by John Saul
"How dare you?" Ellie flared. Her temper snapping, she took a step toward Luke and struck him across the face.
The sound of the slap silenced the room like a shot, and for a moment not even a breath was drawn. Ellie, her hand stinging, froze, and her eyes flicked toward the priest.
Luke's eyes narrowed to slits as he took in his mother's glance, his fingers touching his face where the mark of her hand was already starting to show.
Father MacNeill instinctively took a step back, as if somehow to distance himself from what had just happened.
"That's right, Ma," Luke said, his voice so low it was no more than a rasping whisper. "Hit me. Hit me, then look at Father Mack to see if it's okay." His eyes fixed balefully on the priest. "What about it, Father?" he asked, his voice injecting venom into the priest's appellation. "Did she do all right? Did she do what you wanted her to?"
"I'm sure I can't countenance violence under any circum—" the priest began, but Luke didn't let him finish.
"Don't give me that! You think I don't know what's going on around here? It's Jared! You don't like him, and Ma doesn't like him, and Sister Clarence doesn't like him, and Father Bernard hates his guts. You think I don't know that? You think Jared doesn't know it? Well, guess what, Father? Jared's not going anywhere!"
"This has nothing to do with Jared," Father MacNeill replied. The careful neutrality he always tried to maintain when talking to any of his flock had started to crack under Luke's onslaught, and his voice took on a chilly edge. "Although it's obvious his influence on you has not been a positive one. And it isn't just your mother and I who object to the Conway house being turned into a hotel. There are many people who agree with us."
"Not 'us'!" Luke hissed. "You! And I'll bet every single person who agrees with you goes to St. Ignoramus, right?"
"Luke!" Ellie cried, again stepping toward her son, her right hand rising reflexively.
"Don't!" Luke told her. His body quivered with fury as he glowered at her. "Don't you dare hit me again. And don't you go to that meeting, either! You hear what I'm saying?"
"Your mother is free to go anywhere she wishes, young man," Father MacNeill admonished Luke. "And I will not tolerate your speaking that way to her. 'Honor thy father and thy mother that their days may be long'!"
"I don't have a father!" Luke raged. "My father's dead, remember? You're not him." He wheeled on his mother once more. "If you go to that meeting, I hope you get hit by a truck!" Turning away, he stormed toward the front door.
The silence that fell in the living room as Luke slammed the door behind him lasted longer than the one that had followed Ellie's slap.
"He didn't mean it," Ellie finally breathed. "He didn't mean it at all."
Father MacNeill, though, wasn't so sure. To him, it had sounded as if Luke Roberts meant every angry word he'd uttered.
Every single one of them.
"Mommy! Wanta see!"
Janet lifted Molly out of the stroller and held her up so she could see the people milling around in front of Town Hall. Why had she let Ted talk her into bringing Molly? What possible interest could a meeting to discuss a zoning variance have for a sixteen-month-old? Still, what choice had there been? She'd called five possible baby-sitters, but by the time she talked to the fourth one, she knew the search was futile. Two of the girls hung up when she told them who she was, and the other two had excuses that sounded so flimsy, she was sure they'd made them up on the spot. Only the last one had been honest enough to admit that there wasn't enough money in the world to get her to spend even a few hours alone with a small child in "that creepy old house."
"Jared can take care of her," Ted suggested, but Janet shook her head, surprising herself at how quickly she'd dismissed the suggestion. And she stuck to her position, despite Ted's arguments, though she could not bring herself to voice her growing mistrust of her own son.
Mistrust.
How could it be that in the few short weeks since they'd moved to St. Albans, the implicit trust she'd always had in Jared—the certainty that she could always count on him, even when Ted had been at his absolute worst—had completely eroded? And yet there it was. So many little things, slowly accumulating like the tiny trickles of water that eventually merge together to form a mighty river. None of them particularly serious taken individually, and all of them easily explainable. Certainly Ted had explained them to her over and over, reminding her that Jared was almost sixteen and starting to stretch his wings.
