by Ania Ahlborn
She planned the evening right down to where everyone would sit, marking everyone’s spot with a small teepee of scrap paper, their names carefully printed in tiny capital letters. Naturally, Jeffrey got the head of the table, but to Avis’s surprise, Lily assigned her to the other end. Avis would have liked to sit next to Jeff during such a special occasion, but she couldn’t deny her spot was fit for a queen—a queen who sat across from her king. The rest of the court was sanctioned to fill up the left and right sides of the table.
She was too nervous to eat, pushing food around her plate while smiling at Kenzie’s jokes. She listened as Sunnie and Robin discussed the vegetable garden, and watched Jeffrey from the opposite end of the table as he swirled wine in his glass.
The boys ate. The girls waited.
The boys finished. The girls began their meals.
Before dessert but after Sunnie and Robin had cleared the plates and silverware, Lily rose from her seat and held up her glass. Avis’s heart sputtered to a stop when Lily gave her a thoughtful smile.
“I know you’re all curious about the occasion,” she said. “But once I reveal it, you’ll all come to realize that the fanfare was more than necessary. An expectation for an expectation. A grand event for a grand prediction.”
Someone pulled in a sharp intake of air, as if catching on to Lily’s clues. Avis didn’t see who it was, too busy studying the knot of pine through the lace where her plate had once been. She hadn’t understood what Lily had been talking about the night before, and she still didn’t get what any of it meant. All she knew was that this was important, fulfilling some sort of prophecy. She was the bringer of a kind of divination that had yet to be explained. And again she was left to wonder: why hadn’t she been told of this all-important prediction before? Still on the outside, she thought. Looking in on your own party. Still Audra, no matter what they call you.
“Avis?”
Her gaze snapped up to meet Lily’s. The entire table was staring at her with bated breath. Jeffrey looked smug on his end of the room, like a guy who knew the punch line before the end of the joke. Their eyes met, and he gave her a knowing look, then leaned back in his seat and relaxed while everyone else waited for her to speak.
“Yes?” The word was parched, hardly audible. Her eyes darted back to Lily’s expectant face.
“Would you like to . . .”
Sunnie lifted her hands to her mouth, holding back a gasp. Clover and Gypsy exchanged a secret look and grinned simultaneously. Unsure as to why she would notice such a small detail at that very moment, Avis couldn’t look away from the empty spot at the hollow of Gypsy’s throat. For the first time, Gypsy wasn’t wearing her ornate cross. When she finally managed to pull her gaze away, she noticed Noah staring at her with his alien eyes, wide and disbelieving. Kenzie, however, looked confused. Leave it to Kenzie to not understand what was happening while the rest of the group was clearly in the know.
It was Deacon who spurred her into speaking. Sitting to Avis’s immediate right, he reached beneath the table and placed his hand on her knee in reassurance.
Go on, it said. Have faith.
Avis licked her lips, cleared her throat, and squared her shoulders.
“I’m pregnant,” she told them.
The room buzzed.
All heads turned from Avis to Jeff, as if waiting for him to say something in turn. But rather than speaking, he rose a single shoulder up in an easy shrug and lifted his wineglass as if to say I told you so. It was such a casual motion, so heartbreakingly gorgeous paired with his crooked half grin. He brought the glass to his lips and took a sip, and as though that drink had sealed some unspoken promise, the table erupted into jubilant cheers.
Sunnie and Robin rushed to Avis’s side with hugs and kisses, eager hands pressing against her stomach. But why isn’t anyone else pregnant? The question continued to spiral through her head. The boys moved toward Jeff, who was quick to receive manly hugs and handshakes. Why am I the only one? Clover and Gypsy murmured to each other, but their smiles were steadfast. Nobody made mention of the fact that Avis had slept with every man seated at that table, just as all the other girls had. There was an unspoken understanding: Jeffrey was the father. For some reason, there was no doubt about that in anyone’s mind.
