ALSO BY ELIZA MAXWELL
The Kinfolk
The Grave Tender
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 Eliza Maxwell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542045858
ISBN-10: 1542045851
Cover design by David Drummond
For Dad.
Thank you for your unsinkable faith in me. You see it even when I don’t, and you always have.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Death was heavier than Henry expected. More than the sum of its parts, it would seem.
He shifted the load on his shoulder, wishing he could unknow what was wrapped inside the bundle he was struggling with. He had to find a way to shake free of it—the knowing. If he didn’t, it would keep adding weight, pressing his feet farther into the ground, pushing until he sank below the surface of the earth and finally disappeared altogether.
The shack loomed ahead, balanced precariously on aged, water-marked piers, jockeying for a piece of the night sky among the stately cypress that dripped Spanish moss—a struggle it was always going to lose.
Forcing one foot in front of the other, Henry moved toward the rickety steps. He pictured himself sloughing off his doubts, his horror, and his regrets in a trail of moldy bread crumbs behind him.
Henry knew what he had to do. Wishing otherwise served no purpose. That would only fill him up, leaving no room for the strength he needed to dig deep and find somewhere, somehow.
The steps creaked beneath his feet, giving a voice to the night that stood witness to his actions. A reminder, in case he’d forgotten.
As if he could forget.
The door, which hung crookedly on its hinges, swung wide as he pushed it with his foot, revealing a mostly empty space. Moonlight shone through the windows, save for the dark lines of the iron bars installed over the cracked, dirty glass. The place greeted him, and his heavy load, with the resignation of a bookie who knows desperation when he sees it, or a drug dealer who can spot a junkie at a mile. The place knew the score.
Henry could smell it, clogging his nostrils—the thick stench that fear leaves behind. It was rolling off him, mingling with what was already there.
Tonight would be different, but no less the same.
Dropping the bundle on the floor with a thud that echoed through the bare room, Henry took a moment to catch his breath.
A mistake.
Unbidden, thoughts of his mother crowded in. He didn’t want her here, but he was powerless to stop her. The smile lines around her eyes crinkled as she sent him that look, the one that said she knew what he was thinking. The wink she’d toss his way when she slid the last pancake onto his plate at breakfast.
Henry squeezed his eyes shut.
“There’s no other way, Mama,” he whispered to no one, wondering if she’d understand if she were there.
Putting a thing off never made it easier, Henry heard his mother whisper in his mind, something she’d said to him countless times.
Wishful thinking, maybe, but it was the closest thing to absolution he was going to find.
It would have to do.
Grasping the corner of the blanket at his feet, he pulled, rolling out the body cocooned within, flipping it until it broke free and sprawled, lifeless and indignant, in front of him.
Steeling himself, he reached into the bag slung over his shoulder and removed the tools he’d need, setting them neatly in a row.
There was no going back. It was too late for that.
His only hope, the one he clung to during the long nightmare that followed, was that these atrocious acts he was committing had a purpose. That they fanned a distant flame of flickering light at the end of a deep tunnel.
Or so he wanted to believe.
CHAPTER TWO
Six months earlier
The girl watched. All day, she’d silently observed. Mostly the woman who walked like she had a sickness. She saw the way the woman stood straighter and spoke stronger when others were around. When the woman was alone, the girl saw how her shoulders dropped and the truth showed through, though no one saw it. No one but the girl.
As the hours passed, and the woman went about her routine, a longing grew in the girl. Not just hunger, which had begun to rumble in her belly and would grow sharper by the hour. The girl was used to hunger. It was more than that.
The woman and the young man and the old man who strutted and crowed like a banty rooster, they were part of a set that made up a whole.
She’d seen families before, but she’d never known that feeling.
She stayed hidden, not daring to draw too close. Not close enough to be seen anyway.
She’d watched, and she’d wondered. She’d seen them come and go, then come back again. Did it feel
different to go from place to place when you knew there was a spot in the world you belonged and had people to return to? Or did they take it for granted, never realizing they’d be noticed—a missing piece—if one of them never returned?
She crept closer, all the way to the edge of the woods, as evening came on.