Of course he wouldn't spend nearly as much time with his sister as he used to. Of course he'd value the privacy of his room in the basement. All boys his age start testing the limits of authority at school. And at home. Janet had listened, unable to argue, since everything Ted said made complete sense. Yet nothing he'd said, none of the reassurances he'd given her, had counteracted the cumulative effect of all the small changes in Jared's personality.
She no longer trusted him.
Where once she'd felt nothing but a mother's normal surge of love when he came near her, now her guard went up and she felt herself tense.
The same way it used to be with Ted.
She stopped short, realizing that it was a perfect description of how she felt. It was as if all the traits she'd hated in Ted—which had vanished since they moved to St. Albans—had transferred themselves to Jared!
"Honey?" Ted said. "You okay? Want me to take Molly?"
Jerked from her reverie, Janet let Ted lift Molly out of her arms, and as the little girl clung to her father's neck, Janet tried to dismiss the strange idea that had just occurred to her. Yet as Molly snuggled contentedly against her father's chest, burying her face in his shoulder exactly as she used to do with her big brother, the idea only set its roots more deeply in Janet's mind.
"Maybe I should wait outside with Molly," Kim suggested.
With the warmth of Molly's body suddenly gone, Janet felt the fall chill. It was late October, after all. She buttoned her sweater. "I don't think so," she replied. "But if you don't want to go in—"
"I was hoping the whole family would be here," Ted said.
"Then how come you didn't make Jared come?" Kim countered.
Ted smiled sympathetically at his older daughter. "I know it doesn't seem real fair, but I'd sure appreciate it if you'd come in with us. If they see the whole family, how can they turn us down?"
"If they haven't already made up their minds," Janet fretted.
"I'm sure some of them have," Ted agreed. "But as Phil Engstrom told us, we've got a better than fifty-fifty shot. You heard what he said—if they get to know all of us, he doesn't think they'll turn us down."
Then maybe it's a good thing Jared's not here, Kim thought. All through supper that night, she'd tried to ignore the argument between her father and her brother, but from the moment it began, a hard knot formed in her stomach, and she'd only been able to pick at her food. What troubled Kim most, though—even scared her—was the way she hadn't been able to pick up anything from Jared. Always before, she could glean at least some hint of his feelings, some sensed understanding of what was going on with him, almost as if she could share in his emotions, at least a little bit.
But not anymore.
Tonight, though she'd heard him getting angrier, she hadn't felt anything at all. At first she wondered if he was even really angry, or just acting. But as Jared continued to argue with their father, she could hear the fury in his voice. She could see it in his face, too. But she couldn't feel it. And when he finally left, storming away from the table and out of the house just like their father used to do, all she'd felt was relief that he was gone.
Relief!
Was that how her mother had felt all those years, when it had been so bad with her father? Relief when he left the house, and anxiety when he came back?
Just the thought of it made Kim shudder.
She heard someone calling her name. Sandy Engstrom was waving to her from across the street, showing no sign of the sickness that had seized her that
morning.
"Kim!" Sandy called. "Dad says you should all sit with us!"
Abandoning any thought of skipping the meeting, Kim was about to start across the street toward the small crowd in front of Town Hall when a horn blared, startling her. As her father's hand closed on her arm to pull her back onto the sidewalk, she looked up, then froze in horror at what she saw.
It happened so fast that she knew there was nothing that could have been done to stop it. Not by her—not by anyone.
The car was coming around the corner, and the woman was already in front of it by the time anyone saw her. Time seemed to stand still as Kim gazed at the terrible scene. The woman seemed frozen to the spot, her head turned toward the car that was about to strike her, her purse clutched in her right hand, her left arm outstretched as if to fend off the vehicle.
Then she turned.
Now it seemed to Kim as if she were watching through a telescope. Though the woman was half a block away, Kim could see her face as clearly as if they were only a foot apart.
