The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (11 page)

seventeen

iris

Iris rolled over in
the motel bed, reluctant to open her eyes and let in the spear of sunlight she could feel probing her eyelids. She checked the clock through one slitted lid. Ten-twelve. She needed to get moving. Her head ached even though she’d limited herself to her usual two beers, and the sheets smelled like sex and a musky cologne. The altitude might have enhanced the alcohol’s effect. Thank goodness the kid—Jared? Jermaine?—had had the decency to leave after their second go-round so she didn’t have to face evicting him this morning. He’d been cute and brash, allowing her to pick him up easily at the sports bar, Bumpers, just down the road. There’d been two teams worth of softball players in the bar, young twenty-somethings still wearing their uniforms and dirt. It’d given her a brief moment of satisfaction to walk out with him in the teeth of girls his own age, the pretty ones working their white smiles, pert breasts, and glossy hair to get the result she’d gotten with a half-lidded glance and feigned disinterest.

Actually, Iris thought, dragging herself from the bed to the bathroom, her disinterest wasn’t so feigned. She peed, and got into the shower, letting the cold water sluice over her. The game had lost its edge. She found it harder to lose herself in the sex, harder to conceal her eagerness for her partner’s departure when they were done. The thought of having a conversation over eggs or waffles with Jared-Jermaine or any of his counterparts made her teeth ache. A disturbing question wiggled its way into her brain: if she was getting too old or too weary for the one-night stands, where would she find release when that restless, itchy feeling came over her? Wrapping a towel around herself, she dripped to the dresser to retrieve her jeans and noticed the red light blinking on the bedside phone.
Huh
. She must have missed the message indicator when she came in with Jared—she was almost sure it was Jared.

She hit the button to retrieve the message, expecting to hear one of the Welshes checking to make sure the heater was still functioning correctly. Instead, a tinny, unrecognizable voice startled her. “Go home before you end up like Glynnis.”

Glynnis who? Iris’s first impulse was to laugh at the teen slasher flick nature of the message, but something about the metallic voice worked its way beneath her skin and made her shiver. Or maybe she was cold because she was naked and wet, she told herself, scrubbing at goose-pimpled skin with the towel as she hustled back to the bathroom. It must be a wrong number. Or stupid teens calling hotels, giggling as they left their oh-so-spooky message. That’s all it was.

Before hooking up with Jared, she’d spent an hour reading through her father’s thin file. It appeared the police hadn’t done much in the way of investigating or interviewing once her father confessed to the crime.
Practically every able-bodied inhabitant of Lone Pine was a suspect, as far as Iris was concerned, since the police hadn’t checked alibis. Needing a place to start, she’d reluctantly decided on her mother. Marian Asher had initially told the police her husband was home with her all evening, but then changed her story when Neil confessed. Iris wanted to get the truth from her first, before talking to others in the Community. Dressed in jeans—sure to annoy her mother—and with her damp hair twisted into a messy knot, Iris nodded once at her reflection. With a flick of mascara and a slick of lip balm, she exited the room to find Mrs. Welsh standing a few feet away, a pile of clean towels in her arms.

“Good morning,” Iris said, sticking the key in the stiff lock, more focused on getting coffee than on exchanging pleasantries.

“You had company last night.”

“Excuse me?” Iris lifted her head and stared at the woman, reading condemnation in the way she flared her nostrils in and out.

“We couldn’t help but hear the car.”

Torn between wanting to say “You’re spying on me?” or “What the hell business is it of yours?” Iris bit down hard on her lower lip. She wasn’t going to give the woman the satisfaction of reacting to her near-accusation. She bent to wrestle with the key again.

“Don’t bother with that,” Mrs. Welsh said. “I’m on my way in to clean.” She jangled a key at her belt, indicating she’d lock up when she finished.

Iris nodded her thanks. Reversing the car, she watched Mrs. Welsh push her way into the motel room. Suddenly glad she had her father’s file locked in the trunk, she punched the gas, wishing she didn’t have to see her mother and determined to get the “reunion” over with.

