A sadness washed across her face.
“It’s been almost ten years now, but sometimes I still forget that she’s gone. I almost expect to see her when I go home for visits. Isn’t that just the oddest thing?”
She placed the frame back on the wall and slowly crossed herself.
“When we found out she had leukemia, it just tore our hearts out.”
Leukemia. So she wasn’t one of the ghosts with the slashed throats after all.
“We found out about it shortly after that photo was taken. That’s probably why I’ve always loved it so much. It was before, you know? Like, the shot captures something we could never be again.”
I nodded.
“She was so young. Just seventeen. It’s strange what death does to a family. Since she died, both my parents have stopped going to church. And as you can see, I went the other way.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Do you have a sister, Elizabeth?”
“I do,” I said.
“Make sure to tell her how much you love her. Do it often.”
Her words sounded cliché but the feeling behind them was real and etched with suffering.
“I will.”
CHAPTER 34
“Elizabeth? Please come in here for a moment, if you could. There is something I would like to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” I said.
I stepped into Sister Ruth’s office. She closed the door and led me to a sofa where we sat down.
“I have been meaning to thank you for all the work you’ve done around the abbey. I’ve talked to both Sister Charlotte and Father Étienne and they agree that you’ve been a good worker.”
“No problem,” I said, feeling like I knew where this was heading.
“The other thing that I want to speak to you about is the farmers market. There is a particular reason I scheduled you to help there.”
I looked at her and waited. She sat back.
“Elizabeth, what is it that you hope to take away from your time here?”
“As I’ve mentioned before, I am trying to find my way back to God.”
“And do you think you have been successful in that?”
“Not completely,” I said. “But I’m getting closer.”
“I’m going to be honest here, Elizabeth. I think it’s time that you make your way back into the world. That’s why I wanted you to assist the monks. Working in the city will help with that transition.”
I nodded. I knew this day would come. She went on.
“I think it’s for your own good. I believe you should stay a week longer, two more at most.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“And I know you’ll be just that. Fine. But if you should need any further assistance, we have a list of organizations that can help young people such as yourself get back on their feet. I’ll make sure to get you a brochure before you leave.”
She stood.
“I think this place has done me a world of good, Sister,” I said, getting up. “And it was very kind of you to allow me to stay for so long.”
She nodded and opened the door.
“You know, Elizabeth, many visitors don’t leave here with their faith completely restored, but they have cultivated the seeds from which it will grow as they return to their lives. And that’s what I can see in you. You are different from when you first came through our gates. You will find your faith again. I’m certain of it.”
I shook her hand and thanked her. As I wandered down the hall, it began to dawn on me. It was happening. I was moving on, moving away from this safe harbor I had found. I wondered where the road would lead me next.
CHAPTER 35
As I walked through the garden, I thought about leaving and what it meant. And then I thought about Nathaniel. Time was running out. I had to find a way of beating him.
I kept an eye on the old priest as I worked. He looked tired. He stayed underneath the large awning by the supply shack, sitting on a folding chair in the shade and staring out. We hadn’t even taken our usual stroll through the flowers, but I knew what needed to be done.
“Do you need anything?” I asked, about an hour into the shift.
“Non, non,” he said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “Je vais bien. Merci.”
It was a lot cooler than it had been all week and a nice breeze rolled through. There were some puffy clouds here and there, but it didn’t look or smell like rain. I grabbed some tools and headed to the roses, waving to Rebecca. She was over in the corner with her easel next to a large trellis.
The hours drifted by. It felt good to be working outside and I didn’t dwell on anything negative. I worked diligently pulling out weeds until I plucked the flowerbeds clean. Then I started watering the potted plants.
Rebecca was standing in front of her painting, chewing the end of her brush. A whiff of paint and turpentine blew in the air as I walked over to her.
“Hello, cher,” she said, tying the ribbon on her chin tighter after a gust left her straw hat akimbo. “You’ve been working so hard out here all day.”
“No, not really,” I said.
“Care to take a look?”
I stepped in front of the easel and my jaw almost dropped.
It was the face.
It was the same face of the ghost I had seen by the fountain that day and then later with the other ghosts in the graveyard. Her expression didn’t hold the slightest trace of anger, but it was definitely the dead woman I had been seeing. She wasn’t dressed the same either. In the picture, instead of that short skirt, she was wearing a long, draping robe, looking up with a saintly expression.
“Wow,” I managed to say. “It’s… really beautiful.”
“I don’t have the colors quite right yet on these leaves.” She pointed to the corner of the canvas. “My greens are too sallow. I’ll keep working at it, but after some lunch.”
“I thought I heard you say that you had to start over,” I said, still shocked.
“I did start over. All you see here is from the last couple days. I was painting Jesus over by the gardenias all week but could never get it right. And on top of that, I kept having the image of this woman in my head, although I tried to shut her out. I finally conceded. Poor, poor Jesus! I had to whitewash him and I’ve been praying for forgiveness ever since.”
