The Homecoming

by Alan Russell

  North or south? Cheever wondered.

  He had been told that a century ago, people had waited for low tide and then driven their Model T automobiles north from Moonlight Beach to Oceanside, a distance of some fifteen miles. Cheever decided to follow the path of those old cars. It was low tide now; he didn’t have to worry about the waves. All he had to do was find Stella.

  Stella took a deep breath and then spoke into the phone: “Hi, Mom.”

  “I was just about to call you, Stella,” said Eleanor. “Isn’t it time you and Luke came home?”

  “I did come home, Mom. I came home mostly for you.”

  “What I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. But what if I hadn’t come home?”

  In a low voice, Eleanor said, “What are you trying to say?”

  “Do you remember that ghost story Candy Stewart told on the beach?”

  “I think I remember everything about that night,” said Eleanor, “because that was the last night I thought I’d ever have with you.”

  “And do you remember what Jason said to his mother when he returned?”

  “He told his mother that having a picture of him shouldn’t have been necessary. He said that he’d always been and always would be in her heart, and that she needed to look no further than that.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s easy to say,” Eleanor said, her voice rising in panic, “but it’s not so easy to live. It’s well and good to say your memories should sustain you and that love is eternal, but that doesn’t take into account the relentless pain of absence.”

  “There is no future if you only look backward, Mom.”

  “I know that now.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do, sweetie. Why are you saying all of this?”

  “Because sometimes things happen that you don’t want to happen. Because nothing is constant. Because you have to accept the blessing of those people who are a part of your life and who make your life special, just as you have to accept their absence. In the end there is always the hope that you will meet up in some way and at some time in the future. And it might not be in a way that you imagine or hope, but it will most assuredly be a grand reunion. I’ll see you again, Mommy.”

  “What are you saying, Stella?”

  “I’m saying I love you.”

  Stella ended their conversation. She stared out at the ocean and saw the long and attenuated reflection of the moon on the water. There was a shimmering silver bridge without an end in front of her. All she had to do was follow it.

  She removed her clothing.

  Luke parked at the end of the turnaround on C Street. During his breakneck drive, he’d snuck a few glimpses at the picture Stella had sent. In the center of the shot were all the moonstones formed into a heart, but there were a few other details that made Luke believe he knew right where she’d snapped the picture.

  He ran down the incline, churning up the sand. The moonlight played on the ocean, giving it an iridescent glow. He ran south, and it seemed to him that moonstones had been placed as tiny markers to lead him to the treasure.

  There, Luke thought, there was his moonstone heart. He dropped to his knees, staring at the message she’d left him. But there was no sign of Stella.

  His cell phone rang; the readout told him the detective was calling.

  “Where are you?” asked Cheever.

  “I’m about one hundred and fifty yards south of the lifeguard tower,” said Luke. “Stella was definitely here, but I don’t see her now.”

  “I went north,” said Cheever. “I’ll turn around and jog your way. If I see her, I’ll call.”

  The moon provided good visibility, but the cool night had kept people away from the beach. There was no one around to ask if they’d seen Stella.

  Think, Luke told himself. She was here. Where could she have gone? He studied the moonstone heart she’d made for him. Then he gently stretched his hand over the rocks, touching them with his fingertips and with his being. She’d managed to gather at least twenty moonstones. That meant she’d scoured the area for them.

  There were footprints going to and from the moonstones. He looked at the impressions. Stella must have been walking around barefoot. Had she put her shoes back on, or was she still barefoot? He followed the footprints in the sand with his eyes. He was no tracker, but he couldn’t see any shoe prints in the vicinity of the heart.

  He turned around, scanning the area for anything unusual. That’s when he saw the clothing hidden among the seaweed. He ran to the clothes. Stella’s high-top cloth sneakers were there, as were her jeans and batik blouse. He checked her pants and found her cell phone. What did that mean?

  Without considering his movements, Luke turned his head west, and his eyes followed the silver trail of moonlight extending into the horizon. Way out there, far beyond the breakers, he thought he saw something. Was it a dolphin? No, if that was the case, he’d be seeing more than one fin gliding through the waves. Dolphins traveled in pods.

  It was Stella. She was swimming away from him. She was swimming away from the world.

  Luke ran to the shoreline. “Stella!” he screamed.

  He jumped up and down and kept screaming her name. But the swimmer didn’t stop. She was too far away to be able to hear him.

  Swim after her, he thought. But she was already dangerously far out there. By the time he caught up with her, she would probably be exhausted and maybe even hypothermic; she might not even have the strength to get back to shore.

  Luke turned around and began sprinting toward his car. He’d grab his surfboard and paddle out. There was no way Stella was leaving this earthly plane without him.

  Wilkerson tried to blend in with the shadows as Surfer Boy ran past him, but there was no need. Romeo wasn’t seeing anything except his damsel in distress. Wilkerson had watched him screaming from the shore, trying to get her attention. She was too far away to hear him, though.

  But now the boy had a plan. Wilkerson watched as he pulled down his surfboard.

  Wilkerson had a plan, too.