Minutes later, Iris pulled up beside the ancient Volvo parked in front of the church of God’s Community of Believers and Disciples, hoping she’d find her mother working there and wouldn’t have to look for her at Outback Cottage. She’d called Cade on the way and asked him to meet her there. A little moral support wouldn’t hurt,
and he’d be able to tell them what they needed to do to get her father a new trial, or a commutation, or whatever. She got out of the rental, leaving the door open.
Like I’m planning a quick getaway
, she thought, making herself slam it closed. She faced the church. She wanted to be able to think that the building was nothing special, a rectangle of wood painted white, one story with a steeple, reminiscent of the churches she’d seen on postcards from New England where Matthew Brozek was raised, but the building had a certain grace she couldn’t deny. Aspen and cottonwood trees dappled the roof and sides with leaf shadows, and the hum of bees from the nearby field could have been a hymn drifting from the building’s barely open door. Iris found herself relaxing slightly.

Taking a deep breath, she headed into the church.

eighteen

mercy

Twenty-Three Years Ago

Mercy Asher sat with
her family near the rear of the church, eyes fixed on the wooden beams of the ceiling. A flutter of movement betrayed a sparrow perched on a shallow ledge, breathing hard. Mercy watched it, sorry for its distress. It hopped the length of the ledge fronting one of the narrow rectangular windows inset high above the pews, and then flapped to the next window back, closer to the door. Mercy turned her head to follow the bird’s progress, but her mother elbowed her and she faced forward. Her mother preferred to sit in the front pew, but in recent months Mercy had become adept at dawdling as she readied herself for church, changing her dress or rearranging her hair until her family was among the last of the Community to arrive for the Sunday morning worship service. She wanted as much distance between her and Pastor Matt as possible; her stomach hurt at the thought of sitting where his gaze could rest on her as he stood in the pulpit, at having to take his soft, damp hand during the passing of the peace. Even the thought made her swallow hard and look at Noah for distraction.

Her brother, nineteen months older, was drawing Spiderman figures on the small pad he’d smuggled into the service. The stubby pencil slashed across the page, Noah’s deft fingers bringing the superhero to life with only a few lines. He was good—better than she was. Her envy of his talent was wrong and she asked forgiveness in a silent prayer, eyes open and glued to the pencil as it defined the muscles in Spiderman’s thigh.

Her gaze went from Noah’s page to her banners behind the altar. They’d been installed three weeks ago, during the twentieth anniversary celebration, and every time she set eyes on them she felt a confusing mix of pride and shame. Five of the Community’s older women and Gabrielle Ulm
, a quiet seventh grader who always sat by
herself
on the school bus, had spent weeks working Mercy’s design onto the
banners with various fabrics and embroidery. The colors set the small church alight, and the cloth-of-gold they’d used for the wheat in the Ruth and Boaz scene glowed, backlit by the sunlight pouring through the windows set high on the walls behind the altar.

Finally, Pastor Matt wrapped up his sermon and Esther moved forward to sing while the offertory plate was passed around. She had a light, sweet soprano and Mercy caught Noah craning his neck to get a better view of her. Oh, no! Surely he didn’t have a crush on Esther? She was pretty—slim and dark-haired, with truly startling blue eyes—but she was so, so … Mercy couldn’t come up with a word to describe Pastor Matt’s daughter. Holy. No, not holy. Wanting people to think she was holy, which was a whole different thing.

After the service, Mercy burned to escape, to meet Cade who would be parked in his car near the bus stop on the main road, but her father blocked the exit from the pew, exchanging greetings with the couple in front of him. Noah escaped from the pew on the far end, wriggling rudely around Mrs. Lees who was trying to maneuver her walker into the aisle, and wove his way to where Esther stood accepting congratulations on her singing. Mercy caught her mother staring after him, anger and dismay stiffening her face, and figured she must have seen him almost deck Mrs. Lees. Noah was in for it when he got home, if their mother’s face was anything to go by.

