Let me in, let me in.
The latch on the other side clicked up, and a muscle in her shoulder screamed. She half fell into the church, a place she hadn’t visited since Simon’s memorial service. The last church she’d been inside. Her parents abandoned organized religion after they left the village; Darius was a self-professed agnostic; and her commitment to this church, as a choir member and a bell ringer, had only ever been about music.
A flash of sunlight blasted through the clerestory windows, briefly illuminating the wheeled bier, a wooden wagon once used to transport the dead. Now it gathered dust motes in the corner of the north aisle. North aisle, south aisle, the Lady Chapel, nave, chancel . . . The building was ridiculously grand for a village church. Something to do with the lords of the manor having too much money in the nineteenth century.
The sun disappeared and the Saxon nave became dark like the inside of a womb. As the heating system thumped a soothing heartbeat, a blurred memory returned of the choir singing the Lord’s Prayer while Simon’s mother wept. Marianne removed her sunglasses and walked past the Norman font where she had been baptized. Tucked behind it, a freestanding cardboard display board labeled “The Great War” was covered in kids’ research projects and what appeared to be posters for the women’s land army. In England you could never escape the sweeping strokes of history.
The brass plate, the one they used to pass around for the collection, had been replaced by a locked wooden box with a sign asking for donations to save the organ. Yes, she would donate! Whatever she had left of her sterling! She unsnapped her wallet to remove a fifty-pound note, but her hand paused. Up by the altar, voices twittered. First the cemetery was full of people and now the church. What had happened to perennially quiet village life? This place was like a Black Friday mob scene. Now where should she go to find solitude—the deserted tables under the hot-pink Puddings Galore banner?
Staying in the shadow of a pillar, Marianne leaned forward to spy. A small group of women were working on freestanding floral arrangements, weaving greenery in and out of white and cream flowers. Wedding flowers.
Her left hand closed around the gold-and-diamond locket hanging at her neck—a wedding gift from Darius. He wouldn’t care about the cost of the plane ticket—well, he might scream and stomp and look sexy as hell when the credit card statement arrived and he realized she’d flown business class. Okay, so that was not a normal thought. Normal people weren’t turned on by anger. Not that Darius did rev-up-the-chain-saw rage, but his moods were as mercurial as hers. Although these days he didn’t hurl anger. He lugged around a feeble sadness that said, Aren’t I enough, Marianne? as if love could magically, inexplicably cure mental illness. Or obliterate her taunts, weighted with enough hostility for two: “Leave me alone. I don’t care what you think.” Except that she did care. A conscience was a terrible thing to waste on a mad person. And running away armed with the knowledge that her absence would gut him positioned her squarely between the Tin Man and a killing machine. Heartless, brutal . . . Wait!
A burst of arpeggios soared through the church, pumping through her bloodstream like cocaine. Widor’s Toccata! How perfect, how absolutely perfect. And the organist wasn’t rushing, was playing the piece exactly the way it should be played. The chords separated into individual notes that danced around her like butterflies and then exploded into fireworks. A rhapsodic mimicry of mania—her favorite state of being before it tossed her into the fireball of damnation.
Warm memories trickled out: playing hide-and-seek around the gravestones with Gabriel, laughing when the churchwarden yelled at them; singing carols by candlelight at midnight mass, imagining her future as a rock diva; stumbling through the darkness of a winter’s evening, groping along a flying buttress until she saw the light from the open belfry door; running up the spiral stone steps of the bell tower, vowing to be the best bell ringer in the parish.
This vast space, filled with sound shadows, reverberated with her before history. The pure joy of a life lived without the knowledge of all that would follow. She had run back to the village like a hunted animal needing to burrow, but what if here, in her past, there was a chance at rebirth?
Moving with the stealth of a ghost, not wanting to cause a single vibration in the air, Marianne lowered herself into the back pew, slipped her sunglasses back on, and positioned her bag on a needlepoint kneeler. As the wooden foot pedals of the organ clacked, she cut Darius loose and lost herself in the past. A place where he didn’t belong.