“It’s a miracle.” She heard Robin say it to one of the other girls.
“I always knew she was the one,” Sunnie said.
“It’s perfect,” Lily chimed in.
“Bring life,” Robin whispered.
“Bring life.” The other two joined in. “Bring life, bring life, bring life.”
Avis remained in her seat, afraid to ask them about their quiet chant. She stayed where she was, feeling more unsure than ever before.
After dessert, she retired to the girls’ room while the others stayed downstairs. Because of his waning interest, the last thing she expected was for Jeff to join her. It seemed to her that over the past month, Jeff was far more interested in keeping Maggie and Eloise company than wasting his time on her. And so she was surprised to see him slip into the room and lean against the doorjamb with a sly sort of smile. He said nothing, so Avis broke the ice with a quiet confession.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know,” he said. “Just have faith. Love will be our salvation.”
She frowned, looked away. She could feel his expression fall.
“You’ve been unhappy lately,” he concluded. “Tell me why.”
Avis chewed her lip, tugged at her fingers, considered keeping her silence if only to keep the peace. Tell you why? Are you really that blind? She didn’t want to upset him, but it was the first time she felt as though she actually had some power. Having sat at the head of the table for a reason, she was the source of that evening’s joy. Perhaps now was the time to demand a few answers.
“Why wasn’t Maggie here tonight?” she asked, daring to glance up at him from behind stringy strands of hair.
“Is that what’s been bothering you?”
“You two look like lovers when Eloise is between you.”
Jeffrey leveled his gaze on her, then pushed away from the door to meet her next to the bed. The backs of Avis’s calves bumped the mattress as he placed his hands on her shoulders. “She isn’t one of us. I promise you that.”
“Then what is she to you?” Avis had no way of proving it, had no reason to suspect, but every bit of her intuition told her that Jeff and Maggie had slept together, just as Jeff had slept with all the other girls. And that would absolutely have initiated Maggie into their circle.
But you don’t know that, the voice whispered inside her head. You’re just jealous, and jealousy makes people angry. Unbalanced. Insane.
Unbalanced. That’s what the pills had been for. Pills that Jeff seized from her and poured into the kitchen sink, the toilet, the ocean, out the car window as they drove home from the clinic.
“Maggie is . . .” Jeff paused, considered his words. “She’s a protector, a mother. She has an innate need to take care of things, and we need a few things taken care of by someone outside the family.”
A mother. Avis clenched her teeth.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like things we’ll leave undone when we leave this place.”
Her face flushed hot. Leave? She thought that had been decided, thought it was clear that they were going to stay in Pier Pointe long-term. She shook her head, toeing the line of tears. They were going to leave her alone and pregnant. They were going to abandon her like the butt of a terrible joke.
“But the baby . . .”
“Avis . . .” Jeff began, but she didn’t want to hear it.
“Don’t call me that!” she yelled, pushing him away, moving for the door. “All you do is leave me out of everything!” He grabbed her by the wrist, wrenching it so that she either had to face him or break her
arm.
“Avis,” he snapped, annunciating the name to hammer it home. It didn’t matter what she wanted. He’d call her by the name he’d given her. “Don’t be weak.” His eyes were hard.
“You slept with her!” It tumbled out of her like morning sickness. She tried to pull herself free, but he wouldn’t let go. The sobs came shortly after. She turned away from him, not wanting him to see her cry.
“Avis, stop it.” His tone was stern, his grip on her wrist fierce. When she failed to quit weeping, he twisted her arm behind her back and shoved her down onto the bed. She cried out in pain.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Good,” he said. “Pain is what you need to get your head on straight. Maybe I was wrong about you.” He twisted her arm harder, and she exhaled a clipped yelp. “Maybe you aren’t as strong as I thought. Maybe you aren’t meant to be part of this family after all, especially not as the mother of my child.”
Her head whipped around. She stared him in the face, ready to scream, to tell him to go to hell. If she wanted to be subjected to such abuse, she had two parents who would be happy to oblige. She didn’t need it coming from him.
