House of Reckoning

by John Saul

  “Come on,” she heard Tiffany calling, “keep up.”

  But the dread that flooded over her was so dark that she felt like even the wrath of Mitch Garvey might be preferable to being drawn through the doors of that church.

  “Sarah?” Mitch said, his voice sharp and his eyes boring into her so deeply she was afraid he might have heard her thought.

  She put her head down and kept going, but the closer she drew to the church, the colder she felt.

  And now she felt eyes watching her.

  Evaluating her.

  Condemning her.

  She wanted to turn away and run, wanted to find someplace—anyplace—that would shelter her from the strange cold that was invading her.

  But there was no place.

  Besides, she told herself, you’ve survived worse. It’s only a church and there’s nothing to be afraid of.

  The pastor, wearing a long white robe and a black stole embroidered in silver, stood on the front step, nodding to each of his parishioners as they streamed through the door.

  Sarah’s palms went clammy as she waited, shivering, behind Zach and Tiffany on the step while Angie Garvey leaned in to the pastor’s ear for a private word.

  The pastor’s eyes fixed on Sarah as Angie whispered, then he nodded, and one by one the Garvey family filed into the church. Mitch introduced her to Reverend Keener, but Sarah tried to evade both his gaze and the touch of his proffered hand until Mitch squeezed her elbow hard enough to hurt as the pastor’s cold fingers closed on hers.

  She peered up at the minister’s thin, deeply lined face, and his ice-cold eyes pierced into her as if he were looking into her soul.

  Looking into it, and hating what he saw.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  She drew her hand back and slipped it into her pocket, even though she had a feeling it would never be warm again. Then, as Mitch steered her to the doorway, Sarah balked. “I … I don’t feel well,” she said.

  “Come on,” Tiffany said, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the small anteroom and into the sanctuary.

  Light seeped in through two tall and narrow stained-glass windows that flanked the altar, their leaded panes casting a tangle of shadows onto a thin metal cross suspended over the altar.

  Hanging on that cross was a skeletal Christ, his mouth sagging open in a perpetual moan of helpless agony.

  Sarah shivered and lowered her eyes.

  A low and throbbing chord of organ music rolled out of unseen speakers, and then the choir, clad in black robes, appeared through a side door and took their places, sitting silently as Sarah followed the Garveys to their pew. She recognized some of the faces in the choir, which seemed mostly made up of the girls who sat with Tiffany in the cafeteria.

  Now, as they had in school, they all turned their heads to stare at her.

  Sarah took a deep breath, decided to ignore them, and glanced around to see if maybe Nick was here.

  The church was filled, but Nick was nowhere to be seen.

  But everywhere she looked, everyone seemed to be looking back at her.

  And whispering to each other, their eyes remaining fixed on her.

  She recognized some of her teachers, and the gym coach, and even the woman she’d seen in the car coming down Bettina Philips’s driveway.

  That woman was sitting next to Conner West, one of Zach’s friends.

  And they all knew who she was—the newcomer—and wanted to see her for themselves.

  Some of them smiled at her, but their smiles felt cold, and even as they smiled, they kept on whispering.

  Where is she from?

  Who is she?

  She’s the Garveys’ foster child.

  Her father is a murderer.

  Her father tried to kill her, too.

  She stays after school in Bettina Philips’s room.

  “Straighten up,” Angie whispered harshly, and Sarah jerked around, fastening her eyes on the back of the pew in front of her.

  It’s only church, she told herself. It’s no big deal.

  As if in response to an invisible signal, the entire congregation stood and opened their hymnals. Lagging behind the rest of the worshippers, Sarah pulled herself to her feet, found the hymnal, and tried to mouth the words of the two dark dirges that followed. Then the pastor took his place in the small pulpit high above the congregation and began to speak.

  Sarah tried to follow what he was saying, but her mind kept drifting back to the little country church where all her old friends back home were right now, singing joyful music, swaying together, smiling, and anticipating the great potluck feast that always followed Sunday services.

  Her belly cramped with homesickness.

  Then Reverend Keener’s voice rose in volume and turned strident, and Sarah looked up just in time to see him slam his hand down on the pulpit with enough force that she jumped even in her pew halfway back in the church.

  Then his eyes fixed on her, drilling deep inside her. “Satan is among us,” he said. “Right here in Warwick. Some of us would hold with him—”

  “No,” the congregation cried.

  “But I say unto you right now,” the minister roared, his right arm rising and his forefinger pointing directly at Sarah, “you’d best steer clear of those who personify Satan’s evil.”

  Sarah shrank down into her seat.

  “Cleave ye to God Almighty!” he shouted.

  “Amen!” the congregation responded.

  The pastor let the word hang in the air, then drew in a deep breath. “Amen,” he said quietly, his eyes still on Sarah. After a moment that seemed to Sarah to go on forever, the choir rose to sing the recessional, and the pastor turned his back on his flock of faithful to make his way down the small circular staircase from the pulpit.

  Sarah drew her coat collar up around her burning face, wishing she could simply disappear.

  But what had she done?

  Why had she been singled out and accused with consorting with the devil?

