“No,” she said. “The worst thing is breaking someone else’s.”
Jake came home from Smitty’s with a sack of groceries, frozen foods mostly, and cream of mushroom soup for Doug. He stepped out of his car and looked up. Mountain fog had rolled in, but not thick enough to hide an arsenal of pine cones stacked neatly on the roof.
He was on Carvedilol to strengthen his heart, and huge amounts of Avapro to lower his blood pressure, but nevertheless he set the bag on the porch, grabbed the corner post, and climbed to the roof. When he looked over the edge, he found the metal roof littered with piles of ashes that could very well have come from the chimney. He heard laughter and then knew he’d crossed some invisible line, because the ghost was as real as he was, sitting on the far end of the roof, tapping out ashes from his cigarette.
Jake pulled himself up and sat down. He was too woozy to try to catch a ghost, and he should have realized years ago that it was impossible anyway.
“Just go,” he said.
A light mist started to fall and went through Roy’s head and out his toes. When the downpour began a few minutes later, Roy lit up a new cigarette.
The ghost made his way across the roof, the metal creaking beneath him. His feet were still clad in fifteen-year-old black boots, his ruby pinkie ring now a dull black. He knelt down beside Jake.
Jake reached out a finger and was sure he touched a bony knee. He must have gone right over the edge, because everything was clear as day to him now. Love and meanness were the two things that could turn a dead man into a ghost, but only meanness turned him solid. Only viciousness let him point a cigarette toward a man’s eyes so he could feel the heat.
Roy smiled, and thrust his tongue through the hole where his gold-capped tooth had fallen out. He was still smiling when he said his first words in fifteen years. “I’m not going anywhere. So shoot me.”
Roy laughed uproariously, but Jake just climbed down the porch column. His dogs were running in circles, howling. He grabbed the sack of groceries and went inside, but right away he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach because the house reeked of cigarettes.
He opened all the windows, then put away the food. By the time the Dawsons’ car pulled into the driveway, the smell had dissipated and the ghost was gone. Maggie and Savannah helped Doug out of the car, while Emma lingered in the downpour. She didn’t step up on the porch until she was thoroughly drenched, chancing pneumonia. One more woman still sat in the backseat. Jake had never expected to see her again, so it was a long time before he recognized his mother.
His heart throbbed painfully as he walked out into the rain. Cheryl Pillandro rolled down her window, and Jake took a good, long breath.
“Mom,” he said.
“The police found the body. The sheriff came to my house.”
He nodded. He was not even remotely surprised. All he felt was that this had been a long time coming, and in truth, he was a little relieved.
“You called me a while back.” He felt the rain sink through his shirt and drip coldly down the muscles of his back. His skin prickled, then he started to shiver. He had a feeling it would be hours, maybe days, before he’d be able to stop.
“Yes. When they started the draining. I wanted you to have time to run.”
He invited her in, then went to the loft to put on a dry shirt. By the time he came back down, the dogs were running around the living room in tighter and tighter circles, barking wildly. Jake banged his fist against the wall.
“Take it outside.”
The dogs obediently went out onto the back deck. Emma went with them, then stood on the edge, where the rain poured out of the gutters in thick surges. The Dawsons all surveyed the downstairs.
Jake had not wanted to make the cabin beautiful. He hadn’t sanded down any of the logs, had not put a single coat of urethane on the floors. He’d chosen the roughest, knottiest wood he could find, but now, when Savannah turned around, her eyes shining, he knew he had failed.
“Nice,” Doug Dawson said. “Really nice. I think I’d like to lie down awhile.”
Jake showed him to the bed upstairs. Above it was a single, triangular window he had salvaged from an old Victorian house in town. He was afraid the ghost might hang his feet outside the glass, but all that was there now was rain.
Jake helped Doug into bed, then turned to leave. “Jake,” Doug said softly. “You all right with this?”
