All the bright summer colors—bold violet, tangerine, daffodil yellow—under the glare of the fluorescent lights were making her dizzy. Her eyes hurt. One side of her head had begun to throb. She thought she might be getting a migraine.
“I’m going to try it on,” Devin said and headed for the dressing room. She didn’t even like the sweater and knew she wasn’t going to buy it. But for some reason she needed to get away from the harsh lights and all those customers who were digging through the neatly stacked piles of new tank tops and tees. She needed someplace to be alone, someplace to think.
Inside the dressing room she tossed the sweater on the bench and stared down at it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely take a breath, as if she’d been running nonstop for miles. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, eyes wide, her skin so pale and taut with tension that fine blue veins had appeared above her brow. Her mass of red hair was still tangled from the icy wind outside. She didn’t know this girl at all, this stranger, this crazy person, staring back at her.
Until the day before, she had been able to hold on to some thin thread of hope, the belief that somehow they would all get through this unscathed, that Kyle would never let them get caught and Simon would never be so stupid as to leave evidence behind, especially on his computer. People committed crimes all the time and never got caught. Why should she and the others be any different?
Suddenly she found herself wishing Simon were there. She missed him and that surprised her. If he’d been there, he would have put his arm around her shoulders and reassured her with that funny half-cocked smile of his. He would have given the ends of her hair a light tug. He’d have said, “McCafferty, you’re getting all uptight over nothing.”
Am I? she wondered.
Devin took several deep breaths and tried to calm down. The night before at the hospital, when she and Kyle had sneaked into Simon’s room, it had been all she could do not to scream out loud when she saw him lying there, so exposed and vulnerable.
She and Kyle had waited for almost a half hour to find an unobtrusive way to enter the intensive care unit. They had discovered that the only way in was to press a large circular plate outside the heavy metal double doors leading into the unit. A large sign was posted on one of the doors: Immediate Family Only. After they’d watched one of the doctors press the plate and heard the clatter of the doors opening, they knew the noise would draw attention to anyone who tried to enter.
Finally, they had followed a man and woman into the ICU who were obviously there to visit someone. As soon as the doors thumped open, Devin and Kyle did a quick survey of the large room, a surprisingly cheerful place with pale mauve walls and a flowered border that ran along the top, right below the ceiling. On the left were rooms, only one of which had the curtain drawn across the glass wall. The others appeared to be unoccupied.
The first station, presumably for the administrative assistants, was empty. The second, farther back in the room, appeared to be the nurses’ station. Only two nurses were on duty, and they were busy talking with the man and woman who had just entered the room.
Kyle nudged Devin and tipped his head toward the second room on the left, the one with the partially pulled curtain. He slid the glass door to the side and the two of them slipped into the room.
Devin was glad Simon’s room wasn’t on the other side of the nurses’ station. They would have never been able to pull this off.
With the curtain closed over the single window and the curtain pulled across most of the glass wall, dimming the glare of the fluorescent lights from the main room, Devin could barely make out the form on the bed. Simon’s face was bruised and swollen. He looked so different that at first Devin thought they had the wrong room. The person lying in the bed barely resembled the boy who had become such an indispensable cog in their crooked wheel. She grabbed the cold metal side rail and held on so tightly both hands turned waxy white.
If the nurse hadn’t shown up at that moment and ushered them back through the double doors, Devin might have bolted right out of the room on her own. The sight of Simon was far worse than she had imagined.
But there had been a single moment, while Kyle attempted to charm the nurse into letting them stay, when Devin had managed to unglue her hand from the metal bar and rest it on Simon’s. “Simon,” she whispered. “I miss you.” And then she and Kyle were brusquely escorted back to the waiting room.
Kyle stood in the middle of the cramped room, his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants, staring at the hospital’s mission statement posted on the wall, looking thoughtful. Devin, not realizing he wasn’t behind her, was already halfway down the hall, heading for the front lobby before she noticed. And she would have kept on going, Kyle or no Kyle, if she hadn’t made a wrong turn, ending up in another ward. As she stood in the hall, trying to get her bearings, images of Simon lying in that hospital bed came crashing down on her. He was going to die. Anyone could see that. No one who looked that bad could be expected to survive.
This was all their fault, hers and Kyle’s and Danny’s. They should never have dragged him into “the project.” He didn’t have Walter Tate’s devious nature.
Another, more disturbing thought came to her. What if Simon had been so upset about the possibility of an investigation, terrified of what would happen to his reputation, that he had run into the Hanging Tree on purpose? That was when Devin began to sob uncontrollably. She could not stop shaking. Simon was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.
Kyle rounded the corner just as a concerned nurse came running from behind her station. Kyle put his arm around Devin and steered her away from the oncoming woman.
“Jeez, Dev. What the hell is wrong with you?” he said, keeping his voice low.
“Simon,” she told him between sobs. “He’s going to die, isn’t he?”
“He’s not going to die, okay? Get a grip, for god’s sake.”
