Turtle Moon (14 page)

"You got yourself into a mess, all right. But I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm not going to turn you in."

The boy cups his cigarette in his palm and narrows his eyes. Julian notices that his right hand is on the door handle. He'd be fast if he decided to run.

"Anybody ever tell you how stupid you are?"

Julian asks. "Anybody ever tell you that everything you've done so far has made you look guilty of just about anything, including murder?"

He can see the boy's fingers tighten on the door handle. "You can run now," Julian tells the boy.

"But whoever did kill that neighbor of yours might just catch you and slit your throat. One thing you can be sure of-I'm not about to kill you.

The boy lets go of the door handle and wraps his arms around himself so he's all hunched up.

"Okay." Julian nods. "You made a good decision right there. Now just put out that cigarette before you burn a hole in my upholstery, and follow me into the house."

The boy is shivering, but his mouth is set in a fierce line. Julian can't help but remember exactly how much he had to prove at that age.

He used to climb out his bedroom window and meet his cousin where the willow trees stood until last week. They could easily find their way along the road without a flashiight, even on nights when there was no moon.

The boy has reached through the wire meshing, into the back, so that Arrow can sniff his fingers.

"Want to leave that dog of mine alone?" Julian says as he swings his door open. "He's vicious."

After going around to the passenger side, Julian opens the door and waits. The boy looks up at him, then gets out. His hair sticks up on one side, from sleeping all folded up against the door.

"Just watch out for coral snakes," Julian says, in case the boy gets it into his head to take off.

The boy is shivering so badly that his teeth hit against each other, and Julian wonders if he should have offered him his own shirt. As they near the house, Julian realizes just how run-down the place has become; the porch is sagging and the roof is covered with leaves. Miss Giles stands at the screen door, holding her robe closed. In the dark, with the wind coming up, Julian figures this could easily look like a place where they popped you in the oven, then ate off your fingers and toes.

"Don't tell me you're scared?" Julian says softly when the boy hesitates.

The boy gives him a look of pure hatred, then continues up the steps.

Julian knows that when he was twelve he didn't want anyone too close to him, so he makes certain to walk a pace behind.

At the top of the steps, he reaches past the boy and pushes open the screen door, and when he sees that Miss Giles is holding her long-handled axe, Julian has to bite his lip to stop from laughing out loud. It's a test. If they can't trust the boy, they might as well find out right now. The boy looks terrified of Miss Giles, who greets him in her robe and the fuzzy slippers she always refers to as mules.

"If I'm going to make you hot chocolate, then I need some wood,"

Lillian Giles says. She holds out the axe and the boy stares at her; Julian can see the lump in his throat. "Right out by the back door,"

Lillian says.

The boy takes the axe, but then he sees the stuffed bunny, so badly stained with chocolate and dirt, and it becomes clear to him that he's not going anywhere without the baby. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

"He doesn't talk?" Lillian asks Julian.

"He's having a problem with his throat," Julian says. I don't know, maybe he's got strep."

The boy keeps on staring at the bunny, running his fingertips along the smooth handle of the axe.

He looks as if he's been swimming in mud; when he turns his head, little clouds of gnats fly out.

"I'll let your mother know you're all right," Julian tells him. "All you have to do is chop some wood and keep your mouth shut, which shouldn't be too hard for you to do."

But the boy still refuses to move, and that's why Miss Giles leads him to the spare bedroom. She waits in the hall till the boy gets up enough nerve to follow her; then she opens the door so he can see the baby in her crib, filthy and safe, sucking on her thumb.

"Now you go out by the back door," she tells the boy. Bossing around runaways who carry sharp axes has never bothered her in the least. The boy has no choice; since he's not about to run and leave the baby behind, he does exactly as he's told. The dog in the car is watching him as he walks to the woodpile. Arrow makes a soft whining sound that makes the boy shiver even more.

Shirtless and cold in the moonlight, he's afraid of coral snakes and death and his own loneliness, but he starts to chop wood anyway.