Joining the trickle of parishioners headed out the back of the church, she glimpsed the sparrow, eying the open doors as if waiting his turn to exit. “I know the feeling,” she whispered. As she watched, he swooped toward the door, but veered away at the last minute, frightened by a tall man who turned abruptly, and flew away from the crowd toward the altar.

Circling the worship space twice, the bird then flew toward the brightness of the floor to ceiling picture window beside the pulpit. He gathered speed, and Mercy knew he thought he was headed for freedom, the sky, and the pine trees framed by the window. She could do nothing but watch as he sped toward the pane, lovingly polished with ammonia and newspaper by her mother and a handful of other women who kept the church spotless, so not a streak or smudge marred its clear surface. Mercy thought she heard a small thud as the sparrow hit the window, although, surely, his lightweight, feathery body hadn’t made much sound. She winced. He fell straight down, leaving a bird-shaped blur on the glass, wings upraised and fanned out, like illustrations of the Holy Spirit descending as a dove.

Mercy walked up the center aisle, hoping to find the bird merely stunned. Before she was halfway to the window, her mother swept in from the left, bent, and picked up the bird by one wing, holding it between a thumb and forefinger. He dangled from her hand, clearly dead.

“Mercy, find a plastic bag, a trash bag,” she said unemotionally. “There’s a stash of old grocery bags in the kitchen, under the sink.” Studying the window, she shook her head. “It’ll take some elbow grease to get this mark off the window.”

Near tears and not sure why—it was only a sparrow—Mercy did as directed, descending to the church basement which held the Sunday school rooms, the kitchen, and a large gathering area. She came off the last stair and turned the corner. A flutter of blue skirt and flip of dark hair disappeared into the first-grade Sunday school room with its Noah’s ark poster on the door. More sad about the bird than curious about why someone was in the deserted classroom area, Mercy made her way to the kitchen, not bothering to turn on the lights. Finding a flimsy grocery bag, she stuffed it with a handful of paper towels to make a nest, and returned to the hall.

A heavy tread on the stairs warned of someone’s approach, but she still gasped when Pastor Matt stepped into the dimly lit hallway. Her heart beat like the panicked bird’s and she backed up a step. She hadn’t been alone with him for months, not since she told him she wouldn’t anymore, that she’d tell if he tried to touch her. Now, his scent, a mix of deodorant and warm wool, activated by the heat he generated preaching, wafted over her. Swallowing back a mouthful of bile, she froze, hoping he wouldn’t notice her.

She must have made some sound, though, crinkled the grocery bag, because Pastor Matt turned toward her, surprise and a hint of consternation on his broad face. “Mercy! What are you doing down here?”

She stuttered something about the dead bird and held up the plastic bag. “My mom sent me for this. I’m just taking it to her. She’s waiting for me.”
She’ll miss me. She’ll come looking for me.

“Then you should go,” he said calmly, stepping away from the stairs. Grateful that she didn’t have to brush past him, touch him, she crumpled the bag in her fist and fled up the stairs.

nineteen

iris

Determined not to let
memories from the past derail her, Iris shoved the door wide and stepped into the church. She meant to walk straight on through the worship area and find her mother, but she paused. The sanctuary looked the same, exactly the same. Same airy, sunlit space with high windows. Same wooden pews. Probably not the same deep blue runner on the aisles, but identical to the old carpet. Same—her banners were gone. Iris had barely noted their absence, when a movement made her slew to the right. Her mother, just as slim and upright, hair gone gray, stood at the window by the pulpit, running a squeegee down its length as if still trying to remove all traces of the dead sparrow from years ago.

Iris watched for a moment in silence, admiring her economical movements, her focus on the task. Her concentration reminded Iris a little bit of the way she got when she was working on a jewelry project. Wearing an apron over a shirtwaist dress that could well have been in her closet when Iris lived at home, she had cut her hair. Gray and silver strands framed her face in a sort of pixie. Maybe some things
had
changed.