As soon as they reached the lobby Kyle said, “Nothing like making a scene so they’ll be sure to remember us here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He fumbled in his pocket for his car keys as they stepped through the automatic sliding doors leading outside. “It’s not what I’d call keeping a low profile.”
Devin was too exhausted and shaken from seeing Simon to argue with Kyle. Still, she wondered, as she often found herself doing these days, what she had ever seen in Kyle. Sometimes she marveled that they had been together for almost four years.
Someone was tapping lightly on the louvered door to the dressing room. Liz’s voice floated into the cramped space.
“Devin? Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“You’ve been in there twenty minutes. How long does it take to try on one sweater?”
Devin drew a long breath. “I can’t decide whether to buy it or not.”
“So put it back on the table. We can come back later if you still want it.”
Before she realized what was happening, Devin was sliding down the wall of the dressing room. She landed on her backside, knees up against her chest. She couldn’t seem to get up.
“Can I come in?” Liz asked. Her voice sounded cautious. It was obvious she knew something was wrong. When Devin didn’t respond, Liz tried the doorknob but found the door locked. Below was an open space of about one foot. She peeked under the door, then got down on her hands and knees and scooted underneath. She leaned against the wall across from Devin, her back against the mirror. “So, what? Do you want to go home?”
Home. Devin closed her eyes. All these years she had been looking forward to the moment when she could leave the crowded Cape Cod house on Meadowlark Drive, when she would share a room with only one other person, not two, when she wouldn’t have to elbow out eight other people plus her grandparents for a fried chicken breast. And now it seemed that in ways she had never expected, she had already left. The Devin who walked through the back door that night would not be the same girl who’
d left the house late that morning, would never be the same girl. It was almost, she thought, as if everything that had come before had suddenly been canceled out. This was what was left, this panicked pale face in the mirror, a face she couldn’t even bring herself to look at.
Liz leaned forward. Gently she placed a warm reassuring hand on Devin’s. “Come on. We’ll leave, okay? The bus should be outside in about ten minutes.”
But Devin had begun to cry. Tears snaked streaks of mascara down her cheeks. And there was nothing Liz could do but wait.
Liz sat cross-legged on her unmade bed surrounded by note cards and library books. Her smoky-gray cat, Pandora, was curled in her lap, warming herself in the late-afternoon sun that spread over Liz’s legs and the bunched-up comforter. Liz stroked the cat. She bent over and rubbed the tip of her nose in Pandora’s fur. The last thing she felt like doing was working on her history paper. Whatever had possessed her to write about Jessup Wildemere, for Pete’s sake? Whatever made her think she could find some undiscovered bit of information from some remote event that had happened more than two hundred years earlier? All she had to go on were the same stories her parents and grandparents and those before them had grown up with—stories told around campfires late at night, or at Halloween parties where the only light came from candles burning inside hollow pumpkins.
Everyone in Bellehaven knew how Jessup Wildemere, a scraggly, unsavory drifter, had stabbed Cornelius Dobbler so many times the blood had seeped through the crevices in the floorboards and stained the ceiling below, and how he’d been caught the very same night by some of the townsmen.
The hanging had taken place during the snow-blistering winter of 1798, back when the town was still called Havenhill, back when food was scarce and the townsfolk couldn’t see sharing what little they had with some murderer locked up in the jail for what could be months before a judge ever came through and tried the case, if at all. So they took matters into their own hands, had a brisk, tidy trial in the local tavern with a preacher presiding over the proceedings, found Jessup Wildemere guilty as sin, and hanged him the next morning before the sun was up and before they’d have to feed him breakfast.
Jessup Wildemere was the only person ever to be executed in the entire county. And it wasn’t even legal.
Campfire ghost stories aside, Liz had begun to wonder if she would ever find any records of the case. No one seemed to know why Jessup had killed Cornelius Dobbler, although there was much speculation. Some claimed he had been drunk, others said it had to do with an argument, still others suggested he was flat-out insane. Pure and simple.
Liz had spent hours in the archives of the library and at the local historical society. So far she had turned up very little. Not only was the lack of historical evidence discouraging, but she had more or less lost her enthusiasm for the project when she’d learned of Simon’s accident. She could no longer think of the Hanging Tree—as everyone at school called it—without thinking of Simon.
The whole project, just the thought of anything to do with the Hanging Tree, seemed even more impossible since Devin had told her earlier that day how bad Simon had looked in the hospital. Devin’s words had been nowhere near as revealing as the expression on her face, a look that clearly said she feared for Simon’s life.
Liz squeezed her eyes closed and tried to picture Simon as he was the summer when they were both thirteen and racing each other to the floating dock in the middle of Silver Lake—the summer she fell in love with him. She had been pulling ahead of him, digging hard at the water, determined to beat him, when she felt a hand on her ankle. It was Simon. With one swift yank, he dove beneath the water and pulled her with him. Liz had grabbed his hair, kicked her feet, and flailed her arms, trying to get to the surface.
