The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (26 page)

forty-three

marian

Twenty-Three Years Ago

Marian strode through the
woods that edged Lone Pine, counting on the noise she made trampling twigs and rustling branches to warn away any wildlife. The bears were cranky this time of year, awaking hungry from their hibernation, and Quentin Welsh had reported seeing a black sow by the motel two nights ago. She hated the necessity of skulking through the trees, but she couldn’t march boldly up to Matthew’s door. Not tonight. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her cardigan tight at the neck. It had no business being so cold in early May. She stepped out of the woods, the smoothness under her feet signaling she was on the lawn, even though the moon was stingy and she could barely make out the turret and peaks of the Victorian house.

She saw no one as she crossed the lawn to the front porch. No surprise at past ten o’clock. Smoothing her hair, she rapped on the door. It opened almost immediately, and she fell back a step. She should have realized she might see Glynnis, but she hadn’t prepared a story.

“Marian,” Glynnis said in her dry, unanimated way. She had gone from being petite to fragile in the years Marian had known her, and now, with light gray hair pulled back into a low bun, and her sallow face makeup free, she looked ten years older than her rightful fifty years. “It’s late.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s only—”
I need to find out if your husband cheated on me with my daughter.
She couldn’t tell the truth.

“You’ll be wanting to talk to Matthew about Mercy, I expect.”

“Yes, I—”

“She took the stones hard; I could tell.” Glynnis opened the door wider to invite Marian in. “Matthew can maybe give you some ideas for helping her through this time, bringing her to the point of desiring reconciliation with the Community.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Marian said, stepping inside. “I’m worried about Mercy.”

“He’s in his study. You’ll excuse me—I’ve got some banana bread just about ready to take out of the oven.” She headed down the wallpapered hall to the kitchen.

A strange woman. Marian had always wondered what brought her and Matthew together, though she knew she couldn’t see Glynnis clearly through the fog of guilt. She needed to get this over with. Knocking once on the closed study door, she opened it without waiting for an answer. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and stood with her back against it. The drapes were drawn and a small fire burned cozily in the hearth. Matthew sat at the desk, his broad brow propped on one hand as he read the large Bible opened on the blotter. He marked his place with a finger and looked up. A mix of emotions—surprise, consternation, fear—skittered across his face before he smoothed them away and stood, coming toward her with hands outstretched. When he got closer, she noticed the bruise, like a shadow, seeping from the corner of his mouth across his jaw.

“Marian! What are you doing here? Is Mercy okay?”

Marian brought her clasped hands up beneath her chin so he couldn’t take them. This was the first time they’d been alone behind closed doors since she’d married Neil. Matthew had told her he couldn’t trust himself with her, that they had to keep a distance to preserve their marriage vows, but she wondered now if he’d actually been worried that she’d enact a scene or beg him to resume their relationship if they were alone together.

“Tell me you didn’t do it, Matthew.” She blinked back tears. “No. Tell me the truth.”

He halted, his eyes wary. “What truth is that?”

She kept her gaze on his face. Her every muscle was tight; she felt as brittle as the ice on the pond, ready to crack with the slightest pressure.

He tried a sad chuckle. “Oh, Marian, how could you think—? You, of all people.”

“Exactly.” She regarded him coldly. “I, of all people.”

She became conscious of his body odor and realized he was perspiring beneath his maroon sweater. The smell of him brought back memories—wrong, hurtful memories—and she pushed them down. She studied him with the clear insight of a thirty-three-year-old woman, and not the bedazzled eyes of a lovesick teenager. Something gnawed at her insides … the growing conviction that she had wronged Mercy horribly and unforgivably.

“You fornicated with my daughter.”

He opened his mouth, and she could almost hear the words of denial hovering on his thick, pink tongue. But then he said, “She’s so very much like you were, Marian. Your image.”

She recoiled, bumping against the door. “You are a sick man. Sickening.”

His eyes glinted. “God made me as I am.”

