A Stillness of Chimes (4 page)

“It’s crazy right now, getting ready for the festival. Once that’s over, I’ll get back to rehabbing the house.”

“Funny,” she said, leaning against the counter. “We’re both back in the houses where we grew up—at least for a while.”

“That reminds me. I heard Cassie’s in town too.”

A smile lit Laura’s face. “She is? I’d love to see her. I guess Drew came too?”

“Nope. Seems to be a solo trip.”

“Cass didn’t tell me she’d be in town. Not that we’re as close as we used to be, but we do stay in touch. I hope everything’s all right.”

“Everything’s fine, most likely.”

“Anything new with Dale?”

“He stops by a lot more often than I’d like. Every time I hear that rattletrap truck pull into the drive, I look for an excuse to say I was just leaving.”

“How are Keith and Annie?”

“They’re doing well,” he said, remembering the message from his sister-in-law. “Annie said to tell you ‘hey.’ She would love to see you if you want to stop by.”

Laura nodded but didn’t commit herself to it.

The scent of the lilies on the counter reminded him of a long-ago Easter morning when Laura, wearing a new dress, stood hand in hand with her dad to sing “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” Elliott was perfectly on key while Laura wasn’t even close.

She frowned. “What’s that funny little smile for?”

He angled his head toward the lilies. “They make me think of Easter and your dad’s favorite songs.”

She studied the flowers for a moment, then met his eyes but said nothing.

He loosened his tie, tugged it off, and wound it around his hand like a bandage. “You must be freezing. You want to change into dry clothes before we get into this? Because what I have to say, Laura … it’ll take some time.”

She lowered her gaze to the necktie wrapped around his hand. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” She turned and walked into the living room. Mikey, stretched out on the couch, batted a languid paw at the hem of her dress swinging against her muscular calves, but he missed. Ignoring the cat, she headed down the hall.

Except for the plants all over, Jess’s kitchen looked the same as it always had when Sean had stopped by for a cup of coffee and a chat. A little neater than it used to be, maybe. Her favorite mug, the pale blue one with rainbows and angels on it, hung from the mug rack beside the coffee maker. It was odd to see her possessions all around, outliving their owner. Elliott’s too, years after he’d drowned. Dulcimers, mandolins, and guitars still lay around the house as if he’d set them down just days before.

The storm attacked the windows with fresh energy, the rain gusting sideways in belts and waves. Leaves bent backward, showing pale undersides. No birds calling. Only rain, wind, and the faint tinkling of Jess’s miniature wind chimes in the backyard.

The storm had draped gray swags of mist over everything, but once the weather cleared, Laura would have a good view of the family plot in the cemetery across the road. But Jess’s grave was still too new to have a headstone, and Elliott had no grave. Only a bronze plaque that bore his name, a line about having served his country, and the dates of his birth and death.

Sean shook his head. That was a rough summer. A strange summer. He and Laura had turned eighteen that August, but their birthdays had been lost in the turmoil and ruined by his own naiveté.

Trying to shut out the memories, he turned around, only to face another reminder of the past. He’d sat at the Gantts’ kitchen table many a time after Elliott rescued him. That wasn’t too strong a word, either. Nobody else would have waded into Dale’s fists to save a scrawny kid from another beating. Elliott took him home that day, patched him up, and turned him over to Jess for a decent meal while Laura looked on with wide eyes. Then Social Services got involved, and everything was topsy-turvy until Dale landed behind bars somewhere and Sean’s grandma moved to town and took him in.

He closed his eyes. How old had he been? Fourteen? And hungry for a father figure. Elliott had never been exactly stable, though. Or even quite sane. If the stories were true—the new stories that were spreading like a virus and the nightmares Sean had spun in his own head.

But they couldn’t be true.

“God,” he whispered. A one-word prayer. He figured the Lord already knew the rest of it.

