Sticks and Stones
Page 57
“Can I see it?”
Caroline nodded through her tears. “Yeah.” She picked up a piece of paper with writing on it from her bedside table and held it out for Leah.
“Read it to me,” Leah said instead of taking it. “I think it would be cathartic for you.”
Caroline sniffled, trying to hold the tears back. “Are you sure? I don’t know if I can.”
“Try.”
Caroline cleared her throat, but Leah still heard the tears when she spoke. “Okay,” Caroline said, “but you probably won’t like it. It’s not very good.”
“Let me do my own judging, okay?”
Caroline nodded and began to read, stopping several times to choke back her sobs.
MY BREATH AND YOUR HEART
Helpless
I was balanced
On love’s razor-sharp edge
Stumbling and tumbling
With each word that you said
Falling so deep
I caught my breath and your heart
Holding them both
Until the Fates, life, or time
One day tear us apart
“That’s it,” Caroline said. “It’s not very long or nothin’.”
“It’s beautiful, Caroline. He would’ve loved it.”
Caroline had a black string around her neck with something wooden hanging from it. Leah saw it swinging as her daughter put the poem back where she’d been keeping it.
“Is that new?” Leah asked.
“What?”
“This.” Leah plucked it up with her fingers. It was some sort of carving.
“Jonathon’s grandpa gave it to me,” Carry explained. “It’s a hummingbird.” The tears came back even stronger. “It’s supposed to bring good luck.”
Leah gave a big sigh. “Well, in a way it worked.”
Caroline pulled away, looking at Leah incredulously. “How can you even say that?”
“Honey, because you’re still here. And I think you may have Jonathon to thank for that.”
Another sniffle from Caroline. “But he’ll never get to read my poem because now he’s gone.” She was racked with sobs again. “I don’t know how I keep crying. You’d think I’d run out of tears.”
“No, tears are something you never seem to run out of. I know. I cried near on every day for six years after your pa was killed.”
“How did you get past it?”
“Sooner or later, you will stop thinking about the bad parts, him being shot and all, and those memories get replaced by all the good things you did together while he was still here. But it’s goin’ to take some time.”
“So, for now I just lie here cryin’?”
“If that’s what it takes.” Leah nodded. “Just remember that me, and even Abe, are here for you if you need us.”
Caroline sniffled. “Thanks, Mom,” she said, returning the hug her mother held her in. “I just miss him so much.”
“I understand that. I still miss your pa every single day. But trust me, with time, the missing becomes easier. Sooner or later you will move on with your life.”
Caroline’s chest heaved as she took a big breath and slowly let it out. “Right now, I can’t imagine life without Jonathon.” She rubbed her eyes.
“I know.”
“We saw each other practically every day.”
“I know.”
Caroline’s sobs came back. “Mom, I miss him so much. It’s like there’s a hole in my heart that won’t ever be filled again.”
“It will, honey. It just takes time.”
Leah looked out Caroline’s bedroom window. The purplish sky had started to turn that deep midnight-blue color you always see at the day’s end. A few stars had begun to shine, twinkling in the vast stretch of dark blue. How far away were they? The universe is so big, it’s easy to get lost.
One day, Caroline would be okay with Jonathon’s death. Maybe not in months, maybe it would take years, but once that day came, Leah’s daughter would once again see the world’s beauty instead of just its brutality. She might even look up at the night’s first stars with a secret wish, the way she did when she was younger.
Now, Leah made her own wish on the stars, that her daughter would make it through this soon. It made everything feel just a mite better.
But there were some things that didn’t heal, things you couldn’t come back from, and Leah thought that was the most tragic part of Caroline’s losing Jonathon—that her world would be forever changed. The Stickman had returned and taken three victims with him.
Leah now considered, in a way, there were four.
Everyone grew up eventually, but Caroline had just been forced to do so early. The naïveté she held tightly to that made life safe had been lost. This brought tears to Leah’s eyes, because that naïveté could never be brought back. Like Jonathon, it was gone from Caroline forever.
A deep sadness fell over Leah’s heart.
She had failed to protect her butterfly; instead she had touched its wings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since Dream with Little Angels, each new book feels a little more solid and real to me than the last, and I owe a lot of that to the following people, without whom Sticks and Stones would’ve been a different book.
As always, a debt of gratitude goes out to my agent, Adrienne Rosado, for her tenacity and diligence. If there is any agent as fine as she, I know not of them.
