by Jen Blood
I headed for the door, intent on leaving the Paysons behind. Just as I was reaching for the doorknob, my flashlight beam bounced off something beside the dresser. Juarez stood by as I went to investigate.
Half-buried in dust and grime, almost hidden from view behind the old bureau, was a rosary. The crucifix was made of cut glass, the beads carved from what I suspected was bone.
“Why would someone running a Pentecostal church have a Catholic rosary?” Juarez asked, looking over my shoulder
I examined the pendant carefully, then paused when my fingers stumbled over letters etched into the glass. I shined my flashlight on the area. “RW,” I said, half to myself.
“Payson’s wife’s name was Mae, wasn’t it?” Jaurez asked.
I nodded.
“So, who was RW?” he pressed.
I shook my head. The motion made my headache worse, and the surroundings weren’t doing much for my mood. The kicker, of course, was the dawning realization that someone had tried to kill me. Okay—maybe kill was too strong a word. If my attacker had really wanted me dead, he sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten much resistance from me, based on how ineffectual I’d been at fighting him off. But he had wanted me to go home, and he’d clearly wanted me to take his recommendation seriously.
I didn’t know who RW was. I thought of the lamb’s body still in my father’s old bedroom, and the puddle of vomit in the hallway that I had yet to clean up. It wasn’t even noon yet, and the whole world had turned upside down.
Juarez touched my shoulder. “Erin?”
I nodded. Standing was a monumental act of will. “Yeah. I don’t know—I don’t have a clue who RW was. I don’t have any more answers than you do, at this point.”
His hand remained at my shoulder. It was warm and solid, and after a moment it migrated to the back of my neck and his thumb brushed against my nape, his fingers kneading the tense muscles there. I closed my eyes.
“Let’s go back to the mainland,” he said. “You should rest.”
For once, I didn’t argue.
◊◊◊◊◊
It was still raining when Juarez and I got back home that afternoon, a very bedraggled Einstein following in our wake. Diggs was still at work, for which I was grateful. Juarez made lunch while I popped a few Tylenol and avoided every mirror in the house. The chicken was sautéing and I was at the table contemplating my mysterious rosary when Juarez sat down beside me. He inched his chair closer to mine.
“How’s your head?”
“I’m all right.”
He cupped my cheek in his hand. It was cool and callused. After a second’s hesitation, I leaned into his touch.
“I’m glad you called me,” he said.
“I’m glad you came out.”
He dropped his hand, but didn’t move any further away. “Of course. But I still think we need to tell someone—report what happened. You could have been killed. And whoever did this is still out there somewhere.”
“Not yet—I don’t want cops swarming the island. I probably just surprised some squatter. If he’d wanted to do more damage, he could have. I’m fine.” I couldn’t tell whether he bought the story or not.
“I think Diggs is right about this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“He told you that?”
“We had a talk the other day. He’s just worried about you.” He stopped. We’d managed to go all this time with neither of us mentioning the kiss he’d walked in on the night before, or why I’d called him instead of Diggs this morning. I had a feeling that streak was about to end, though.
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I said.
“I know that.”
Well, that was certainly easier than I’d expected.
“I spoke with Diggs this morning—he said the same thing,” Juarez said.
“That there’s nothing going on,” I repeated. It was fine for me to say it, but I felt inexplicably annoyed that Diggs was singing the same tune.
“It’s not my business,” he said. “He’s concerned—we can leave it at that.” His gaze fell back to the rosary in my hand. Apparently, that conversation was over.
“May I see it?”
I handed him the rosary.
“It’s well made,” he noted. “And old, I suspect. Do you remember anyone in the church with those initials?”
“I’ll have to go back over the roster of members.”
“I would have thought you’d have it memorized by now. No one comes to mind? Rachel, Raymond, Randall. Rebecca?”
I looked at him. His proximity was suddenly anything but comforting, and the intensity in his eyes was downright unsettling. I eased my chair backward.