  But of course she knew: it had been Angie Garvey whispering to the preacher about Bettina Philips.

  Now the heat of indignation began to burn away the embarrassment of a moment before. Bettina Philips was her friend—her only friend, except for Nick Dunnigan.

  No one—not even Reverend Keener—was going to change that.

  Sarah sat quietly in the front seat of the old Pontiac as Angie backed out of the driveway. The dashboard clock read 2:07, and the prison visitors’ center let no one in after two-thirty. If she wasn’t inside by then, she wouldn’t get to see her father.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Angie said as she turned out onto Quail Run and proceeded down the street at what seemed to Sarah to be more the pace of a snail crawling than a quail running.

  “The visitors’ center closes—” she began, but Angie cut her off.

  “At two-thirty. I know. And I also know I’ve got better things to do on a Sunday afternoon than to ferry you back and forth to the prison. From now on you can take the bus.”

  Which would have been fine, except no buses ran out to the prison at any of the times she could possibly use them.

  She’d already checked.

  “And there better be a whole column of A’s marching down your report card, too, missy,” Angie continued, lighting a cigarette. “Hanging out at the prison is not the right thing for a young lady, and it’s the first privilege you’ll lose if your grades aren’t up to snuff.”

  Sarah sat silently, determined to do nothing that might give Angie an excuse to turn around and go back home, but the dying landscape of autumn flying by outside the car’s windows looked almost as bleak as she felt.

  At 2:24, Angie pulled into the circular drive in front of the visitors’ center. “I’ll be back at four o’clock sharp,” she said, barely even glancing at Sarah. “Don’t make me wait—not even one minute.”

  Sarah hurried into the visitors’ center, signed in, and caught up with the last of the visitors as they were going thro
ugh the metal detector.

  She’d made it.

  But when she saw the man who stood up to greet her in the cavernous visiting room, she almost didn’t recognize him, and for a moment thought her father wasn’t there at all. Then, when he came a little closer, she did recognize him. In only a week, Ed Crane had lost more weight than Sarah would have thought possible. His cheeks had taken on a sunken hollowness, and his skin had turned a sickly looking yellow.

  “Hey, sweet pea,” he said, a small flicker of light glimmering in his tired eyes.

  Sarah ached to run into his arms, to hold him, to comfort him, but one glance at the guard standing nearby told her that she’d better do nothing more than sit in the molded plastic chair across from him and hold his hand.

  But at least she was here, and she could see her father, and he could see her, and no matter how cold and bright and horrible it was, it still felt better than being back in the Garveys’ house.

  “You okay?” her father asked. “How’s school?”

  Sarah searched her mind for a way to keep the truth of how bad it was from him, but already knew he’d seen some of her misery in her eyes. She forced a shrug. “It’s okay, I guess. You know—I’m new—I limp—they think I’m a geek.”

  Her father’s eyes clouded with anger. “You’re not a geek.”

  She managed a smile. “I know that and you know that. Now all we have to do is figure out how to convince everyone in Warwick.”

  Some of his anger seemed to fade. “How’s the family you’re with?”

  What was she supposed to say? If she poured her heart out to him about how horrible her life was, she’d only make him feel worse than he already did. “They’re all right, I guess,” she said. She could see he knew she was holding something back, so she forced a small smile. “They’re just different.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay,” she interrupted, deciding to toss one of her father’s favorite sayings back at him: “‘Life throws you some fastballs, some sliders, and the occasional changeups,’ right?”

  Ed Crane smiled. “Right.”

  “What about you?” Sarah asked, trying to change the subject before he could ask more questions about the Garveys. “Are you taking care of yourself? You look kind of skinny.”

  “Now you sound like your mother,” Ed retorted. Then the flicker of humor in his eyes died away. “Hey, I’m fine. I just don’t have much of an appetite in here,” he said. “The food’s not like what you and your mom used to make.”

  “Well, make yourself eat it,” Sarah told him, realizing that she was now repeating words her mother used to speak to her. “You’re going to get out of here in a few years, and I’ll graduate and we’ll go back home again, right? We’ll be together again, like it used to be. So you have to be strong—you have to get through this.”

  “And I will,” Ed Crane said, suddenly understanding just how much Sarah wasn’t telling him, and knowing that no matter how much he asked, she wouldn’t tell him. And if she could get through what she was going through, so could he. “Stop worrying about me,” he went on. “We’re both going to be okay.” It seemed, then, that Sarah might start crying, and Ed knew he’d never be able to get through that. If she started crying, it might just kill him right here, right now. “Tell me about your art,” he said, leaning closer and taking her hands in his. “Does the school have a good teacher?”

  Sarah seized on the question, forcing back the tears that had been about to overwhelm her. “A really great one,” she said. “Her name’s Miss Philips. But—” She cut the word off as quickly as possible, but not fast enough.

  “But what?” her father asked, cocking his head the way he did when he wasn’t going to give up until he had an answer.

  Sarah tried to make it sound like no big deal. “I don’t know—the Garveys—the people I live with—they don’t like her.”

  “Why?” Ed asked, frowning. “Is there something wrong with her?”

  Sarah hesitated, then decided there was no point in not telling him the truth, at least about this. “The people at their church don’t like her, either. They all think she’s a witch.”

