“I don’t know what it was Raven expected from me but whatever it was, I couldn’t give it to her. I couldn’t apologize for him, or explain why he was the way he was. Then, when she told me she was pregnant and that she was going to keep the baby, I about shit. I offered to help, you know, give her whatever money I could, but she refused. Guess she didn’t want anything to tie an innocent baby to our fucked-up family. I don’t blame her. I just wished there was more I could do for her.”
Nicky and I were silent the rest of the way home. I left the car running while I went in to buy a pack of cigarettes at Haskie’s. I was relieved to see a teenage girl behind the counter, no sign of Jim. The lights in the antique shop were off. Ellie had gone home, too.
When we got to the bottom of Bullrush Hill, I looked past the destroyed mailbox and the swinging sign at the Griswolds’ place and saw movement in the yard. It was dark and the snow was heavy, but I was sure I caught a glimpse of a fair-haired child disappearing behind the back of the house.
“Did you see that?” I asked, hitting the brakes. The car skidded about two feet.
“What?” Nicky followed my gaze over to the ruin of his old house.
Del. It was Del.
“Nothing, I guess. Must have been an animal.” I decided Nicky was agitated enough without me telling him what I thought I had seen. Maybe it had been an animal after all and my eyes were just playing tricks on me. The driving snow made it difficult to make things out, gave everything an ethereal, dreamlike quality. Del’s storm.
I stepped on the gas and continued up the hill, the rental car’s tires slipping and spinning in the snow.
RAVEN WAS FRANTIC WHEN we got back to my mother’s. Gabriel was with her in the kitchen.
“Opal is missing,” she said. “She’s just gone. I’ve called all her friends. No one’s seen her. She’s been gone four hours now and she wouldn’t be out on her bike in this weather. Something’s happened.”
Nicky sat down awkwardly at the table, resting his crutches against his chair.
As much as I wanted to tell Raven to relax and that Opal was going to turn up fine any minute, I knew immediately that it wasn’t true.
“Have you called the police?” I asked.
“Of course,” Raven said. “The detectives said not to be concerned yet, but they’re planning to stop by in an hour or so anyway to take a look at the knife I found.”
“Knife?”
“I found this in your mother’s locked drawer when I was cooking this afternoon. It’s not hers. I’ve never seen it before.” Raven held out a sealed plastic bag with a small paring knife in it. I recognized it as the one my mother was using to slice strawberries on my first morning home. The morning after the murder. My mind flashed to how disheveled my mother had looked with leaves, dirt, and what appeared to be dried blood on her bandages. Had my mother gone into the woods and found the knife there?
Another, more horrifying thought surfaced: one that I’d been pushing back for days. Had my mother used the knife? Was it possible that this frail, sick old woman could be the one who killed Tori Miller? She was clearly out of her head most of the time, but capable of murder? I doubted it.
But if, somehow, Del had gotten inside her…
“There’s a small piece of blond hair caught under the handle,” Raven said. “If you look carefully, you can see it.”
I held the bag in my hand and searched until I saw that Raven was right, there was a fine strand of hair there. Pale blond.
“I don’t suppose you know where the knife came from?” Raven said, and I shook my head.
“It’s been here since I have,” I told her. “We used it to make strawberry pancakes my first morning home.”
Raven squinted at me, took the knife back, and tucked it carefully into her purse.
“We’re going to go take a drive around in the Blazer,” Gabriel said. “See if we can find any sign of Opal.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.
“No,” Gabriel said. “You stay here and look after your mother. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
“Be careful out there,” I said. “The roads are getting pretty slick.”
“I’ll go warm up the car,” Gabriel said, leaving us.
Raven hurried into the front hall for her coat and boots. I followed at her heels. “There’s ratatouille on the stove—your mother wouldn’t eat. She worked on her painting till about six thirty or so, then went to her room to lie down. She said the painting was done.