“My head’s not quite where it should be,” I said. “Otherwise, I’m sure I’d remember.”
He got up to tend the chicken and laid the rosary back on the table. I stood.
“I’m sorry—it turns out I’m not feeling quite as well as I’d thought. I think I’m just gonna take a shower and try to get a little sleep.”
I took Einstein—who wasn’t at all keen on leaving the chicken behind—and we retired to our room. When I was safely inside, I realized that my heart was beating too fast yet again. Another adrenaline surge like the ones I’d experienced today and I was likely to go into overdrive. Or sink into catatonia. I locked my bedroom door, my fingers curled around the rosary—the latest piece in a puzzle I was beginning to doubt I’d even survive to solve.
August 10, 1990
The sun is a distant white haze, the field around thick with blades of tall grass gone yellow from the drought. Rebecca revels in the silence. The buzz of bees at her ankles, the sweetness of pine and sea salt on the wind, the call of island birds basking in the warmth of their summer home.
There was never peace with her husband, but there was immeasurable peace without him. Early mornings after Joe would leave for the boat, before Zion awoke, Rebecca would be alone. She would check on her son first, watching his chest rise and fall. Then, she would go down to the water and listen to the surf break over the granite shoreline. The constant tension of a warring homefront made those reprieves more than cathartic—they were like a lungful of air before she was pulled under once more.
It is early afternoon, and Rebecca feels she has earned a few moments of solitude. Seated on a boulder in a thicket of pine and spruce, she hears the crack of a dead tree limb underfoot. She knows before he enters her hiding place exactly who it is. Whispering through the silence, Rebecca looks up to meet Matt’s eye.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
Despite the fact that he is now the constable of Littlehope, Matt Perkins looks the way he always has to her: too fragile, slightly off-center, his blue eyes watching the world with the suspicion and naked hope of a beaten dog.
“I could say the same. I came to get you.”
She shakes her head. “I’m staying, Matt.”
“The hell you are. Get Zion—I’ll take you someplace safe.”
“Will you, now?”
He takes another step toward her. Rebecca notes for the first time that he’s wearing his uniform. She wonders if he is armed. This might be cause for concern in anyone else, but Matt isn’t anyone else. He’s no one. The boy she loved grown to the only man she trusts. It doesn’t matter, though; she knows his limitations.
“He’ll find us. You know that,” she says.
“He’ll find you here, too.”
“Isaac can keep us safe.” The way you can’t. She doesn’t say the words, but she knows he hears them nonetheless.
“It isn’t good for Zion. You don’t know anything about Isaac Payson.”
“I know he wouldn’t hurt my son, and I know that he wouldn’t hurt me. I know that he’s been chosen.”
Matt steps in closer. She can tell that he hasn’t been sleeping. The whites of his eyes shine like glass, splintered with red veins. She remembers the same look when he used to sneak into her room at the home late at ni
ght, shaking from the latest nightmare. Pleading to stay with her.
“I’ve been reading about this, Becca. Talking to experts. People die in these kinds of places.”
He stops. An instant later, Rebecca hears the rustle of leaves behind them. She turns, following Matt’s gaze, to find Adam approaching. It’s plain by the way he smiles at them both that he’s heard at least a portion of their conversation.
“Good morning, Rebecca. Matt.”
Matt nods, immediately assuming his role. For a man as weak, as tremblingly fallible as Rebecca knows Matt Perkins to be, he is still one of the best actors she’s ever known. He smiles, and it appears entirely sincere.
“Nice to see you, Adam.”
The men study one another. The sun bears down on Rebecca’s back until she feels a trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades.
“How’s everything on the mainland?” Adam asks.
“Fine. Couple of bar fights over at the Shanty. Kat patched everybody up and they were laughing it up by the end of the night.” He keeps his eye on Adam. “Your girl was with her. Doesn’t seem like the best way to raise a little one—patching up bloody fishermen, Erin playing pinball ‘til closing while her mum drinks her weight in whiskey and leaves with whoever’s sober enough to get ‘em home in one piece.”
