“We can talk better here now, can’t we, Judge?” Patrick sighed, leaning forward.
“Patrick, let her go. Please,” her uncle begged.
“Oh, we’re all gonna go, but first Fiona wants to know who her father is, that’s all.” He shrugged. “Simple enough, huh?”
Jaw clenched and grim, her uncle turned back.
“Tell her, you hypocrite, you fucking phony!” Patrick bellowed at the back of his unmoving head. “All right then, get out.” When her uncle had gotten out of the car, Patrick told him to remove one end of the chain from the post.
She watched him trudge through the swirling snow in his narrow English wing tips, his stiff white collar high above the black robe that was blowing around his knees. After the chain was lifted, he got back in and righted the car. He drove a little way past the posts, then got out, as Patrick directed, and rehung the chain across the road. Her uncle’s breath seemed labored as he climbed back into the car.
“Do you feel all right, Uncle Charles?” she asked as the car inched over the snow.
“Don’t call him that!” Patrick exploded with a slap on the back of her uncle’s head. The car stopped and Uncle Charles started to turn around. “Keep driving, you bastard! You fucking no-good, phony bastard!” Patrick screamed until the car began to move again. Patrick told him to follow the road up into the woods.
“Where are we going?” Fiona asked Patrick. Her teeth were chattering. She was afraid of what he might do if she spoke to her uncle again.
“Tell her,” Patrick said, grinning.
“We won’t get far,” her uncle warned, inching along the old logging road that from here on in was narrow and unpaved, and now with drifting snow, treacherous.
“We’ll just go as far as we can then. Hell, I mean, isn’t that what we’ve been doing all this time anyway?” he said.
“Why, Patrick?” Uncle Charles suddenly cried in a pained voice. “What good will it do?”
“A lot. Because I love Fiona, but, you see, we got this . . . complication. She thinks I’m her father. No matter what I say, she won’t believe me, so I want you to tell her the truth so we can be together, so we can go someplace and get away from here.”
Too ashamed to look at her uncle, she averted her eyes.
“I already told her,” Patrick continued. “But now you have to tell her. So go ahead, tell her! Tell her!” he said with a swipe at the back of her uncle’s head, a gesture almost infantile in its feebleness, but for the hatred twisting his scarred face.
He stopped the car and shifted into park. They were surrounded by whiteness. Tree branches sagged under the heavy wet snow. Her uncle looked back, glaring. “And then what, Patrick? What else?” he asked, his voice trembling with outrage and disdain.
This seemed to calm Patrick. He smiled and fell silent for a moment. “That’s all,” he finally answered. “That’s all I want.”
“And what happens to Fiona then?” her uncle asked.
“She’s coming with me. I’m going to take care of her.” She felt her insides sink as Patrick put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “So tell her. Tell her you’re not her uncle. That you’re her father. Tell her, Charlie. Come on. That’s all I want. That’s all you have to say.”
Afraid to cross Patrick and unable to look at her uncle, Fiona sat with her head bent.
“I’m not asking for any of the shitty details,” Patrick said. “All I want is—”
“Is that true, Fiona?” her uncle asked in that all-too-familiar tone of incredulity and disgust. “Do you love him?”
“Tell her!” Patrick demanded before she could answer. “Tell her! Tell her!”
“You forced her here, didn’t you? Just like you forced me. It’s not the truth we’re here for, is it? Because you don’t really want that, do you, Patrick? Think about it. How could you? How could you possibly? No. This is my punishment, isn’t it? To watch you hurt Fiona. To watch you defile her. Well it’s not going to happen. I won’t let you. Not her. Not here. No! You’ll have to kill me first!” He threw the car into reverse. He couldn’t turn, so he was trying to back down the way they’d come. Patrick roared at him to stop. The wheels spun and the car fishtailed, then slid sideways off the road down into the gully, coming to rest against a thicket of snow-bent branches. Uncle Charles continued to shift frantically from drive to reverse, trying to get traction, but the treadless tires only spun and spun and spun with a high, sickening whine.
