The Amber Photograph

by Penelope J. Stokes

  Diedre was exhausted, too, but the revelations of this night still swirled in her head, murky as an ocean wave stirred by an invisible undertow. The questions that had brought her here had all been answered, but the answers simply raised other dilemmas, deeper ones. It would have been challenging enough to begin a new relationship with a sister she had never really known. But a mother? How was she supposed to relate to a mother who was only fifteen years older than Diedre herself? How could she let go of the memory of Mama, who had raised her and loved her all her life, and transfer that unique devotion to a stranger?

  And how could she ever think about herself in the same way again?

  Even given the idea that Mama had been unfaithful to Daddy and borne a child out of that passion, Diedre could still regard herself as the product of tenderness and desire. Now she had to face the horrible truth that her conception was the result not of love but of rape—perhaps the ugliest, vilest, most brutal four-letter word in the English language.

  A tremor went through her. She tried to push the terrifying image out of her mind, but it wouldn't leave. Her eyes swam, and she groped for the cigar box, which lay next to her on the window seat. Rummaging inside, she finally came up with the photograph of Daddy and the child Amber.

  She couldn't see it clearly in the dim light, but the image was so impressed upon her brain that it re-created itself in her mind: the huge, overstuffed armchair, the little girl on the man's lap, the man's arms wrapped around her, the smile, the look of adoration on his face—

  God, she groaned inwardly, dear God, no. From the depths of Diedre's soul the plea came—a wordless, agonized cry for help, for understanding. Her whole body shook, and a wave of nausea swept over her, leaving her breathless and clammy. She wanted to run away, to scream, to throw things, to beat on something—or someone. "No!" she whispered—this time aloud. "No, no! God, no!"

  Her hands clenched into fists, and she began pummeling the pillow in the window seat. With every blow, her emotions grew wilder and fiercer, until she had fallen to her knees on the floor, bashing the stuffing out of the pillow, screaming, "I hate you! I HATE you, Daddy! I HATE YOU!"

  When she paused for breath, Diedre felt a weight leaning against her back and arms embracing her. Tears fell on her shoulder, and Amber's voice whispered in her ear, "It's all right, honey. I've got you. I'm here. Get it out. Get it all out."

  As the rage subsided, Diedre turned and collapsed into Amber's arms, sobbing. For a long time the two of them sat there on the floor, propped against the window seat, while Diedre wept. Then, finally, when she could catch her breath enough to speak, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked at Amber. "I'm sorry. I wanted you to sleep. You need to rest."

  "I had a nap. I'm fine. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on, what you're feeling."

  "I don't know what I'm feeling," Diedre murmured. "Except that I hate him. I'm so ANGRY at what he did to you. And . . . " She paused.

  "And what?"

  "I don't know how you stand it. How do you deal with it, every single day?"

  Amber touched Diedre's cheek. The bandages, rough against her skin, reminded Diedre once again of all that her sister . . . her mother . . . had been through in the past few weeks.

  "I've had twenty-five years of experience dealing with it," Amber said quietly "I've been in therapy I've learned—well, I'm still learning—to redirect my anger. I've learned containment when the memories threaten to derail me. It takes time. It's taken me years—and I'm just now beginning to feel whole again."

  "I hate him," Diedre repeated. "I hate him for what he did to you. And I hate myself, too."

  "I understand why you'd hate him" Amber whispered. "But why on earth would you hate yourself?"

  Diedre touched one of Amber's bandaged hands very gently. "Because all this is my fault."

  Amber gazed at her intently. "Diedre, you had no way of knowing that he would have you followed when you came out here to find me. You did what you needed to do, to get your questions answered and—"

  She stopped short as Diedre shook her head. "That's not what I mean." Diedre took in a breath and let it out again, summoning her courage and putting her thoughts in order. "If it hadn't been for me, you would never have been sent to the mental hospital. You wouldn't have had to endure this for all these years. From now on, every time I look in the mirror, I'll see him. What he did to you. What you had to go through on account of me. It's as if I'm covered with filth that can never be washed away And I know that's what you'll see, too, whenever you look at me. You'll see it. And you'll hate me."