Jake turned around. If his father had lived, Jake’s whole life would have been different. Yet when Paul Grey had died, the last thing he’d told his wife was “Thank God it wasn’t you.” That was the thing with fathers; they had no idea how vital they were. They had no idea a child just went to pieces without them.
“I’m not all right with you dying, no,” he said. Already the loft smelled sweeter, as if pieces of Doug were coming off in the air. He went to the window and propped it open. “But if it has to happen, then you ought to do it here.”
He looked back and Doug was smiling, his eyes closed. Jake walked down the stairs.
Cheryl, Maggie, and Savannah all sat around the dining-room table, whispering. They stopped cold when they saw him.
“I suppose you told her,” he said, gesturing to Maggie. “What’s the point of being an escaped murderer, if everyone’s in on it?”
He walked out onto the deck. The rain had finally let up and the air was cold and charged. He threw a rawhide for the dogs and sparks flew when it hit the ground. He heard a throat clearing and turned around to find Emma standing there, glaring at him.
“As a matter of fact, I hired Mr. Malone back. He’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”
Her sudden smile startled him, and it would bring Eli Malone to his knees. A boy like that never expected a girl like this to fall in love with him. It was out of the realm of possibility. It could shake a whole world.
She ran off into the woods after the dogs and, a few minutes later, Cheryl came out. She put her hand on his shoulder, then quickly dropped it.
“I didn’t say a word to the police,” she said. “I swear I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. Everything matters now. They’ve identified the body, Jake. They think I did it. And since I didn’t, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Jake turned to her. He did not laugh, because it would have hurt too much.
“You know why I left?” he asked.
Cheryl looked away. There were tears in her eyes and he was glad. He’d waited a long time to hurt someone back.
“It wasn’t because I killed him,” he went on. “It was because I hadn’t done it sooner, before he’d tainted you.”
Cheryl grabbed his arm with the hand Roy had broken all those years ago. Today, her nails were smooth and polished in pale pink. She had a ring on her middle finger with a sapphire blue stone.
“You can hate me,” she said. “I can take that. But what I can’t take is you giving up. Just letting them get you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She dropped her hand and stepped back. Her hair was cut clear above her ears, a style Roy would have beat her for.
“I was crazy then,” she said, running her hand along the wet deck railing. “I lived on hating Roy. I know you can’t understand that, but it’s the truth. I woke up every morning holding my breath, hoping my heart would just give out.”
Jake turned away. He had waited a long time for this day, but now he was disappointed. It was too hard to hate a person. It took more energy than he had. He wished Savannah would come out and lay her head on his shoulder. He wanted her to stand beside him until the sun went down, and then point out every constellation and tell him the myths behind the stars.
“You can’t understand it,” Cheryl went on. “I know you can’t. I can’t, not now. There are very few things a woman can’t forgive herself for, but one of them is not standing behind her son.”
“It’s all over now,” Jake said, but of course it wasn’t. It was jus
t beginning. The thing with hiding out was that nothing got done. Time would stand still until someone found him out.
Cheryl leaned against him, crying. He closed his eyes. He tried to work up some kind of loathing, but the woman in his arms was too much of a stranger, and strangers were easy to forgive.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve done fine.”
Cheryl pulled back to look at him. She wiped her eyes and glanced up at the roof, where the ghost had materialized out of the blue and was watching them steadily. His mother saw nothing. She turned around and fingered the buttons on her silk blouse.
“I sold the house. I’ve been working at Dillard’s. In lingerie. They’re moving me up to the women’s nine-to-five department.”
The ghost slid down the gutter behind her. He was smiling, but in a second his grin stopped cold, and even Jake, who was always expecting a fight, was not ready for the fist when it came at his mother.
Roy swung at Cheryl’s head, but the blow went right through her and landed on the side of Jake’s chin. Jake put his hand to his skin, expecting to find blood. His fingers came away clean.
“Jake?” Cheryl said. “Is something wrong?”