“Get out!” Patrick said, clambering from the tilted car. He reached back for Fiona, her resistance futile as he dragged her out by her ankle and wrist. Coins jingled and rolled down her leg, making holes in the snow. “Now you!” he ordered her uncle, who followed quickly when he saw her outside.
Her teeth chattered as she hugged her bare arms against the snow. Patrick paced back and forth, his frantic demand that Hollis admit paternity sounding childish and hysterical here on this abandoned road in the middle of a snowstorm.
“Have you thought this through, Patrick? To its logical conclusion? To the end?” her uncle asked.
“Yes!” he said, suddenly embracing Fiona so tightly that she could only bow her head. “Of course I have. We both have.”
“No! No!” she cried, trying to push him away. She jammed her elbow into his side and ran to her uncle. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She tried to tell him that she had never wanted anything like this to happen. “I should have listened. I know that n—”
Patrick grabbed for her. Turning, she backhanded his face with such force that he staggered sideways and caught himself on the car. His face was so tight with rage and anguish as he came toward her that his eyes seemed to bulge out of his head.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed, terrified by his seething torment. “I’m not going with you. Do you hear me? I don’t want you near me. Don’t touch me! I hate you! I hate you!” she cried as he seized her arm.
“Get your hands off her!” her uncle demanded, pulling at him, and with that, Patrick swung and hit him in the belly. Her uncle doubled over, then sank to his knees, bracing himself with his hands in the snow.
“Bastard. No-good bastard,” Patrick muttered and kicked him in the side with a sickening thud, continuing to kick with each outburst. “She was just a kid, like me. That’s all she was. Just a kid and you fucked her. You had everything, you bastard. You had a wife and kids, but you didn’t care, did you, you bastard. You had to take away the one thing I had, the only girl I ever had. I loved her, and you ruined it! You ruined her! You ruined everything. You took away my whole life, you sniveling bastard, you . . .”
Her uncle gasped as he struggled to stand. He looked up and his eyes rolled. He needed help, but she couldn’t move, didn’t dare because everything had become blurred and distant. There is a sound snow makes as it falls through trees. Unnoticed, the sound is soft, barely a whisper, until it is listened to, and then one hears each flake after flake against every branch, needle, and leaf, and the falling whiteness becomes a rush that grows to such a steady, deafening roar that there is no boundary, no definition left between earth and sky.
“I loved her,” Patrick was shouting. “No matter what happened to me, I knew she was there waiting. And then when I came home, everything was different. I couldn’t believe it. She’d bleached her hair. She was gonna have a baby any minute. It tore me apart, but I went with her when she had it. He didn’t, the bastard, but I did! I did! Because I loved her!” he insisted, staring. “She was the only girl I ever loved. Until you.”
Helpless, Fiona shook her head. There was nothing to say. Not a word, not a single word existed for this moment, for such a revelation. The pulsing stillness pressed against her breastbone. What irresistible madness had brought them here? Whose sin? He kept saying her name. Fiona. Fiona. Fiona. She backed away.
“I’ll take care of you. I will. I swear, I always will,” he whispered. His icy hand gripped her arm.
No. No. No. No, she answered each lure, but he was a
lready leading her to the woods. He would show her. She would know. She would finally know. She would know everything.
“Don’t go, Fiona!” Charles Hollis pleaded, holding his side as he struggled to stand up. “Don’t go with him!”
His hobbled footsteps followed, scrambling to keep pace, crunching the crisp leaves under the new snow. The line of spindly pines on the high ridge signaled their destination. Her wet uniform stuck to her back. Staggering close behind, Hollis panted with exertion and pain. Here, the overgrown road steepened, narrowing to the width of a path. She followed Patrick as he climbed the ridge with so little effort that he was suddenly at the top waiting. Halfway up, her foot exposed a streak of ice and she slipped back down on all fours. Hollis made it to her side as she was getting up.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“Listen to me!” he gasped, holding his chest. “He’s crazy! He’s out of his mind!”