Laura stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. Sean, seated at the table, seemed not to notice her. While she’d been changing into jeans, he’d cleared a space by moving some of the plants to the floor and the wide windowsills. Drumming his fingers on the golden oak, he stared into space and frowned. Like he used to frown over her tangled geometry proofs.

Once, on the porch swing, she’d complained about all those aggravating angles and lines and curves in the textbook. He’d said the whole world was angles and lines and curves. Then he picked up a fallen sweet-gum leaf to illustrate his point, brushed the leaf across her cheek, and kissed her for the first time.

Contacts out, glasses on, she felt like that gawky, nearsighted teenager again. Sean, though, had lost everything awkward or gangly from his teenage years. He carried himself with understated confidence. With authority. He wore his thirty years well.

He looked up, eyes as blue as the sky but troubled as a storm. His fingers stilled. “Feel better?”

“Warmer, anyway.”

“I can make you some coffee. There’s always a bag of good Costa Rican stuff in the cupboard.”

She smiled at his familiarity with her mother’s kitchen. “No, thanks, but you go ahead if you want some.”

He shook his head, and his hair fell into his eyes. If he didn’t get a haircut soon, he would look like a wild man.

He ran a finger back and forth on the table. “The furniture your dad made, and his mandolins and dulcimers and all,” he said, circling a knot in the wood grain. “They make me remember him like it was yesterday. He did beautiful work.”

She sat across from him. “So do you.”

“I learned from the best.” But his pleasant words didn’t match his worried expression.

“What’s going on, Sean? What’s bothering you?”

Sean, who’d never been afraid to speak his mind, hesitated. “There have been some crazy rumors floating around. I don’t believe them, but I don’t want you to hear them without warning.”

“Rumors about what?”

He reached across the table and covered her hands with his. A woodworker’s hands, like her dad’s, they bore a few small scars.

The quiet ticking of the clock on the wall filled the long stillness before he spoke. “Have you ever heard of a man walking away from his life? Just leaving?”

“Everybody wants to walk away sometimes. How many times did we hear Cassie say that? And she finally did, with Drew.”

“I don’t mean moving away like they did—like you did. What I mean is … vanishing. On purpose.”

“Sure, it happens.”

His grip tightened. “Half the town is saying we might know somebody who did just that.”

“Who?”

“Do you remember Eric Rudolph?”

The bomber. The white supremacist. When Laura was a teenager, the papers had been full of him and his crimes, but she failed to see a connection between him and the sleepy little town of Prospect. She nodded though. “I remember reading about him.”

“He hid out for years. Not far from here, in North Carolina. In the same kind of terrain. The mountains are like a big food locker for a man who knows how to hunt and fish and forage.” He stopped, his gaze holding hers, then went on, slowly.

“Some folks are saying a man can stash what he’ll need to survive,” Sean said. “Food. Clothing. Tools. Hunting and fishing gear. He makes his plans. He sets up a secret camp or two, somewhere in the wild. He gets everything ready. And then one day, a hot summer day … well, some folks say a man could fake his own drowning.”

The words sank like heavy stones thrown into deep, dark water. The room swirled. The mingled smells of potting soil and lilies weighed on her. Choked her. Sean receded into a black distance.

“Laura, do you understand what I’m saying?” His features swam back toward her through a dark fog.

“Yes.” She hadn’t noticed pulling her hands away, but they were in her lap, twisting around and around, shaky and cold. Her head buzzed with her old theories, the wild ones her mother had scoffed at. This was different though. It was all wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Sean said. “I had to tell you before you heard it with no
warning. I don’t know how to say it except straight out. A few people say they’ve seen him alive. Not just traces of where a man’s been—though they claim they’ve seen those too—but actually … him. Your dad. Elliott Gantt. Older, thinner, crippled up. With long hair and a beard.”

It couldn’t be true. Nearly twelve years had gone by since her father had vanished in the deep waters of Hamlin Lake. Eleven years, nine months, and fifteen days. She’d worked it out on the long drive from Denver.

