The Halo Effect: A Novel
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PRAISE FOR ANNE D. LECLAIRE
Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence
“Luminous.”
—PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
“Eloquent and moving . . . Although technically a memoir, this book moves beyond that genre into spirituality and philosophy. LeClaire’s reputation as a novelist may draw readers to this lovely book, which should also have cross-over appeal to spiritual seekers of any religion and no religion.”
—Booklist
The Lavender Hour
“LeClaire packs this winning novel with resounding life lessons and a resonating set of romantic relationships.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Entering Normal
“Exquisite . . . A beauty . . . If you love the feel of Anne Tyler’s novels, then this has your name all over it.”
—Daily Mirror (London)
“In rich and limpid prose, LeClaire shifts the point of view . . . focusing on the small acts that get us through the day, or the night, or not. A woman’s book in the best possible sense, this will leave readers warm and satisfied.”
—Booklist
“An emotional wallop comparable to that produced by Sue Miller’s The Good Mother or Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A gentle, spirited novel about friendship and survival.”
—USA Today
Leaving Eden
“A light, breezy novel about serious subjects. It’s eventful, with a lingering death, a murder, a secret revealed, to say nothing of a makeover.”
—Boston Globe
“Artfully crafted characters resonate within this emotional novel detailing one girl’s ability to face the hardships of her life.”
—Romantic Times
The Law of Bound Hearts
“Recommended . . . LeClaire has crafted authentic characters and successfully portrays the power of forgiveness.”
—Library Journal
“A gripping, emotional intensity and depth of feeling highlight this poignant and lyrical novel, which illustrates how precious life is.”
—Romantic Times
ALSO BY ANNE D. LECLAIRE
Fiction
The Lavender Hour
Entering Normal
Leaving Eden
The Law of Bound Hearts
Land’s End
Grace Point
Every Mother’s Son
Sideshow
Non-Fiction
Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence
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 by Anne D. LeClaire
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, 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: 9781503943186
ISBN-10: 1503943186
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
For Bernard Cornwell:
Partner in Crime and First Lines
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
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
PART TWO
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
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
Every day is ordinary. Until it isn’t.
On this early-October morning, the townspeople in Port Fortune wake before dawn to an ordinary day with its ordinary sounds: the groaning of trawlers straining against lines in the mist-shrouded harbor, the metallic chorus of gear being loaded on board underscored by the fog-muted, early-morning conversation of men, the deep-throated tolling of the marker buoy in the outer harbor, and over at Cape Port Ice the drone of the giant ice-making machines. They wake, too, to the town’s ordinary smells: at the docks the distinct miasma of salt air, diesel fuel, ripe bait, and mug-up coffee, and at the Loaves of the Fisherman Bakery on Prospect Street the aroma of anise, cardamom, sugar, yeast, Frialator oil, and cappuccino, scents so thick they nearly coat the air. These everyday noises and smells are not dissimilar to those of her sister fishing ports along the Northeast Coast and yet are somehow so particular to this place that a lost and sightless child could find her way home.
At the police station, the shift changes, and Detective Dan Gordon retrieves his service revolver from his locker, where he has stored it since the birth of their daughter the year before. His wife insists on this precaution. Holly no longer wants a gun in the house, not even one he swears he always unloads and secures in the small gun safe in the basement. He is not unsympathetic to her request. Even in this small town, he has seen the sorrow caused by weapons that are believed to be unloaded, not to mention the grief resulting from those deliberately loaded and fired in hot passion or cold foresight.
At the Church of the Holy Apostles, Father Paul Gervase unlocks the front door and prepares for early Mass amid the comforting aroma of incense, wax, and the oil soap Mrs. Mason uses on the worn oak floor. Not long ago, the church was kept unlocked, but a recent uptick in crime changed that. The local paper ran a series about the town’s growing drug problem, particularly the OxyContin scourge that has led to a heroin epidemic, the lead story for a week until it was crowded off the front page by reports about nearly a dozen girls at the local high school getting pregnant. The world is changing, and no one knows this more than Father Gervase. He waits for the first parishioners to arrive, Italian and Portuguese wives and widows for the most part, holding tight to the rituals of a lifetime as if by this they can slow a world spinning beyond their control.