The ghost seemed as surprised as he was. He stared at his hand, twisting it right and left. He tapped the porch railing and Cheryl whirled around at the sound.
“Woodpeckers?” she asked.
Roy threw back his head and laughed.
“No,” Cheryl went on, “robins. Definitely robins.”
Jake took a deep breath and realized something would have to be done. It was entirely possible he would have to kill Roy Pillandro twice.
He looked back at his mother, but she was just smiling, looking out at the woods. “It’s beautiful here,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”
For a moment, she looked half her age. She looked like a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to fight back. Jake looked for the ghost, but Roy must have noticed the same thing, because he was gone.
“It took me thirty days to get up the nerve to go back to the lake,” Cheryl said. “You know the first thing I did when I got there? I leaned over the pier and spit on that son of a bitch’s grave.”
Jake reached out and touched her white hair. When she pushed her cheek against his hand, he remembered why he’d killed a man. He remembered why he’d been glad.
“I’m happy you’ve found someone,” his mother said.
Jake looked through the window into the cabin. Savannah and Maggie were sitting at the table. Savannah had laid out her cards, but Maggie refused to look.
“I haven’t found anyone,” he said. “She’s not staying.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not the staying type.”
“So you’ll go with her.”
“I can’t go anywhere. Not anymore. What will happen will happen. I don’t really care anymore.”
Cheryl grabbed his hands. “Oh, you care. Don’t think I don’t understand what you’re doing. Your father was the same. He’d get all quiet and stoic when inside he was dying. He never told me a thing about that heart of his until it exploded on him. That was just plain cruel, Jake. I didn’t even know where the checkbook was. I couldn’t get his damn stick shift out of the driveway.”
“Mom.”
“You care,” she said. “And if you don’t, I’ll bet that woman in there does. I saw the way she looked at you. You better care, Jake Grey, or you’re going to break that woman’s heart in two.”
“I think that it will be the other way around.”
Cheryl stayed for the night, but the next morning had to get back to work in Tucson. Jake walked her out on the porch, which during the night had been dusted with a slick coating of pine pollen.
“I’ve got a bedroom this color,” Cheryl said, swiping a finger through the yellow dust on the railing. “I’m in a book club, too. Did I tell you that? We meet every Wednesday night. We read John Irving, if you can believe that.”
Jake smiled. “That’s great, Mom.”
“I’ll come back the second you need me. I’ll quit if I have to. One won’t make up for the other, but nevertheless, this time I’m doing it right.”
After she left, Savannah met him on the deck. The morning sky was closing in, smelling of rain again, and birds seemed to fly at them out of nowhere. A pine cone fell right out of the sky, or maybe from off the roof, but Jake wasn’t about to turn around to check.
He stood stiff as wood. He might never have held her, if she hadn’t held him first.
“I can see why you love it here,” Savannah said quietly. “I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow. I dreamed of vanilla ice cream.” She laughed and leaned into him.
When he had asked them to come, he had not considered that Savannah would ruin his cabin for him. Now he’d never be able to stand in this spot without wishing for something soft to hold. He’d never sit in front of his fire again without craving ice cream. He’d be relegated to the few spaces she hadn’t touched—his woodpile, the basement, the dim corners of his workshop.
“The sheriff came to my mother’s house,” he said.
She nodded. She flicked at a mosquito hovering around her face, then turned to him. “There’s no way they can link you to that body. And even if they could, you did what you had to do. It’s been fifteen years, Jake. No one’s going to pursue this now.”
“Like hell they aren’t.” Maggie had come out onto the deck with a cup of coffee.
Savannah stepped out of Jake’s embrace. “Jake doesn’t deserve—”
“It doesn’t matter what he deserves,” Maggie said. “Jake understands this.”
He nodded, because he did. Life unfolded as it would, whether you were good or bad. If he ever learned to pray again, he’d pray for luck, not love or money.
