“I told her I was pregnant,” Jolene said, clanging the metal lid onto the birdseed can. She drifted back to her chair, picked up her tea, and swallowed. She didn’t sit.
“Where did you run into her?”
“Here. She dropped by.”
Zach’s brows drew together. “You invited her in, talked to her? She was never reconciled, Jolene—you know that.”
He spoke in the condemnatory tone that frequently made her itch to do the opposite of what he commanded. Suggested. She fought down the disloyal feeling. “I’m sorry. It didn’t even cross my mind.” Before he could say more, she changed the subject. “In all these years, we’ve never really talked about what happened that night.”
“What’s to say?” Zach gazed at her from beneath lowered brows, the vein at his temple throbbing as it did when he got tense. “Neil Asher apparently believed what Mercy said and came looking for my father. He went after him with the poker. I’ll grant that it was probably a crime of passion; I don’t think he planned it. He let rage drive his actions and the consequences were tragic for all of us.”
“What would you do if someone had ever molested Rachel?”
“Pray.”
He hadn’t even thought about it, hadn’t let himself see a grown man’s hands caressing Rachel, just come out with the church-approved answer to any crisis. “Oh, come on.” Jolene looked at him with open skepticism.
“I’m a man of God, Jolene.”
She turned back to him, breathing in the scent of grilling meat from the neighbors’ house. “Last I knew, that didn’t mean you’d had your feelings surgically removed.”
“Don’t be flip.”
“I’m not. Iris brought it up today, told me I should be grateful your father’s been in a coma all these years, that he wasn’t up to—forgive the pun—abusing our daughter. I haven’t been able to get that thought out of my head since she left.”
Zach rose, and the heavy step he took toward her made the deck tremble beneath her feet. “Are you saying you think—? That you believed Mercy back then? That my father—? It’s not possible.” He made a gesture that brushed away the repulsive idea.
The truth hovered on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed hard, paused, and then said, “I was at your house that night you know, looking for you.”
He stilled. “You never said.”
She looked down, noticing that the silvered wood of the deck needed refinishing. She worked at a splinter with the toe of her shoe. “I heard you fighting. You and your father. You both sounded angry enough to … What was it about?” She looked up and met his eyes.
Zach’s lower lip jutted and he bit out in the voice of a man goaded past discretion, “You. He wanted to have you punished for the sin of fornication. Apparently your mother went to him for advice when you told her about the baby.”
“Did you tell him it was yours?”
His silence answered her. She should have felt like crying, but something cold and steely was seeping through her blood vessels, freezing her emotions, and she gazed at him dry-eyed. “So … what, then? Did you at least try to talk him out of the reckoning stones?”
“Of course I did! After seeing Mercy—I told him it was barbaric, un-Christian. He recited First Corinthians to me, about the congregation needing to chastise the sexual sinner. I told him there were better ways. He reminded me of my duty to honor him as my father. I … I told him I was leaving, that I couldn’t be part of the Community anymore. He roared at me to stay, but I ran out.” Zach looked sickened by the memory, his face pale.
Jolene felt a flicker of pity but stopped herself from going to him. He had denied her and Aaron by not owning up to his paternity. “Did you hit him?”
“Jolene!”
She stared him down.
“I have never raised my hand in anger against another human being. You should know that’s not who I am.”
The hurt on his face brought her to him. She stroked his cheek. “I do know. I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“I thought I heard you back here.” Esther Brozek’s voice cut into the still night and Zach’s sister maneuvered her bulk through the sliding glass door onto the deck. It quaked.
Jolene had a sudden vision of the deck collapsing beneath their combined weight, the three of them plunging through jagged boards to the concrete pad below. She and Zach drew almost imperceptibly closer, the two of them closing ranks against Esther. A glow rose from the neighbors’ barbecue coals and Jolene realized the afternoon had edged into dusk while she and Zach talked. She rubbed her upper arms, conscious of the chill. There’d be no getting around asking Esther to stay for dinner, she thought resignedly.
“I hear Mercy Asher’s been stirring up trouble and I wanted to talk to you, Zachary, about what we should do about it.” Without being asked, Esther settled into the chair they kept for her, an armless chair of sturdy wood that could bear her weight.
“She’s Iris Dashwood, now,” Jolene said, ignoring the inner voice that told her not to needle her sister-in-law.
“She was born Mercy Asher and she’ll always be Mercy Asher to me,” Esther said.
“We’re all different people than we were twenty-three years ago,” Jolene said. “We just don’t all have new names to reflect that.” And wouldn’t it be lovely if we did, if we chose different names at ten, eighteen, thirty-five, to reflect who we’d become?
“Not me.” Esther shifted in the chair and arranged her caftan to cover her calves.
“I don’t think we need to ‘do’ anything about Iris,” Zach said, and Jolene knew his use of Iris’s new name was a way of siding with her. “I haven’t given up hope of persuading her to be reconciled.”
Esther snorted. “The sins of the father get visited on the children for generations.”
“Don’t be so Old Testament, Esther,” Jolene said.