The woman's eyes were wide with terror.
Her mouth was agape, though no sound was coming out of it.
And Kim recognized her.
It was the woman she'd seen in her nightmare the night she'd imagined the rats crawling up out of the toilet.
The woman who'd been suspended upside down from the cross in the strange cathedral.
But how could that be?
Yet now, as she stared in mute horror at the woman, Kim had no idea who she might be.
Then the horrifying tableau came to life.
The car's horn blasted again. The woman screamed.
The scream was cut off by a terrible thumping sound.
The woman's body was lifted into the air, and a second later it dropped back, falling onto the hood of the car, where it glanced off the windshield and was hurled to the street.
There was a screech of brakes, nearly lost in the screams of the crowd. In an instant the woman on the street was surrounded. Kim could hear someone shouting for a doctor.
Then she saw a priest—Father MacNeill—kneel down by the woman and begin to pray.
Kim's father and mother started to move toward the fallen woman, and she moved along with them. But then something, some force, made her pause.
Jared!
She could feel him!
She could actually feel him again!
But where was he?
Stopping, Kim scanned the area and saw nothing except the quickly growing crowd around the injured woman, who was now moaning and reaching up for help.
Then she spotted him.
Her brother was standing in the square, perhaps fifty feet away. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the woman who'd just been struck by the car.
Looking at her, and smiling.
She opened her mouth to call Jared. Before his name left her lips, however, he turned and looked at her, as if she'd actually called to him.
The smile—the strange grimace of pleasure that had twisted his lips as he gazed at the accident victim—was gone.
Instead, Kim saw him glaring at her. Glaring at her angrily, as if he'd just been—
Kim stopped short, unwilling even to think the word she'd been about to use. But as she watched her brother, she knew there was no other way to describe his expression.
He looked guilty.
He looked as if he was doing something wrong, and he knew it.
He looked as if he'd just been caught.
CHAPTER 29
Phil Engstrom banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order exactly one hour after it had originally been scheduled. He struck the podium again and again, but the murmur refused to die away as the crowd that had turned out for the meeting continued to whisper among themselves about the accident.
An ambulance had arrived from the fire station around the corner less than a minute after the car struck Ellie Roberts, and she was rushed to the hospital no more than five minutes after she fell to the pavement. Phil himself had seen the accident from start to finish, and in his eyes it had been quite simple: Ellie stepped out from between two cars to cross the street at exactly the same time that Clarie Van Waters turned the corner. To Phil, the accident had been an unfortunate confluence of Ellie not watching where she was going and eighty-year-old Clarie insisting on driving her ancient DeSoto years after her license should have been lifted.
Nevertheless, the rumors began flying even before Ellie was taken to the hospital. The crux of the gossip was that since Ellie had been on her way to protest the variance Ted Conway wanted, Conway therefore must have had something to do with the accident. That Ted had been nowhere near either Ellie or the car and could in no way have been responsible seemed to cut no ice whatsoever. The problem, Phil thought, was that the accident and the talk that quickly accompanied it was enough to change the whole tenor of the meeting. Where an hour ago he had sensed that the town was fairly evenly split and a vote could go either way, now he could feel support swing toward Father MacNeill's opposition to the variance. He'd toyed briefly with postponing the meeting, but quickly abandoned that idea, knowing it would be interpreted—correctly—as a stalling device. So, even as he banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order, Phil Engstrom was wondering about how he and Ted might reverse the decision later.
"All right, everyone," he said. "If we don't want to be here all night, we better get started." He droned through the legalisms and rules of procedure, then decided to let Father MacNeill have his say first. Better to let Ted see what he was up against, he thought, and then decide how to handle it.
Father MacNeill moved to the podium slowly, his head bowed as if he were just now thinking about what he wanted to say. Even when he faced the crowd, he said nothing, fingers tented beneath his chin as if he were still deep in thought, or perhaps even seeking divine guidance. But when he finally spoke, he never mentioned God or the Church. The Catholics in the room, Phil Engstrom knew, were mostly already convinced. Instead, Father MacNeill talked about the history of the town, about its stability, about its continuity. Phil Engstrom didn't even need to look at the approving nods coming from every part of the room to sense which way the wind was blowing.