I moved the hose down to the next pot and tried to smile, but I still felt more than a little jarred.
“Does that happen often?” I said. “Working on something and then going in a different direction?”
“Sometimes. You would think by now I would have learned that in the long run it’s better to follow divine inspiration instead of fighting it.”
“So who is she?”
“That’s a good question. I don’t know.”
“Where, uh, how did you get the idea for the face? I mean, did you just see her standing out here in the garden?”
“Oh, cher, of course not. I saw her in my mind’s eye, guided by the Almighty. Sometimes I’m moved by something that I cannot fully comprehend. But I do wish I knew who she was.”
“Well, you’ve done a beautiful job of rendering her, whoever she is.”
“Why, thank you,” she said. “I try. I better go grab some lunch now. Have yourself a blessed day.”
“You too,” I said.
I picked up the hose and finished watering, a fresh crop of goose bumps sprouting on my skin.
CHAPTER 36
When I got back to the bungalow, a light was flashing on my cell phone. I was just about to call Kate when it rang again.
“Hi, Kate!”
“Sista Kate can’t come to the phone right now, Mrs. Torrance,” a gravelly voice said. “RedRum! RedRum!”
I released the breath that caught in my lungs when I heard the familiar laughter and wheezing.
“David?” I said even though I knew full well it was him. “David Norton?”
“Well, it’s not the Easter Bunny, Abby Cra—. Oops, I mean, Renée Montagne.”
“Is Kate okay?” I said when he settled down. “I can’t imagine her letting you have her phone to call me.”
We each had a burner that we used only to make such calls.
“Relax your panties. She’s fine! She gave me this phone and told me to call you. We were heading out to dinner when she remembered that she needed something back at work and she said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be back in half an hour,’ and I said, ‘No way, I’m starving!’ And the next thing I know, she hands me the Bat Phone and says, ‘Go ahead and call her, Alfred.’ Well, except she didn’t actually call me Alfred. And I said, ‘I won’t bury another Batman. I won’t do it, Master Wayne. I won’t.’”
He said the last part in what I guessed was a Michael Caine accent.
“It’s great to hear your voice,” I said. “I can’t even remember the last time we talked.”
“It’s been far too long, Ab—” He stopped himself before saying Abby Craig, which must have taken all his strength. “I guess we sort of communicated on Facebook a few months ago, remember? You were David Janssen and I was Harrison Ford. We were so sly.”
It was when I had been in Denver. It was snowing outside and I had found a rundown internet café and was on the computer for hours. I had even Google mapped Bend and walked around downtown, around my neighborhood, and over to Ty’s house.
“Did you notice that the stories about you have died down?” David said. “And it’s all thanks to moi!”
I didn’t bother to point out that the reason my face was splashed across the nation for so many months was also in large part because of him and his well-intentioned but ill-advised very public campaign to clear my name.
“I appreciate that, David.”
“I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. Seriously. You try being me and not talking about something you’re dying to tell people. But now when I sit down with reporters, I lock my mouth on anything having to do with you and throw away the key. I’ve been so good! Although I almost slipped up with Brandon Rogers. You know Brandon Rogers, right?”
“No,” I said.
“He’s this reporter over on E! and he wears his Armani oh so well, with all those muscles and man parts bulging out everywhere. I said, ‘Brandon, I’ll do anything for you except talk about that.’ And I meant anything. That manhunk could have asked me to wash his car and I would have been like, ‘Where’s the soap, lover?’”
He broke out into wheezes again and I couldn’t help but join in. It must have been the first time in months that I laughed.
“It seems so long ago now when we used to talk like this late at night,” I said. “And I was helping you work through something or you were helping me. It’s funny now looking back at that. Then, I don’t think all our problems together amounted to—”
“A hill of beans?”
“I was going to say something else but, yeah, a hill of beans will do. A hill of coffee beans.”
“Bestie, I want you to know that I’m still doing my best over on this end to set you free,” he said. “We’re going to get you back home. Our team is on it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We have the best criminal defense attorney on the planet and a notable PI, and they both love my show by the way, but the important thing is they’re going to find a way to prove your innocence. Each day brings us closer, Ab—”
He stopped himself again and I could almost smell the burning tires on the pavement. I knew he and Kate must have been spending a lot of money on this. I didn’t want to tell them not to. But for me, I just couldn’t see it. In a million years, how could anybody possibly prove that I didn’t kill a man when someone saw me kneeling over his still-warm body holding the murder weapon?
“Okay,” he said, letting out a loud breath. “I promised your, ah, sibling that we’d only talk for ten minutes, so I’m setting the timer right now.”
“But we’ve already been on for almost that long.”
“That doesn’t count,” he said. “We were warming up. We’re out of practice.”
