The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (25 page)

forty-one

jolene

Jolene lingered in the
church after the service, unwilling to face everyone outside. She prayed for guidance, for patience, and for a calm spirit to replace the roiling one within that made her doubt her worth and the choices she’d made the past twenty-three years. Exhausted, she shifted off the kneeler and closed it with a clunk, and then sat in the pew until Zach came to find her. She didn’t know how long it had been, but she couldn’t hear voices from outside anymore, so the Community must have dispersed.

Zach had a heavy tread and she heard him approach, even down the carpeted aisle. He halted beside her pew and she could feel him looking down at her, and hear his exhalations. She shifted to her left in silent invitation and he sat beside her. She stole a glance at him. His face was somber and his shoulders sagged. Probably from carrying the weight of everyone’s problems on them … and she had added to his burden with her outspokenness and her unwillingness to any longer fill the role of pastor’s wife the way she always had.

“I’m so sorry, Zach.” She couldn’t begin to list all the things she was sorry for—proclaiming his father a child molester was the least of them—but she knew that’s what he thought she meant.

He didn’t acknowledge her apology. “You mock me and my family in God’s house,” he said, anger and sorrow twining in his voice. “You accuse my father of unspeakable acts. You make a mockery of our one-ness, and hold me up for ridicule in front of my congregation.”

“God’s congregation.” Jolene bit her lip. “I wasn’t mock—”

“What congregation will follow a pastor who has no control in his own house, whose daughter steals, and whose wife—” He cut himself off.

“Whose wife what? Tells the truth? If anyone wants to condemn me, it should be for my years of silence, not for my honesty. I was not going to let Esther, you, me do to Rachel what we did to Iris. I wronged her, we all wronged her—”

“I never wronged her.”

“You threw stones.”

The flat accusation in her voice silenced him. He stared straight ahead, not looking at her. She didn’t know if he saw the altar and the cross, or if he was looking inward. She put a hand on his thigh and the muscles flexed beneath her palm. He cleared his throat. “My father. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“I wanted to spare you. With Iris gone, and your father like he was, it didn’t seem kind or necessary to make you see … that side of him.”

“He did a lot of good in this Community. He helped a lot of people.” Zach sounded desperate, like a man trying to paddle a rowboat without oars. He blinked rapidly behind his glasses.

Jolene clamped her lips together and prayed for the strength not to say anything. The silence lengthened and she became aware of a faint buzz that probably meant the sound system hadn’t been turned off, and the almost imperceptible ticking of Zach’s watch. Dark had crept up the windows while they talked and only the topmost panes remained fog-colored, giving an ombre effect to the windows.

“I should have known.” He bent his head and his shoulders shook. She scooted along the pew until their thighs touched and put her arms around him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. Jolene tried hard to imagine what it must be like to have to see a parent in a new and repellent, horrifying light. She tightened her grip on Zach and let him cry.

When he had recovered himself and they had broken apart, sitting side by side in silence again for ten minutes, she asked, “What about Rachel?”

He slewed in the pew to face her, his brows drawn together in an uncompromising line. “Rachel is my daughter and I love her, but I cannot condone stealing.”

“I never asked you to—”

His upheld hand silenced her. The wedding band on his ring finger shone dully in the twilit sanctuary. “I prayed hard these past days and searched my conscience. I had decided that the reckoning stones do not accord with God’s mercy and forgiveness and I tried to convince the elders of that, but I was out-voted.” He fell silent. “My sister … has had many crosses to bear, but she has the Community’s best interests at heart. Still, after today, I think if our daughter contributes eighty hours to serving this Community righteously, and gracefully accepts being grounded for a month, that she will have ample opportunity to repent and atone.”

A wave of relief washed through Jolene. “Oh, Zach, that’s all I was trying to do: atone. I’m sorry if it felt like I was dissing you when—”

“Dissing’?” A wry smile curved his lips and gave Jolene hope.

“Sorry. The kids’ language is infectious. They say it when—”

“I know what it means.”