  Amber closed her eyes and battled for breath as a fist closed around her heart. "Hate you? I could never hate you, Diedre. I love you!"

  "But how could you? How can you even be in the same room with me without being reminded of—of him? Of the horrible things he did to you? Of all the pain, the fear, the isolation, the loneliness. I'm the walking, flesh-and-blood image of that abuse, the—"

  "No, Diedre, you're not," Amber interrupted. "I knew it the moment I saw you, just after you were born, when I held you for the first time. I knew it years ago, when I came back and tried to take you away with me. And again tonight. Don't you see? You are the blessing brought out of the curse"

  Diedre stared at her, slack-jawed. "No, I don't see."

  Amber smiled. "It's taken me a long time to understand it, too. It's a concept Susan likes to talk about—a verse in Deuteronomy, I think. Something like, 'God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.'"

  She paused for a minute, amazed that she could even think such a thing. How had she come to the place of being able to find something positive in the midst of life's challenges and heartbreaks? But Amber knew the answer. She had changed—or rather, she had been changed. She had found something in the life of faith—a blessing—that was innately true.

  Diedre frowned and let out a grunt of disapproval. "How can you talk about God, Amber? Where was God when all this happened—when you were being raped, when I was being conceived, when you were being committed to a mental hospital?"

  It was a question Amber had been mulling over for weeks, and still she hadn't come to any satisfying conclusions. She thought for a minute, and then admitted, "I don't know, Diedre. This is one of those spiritual dilemmas that has a lot of bad answers but not very many good ones."

  "What do you mean, bad answers?"

  Amber let out a sigh. "Listen, Diedre, I'm pretty new at this faith stuff, but I know when what I hear doesn't make sense. I've heard some people talk as if everything that happens is God's will—as if it was God's will for Daddy to molest me. In my book that's a bad answer. Other people say that God doesn't will bad things, but still allows them, so that we can learn some kind of lesson from them. I can't buy that,either." She watched Diedre's face closely. "I guess my beliefs about God are fairly practical—I can't imagine a loving God who would use sexual abuse to generate trust in a twelve-year-old. That kind of logic just has too many holes."

  Diedre leaned against the window seat and swiped a hand across her tear-stained face. "I couldn't accept that either. But I don't see how you can accept any notion of a loving God, given what you've been through."

  Amber nodded. "It's amazing, I'll have to admit. Until recently, I hadn't given God more than a passing thought—and a pretty negative thought, at that—for more than twenty years. But then I looked around—at Twojoe and at Meg and at Father Susan. I started trusting in their love for me and their acceptance of me. That's where my faith comes from—seeing God in them. And that faith is starting to take hold not because of what happened, but in spite of it."

  Diedre's eyes held a shadowed, suspicious look. "I always thought I believed in God. Now I think I've lost my faith completely."

  "It'll come back," Amber murmured. "Grace is pretty irresistible, once you've had a taste of it. A very wise person once said that faith can't be lost—it's just buried. And buried seeds will sprout again in their t
ime."

  "I'm not going to hold my breath," Diedre said curtly. "But go on. You've told me about the bad answers to why things like this happen. Are there any good answers?"

  "Sometimes I don't think there are any answers at all," Amber replied. "Your conclusions will probably be different, and that's OK. I think that God doesn't cause terrible things to happen, but when they do, God can turn them around. Like the 'curse into a blessing' concept." She looked intently into Diedre's eyes. "Evil exists, honey, and bad things happen. Terrible things, sometimes. But something good did come out of this horrible mess, Diedre. You. You are the blessing in all of this."

  When Amber had started into this discussion, she had felt as if she had been set down in a high hedge maze, groping this way and that for an exit. Suddenly, miraculously, she came to the end. The truths hadn't originated with her, but they had become hers. And she knew in the deepest places of her soul that what she had told Diedre was right. The young woman who sat before her now was, indeed, the blessing that had come out of the curse. Her sister . . . her daughter . . . her friend.