But the moment she set eyes on him, her anger teetered toward helpless guilt. Not understanding how she could go from furious to culpable so quickly, Avis let out a wail. Perhaps Jeff was right. She wasn’t as strong as he had thought, as she had wanted to be; she needed those goddamn pills after all. Something about the way he was looking at her—the disappointment in his eyes?—was too much. She crumbled. He jerked her forward, crushing her against his chest.
“Hush,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s all right. Be strong. Trust me, Avis. You have to—”
“—have faith,” she finished for him, air hitching in her throat.
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly. You have to trust me. Trust in me with your whole heart and I’ll give you things beyond your wildest dreams.”
She breathed out, her sobs stammering to a slow stop. She wanted him to tell her that he loved her, that he was as happy as everyone else about her big announcement, that he was excited to be a father. She wanted to hear that he had been so drawn to little Eloise because he wanted his own child, not with Maggie but with her. She pictured their baby—a dark-haired boy like him, or a blond little girl like her. Or perhaps she’d be a mix of both. A blonde with a mysterious soul.
“I’ve been searching for you for what feels like my entire life,” he told her. “And tonight, I’ve been assured you’re the one. You see, I’m on this earth to usher a select few to a perfect world—a world of kindness, happiness . . . of unconditional love. And you’re here to help me achieve that.” He placed his hand on her stomach with a thoughtful glance. “This baby will save us all from a world of ugliness and pain, Avis. And you are its mother. You have to be strong. For us. For me. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good. Good girl. Hush, now. Be calm.”
It was only then that she noticed Deacon, Noah, and Kenzie looming just outside the bedroom door. They had been listening, waiting. Avis blinked at them through tear-swollen eyes, but Jeff blocked her view a moment later.
His fingers caught the hem of her shirt. He tugged it up and over her head, then pushed her down onto the mattress as she stammered, the question of why poised on her lips. Her inquiry was silenced by the shake of Jeff’s head. Shhh.
She squeezed her eyes shut as he tugged her jeans down over her hips. She could hear the boys shuffle into the room, could make out the sound of snaps and zippers hitting the floor. Not wanting any part of what was about to happen, she felt sick and exhausted and held back her tears.
Four pairs of hands groped at her flesh. Teeth dragged across her skin. Their fingernails scratched amid hushed, chant-like whispers she couldn’t make out because she was crying again. She sobbed as they pulled at her bra and underwear, tearing at them like aggressors, like animals, like nobody she’d have ever called her family at all.
43
* * *
DESPITE HIS OWN trepidation about continuing to press Jeff for an interview, Lucas couldn’t let it go. He spent the next few days in a haze of research. The house alarm he couldn’t afford got installed. He called Lambert Correctional and bothered Lumpy Annie a good four or five times more to no avail. He tried to get back in Jeanie’s good graces, but most of the time, she wanted nothing to do with him. The only time she did talk to him was when she wanted pizza or takeout. Despite being tight on cash, he always obliged. At that point, meeting her culinary demands seemed like the least he could do. He offered to take her into Pier Pointe, to drop her off at the movies. She wasn’t interested. Echo stopped by to check up on them, but her visit degraded into Jeanie asking if Echo wanted to go up to her room to look at stuff on the Internet. Lucas didn’t like that, but he also didn’t like the idea of his daughter growing feral, either, so he allowed it. It seemed to him that, despite Jeanie’s previous insistence that he take her places, she was now resolved to staying locked up in her room. And so he remained in his study.