“I can’t … that’s … even if it’s true, even if … No, after almost twelve years? He couldn’t still be alive. Except”—the thought rolled in her heart like thunder—“he fought in Vietnam. He was trained to survive. To live off the land. Do you think there’s any chance it could be true?”

Sean shook his head. “I don’t, Laura. I really don’t. It’s absurd. But this morning I heard another rumor and decided I’d better tell you before somebody else did.”

“What’s the new rumor?”

The frown lines furrowed deeper into his forehead. “Remember Preston from high school?”

She nodded. Their biology teacher, “Presto” Preston had a penchant for bad puns and worse neckties, but he’d been a stickler for empirical evidence. He was so rational and logical that everybody said formaldehyde ran in his veins.

“I saw him this morning at the Shell station,” Sean said. “He claimed to have seen your dad crossing the road by the old church camp on the lake, just before dawn. Preston said—”

“Wait. This morning? Preston saw him? Only hours ago?”

“Claimed to, anyway. He said he’d know your dad anywhere, the way he moved like a cat. Light on his feet. But lots of people move that way. And
it wouldn’t make sense for him to hide out at the camp. There’d be too many people around.”

“How long have these … sightings been going on?”

“The stories started a few weeks ago, after you’d been home for the funeral.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want to bother you with a load of foolishness. People see things all the time. Me, I’ve seen Elvis. Up in Gatlinburg.”

She tried to laugh, but it rang hollow. “So have I.”

“I’m glad you’re sensible, Laura. I was afraid you’d start scouring the mountains for him. That’d be crazy.”

“But so was he—nearly. What if it’s all true? I’ve believed crazier things. Just after it happened, I shared some wild theories with my mom. I thought maybe he nearly drowned but someone rescued him and took him off somewhere. If he was injured or had amnesia, he wouldn’t have been able to reach us.”

“What did she say to that?”

Laura stared at the table and relived her mother’s brusque dismissal. “She said I needed to stop living in a little-girl fantasy and get off to college.”

That week, in the strange new silence that had fallen upon their house, she’d decided to go to school in Colorado, not Georgia. She’d been accepted at both schools. The last-minute scramble to change her arrangements had allowed her to escape everything. Until now.

“The rumors can’t be true,” Sean said gently. “I’ve talked to the sheriff, and he says they’re bogus. Nobody has a shred of hard evidence. Some people are taking it seriously, though. Doing their own investigations.”

The way he said
some people
made her skin crawl. “You’re talking about Dale, aren’t you?”

After a moment’s silence, Sean nodded. “Yeah. He’s got a bee in his bonnet.”

“What’s he doing?”

Sean shrugged, as if he were trying to make light of it. “I don’t know exactly what he’s up to, but the other day he said the best way to catch a prowler is to go on the prowl yourself.”

Of course Sean’s father would want to find her dad, if he really was out there. Just for the sick pleasure of hauling him in, displaying him like a trophy of war.

Laura’s throat was so dry she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t swallow.

She lowered her head to the table and closed her eyes. The tears wouldn’t come, but a horde of unwelcome thoughts did. She shoved them to the back of her mind so she couldn’t hear them screaming at her.

Chair legs scraped the floor. Sean walked around the table, stood behind her, and kneaded her shoulders while rain ticked at the windows and the bones of the house creaked. The oak table was cool and hard beneath her cheek. Her dad had built the table with his own hands—the hands that used to smooth her bangs from her forehead so he could plant a kiss there. And where were those hands now? Not at the bottom of the lake, after all?

She straightened, her chest an aching lump of lead. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t do anything. There’s no need.”

Wobbly and feeling detached from reality, Laura pushed her chair back, making Sean release her shoulders. She rose and faced him.

His fingers cool as water, he brushed her hair out of her eyes as tenderly as her father used to do. “What a way to come home. Buried your mama a month ago, and now folks would have you believe you’re about to resurrect your daddy. But it’s not true, Laura. It can’t be true.”