The Man, The Moon And The Marriage Vow

by Christine Rimmer

  Feeling like the coward he knew he was, Erik looked away from Pete—and saw Becca, sitting curled up in Evie’s favorite chair, clutching the stuffed toy she called Chippy. Becca was sucking her thumb, something he hadn’t seen her do since right after Carolyn died.

  “Becca, your thumb,” he said sternly.

  She’d been sucking so hard that it made a popping sound when she pulled it out of her mouth. She tucked it under her chin, as if she was going to stick it right back in the minute he stopped looking her way.

  “Dad. Where’s Evie?” Pete demanded again.

  “Yeah.” Jenny joined in. “We don’t understand. She would never just leave without telling us.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Pete said. “Something bad’s happened, hasn’t it?”

  Erik looked from one child to another and wondered if he was going to live through this—and much worse than that, if his children would.

  “Dad?” Now Jenny sounded as if she might cry.

  And Becca’s thumb was back in her mouth. She sucked on it furiously.

  Erik sank to the couch. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. He sent a wordless prayer to heaven for the right way to deal with this.

  And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up. His son was standing over him. “Just tell us what happened, Dad. Just tell us like it is.” Pete sat beside him, very close. Jenny, who’d been sitting a few feet away, scooted near on his other side. And Becca slid off Evie’s chair and came to sit in his lap.

  Erik took his son’s advice. He told the facts he knew as simply as possible, about how Evie had disappeared yesterday afternoon from her shop and how he’d just been to the sheriff’s station to fill out a missing person’s report. He left out the stuff about Gideon Jones and the ugly possibility that Evie might have been kidnapped. That was all only speculation anyway, and not something they needed to know at this point.

  When he was done, Jenny’s eyes were teary-bright and Becca looked as if she might suck that thumb of hers right off, but at least they knew what was going on. They weren’t much more in the dark than he was.

  Erik spent the rest of the day with them, helping Pete with his homework on the computer, giving Jenny some ideas for an art project at school and holding Becca in his lap as much as he could. All day, the phone kept ringing, people wanting to know if Evie had shown up yet. He and Darla told everyone that they’d call them the minute they had news.

  They ate dinner at six, and were cleaning up the dishes when there was a knock at the door.

  Erik went to answer. He pulled back the door to find Nellie standing there, her thin face grim and determined in the spill of light from the room behind him.

  Nellie didn’t bother with any how-do-you-do’s. “I hear no one has learned where she’s gone.”

  Erik just shook his head.

  “You look terrible, Erik.” Nellie’s tone came perilously close to being gentle.

  “Grandma Nellie!” With a little cry, Becca slipped around her father and reached out her arms.

  Nellie scooped her up and hugged her close.

  “Evie’s missing, Grandma,” Becca said against Nellie’s neck. “Come in my house. Read me a story.”

  Erik stepped back and Nellie carried Becca over the threshold. Darla came in from the kitchen, to see who it was. The two women looked at each other over Becca’s blond head.

  Then Darla said, “If you can stay, Nellie, I’ll just finish the dishes and go on home now.”

  “Absolutely,” Nellie said. “I’ll visit with the children awhile, and see that they get tucked into bed.”

  A few hours later, when Nellie came downstairs after putting the kids to bed, she joined Erik in the kitchen.

  He was sitting at the table, trying to read a weekly newsmagazine when she came in. He set the magazine aside and looked up at her, thinking how strange life was sometimes. Here he was after all this time, alone with the woman who had hated him for just about the same number of years as Evie had been running from that terrible father of hers.

  Nellie approached nervously. “Mind if I sit down?”

  He gestured at a chair.

  She pulled it out and sat. He waited, not knowing what to say himself, but trying to be receptive, in case she wanted to talk.

  When she remained silent, he reached for his magazine again.

  She spoke then. “Erik?”

  He left the magazine where it lay. “Yeah?”

  “Could you tell me…what has happened to her?”

  He felt a headache coming on, behind his eyes. “We don’t know for sure.”

  “Could you tell me what you do know?”

  He looked at Nellie probingly. She was noted for her gossipy ways. Whatever he told her could be all over town within twenty-four hours.

  She seemed to realize the direction of his thoughts. “Yes, Erik. I do love to talk. But in this case, I will guard my tongue. As God is my witness, I promise you.”

  For some reason, he believed her. “All right,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

  He rose and went to the cupboard where a bottle of aspirin waited. He shook two into his hand and washed them down with tap water.

  “Erik?” Nellie said from behind him, as he set his empty glass on the drain board.

  “Hmm?” He turned to look at her.

  “You’re a good man.” Her voice sounded strange and tight, as if the words hurt coming out.

  Erik said, “Thank you,” because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He understood that things were going to be all right between him and Nellie from now on. It didn’t mean as much as it should have, not without Evie there to see it happening.

  Erik took his seat once more and began to tell Nellie everything he and the others had pieced together.

  After he’d told her what he knew, Nellie seemed reluctant to leave. She got up and made hot chocolate for the two of them and they sat in silence together for a time.