He couldn’t find much on the suicide Marty had mentioned during their lunch. In a short-and-sweet Lambert Gazette article, Lambert prison guard Stewart Hillstone was said to have been a “kind, gentle, churchgoing man” who, presumably, suffered a psychotic break after being laid off from his job. And while there was speculation that Hillstone was axed because of the Schwartz incident, Lambert Correctional Facility claimed that the layoff was due to budget cuts. LCF stated that they didn’t hold Hillstone responsible for Schwartz’s demise. And while Lucas had no idea whether they pink-slipped Hillstone because Schwartz had been found choking on his own blood, he was sure anyone who knew enough about Halcomb would have come to the same conclusion: Halcomb had something to do with the deaths of both Schwartz and Hillstone. And yet, not a single investigator glanced Halcomb’s way. He was, after all, locked up and harmless. Locked up and speechless, actually, despite their goddamn deal.
Donna Hillstone’s obituary appeared in the Gazette a few days after her death. Stewart Hillstone didn’t receive a write-up at all; in the obit, Donna’s sister, Sandra Barnard, was noted as Donna’s only next of kin. The White Pages website listed her as living in Lambert. Lucas promptly entered the phone number into the contacts list on his phone. If he could get Sandra to talk to him, he could find out if Stewart had said anything suspicious in the weeks leading up to his and Donna’s deaths.
Lucas refused to believe there hadn’t been signs. Maybe Stewart had mentioned something about Halcomb’s philosophy or his own new beliefs. But the number was disconnected. Typical. The article had referred to Sandra as Miss, not Mrs. It failed to mention any nieces and nephews left to mourn their murdered aunt Donna. It was more than likely that Sandra had packed up her stuff and gotten the hell out of Lambert as soon as she took care of the unpleasant business of burying her only sibling.
He tried to get in touch with various soft leads. Trevor Donovan had only briefly known Jeff Halcomb when living in San Francisco. He had since been the leader of a peaceful protest group called California Change. As it turned out, California Change had disbanded in the mid-eighties and its members had scattered along the western coast. There was no contact information for Trevor, no trail to follow.
Susanna Clausen-King, a wayward traveler who had been quoted in an article about Halcomb after his arrest, was even more of a ghost. As far as the Internet was concerned, she never existed, and even if she had, Lucas doubted she’d have been able to give him anything useful. It seemed that back in Jeff’s San Francisco days, he had still had a head on his shoulders. Or maybe that had been his game plan all along—play it cool, be charming. Reel in the kids and get heavy after they were good and committed.
What did surprise Lucas was the ringing of his phone. He nearly jumped out of his skin before snatching his cell off his desk and accepting the call. It was Mark.
&nbs
p; “Um, hi?” Mark sounded unsure. “Are you alive out there? What the hell, man?”
Lucas pinched his eyebrows together, the bridge of his nose forming a deep-grooved V. “What?” He shook his head, as though Mark could see his confusion.
“What?” Mark asked. “What do you mean what?”
Lucas was baffled. He leaned back in his seat and stared at the door of his study, perplexed. “Let’s start over,” he said. “Hello, Mark. How’ve you been?”
Mark didn’t respond for a long while. Lucas could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, as though drowning in his own dose of mystification. Finally, he spoke. “Well, fuck. Hi, Lou! I’ve been great, except for the fact that you haven’t been answering your phone or returning my calls for like over a week.”
“What?” Lucas leaned forward, pulled his phone away from his ear to look at the screen. Had he missed calls? He hadn’t heard his phone ring in days, but it was possible. Service was flaky out here. Half the time he was running on a single measly bar, and his phone wasn’t the best. But over a week? “Wait, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about why the hell haven’t you called? I’ve left you like a dozen voice mails. This was my last try before getting in the car and driving my ass out there to make sure you haven’t . . .” He stalled. “Jesus, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
But Lucas was hardly listening. He glanced at his phone again. Over a week? That was impossible. He’d lost track of time before, but this was beyond just forgetting the day of the week. Something about the date glowing on his cell’s LCD tripped a fuzzy thought inside his head. It was a familiar feeling, like walking into a room only to realize he didn’t know why he was there. That strange, disorienting sensation promised that he was forgetting something he swore he’d never let slip his mind. A birthday? An anniversary? Christ, had he promised to take Jeanie somewhere again?
