by Jen Blood
Reverend Diggins had always been an early riser—I was thrilled to see that that hadn’t changed over the years. When I pulled in front of the church, his PT Cruiser was the only vehicle in the lot. Across the street, the general store was already in full swing. Pickups were packed in tight, fishermen in yellow slickers loitering outside with cigarettes and hot coffee. It looked like a casting call for the next Gorton’s fish sticks spokesman. I searched the crowd for a sign of Ashmont or his truck, but saw neither.
If possible, the Reverend looked even less enthusiastic about seeing me today than he had on our first visit. His office was chilly. Reverend Diggins looked up from his desk with a frown when I entered, and the temperature dropped another degree or two.
“I know it’s early—I just had a couple more questions, if it’s all right.”
He nodded to the same chair I’d argued with him from two days ago. I sat. There was a ledger open on his desk, a silver fountain pen on top. He put the pen in a felt case and closed the ledger before addressing me.
“I’m glad that you came, actually,” he said, surprisingly enough. “I’m afraid I was a bit harsh with you the other day.”
“It happens.”
He actually looked amused at that. “I imagine it does. What can I help you with this morning?”
“I thought you might have some old pictures here. Of picnics and special events, that kind of thing.”
“Still interested in Rebecca Ashmont, I take it?”
“I’m just curious about her—she caused quite a stir. When I’m writing her for the book, I’d like to have a picture of some kind in my mind.”
“You should be careful—you’re developing a bit of an obsession.”
I looked at him, reminded inexplicably of those old Victorian paintings where the faces remain impassive while the eyes seem to follow your every move.
“I don’t think I’d be the first person obsessed with Rebecca, do you?”
“She was an unusual woman. She certainly had an effect on the people she touched, if that’s what you mean.”
“And did she ever touch you, Reverend?”
The words were out before I could stop myself. The Reverend stiffened. Rather than dignify the remark with a response, he stood and went to a bookshelf on the back wall. He ran a bony finger over the spines until he came to a thick, leather-bound volume.
“This covers the years she was here—you can start with that.”
He returned to his desk and opened his ledger once more as I took the album and flipped through. I found what I was looking for after a few minutes of scanning faces and captions. I turned the album so the Reverend could see.
“That’s her?”
He nodded, but I couldn’t read his expression.
In the first photo of her, a woman with thick, black hair was seated at a picnic table by the water, a single braid hanging loose over one shoulder. Her face was heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and full lips. Thickly lashed, wide black eyes stared back at me. In the first few shots, Rebecca was svelte, with long legs and slim hips. In the next set, she’d gained weight, thickening around the middle, her breasts perceptibly fuller.
“She was pregnant while she was here,” I said.
“Was she? It was quite a few years ago—I’m afraid I don’t remember it that well.”
I let that go for the moment. When I flipped the page, Rebecca stood in front of the church. Something had changed about her since her last photograph. It was her eyes—there was something otherworldly about them that I hadn’t seen before, like she wasn’t quite all there. She held a toddler in her arms—a little boy, maybe two years old. He was dark like his mother, with thick black hair and wide black eyes. I thought again of the blue-eyed angel hidden in Jack’s things.
“Do you remember her son at all?”
He shook his head, too fast to have actually given the question any real thought. “No. Rebecca had left the church some time before that photo was taken—she came back to the mainland for a picnic, if memory serves. Before that, I hadn’t seen the boy since he was an infant. I never saw him again after that day.”
He got up again and returned the photo album to its spot on the shelf. Afterward, he headed straight for the door.
“I’m sorry—that’s all I can tell you about the matter. If you’ll excuse me, I have morning devotionals to attend to.”
I rose without a fight. At the door, I couldn’t resist getting in a final question.
“Did you know Joe Ashmont didn’t think he was the boy’s father?”
He wasn’t surprised. “I seem to recall rumors to that effect.”
“Any idea who it might have been if it wasn’t Joe?”
Much to my surprise, he smiled at me. “Subtlety is not your strong suit, Ms. Solomon. Are you asking if I fathered the child?”
The fact that he was laughing at me took a little of the bite from my interrogation. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
We were still sequestered in his office, but the Reverend looked at the door as though confirming that fact. He returned to his desk and sat down. I remained standing.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell my son,” he said.
“Of course,” I lied.
“It would not have been impossible for me to have been the child’s father,” he said.
“So, you had an affair with Rebecca Ashmont,” I said.
He looked a little queasy. When he looked at me again, I was reminded that I was speaking with a scholar of some repute, and not just some Bible-thumping hick. I made a mental note to handle the rest of the interview accordingly.
“I am not unaware of the feelings you and my son harbor toward organized religion. I understand that you find our practices archaic, if not overtly hypocritical. But I take my position very seriously. I always have.”
“Which is why you slept with one of your congregation, possibly knocked her up, and then sent her back to her abusive husband, I suppose.”
Any trace of amusement vanished from his face. After a few seconds, he managed a placid smile.
“I take full responsibility for my actions. I was under no spell, and I certainly was not under duress.”