The first wave of mania had been intoxicating. Never-ending spring nights of beautiful thoughts cantering through her mind, too fast to capture. Gabriel had already withdrawn, but Simon was a moth to her flame—or maybe he was addicted to the glut of casual sex no eighteen-year-old guy could reject. And how could any girl have refused attention from Simon—charming, gorgeous, and hero-worshipped at the private school where he was head boy?
Nothing but harmless fun until they both discovered she was pregnant. Until her mind spun so fast she could no longer speak in complete sentences. Until her world blew up along with her sanity at Simon’s memorial service, delayed because Mrs. Bonham insisted on waiting until she and Gabriel were released from the hospital. That took a while since they both had fractured pelvises. Gabriel, who’d been in the backseat, also fractured his skull and broke his collarbone along with several ribs. Mrs. Bonham told Marianne she was the lucky one, as if losing a baby she’d felt moving inside her womb and the subsequent infection that meant no other baby would ever grow there were gifts. The doctors should have moved her to the loony bin right then, after condemning her to a life of infertility. But no, they released her into the world with her frayed mental fuse already lit.
After the psychotic break, the medical profession screwed up again, labeled her psychosis understandable, and sent her home to a black depression. Everyone said she should return to school. In the end she agreed, but only because she’d begun to plot her death. And she would have succeeded had someone not held her wounds closed.
Surviving suicide was not for wimps.
Deciding a fresh start was best, her parents—gentle beings who’d adopted her as a newborn and knew nothing about the roots of insanity—sold the house, packed up twenty years of English life, and returned to the faculty at their alma mater, Duke University. An ocean away from everything Marianne had ever known. Maybe they hoped she would reboot like a malfunctioning computer. Sedated and past caring, she never bothered to ask for explanations. Gabriel refused to say good-bye. In North Carolina, her family began the long journey of denial, treatment, remission, and two more suicide attempts. With each episode, her mind unraveled further. By the time she could make sense of her permanently medicated existence, Gabriel was part of something she had long discarded.
And now she’d discarded Darius.
The organist ran through the toccata several times, practiced a few hymns and Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” and then slipped out the side door by the altar. Marianne’s buttocks were numb. Shouldn’t honoring God come with more padding than a paper-thin cushion on English oak?
The flower arrangers migrated down into the aisle to twist ivy up the brass candleholders on the pew ends, and Marianne turned her head away. She should leave, but go where? The music had zapped her energy. Rendered her officially useless. Marianne stared at the ornate raised tomb in the Lady Chapel. So English to have centuries-old remains buried inside a church. What lay beneath the alabaster baron and his two wives, their eyes closed and their hands folded in prayer? A sweet deal of never-ending rest.
No, Dr. White. I’m not suicidal. But I think about death all the time. I want to be nothing. To hear nothing. To see nothing. To feel nothing. I want my mind to stop.
A woman stomped down the aisle carrying a huge tin pitcher. “Good afternoon,” she said. Her voice commanded; the knotted scarf at her neck covered in pictures of bridles and saddles suggested she was the horsey type. Horsey types were almost as bad as café owners who
chose eyesore banners of pink. Her footsteps receded and water ran. They must have added either a kitchen or restroom in the choir vestry. How very progressive.
Horsey Woman came back, walking slowly, holding the pitcher with both hands. She was wearing a green quilted vest over a taupe sweater, a knee-length tweedy skirt that looked unbearably itchy, and flesh-colored pantyhose. Someone who understood the English summer. Marianne shivered. The day before, it had been ninety-eight degrees in Carrboro.
And the woman was wearing brown brogues. The only time Marianne wore sensible shoes was for working out. Not that she’d exercised for months, since she could no longer do it alone. Darius had never understood that exercise—shared or solitary—was not about pleasure. It was merely a means to exorcise her mind and exhaust her body.
She could no longer do anything alone, not even retreat into her shoe closet. In his concern, Darius had become a stalled-out storm cloud that hung with suffocating heaviness.