The words strike their mark, as intended. A flicker of pain crosses Adam’s face; she sees Matt’s satisfaction in the way his arms hang loose at his side, a smile that’s very nearly a sneer at the corner of his lips. He is not a cruel man—not as cruel as Joe, at any rate. He can be mean, though. She has seen him take pleasure in another’s suffering more than once, always surprised to see the trait in one who has only shown her kind words and a gentle hand.
“Katherine has her problems, but she loves our daughter,” Adam says. “She’s a good mother.” He doesn’t sound convinced.
“It’s better than being out here, I guess. An island out in the middle of nowhere’s no place to raise a child.” Matt looks at Rebecca meaningfully. She holds his eye until he looks away, as though ashamed of his behavior.
“There’s nowhere safer than here for most children. You should speak to some of the young people raised on the island, Constable. Self-assured, well-adjusted, healthy. At peace.”
“And yet, you toss your little one to the wolves on the mainland. Why is that, Adam?”
Rebecca waits for his answer, having considered the question herself. The man looks lost for a moment. When he comes to, he nods up the path toward the house.
“Isaac is at the greenhouse, Constable, if you’d like to see him. I’m sure he’d be happy if you joined us for lunch.”
Rebecca sees the annoyance on Matt’s face before he can hide it. He clears his throat; looks over his shoulder.
“No, I should get back—I just came to see Becca. Just wanted to make sure everything’s okay out here.”
“Everything’s fine,” Adam says. His façade of peaceful self-assurance has been restored. “She and Zion fit in very well.”
Despite his words, Matt makes no move to go. Adam likewise remains where he is. It’s a staring contest between two little boys, but Adam doesn’t seem shaken by the competition. The smile on his face is less the easy warmth of an apostle, more the sleeping fire of an archangel. He does not budge. Matt looks away first. For a moment, Rebecca feels her old friend’s defeat as though it were her own, and is disappointed to find a tiny stone of hatred for Adam beginning to form somewhere deep.
She considers asking Adam to leave them, but the look on his face changes her mind. Though she knows he would never lay a hand on her physically, he is still the closest person to Isaac. She can’t risk going against a man with the power to turn the Reverend from her. The realization that she is once again caught between warring men, each intent on deciding her future, makes the tiny, hateful stone inside begin to grow.
For his part, Adam seems content with the way the conversation has gone. He straightens, ignoring Matt for a moment to address Rebecca. “When you’re through, Isaac would like to see you in the garden.”
He nods casually at Matt, and finally leaves them. Matt turns to her once he’s out of sight. The mask has vanished, fury and terror mixed in his bloodshot eyes.
“See that? They’re watching you. You’re not safe here—you have to make a choice.”
She shakes her head, turning her back on him in favor of the path toward Isaac. “That’s where you’re wrong. You were always the one with the choices. I had Joe; now God has sent me Isaac. There is no choice for me—there never has been.”
She leaves him behind. As she walks away, she feels each blade of dead grass strike with razor sharp precision at her bare ankles. She takes one last, deep breath and lets the silence work its magic before she rejoins the church.
Chapter Fourteen
Understandably enough, sleep didn’t come easy after the attack. I dozed on and off, but otherwise stayed up writing for most of the day and a good part of the night. When Diggs knocked softly on my door at a little after one a.m., I chose the coward’s way rather than facing him and pretended I was sleeping.
By the time I actually did fall asleep, night had given way to the soft edges of a gray dawn. I dreamed of masked men and burning buildings, my father at the center of everything, and when I woke two hours later, my nerves were strung tight. Diggs was already gone for the day, and Juarez was likewise not in attendance. My right eye was swollen and purple, my bottom lip looked like a Botox injection gone horribly awry, and my body felt like I’d been run over—twice –and then wrung out bone by bone.
