The Unremembered Girl: A Novel

by Eliza Maxwell

  “I said be gone, sinner! And I won’t say it again! My house is cleansed of the devil, and I won’t be letting him in the door on the word of his minions. The might and the light of Jesus will protect my doorstep. Be gone, I say again, before I strike you down!”

  Jonah wasn’t the only person watching the ruckus the two men were making in the street. Tinker himself had come out from behind his counter and walked over to stand next to Jonah, and Jonah could see others gathering up and down the street.

  “Like a carnival sideshow,” Tinker said, smoothing his large gray mustache as he spoke. “Doucet’s done lost his mind,” he murmured.

  “Behold, there are sinners in our midst, and beware!” Mr. Doucet was shouting to the gathering crowd. “Mark this man’s face, a harbinger of evil, he is. Skulking in the woods, and dealing in infamy. Drugs, prostitutes, darkness, and sin for sale, right under our noses. Push it out, good people, push it out, and cleanse our town of these evil pastimes. For if you don’t, the Lord will see the darkness you let into your heart, and into your homes.”

  Jonah had seen the way people mostly paid no mind to the words Mr. Doucet spoke. He felt a kind of kinship with the man because of it, in spite of his loud, ugly ways. People mostly paid no mind to Jonah either. But this time, folks were whispering to one another, asking about the other man, the one backing away from Mr. Doucet and his angry words like a cockroach that’s had a light shined into its corner.

  The man scurried away, looking down at his feet while people whispered, but Jonah didn’t miss the mean on his face when he looked back over his shoulder at Mr. Doucet, who was still going on about the devil walking among them.

  It was too bad, Jonah thought. Too bad they couldn’t have been friends.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The veil of normalcy was thin and ragged, but Henry and Eve held it tight against their huddled shoulders, trying to find their way.

  Henry brought Eve along when he went to a job across town. He’d been hired to build a pergola and couldn’t afford to pass on the work. He was beginning to realize that their needs would change dramatically once the baby was born, an inevitability that Eve refused to discuss.

  Neither was he willing to leave her alone for any extended period of time, so she’d brought the books that Henry had picked up from the library and settled into a lawn chair in the client’s backyard while Henry had measured, sawed, and nailed. The books were colorful and bright, simple pictures and strings of letters designed to enthrall children while they learned the basics of reading.

  Henry recalled the initial shock he’d felt, realizing that Eve couldn’t read. He’d been teaching her how to cook, working from his mother’s old recipe books, when he’d seen the blank puzzlement on her face at the sight of his mother’s neat cursive penmanship. His shock soon gave way to sadness.

  He’d shifted gears, and their lessons had gone from how to sear a steak to how to recognize the letters of the alphabet. Eve was a surprisingly quick study for someone who’d never been in a classroom.

  Henry’s heart beat faster each time she fought her way to the end of a word, sounding it out as she went, then looked up at him on the ladder, real laughter in her voice. It was a simple kind of joy. And addicting.

  The wind picked up in the afternoon, cooling off the day and giving them the first hints of the storm heading their way, but they paid it no mind.

  Evening was falling as he drove the truck back home. He was sweaty and tired—but content. Eve sat next to him holding the books tightly in her lap, next to her ever-growing belly, her face calm and clear. Hopeful. At least, that’s what Henry saw. What he chose to see.

  He was casting sidelong glances in her direction, not paying as much attention to the road as he should, so he didn’t see his stepfather until he was almost on top of him. Livingston was gesticulating wildly and talking to himself, ranting, as he walked down the gravel road that led home with the wind whipping the leaves around his feet, herding them this way and that in a wild sort of dance.

  Henry slowed the truck to Livingston’s pace, which never faltered.

  “Sinners. Sinners, I say!” he said to Henry, shaking his fist with a wild look in his eyes as he continued to trudge toward home.

  “Hop in, Livingston,” Henry said as the first fat droplets of rain began to fall here and there, an opening act for what was about to come.