They can hear him in the kitchen, where Miss Giles heats up a pan of milk. She hasn't had a wood-burning cookstove for years, not since one of her foster children grew up to manage an appliance store in Hartford Beach, but sometimes chopping wood is what's needed anyhow.

"You're exhausted," she tells Julian as he lights a cigarette off the back burner of the stove. "You're getting that froggy look around your eyes."

Julian grins and heads for the living room, but he stops and turns back in the doorway. "You're sure I can leave you with that?" he asks, nodding toward the back door.

"Baby, you can leave me with ten more just like him," Lillian Giles says.

If Julian weren't who he is, he would put his arms around her. He always loved to watch Miss Giles make hot chocolate; she used a big wooden spoon and round motions that made it appear she was using all her strength.

"You've got diapers and all that?" he says, hesitating.

"I've got everything," Miss Giles assures him.

"Scat."

Julian walks out to his car just as the quarter moon appears in the sky. He gets in behind the wheel and works the wipers once, just to get some of the mosquitoes off the windshield. In the back, Arrow stretches out and groans, then licks at the torn pads of his paws. As Julian hears the boy chopping wood, he remembers that all you needed was three strokes to split a log. But to get a pile big enough to suit Miss Giles took a lot of energy. By the time that boy was done, his shoulders and arms would ache, his palms would be bloody and raw, and he'd be just about tired enough to crawl into bed and sleep the whole night through.

part five.

LUCY is asleep on the couch when he phones her. It's only natural that she thinks at first that it's Evan, who's been calling her constantly.

As soon as she does recognize Julian's voice, she sits up straight, completely awake. He tells her that her son is safe, but that isn't enough. Even after he explains how isolated Miss Giles's place is, after he gives in and tells Lucy exactly where the house is, she isn't satisfied. She needs to know how long she has before Julian turns Keith over to the police for questioning. It's late, but Lucy quickly gets dressed. She chooses her clothes carefully: a short black skirt, a silk blouse, high heels. When you are going to beg you must never look like a beggar. That's common sense. You need to look like you deserve what you're asking for, and in Lucy's case all she wants is time.

She drives toward the marshes, but in the dark everything looks different; she's not certain she'll recognize his driveway until it's right in front of her. She parks out on the road, near the sweet bay, which leaves its scent on her clothes, then walks down Julian's driveway. As she finds her way in the dark, she rehearses what she will say to him. She'll say Please and Thank you and if you had a son, you would know. But mercy is more difficult to ask for than to grant, and when she nears the house, she hesitates. She doesn't notice the toad that scrambles across her path.

When she stumbles, the dust rises around her in a cloud and the dog in the kennel begins to bark.

It's an awful, bellowing sound, as if the dog had been wounded.

Is it possible that Julian Cash waits for prowlers? He's wearing jeans and has already stepped into his boots when he comes out to the porch.

He's holding tight to the female shepherd's collar, so she can't break away. When he sees Lucy, there in the dark, almost at his front door, she looks like something he dreamed, as though she belonged to him.

Julian quiets Loretta and has her sit. There are white moths trying to get inside his open front door, and his porch is lined with rotten boards. Julian can't look away from Lucy; he's hypnotized by the way she opens and closes her hands when she speaks, as if she were using sign language. Behind her, the black sky shimmers with living things, mosquitoes and night beetles and moths.

"I want to make a deal with you," Lucy is saying.

Julian signals for Lucy to follow him. Maybe he didn't hear her, maybe that's why he's leading her into his house and maybe that's why she's going. Loretta goes directly to her place beside the door. It's a small house, basically one room, with a couch and an unmade bed and a braided rug, which is dusty no matter how many times it's hung over the porch railing and beaten with a broom. In the kitchen there are the shadows of everyday things: a toaster, a plastic dish rack, a blue tin pot used for boiling water. Right in the center of the ceiling there's a circular fluorescent light, but when Lucy reaches up to pull the string, Julian stops her. He doesn't want her to see him.

He doesn't want her to know how hot he is in this tiny kitchen where the windows don't budge unless you hit the frames with a can opener.

