Firefly Rain
Page 30
“I love you,” I said again when my throat finally stopped catching. Then I headed back toward the house. Through the pine trees, I could see the lights of the kitchen come on. Jenna was no doubt busy making coffee inside. Maybe Adrienne had woken up. There was glass to sweep up and damage to assess and a phone call to the police to make and maybe even some deep dreamless sleep to dive into.
Slowly, but with rising speed, I walked toward the light.
Hanratty was there within the half hour, with half the emergency vehicles in the county following close behind her. The noise woke Adrienne, who stumbled out into the kitchen wrapped in a blanket and an old shawl of my mother’s. Her eyes were wild, and I knew right then that she’d never spend another night in this house.
“Mr. Logan?” she asked haltingly. “Jake? What happened. What happened?”
“It’s all over,” I said. “I promise.”
She saw my hand then, still bleeding through the torn-up old shirt we’d wrapped around it and the bloody rags we’d wound around my arm. She saw the wreckage of the door, the broken glass still on the floor, and the shattered furniture. She saw Jenna standing there like a hawk, and past her, paramedics moving stretchers with covered bodies on them. Hanratty’s voice carried over the racket, bellowing orders.
Adrienne’s jaw dropped. Her eyes widened and she started shaking. “No,” she whispered. “What did you do, Jake? What did you do?”
“Adrienne…,” I started, and reached out for her.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed, and she ran back down the hall. A door slammed a moment later.
“I think I’ll be taking her out of here,” Hanratty said as she walked up the porch. “Trouble does have a way of finding you, doesn’t it, Mr. Logan?”
I stared at her. “I’m too tired for games, Officer Hanratty. Just take care of her, okay? She means a lot to me.”
“You got a funny way of showing it.” Hanratty snorted, but she didn’t push it any further. “I suppose you have an explanation for all this?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I could tell you what happened, but you’d never believe it. Besides, the autopsies will show that Carl Powell died of cancer, and Reverend Trotter of heart disease, and you don’t want to try to figure out what they were doing out here in the middle of the night anyway.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said softly. “Have all the promises been kept?”
I blinked. “In their own way. I think. How’d you know?”
“I know what’s going on in this town,” she said. “It’s my job. You’ll be staying, then?”
“I don’t know. I’ll give it a shot and see what happens.”
“Good enough,” she said, and she turned to Jenna. “He’s not a total asshole, you know. You could do worse.”
“I could,” she agreed, as she shot me a look I chose not to read.
Hanratty yawned then, a sound like one you’d hear in the wrong end of a zoo. “I’d better take Miss Moore out of here. Maybe get her feet looked at, and her hands, too. You two,” she added conspiratorially, “might want to get out of sight while I do so. She looked a bit upset.”
“That she did,” Jenna noted. “Come on, Logan. Let’s get some air.”
“Good thought,” Hanratty said. “Go let the folks at the ambulance check you out while you’re out there. ’Specially you, Logan. That hand looks nasty. You might even think about a trip to County and some time in a hospital bed. I’ll expect you in town to make a statement when you’re feeling up to it.” She cocked a sharp stare at us both. “You will come in and make a statement, won’t you?”
“Promise,” I said, and I nearly swallowed my tongue trying not to laugh. Hanratty gave a snort.
“Fine, whatever,” Hanratty said. “Get out of here already so I can take that poor girl somewhere else.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Jenna took my arm, the good one, and we stepped through the broken door together.
Dawn was coming up slow and wary, like it wasn’t sure it wanted the job. The sky overhead was clear, but where the sun was rising there were ragged strips of cloud, just starting to glow red. Out in the fields, the creatures that normally went to bed with the day were uneasy. You could hear it in their calls—ragged choruses of croaks and chirps, all the rhythm lost. It reminded me of a good old, big-city traffic jam, with everyone leaning on their horns all at once and no one getting anywhere.
“So you’re staying,” she said.
“For a while,” I told her, and I leaned gingerly on the railing. “I have to, you know. I think it will be better here now, though.”
“It might be,” she said grudgingly. “The house feels… different.”
“Breezier,” I said, and we both chuckled. “No, I think you’re right. I think they’re gone. My father went with her when she decided it was time to go. I hope they’re where they need to be.”
“You’ll know tonight.”
“I will?” I looked at her. “How?”
“Look for fireflies,” she told me. “If they’re back, it’s over.”
I smiled at her. “You know, you’re right. I never would have thought of that.” I blinked, then, as I realized what she was saying. “You’re going back? Today?”
Jenna nodded. “Today. It’s been interesting, Logan, but I have to tell you, this isn’t the restful trip I was looking for. I’m sure you’ll be fine, but I can’t stay here, not for a while. Maybe once you get things back together, I’ll come back down and we’ll give it another shot.”
“I’d like that,” I said, and found that I meant it. My good hand slid toward her on the rail. After a moment, she took it and gave it a squeeze. “I’d like that a lot.”
“I might, too,” she said, and she kissed me.
We broke apart after a long moment, and I blinked. “Hurry back,” I said, only half joking.
“I just might,” she said in a quiet voice I’d never heard from her before. “Now come on, let’s get your hand looked at. And your arm. And your nose. And, Jesus, Logan, I hope you still have insurance, because you’re a fucking mess.”
“COBRA,” I told her. “And you’re an absolutely beautiful fucking mess.”
“Smooth talker,” she said, even as she led me down the steps toward the paramedics.