Marian took two hasty steps toward him, hauled her arm back and slapped him full across the face. The blow stung her palm and rocked his head sideways. Tears wet her cheeks. She swung her arm again, but he caught her wrist and forced her backward, almost against the fireplace screen. Heat from the flames warmed her legs. “We are both guilty of horrible sins. Our relationship was wrong and sinful from the start. The only good to come from it was Noah.
My
son. Mine and Neil’s. You poisoned my relationship with my daughter. You molested her, just like she said, and I refused to believe her because I thought … I thought—”

“I do still love you, Marian,” Matthew said, trying to take her hand.

Repulsed that he could intuit her thoughts, she yanked it away and staggered back, bumping against the fireplace tools which jangled to the floor.

Another crash sounded from the hallway. Matthew shot Marian a look that warned her she had as much to lose as he did, and opened the door. Glynnis knelt on the floor, surrounded by a litter of broken china and a tray. Her hand clutched a jagged shard and she stared up at her husband, hatred burning in her eyes. “I was bringing you tea, and I heard … I heard …”

She stopped mid-sentence and her jaw hung slack, mouth ajar. Glynnis had deliberately eavesdropped, Marian suspected. What else had she overheard over the years? She began to think there was more to Glynnis Brozek, a slyness, than she had ever recognized. The heavy aroma of banana bread drifted from the kitchen and Marian knew she’d never be able to eat it again.

Matthew said soothingly, “I don’t know what you thought you heard, Glynnis, but Marian was just asking my advice about poor Mercy. That misguided girl—”

“Don’t touch me.” Glynnis struggled to get to her feet, and breathed with effort, laying a hand on her chest. “I’ve known what you were for years, and turned a blind eye because I loved you, because you were the father of my children, but now—”

“Let me help you clean this up,” Matthew said easily, robbing his wife’s words of their power by ignoring them. He stooped to pick up slices of shattered cups and place them on the tray. “Oh, you’ve broken one of your mother’s saucers. I know how you love that pattern. Maybe we can get it repaired.”

Forcing her stiff limbs to move, Marian sidled around the pair, frantic to get out of the house. “I’ve got to go. Neil will be wondering where I am. Glynnis—”

The woman’s now empty eyes swiveled to her and Marian found it impossible to utter the apology she knew she owed her. She banged against the newel post as she stumbled past it, and looked up at the sound of a soft footfall from the landing. A shadow moved and then Marian was out the door, leaving it ajar as she raced toward the woods and home, the stench of burning banana bread chasing her.

forty-four

iris

Iris sat frozen when
her mother finished speaking, feeling like only stillness could keep her together. She was in the eye of a hurricane, and if she moved at all, she’d be swept into the wrecking winds and torn apart. Noah was her half-brother. Her mother and Pastor Matt had—Iris’s mind refused to go there. She understood now, at least, why Marian hadn’t believed her, couldn’t believe her, when she said Pastor Matt had molested her. Marian had been in love with Matthew Brozek all along, even after her marriage ended their affair. Admitting that he’d slept with her daughter, that he was a pedophile who’d never really loved her the way she loved him, would have destroyed her, Iris recognized. She looked at her mother. Maybe had destroyed her.

Marian, after one brief, almost furtive look at Iris, had dropped her gaze to her lap where her fingers worried at a button on her dress.

“Do you hate him?” Iris asked.

“I did. For a while. After you left, because he’s what made you go. I hated us both. I cut my hair as a sign of penitence.” Her fingers pulled at one short strand. “Neil never asked why I cut it. With Jesus’ help, I forgave Matthew long ago. I’m still working on forgiving myself, window by window.” She made a circular motion with one hand, as if she was polishing glass. “You need to forgive him, too. Not for his sake, but for yours.”

Iris stared at her mother, biting back an instinctual denial. An image of Pastor Matt as she’d last seen him, lolling in his bed as she shook it, came into her mind’s eye and almost immediately faded. She looked at her mother with wonder, thinking about the years she’d spent caring for the church, trimming shrubs, steam-cleaning carpets, changing furnace filters. She’d taken the task on like a penance, Iris thought. She remembered Cade talking about going to confession and receiving Hail Marys as a punishment for something trivial. How many cleaned windows did it take to get a clean slate? Studying the way her mother’s gray robe drained her face of color, how her dark eyes stood out against the pallor, troubled, beseeching, Iris realized it wasn’t Pastor Matt she needed to forgive.