I heard a ticking in the background as I slipped out of my shoes and looked out the window.
“Kate said you have a few new movies lined up this year.”
“We’ll get to that. First I want to know how you are,” he said, lowering his voice. “You sound good, so I’m guessing you’re not stuck in that horrible chile field Kate told me about.”
“Yeah, I’m in a good place now. But c’mon, really, give me some juice.”
David put up a fake fight but then spilled some behind-the-scenes gossip having to do with his show and also told me about his agent negotiating a huge raise for him.
“That’s awesome, David. I’m so happy for you. I really am.”
David Norton had done it. He was living the dream.
“You wanted this and you made it happen,” I said. “It almost makes me think that impossible things are possible.”
“They are, Abby Craig, they are,” he said, letting it slip. “And they will happen for you too. Seriously, they will. You need to believe that.”
I heard the timer, but I didn’t care.
“Don’t go yet,” I said. “How’s…”
I heard my voice break.
“How’s Ty doing?”
There was a long pause.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth or should I just lie?”
My heart dropped hard like a watermelon falling off the back of a truck.
“Is he bad?”
“Girlfriend, you were the love of his life. He’s not good, I’ll tell you that much. But I think he’s getting better. Man, if Sista Kate knew I was telling you…”
“Telling me what?”
“Well, really, there’s not much to tell. Except that…”
“Except what?”
“He’s gone, Abby Craig. He’s back in Montana.”
I didn’t know why it hurt hearing that, but it did.
“He’s been in bad shape since you left. I mean, beyond bad shape. He even managed to get himself fired.”
“From 10 Barrel? Why? How?”
“Well, I think they came to some sort of agreement at the end. But he was blowing them off, not showing up for work days at a time because of his drinking. Jeez, I don’t even do that. But don’t worry. Your sister helped him and got him some movers and packed up his stuff and put him on a plane.”
“Kate sent him back to Montana?”
“She thought that a change would do him good. You know, to get away from a place where everything reminded him of you.”
I heard a moan coming from the scar tissue in my chest.
“He’ll be okay,” David said. “I think it’s good for him to be around his people. You know, those cowboys are always so depressed, singing about the one that got away and smoke rings and the wrong boots under the wrong beds. He’s where he can heal.”
David was trying to sound upbeat, but there was a sadness in his voice, like he had lost another friend.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I mean it. I wanted to know.”
“We just need to clear your name and get you back home. And then you and me will go after that cowboy and throw a rope around him and bring him back too. It’ll all work out. I know it.”
I didn’t think that was true, but I liked how there was one person in the world who believed it.
“Okay, David. We better hang up now.”
“Keep hope alive, Abby Craig!”
I said goodbye and threw the phone on the bed.
And then I let the tears flow.
CHAPTER 37
As I headed over to dinner I noticed that there were a lot of new faces coming out of the bungalows and it reminded me of what Sister Ruth had said. That my days here were numbered. We were called guests and visitors for a reason and I knew that it was important not to overstay the welcome, even if I wasn’t quite ready to go.
I heard Rebecca’s voi
ce streaming from a sea of gray hair in front of me. She was still talking about her painting to anyone who would listen, saying how it would soon be hanging in the chapel.
I was still thinking about the news that Ty had gone back to Montana. His family could help him get through this and part of me was glad about it, but it still brought it home with a finality that cut me to the bone. It was over. We were over.
Suddenly I saw a young hawk circling high above the abbey and for some reason it lifted my spirits. I thought about how lucky I was to have had these two great loves of my life. Jesse and Ty. I lot of people never even had one. Whatever happened, whatever fate waited for me around the bend, at that moment I was eternally thankful for that. I had already lived a full life. It was important not to be greedy.
I smiled up at the sky. It wasn’t a forced smile.
CHAPTER 38
Just before walking in, I saw the cat and gave him a little pet on the head. He was waiting by the door, poised and ready for his friend to bring out his evening snack. But Father Carmichael wasn’t at dinner. I sat alone until Anna came in. She got her bowl of stew and brought it over, sitting two seats away from me.
She gave me a silent nod of the head that reminded me of Mo, the way she always used to greet me when I walked into work. I wondered what Mo was up to, how her music was going and if she was still seeing Officer Mulrooney, and in that moment I missed her terribly, knowing full well the feeling was most likely not mutual.
“Hey, Anna,” I said. “It’s good to see you here.”
She glanced over.
“Well, Sister Ruth said I should start coming to dinner. She said I should try and be part of the community or something lame like that. So, here I am.”
I saved a little piece of bread for the cat. Anna played with her food and didn’t say too much. I sipped the last of the apple juice out of the carton and started to get up.
“Thanks for stopping by the other night,” she said. “I was wrong. Talking actually did help a little.”
“It helped me too. I went back and finally fell asleep.”
Forty-Four Book Twelve (44 series 12) Page 8