Taking a deep breath, Iris started up the side aisle.

Her mother turned her head and stilled when she saw Iris. Then, the squeegee dropped into the bucket, the only sign of her surprise.

“Mercy. No, I understand it’s Iris, now. Iris Dashwood. Mercy wasn’t good enough for you.” Marian’s voice was measured, almost toneless, betraying no surprise, no anger, no joy or even mild pleasure at seeing her daughter after twenty-three years.

So that’s how it’s going to be
. Iris was surprised by the wave of desolation that rushed over her. Swallowing hard, she came within hugging distance, or hand-shaking distance, of her mother and stood awkwardly. Neither moved.

“I like your haircut.”
Stupid. As if she cares what I think of her hair.
Iris fumbled for something more meaningful to say, but there weren’t words to bridge a twenty-three-year gap. “I guess you heard I was in the area.”

“Your father mentioned it, and Esther. The whole town knows you’re back, although some of them moved in after your time, so it doesn’t mean much to them.”

Does it mean anything to you?
Iris wished she had the nerve to ask the question. “No, it wouldn’t.” She cast around for a safe topic. “The Community’s grown. I like the new store, the co-op. Whose idea was it?”

Marian retrieved the squeegee and drew it down the window. She gestured to the stack of newspapers at her feet and Iris obediently picked one up, formed it into a pad, and began to polish away the thin streaks. “Esther Brozek’s. When the Community selected Zachary as the new pastor, they made her the senior elder.” She looked thoughtful. “She’d been working with the alpacas for some years by then, on top of caring for Pastor Matt, and she came up
with the idea of doing more than just selling their wool. She persuaded some of the women to learn to spin the wool into yarn and convinced others to knit it into sweaters, gloves—well, you saw the place. When Howard Hecht suggested we get some beehives, she researched it and hives popped up in the Community’s fields faster than anthills after a rain. It’s been good and bad for the Community.”

“How so?” Iris was content to let the conversation drift along on this non-confrontational current.

Marian shrugged a bony shoulder. “We’re not as tight knit anymore. Too many tourists traipsing through Lone Pine, calling our religion a cult, talking about us like we can’t hear them. Why, a couple of them even tried to take photos in the worship service until Pastor Zachary stopped them. You’d think we were one of those churches juggling rattlesnakes or something.” She sniffed.

Or something.

“Too much of a focus on materialism,” Marian continued, “even though the co-op’s profits go to our outreach programs for the poor.” She picked up the bucket and gestured for Iris to collect the crumpled newspaper from the floor. “I remember when the Community was about serving God and your fellow man, living simply and obediently.”

Iris followed her mother down the stairs to the kitchen, reflecting that she never would have guessed their reunion would involve window washing. Scrubbing the newsprint off her hands at the sink, she turned off the tap and glanced around at the sparkling counters and stove so clean it looked unused. “So, I guess you’re the caretaker, now?”

Marian nodded, a small smile stretching her lips. “For almost twenty years. I clean, mow, do small repairs. I’m surprisingly handy.”

Iris could believe it. “It’s never looked better.”

Marian accepted the compliment as her due.

“So … Dad.”

Marian stiffened, but raised her brows for Iris to continue.

“I saw him yesterday, in the prison.”

“You could hardly see him anywhere else.”

“He … it turns out he was under a misapprehension, that he confessed because …” Iris didn’t know why she was finding it so difficult to spit out. “He didn’t attack Pastor Matt or cause Mrs. Brozek’s death.”

“Of course not.” Marian emptied the bucket of sudsy water into the sink and rinsed it out. “He thought you did.”

Iris gaped at her mother’s back. The silence lengthened and her mother turned around with raised brows. “Surely you didn’t think I didn’t know? Neil was my husband; he wasn’t capable of such an act.”