Horsey Woman reached the altar and talked with an older woman, who glanced back at Marianne with a shrug. Time passed, and the women began to gather their tools and leave. No one spoke to her. The door clanged shut, but two women remained, whispering by the font.
“Don’t you think one of us should ask if she needs help?” The voice was high, anxious.
“I can’t stay another five minutes,” voice B answered. “I’ve got the ferret man coming to deal with my rabbit warren.”
“I’ll go fetch the reverend.” Voice A again. “He’ll know what to do.”
The door opened and shut; silence swallowed her whole.
Marianne shot awake to the smell of the outdoors and a hand shaking her.
“Hello there,” a man’s voice said.
Where was she? She inhaled the stale scent of ten centuries of religious ritual with a hint of furniture wax. Newton Rushford, the church. She glanced over her shoulder at the thousand-year-old stone pillar blocking her in and then back at the man crouched down on his haunches at the entrance to the pew. No exits and only skeletons to hear her scream.
Good job, Marianne.
“Welcome to Newton Rushford. The flower ladies came to find me. They were somewhat concerned about this elegant and rather sad woman who’s been sitting in the church for the last few hours by herself. I was wondering if I might offer some assistance?”
“No.” Marianne sat up but kept her eyes down. Where were her sunglasses? “Sorry. I’ll be on my way.”
“Right, then.” He sounded casual, friendly. Like they’d had this conversation a hundred times before. “Can I give you a lift somewhere? All the cars parked by the war memorial belong to parishioners, and my keen eye tells me you’re far too well-dressed to have arrived on the bus from Bedford or Milton Keynes. I’m the vicar, by the way. Perfectly harmless. Worst thing I ever do is nod off in the Swan after a pint or two with the bell ringers. The barmaid insists I snore.”
She glanced at the U2 T-shirt strained across his chest. “You don’t look very vicar-ish.” What he looked like was an obstacle.
He stood, letting out an ooff when one of his knees cracked. “I’ve been volunteering with the youth group, so thought a T-shirt would be more appropriate than a dog collar. And who doesn’t love U2?”
Marianne nearly said, My husband.
“We’ve been attacking weeds in the cemetery,” he said. “The nettles love all this rain.”
Bracing her hands on the back of the pew, she wobbled up to her feet. He was tall, this middle-aged guy who claimed to be a man of God but was wearing ripped black jeans and a band tee. Give him a few tats and he could have been Zeke, their freelance sound engineer. Zeke was also big with dirty-blond hair. Although not as big as this guy, who had to be at least six two. Trying to push past him would be pointless. He towered over her, and he had that wide, solid chest. Why couldn’t they have left her alone, those twittering women? For once she hadn’t been causing harm.
More sleep, her body said. No. Her fingers scurried through air. Go to the cemetery. She patted down her pockets—where were her sunglasses?—and glanced up.
He was smiling at her, a smile that seemed to reach into his eyes. Pale blue rimmed with navy. A memory flashed: she was trapped inside the body of a raving lunatic, flailing against leather restraints and screaming at those same pale eyes, “Why couldn’t you have let me die?” So. He was the one who had saved her that night. How could she not have guessed, and how could she not have suspected he’d stayed in the village? That had been part of his plan, and unlike her, Gabriel had always stuck with his plans.
His smile slipped away, his eyes widened, and his face drained of color. “Marianne?” he whispered. “Is it you?”
“In the flesh.”
“This is . . .” Gabriel ran his hands through his hair, still thick but horribly short. What a sacrilege to hack off those locks. Bits of leaves drifted out like snowflakes. He lowered his arms and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, then tugged them free. His chest began moving rapidly.
“Sit,” she said, backing up. “You’ve gone horribly pale.”
“This is”—he gave a feeble laugh—“most unexpected.”