He knew what she meant, but did he know who she was? The thought leaped, unbidden, into Jolene’s mind. Her eyes lingered on her husband’s face. She loved him, and yet that love seemed to eat away at her foundation, like waves sucking the sand from beneath a beach house. She had become one flesh with him, vowed to love him until death, and she was and would. Becoming aware that her nails were gouging her palms, she unclenched her fists. She could say she wanted a separation, but the very thought, the form of the word in her head, squeezed her lungs closed and made her gasp with pain. She didn’t want to be separate from him; she just wanted to be different
with
him. Trouble was, she didn’t know if he could accept, never mind embrace, the person she was becoming … had become. A doubter, not of God but of religion, a protector, a seeker, a voice. And if he couldn’t? She wanted to shy away from considering either a future alone, like Iris was alone, or endless years of meeting other people’s expectations.

“Jolene, I think we—”

“I want to act.” She laid the idea down like a marker, stopping Zach mid-sentence.

Blank astonishment wiped his face clean of anger. “You want to—what?—run off to New York or Hollywood? At your age? You have responsibilities, Jolene.”

“No, of course not,” she said, ignoring the age comment. She wasn’t even quite forty. “Here. At the Fine Arts Center, or Theaterworks, or that new center in Parker. I’m not talking about making it a career or anything. I just want to try, to have something to do for me. Maybe I won’t get into a show, but if I do, it wouldn’t take that much time … a couple hours in the evening for five or six weeks or so.”

“I don’t know if being on stage is appropriate for a pastor’s wife …” His tone verged on disapproval, but he tugged at his earlobe and she knew he was thinking about it. Really thinking about it, not just pretending to like she sometimes did before denying Rachel permission to camp out on a sidewalk overnight to get tickets to a movie, or something equally outrageous.

“I’m not talking about doing burlesque,” she said, standing. “I’m talking about Shakespeare, Chekov, Neil Simon.”

He was silent for a moment. “I need you,” he finally said. Despite his solidity, a trick of the light made him look somehow insubstantial in that moment, as if the mere thought of her leaving was enough to diminish him.

She leaned over until her face was inches from his and put her hands on his shoulders, the weave of his jacket imprinting into her fingers. “And I need you, and Rachel and Aaron, and the Community. I’m not leaving. I will never leave you, Zach, even if you are against this, against my finding a creative outlet, an activity that fulfills me in a different way than mothering and nurturing and
helping
all the times does. You can’t tell me that always being available to your parishioners, always lending a hand or being a shoulder to cry on, doesn’t wear on you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with helping.” But he said it with a rueful look that told her he got it.

She let out a sigh of relief.

“I love you, Jolene. I can’t remember not loving you.”

“Good thing,” she said in a voice muffled by the tears she was holding back, “because you’re stuck with me.”

Zach stood so suddenly she stumbled backward so his head wouldn’t clonk her chin. He caught her waist and said, “I’ve been wanting to see the new exhibit at the art museum in Denver. Sunday, after the service, we can go up there, spend the night even.”

Jolene opened her eyes wide. Spontaneity was not Zach’s long suit and she couldn’t recall another time when he’d suggested a spur-of-the-moment outing, never mind an overnight trip. “Really? What about Rachel?”

“We’ll deal with Rachel and … and all of it later. I’m sure Abby’s folks will let her stay overnight. Right now … well, I think we should just be Jolene and Zach and let our daughter, and my father and sister, and the whole darn Community muddle along on their own for a day or two.” Anguish tightened his face when he mentioned his father, but was quickly erased.

He was trying so very hard to reach out to her that it made her heart ache. “I’ll take a personal day Monday,” Jolene said, happiness rising within her.

Zach held out his hand and she took it. The feel of his square palm against hers almost made her cry. “I love you, Husband,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder as they walked down the aisle, fingers twined.

“I love you, Wife.”