Since ‘pretty’ wasn’t an adjective I expected anyone would be using to describe me anytime soon, I decided to get on with my day with the lofty goal of not scaring the crap out of the neighborhood kids. I put on jeans and t-shirt, and stole an old Nick Cave sweatshirt and a black baseball hat from Diggs’ closet. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and added the requisite sunglasses, made myself coffee and toast, and then paused when I found a note from Diggs on the fridge.
Thought you’d want to know: your buddy Noel Hammond’s back in town. Can we talk? I’ve made time tonight if you will. Love, D
I groaned. While it wasn’t likely I would have been able to hide from Diggs until the swelling had gone down and the bruises had faded, I’d been prepared to give it the old college try. The news about Hammond being back in town was encouraging, though. I decided to lay aside my wounded pride after the disastrous kiss-that-wasn’t the other night, and headed for the door as I hit speed dial on my cell.
Diggs answered on the second ring.
“So you are speaking to me,” he said.
“Looks like. Thanks for the heads up on Hammond—I’m headed over there now.”
“And we can talk tonight?”
Outside Diggs’ front door, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. I waited while Einstein christened a nearby rosebush.
“We can, but…Diggs, it’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal—I just wanted to say I was sorry.”
“For kissing me.”
There was a breath’s length of a pause on the line. “Well…Yeah, for that.”
“Except I was the one who kissed you. So—no harm, no foul. It was just a kiss, Diggs. Don’t tell me all this time in the sticks has turned you into a blushing virgin.”
He laughed, but I could tell he was still freaked out. “No, not yet. Give it a little time, though. I just…” He sighed. “You’re important to me, Sol. And I know how much you have going on right now. Something in your life should be uncomplicated, you know?”
“And you want to be that something,” I said.
“No one else seems to be volunteering.”
He didn’t mention Juarez, but the implication was clear. “Maybe we could go out to dinner tonight?” I asked, since it didn’t appear there was a way around it. “Just you and me. I need to run some things by you.”
That would give me an entire day to fig
ure out how to tell him I’d been beaten to a pulp by a phantom assailant, and had called a virtual stranger instead of him to come save my ass.
“Eight o’clock at the Shanty okay with you?”
The Shanty was a little lobster shack-slash-bar on the water. It was long on history, short on class, and used to make the best chili fries this side of heaven. It seemed a fitting place for Diggs and me to renew our vows of quasi-chastity and enduring friendship.
“I’ll see you then.”
I disconnected first, clipped Einstein’s leash to his collar, and we were off once more.
I stopped at Wallace’s General Store for gas, and cursed the lack of technology that meant I’d have to go inside and face the cruel world rather than revel in the anonymity of a quick-and-dirty debit card swipe. It was ten o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning, which meant the store was packed. I stood in line with my eyes focused on the wooden floorboards, hoping no one would notice that I looked like an embittered battered wife in a Lifetime Movie of the Week.
That hope was shot to hell when I heard someone clear their throat behind me. I was next up in line at the cash register, a twenty dollar bill already in hand. When I didn’t respond to the sound, Joe Ashmont chuckled.
“Looks like somebody put you in your place, missy.”
I turned around. He held a whiskey bottle in one hand, already opened and missing the first round. In the other, he clutched a pack of cigarettes and, oddly enough, a bag of tangerines. Cirrhosis or lung cancer might be a valid concern for old Joe, but at least scurvy wasn’t in the cards.
“That happen out on the island?” he asked.
I took a step away from him. “It’s none of your business.”
He nodded amicably. His eyes remained hard, his mouth fixed in a fool’s grin as he continued to appraise me. “Guess you’re right about that. No business of mine when a pretty woman gets her clock cleaned.” He paused. “Not unless I’m the one did the cleanin’, that is.”
My mouth went dry. I met his gaze for the first time, trying to ignore my trembling hands and the sudden clench in my stomach. He nodded toward the cashier.