With the filled-out biceps, darker hair, and what must have been a serious growth spurt, he resembled his big brother more than ever. Simon and Gabriel had always been a stunning pair—physically similar and only a year apart but with personalities that contradicted each other at every turn. Simon was charm, danger, and raw sex appeal. The classic bad boy that teen girls and little old ladies couldn’t resist. Gabriel was easygoing, sweet, and predictable. The kind of guy mothers loved because he always cleared the dishes. One of them was safe; one of them wasn’t. And one had never been a good number for Marianne Stokes.
Gabriel collapsed into the pew and wiped his forehead, spreading a smudge of dirt. “Gracious. This is . . . I don’t know what else to say . . . unexpected.”
“Sorry about that. It’s a bit unexpected for me, too.” If she’d passed him on the street, he would have been a stranger, this man who had once been her coconspirator, her conscience when she didn’t have one, her best friend, her childhood sweetheart, her first love. The guy who represented childish pranks and first gropes. The person who had every reason, plus a few extra, to hate her. Or had they grown to hate each other? Another memory tumbled out, of him screaming at her, calling her a whore. Except that Gabriel never screamed. He wasn’t wired for strong emotions. Surely that was the reason she’d strayed to his tempestuous older brother.
She’d dreamed big, of escape. Gabriel dreamed small, of putting down roots in the village. And she laughed when he talked about ordination. Yes, he loved visiting old churches and prattling away about the architecture, the music, the sensory experience—the bells and smells—but she never took him seriously. Seemed he’d known his heart all along.
Gabriel sat up and placed his hands in his lap. “You look good, Marianne. A little thin, but good.” He’d always been a pitiful liar. His hands were shaking, and the tone of his voice had changed. The camaraderie had gone. “What’s brought you back after all this time?”
She could make something up. Deceit always came easily, but the entire scene took on a dreamlike quality, and for months she’d had nothing but nightmares. Standing here in this church that had witnessed centuries of history, with this stranger who had known her better than anyone, it was almost a relief to be honest, to not have to pretend to make sense.
She sat next to him and laid her hand on top of his, pushing down lightly until he stopped shaking. “Damned if I know. Best guess? This is my endgame. But I need to visit the cemetery, and you have to come with me.”
THREE
GABRIEL
He would never quibble with God over his job description, certainly not the part about helping a suicide survivor in distress. But surely there should be an exemption clause for the woman who had destroyed his life. Gabriel looked up at the angel ceiling of the nave and prayed, briefly, for the strength to
be a compassionate Christian, not a small-minded weasel. Although he was definitely leaning toward the latter.
After thirty years of silence, Marianne had returned. And in true Marianne fashion, she was embarking on a grand adventure and eager to drag him along for the ride. Admittedly the cemetery was only a five-minute walk from the church—ten in those heels—but she might as well have said, “Follow me into the maw of hell. It’ll be fun.”
She looked rather poorly. Was this some last hurrah to cross off her bucket list? He spent enough time visiting deathbeds to recognize the signs: the sunken cheeks and unhealthy pallor. Cancer, it was probably cancer. He’d never wanted to see her again, but never hadn’t included a terminal disease. This must be a test, God booming, “Don’t be an arse, Gabriel. Get over yourself and offer comfort.” Except he couldn’t find his voice, let alone words.
Gabriel dragged his hand across his mouth and glanced at her sideways. Looking at Marianne for too long had always been ill-advised. Within microseconds she could convince the strongest-willed boy to sell his soul or steal sherbet lemons from the local shop. Yes, under her tutelage he had enjoyed a brief career as a thief.
“Are you ill?” he said quietly.
“Yes, but not in the way most people think.” She jumped up, her hands fluttering through the air like dandelion clocks.
He’d forgotten how small she was—a waif powered by a high-voltage battery. In his memories she’d been taller.
“I’m sorry. I should have called, sent a carrier pigeon, something.” Her mouth twitched as if trying to remember how to smile. “My problem is that I don’t think before I leap. Never have, never will.” Had she always talked so quickly? “You know that better than anyone.”
“Do I?” he said.
Echoes of Family Page 4