Iris watched for a moment in silence, admiring her economical movements, her focus on the task. Her concentration reminded Iris a little bit of the way she got when she was working on a jewelry project. Wearing an apron over a shirtwaist dress that could well have been in her closet when Iris lived at home, she had cut her hair. Gray and silver strands framed her face in a sort of pixie. Maybe some things had changed.
Taking a deep breath, Iris started up the side aisle.
Her mother turned her head and stilled when she saw Iris. Then, the squeegee dropped into the bucket, the only sign of her surprise.
“Mercy. No, I understand it’s Iris, now. Iris Dashwood. Mercy wasn’t good enough for you.” Marian’s voice was measured, almost toneless, betraying no surprise, no anger, no joy or even mild pleasure at seeing her daughter after twenty-three years.
So that’s how it’s going to be. Iris was surprised by the wave of desolation that rushed over her. Swallowing hard, she came within hugging distance, or hand-shaking distance, of her mother and stood awkwardly. Neither moved.
“I like your haircut.” Stupid. As if she cares what I think of her hair. Iris fumbled for something more meaningful to say, but there weren’t words to bridge a twenty-three-year gap. “I guess you heard I was in the area.”
“Your father mentioned it, and Esther. The whole town knows you’re back, although some of them moved in after your time, so it doesn’t mean much to them.”
Does it mean anything to you? Iris wished she had the nerve to ask the question. “No, it wouldn’t.” She cast around for a safe topic. “The Community’s grown. I like the new store, the co-op. Whose idea was it?”
Marian retrieved the squeegee and drew it down the window. She gestured to the stack of newspapers at her feet and Iris obediently picked one up, formed it into a pad, and began to polish away the thin streaks. “Esther Brozek’s. When the Community selected Zachary as the new pastor, they made her the senior elder.” She looked thoughtful. “She’d been working with the alpacas for some years by then, on top of caring for Pastor Matt, and she came up with the idea of doing more than just selling their wool. She persuaded some of the women to learn to spin the wool into yarn and convinced others to knit it into sweaters, gloves—well, you saw the place. When Howard Hecht suggested we get some beehives, she researched it and hives popped up in the Community’s fields faster than anthills after a rain. It’s been good and bad for the Community.”
“How so?” Iris was content to let the conversation drift along on this non-confrontational current.
Marian shrugged a bony shoulder. “We’re not as tight knit anymore. Too many tourists traipsing through Lone Pine, calling our religion a cult, talking about us like we can’t hear them. Why, a couple of them even tried to take photos in the worship service until Pastor Zachary stopped them. You’d think we were one of those churches juggling rattlesnakes or something.” She sniffed.
Or something.
“Too much of a focus on materialism,” Marian continued, “even though the co-op’s profits go to our outreach programs for the poor.” She picked up the bucket and gestured for Iris to collect the crumpled newspaper from the floor. “I remember when the Community was about serving God and your fellow man, living simply and obediently.”
Iris followed her mother down the stairs to the kitchen, reflecting that she never would have guessed their reunion would involve window washing. Scrubbing the newsprint off her hands at the sink, she turned off the tap and glanced around at the sparkling counters and stove so clean it looked unused. “So, I guess you’re the caretaker, now?”
Marian nodded, a small smile stretching her lips. “For almost twenty years. I clean, mow, do small repairs. I’m surprisingly handy.”
Iris could believe it. “It’s never looked better.”
Marian accepted the compliment as her due.
“So … Dad.”
Marian stiffened, but raised her brows for Iris to continue.
“I saw him yesterday, in the prison.”
“You could hardly see him anywhere else.”
“He … it turns out he was under a misapprehension, that he confessed because …” Iris didn’t know why she was finding it so difficult to spit out. “He didn’t attack Pastor Matt or cause Mrs. Brozek’s death.”
“Of course not.” Marian emptied the bucket of sudsy water into the sink and rinsed it out. “He thought you did.”