  His stepfather ignored him, mumbling under his breath. His diatribes had gotten more vehement, and more disturbing, during the weeks and months since Mama had died, and Henry had been secretly grateful that Livingston spent so much time away from the house, some nights stumbling home in the small hours of the morning. Many days, he didn’t come home at all.

  Seeing the state of him now, though, Henry felt a wave of shame that he couldn’t ignore. His mother would be appalled that he’d allowed this to continue. Livingston was wasting away before their eyes. His skin sagged, and his clothes were dirty and hanging from his frame. He’d always been wiry, but he looked skeletal now.

  Henry wondered when he’d last had a real meal.

  Trying to ignore the clamor of words in his head that he knew his mother would have thrown his way, Henry put the truck in park right there in the middle of the road. It wasn’t likely to be in anyone’s way, since no one traveled down there unless they were heading to the house.

  He opened the door and jogged to catch up with his stepfather, who was so caught up in his own circular sort of hell that he had nothing to spare for Henry.

  Henry laid a hand on Livingston’s shoulder.

  “Livingston,” he said. “Stop.”

  Throwing off the hand, and the kindness that came with it, Livingston turned to Henry.

  “What do you want, boy?” he demanded, facing his stepson.

  Henry stepped back, reeling from the decimated face in front of him. Grief had melted away most of the humanity that Livingston had possessed, leaving little behind. A mechanical man with a suit of skin hanging off him, powered by a smoking, burning passion.

  “Let me give you a ride,” Henry said softly, trying to soothe a man who wouldn’t be soothed.

  “I don’t need a ride! Jesus walked, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me, by God! Forty days and nights in the desert, and he had his answers. And I will too. I will have answers, boy!”

  “Livingston, you’ve got to stop this,” Henry pleaded quietly.

  “Stop what, boy?” Livingston asked, his words sharp as knives. Henry knew he was waiting to pounce on whatever he said next, to skewer it on his spear of self-righteous indignation.

  “This has got to end,” Henry reiterated.

  His stepfather’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll stop when the Lord comes down and speaks to me directly, son. And not before then. When his only begotten son was crucified for the sins of humanity, God didn’t stop it. And I won’t stop now. Not because some snot-nosed little shit has found himself some opinions. Now, you get on my side or get out of my way, boy. I’ll not be stopped.”

  The insults meant nothing to Henry, but his stepfather’s refusal to let go of his zealous persecution of anyone who didn’t measure up to the standards of Livingston Doucet—and that encompassed every person he’d ever met—left Henry fuming with frustration.

  “Mama wouldn’t have wanted this,” he called to Livingston’s retreating back. “Not in a million years. She’d be horrified, and frankly, she’d be ashamed of you. And you know it.”

  It was the only ace Henry had in his hand, and one he’d hesitated to play. Invoking his mother’s name felt wrong somehow. Manipulative, in a way that Caroline Doucet had never been. But desperation forced him to throw those cards on the table.

  The punch to the jaw shouldn’t have been as powerful as it was. Henry’d seen it coming, had made a conscious decision to let it land, but the hatred and grief behind it had lent it a force that Livingston’s bony limbs didn’t seem capable of.

  Stumbling backward, H
enry nearly went down.

  As it was, he had to bend over and lean his hands against his knees, shaking his head to get his bearings back.

  When he looked up into his stepfather’s face, he had to accept that a winning hand made no difference to a man who was no longer playing by the rules.

  He’d never seen such concentrated, undiluted grief. There was no fighting against that. Henry knew then, no matter his faults, no matter his crazy, that the one true thing that defined Livingston Doucet was his love for his wife. Her death had only hardened that love, forged it in the fires of a hell of his own making.

  Livingston advanced on Henry again, and Henry let him come. His only hope was that if his stepfather couldn’t purge his grief in the normal way, then this would help him down that road. It was the only thing Henry had to give.

  The next punch caught him in the eye. It was almost as powerful as the first, and it took an act of will for Henry not to raise his hand and hit back. Not to raise a hand even in his own defense.