The white moths smack their wings against the small panes of glass as Julian sits down on a wooden chair. He takes out a cigarette, and when he strikes a match there's a sudden flare of yellow light. Quickly Julian shakes out the match without bothering to light his cigarette.

"I could make coffee," he offers.

If you drank hot coffee in this kitchen you might faint from the heat.

You might lose all your willpower.

"No," Lucy says. "Thanks."

"Good, because I make terrible coffee. All I have is Cremora," Julian says. He knows he sounds like a complete idiot.

"I don't want you to tell anyone where the children are," Lucy says.

"Just for a few days," she adds after he looks at her. "Until I can find out who Karen Wright was and why someone would want to kill her."

He doesn't argue with her the way she expected he would; he doesn't ask why she thinks she has a better chance at the truth than the Verity police or Paul Salley. He just keeps looking at her. He's not going to stop.

"I don't want Keith to look like he's guilty," Lucy admits.

"He does," Julian says. "Look it." He places his unlit cigarette on the table and studies it. "And what do I get out of this?"

"You get the identity of the dead woman and maybe the person who murdered her."

Julian should reach for the phone and call Walt Hannen right now. When he looks up, he sees that one white moth has managed to find a crack in the glass; it sweeps in from the night air, wings beating.

"I don't think that's what I want," Julian says.

In the doorway to the kitchen, Lucy can feel him wanting her. If it weren't so dark, she'd be able to see that the mark across his forehead has turned scarlet.

"You should tell me to go home," Lucy says from the doorway.

"Go home," Julian says, and he means it.

But in this place, in the middle of the night, they are light-years away from reason. Julian would never make the first move. He knows if it were day she would run, and who could blame her?

He doesn't have to look in a mirror to know who he is. As a boy, he was frightened not of ghosts and spiders but of his own reflection.

Drawn by his desire, Lucy steps through the kitchen doorway, and once she's done that it's impossible to go backward. Julian reaches for her hand, and when he pulls her onto his lap, he knows he'll never be able to stop himself.

Lucy can feel his hands under her blouse. She can feel his heart beating. It's so hot in the kitchen it's unbearable, hotter still when he kisses her throat. It is possible, in heat like this, to find yourself dissolving. When he takes her face in his hands and kisses her on the mouth he wills her to close her eyes, and she does. This is what they call May madness, when you do things you never expected or even imagined yourself capable of. It comes upon you suddenly, and it doesn't let go.

Lucy feels his shoulders, his back, the ladder of ribs that hides his heart. Her skirt rides up, past her thighs, as she moves to wrap her legs around him. That's when he stops kissing her, abruptly, leaving her gasping. He wills her to open her eyes; he gives her one more chance to really look at him, and to flee.

Right then, Lucy decides to forgo daylight and perfection, simple thoughts and reason. She lifts her mouth to his ear and whispers that she wants him, and he takes her to his bed, where the sheets are blue and unironed. He pulls off her skirt and her underpants, he can't do it fast enough; he lifts her on top of him, cross-stitching himself onto her skin. The noises he makes sound as if he is in pain, and when he moves inside of her he has his fingers laced through hers.

Lucy kisses him on the mouth certain she's under a spell. For this one night she's crazy, crazy to be in his bed, where he keeps her until it's no longer possible to tell what part of the heat is outside and what part is made up of their own flesh and bones. By the time the stars have begun to fade, the sheets are soaked and the heat has risen into an arc just below the ceiling. Never in his life would Julian have believed he could have fallen asleep with someone in his bed.

Still, it comes as no surprise to him that when he wakes up, he's alone. It makes perfect sense that he would be awakened by the barking of dogs and the sound of a woman running down his driveway in the pale first light of morning.

No child has driven Lillian Giles crazy, not yet.

She pities parents, it's such a thankless job and so many of them mess up so badly. She probably would have done the same with her own, would have scolded too often or not often enough; she might have whacked her truant boy with a hickory stick or sent her fresh-mouthed girl to bed without supper. As it is, she's more patient than the spider who's been living in her rafters for years. She's convinced she's so good with children because of Julian. Once you bring a child back from the dead, nothing he does can distress you. After that, everyone else seems easy.