  Surfer Boy slowed at the water’s edge as Wilkerson had counted on him doing. There was no way he was going to race into the surf with his clothes on. He ripped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes. Then he started pulling down his jeans. Of course he didn’t notice Wilkerson’s approach. His eyes were fixated on her distant figure.

  Wilkerson had selected the perfect beach stone. It was a cobblestone as big as his fist, and he swung it at Surfer Boy’s temple.

  The kid dropped. He never even screamed. As he flopped around on the beach, his blood colored the sand red. The blow caused his body to spasm. Surfer Boy wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon; Surfer Boy might never be getting up. But he was alive for the moment, and that suited Wilkerson’s purposes. He shook his fist and the bloody rock that was in it toward the faraway figure in the water. She would sense him, he knew. She would hear him.

  “I’ll crush his skull unless you come back!” he screamed. “I swear to God I’ll kill him!”

  Wilkerson strained to see the far-off figure. Was she still swimming away from shore? Even with the moonlight it was hard to see.

  “If you leave us, he dies!” screamed Wilkerson.

  And then he felt like doing a little jig. Stella had definitely changed her course. She was now swimming toward shore.

  “Drop your weapon!” a voice commanded.

  Wilkerson knew the voice of his old nemesis. For seven years the cop had been asking him questions. He had been unrelenting and unforgiving, judging Wilkerson even for the crimes he hadn’t committed.

  “Surfer Boy attacked me,” said Wilkerson. “I was just protecting myself.”

  Once more Cheever said, “Drop your weapon!”

  “You were always wrong about me. But you could never admit it. You owe me a long-overdue apology.”

  “Drop it!”

  “You spilled that pizza on me, and then you paraded me in front of
the press, making me look like a lowlife.”

  “Step away from that boy, drop the stone, drop to your knees, and cuff your fingers behind your head.”

  “Do you believe in God?” asked Wilkerson.

  “Yes,” said Cheever.

  “And do you think all of us are a reflection of God?”

  “We’re supposed to be.”

  “Then why did God make me like I am? I’m twisted. Isn’t that what you always told me?”

  “I provoked you to try and find out what happened to Stella.”

  “Stella, Stella, Stella. The first time I saw her, I was almost blinded by her light. I was drawn to her, of course. Do moths get blamed for being attracted to the light? It’s their nature. But what about my nature? I felt almost cleansed in her light. But then she went away.”

  “She came back.”

  “And now her light is even brighter. She knows what I want. It’s what I’ve always wanted. But I was interrupted. Seven years ago she was meant to die by my hands. I kept getting closer to doing the deed. I was circling her like a shark. Every day I would make sure I got a glimpse of her, and at night I would kill her in my thoughts, and in my dreams.

  “Can you imagine what I felt when I heard she was gone? It was hell. I was more jealous and angry than you could imagine. Someone else had gotten my prize. Someone else had her.”

  “That’s why you should take her deliverance as a sign. God gave you another chance.”

  “Is that the same God who made me? Do you know how much I hate love stories? They mock me, because I always knew I would never have a love story of my own.”

  Cheever didn’t like Wilkerson’s vibe. He seemed to have come to a decision, and not a good one.

  “Put down the stone. This is your last warning.”

  “Why? Surfer Boy isn’t going to make it anyway.”

  Wilkerson snuck a quick glance at Luke. The boy didn’t look good; his breathing was loud and erratic. Still, the kid was young and strong.

  “But I could be wrong. As long as his heart’s beating, I know he won’t give up. Her love sustains him even now, and I can’t have that.”

  With a sudden motion, Wilkerson lunged toward the downed figure. The rock, clenched in Wilkerson’s hands, was meant to cave in the boy’s head. But the stone never reached its target. The sound of gunfire wasn’t loud on the beach; it was mostly swallowed by the surf. But the shot tore through Wilkerson’s chest.

  It was a fatal wound, but for a few seconds, Wilkerson was able to ignore it. He turned his head, and his eyes followed the trail of moonlight, looking for the brightest light of all at the end of it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Cheever fought through his shock, and tried to save the boy’s life. He did chest compressions as he spoke.

  “You’ll be all right, Luke,” said Cheever. “Help is on the way.”

  He was pretty sure the kid couldn’t hear what he was saying. Cheever suspected Luke had a fractured skull. He was no doctor, but it wouldn’t have surprised him if the kid also had a cerebral hemorrhage.

  The cop continued to do chest compressions through the kid’s shaking, spasms, and rattling teeth. It was hopeless, he knew, but he wouldn’t give up.

  “Luke!”

  The cry could be heard over the breaking waves. That’s when Cheever turned and saw her emerging from the surf. He thought of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus; she was that beautiful and more.

  “Luke!” she called again.

  There was something commanding about Stella’s voice. Cheever could feel it down to his toes. It was a summons not easily ignored.

  Stella ran to Luke. Later, in his report, Cheever would say that she applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But it wasn’t that. At first she cradled his damaged head to her breast; then she kissed him.

  “I’m here, Luke,” she said. “Follow my voice back home.”

  And then she kissed him again, and this time in a whisper repeated, “I’m here, Luke.”