“Then, why—”

“I couldn’t talk him out of it. I begged him not to do it, but he felt he had to. For you. He was—is—my husband. I gave in to his wishes. Ephesians tells us that wives must submit themselves unto their own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

For the first time, Iris sensed resentment. Drawing herself up, she said, “It wasn’t my fault.”

Marian flicked her a scathing glance and then attacked the stainless steel sink with cleaning powder and a sponge. “If you hadn’t run off, your father would not be in jail right now.”

“If you hadn’t called me a liar, I wouldn’t have left. The least you can do is look me in the eye.” When her mother didn’t budge, Iris started to grab her shoulder, but stopped herself mid-reach. She backed away two steps, coming up against a pantry door whose pull dug into her spine. Her whole body shook and she stilled her hands by shoving them into her jeans pockets. “I’m going to get Dad out of prison. If it takes me six months”—
God forbid I have to spend half a year here
—“I will find the truth and get him out.”

“He confessed, Iris.”

Her mother’s ease with her new name was almost unsettling when everyone else she’d talked to had slipped up and called her Mercy at least once. It was like Mercy had died. No, had never existed. As if Marian had been introduced to a new person, Iris, and accepted her at face value. Like she didn’t even find Iris particularly interesting, not someone to get to know better over coffee or lunch.

“Don’t you want him back?”

Her mother’s silence filled the kitchen. It infiltrated every crevice—the sliver of space between the refrigerator and the wall, the wells beneath the coils on the range, the toaster slots. It was like a heavy gas, weighting the oxygen to the ground so Iris found it hard to breathe in. “You don’t. You don’t want him freed.”

Marian whipped around, water arcing from the sponge she held and splotching Iris’s shirt. Her voice, though not loud, thrummed with anger. “You don’t get to come back here after a quarter century of running away and pass judgment on me.
I
saw my husband through the trial—a trial he underwent because of you—and I have visited him faithfully twice a month since he was wrongfully imprisoned.
I
spent what little money we had on lawyers, trying to get him out and failing because he wouldn’t tell the truth.
I
bore the burden of this town’s hatred because of what you and Neil did, but I couldn’t up and leave like you two—”

“Dad didn’t—”

“—just walk away from my responsibilities as if they didn’t matter. I couldn’t be so damned selfish.”

“Stop! I wasn’t even sixteen. Pastor Matt—”

“
I
undertook to care for this church when no one else would, bec—”

A clunk interrupted Marian’s tirade and Iris turned to see a girl of five or six, glossy dark hair slicked back with a red headband, standing wide-eyed in the doorway. “Nana, why are you mad at this lady?” she asked. Her wide-eyed gaze traveled slowly from Iris to Marian and back again.

Marian stopped mid-word and placed the sponge in the sink. When she turned back, her face and voice were smoothed of emotion. “Angel, this is your Aunt Iris.”

The words jolted Iris, although she didn’t know why she was so surprised; she’d speculated about Noah having children.

“I don’t have any aunts,” the girl announced. “Mommy doesn’t have any sisters and Daddy’s sister is dead.”

Ouch
. Iris shot her mother a look and got a slightly malicious smile in return.

“I’m not dead,” Iris said, sinking so she was eye-to-eye with the child. Brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes stared into hers. “I just live a long way away. In Oregon. Do you know where that is?”

Angel looked doubtful, but then said, “The capital of Oregon is Salem, and the capital of Colorado is Denver, and the capital of Idaho—”

“Wow. You know your capitals already. How old are you?”

“Five and a half. I’m the smartest one in my class.”

Iris had no trouble believing that, but Marian said, “We’ve talked about boasting before, Angel, and how it does not become us. All our talents and skills come from the Lord and we use them to reflect glory back on him.”

“Yes, Nana,” Angel said, bobbing her head, “but I wasn’t boasting. I was just
saying
.”

Iris stifled a chuckle and Angel beamed at her.