The mosquitoes buzzed around her, and she heard the bullfrogs singing off-key from the marsh far to her back, but she paid them no mind. She watched the house—no, the home—with a single-minded intensity.
Smells from the kitchen reached her, ribbons floating on the breeze. They pulled at her, teasing her hunger for food and a deeper hunger for things she couldn’t name.
She followed those ribbons, stepping from the shelter of the woods. It wasn’t dark yet, it wasn’t wise, but she gave no thought to consequences.
Closer and closer she came. Her steps were light, and she disturbed nothing as she found a window to peer inside. Her stomach grumbled, and her heart ached in new ways, but the family took no notice. They were together, unconcerned about the gathering dark outside and unaware of the girl who was watching.
Lost in a trance, she couldn’t look away and didn’t want to.
For a time, she closed her eyes and listened to their voices, muffled and sharp and soft, and she forgot everything. She forgot that she was dirty and alone in a place she didn’t understand. She forgot the troubled road that had brought her to this place. She forgot the gnawing hunger in her belly.
It was the laughter, such a foreign and joyous sound, that pierced her daydream. It was a careless thing. She’d never laughed like that. And she knew she never would.
With a gasp, the girl ran. She didn’t belong in this place any more than she’d ever belonged anywhere.
The shadows of the trees and the night swallowed her again.
CHAPTER THREE
Henry’s brow drew together as he watched his mother emerge from the dense span of woods on the east side of the house. He stood in the bed of the pickup he was unloading, shading his eyes from the morning sun opening its arms above the trees, and raised a hand in her direction.
She ambled, and she did it slowly. Not quite a shuffle, not yet, but a far cry from the easy stride she used to have. But Caroline Doucet wasn’t quite the woman she used to be.
She waved in return, then made her way slowly toward him.
Henry went back to moving crates, but his mind was elsewhere and the empty bottles rattled carelessly around inside.
The sharp cry of distress brought his head back up with a snap.
He saw her totter, one arm thrown out instinctively, circling the air for balance, the other bracing itself to meet the ground as her legs wobbled beneath her.
Henry leapt over the crates, launching himself from the bed of the truck in his mother’s direction. His feet landed and he was already running before she’d made it all the way to the ground.
The dark-garbed figure materialized from nowhere. It swooped toward his mother, and Henry squinted, trying to comprehend the sight, while fighting off the panic that gripped him, the panic that was always waiting just beneath the surface, waiting for this moment.
His feet moved faster, his heart pumping, as he tried in vain to reach his mother before the shadowy apparition beat him to her.
It wasn’t a race he could win.
The fleeting sense in those seconds that Death, incarnated before his eyes, was hurtling toward his mother was irrational. Impossible. But he couldn’t deny his confusion when, instead of swallowing Mama whole within the folds of its hooded black wings, the figure stooped low, catching his mother just moments before she fell to the ground.
It wasn’t Death. Of course it wasn’t. That was crazy.
“Mama,” Henry gasped, drawing near to the pair and skidding to a halt, adrenaline still coursing through him. “Are you all right?”
“Well, yes,” she said, shaking her head and sounding nearly as confused as Henry had been. “Of course. I tripped, that’s all. Thank you . . . ,” she said, looking over at the stranger who’d come to her aid, seemingly out of thin air.
Henry spared a glance for the person his mother was leaning against, registering the dark and dingy clothing hanging like tattered bat wings, the cloak pulled up that obscured a face in shadow. He could almost excuse himself the fantastical notion that Death had come swooping out of the trees to claim his mother as his own. Considering all things.
Shaking off the morbid thought, he moved to his mother’s side, bending to support her and letting her lean on him to make her way back to the house.
“Don’t fuss, Henry,” she said to him, clucking like a hen. “It’s nothing. Just the perils of age and daydreaming. I tripped over my own feet, that’s all.”
But she leaned on him all the same. He wondered if she’d twisted an ankle.
“Mama, I don’t understand why you have to wander around in the marsh every morning, alone,” he said.
She glanced up at him, faint irritation mingling with affection.
“Henry,” she said, lightly mocking his prissy tone, “I don’t understand why you have to be so bossy. Besides, I wasn’t alone. My guardian angel was with me today . . .”