  At last, after midnight, she went home, saying she’d check with Darla tomorrow, and take her turn with the Riggins women in helping out around the house.

  It was after one when Erik finally closed himself into his studio again. He was tempted, the minute he’d shut the door, to look at the portrait he’d turned to the wall. He longed to stare into her eyes again, even if they were only painted eyes.

  But he didn’t do it. He might break down and sob like a baby if he did it. He couldn’t afford to waste his energy in tears.

  So he went to the cramped couch beneath the windows and stretched out as best he could. From there, he could see the painting of the mountain meadow. He stared at it a while, finding that it kind of relaxed him, to look at it, to pretend he was lying there, with Evie, among the wildflowers.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It happened again, as it had the night before.

  Erik woke in the meadow, with Evie. He was still holding the bunch of wildflowers he’d been picking one by one. He stared at the flowers.

  “Erik?” she said. “Please. Look at me.”

  Though he knew it would hurt, he did it; he raised his eyes. And there she was. Achingly beautiful, her skin like cream, her hair shining with red lights in the sun.

  He cursed the rules of this cruel dream. Here, he couldn’t reach out and put his hands on her, feel the softness of her, pull her close and know her sweet breath against his skin.

  “Oh, Erik.” She put out a hand.

  He pulled back, remembering what had to be done here. “Tell me about that ‘fatal’ accident you had.”

  “Yes. I will.”

  “Well, then?”

  “All right. But I want you to know first—”

  “What?”

  “That I know I was wrong. I know I should have told you everything. But we had so much. I couldn’t bear to risk it.”

  He dropped the flowers to the ground. “So you lied.”

  She was silent then, her gaze cast down at the fallen bouquet.

  “I want t
he truth now, Evie.” His tone was cruel. But she couldn’t blame him for that. He had to be cruel. Certain things must be said. And who could know how much time she would have to say them?

  In the dark room, her fever raged while a madman kept watch…

  “Tell me the rest,” Erik commanded.

  “All right. I will. Where was I?”

  “A public swimming pool, you said.”

  She tucked her legs to the side and leaned on an arm, remembering. And then she began.

  “It was hot. A sweltering July day in L.A. Nevada had scraped together enough change to take us swimming. We all three went, in the pitiful bathing suits that Faith had managed to get us from a Goodwill store. The pool was crowded. It seemed like there was hardly room to get in a stroke or two before you ran into someone else. But we didn’t care. The water felt so wonderful. We paddled around, laughing, saying ‘Excuse me’ to strangers every few seconds. It was a pretty big pool. I was doing my best imitation of a breaststroke, in the deep end. And somebody jumped off the diving board and kicked me in the head—or at least that’s what we decided later must have happened.”

  “You were hurt?”

  “Knocked out cold. There were so many kids, though, that the lifeguard didn’t see I was in trouble for several minutes. They pulled me out, tried to get me breathing again. But I was dead. My heart had stopped. The lifeguard said, ‘I can’t get a pulse. My God, she’s dead.’ I heard it from far away, not with my ears. Like I was above the whole thing, looking down.

  “And then Nevada shoved the lifeguard out of the way. She grabbed me and shook me and screamed at me not to leave. That we were all together, sisters. We’d lost our mom, and we had to stick together. We needed each other. ‘Please, Evie,’ she was crying. ‘Evie, don’t leave us. Evie, come back!’ And then Faith was there, too, sobbing and saying the same things. And…I couldn’t stay above them anymore.

  “The next thing I remember, I was throwing up on the concrete on the side of the pool.”

  “So you lived?”

  “I guess. Or…maybe I came back to life. And brought a few things with me.”

  “Like?”

  “Like after that, I started…to know things other people didn’t know. See things other people didn’t see. And I could sometimes make people feel better, by touching them. And my father…”

  “Your father what?”

  “He caught on right away that these abilities I had could be useful. He’d always been a con artist. And he started teaching me things, like how to really observe people, to make them think I could read their minds, even the times I couldn’t. Within two years after the accident, he was taking out ads in tabloid newspapers. He billed me as a “psychic locator.’ He’d give a post office box where people in need—that was how he put it—could write. And then he’d find out the ones who had money to spend.”

  “And did you help these people?”

  “Sometimes. My…abilities were never too dependable. I picked up random impressions, like visions, more than anything else. And the problem was always how to interpret what I’d seen.”

  “You’re saying you made mistakes at times, is that it?”

  “Yes. And people got hurt. People paid their money and got their hopes up and…I would let them down. I got to hate myself for that, over the years. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

  “What was?”

  “I, umm…”

  “Come on, Evie, don’t give up now. Tell it all.”

  She looked at him again, and he felt that she was taking in the whole of him, gaining what strength she could from the sight of him. “Yes. Yes, I do want to. I want you to know.”

  “And I’m listening. Tell me.”

  She made herself speak. “At first, my father let me tell the clients whatever I could pick up. He’d set up a sort of séance room in whatever hotel we were living in. He’d turn the lights low and have me pretend I was in a trance. And whatever I came up with, that was that.