“What are you doing here, anyway, young lady? Did you quarrel with Ruthie?”

“She has to go to her soccer game, so I came home. Can we Skype with Daddy?”

“Later.”

“Where is Noah?” Iris asked.

“Afghanistan,” Marian and Angel chorused.

“You’re kidding!” The words leaped out before she could stop them, but Iris had trouble seeing her obnoxious, slightly rebellious brother as a soldier. He must have changed a lot. Well, why not? She certainly had. “How long—”

Marian’s frown stopped her; obviously, she didn’t want to discuss the war in front of Angel. Iris nodded her understanding and vowed to find out more later. Had Noah joined the military out of a desire to serve his country, or to escape from the Community? She didn’t know him as an adult; she couldn’t begin to guess.

“I’m hungry,” Angel announced, standing on tiptoe to pull a jar of peanut butter from a cupboard.

“Hands,” Marian said, letting a breath of refrigerated air into the room as she handed Angel some grape jelly. The little girl obediently washed her hands before returning to her sandwich-making, the tip of her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth as she spread the peanut butter evenly onto some bread.

“Sorry I’m so late.” Cade’s voice came from the doorway and Iris turned toward him with relief. He represented stability in this world gone topsy-turvy. He smiled and held up two coffees, handing her one. “Good morning, Mrs. Asher.”

Marian’s gaze slid from Cade to Iris and back again. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you now that Mercy’s back. How long have you been married now? Must be going on for sixteen years.” She stared at Cade’s ringless left hand wrapped around the cup as she accepted the coffee.

“Fifteen in August,” Cade said levelly.

“Do you know Angel?” Iris asked hurriedly.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Cade shook hands with the little girl, who giggled again, and engaged her in a conversation about Polly Pockets and
Jake and the Neverland Pirates
. Iris looked on semi-wistfully, wondering how she’d gotten so out of touch with that segment of the population under the age of legal consent and their favorite activities, music, and TV shows. The glimpse of Cade’s family life also left her feeling … untethered. She couldn’t think why that word came to mind, but it would do. She was untethered by family or even a job since she could take hers with her anywhere. She’d always appreciated what she thought of as her flexibility, her ability to pick up and go on the spur of the moment, but right now it felt more like homelessness.

Iris squashed the thought. She was living the dream, a free, untrammeled life full of adventure, creativity, and casual sex with hot men. Cade was trapped by a mortgage, the need to fund his kids’ college educations, and his wife’s expectations. He probably had to spend every Christmas with his in-laws—whoever they were—listening politely as his father-in-law droned on about the Avalanche, and every vacation at a kid-friendly Howard Johnson’s Hotel with a waterpark. As for her mother … Marian was so much a prisoner of the Community, of the church building itself, that she might as well be locked in. Poor Marian. Poor Cade. Iris’s gaze lingered on him as she sipped her coffee, and when he looked up and smiled at her, she scalded her mouth with a too-big gulp.

Finishing her sandwich, Angel said a sunny goodbye to everyone, gave Marian a hug, and said she was going to see if Janelle could play. The adults looked at each other as Angel’s footsteps faded. Without a word, Marian retrieved the sponge from the sink and began to wipe the table, gray head bent over the task. Iris continued to lean against the pantry, and Cade, subtly elbowed aside by Marian, backed up against the windowsill so they made an awkward, lop-sided triangle.

“We need to get Dad out of prison so he can spend time with Angel,” Iris said. She didn’t know where the words had come from, but she felt the truth of them in her bones. “She deserves to know him. He deserves to know her. ‘Children’s children are a crown to the aged,’ it says in Proverbs.” Iris was surprised that she could still dredge up the Bible verses she’d been forced to memorize in Sunday school.

Marian stilled, and then straightened, table half-wiped. Her gray eyes dwelled on Iris’s face for a moment before she said, “Don’t quote the Bible at me like it’s a weapon. It’s God’s sacred word.”