At Port Fortune High School, Wayne Jervis, the custodian who moonlights part-time doing work at Holy Apostles, arrives and turns up thermostats. He unlocks classroom doors and then enters the faculty lounge, where he swit
ches on the automatic coffee machine and adds water and grounds. Lastly, as he does every weekday, he goes to the girls’ locker room. The bitches’ locker room. He knows what they call him behind his back. Jervis the Pervis. Bitches. In recent months, nine of them have become pregnant, and despite the denials by the school principal, the girls, and their parents, a rumor persists that these are deliberate decisions, the result of a pact among the girls. Bitches. Sluts. Whores. The lot of them. If they are so hungry for cock, he’d be happy to show them what a real man can do. And a lot better than their high school boyfriends can. Jervis enters a stall and takes a long piss, leaving the seat up and the toilet unflushed when he is done.
At the Loaves of the Fisherman, Manny Costa, Leon Newell, Caesar Amero, and Portuguese Joe arrive early. The four have spent a lifetime rising before dawn, and although they no longer fish, the old habits die hard. At their regular table, they drink coffee, eat sweet rolls, and talk about the things that occupy their conversation every morning: the weather, town politics, how maybe the foreign fleets haven’t completely killed the industry but the restrictions of new federal fishing regulations surely will.
Gradually the fog lifts and the sun inches upward, striating the horizon and casting a roseate glow over the eastern sky, the harbor and icehouse, the station, the bakery, other businesses, and homes. Slowly the rest of the town awakes.
On Chandler Street, Rain LaBrea hears her brother revving the engine of the thirdhand, piece-of-crap Mazda he thinks is such a big deal and curses him for not waiting to give her a ride to school. She texts her friend Lucy about how she now will have to take the bus like the dweebs do. There is no use complaining to her parents unless she’s up to enduring one more lecture about how she should get up earlier if she wants Duane to give her a ride. Duane, her mother’s Golden Boy who, in her eyes, can do no harm.
Across town, on Governors Street, Sophie Light raps twice on her daughter’s door. “Lucy? Are you up?” She listens for a moment, and reassured by the noises inside the room, she descends to the kitchen and crosses to where Will is pouring coffee into two mugs and brushes his cheek with her lips, smoothes an unruly lock of hair with her fingers, a cowlick that spins in a counterclockwise directions that not even a comb and application of hair gel could tame.
“What time did you finally come to bed?” she asks.
“Around midnight. The game went into overtime.” He hands one of the mugs to her. “Did I wake you?”
“I was so wiped last night I wouldn’t have moved if Hannibal and his elephants bivouacked in the room.” She takes a sip of coffee, smiles her thanks. “So who won?”
“Green Bay.”
“Is that good?”
“Not for Chicago.” He starts to say more, but at that instant he hears Lucy coming down the stairs. When their daughter enters the kitchen, his smile of anticipation morphs into a frown as he observes the snugness of her sweater, the length of her skirt that in his mind should be illegal, then intercepts a look from Sophie. Let it go. She’s accused Will of being overly protective. “What would you prefer she wear? A caftan?” she recently asked him. Clearly she is better at handling their daughter’s nascent sexuality than he, but doesn’t she understand that a man’s central purpose and desire is to protect those he loves? Now he looks at the contours of Lucy’s breasts and her long thighs still tinged with the last of her summer tan. Their daughter is developing into a beauty on the cusp of womanhood, but it seems to Will she is remarkably innocent of the power this will give her. Yes, a caftan would be fine with him.
They eat what he has prepared. Cold cereal with sliced banana. Sophie pours them a second mug of coffee. Lucy gulps OJ. They sit in a comfortable domestic silence broken only by the faint tapping of Lucy’s thumbs on her iPhone, the digits moving faster than Will would think possible on the screen’s miniature keys and icons. If he’d done this at the table, his father would have cut off his hands. He wishes they would ban those things. Cell phones, social networking, Facebook, Twitter—ridiculous name. All the things pulling their daughter from them. He starts to speak but gets another look from Sophie. Let it go. Then, as if a switch has flipped, the morning ritual ends, and there is a flurry signaling departure. Sophie grabs her briefcase. At the door, she turns to ask, “Shall I stop on the way home and pick up dinner at the Kottage Kitchen?”
“I’ve got tonight covered,” Will says.
Lucy kisses his cheek, and he smells the banana on her breath, inhales the apple-scented shampoo of her hair, the sweet fruitiness of her, and he knows a moment of fear and again the desire to protect her from danger large or small.
“Bye, Da,” she says in a voice still morning husky.
He nods his goodbye. He kisses Sophie, a lingering kiss that draws a mock sigh from Lucy and a “Hey, you guys, I’m still in the room,” but when he looks over at her, she is grinning. Then they are gone, and he resumes the morning rituals, wiping off the table, stacking dishes, turning off the coffee, already slipping into his own day, thinking now of the painting waiting upstairs on the easel, the supplies he’ll need to order before the weekend. It is Tuesday, the day Sophie holds after-school rehearsal for the chorus and Lucy stays late for French club, then a field hockey scrimmage. Eight hours stretch before him, an ocean of quiet with no husbandly or fatherly obligations, and he feels a fleeting twinge of guilt at the pleasure the idea of this brings him.