“Kate, one more thing.” Raven was doing up the top button of her coat. “I’m curious. Where’d your mother find that old badge?”
“Badge?”
“Yeah, she’s got some rusted sheriff’s star pinned to her shirt. Looks like a kid’s toy. I thought maybe it was some old thing of yours.”
I stared dumbly at her, as if she had been speaking some strange tongue.
I wondered if Raven had ever heard about the little detail of the missing star in the unsolved Griswold murder case. If she had, then surely she would have had the police waiting for me with handcuffs and leg irons.
“I’m just worried she’ll hurt herself with it,” Raven explained. “The points look pretty sharp. You might want to try to take it away.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll get it away from her.” Damn right I will. Especially with the police on their way.
When Raven left, I went into the kitchen, hurriedly scooped some ratatouille into a bowl for Nicky, and told him I was going to go change my clothes. I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a minute.
Opal was missing. I knew the killer had her. I had a lot of jumbled pieces of the puzzle spinning around in my head, but some of them were beginning to fit. I knew the next step was to talk to my mother. But first, I wanted to take a look at her finished painting.
The thought of going into the studio alone frightened me, but I wouldn’t drag Nicky along. This was something I had to do on my own. Besides, I told myself, it was only a painting.
“Aren’t you having anything to eat?” Nicky asked as I put the bowl down in front of him.
“No. I ate up in Burlington,” I lied.
“What’d you do up there anyway? Raven told me you went to see an old friend. Was it Mike? Did you find him?”
“No. I went to his shop, but he wasn’t there.” The second lie came easier than the first. It seemed easier and safer than to go ahead and tell him everything I’d learned and all the things I was beginning to suspect.
“Be right back. I’m just going to change.”
“Into something more comfortable?” he asked, grinning slyly.
I combed my fingers through his hair and he leaned in, resting his head against my belly. He pulled up my shirt and began kissing me, gently at first, then running his tongue along the top of my jeans until I shivered, pulling away.
“I think you’re a little stoned on pain meds,” I told him. He reached out to pull me to him again, but I danced away, promising to be right back.
I carried a candle into the studio, shutting the door behind me. My mother had draped an old white sheet over the painting on the easel.
I moved closer, holding the candle out in front of me, hands trembling. When I pulled back that sheet, it would be like disrobing a child in her Halloween costume. I worried that it would be Del herself I’d find underneath. I looked at the sheet and swore I saw it move, rippling slightly in some breeze I didn’t feel.
It’s only a painting. Only a painting.
I reached forward, grabbed the sheet, and threw it back.
The flames were almost three-dimensional, hypnotic in shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple. The shadowy figure in the corner was now a fully fleshed-out person who seemed at home in the flames. Like she was born of them. The girl my mother had painted in the corner was the exact likeness of Del.
She wore her yellow cowgirl shirt and blue corduroy pants with a thick leather belt—the outfit she had on the day
she was murdered. Her gray-blue eyes stared out at me and she had a half smile on her face as the flames shot out around her, licking at her feet like hungry dogs. The sheriff’s star was pinned to her chest, just above her hidden letter M. M for Mike. My own tattoo burned in response. I could almost hear Del saying the name out loud: Desert Rose. A pretty name for a pretty color. Hello, Desert Rose.
“Hello, Del,” I said to the painting, thinking if I could hear myself speak, the fear would lessen.
The flame of the candle I carried leaped up, illuminating the painting. Del’s face glowed, surrounded by the colorful, lively sea of flames my mother had painted. Then I heard a sound, a quiet laughter. It did not seem to come from the painting exactly, but from all around me—the walls, the windows, under the bed. The candle flame jumped back down, flickered, then was out, leaving me in complete darkness.
I knew I was no longer alone.
17
November 17, 2002
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve thought a lot about Patsy Marinelli—remembering her words on the night I told her about Del: The dead can blame. But mostly, what I’ve thought about is what finally became of the huge woman we all called Tiny.