Esther’s eyes slid her way. “It’s our duty and privilege to obey the Scriptures. Mercy has shown time and again that the Lord’s will is nothing to her. She was too prideful to accept the Community’s discipline twenty-three years ago, and I sense that she hasn’t changed. We need to convince her to leave the Community before her example corrupts our youth.”
Jolene sensed Esther’s measured words concealed a burning desire to have Iris run out of town by an old-fashioned mob wielding torches and farm implements. “What did you have in mind, Esther?”
A tiny smile cut into the woman’s fat cheeks. “Oh, I think Mercy Asher will choose to move on before too long. She might find that memories can be … painful.”
Jolene bit back the verse about offering hospitality that came to mind. There was no point. She crossed to the sliding door, wanting to get away from the almost physical aura of self-satisfaction that pulsed from Esther. “The soup smells done. You’ll stay for dinner?”
“Of course.”
Of course. Jolene sighed, and entered the house, calling for Rachel to set the table.
twenty-four
iris
Iris emerged from the motel room Monday morning after a restless night, determined to buy a large coffee before meeting Jolene. She needed the caffeine. She’d tried to work on designs for the new commission Sunday, become frustrated with her lack of progress, and been pleased when her cell phone rang. Jane, she thought, picking it up. She hadn’t recognized the number that came up and answered warily: “Iris Dashwood.”
“Mercy, is that you?” A phlegmy cough followed.
Momentarily astonished to hear her father’s voice, she learned he was allowed to make daily calls and had gotten her number from Cade. “Have you made any progress?” he asked, the hope in his voice squeezing her heart like a vise. “Found out who attacked Pastor Matt? I heard he’s awake now—praise the Lord. Has he said anything about what happened?”
“No, he, uh, his memory is messed up.” Iris couldn’t admit she h
adn’t been able to make herself try to see him again. Feeling her father’s disappointment in his silence, she hurried on, “But I’m talking to people and I’ve been through the police reports. Did you see or hear anything that night that I can follow up on? Walk me through exactly what happened.”
He told her about discovering that she wasn’t in her room and immediately setting out for the Brozeks.
“I did go there,” she admitted when he petered out, apparently embarrassed at having thought she’d harm Pastor Matt. “Keep going.”
“You were so angry after the ritual,” he apologized. He’d noticed the cottage door hanging open and gone there instead of the main house, finding Pastor Matt just inside, beaten and bloody. “I felt his pulse—he was still alive. That’s how I got his blood on me. I was about to go for help when Esther showed up and set up a screech. I told her her father was still alive and she ran out, up to the house to call for help. I stayed with him, praying, wishing I knew something about first aid, until help arrived.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything, sense someone in the house or on your way over?” Iris tried to keep her frustration out of her voice.
“No, I—wait. I heard a car. I thought it was the ambulance arriving, but then no one came for another five minutes. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t much.
He cleared his throat and Iris heard other conversations going on in the background. “You know, I thought I was resigned to dying here, to living out the rest of the years God grants me in this place, but now … Now, this place itches at me like a wool sweater. Things I was used to—the routine, the boredom, the complaining, the food—they rub at me like they haven’t done in years. I’ve been reading Job and taking hope because even though God let Job live in misery for years, took away his health and his family and all that mattered to him, he restored it in the end. Twice as much as he had before, the Bible says.”
Iris closed her eyes, feeling the burden of her father’s hope. What if she couldn’t prove someone else had done it? What if she had gotten her father’s hopes up, only to dash them? He’d be so much worse off than if she’d never come back. She made reassuring noises into the phone and was relieved when he said his phone time was up and that he’d try to call tomorrow.
Giving up on the design she’d been working on when he called—it wasn’t worth the piece of paper it was drawn on, anyway—she’d gone to bed early and alone. The gremlin in the heater had begun working overtime again around midnight and she’d had to turn it off to avoid being roasted, leaving a message on the motel office’s answering machine since she was reluctant to wake the Welshes. As a result, she’d ended up shivering by four in the morning, and had slept fitfully the rest of the night, finally turning the heater back on, but opening the windows.
Now, wearing a fleece jacket over a light sweater, she noticed the grass was frost-tipped. April in Colorado was a tricky month weather-wise, she remembered, with temperature swings of sixty degrees in a twenty-four-hour period and conditions ranging from icy fog to snow to pounding rain and hail. She glanced at the rental car, hoping she wouldn’t need to scrape ice off the windows, and stopped.
Red slashed across the windshield. Four letters in drippy red spray paint almost obscured the glass: “LIAR.” A slow burn started in Iris. She circled the car, gripping her purse so tightly her knuckles whitened, and read the same word written on the driver’s side and the rear window. On the passenger side, only the letters “L” and “I” marred the car’s finish. Like someone or something had scared the cowardly vandal off. Maybe she’d spooked him when she got up to mess with the heater. The thought of someone out here, defacing her car, not twenty feet away from where she slept, made her suck in a deep breath.
Fanning her anger to chase away the pang of worry, she marched toward the office, stiff-arming the door open and setting the innocent bell jangling. Mrs. Welsh looked up from a computer and pushed reading glasses atop her head at the sight of Iris. A cream cheese–smeared bagel sat on a napkin beside the keyboard and the aroma of coffee wafted from a steaming mug.