An ordinary day in Port Fortune.
Until it isn’t.
Until Lucy Light doesn’t come home.
PART ONE
SINNERS
CHAPTER ONE
First they sent the priest.
Looking back I can see the inevitability that it should be the priest who would come, but of course that morning, not given the knowledge of foresight, I had no idea of how our fates were to become entwined. It was one of those warm and gentle days of late spring, and I’d opened the eaves window several inches, so the echo of a car door slamming floated up to the attic where I was working. I wondered if it was Sophie. I hadn’t expected her, and things were often strained between us now, so I wasn’t sure whether to go down or stay in the studio—a simple enough decision but just one of the many things I was no longer certain of in the unmoored ship of my life. My one or two absolutes, no one wanted to hear, least of all my wife.
I crossed to the window and looked down at the drive, but the black sedan parked next to my gray Prius was unfamiliar. A man stood beside it; I recognized the garb. A priest. Instantly I understood. Sophie was behind this. I heard the echo of her voice, the words she’d spoken the last time we’d talked, her voice soft with concern but steady, firm in her conviction. You need to talk to someone, Will. You need to talk to someone about your anger, about the way you’ve isolated yourself, shut yourself off from everyone. Well, screw that. I didn’t need to talk to anyone and certainly not a goddamn priest. Reflexively I stepped to one side so the angle of the attic shadow would conceal me from view if he looked up, but the priest, who was carrying a small yellow parcel, didn’t raise his eyes, his attention focused on the flagstone walk where shallow puddles lingered from the rain that had fallen in the early morning, a shower much welcome, for the water table was low that year. Petals from the early-blooming azalea floated on the puddles like confetti. I watched as he negotiated around them carefully, made his way to the steps. Even from this distance, I could see his frailty, evident in the way he grasped the railing with his free hand, the way two-footed, like a child, he made his way slowly up the wide steps that rose to the front porch, planks I had reclaimed from disrepair, sanded bare and stained with Sherwin-Williams WoodScapes Exterior. Rookwood Amber. Not long ago, I’d found satisfaction in poring over color charts as if they were oracles. Just as once, not so very long ago, I’d found a comforting, nearly meditative pleasure in cutting cracked putty from sashes and replacing and repointing window panes, restoring elaborate wainscot, and planing the bottom of doors until they again swung free. How quickly what once were p
riorities could be upended. The man below disappeared from my line of vision, but I continued to stand at the window. I watched a car pass in the street and heard the engine of a low-flying plane overhead, something I normally would not have heard since I usually kept the window shut and all sounds from outside were silenced by thick walls, one of the benefits of houses built more than a century ago. Our street was lined with such well-constructed buildings. The doorbell rang, and again, a moment later, came a second chime. I knew I could outwait him—eventually even a man of the cloth schooled in patience would have to acknowledge defeat. Man of the cloth. How readily that antiquated phrase came to mind. I heard in it my mother, who’d had an idiosyncratic affection for outdated expressions. And for clergy, too, now that I thought of it, though our family had been Episcopalian, not Catholic. Yes, I could have waited up there until the priest left. Over and over since then I have wondered how things might have changed if I had never gone to answer his ring. Instead, determined to conclusively settle this matter that had brought the priest to my home—goddamn it, I did not need to talk to anyone about my anger—I wrapped my brush in a square of foil, found a rag, and wiped my hands, got them as clean as they would ever be. Before I went down, I remember switching off the large fan, an industrial one I’d installed myself to protect my family from toxic fumes, to keep them safe.
To keep them safe. Even now I taste the irony.
I did not hurry as I descended the three flights. When I reached the second-floor landing, the chimes pealed once more, and again as I crossed the foyer, and I knew a small, mean satisfaction at keeping the priest waiting. Through the wavy glass of the sidelights, I viewed an ordinary man edging out of the north side of middle age. Although it was cool for May, he was bareheaded, and the wind lifted the short strands of his hair into spikes, like the gelled pink hair of the teenage clerk at the market where we now shopped. In my limited experience, I have always found priests to be fat or skeletal, as if they were either wasted or well fed by their faith. This one was thin, scholarly looking, with shoulders beginning to stoop. From the weight of his calling, I remember thinking. All those untold burdens. I felt no sympathy. Don’t talk to me of burdens.