I wasn’t there when it happened, but I arrived for my shift in time to see them taking her body out. The swing shift nurses told me their version of what had happened, and I filled in the details with what I read later in the log.
After dinner, Patsy went around saying good-bye to people. One of the nurses, humoring her, asked her where she was headed. My husband’s coming for me, Tiny said. I’ll be gone soon. And then she went into her room, closing the door behind her.
Poor Tiny, the nurses said to one another. Now she’s forgotten her husband is dead.
During bed check at ten, they found Patsy Marinelli, blue-faced, eyes wide open. She’d choked to death on her own tongue.
The dead can blame.
I FROZE IN THE DARKNESS, waiting for my eyes to adjust. There was a faint glow coming from the window, but other than that small square, I was surrounded by utter blackness. The giggling got louder, more shrill. I thought of crying out for Nicky, but knew he’d have a difficult time getting to me, if he even heard me at all. Ron Mackenzie’s warning raced through my mind: One potato, two potato, three potato, four / She’s coming after you now, better lock the door.
I took a step back, then another, and slowly turned toward the door, my arms in front of me, fingers groping out into nothingness. The air in the room was cool and getting cooler. It felt damp. The floor beneath me seemed to give, like I was walking on dirt. Like I was back in the root cellar. Del’s smell was all around me—damp, rotting potatoes and dirt. It filled my nose and throat until I imagined I could feel actual soil packed in there, stopping my breath.
I shuffled quickly to where I thought the door should be, but my hands found only the wall. I felt my way along it, to the left first, five paces, then back to the right. The wall felt like cold cement, not the smooth shiplapped pine I knew should be there. I remembered my first visit to the Griswolds’ root cellar—how when Del closed the door, I was sure she’d locked me in. I felt that same blind panic setting in.
When my hand found the brass doorknob at last, it was so cold it burned my palm. I pulled my shirtsleeve down and managed to turn it. I twisted the knob to the left and pulled, but the door would not open, as if it had been locked from the outside, but I knew the door had no lock.
Was someone holding it shut? My mother getting back at me for locking her in her room each night, or Nicky maybe, in an effort to prove that his sister’s ghost existed? But the laughter…
I pounded on the door while my mind struggled to give a plausible explanation for what was happening, but all I came up were wild excuses.
“Nicky! Mom!” I screamed. “Let me out! Open the door! Jesus Christ, open the door!”
I put my ear against the door, listening for the sound of someone coming to my rescue, but there was only Del’s laugh. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. It was the laugh of a trickster. An I’m gonna get you laugh. The laugh I’d heard as Del rolled on the ground the last day of school.
The dead can blame.
I rattled the door handle, collapsed against the wood, sobbing, quietly begging now.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please let me out.”
I wasn’t making excuses or inventing plausible scenarios now. Del had me. She had come back just as Nicky tried to warn me she would. Just as Opal had been insisting all along. I leaned against the jammed door feeling that old familiar feeling that whatever happened next would be up to Del. She was making the rules. There was no use fighting the inevitable. My shoulders sagged.
“Okay Del,” I said. “You’ve got me. What now?”
The laughter stopped abruptly, like a switch had been thrown, but the thick smell of soil and rot intensified.
The door swung inward with great force, sending me toppling to the floor. I slid and hit the legs of the easel, and the painting crashed down on top of me—I shoved it away, a bit desperately, squeamishly. Light spilled into the room. Beside me lay the painting of Del, her eyes on me still. I scrambled away from her, butt sliding across the floor, when I realized I was in the shadow of whoever—or whatever—had opened the door.
It took a lot of willpower to turn my head to face the doorway.
When I looked up, it was not Del’s ghost I saw hovering over me. It was my mother who stood in the doorway, grinning. She had on a calico housedress and rubber galoshes. Her hands wore their gauze bandages, thickly padded, like two bright white boxing gloves. Pinned to her chest was Del’s old sheriff’s star.