Iris gaped at her mother’s back. The silence lengthened and her mother turned around with raised brows. “Surely you didn’t think I didn’t know? Neil was my husband; he wasn’t capable of such an act.”
“Then, why—”
“I couldn’t talk him out of it. I begged him not to do it, but he felt he had to. For you. He was—is—my husband. I gave in to his wishes. Ephesians tells us that wives must submit themselves unto their own husbands, as unto the Lord.”
For the first time, Iris sensed resentment. Drawing herself up, she said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
Marian flicked her a scathing glance and then attacked the stainless steel sink with cleaning powder and a sponge. “If you hadn’t run off, your father would not be in jail right now.”
“If you hadn’t called me a liar, I wouldn’t have left. The least you can do is look me in the eye.” When her mother didn’t budge, Iris started to grab her shoulder, but stopped herself mid-reach. She backed away two steps, coming up against a pantry door whose pull dug into her spine. Her whole body shook and she stilled her hands by shoving them into her jeans pockets. “I’m going to get Dad out of prison. If it takes me six months”—God forbid I have to spend half a year here—“I will find the truth and get him out.”
“He confessed, Iris.”
Her mother’s ease with her new name was almost unsettling when everyone else she’d talked to had slipped up and called her Mercy at least once. It was like Mercy had died. No, had never existed. As if Marian had been introduced to a new person, Iris, and accepted her at face value. Like she didn’t even find Iris particularly interesting, not someone to get to know better over coffee or lunch.
“Don’t you want him back?”
Her mother’s silence filled the kitchen. It infiltrated every crevice—the sliver of space between the refrigerator and the wall, the wells beneath the coils on the range, the toaster slots. It was like a heavy gas, weighting the oxygen to the ground so Iris found it hard to breathe in. “You don’t. You don’t want him freed.”
Marian whipped around, water arcing from the sponge she held and splotching Iris’s shirt. Her voice, though not loud, thrummed with anger. “You don’t get to come back here after a quarter century of running away and pass judgment on me. I saw my husband through the trial—a trial he underwent because of you—and I have visited him faithfully twice a month since he was wrongfully imprisoned. I spent what little money we had on lawyers, trying to get him out and failing because he wouldn’t tell the truth. I bore the burden of this town’s hatred because of what you and Neil did, but I couldn’t up and leave like you two—”
“Dad didn’t—”
“—just walk away from my responsibilities as if they didn’t matter. I couldn’t be so damned selfish.”
“Stop! I wasn’t even sixteen. Pastor Matt—”
“I undertook to care for this church when no one else would, bec—”
A clunk interrupted Marian’s tirade and Iris turned to see a girl of five or six, glossy dark hair slicked back with a red headband, standing wide-eyed in the doorway. “Nana, why are you mad at this lady?” she asked. Her wide-eyed gaze traveled slowly from Iris to Marian and back again.
Marian stopped mid-word and placed the sponge in the sink. When she turned back, her face and voice were smoothed of emotion. “Angel, this is your Aunt Iris.”
The words jolted Iris, although she didn’t know why she was so surprised; she’d
speculated about Noah having children.
“I don’t have any aunts,” the girl announced. “Mommy doesn’t have any sisters and Daddy’s sister is dead.”
Ouch. Iris shot her mother a look and got a slightly malicious smile in return.
“I’m not dead,” Iris said, sinking so she was eye-to-eye with the child. Brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes stared into hers. “I just live a long way away. In Oregon. Do you know where that is?”
Angel looked doubtful, but then said, “The capital of Oregon is Salem, and the capital of Colorado is Denver, and the capital of Idaho—”
“Wow. You know your capitals already. How old are you?”
“Five and a half. I’m the smartest one in my class.”
Iris had no trouble believing that, but Marian said, “We’ve talked about boasting before, Angel, and how it does not become us. All our talents and skills come from the Lord and we use them to reflect glory back on him.”
“Yes, Nana,” Angel said, bobbing her head, “but I wasn’t boasting. I was just saying.”