  Ed stared at her for a second, and she could see that whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Then, when her expression didn’t change, he suddenly laughed out loud.

  It was a huge, rich, booming laugh that transported her back to the home she’d grown up in and the way things used to be.

  “A witch?” he cried out, then laughed again, and finally wiped the moisture from the corners of his eyes. “That’s quite a church they’ve got you going to. How do you even keep a straight face?”

  Sarah bit her lip. “If you’d been there, and heard the minister, you wouldn’t think it was so funny.”

  Her father’s laughter finally died away, and he reached out and took her hand once more. “You can’t listen to nonsense like that and take it seriously, sweet pea. You’ve got a solid head on your shoulders, and you’re perfectly capable of making up your own mind about things like what people might and might not be.”

  “That’s what Miss Philips said.”

  “Well, good for her. Sounds like she’s all right to me.” He shook his head. “A witch. That’s a good one.”

  It got easier then, and for the next hour Sarah found herself talking with her father almost the way they used to at home. And for a while the sterile visiting room in the state prison might as well have been the kitchen in the little farmhouse outside of Brunswick. But soon—too soon—the big clock with the cage over its glass face read three-fifty and it was time for her to go.

  Away from the coziness of being with her father in the prison, to the prison of being in the house with the Garveys.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Daddy,” she promised, refusing to ruin the visit at the very end by bursting into tears.

  “I’ll look forward to that, honey.”

  “So you eat your vegetables, okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  Before her tears could overcome her, she hurried away, suddenly terrified that she might be even a few seconds late to meet Angie Garvey.

  That could cost her a visit with her father, and no matter what she had to do, she wasn’t going to let that happen. And the next time she came to visit, she’d bring him another drawing.

  Maybe she’d do a portrait of her mother. She’d never tried to do that before, and it might be kind of fun, even if it didn’t turn out very well.

  Not that it mattered how bad it came out.

  Her father would love it anyway.

  Sarah eyed the object on the counter in front of her as warily as if it were a cobra rather than merely a carrot, knowing that if she didn’t cut it exactly as Angie had shown her a moment ago, her foster mother would strike out at her with a venom that might not be fatal, but would sting every bit as much as a serpent’s bite. Now, as she held the knife over the carrot at what she hoped was the same angle Angie had demonstrated, she felt the woman’s cold gaze over her shoulder. “Presentation is everything,” Angie reminded her when she was done, reaching over and rejecting two chunks that failed to meet her standards. “Especially for Sunday dinner. Remember that any job worth doing is worth doing well.”

  Sarah tried not to think about the fun she and her mother used to have cooking dinner together, laughing and joking and sometimes dancing around in the kitchen, paying no attention at all to the size or shape of carrots. Here, there was no temptation at all to break into song, let alone dance around the Garveys’ kitchen.

  “Hey,” Tiffany said as she came in and opened the refrigerator door.

  Sarah stiffened. “Hey,” she replied, carefully keeping her eyes on the work in front of her.

  “So, what’s it like to visit someone in prison?” Tiffany asked with an exaggerated innocence that immediately put Sarah on guard. She glanced over at Tiffany, who was now leaning against the doorjamb, a Coke in her hand.

  “It was kind of hard the fi
rst time,” Sarah said, choosing her words carefully.

  “Keep working while you talk,” Angie reminded her.

  Sarah reached for another carrot. “But I love seeing my dad.”

  “Your dad the murderer?” Zach asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway next to his sister. Sarah felt a twinge of anger at the emphasis he put on the last word.

  “It was an accident,” Sarah said quietly.

  “I thought running over you was the accident,” Tiffany said. “That’s two too many accidents, if you ask me.”

  Sarah’s face burned, but she said nothing, keeping her eyes on the carrot as she quickly sliced it into the exact pieces Angie demanded.

  “He’s going to Hell, you know,” Zach said. “So visiting him is kind of a waste, isn’t it?”

  Sarah glanced over at Angie, who stirred the boiling pasta and seemed not even to have heard what her children were saying.

  “Seems like maybe you should spend your time trying to save your soul instead of hanging out with him,” Tiffany said.

  “He’s my father,” Sarah whispered, her voice sounding weak and small even to herself.

  “But he’s going to Hell,” Zach repeated.

  “You should be in church, praying for your own salvation,” Tiffany said.

  Sarah’s fingers tightened on the knife. “If I’m in church, I’ll pray that my father gets out as soon as he can, and when I’m not in church, I’ll go visit him as often as I can,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “Keep chopping,” Angie said. “If you don’t get your work done, you won’t be visiting him at all. And when you finish the carrots, you can cut up the broccoli for the salad.”

  So that was it—soon they weren’t going to let her visit her father. No matter what she did—no matter how hard she tried to please them—it wasn’t going to be enough.

  And the punishment would be keeping her from visiting her father.

  She took a deep breath and turned to face Angie. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the smirk that twisted Zach’s lips and the brightness in Tiffany’s eyes as she waited to see what was about to happen. “You can’t keep me from visiting him,” Sarah said, struggling to keep her voice under control. “I have a right.”