  Diedre tried to assimilate what Amber had said, to believe it, to hold onto it the way a drowning person grabs onto anything that floats. And yet something in her heart told her that it would be a very long time before her own resolution came. The best she could do right now was try to see herself through Amber's eyes.

  "Give yourself time to learn how to deal with this," Amber was saying. "It's not easy, although it does get better. I suppose the question now is, what do you need? What can we do to help get you on the road to healing?"

  Diedre didn't have to think twice to come up with an answer. "Confront him. Make him pay. If possible, get his can thrown in jail."

  Amber threw back her head and laughed. "Where on earth did you get so much fortitude, girl?"

  "I don't know," Diedre said slowly, gazing into Amber's eyes. "Maybe I really am my mother's daughter."

  Amber was still sitting on the floor beside Diedre when a faint knock sounded on the door.

  "Come in."

  The door opened a crack, and Twojoe's head appeared around the doorpost. "I didn't want to wake you two if you were sleeping, but since you're up, would you mind coming downstairs?" He waited while they got to their feet.

  "What time is it?"

  Twojoe looked at his watch. "Quarter to five. Jake Nordstrom's here, and Meg is making coffee."

  "The sheriff? What does he want?"

  Twojoe shrugged and gave a sheepish grin. "I suppose he wants to take our prisoner into custody."

  "Prisoner? The guy who attacked me and burned the barn? You caught him?"

  "I did. But he's got a few things to say before Jake hauls him away, and I expect both of you are going to want to hear it."

  The two of them—Amber in flannel pajamas, and Diedre still dressed in her jeans from the night before—followed Twojoe down the stairs into the living room, where Meg held out a mug of coffee in Amber's direction and handed a second one to Diedre. Sheriff Nordstrom stood with his back to the fireplace, dangling his handcuffs from one meaty finger. Vernon Houston, his hair a wild mane of white, slouched against the living room wall.

  In front of Vern, on the sofa, sat a wet, bedraggled man in a dark green jacket, his hands bound with silver duct tape and his right leg splinted with a couple of mismatched boards and more of the silver tape. A livid, crescent-shaped cut above his right eye stood out against his pale skin. Amber immediately recognized her attacker.

  Diedre let out a gasp when she saw him. "Carlene was right—you were following us!"

  Amber turned to Twojoe. "He's hurt—shouldn't we call an ambulance?"

  "His ankle's broken," the sheriff said. "The EMTs are on their way. We'll make a stop at the hospital to get it set, and then he'll get booked and spend the night in jail." Nordstrom cut his eyes at the interloper. "You ready to talk now?"

  The man nodded.

  "His name is Shiv Willis," Twojoe told Amber. "Jake's got the warrant for his arrest, and he's been read his rights. Meg and I both witnessed it. He's decided to come clean."

  "Decided to roll, is more like it," the sheriff growled. "You've been down this road a few times before, haven't you, Willis?" When the man did not reply, the sheriff turned toward Amber. "I checked him out. Rap sheet as long as your arm. He'll cut a deal with the D.A. for a reduced sentence, and most likely be extradited back to North Carolina." He turned a cold eye back on Willis. "All right, we're listening. What you got to say for yourself?"

  Shiv Willis fixed his gaze on Amber's hands. "I started the fire in the barn. I'm sorry about that. . . and hitting you with the gas can . . . and coming to the hospital and . . . everything." He shook his head. "It was a job—just a job. But I didn't mean for anybody to get hurt. I don't—well, I don't hold with going after women. It's against my principles."

  "Yeah, we know, you're a regular boy scout," the Colonel interrupted. "Get on with it."

  "I was hired by a lawyer named Underwood—," Willis began.

  "Uncle Jack," Diedre muttered.

  "Yeah, that's right. Jack Underwood. He sent me out here to follow you and your girlfriend—" he looked at Diedre, "and to make sure you didn't hook up with her—" He motioned with his head in Amber's direction. "I didn't know why—in my business, we don't ask too many questions. Underwood just told me to do whatever was necessary to keep the lid on, that his client's daughter—the older one—had information that could cause problems for everybody."

  "And the client was—?" Houston prompted.