And to my editor, the colossal John Scognamiglio, who serves as a navigational beacon when the skies darken and the waves crash. This time around, I want to especially thank him for allowing me to come in at nearly double my contracted word count so I could tell this story the way I wanted it to be told.
Also to Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, Brian Michael Bendis, and Warren Ellis, for raising the bar so freaking high, inspiring me to aim my own standards at the stars.
A nod to Claudia Lacunza at Easy DNA for her help in making sure I got that part of the science right.
Applause for Yvonne Rupert for giving Raven Lee Emerson a story to tell.
Also, big thanks go to cochise1872, whose real name I never managed to find out. (I tried, man. Honestly, I really did.) His online posts taught me everything I needed to know about lock-picking and made me realize there’s absolutely no point in locking my doors anymore.
Once again, Mark Leland put himself at my disposal for all things police procedural and deadly. One day, maybe we’ll hit the firing range, Mark. I seem to believe you offered something like that once upon a time....
A tip of the hat goes out to Natalie Pierson, whom I somehow managed to coerce into becoming my research assistant for this book.
And I’d be fraught not to mention all the help I receive from the Chilliwack Writers’ Group, a group consisting of Mary Keane, Garth Pettersen, Ken Loomes, Terri McKee, Fran Brown, and Wendy Foster. On that same note, I’d like to send out props to all my friends at Writers Village University. You’re all a swell bunch of folks, and my life’s better for having you in it.
Finally, a big thank-you to all of you readers out there, for continuing to stick with me and support my work. Without you, I’d still be back writing novels purely for the entertainment of me and my cats. And frankly, the cats are terribly harsh critics.
Michael Hiebert
British Columbia, Canada
June 2016
Oh, and just in case y’all might be wonderin’ . . . The Oakland A’s swept the San Francisco Giants in a demoralizing four-game win to take the 1989 World Series, despite having to put up with a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hitting the field just minutes before the start of game three.
In other words, Leah won twenty bucks.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
Sticks and Stones
Michael Hiebert
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group’s reading of Michael Hiebert’s
Sticks and Stones!
Discussion Ques
tions
Please note: These questions are for readers who have finished the book. As such, they contain spoilers. Please do not review them until you’ve read the book.
1. In the text, the core story shifts at one point. What does it start out as being? What does it become? When does it change? Why does it change?
2. The “climax” of a story is when the major question or problem in the story is answered or solved. What is the climactic scene of the text? Could it be argued that there is more than one climax? Note that subplots can and often do have their own climaxes. This question only concerns the main plotline. NOTE: The answer is not obvious.
3. In classical terms, a tragedy is a story when the main character dies in the climax (sometimes literally, occasionally metaphorically). A comedy is one in which the main character is triumphant in the climax. Is this story a comedy, a tragedy, or both? Why? NOTE: The answer is not obvious.
4. The climax in a story always leads to a “resolution.” Occasionally, this resolution can be “ironic.” An ironic ending in a story is when the main character enters the climax with a certain goal but comes out of it acquiring something he or she didn’t expect instead, only to discover this new situation or achievement is actually better. What did Leah start this story wanting (what was her “goal”)? Did that goal change before the end of the story? If so, how? How, if at all, could this story’s ending be considered ironic?
5. The main theme of the book is clearly stated early on in the text. What is it?
6. A second theme is also clearly stated later in the text. What is that?
7. For a portion of the story, the town of Alvin is pounded by torrential storms. In literature, weather is often used to emphasize or underscore plot elements, and that is being done here. What plot elements precipitate the storm? What plot elements stop the storm? What happens during the storm that is being underscored? Why did Hiebert choose to use the storms this way?
8. Jonathon’s death is directly foreshadowed in at least two places in the text. Where and what are they?
9. Along with the main plotline of Leah trying to solve the case, four other subplots run alongside the main one, weaving in and out of it. What are these four plotlines?
10. A plotline usually has what’s known in literary terms as an “inciting event” or a “conduit to action.” This is an event that sets the plot in motion. What is the inciting event for the main plotline? What are the inciting events for the four subplots?
11. A “character arc” defines how a character changes throughout the plot of the story. Three main characters have large arcs in the text. Who are they? What changes do they go through?
12. One main character in the text only slightly arcs. Who is this?
13. What main character doesn’t arc at all in the text and, indeed, has never arced since the series began in Dream with Little Angels?
14. In the text, which main character’s arc is left “unfinished”?
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Michael Hiebert
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3739-8
ISBN-10: 1-61773-739-9
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-740-4
eISBN-10: 1-61773-740-2
First Kensington Electronic Edition: July 2016