  He didn’t do it for love of Livingston. He might have been the only father that Henry had ever known, but there had never been love between them, and that was a fact. What use had the man for another son? He had his own to screw up, and he’d done a fine job at that.

  The third blow found a home against Henry’s rib cage, but Livingston was losing steam. It was still more than he should have been able to give, but not as much as he’d have liked to.

  Henry let it land for love of his mother. For her love of this old, broken man and the person she always believed he could be. She was wrong, in the end, but that didn’t change anything.

  Henry was prepared for the next fist to land. A few more punches thrown, and Livingston would collapse in the dirt at his feet, his hatred spent, and Henry would pick him up and walk him home. He’d feed him, if he could. He’d help him stumble to the bed he’d shared with the love of his life. He’d care for him in the only way he could. In the way his mother would have wanted.

  But he never had the chance.

  Henry had heard people say that time slows down in those moments when life hurtles into death. But it wasn’t true. Not entirely.

  In the seconds it took for the hammer—Henry’s hammer, with his father’s initials carved into the handle—to come crashing down on the back of Livingston’s head, time raced past in a blinding flash, so fast it happened.

  It was in the moments after, with Livingston crumpling to the ground at Henry’s feet, the manic look on his face contorting strangely, with the dull thud of metal meeting flesh and bone reverberating in Henry’s mind, that time seemed to stop.

  As Livingston slowly fell to the ground, it was like a curtain falling away, revealing Eve, standing directly behind where his stepfather had just been. The hammer, gripped tightly in her hand, slowly came down by her side. There was a spray of red across her face, as calm now as it had been just minutes before, in that haze of contentment that Henry had reveled in.

  Henry’s mouth was hanging wide, gaping at the impossibility of what had just happened. The world was buzzing around him, but he couldn’t hear it. He could only watch as Livingston fell, first to his knees, then forward, his body flopping like a bag of potatoes against Henry’s lower legs.

  Seeing the wound on the back of his stepfather’s head as his dead weight pressed against him sent a wave of revulsion through Henry. He stumbled backward and away, in a rush of overwhelming panic.

  Slowly, his wide, unblinking eyes rose to Eve. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words weren’t there.

  His attention was pulled back to the man lying between them in the dirt when Livingston gave a garbled moan. Henry watched in shock as his body twitched, then his arms came in and he tried to rise, looking like nothing so much as Frankenstein’s monster trying to come to life.

  Henry dropped to his knees in the dirt.

  “Oh God, we have to help him, oh Jesus Christ, what—”

  His words broke off as a spray of blood came at his face, punctuated by the sound of another bone-shattering blow from his father’s hammer.

  Henry fell backward into the dampening dirt, and all he could hear was the rush of blood in his veins.

  Eve had hit him again.

  “Stop! Stop! Jesus, Eve, stop!” Henry cried as she raised her arm again. He threw himself toward her, stopping her arm from coming down a third time.

  His arms were around her. He stared into her eyes, both of their faces marked with the deep-red truth of what she’d just done.

  “Eve,” he cried, standing between her and the man she’d just murdered, putting his hands gently on both of her cheeks and forcing her to look at him. “Oh God, Eve, why? Why?!”

  Her face was a mask of still waters, the abysmal depths of which Henry knew he’d never truly understood. He pulled her close, and her arms fell to her sides, the hammer dropping to the dirt at their feet. He clung to her while his mind raced and his heart pounded.

  “He shouldn’t have hit you,” she said with her face pressed against his chest, right where his heart was. Her voice was devoid of emotion.

  The rain, which had been hanging back, waiting to make its entrance, let loose upon them, drenching the two people huddled together in the middle of a lonely road.

  What had she done? Dear God, what had she done?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Jonah was watching his favorite movie about the boy wizard and his friends when the storm took out the power. Aunt Helen started cussing, but that was okay. Jonah hadn’t done anything to make the power sputter, then cut out completely, so the cussing wasn’t aimed at him.