He paused, considering his words. “With that said, I would like you to understand that Rebecca was an extremely persuasive young woman who believed herself to be fulfilling a very specific role.”
“By sleeping with preachers?”
“People have believed less credible destinies. Rebecca told me once that she believed God spoke to her, mid…” his pale cheeks flushed to a deep pink that climbed all the way to his receding hairline.
“So, Rebecca Ashmont believed she was God’s concubine. That’s your story?”
“That was her story, though not so crudely put,” he said. He got up and made for the door one more time. “That’s honestly all I can tell you. You should go.”
I didn’t need to dig any deeper—I knew exactly what the Reverend’s spin on the affair would be. It was the story of Eden all over again: an innocent man does his best to lead a godly life only to be led astray by Eve, buck naked with a snake ‘round her neck and an evil apple in hand, just begging to be tossed from the garden. I managed to get in one last question before he pushed me out the door.
“So, Rebecca’s son—Zion. Where did he fit into this whole delusion of hers?”
I heard footsteps upstairs. Reverend Diggins looked like he was about to be caught in the act instead of just talking about it. His fingers tightened around the doorknob, his lips pressed into a pale, straight line.
“I told you, I only saw them together when he was small. But the way she raised him was not…” he hesitated so long that I thought he might not finish. Someone stopped at the top of the stairs, calling the Reverend’s name.
“Reverend Diggins?” I prompted.
He paused to call up the stairs. “One moment please, Alan. I’ll meet you out front.” He returned his attention to me as the man’s footsteps receded.
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“Rebecca was not a traditional mother, clearly. Zion was the center of everything. He was a serious baby who grew into a serious toddler, and I expect ultimately became a very serious adolescent. I never knew him as he grew older, but the stories that I heard were that he was somewhat…”
I realized I was holding my breath. “Somewhat…?”
“… Unbalanced,” he completed. “There was a rumor that Isaac was grooming him for his position at the head of the church. It is my understanding from accounts I’d heard at the time that Zion took this training very seriously.”
“But he was only a kid—he would have been twelve, thirteen years old when Rebecca took him to Payson Isle.”
“With Rebecca and Joe Ashmont as parents, I expect twelve years is quite enough time to develop some… eccentricities.”
Or go batshit crazy, in other words. I considered this for a moment, still trying to reconcile the image of the black-eyed little boy on his mother’s lap in the photo with the man I now believed he had become. Then, something else made me forget that thought altogether.
“Wait—accounts from whom? They’d only been there a month, and everybody out there died. Who talked to you about Zion?”
He hesitated a split second too long, and I knew. I didn’t have a chance to ask anything else as he herded me into the hallway. Just before he closed the door on me, he whispered the words I’d already anticipated.
“Your father was concerned. He came to me for counsel regarding the relationship between Isaac, Rebecca, and the boy, a few days before the fire. That’s why we were going in—that’s why he wanted them off the island. Not just because of Rebecca’s delusions, but because of her son’s.”
August 17, 1990
Rebecca sits on a ledge on the north shore of the island, waiting for Isaac. Below, the ocean is a clean, sharp blue, etched with the white lines of a strong surf on a windy day. The ledge provides a perfect vantage, the granite cut as though God himself designed the site for this purpose. Rebecca thinks of the occasional stone masonry Joe used to do in the summers when they were still at the orphanage. She used to imagine Christ wielding a hammer in much the same way, for some reason. Joe would return at the end of the day, covered in fine white dust; she could taste stone in his beard and on his eyelashes.
A voice pulls her from her reverie. It is not the one she expected.
“Beautiful view.”
She glances over her shoulder as Adam approaches. “It is.”
It is late afternoon, the sun still high in the sky. Rebecca usually meets Isaac in the dark of night or first light of morning, but he suggested an earlier meeting this time. It made her uneasy the way he avoided her gaze when he made the request; Adam’s presence does nothing to ease her mind.
He sits beside her without waiting for an invitation. When she looks at him, his eyes are as blue as the ocean below. She thinks for a moment that the name he chose for his new life is apt—he has assumed the innocence, the fresh-boned purity, of someone just stepping into the world. Now that she knows the extent of his deceit, she finds herself unexpectedly impressed with the performance.
“Do you spend much time here?”
She nods, knowing he will continue regardless of whether or not he receives encouragement from her. First man or no, he is still essentially a man.
“Isaac sent me to tell you he can’t meet you this evening.”
This time, she does turn. There is always something veiled about Adam, a sense that he is hiding some inner darkness behind those eyes of brilliant blue. For an instant when their eyes meet this time, however, the veil falls. She understands suddenly what he sees when he looks at her: A weed. Something unwelcome, something dangerous—a plague to be plucked from their midst before it contaminates the carefully tended garden that is the Payson Church.
She picks up a handful of granite pebbles from the ground beside her and holds them so tightly in her clenched fist that the stones dig into her skin. She attempts a smile.
“Did he say why he can’t meet me?”
Adam shakes his head. Doubt darkens his face for an instant before it is gone. “He’s busy, I think. Preparing his sermon.”