The knowledge thudded into her like a rockslide, making her sway in the chair. She reached for her mother’s hand. It was cool, work-roughened, strong. The knuckles were slightly swollen and Iris wondered if they pained her. This hand had smoothed her hair back from her sweaty forehead when she’d had the flu, spanked her, held hers for balance when she learned to roller skate, plucked chickens for family dinners, and slapped Pastor Matt for her.

“I want to forgive, Mom,” Iris whispered, and they both knew she wasn’t talking about Matthew Brozek. A concept for the Green Gable sculpture rose up before her suddenly, born of what her mother had said. A window, or window panes …

Marian sniffed hard and stood to fetch a box of Kleenex. She blew her nose and returned to the table, but remained standing. “Well. It’s late.” Her tone suggested it was time for Iris to go.

Iris refused to budge, her mind buzzing. “So neither you nor Dad really has an alibi,” she said slowly.

Giving her a sour look, Marian said, “Well, really! After all this, you’re saying Neil beat Matthew after all? Or I did?”

“If you were at the Brozeks’, you can’t know what time Dad left the house. What if he followed you there? Cade was there before you—that’s why Pastor Matt’s face was bruised.”

Marian looked stricken, but recovered quickly. “That’s ridiculous. If you don’t know by now that your father is no more capable of beating a man half to death than … than Angel is, then you’re hopeless.” She stood and plucked a sponge from the sink, and began wiping down the table with short, angry swipes.

Iris remembered the look on her father’s face when she told him she hadn’t attacked Pastor Matt. His shock was real. Sucking in a deep breath, disturbed at the path her thoughts had taken, she asked, “Did you think I’d done it?”

Marian shot her an impatient look. “Not for one second. Not one! Why do you think I was so against Neil confessing? You didn’t—don’t—have it in you to beat a man to near death, any more than Neil does. A mother knows. I tried to make Neil see that, but he was convinced, with you gone, that—. He insisted on confessing. If you hadn’t run off, Neil would never have gone to prison.” She scrubbed viciously at an invisible spot on the table.

Iris looked at her with wonder, touched despite the acid rider by her mother’s adamantine belief in her innocence. Iris changed the subject slightly. “Who do you think was on the landing?”

“What?”

“The landing. You said you heard someone. Who else was in the Brozek house?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Probably Esther or Zach, wouldn’t you think?”

“Yes. But they both say they were gone. Zach told me he was looking for Jolene, although he never found her, and Esther said she was at the church, working on something for Sunday school.” Iris knew she’d learned something else, something about the church, but she couldn’t place it. She tried sifting through everything she’d heard this week. She’d talked to Jolene and Zach about that night, to Cade … the knowledge she sought clicked like a puzzle piece locking into place. “Cade vandalized the church that night,” Iris said, rising in her excitement.

“That was him?” Marian looked indignant. “Well! He ought—”

Iris spoke loudly to override her mother. “Wouldn’t Esther have heard him smashing windows if she was really in the church basement like she said? Wouldn’t she have come up to see what was going on, or, at least, mentioned it to the cops the next day if she was too scared to confront an intruder?”

Marian stilled and Iris locked eyes with her. “You think Esther was at the house,” Marian said finally, “that she knows what happened to Matthew.”

“It makes sense,” Iris said with fierce exultation at having discovered the truth that would free her father. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Iris bit her lip, trying to think through what might have happened. Maybe Glynnis had finally snapped and gone after her husband with the poker. Had Esther intervened?

“If Esther was there, why wouldn’t she say so? Why lie about being in the church?” Water dripped from the sponge, betraying Marian’s convulsive grip.