She nodded. “He killed Chester.”
“No. Oh my God, no,” he groaned, looking wildly around. “The quarry. You can’t go up there. Come on. Run. We can get back down . . .”
“He’ll just come after us,” she said, amazed he would think they could get away.
“I’m waiting! Get up here!” Patrick bellowed, starting toward them. “Don’t make me come all the way back down there!”
“If we hurry . . . ,” Hollis started to say as she began the slippery ascent again, grabbing branches and saplings to hoist herself along. Patrick stopped, waiting until she reached him. She followed him to the ridge, then a hundred yards farther until they were looking down into the quarry, its black stillness barely marred by the pelting snow. This was the highest point, the drop from here at least sixty feet. The sheer granite walls below had only a few jagged ledges wide enough for any accumulation of snow.
“She’s down there,” Patrick said so calmly she merely glanced at him.
Hollis’s panting grunts grew louder as he approached them.
“In her car,” Patrick continued. “In the trunk. I put her in the trunk, after. I didn’t know what else to do.” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t the baby. That wasn’t it. She was supposed to put it up for adoption. They wanted her to, him and Arlene, but then she changed her mind. She wouldn’t. She refused, and they were so mad. ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘let’s get married then.’ I told her it was all right. I could handle it. I’d take care of her. But she said no, she couldn’t. She said they’d given her money to go away. They wanted her to move someplace else so people wouldn’t know she’d had her sister’s husband’s baby. Ten thousand dollars. It’s all down there with her in a blue shoebox. She brought it in to show me. I begged her not to go. She had to, she said. She got up and said she was going to go pick up the baby. I told her I’d go with her then. It didn’t matter to me as long as we were together. She started to cry and she kept saying no, I couldn’t, and I kept telling her yes, yes, yes, I could. ‘I have to,’ I said. And then she said she didn’t love me anymore. She said it was him she loved. Her brother-in-law. Her own sister’s husband. That’s why she couldn’t stay, and that’s why she couldn’t give her baby away, and that’s why she had to be honest and tell me she didn’t love me.
“‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I love you,’ I kept trying to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. That’s all I wanted, for her to listen, but she kept trying to get away. My hands were on her neck, and then she was dead. So I put her in the car and drove it up here and pushed it over. It went down fast. And then it was over. Everything. The whole rest of my life. It was just over.”
Fiona was backing away, but he hadn’t yet noticed.
“Fiona,” Hollis said.
“She’s down there,” she told him numbly. She pointed to the quarry, but he looked only at her. “She’s in the trunk of her car,” she said.
He stared, blank-faced and unmoving, his shock and loss, she realized, surely greater than hers, for having known Natalie. And, if it was true, for having loved her. All color had drained from his cheeks, paling his flesh to the whiteness of his hair, of the snow that fell heavier now, and faster, coming at them slantwise, almost horizontal with the gusting wind. He was trembling, his beautiful blue eyes now dulled to gray, like clouding ice. “I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so sorry.”
She nodded.
“So what do we do now?” Patrick said, facing them, arms folded, his back to the quarry.
“Let’s go back down,” she said.
“I’m talking to you, Judge!” Patrick said sharply. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Hollis said wearily as he continued to shake his head.
He is. He’s in shock, she thought, watching the realization of Natalie’s death overtake and empty him.
“Well, we can’t keep pretending, can we? Can we?” Patrick shouted, his voice breaking when he got no answer.
Hollis shook his head.
“You should’ve let me tell them when I wanted to. But then I’d’ve never gotten to know Fiona.” Patrick looked at her. “I even thought about trying to be who you wanted, but then I’d see you and it’d be her all over again. You sound just like her. You got that same scratchy kind of laugh. You even walk like her.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand while Hollis looked on. “I love you.” He held her chin, forcing her to look at him. His eyes closed as he kissed her.