She looked over her shoulder, speaking to the stranger, but the hooded figure had slipped from her side and was standing two paces back.
Henry and his mother both turned.
He didn’t know the etiquette for greeting a dirty stranger he’d mistaken for Death, but his mother had no such hesitation.
“Please, I’d like to thank you . . . for your help . . .”
Mama’s voice trailed off as the stranger took a step backward at her words. A barely perceptible shake of a head came from within the shadows of the cloak.
“I don’t even know your name,” his mother said, raising a hand, palm up, toward the figure.
But the stranger took a quick step backward again.
“Please,” Mama said again, her voice soft and calm, like she was speaking to a wild animal spooked at finding itself trapped in a cage. In a way, perhaps she was. The stranger turned toward the pines that bordered the field where they stood and bounded off, back from where they’d materialized, the dirty folds of clothing flapping in the wind behind them.
Henry had to stop himself from running after, demanding answers to the same questions his mother no doubt had, though in a less compassionate tone. But his mother was his first priority.
“Come on, Mama,” he said, nodding toward home.
She didn’t answer, just looked toward the woods, where her sudden savior was blending into the shadows of the trees.
“Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” she said in a low voice, speaking more to herself than to her son.
Henry shook his head, pushing back the surreal oddness of the situation and reaching for the comforting familiarity of reality.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
She nodded, turning away from the woods.
“I’m fine, Henry. You worry too much,” she said, her tone falling into the familiar pattern of soft chiding he was used to.
“And you don’t worry enough. You could have hurt yourself,” he said.
He couldn’t help one last glance over his shoulder as they made their way toward home.
Just on the edge of the pine woods, he could see the outline of the stranger who’d stopped his mother’s fall. Something intangible pulled at him, and his eyes widened ever so slightly as the figure took half a step forward and pulled back the folds of the cloth that had covered their face.
It was a girl. A dirty, unkempt girl. A girl whose face held such profound sadness as she watched the two of them walk away that it felt like a weapon. Something sharp and painful that pierced through the center of him.
And then she was gone.
Shaking his head at his own thoughts, he forced his attention back to his mother.
“Surely you’ve memorized every twig and leaf there is to see out there by now,” he said to the top
of her head, trying to reel in his overactive imagination.
“Oh, Henry, where have I gone wrong with you, love?” she said lightly, but she was clearly distracted.
“I’m serious,” he said, his voice sharper than he’d intended. The thin layer of irritation that coated his words couldn’t disguise the worry at the heart of them.
She glanced up at him in surprise.
“So am I, son,” she said, giving him a bemused smile.
“What if something happens? What if you fall again, or . . . I don’t know.”
“Henry,” she said gently. “If I fall, then I’ll pick myself up.”
“Mama—”
She held up a hand to cut him off. “You’re worried. Okay, I know. It does you credit. But try to understand,” she said softly. “Mornings out there, with the quiet and the mist hanging low over the water . . .” Mama shook her head. “I know it sounds silly, but out there? That’s where God lives.”
Henry sighed. “Livingston might have something to say about that.”
“Your father has his own kind of relationship with the Lord, a more complicated one than mine.”
Henry bit back the retort before it broke free, but he could hear it, plain as day, in his head: Not my father.
“About as complicated as a bully has with the rock he’s about to hit you with.”
“Henry!”
“Sorry, Mama,” he said, abashed, at least a little.
“He has his reasons, you know.”
Henry did know, and he regretted the words that put those creases in his mother’s forehead. Even if they were true.
“Things changed for him, Henry. He’s never been the same. Not since . . .”
Since Mari, Henry thought. But they rarely said her name out loud.
“Ms. Watson’s roof is leaking again,” Henry said, changing the subject as they drew close to the house.
His mother nodded and glanced back toward the trees.
“I’ve got some mayhaw jelly you can take to her when you go,” she said, her voice quiet.
Henry followed her line of sight, but there was no sign of the strange girl. No sign that anything out of the ordinary had just happened.
If he hadn’t witnessed it himself, he wouldn’t have believed anything had. But there was a nagging ache where the stranger’s sadness had touched him that lingered, undeniable.
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