Iris said, “I don’t know. But I damn well plan to ask her.”

forty-five

iris

Back in her room,
having accepted her mother’s advice to wait until morning to tackle Esther, Iris reached for her sketch pad with shaking hands. She wanted to still her brain, going around and around with Marian’s revelations. The window idea for the award commission sang within her and she burned to get it down on paper. What if she couldn’t do it, if her fingers wouldn’t translate what was in her head onto the page? What if she was still blocked? She hadn’t confronted Pastor Matt, after all.
Only one way to find out.
Flipping the pad open, she picked up a pencil, hesitated, and then began to draw. The lines came stiffly at first, but then more fluidly as she gave herself up to the images. Filling page after page with drawings, each one more detailed, more crisp, more exactly what she envisioned, she worked until almost dawn, afraid to stop. When the pencil finally slid from her cramped fingers, she crawled into bed fully clothed, leaving the sketch pad open on the bedside table. Happy exhaustion pressed her into the soft bed. It was back. Her gift was back. Even though she’d never had it out with Pastor Matt like she’d planned, her gift was back. Feeling a superstitious reluctance to examine it too closely for fear that thinking about it too much might close her off again, she rolled over on her side and smiled, letting sleep steal over her.

Still filled with a sense of well-being, even though her talk with Esther might turn ugly, Iris approached the Victorian home at just after eight in the morning. Clouds had moved in and the day was chilly enough that Iris wore a hoodie over her T-shirt and tucked her hands into the kangaroo pocket after she knocked. Shifting from foot to foot, she waited for Esther to answer. The door stayed closed. Iris made a visor of her hand, stepped over to a window, and peered in. A sleepy dining room, empty, met her gaze. No light shone from the hall beyond.

Iris descended the veranda stairs. Damn. Where could Esther be at this hour? Maybe she was visiting her father. No, her car was under the carport; Iris had noticed it when she walked up from the church parking lot. She could be breakfasting with Zach and Jolene or a friend. Seeing the futility of going on a door-to-door hunt for Esther, Iris left her car where it was and wandered into Lone Pine in search of coffee and information.

Debby’s Café hummed with activity and conversation, but Joseph Ulm spotted Iris as soon as she came in. “The usual?” he asked over the heads of two women chatting at the counter.

Feeling absurdly warmed by his greeting, Iris nodded. As he counted out her change, she asked where she might find Esther.

“Try the barn. She usually works with the alpacas on Saturdays. Stop back by for a piece of pie when you’re done. That way I’ll know she didn’t put a pitchfork in you.” He grinned again, but Iris wasn’t altogether sure he was joking.

“Thanks. Say ‘hi’ to Gabby for me, next time you talk to her,” Iris said.

“Will do. She’s Gabby Von Wolfseck now, you know. She and Keith are expecting their third in July. Their oldest is coming up on fifteen. Already got college scouts watching him pitch. And the middle girl, Tracy, plays a violin that could make the angels weep.”

Joseph Ulm wore a proud grandpa expression and Iris said goodbye and left before he could whip out photos.

The trek to the alpaca barn on the far side of the meadow took Iris almost fifteen minutes. By the time she arrived, the sun had broken through the clouds and she was sweating lightly. Taking off the hoodie, she tied it around her waist and followed the sound of a murmuring voice into the barn. It wasn’t a big structure designed to hold tractors and large livestock. Rather, it seemed to have been purpose-built for the alpacas, a rough lean-to with small pens on either side of a central aisle, most of them occupied by alpacas, and a ceiling that only cleared Iris’s head by a foot and a half. Gaps where the boards didn’t fit together evenly let in jewels of sunlight and air. It felt like a cross between a barn and a chicken coop, and smelled of hay and fresh water.

Iris walked softly down the aisle, an object of curiosity to the alpacas. She stopped when she came to the open door of what looked to be a storage room, filled with sacks of feed. Dust motes twirled in the sun’s spotlight beaming through a small window. Esther, massive in overalls and work boots, crouched beside a brown alpaca, preparing to give it an injection. The animal didn’t even seem to notice the needle go in and butted Esther’s arm when she patted it.

Iris must have made some sound because Esther looked up. “She’s diabetic,” she said, nodding toward the alpaca. “Has to have insulin twice a day.” She stood with effort and disposed of the syringe in a gallon milk jug half full of syringes. Then, she turned and met Iris’s eyes, “I told the police about you, you know. About you trying to kill my father and your father taking the blame for it. You’ll have to pay for what you did.” Her face shone with malice.

Ignoring Esther’s words, she said, “My mother and I talked last night.”

“You’ve caused her a lot of grief.”