Iris stifled a chuckle and Angel beamed at her.
“What are you doing here, anyway, young lady? Did you quarrel with Ruthie?”
“She has to go to her soccer game, so I came home. Can we Skype with Daddy?”
“Later.”
“Where is Noah?” Iris asked.
“Afghanistan,” Marian and Angel chorused.
“You’re kidding!” The words leaped out before she could stop them, but Iris had trouble seeing her obnoxious, slightly rebellious brother as a soldier. He must have changed a lot. Well, why not? She certainly had. “How long—”
Marian’s frown stopped her; obviously, she didn’t want to discuss the war in front of Angel. Iris nodded her understanding and vowed to find out more later. Had Noah joined the military out of a desire to serve his country, or to escape from the Community? She didn’t know him as an adult; she couldn’t begin to guess.
“I’m hungry,” Angel announced, standing on tiptoe to pull a jar of peanut butter from a cupboard.
“Hands,” Marian said, letting a breath of refrigerated air into the room as she handed Angel some grape jelly. The little girl obediently washed her hands before returning to her sandwich-making, the tip of her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth as she spread the peanut butter evenly onto some bread.
“Sorry I’m so late.” Cade’s voice came from the doorway and Iris turned toward him with relief. He represented stability in this world gone topsy-turvy. He smiled and held up two coffees, handing her one. “Good morning, Mrs. Asher.”
Marian’s gaze slid from Cade to Iris and back again. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you now that Mercy’s back. How long have you been married now? Must be going on for sixteen years.” She stared at Cade’s ringless left hand wrapped around the cup as she accepted the coffee.
“Fifteen in August,” Cade said levelly.
“Do you know Angel?” Iris asked hurriedly.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Cade shook hands with the little girl, who giggled again, and engaged her in a conversation about Polly Pockets and Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Iris looked on semi-wistfully, wondering how she’d gotten so out of touch with that segment of the population under the age of legal consent and their favorite activities, music, and TV shows. The glimpse of Cade’s family life also left her feeling … untethered. She couldn’t think why that word came to mind, but it would do. She was untethered by family or even a job since she could take hers with her anywhere. She’d always appreciated what she thought of as her flexibility, her ability to pick up and go on the spur of the moment, but right now it felt more like homelessness.
Iris squashed the thought. She was living the dream, a free, untrammeled life full of adventure, creativity, and casual sex with hot men. Cade was trapped by a mortgage, the need to fund his kids’ college educations, and his wife’s expectations. He probably had to spend every Christmas with his in-laws—whoever they were—listening politely as his father-in-law droned on about the Avalanche, and every vacation at a kid-friendly Howard Johnson’s Hotel with a waterpark. As for her mother … Marian was so much a prisoner of the Community, of the church building itself, that she might as well be locked in. Poor Marian. Poor Cade. Iris’s gaze lingered on him as she sipped her coffee, and when he looked up and smiled at her, she scalded her mouth with a too-big gulp.
Finishing her sandwich, Angel said a sunny goodbye to everyone, gave Marian a hug, and said she was going to see if Janelle could play. The adults looked at each other as Angel’s footsteps faded. Without a word, Marian retrieved the sponge from the sink and began to wipe the table, gray head bent over the task. Iris continued to lean against the pantry, and Cade, subtly elbowed aside by Marian, backed up against the windowsill so they made an awkward, lop-sided triangle.
“We need to get Dad out of prison so he can spend time with Angel,” Iris said. She didn’t know where the words had come from, but she felt the truth of them in her bones. “She deserves to know him. He deserves to know her. ‘Children’s children are a crown to the aged,’ it says in Proverbs.” Iris was surprised that she could still dredge up the Bible verses she’d been forced to memorize in Sunday school.
Marian stilled, and then straightened, table half-wiped. Her gray eyes dwelled on Iris’s face for a moment before she said, “Don’t quote the Bible at me like it’s a weapon. It’s God’s sacred word.”