"Here in St. Albans," the priest said, moving into his summation, "there has always been a place for everything, and everything has always been in its place. Certainly, none of us can have any objection to a new inn opening in our town. I, for one, would support it. But the Conway house stands in a residential area—a family area—and to invite strangers into the very heart of our neighborhood strikes me as folly." His eyes moved from face to face. "The place for strangers—and whatever pleasures they might seek—does not lie in the area in which our children play." A murmur of approval rippled over the room, and Phil Engstrom knew it was all over. The priest's invocation of the specter of child molestation—although he hadn't quite said it—would be enough.
As Father MacNeill moved back to his seat, pausing every few steps to accept the murmured praise of his parishioners, Phil turned the podium over to Ted Conway. "Good luck," he muttered under the rustle of the audience readjusting themselves on the hard benches, though he didn't see how Ted was going to turn this around. Right now, he didn't think Conway would get more than ten votes out of the whole lot of them.
Ted stood at the podium, gazing out at the sea of faces that filled the auditorium. Throughout the priest's speech, he had felt the mood of the room harden, sensed that what little support he'd had left when the meeting opened was washing away under the cleric's river of words.
But Ted had also noticed that as Father MacNeill scanned the audience, addressing himself first to one person, then to another, meeting the eyes of nearly everyone in the room, he'd never looked at him.
Not once.
Now, Ted's own eyes sought out the priest, who was sitting next to Father Bernard with his head bowed while his fingers manipulated his rosary beads. Ted willed him to look up, to meet his gaze.
Though Father
MacNeill continued to pray, Ted was certain he saw the line of the priest's jaw harden.
He can feel me, Ted thought. He knows I want him to look at me, and he won't do it. His eyes shifted away from Father MacNeill, and once more he scanned the room.
A month ago he would have been feeling the thirst for a drink—indeed, he wouldn't have come to the meeting at all without at least a couple of belts of scotch to bolster his courage. But not tonight. Tonight, as he gazed out at the hostile eyes fixed on him, he felt no desire for a drink.
Nor any fear that he would fail.
Ted picked a man in the fourth row whose eyes were already smoldering, although he had yet to utter a word.
"My family has been in St. Albans as long as St. Albans has existed," he said. "I know it. You know it." He focused on the angry-looking man. "We've all heard the stories, and I'm not going to deny them." The man frowned, looking less certain. "But I'm not going to talk about those old stories. Instead, I'm going to talk about myself, and my wife, and my three children, and the dream I have."
The audience stirred once again, and Ted saw that it wasn't only the man in the fourth row who now looked uncertain; he saw hostility dissolving into curiosity throughout the room. When he resumed speaking, his voice was as low as Father MacNeill's had been, but commanded every bit as much attention as the priest's. Slowly, his eyes moving from one face to another, he told the story of how he had come to bring his family to St. Albans.
It's not possible, Janet thought. Though she couldn't see the audience from her place in the front row, she could sense the change in the atmosphere of the room. Even Molly, who wriggled in her lap all through Father MacNeill's speech, had settled down, as if the sound of her father's voice was enough to calm her. Where did he learn to do this? Janet wondered as she watched Ted speak to the crowd. Soon after he began to speak, his eyes met her own for a moment. In that instant, as he talked about what their life had been like only a few weeks ago, she felt a sense of empathy so great—a certainty that he not only understood exactly how she had felt, but that there was nothing he wouldn't do to make up for it—that tears came to her eyes. His gaze shifted from her, releasing her from the grip of his own emotions just as she was on the verge of crying. "It's going to be okay, Mom," she heard Kim whisper. "Daddy's going to make it all right." Janet could only nod, not trusting herself to speak.