Brushing aside Esther’s comment, Iris continued, “She told me about visiting Pastor Matt at your house the night he was attacked. She went there to confront him about molesting me. She knew, you see, what he was capable of since he’d seduced her years earlier. I never knew that. Your mother overheard them talking.”

Iris paused, trying to gauge Esther’s reaction. The older woman’s face remained deadpan, her blue stare un-nerving Iris. Iris shifted, her feet rustling wisps of hay underfoot. “You were there.”

When Esther still said nothing, remained motionless, Iris plunged on. “You know what happened that night, Esther. Have you kept quiet all these years to protect your mother? Here’s what I think happened. I think Glynnis lost it. She heard her husband admitting to raping not only me, but also my mother. She snapped. After my mother left, I think Glynnis picked up the poker, followed Pastor Matt to the cottage, and beat him. No one would blame her, Esther. I’m sure you don’t want to see her name blackened at this late date, but think about my father’s freedom. It’s not right that he should die in prison. Can’t you come forward and tell what really happened, clear my father?” Iris’s voice and eyes pled with the other woman.

Esther blinked slowly. “My mother never lifted a hand against my father. She was a mouse. A pathetic, sniveling little mouse. Gray, blah. What he saw in her, I’ll never know.”

The venom in her voice startled Iris and she found herself looking around surreptitiously. There was a metal bucket, and a wheelbarrow with a small shovel in it, probably for mucking out the stalls. Nothing that looked like a weapon. Iris relaxed a bit, chiding herself for letting Ulm’s joke get to her.

“My mother didn’t go for the poker, she went for the phone.” Anger mottled Esther’s face. “She told him she was going to call the police and turn him in. He laughed at her and left, not bothering to say where he was going, but I knew. I came downstairs to stop her, and found her on the floor in the kitchen, gripping her left shoulder. She was obviously having a heart attack. All I had to do was kick the phone out of the way—she had dropped it—and wait for nature to take its course.”

A chill like the cold metal tine of a pitchfork ripped up Iris’s spine and she jerked. Had she misunderstood Esther? “You—?”

“I showed her the mercy God wants us to show all who suffer or are in need. I put a damp cloth on her brow and I sat on the floor with her, holding her hand and praying for her soul until her spirit left her. She couldn’t talk, so I prayed for her, asking God to forgive her for thinking to betray the husband he had joined her with, asking him to make her passing painless and quick. He was merciful and just, as is his nature. It was less than twenty minutes before she died. But even that was too long.”

Iris stared dumbfounded at Esther, who was eerily calm. Only her last words betrayed emotion. “Too long?” Esther hadn’t admitted to murder, or even lifting a hand against her mother, but surely not summoning help for someone in distress was a crime? It was certainly a moral crime, even if the legal system couldn’t prosecute. And it made Esther one very cold, calculating eighteen-year-old. Iris edged toward the storage room door, uneasily aware that the two of them were alone and isolated.

“I went after my father, of course. I had to tell him about Mother, to assure him that he was safe. I was too late. If only Mom hadn’t taken so long to die, I’d have been there. I could have saved him.” Sorrow contracted Esther’s face. “Your father had already attacked him when I got to the cottage, struck him down and hit him again and again. There was blood everywhere.”

Iris didn’t think this was the time to protest her father’s innocence, so she kept her mouth shut. She touched the door jamb, the unfinished wood rough beneath her hand. A thought struck her. “You must have been very mad at him,” she suggested gently. “At your father. For what he did. No wonder you struck out at him.”

Esther stared at Iris for a second before catching on. She laughed. The sound rang inappropriately through the barn. An alpaca bleated. “You think I hit my father? I would never, ever have hurt him.” Earnestness settled on her doughy face and she took a step toward Iris. “Never. I loved him. He was the love of my life. Even when he left me for Penelope, I didn’t stop loving him. It wasn’t his fault, it was hers. He didn’t want to be the way he was. He fought it, you know, fought against his nature, the way God made him. He used to cry sometimes when he came into my room at night and I’d tell him, ‘It’s okay, Daddy.’ Girls like Penelope and you tempted him, led him into sin. You were Bathshebas to his David, displaying yourselves, luring him away from God and me.”