Although the words seemed combative, Marian spoke quietly, without hostility, and Iris heard acceptance in her voice. She expelled a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Okay, then. He’s innocent. We need to prove that. Every day he spends in prison is—” Is flaying me with a whip. She couldn’t say that—Marian and Cade wouldn’t understand the guilt she felt, the responsibility she had to free her father. “Where do we start? I’m going to investigate, ask some questions,” Iris said defiantly when her mother remained silent. “There’s a limited suspect pool. We know I didn’t do it and Dad didn’t do it … it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out who did.”
“Do what you want,” Marian said, pushing back from the table with a scraping sound. “You always did.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Iris stood so rapidly her chair would have toppled over if Cade hadn’t caught it. “You—”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
Iris saw her mother through a veil of anger, like the multi-hued light dots that popped behind her eyes if she knuckled them hard. “Is that all you can do? Spout the Ten Commandments? Maybe if you’d ever actually listened to me, had a conversation, instead of falling back on Scripture every time I tried to talk to you, tried to tell you—. Maybe everything would have turned out differently. Ever think of that?”
Marian drew her mouth into a tiny knot, sucking in air with a thin hiss.
Cade put a hand on Iris’s arm. “Walk me out, Iris. Mrs. Asher, I’ll be in touch soon.”
Iris turned and banged through the nearest door, instinctively taking the half-flight of stairs that led to the churchyard, rather than the ones that opened near the worship area. Cade caught up with her as she marched down the path leading to the columbarium where engraved stones memorialized the people whose ashes were interred below them. Yellow forsythia frothed over a stone wall and a robin tugged at a worm in a manicured patch of lawn that, Iris imagined resentfully, her mother trimmed by hand, probably blade-by-blade with a pair of nail scissors.
“Iris, wait.”
Iris halted but didn’t turn, realizing with fury and chagrin that she was close to crying. She never cried. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, and then wiped her sleeved forearm under her nose before turning. “Well, on a scale of one to ten, I’d rate that reunion as a minus two,” she said, with an attempt at lightness. Her muscles wouldn’t respond when she tried
to force a smile.
“Iris.” Cade pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly.
“She doesn’t care. She’s sorry I came back.”
Cade made soothing noises and rubbed her back. It was several minutes before she relaxed under the spell of his hand stroking her spine. Her face rested on his shoulder. If she angled her head just a bit, her lips would press against his neck … She pulled away, wiping moisture—not tears—from her eyes with the hem of her shirt. Cade’s gaze rested on the expanse of tight abdomen she exposed.
“Sorry for falling apart on you,” Iris said, working hard to make her voice sound normal. She met his gaze and smiled faintly. “I usually cope a little better.”
“It’s an emotional time.”
Iris smiled wider at the understatement, and brushed away a wisp of hair caught at the corner of her mouth.
Cade said, “Look, I’ve got an appointment I can’t blow off. Meet me later? Drinks at Nosh? It’s on Tejon.”
“Remember when you introduced me to beer? I’d never had alcohol before.”
“You didn’t like it.”
From the look in his eyes, Iris knew he was remembering what came after her first half-bottle of Coors. “I like it better, now.”
“Six thirty?”
“Won’t that make you late for dinner?”
“Lila and I are separated.”
“But still married.”
Cade nodded, his gaze skimming the sharp line of her cheekbones, the way her dark hair sprang back from her temples, the indention above her upper lip. “Maybe not for long. She cheated on me. With an intern at the firm.”
Although he tried to hide his pain by delivering the words dispassionately, Iris could almost feel the hurt and anger and betrayal seething inside him. “That sucks.”
He barked an unamused laugh. “Understatement.”
“Do you still love her?”
Running a hand down his face, Cade said, “I love my family.” He forced a smile. “But that’s neither here nor there. What about that drink? I promise not to bore you with the sordid details of my marital troubles. I want to hear about you.”
The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense Page 11