  Shiv Willis quailed visibly at the Colonel's daunting presence. "Guy by the name of McAlister. I don't think Underwood intended for me to know that, but he let it slip once. I got the impression McAlister was some bigwig politician or something—somebody important."

  "And the two of them hired you to make sure Amber kept her mouth shut?" Colonel Houston asked.

  "That's right. Underwood put me onto the real estate angle. Thought if I made it impossible for Elkhorn to keep this place, the woman— Amber—would have to disappear again." He licked his lips. "Can I have some water?"

  "When you're done," the sheriff said.

  "Okay, well, anyway—" Willis shifted, wincing as his injured leg took some of the weight. He sagged back against a towel someone had thrown over the back of the sofa to protect the fabric. "Anyway, I figured burning the barn down would be like an intimidation thing—that Elkhorn here would cave in, sell the place, and—" He shook his head. "Guess it didn't work."

  "About as well as the scheme of that guy who ordered a pizza to his own address and then robbed the delivery boy." The Colonel gave a short bark of a laugh.

  "It would have worked if I hadn't lost my lighter," Willis protested, swearing under his breath. "But I didn't know she—," he nodded in Amber's direction, "was going to be in the barn that night."

  "But she was in the barn," Jake Nordstrom interjected. "That makes it a felony—attempted murder."

  "I didn't attempt to murder anybody. Especially not a woman."

  "But your employers did, didn't they?" The Colonel fixed his gaze on Amber. "Sounds like conspiracy to me. Attempted murder, arson—"

  "Not to mention some other charges that are even worse," Twojoe put in. When the Colonel raised his eyebrows, Twojoe said, "We'll tell you about that later."

  The sheriff went over to the sofa and ripped the duct tape off Willis's wrists, replacing it with the handcuffs. "I assume you're going to cooperate with the D.A. and testify real nice and neat, just like you've done here tonight."

  Shiv Willis nodded. "Long as I get my deal."

  "Don't worry. You'll get your reduced sentence as long as you deliver your bosses." He turned to Twojoe and Amber. "You can press charges here on the arson and assault, but if you want to get the lawyer and the father—"

  Twojoe put his arm around Amber and looked into her eyes. She smiled grimly up at him, then caught Diedre's gaze and nodded. "We'll be making a call to North Carolina firs
t thing."

  A flashing red light flickered through the glass of the front door and streaked down the entryway into the living room. "That must be the paramedics," the sheriff said. He hoisted Shiv Willis up and, supporting him under one arm, ushered him out.

  When they were gone, Amber let out a sigh and sank into the cushioned back of the big armchair. "I can't believe it."

  "Can't believe I caught the guy, or can't believe he's going to talk?"

  "Can't believe it's over."

  Twojoe laid a hand on her shoulder, and she rested her cheek against it. "It's not over yet," he said quietly. "It won't be over until we see that animal who calls himself your father behind bars." He sighed. "Justice may be a long time coming."

  Amber closed her eyes. Twojoe was right—they still had a difficult road ahead of them. But a heavy weight in her spirit had lifted, and for the first time in nearly thirty years, Amber Chaney felt almost free.

  37

  If It Takes Forever

  On the deck overlooking Hood Canal, Twojoe sat in the moonlight, holding Amber's bandaged hand gently in his own. It was a clear, cool evening; silence stretched between them as they gazed out over the mountains. He wished the burns were healed, wished he could stroke her skin and feel it soft and pliable beneath his fingertips. He wanted to hold her hand so tightly that she could never get away from him, never leave his side.

  But she was leaving.

  Tomorrow morning, she would put her suitcase in the trunk of her dead mother's car and head east with Diedre and Carlene. Back to North Carolina, to confront the man who had molested her.

  Twojoe wanted to go with her, to be there to support her, but Amber had refused his offer. "I have to do this myself," she had said. "It's important to my recovery—and to Diedre's."

  After Shiv Willis had been taken into custody, she and Twojoe had sat down and explained to Vernon Houston the parts of the story he had not yet heard. Once he got past his initial anger, the Colonel had shifted into his problem-solving mode: he had a friend in the D.A.'s office in North Carolina, he said, and she would take care of everything.