Both of them had shot through the water at the same time. Waterfalls streamed from Simon’s joyous face as his mouth burst open in surprise laughter. His arms circled her waist as he lifted her into the air. And when he lowered her into the water, their faces were barely a breath apart. She would have kissed him right then and there, if he hadn’t suddenly pushed off in the direction of the dock, never once looking back. If he had, he would have realized that Liz, who remained exactly where he’d left her, stunned and treading water, had forgotten all about the race.
Carefully, Liz slid Pandora from her lap and went to the window, using her foot to plow a path between clothes, books, and food-crusted plates along the way. The sun had dipped behind the house across the street, leaving soft purple shadows on the snow. If she opened the window and leaned out far enough, she could catch a glimpse of a few of the top branches of the Hanging Tree, a block and a half away. Even though the tree was on the same road as the high school, Liz had managed to avoid it by crossing to the other side of the street, going around the block to Greenwood Avenue, and then heading down to Edgewood. Now she wondered how she was ever going to write a paper on Jessup Wildemere if she couldn’t even bring herself to walk by the tree where he was hanged.
Liz glanced over at Pandora, who slid to the edge of the bed on her belly, slowly stretched out both front legs, and dropped gracefully to the floor. The cat sidled up to her and threaded herself in and around Liz’s legs.
“You’re right,” she said to the cat, as if Pandora had spoken. “I can’t spend the rest of my life avoiding that stupid tree.” She reached over, snapped up her jacket from the back of her desk chair, and headed downstairs.
Fortunately, despite the mounds of snow hiding the curb, the sidewalks were clear. It hadn’t occurred to her to put on boots.
As she neared the end of Willowbrook Road, her heart began to thump uncontrollably. On the corner was the Gulf station and across the street from it, the Liberty Tree. The icy wind whipped the branches of the old oak into a frenzy and brought tears to Liz’s eyes. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head.
For a while, she stood on the corner and stared over at the tree. She wondered how it was going to survive with such a huge gash cut into it, a gash made by Simon’s Honda. The wound had been covered with pitch. But Liz had her doubts.
She stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and crossed the street, coming to stand only a few feet from the snow piled by the curb. The bronze plaque, she saw, lay bent and semiburied in the snow. Maybe a snowplow had hit it, but she doubted it. The people who drove the plows knew to keep their distance from the tree. More than likely it was Simon’s car that had damaged the plaque.
Liz shifted her gaze from the plaque to the branches above her head, branches, like most trees in Bellehaven these days, laden with crows. She wondered which branch had supported Jessup Wildemere’s body. But most of all, she wondered how she was ever going to get to the truth of what had happened in this place. Both times.
Simon was walking down the hospital corridor next to Courtney. He could hardly believe it. A few minutes before—or maybe hours or days, he could never be sure—he’d thought he heard her voice. It had floated down to him, echoed off stone walls, as if he lay at the bottom of a well. He tried to answer, as he lay there in the cold dark, tried to see some light, some indication of how far down in the well he might be, tried to gauge how long it might take before someone found him.
And now here he was, walking beside his sister, wondering how she’d managed to pull him out of the well and whether she’d come to take him home. Except, like everyone else in the hospital, she didn’t seem aware he was there. Simon opened his mouth to ask her what had happened to him, to ask why he was in this place, but no words came out.
Before he could decide what to do to get her attention, he felt the clammy gray chill. Fully expecting to be pulled back into his body, he wasn’t prepared to find himself outside, standing beneath the Liberty Tree. Worse yet, he was still in his flimsy hospital gown. Instinctively he reached behind him to make sure the ties were knotted securely. The snow covered his ankles, yet he felt no icy sting on his legs or bare feet.
The base of the bronze plaque had been bent all the way to t
he ground, and the plaque itself was half hidden beneath the snow, as if someone had plowed right into it. The sun had already dropped behind the trees, but Simon could still make out a gash the size of a huge beach ball. The wound had jagged edges, as if a T. rex had taken a bite out of the lower part of the ancient oak. Someone had painted thick globs of tar over it.
Chills rippled along his spine. The sight of the gash disturbed him, although he didn’t know why. Nor did he know why he had come to this place. One minute he’d thought he was on his way home with Courtney, and the next …
For the first time since he’d appeared in this place, Simon noticed a young man, his body hunched forward, sitting on the Neidermeyers’ split-rail fence on the other side of the sidewalk. The man studied him with curiosity. Behind him, the evening sky had begun to turn a midnight blue. Simon realized the man actually saw him. The only other person to see him had been Stanley Isaacson. Simon grabbed the back of his gown, held it tightly closed. But if the man noticed anything odd about the way Simon was dressed, he didn’t let on.
Simon, however, was acutely aware of the man’s clothes. They were like nothing he’d ever seen, except perhaps in history books—black breeches, knitted stockings, worn dusty black shoes with large buckles, an off-white shirt, and a tan vest. On this unusually bitter cold day the man wasn’t even wearing a coat. His long dark hair was pulled back and tied at the base of his neck with a black ribbon. On his head he wore a tricornered hat.
Shades of Simon Gray Page 8