I stood up to face her, but took a step back when I realized the rotten potato smell was now coming from her.
“I know you!” my mother exclaimed in Del’s voice. She rocked back on her heels. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Deputy. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” She turned, marched to the front door, and swung it open. I stepped through the living room, following her at a safe distance. A flurry of spinning snow let itself in through the open door, her own private storm. She walked out into the dark.
“Ma! Ma, where are you going? Get back in here. You’ll freeze to death!”
“Catch me if you can, Desert Rose. Catch me if you can!”
“Ma! Wait!”
I hurried to the front door and pulled my boots on. I snatched my parka from the coat peg and the flashlight from its hook on the wall.
“What’s going on, Kate?”
Nicky had hobbled in from the kitchen and stood awkwardly balanced on his good foot and the two crutches.
“My mom just took off. Only I don’t think it’s her, exactly. I think she’s Del.”
“Your mom is Del?” Nicky squinted at me—now the great believer wore a look of doubt on his face.
I didn’t have time to explain.
“Nicky, just stay here, okay? And lock the door. If she comes back alone, don’t let her in. Wait for me.”
“Don’t let your mom in?”
“It’s not her, Nicky.”
I zipped up my parka and stepped out into the snow, clicking the flashlight on.
“Lock the door behind me.”
The snowflakes stung my face. I swung the beam of light around the cabin and along the tree line but saw no trace of my mother. There were only her footprints, leading exactly the way I knew they would.
I felt for Nicky’s gun in my pocket, praying I wouldn’t have to use it, but feeling reassured by its presence. Would I shoot my own mother if I had to? Did it still count as matricide if I was actually gunning for a little girl ghost? And how could you kill someone who was already dead?
I started off toward the path, and when I got to the boulder at the head of it, I turned right and began my journey down the old trail once more. Surrounded by the forest, the darkness deepened. My feet slipped, and the snowy night just seemed to absorb the flashlight’s beam. I could see about two feet in front of me.
�
��Ma?” I called out into the dark. But no, that wasn’t who I chasing, was it? “Del? Del, wait up! Wait up, Del!”
My feet shuffled into a slow snow jog, doing more sliding than running. I fell once, then twice. The third time the flashlight flew away from me and I had to crawl on my hands and knees into prickers to get it back. As I rose to my feet the wind kicked up and blew the light powdery snow in gusts. Trees groaned. I kept my eyes on the tracks in front of me, illuminated by the flashlight’s beam.
Was she taking me to my death? Had Del waited all these years, plotting and planning her revenge? Were Opal and Nicky right all along? Was Del Tori Miller’s killer? Del in the form of my vacant, heavily medicated mother? My mother, who just happened to have bloody, leaf-littered bandages and to be wielding a paring knife the morning after the murder.
We were close now. So close. I hurried along through the woods, keeping my light on the footprints in front of me, sure I would lose my way without them. The snow was falling hard and fast, and the wind was blowing it right into my face. I had to keep stopping to wipe the snow out of my eyes. It froze on my lashes, blurring the already dim view I had.
My mother’s tracks turned right at the fork and went in a straight line toward the old leaning cabin. But as I squinted down at the snowy forest floor, I saw that her tracks joined two other sets of footprints that had come from the other direction, from the Griswolds’ field: one smallish set, one very large. They were filling in quickly, and crisscrossed each other, turning here and there from individual prints into dragging streaks.
“Hurry, Desert Rose!” my mother’s voice came floating back out of the darkness, muffled by the snow. “There isn’t much time!”
I looked down at the footprints in the snow and suddenly understood.
Del wasn’t taking me to my death.
She was taking me to save Opal.
I made out the shadow of the cabin just ahead of me. Its lean seemed dangerous. I stopped and ran my flashlight beam along the front of it. There was a soft glow from inside and the windows and open door formed a frightening, crooked face. I saw no movement, but heard voices inside. Then a muffled scream.
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