Something in Esther’s voice prickled the hairs on Iris’s arms. She remembered the sensations of water and terror she’d felt when holding Penelope’s bracelet. “Penelope didn’t die in the landslide, did she?” Iris blurted.

“It was an accident.”

Iris didn’t ask what Esther meant. It was too much to process at once. Esther had been Pastor Matt’s first victim. Or maybe not. There was her own mother, after all. At any rate, he had molested his own daughter and when she’d grown too old for his sick tastes, he’d moved on to other girls in the Community. Esther had felt rejected and taken steps to secure her father’s attentions again. Iris breathed quickly, almost hyperventilating at the implications. She sucked in a bit of hay or husk of feed and began to cough hard.

While she was bent forward, Esther grabbed her arm. Her hands were large and the pudgy fingers had a core of steel. Iris tried to wrench away, but Esther pulled her in until their faces nearly touched.

“And you,” she breathed into Iris’s face. “You tried to take him away, too. What none of you ever understood is that he’s mine, that we share a sacred bond, a connection that is eternal. You were a wisp of fog in his life, a moment. Meaningless. I’m the one he loves.” Esther’s fingers tightened. She leaned into Iris and bore her back against the storage room wall, her bulk pinning her to the splintery slats, breast to breast, thigh to thigh. The intimacy of it was unnerving.

Iris fought down panic. Esther’s flesh enveloped her, made her feel as if she couldn’t breathe. It felt like all of Esther’s three hundred fifty pounds was compressing her rib cage, making it hard to draw in air. Esther was still talking, but Iris had quit listening, intent on getting away. She didn’t have enough leverage to get a knee up into the woman’s crotch. Esther’s hand still gripped Iris’s left arm and she fought to wiggle her right hand free. The boards protested and Iris thought she felt them shift.

“… they’ll all be glad you’re gone,” Esther was saying. “No one will look for you or wonder why you didn’t come back. Not even your own mother.” She maneuvered her hand up and began to wedge it toward Iris’s neck. Her eyes were hard, soul-less sapphires and she pressed her lips together so tightly they disappeared into the flesh surrounding them, making her look eerily like the sock puppet dolls Iris and her mother had made together when she was a child. Esther’s fingers groped for Iris’s neck as her torso mashed Iris to the wall. A rank scent rose from her, adrenaline and sweat and malice oozing from her pores.

Iris knew she only had one shot. As Esther’s fingers dug into her throat, she smashed her head forward into the other woman’s nose and threw herself back against the wall as hard as she could, using all the power of her legs to strain backward. Blood splattered from Esther’s broken nose. The woman bellowed with anger and pain, heaving herself forward to grind Iris against the wall. Esther’s hand tightened around her neck, and Iris’s vision began to dim at the edges, blood pounding in her head.

The wall shuddered. Just a little more … Iris sank down as much as she could, allowing her thighs to push harder.
Crr-rack!
The boards bent, then splintered under their combined weight. Iris felt a slight gap open between herself and Esther as she fell backward. She flung herself sideways, not wanting to cushion Esther’s fall or be trapped under her. A broken board gouged her thigh. She ignored the pain, wrapping her suddenly free arms around her head and ducking her chin toward her chest.

Iris hit the ground with a hard thud and lay winded for a moment. Dust and debris created a disorienting fog, but she could see the litter of torn and broken boards that had been the storage room wall and part of a pen. Hoofed feet sounded like far-off thunder as the alpacas surged inside their pens, panicked. The ones freed by the wall knocking over their enclosure trotted down the aisle and out the open door. Her left shoulder shrieked with the pain of torn muscles and blood dripped down her leg from where the board had gouged it. Her legs were trapped beneath Esther’s still form.

With her left arm all but useless, Iris scrabbled backward.
An anchor. Need something to hold onto.
Her fingers brushed cold metal. With a gasp of relief, she hooked her elbow around the water trough’s supports. The metal cutting into her arm, she hauled her body toward it. Bucking and pushing with her legs, she managed to drag them out from beneath Esther’s heavy body. She identified a strange, ragged sound as her own labored breathing, on the cusp of sobbing. Uncoiling her arm from the trough, she pushed to a kneeling position. Grabbing the trough’s edge, she began to pull herself up. A hand clamped around her ankle.