Epilogue
It was another day before Jenna left, her rental car roaring down the road in a plume of white smoke that somehow didn’t feel like a good-bye. I watched her go, feeling better than I had in a long time, and kicked off my shoes. It seemed like the right thing to do, and I wasn’t going to argue with an urge like that.
They’d kept me in the hospital ’til the next morning, much to my surprise and Jenna’s worry. She’d decided to stick around long enough to see that I made it home safe and sound. “But not a minute more,” she warned me as they loaded me into the ambulance, and she even sounded like she meant it a little bit. Then she followed us to County, and damned if she wasn’t five feet off the ambulance bumper the whole way there.
The prognosis on my injuries was mixed. My nose was reparable, or so the doctor said, but I was never going to be quite the same handsome devil ever again. Having a chunk of your face knocked a few degrees off line will do that for a man.
The news on my hand wasn’t quite as good—there were some crushed bones to go with the severe lacerations. They had to do surgery to put the jigsaw puzzle inside my fist back together, and then they slapped my arm in a cast up to the elbow to make sure I didn’t mess it up again. The doctor also stuck me with a rabies shot, just in case, and gave me a stern talking-to about the way I took care of myself. I took it all as best I could, too tired and too numb to wiseass back at him. Jenna, for her part, was fine. Scratches and cuts and a bruise here and there—she took care of herself, as always. She sat by my bedside and watched me sleep, or at least that’s what the nurses told me when I woke up and she was gone. She didn’t come back until morning—pale, tired-looking, and ready to get me out of there
come more hell or high water. And at my bedside, she’d placed one crushed, crumpled toy soldier.
Hanratty’s questioning of both of us was perfunctory, not that I’d expected much else. Details would have raised too many questions. Instead, the town would discreetly mourn the loss of some of its leading citizens, pick up, and move on. Carl, it turned out, had a considerable sum of money that he’d willed to the upkeep of the Logan property, and specifically to the perpetual care of my mother’s grave. I told Hanratty I wasn’t sure I’d be using it, and she gave a massive shrug. “No sense in letting it go to waste,” she said, “especially after what you went through with him.”
“He went through more with me,” I said, and I let the subject drop. There’d be enough time to deal with that later. There’d be enough time to deal with a lot of things later.
Adrienne, on the other hand… well, I didn’t know what happened to Adrienne. Nor did I ask, though I wanted to. Hanratty dropped a couple of hints that she’d gone back to her family in Banner Elk for some peace and quiet, and strongly discouraged any follow-up on the matter.
And then Jenna brought me home, said her long good-byes, and drove away.
I waited until the last plume of dust was out of sight, then stepped off the porch and felt the cool wet grass between my toes. This was my land. I belonged here. Every step I took told me that it was right.
In front of me, the fireflies danced. I could see them lighting my way in swirling clouds of light and steady pulses in the grass. I took special care not to step on them as I walked down to the pine trees and beyond. It wouldn’t do to harm any fireflies, not now. It just wouldn’t do.
The graves were waiting, like they always had been, just past the trees. Father’s stone had lines of lightning snaking along it, bolts of yellow-green power that wriggled and writhed and winked out when you least expected it. The same lines of fireflies that covered his grave snaked through the tall grass that grew there and shone up to Heaven. Mother’s stone was different, a soft glow from a hundred lights shining low and steady all at once. It told the angels, “Here I am. Come get me. Come bring me home.”
Up above, the skies were bright and clearing. There was a quarter moon sitting overhead in a patch of open sky torn from the clouds around it. The rain had long since gone, but I didn’t mind. It had rained enough since I’d come home. I wanted to see the stars.
I smiled and turned back to the graves. “Good-bye, Mother,” I said. “Good-bye, Father. I’m sorry. I did love you, you know. I wish I’d shown it better.” They didn’t answer, not even in that fever-dream way I’d imagined they might. They were gone, thank God, gone home to wherever good people who try hard and love strong are supposed to go. Off in the distance, frogs sang and crickets chirped, and every so often I could hear the wind. No voices, though, and when I spoke, the night swallowed up the sound right quick.
That was fine. It was over. The fireflies were proof of that, all the proof that I needed. I nodded to each stone, then pivoted on my heel to head back up toward the house. It had been a long day in a series of long days, and I was bone tired.
As I turned, though, I noticed something. Lightning bugs were everywhere, happy and oblivious. One even landed in my hair. Except…
Except there was one bare patch left without them. It was six feet by three feet, just the right size for a grave, and it was right next to where my mother rested. No fireflies danced on it. No fireflies would cross its boundaries.
I took a deep breath and rested my hand on a tree to help steady me. No fireflies there, not for me. A slow look around my land showed me sparks of light everywhere. They’d come back, all right; they’d come back like they’d never left.
Save for that one spot, that one bare patch of black night resting so close to Mother’s gravestone that it made my heart ache. There was a message for me there, a message written in light and shadow.
That grave they marked out was mine, and not a one of them would guide an angel to it.
I’d planned, even after all this, to stay through the end of the year, then move on come next spring. This was my land now, my home, but I still needed to move on. The difference was that I’d come back to it, and both the land and I knew it. No matter where I went, I’d come home. Maybe Jenna would join me, maybe she wouldn’t. That was for the future to tell, though, to unwind in its own way and its own time.
That’s what was written in my blood and in my bones. And the fireflies? They knew that once I came back, I’d be staying.
Forever and ever.
Amen.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
prologue
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
Epilogue