  “Go see if you can dig up the matches in the drawer, Jonah. I’ll get the lanterns,” Aunt Helen said, heaving herself out of the old, dilapidated sofa that had soft dented spots where they usually sat to watch the television. The dent where Jonah sat was bigger, but Aunt Helen’s had been there longer, and she always had to put a hand on the arm of the couch and wiggle her way to the front to pull herself up.

  It was dark in the kitchen, but Jonah had the place mostly memorized, and he knew which drawer to go to. He didn’t even trip over anything along the way.

  He had the matches in his hand and was following the sounds of his aunt’s cursing when he heard, over the howling of the wind, the familiar tolling of the bell in the tree at the edge of the marsh.

  He stopped and turned toward the front of the house, and Aunt Helen’s words broke off mid-cuss.

  “Maybe it’s Henry,” Jonah said hopefully. “Maybe he could help with the ’lectric.”

  Aunt Helen took the box of matches from Jonah’s hands.

  “The boy’s got talents, but I don’t think even Henry can help with that, Jonah. Why don’t you take the boat over and see who’s come calling at this hour, and in a storm no less.”

  “I can wear my yellow rain slicker,” Jonah said, smiling at the prospect.

  “That’s a good idea. You go fish it out of the closet, I’ll light some lanterns for the front porch.”

  “Okay.” Jonah liked the chance to wear his rain slicker. It was bulky and sometimes sweaty inside, but the pitter-pat of the raindrops bouncing off the rubber surface made him happy.

  He listened to the rain beat off the slicker all the way across the swamp. He pushed the hood back, because it was hard for him to see where he was headed in the dark with it hanging down on his face, so his hair was slick and wet when he slid the boat up on the opposite bank, but that was okay.

  Henry and Eve were waiting for him, and they were slick and wet too. They weren’t wearing rain slickers.

  “Sorry to get you out in this mess, Jonah,” Henry said over the murmur of raindrops hitting the surface of the marsh around them.

  “Ah, I don’t mind. I ain’t gonna melt,” Jonah said, smiling at the pair.

  Henry helped Eve step into the boat, then pushed off from the shore, wading into the water and stepping in himself. Jonah got them turned around and followed the lights that Aunt Helen h
ad burning to show the way home.

  Aunt Helen herself was waiting for them out on the porch. Jonah wished he’d thought to bring a flashlight to shine the way on the ground, so Henry and Eve could see up the steps, but he hadn’t thought of it.

  They made it up to the porch just fine, all the same.

  “Henry Martell,” Aunt Helen said, handing over towels to both Henry and Eve to dry themselves under the shelter of the porch. “Awful odd time for a social call,” she said. Normally, Aunt Helen was pleased as punch to see Henry, but she sounded different tonight. Jonah thought she sounded like something was weighing on her. Come to that, Henry had a like-minded look on his face. Jonah thought maybe there was more going on here than he was seeing, but he didn’t fuss about it.

  He shook himself out of the rain slicker instead and set it over the rail of the porch to drip.

  “Ms. Watson, I’ve come to ask a favor,” Henry said, his voice dead serious. “Can Eve stay here with you for a while? Not for long,” he added. “Just for tonight. I got some things to take care of, and I don’t want to leave her by herself.”

  Aunt Helen took a good long look at Henry standing there on the porch, her eyes lingering on the bruise that was swelling over his eye. Then she looked over at the silent girl who was standing next to him, her long dark hair plastered to her head.

  “I’ve known you your whole life, Henry, and you never once asked me for a favor. Done quite a few for me over the years, but never asked for a single one in return.”

  She crossed her arms, her head tilted to one side while she took in the sight of the ragged pair in front of her.

  “I’ll not turn you down now. But I’ve got to ask, because I’m too nosy not to, and because you look like you’ve seen some trouble: What’s going on?”

  Henry glanced down at Eve, and Jonah didn’t understand the look that passed between them. He fished in his pocket for one of his last lemon drops. The wrapper crinkled, and when he popped it in his mouth and looked back at everyone, they were all looking his way.