“And you’re his messenger.”
He nods. The weight of the words she knows he is struggling with are heavy in the air. Finally, she prompts him.
“Was there something else?”
With long, graceful fingers, he reaches for one of the sharper stones on their shared ledge and flicks it in a clean arc through the air. If they were closer to sea level, the stone would have caught the water just right—it might have skipped five, six, seven times before it sank. This high up, it just sails out in a straight line before beginning its descent.
“I just wanted you to know that I understand,” Adam says.
She turns to look at him in question.
“I know what it is to want something for your child. I know how becoming a parent changes you—how the world takes on new meaning.” He falters when she does not respond. “What I mean to say is, I know how easy it can be to lose yourself—to lose sight of God’s plan for you—when you have a child.”
“Zion is God’s plan for me,” she returns simply. It’s absurd that she is having this conversation with a man who has allowed his only child to be taken from him, raised by a godless woman on the mainland.
“You’ve done a good job with him—no one’s saying Zion isn’t an exceptional boy. I’m just saying, maybe the time has come to start considering your own spiritual well-being.”
A fishing boat appears from behind the cove, followed by a dozen or more gulls that dive relentlessly at the deck. She knows immediately that it is not Joe’s boat—he kills a fresh gull every morning and nails it to a post at the hull. No gulls follow Joe.
“I’m saved,” she finally says.
“The way you conduct yourself with Isaac suggests that you are not.” He hesitates a moment when she doesn’t respond. “I’m not here to judge your conduct with Isaac. I’m more concerned about his behavior with Zion.”
For the first time, she is surprised by his words. “My son has been chosen.”
“He’s a very bright boy. Gifted. But I’m concerned that Isaac has become somewhat… fixated, on him.”
It is only then that she realizes the extent of his envy. Until Zion’s arrival, Adam was the sole focus of Isaac’s guiding hand, the adored apprentice at the feet of the master. Others attended prayer meetings and Bible study, learned the ways of the Lord, but Adam was the favorite son.
Everything has changed since their arrival.
The silence between them grows sharper. She can feel him struggling with the final words to drive his argument home. He reaches out to her—touches her leg, just slightly, with the palm of his hand. Rebecca flinches, and he looks as guilty as if he’d struck her.
“I think it would be best if you took Zion from this place. Put an end to your relationship with Isaac, take your son, and make a new life for yourselves. Isaac can’t do it—you two have some kind of power over him, some sway that he can’t seem to fight. But he has built something here, something valuable. All of that has been jeopardized since you and Zion arrived.”
Rebecca weighs her response carefully, considering the information Matt passed on to her just yesterday. She hadn’t planned on saying something so soon; now, backed into a corner by Adam’s design, Rebecca realizes she has no choice. She will not go quietly.
“You say you are concerned with putting the church in jeopardy. If that’s true, how can you justify living here when your presence is a much clearer danger to the sanctity of this island?”
Several long seconds pass. Seagulls scream and waves crash, but Adam is frozen.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, finally. The words are so weak they make her smile.
“I think you do. I understand the need to separate one’s self from the past; to reinvent yourself when it’s clear the path you have chosen is not the one God intended.
But it seems Isaac and his followers are far better equipped to handle the challenges of one battered woman and her gifted child, than the fury that could reign down upon us all should you be discovered here.”
He has gone unnaturally pale, staring at her as though she’s already uttered the threat.
“No one knows,” he said. “That part of my life is behind me. The people who died, those who survived… It’s all behind me.”
“Yet you sent your only child away to protect her—isn’t that true? To ensure that even if you—if we—are found, Erin will be safe. It’s a mistake, Adam, to believe I wouldn’t go to equally drastic measures to ensure that my son’s new life is not threatened.”
Before he can respond, a branch breaks behind them. She and Adam turn, and Rebecca is not surprised to find Zion standing at the path. He walks to them with the certainty of a man rather than a child, and comes to stand beside his mother. Still seated, her head reaches just above his hip. His hands fall to her hair, and she nearly closes her eyes at the comfort of her son’s touch.
“I didn’t know where you were,” he says.
It is a lie, but one she can forgive.
“I was here. We’re finished now.” She looks at Adam, daring him to challenge her. Zion offers her his hand. Rebecca doesn’t hesitate to let him take her full weight when pulling her up, confident he can handle the burden. Adam remains seated. As mother and child prepare to leave, he finally speaks.
“I wish you would think about what I said.”
Adam is on the ledge, Rebecca to his right. She doesn’t think about where Zion is until the boy has switched places with her, putting himself between her and Isaac’s minion. He moves so quickly that he knocks against the older man, his dark eyes hard. Adam grabs hold of a piece of scrub-brush to keep from falling off the ledge and onto the jagged rocks below.
More gulls screech somewhere offshore. Adam gets to his feet, and the two chosen ones—the elder now cast aside, the younger just coming into his own—stand facing one another. Zion looks at Adam tranquilly, his grip tightening on Rebecca’s hand.