The words felt like vows in the gentle quiet of the church and Jolene hugged the feeling close. It was moments like this that held a marriage together for the long-term. The insight surprised her. It wasn’t the hot sex of the honeymoon phase, or the children, or habit. It was the determination to stay connected, to accept these moments of grace that came even in the midst of what promised to be a hard period, to work at loving the person she’d promised to love and cherish until death. She pulled Zach to a stop and leaned up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, inhabiting the peace of the moment and letting it work its way through her entire body before they opened the doors.

forty-two

iris

Iris found herself at
the door of Outback Cottage without conscious thought. She pounded with her fist, upset enough to consider kicking the door in and storming the bungalow. When Marian swung the door inward with a surprised and irritated expression, Iris took an automatic step forward before realization froze her. Her breath hitched and her eyes swept the area. Nothing—
nothing
—was the same. Framed photos of Colorado landscapes had replaced the mirror and cross on the walls of the small foyer. Someone had knocked out a wall to open the kitchen to the living room area. Mrs. Wellington’s scratchy sofa and loveseat had been replaced with a low-end but attractive microfiber suite in a rich chestnut color. Colorful pillows and peach-colored walls made the space homey, even welcoming. Iris sucked in a thin thread of breath through her constricted throat.

White subway tiles gleamed from the kitchen’s walls and the linoleum had been replaced with a wood-look laminate. Even the appliances were new.
Of course they are
, Iris thought.
It’s been twenty-three years.
She let herself breathe. Her fear of the cottage didn’t have anything to do with the space itself. It was about what had happened here and she was safe from that now. She was thirty-eight, not fifteen, and Pastor Matt was gone, for all intents and purposes. She could be here without hyperventilating. She took three slow, deep breaths to prove it, and looked at her mother.

Marian was wearing a gray flannel bathrobe that Iris thought had been her father’s. The sight of it would have made her smile if she hadn’t been so wound up.

“What are you doing—?” Marian started. “Oh, you found Angel’s purse. We’ve been looking for it.”

She held out her hand, but Iris jerked the purse away. “Where’s Angel?”

“At a sleepover. I think she’s far too young to be spending the night at a friend’s house, but we Skyped with Keely and she said it was okay.” Marian sniffed. “I was looking forward to an evening alone, so if you’ll just—”

Iris fished the photo from the purse and held it up between a trembling thumb and forefinger. “Is this Noah?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. Noah and Keely. If you’re not leaving, come in so I can shut the door. It’s getting chilly. I wish you’d called first.”

Iris walked farther into the room and faced her mother as she closed the door. She shook the picture accusingly. “There’s a photo of Noah on the fridge at Jolene’s house. With Zach.” She paused, and thought her mother stiffened slightly.

“I’m not surprised,” Marian said matter-of-factly, moving into the kitchen, her slippers flapping. “They’ve been best friends forever. Surely you remember that.” She retrieved a glass from a cupboard near the sink. It tinked against the faucet as if the hand that held it wasn’t steady. “Water?” Marian asked.

“I’m not thirsty. When I saw the photo, I thought the man with Zach must be a cousin because they look so much alike. But he’s not a cousin, is he, Mother? Noah’s his brother.”

Marian’s features squinched together. “How dare you?”

“How dare I?” Suddenly, Iris was shouting. “How dare
I
? You have lived a lie for God knows how many years and you want to act all offended with me? You slept with Pastor Matt, you had his son, and then you were cruel enough to pretend you didn’t believe me when I told you, when I told you that he …” Iris turned away and stiffened every muscle, trying not to let her anger and sense of betrayal overwhelm her.

“I
didn’t
believe you,” her mother said. “I didn’t believe he could … that he could betray me, that our time together meant so little to him!” Pain narrowed her voice to a whisper.

“Oh, that’s rich, Mother. You felt betrayed? What about his poor wife? Did Daddy know?”

Marian’s shoulders sagged. She slumped into a ladder-back chair at the table like a marionette whose strings had been cut. “I suppose you want to know all of it.”

“Damn right.” Iris sat opposite her mother and laid the photo on the table between them.

“It’s funny,” Marian said, her fingers with their short nails touching the photo’s edge. “No one else ever guessed. They were so used to seeing the boys together, to thinking of them as friends, that they didn’t notice how much they began to look alike as they grew up. People used to tell me Noah had Neil’s eyes.” She expelled a sharp breath. “I guess we see what we expect to see, hm? Or what we want to see. You saw the truth because you got far enough away from us all to have a new perspective.”

Iris stayed quiet, waiting for her mother to work her way around to telling her story.