  Cheever took off his blazer and draped it over Stella’s back. The shooting, and everything else, had taken its toll on the cop, and at first he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Luke’s breathing wasn’t as labored, and his face had color. Even the swelling in his head had gone down, and the bleeding had all but stopped.

  It was impossible, of course. So much of this was impossible.

  Cheever went and stood over Wilkerson. Thirty years on the force, and he’d never had to draw his gun. Not once. He got a case of the shivers, and then the dry heaves.

  “I’m sorry,” Stella said, touching him with her hand. Her voice, her words, made him feel a little better.

  “It’s not as if I can exactly see the future,” she said, “but now I can better see the past. And I now know one of the reasons I was selected. Seven years ago Wilkerson was going to kill me. Had he chosen another path since then, Wilkerson could have lived, but he did not. You shot him, but you were not his executioner. His fate was decided long ago.”

  Cheever continued to shiver, despite Stella’s comforting words, despite her saying Wilkerson’s fate was decided long ago. It didn’t feel like long ago.

  “That’s how it must have been with all the others,” said Stella. “I am sure we would have all died—or maybe we did die—without that second chance.”

  It was a convenient explanation for what the Travelers had supposedly done, thought Cheever. Or maybe, he thought, it was a convenient explanation for what he had done.

  “Thank you for saving Luke,” she said.

  Cheever shook his head. “You saved Luke. You came back. But how did you know he was hurt?”

  “I heard him calling.”

  “You were halfway to Japan. There’s no way you could have heard anyone on the shore shouting.”

  “I have heard from much farther distances than that.”

  “You told Luke to follow your voice back home.”

  “There are times when we need someone to show us the way.”

  They heard sirens in the distance. Police and paramedics were on the way.

  “Stella . . .”

  Both of them heard Luke’s whisper.

  Stella dropped down to her knees. “I’m here, Luke.”

  His soft words seemed to come with shadows: “I was afraid you’d drown.”

  “Mermaids don’t drown. And neither do Space Girls.”

  “That’s good to know,” he whispered.

  “An ambulance is coming for you,” said Stella. “Do you hear the siren?”

  “I do,” he said. “Will you stay with me?”

  “We’re valentines, aren’t we?” she said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Cheever was put on administrative leave. There was nothing to suggest the shooting wasn’t justified, but he still found himself undergoing one round of questions after another.

  His story was simple: he’d come upon Wilkerson moments after he’d attacked Luke Hart. After multiple warnings, he’d shot Wilkerson when he again tried to attack Hart with a cobblestone. Shortly after that, Stella Pierce had returned from her swim and begun mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Luke.

  Cheever had been told that Luke’s and Stella’s stories confirmed his own.

  All of them had told the truth, thought Cheever, even though none of them had told anything resembling the full story. He wasn’t even sure what the full story was.

  His account of what happened didn’t include his own investigation into Stella’s missing seven years. There was no mention of Dickie Rath and his mysterious niece, Elle, or Beto Diaz. He didn’t discuss the missing photograph of Stella and her family that she had produced after a seven-year absence. Mindspeak hadn’t been brought up, nor had the Travelers. There was no place in his report to talk about LeRon Rivers or the other “students” supposedly voyaging with Stella. And he couldn’t muddy up the investigative waters by talking about Stella’s intuitive side, which seemed to divine so many secrets, incl
uding some of his own. Cheever had known better than to write about the frog. And during his interrogation, he kept hearing about some mysterious song that Stella had sung at a talent show. That was yet another omission.

  In the end, his report was simple and factual. It was also a crock.

  UFO stories and extraterrestrials seemed to go hand in hand with San Diego and Southern California. George Van Tassel and the Integration was only the start of it. Space cults had long made the area their home. One group had been around San Diego for decades doing its waiting-for-Alien Godot routine. And the Heaven’s Gate cult had made quite a local splash when thirty-nine of its members had committed mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe. Their leader, Marshall Applewhite, told his followers that the approaching Hale-Bopp Comet was being accompanied by a UFO. He said their souls would be carried by this spaceship to another planet, and there, be reincarnated.

  None of that had gone into Cheever’s report either, although he wondered if it should have.

  After two days of grilling Cheever, SDPD decided they’d asked enough questions, and Cheever decided he’d jumped through enough hoops. Supposedly it was all over. Cheever suspected it would never be over.

  There were explanations for everything that had occurred. Cheever wasn’t one for the inexplicable. So he’d found reasons to explain everything from the frog (suspended animation) to Stella’s song (mass hysteria) to her mind reading (if her brain had been enhanced with hardware, then she could use deductive language along with the interpreting of body language to gauge what others were thinking) to her supposed healing of others (hypnosis). But when Cheever put all of his explanations together, they seemed to be more of a stretch than everything Stella had actually done.

  He drove home to Leucadia. Gumshoe greeted him at the door and insisted upon some purr time. Cheever didn’t object.

  Rachel would be over later. She was supposed to be bringing takeout. That was as much of an agenda as Cheever wanted. But it wasn’t to be. Although he hadn’t expected any visitors, he got one.