Even holding her breath, she could smell Chester’s blood. It seemed to come from his mouth.
“Hold me,” he whispered and put his arms around her. “Please hold me. Just for a minute. Please, Fiona. Fiona,” he pleaded as she stood rigidly against him. Then, remembering the gun, she raised her hand to the small of his back and drew it slowly across his waist. If there had been a gun it wasn’t there now. She pulled away.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “Here.” He took off his flannel shirt and slipped it over her shoulders.
Chester’s blood was damp on her breast. “We better go back down now,” she said, expecting him to lunge at her.
He nodded.
“Are you coming?” She was afraid to turn her back on him.
He didn’t answer.
“The snow’s getting really bad. You can’t stay up here.” She stepped away.
He turned and walked to the rim of the quarry, standing so close the toes of his boots stuck over the edge.
“Patrick,” she said, so afraid of startling him she could barely utter the words. “Please. Don’t. Don’t do that. We’ll help you. My . . . the Judge and I, we will, we’ll help you.” She looked entreatingly at Hollis. “Tell him. Tell him you’ll help him. Please!” she begged as Patrick’s body curled, tensing forward so that he almost seemed to be teetering. “Say something!” she begged, shaking Hollis’s arm. “Please! Please!” She shook her head in disbelief. “What’s wrong with you? How can you just stand there?”
Patrick turned then with dazzling wet eyes. He almost seemed to be smiling. “Tell her. Tell her, Charlie. Tell her what you told me. Because it’s the same thing, isn’t it?” He looked at Fiona now. “She was down there two years and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going out of my mind, so I went to his office and told him they could stop looking for her. I told him everything, where she was and what I did. I said how I couldn’t live with it anymore, knowing what I did, knowing she was down there. ‘I don’t care what happens,’ I said, ‘I just gotta get it all straight.’ And he said, ‘But now, Patrick, what’s the point?’ That’s what you said, right, Charlie? That’s it exactly, right? ‘What’s the point of going to the cops?’ you said. ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ you said. ‘Nothing’ll be different. Natalie’ll still be dead. It’ll just ruin everything for everybody.’ That’s what you said, right?”
“I said I’d help you, and I tried,” Hollis said quietly.
“But you didn’t try hard enough,
Charlie!” he bellowed, pointing down at him. “And now look. Everything’s ruined! Every fucking thing for everybody! And it’s all your fault! Not mine! You’re the one! It started with you!”
“What do you want, Patrick? Tell me what you want.”
As Fiona backed away, each step brought her closer to the terrible reality of his deed. All those years. He had known all those years. Day after day, keeping at arm’s length not the troublesome bastard niece but the vile product of his deadly sin. He had denied her not only parents, but sisters and a brother as well.
“I want you to keep trying to help me, Charlie. C’mere. C’mere and help me some more. Come on,” Patrick urged with sad quizzical wonder as if, even now, he were marveling at the breadth of his own impotence when measured against a stronger man’s desperate frailty. “Help me! Help me! Help me!” he cried.
She turned and ran down the snowy hill. The same anchoring saplings and branches now stung her face and arms as she thrashed past them. “My God, my God, my God,” she was panting when she got to the car, snow-covered and tipped into the culvert. Arms folded, she stood waiting. A few minutes passed—days, weeks, years—before a dark figure emerged from the curtain of snow, making his way down the hill.
“Fiona, it’s all right,” he gasped, hand at his chest. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Where’s Patrick?” She looked past him. “Is he coming? He is, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”
“Fiona, listen to me. There was no stopping him. I tried, but he was out of his mind. He just kept raving. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“What happened?”
“I tried to stop him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He jumped.”
“You pushed him, didn’t you? He wanted you to, and you did, didn’t you?”
“No!”
“You’re such a liar. He said you knew. All this time you knew she was down there.”
“Fiona, listen—”
“All those years, and you never said anything.”
Fiona Range Page 46
