across his face. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
“Oh.” His grandmother. And then I got it. I felt so stupid because I hadn’t seen it until now. Mike was in love with me. The glances, the hovering, the way he always paid for everything, and now a precious family heirloom. I’d been so grief stricken about Ben and so caught up with the prisoner that I hadn’t paid much attention to the way Mike was always looking at me.
He came closer and kissed me on the mouth before I realized what he was doing. Seconds later, he pressed himself against me, moving his hands over my shoulders and down my arms, pulling me against him. I could feel his hard muscles and his warmth and breathed in his masculine scent.
“No, stop it,” I told him, wrestling away. “I can’t do this.”
He looked aghast. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
I moved back, shaking with anger. “Look, I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t. Get that through your head, okay? Ben just died and I can’t even think about anybody else. I can’t. I don’t know what you think I am.” I took the necklace off. “And I absolutely can’t accept this.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Amy. I want you to have the necklace. It’s a gift.”
“No, I can’t keep this thing.” I put the necklace in his hand.
He reached for his coat with a troubled face and went to the door. I thought he was going to leave without saying a word, but he turned around. I knew he was searching for something to make things right. “I’ll always be here if you ever need anything.”
“Mike, you need to go.” When I shut the door I could still smell his scent and feel his hands on my sweater.