Marian took a long swallow of water, her throat working and then set the glass down with a decisive click. “I was sixteen when my parents heard Matthew speak at our church in Illinois and followed him here to set up the Community. We felt like pioneers, coming west in a station wagon instead of a covered wagon. The church was already here, and that strange Victorian house, so out of place in what was then an isolated corner of the county. I cried for weeks about leaving my friends, my bedroom, my softball team. Oh, yes,” she said in response to Iris’s surprised look. “I was a pretty good outfielder at one time and had the highest batting average on the team.

“I was so upset for so long that my parents took me to Pastor Matt for counseling. He was young then, Iris, in his early thirties. Handsome and sympathetic. Charismatic. He was so interested in me, in what I thought and felt. He asked my advice about Community matters. I was flattered. I felt—” She broke off, apparently unable to find the right words.

“I know,” Iris said.

Marian nodded. “Yes, well. He was married and Glynnis was pregnant. With Esther, as it turns out. We never meant for it to happen, but one day our feelings overcame us and we made love in his office. We both felt horrible afterward. He begged my forgiveness and we agreed that it would never happen again. But we loved each other so much.”

Iris fought the urge to mime retching; her mother’s story was too awful for such a flippant response.

“And then I discovered I was pregnant.” Marian’s voice went flat and she stared into her empty water glass. “I went to him in tears, panic-stricken. He was as horrified as I. More. He told me he needed time to think what was best to do. When I came to him the next day in his office, Neil was there. I knew Neil slightly; he’d been part of
the Community when we arrived and I’d spoken with him a few times—he had a little crush on me, even though he was six years older—but I barely knew him. I didn’t understand what he was doing there, until Matthew told me that Neil had agreed to marry me and raise my child—he called him
my
child, not ours—as his own.”

Iris reached across the table for her mother’s hand, unwillingly sympathetic. Pastor Matt had victimized them both. Marian let her hand rest under Iris’s for a short moment, and then withdrew it. “I agreed. What could I do? When Neil left, Matthew told me that he would always love me, but that circumstances made it impossible for us to be together the way we wanted to be. He said that Neil was a good man, that he would take care of me and the baby. He made it sound like he was the one making a huge sacrifice, Iris,” Marian said, sounding disillusioned and old. “Like he was sacrificing himself so my reputation wouldn’t be damaged, so he could continue to do God’s work in the Community. I thought he was noble.”

Iris felt ill and didn’t know what to say. “Were you faithful to Daddy?”

Marian jerked back as if stung. “Of course. Matthew and I never again—”

“You were too old for him by then.”

Only the briefest pause suggested Marian had heard her. “I respected Neil and I was grateful to him. In time, I came to love him. I think he loved me all along, and he always loved Noah and thought of him as his. Noah
is
his,” she said fiercely, raking her fingers through her short hair, “in all the ways that count.”

“Does he know? Noah?” No wonder her mother hadn’t wanted him to date Esther.

Marian shook her head violently. “You can’t tell him.”

“He has a right—”

“You can’t tell him. Neil’s already lost everything—you can’t take away his son.”

Iris heard the plea in her mother’s voice. Even if Noah had a right to know who his biological father was, it would wound Neil if the knowledge changed the way Noah related to him. Maybe Noah was happier not knowing. Most of her life, from the time she was a little girl, she’d wanted to
know
everything, because knowledge was power and power was control. Now, she hesitated. It was within her power to completely change Noah’s worldview, his concept of who he was. Would that truth empower him or destroy him? It wasn’t her secret to tell, Iris finally decided.

“I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you,” Marian said with an effort.

Agitated, Iris rose and paced across the small dining area. Her footfalls made the decorative tea cups displayed on a metal
étagère
tink
in their saucers. “So, when I told you that he’d molested me—”

“I couldn’t believe it. I
couldn’t
believe it. It wasn’t until the night of the reckoning stones that I saw, in the woods, that I let myself see …” Marian’s teeth snapped together. “I went to see Matthew the next night, the night you left, although I didn’t know then that you were gone. I needed to know the truth, needed to hear it from him, even though I suspected I already knew, that I had heard the truth from you.”

“You were there that night?” Iris arched her brows.

“Oh, yes,” her mother said grimly.