“I got your message about the heater,” Mrs. Welsh began. “Quentin will—”
“It’s not about that,” Iris said. “Someone vandalized my car last night. I want you to call the police.” She could do it herself, of course, but the police might take the incident more seriously if the motel’s owner called.
“Oh, dear. Vandalized?” She blinked several times and approached the counter.
“Spray painted it. I don’t suppose you heard anything?”
Mrs. Welsh gave it a moment’s thought. “I don’t believe so.”
“Of course not. You only hear my guests coming and going.”
Pursing her mouth into a tight knot, Mrs. Welsh said, “If they didn’t use a car, we wouldn’t have heard anything.”
Lone Pine was less than a half mile away. Someone could easily have walked it, Iris realized. Of course whoever did it was from the Community that had condemned her as a liar when she accused Pastor Matt. She took hold of her temper. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. Please call the police. I want to report this.”
“There is no Lone Pine police,” Mrs. Welsh said. “The county sheriff has jurisdiction out here, but we mostly prefer to handle things ourselves.” She made no move to place a call.
“I’ve had experience with that,” Iris bit out. “This time, I want the police. If you don’t call them, I will.”
Reluctantly, Mrs. Welsh made the call after looking up the number in a phone book.
The chunky blond sheriff’s deputy who arrived twenty-five minutes later held out little chance of catching the perpetrator. “Probably kids,” she said, strolling around the car and making notes. “That’s gonna be a real bitch to get off. You got any idea what it means?” She jabbed a finger at the words.
“It means someone’s afraid of the truth,” Iris said, thanking the officer for her time and taking the report number the woman offered. She’d already called her insurance company and the rental car company while waiting for the deputy.
“We don’t get many calls from Lone Pine,” the deputy said, standing behind the open door of her cruiser with her freckled forearms resting atop the door. Garbled voices crackled from her radio. “Fact, other than a heart attack once, this is the only time I’ve responded to a call out here. I got my dad a sweater at the co-op last Christmas, though. They make some high-quality wool goods. Use alpaca hair. Raise the alpacas themselves, turn the hair into yarn, and do all the knitting right there in Lone Pine. Talented ladies.”
From her admiring tone, Iris couldn’t tell if the deputy was more likely to question the town’s inhabitants about the graffiti, or take advantage of the opportunity to do some shopping. She supposed it didn’t much matter; no one in the Community was going to rat out anyone else.
A car pulled off the road. Eager to sign for the replacement rental car, identical to the one she’d been driving, and get on the road to Jolene’s school before she missed her chance to talk to Jolene, Iris thanked the deputy again and hurried to meet the rental company rep. It was going to be another coffee-free morning.
Parking at Jolene’s school half an hour later, Iris was determined to get some hard information. She was ready to tackle her and anyone else who might know what had happened the night she left town. Fingering the obsidian pendant hanging around her neck, Iris pressed her thumb against the stone’s pointed edge, hard enough to dent the skin, but not hard enough to draw blood. She let the pendant drop to her chest and marched into the school.
When Iris asked for Jolene Brozek at the office, the secretary dispatched a student to show her to a storeroom where Jolene was inventorying costumes. Rolling racks of dresses, uniforms, coats, and menswear crowded the room. Shelves were stacked floor to ceiling with shoes, hats, umbrellas, and large hollow animal heads, including a panther that seemed to
gaze at Iris with malevolent green eyes. Bagheera from The Jungle Book, maybe? The room smelled a bit like a locker room and Iris wondered how the animal heads got cleaned inside after students wore them for a couple hours on stage. She decided not to ask.
“We’ll have more privacy here,” Jolene said in answer to Iris’s raised eyebrow when the student left. “I’ve got to find another Juliet costume. The play opens this weekend and our Juliet broke her arm last night, horsing around on the balcony with Romeo after rehearsal. Her understudy’s half a foot taller.”
“You’re the director?”
“Assistant. The school has a full-time drama teacher. I help out when I have time.”
Drifting toward one of the racks, Iris fingered the lace frothing at the neckline of a medieval gown. She let it fall when Jolene said, “I guess you want to talk about what happened to Pastor Matt. I don’t know that, but I was there that night, at the house, around seven. I was looking for Zach. I’d found out I was pregnant the day before and I needed to tell him.” She laughed bitterly. “Little did I know his father had already told him. When I got close to the house, I heard them fighting, both yelling. I didn’t know then that it was about me.”
“What did you think it was about?”
Jolene shrugged, and pulled a blue velvet gown from the rack, holding it against her torso. “Zach and Pastor Matt argued a lot that spring. Zach was tired of being under his father’s thumb, of always being reminded that what he did or didn’t do reflected on Pastor Matt. I guess I figured they were fighting about college. Pastor Matt wanted Zach to go in state, and Zach had applied to schools in California and Texas. He wanted to get away.”
Iris nodded. “So, you heard them arguing and then what?”
“I hung around for maybe five minutes, hoping Zach would come out, but he didn’t, so I left.”
“Zach and his dad were still going at it?”
Jolene nodded unhappily.
“Any idea where Esther and Mrs. Brozek were?”
The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense Page 14