“He’s suffered enough,” Savannah said. “God can’t hold this against him.”
“God can do whatever he damn well pleases,” Maggie said, “if he’s even there. God does not pay very good attention, if you ask me. People are falling through the cracks left and right.”
She walked off the deck toward the woods, scattering the morning grasshoppers, who leapt out of the way of her sneakers. She left deep, dark footprints in the soggy ground.
“She’s right,” Jake said.
“Please don’t side with her.”
He heard the plea in her voice, and reached out to touch her cheek. “How do you do it? I’ve seen your deck. It’s full of swords and turmoil. It goes against logic and fairness that good things could happen all the time.”
Savannah walked into the cabin, then came back out with the cards. “Shuffle and pick one,” she said.
“Savannah—”
“Just do it. If you already think bad things will come, then you certainly can’t be afraid.”
He shuffled the cards, then turned over the top one.
“The Seven of Swords,” she said. “New plans. Confidence. Proof that not all the swords are bad. Pick another.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s fate. Pick.”
He reached into the middle of the deck and drew Strength. “Self-explanatory,” she said. “And good, I might add. Pick again.”
He chose the Knight of Cups. “That’s attraction. Sometimes falling in love, often a challenge. Go again.”
Jake picked twelve cards, and to all twelve, she had a promising future in store for him. “How do I know you haven’t stacked the deck?” he asked. “How do I know you’re not cheating?”
She yanked the cards back and flipped them over. He saw, very clearly, that the bad cards were in there, but they had all sunk to the bottom with his shuffling.
“Magician,” he said.
“I didn’t touch the cards. You did. So don’t you tell me you have no luck, Jake Grey. Don’t you dare tell me this can’t all work out all right.”
She placed the cards back in his hands, then closed his fingers over them. When she turned and w
alked into the house, all his dogs followed her.
Jake breathed in the vanilla morning air and squeezed the cards tight. Then he opened his fist and picked one out of the middle. It was the Ten of Pentacles, a man, woman and child all dancing, an old man reaching out to pet a dog. He quickly threaded it back in the deck. It was some kind of trick, and he wasn’t falling for it. Only a fool wished for the one thing he really wanted.
TWELVE
THE SEVEN OF WANDS COURAGE
Savannah Knew the superstitions. Kill a cricket in the house and bad news will come to your door. Rip the wings off a bee and you’ll lose everything you treasure within a month.
So when she hiked the trail to Kemper Peak and stepped on an anthill, smashing it flat, she said a prayer not only for the ants she’d annihilated, but for herself. Earlier, she’d swatted a fly without thinking twice and flushed a gargantuan spider down the toilet. How many more signs did she need? Obviously, something bad was about to happen.
No doubt it had to do with the boy in front of her. Eli Malone, along with Emma and Jake, were showing her the path to Kemper Peak. Savannah never saw the bald granite mountain ahead; instead, her gaze stuck on Eli Malone’s back. His brown hair was tied in a ponytail, bobbing from one shoulder to the other. Jake had given the boy his job back, but had promised to keep him away from Emma, if that was what Savannah wanted. The problem was, Savannah didn’t know what she wanted. Since Jake had collapsed in the garden, nothing was a sure bet, not heartbeats or Emma’s happiness or even her very own desires.
Jake was the last kind of man she ought to fall for, all silence and misery, a festering heap of neglect. But when she’d been holding him, waiting for the ambulance, she’d known she was falling then and there. When she had looked up and seen Eli crying, she’d known she didn’t have the heart to keep him from her daughter. Sometimes, you just fell for the wrong person, plain and simple. Sometimes, you just had to ride it out.
Emma walked in front of Eli so he could watch her every move. She kicked up rocks and dust, sliced breezes in two with the sway of her hips. She snatched up dandelions and blew the cottony seeds in his path. Because she didn’t turn around, she never knew Eli snatched them right out of the air and tucked them into his shirt pocket. She never knew just how much effect she had.
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