  “But then, sometimes, I’d pick up things that he didn’t like. Things that would make the client mad—or worse, make him decide there was no point in paying any more money. By then, my father had caught on that a lot of desperate people can be milked for a lot of money, over time, if you can string them along effectively.”

  “So he started to make you lie about what you saw?”

  She bent her head. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “He forbade me to tell anything I saw, until I’d told it all to him first and he’d decided which parts of it to use. So the séances really became nothing more than performances. They were all preplanned, according to what he wanted the client to know. That was when things got so awful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I…sometimes I saw things those people had a right to know. Once, there was this little girl. She’d been missing for weeks and the police had gotten nowhere. Finally, her poor, desperate parents resorted to us. I touched her mother, trying to open myself, to pick up what I could. And I…” The words wouldn’t come.

  “Come on, Evie,” Erik whispered low.

  His voice seemed to give her just enough will to finish it. “…I saw the little girl. I saw her dead, buried in a shallow grave. I opened my mouth to say it, to tell them. And my father must have seen that something he wasn’t going to like was on its way out of my mouth. He dragged me back against him and clapped a hand over my lips. And he pressed it there, hard, holding my arms against my sides so I couldn’t move. He spoke really calmly to them, saying that sometimes I had these little fits. He’d get in touch with them real soon, the minute I was feeling up to taking on the psychic forces once again.”

  Evie reached out and took up one of the lupins Erik had dropped. She brought it to her nose. “Funny,” she said. “It has no scent.”

  He let her have a moment more before prompting, “What happened then?”

  She touched the purple cluster of blossoms, just a breath of a touch. “After they left, I told my father what I’d seen. I begged him to let me tell them. He said no. They had lots of money. They were good for a long run. That’s how he said it, a long run. He reminded me how my sisters counted on me, how things were good for all of us, since he’d dug up this talent for fortune-telling I had.”

  “And what did you do?”

  The confession came out in whisper. “I did what he wanted.”

  He felt her pain, then. And he understood. Everything. “Hell. Evie.”

  She looked across the crown of the lupin at him, blinking back tears. “Don’t be kind. I don’t deserve kindness. We strung those people along for months. Till the police finally found what was left of the little girl. Buried in a shallow grave.”

  He reached out a hand. She ducked back from it and went on.

  “I was thirteen then. For five more years, I went on doing what he wanted. Both Nevada and Faith got old enough to go out on their own. But they stayed, they took the abuse he heaped on them—he never had much use for them—for my sake. And then, when I was eighteen, and old enough that legally he had no power over me, we ran away. All three of us. Late one night.”

  “And you’ve been running ever since.”

  She met his eyes then. “No. Not after I came to North Magdalene. From then on, I didn’t run anymore.” She stood then, and gestured widely. “But refusing to run has had its price. It’s cost me everything. And maybe, after the way I let my gifts be used all those years ago, I deserve to lose everything. I deserve to go missing. Forever. Like that poor little girl.”

  “Evie…”

  But she was vanishing, as the meadow was vanishing. For a moment, he saw black-painted brick walls, a narrow bed, a huddled form.

  And then the dream faded to nothing at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jack found Erik at the town hall late Monday afternoon. Erik was doing the window and door trim of the downstairs meeting room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jack come in.

  He laid his
brush across the open can of paint and straightened to his full height. “Well?”

  “A couple of things. First, we’ve dusted the postcard for prints.”

  “And?”

  “The only usable ones we found were a thumb and a forefinger. Both were my father’s.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. We called Faith and got a description of Gideon, so the report we put out now says to look for Evie in company with a man matching her father’s description.”

  “Good. What about the DMV checks?”

  “We ran them. Came up with zero.”

  Erik felt hollow inside at that news. “I see.”

  “And as far as dusting the store for prints…”

  “What?”

  “I can’t get Pangborn to give me an okay on that right now.” Pangborn was the sheriff.

  “Why not?”

  “We got nothing on Gideon. We ran a check to see if he’d ever been arrested. Nothing at all. We couldn’t find him anywhere. If he’s ever been fingerprinted, it wasn’t under the name Gideon Jones. There are bound to be prints from a lot of people in that store. To try to run a check on every print we got would cost major bucks. Pangborn’s not willing to authorize an expense like that at this point, when we have no prints of Gideon’s to follow up on anyway.”

  Erik wondered if the news could possibly get any grimmer. With a sigh, he pulled off his cap and gave it a slap against his paint-spattered white overalls.

  “Look,” Jack said. “Why don’t you lock up the store? Don’t let anyone in there for a few days. Maybe some new piece of evidence will turn up, and I can talk Pangborn into dusting for prints in there after all.”

  Erik thought of the store, so empty now that Evie wasn’t there to make it come alive. Locking it up and forgetting about it for a while would be just fine with him. “Sure.”

  “Erik, I…”

  He put his cap back on. “Thanks, Jack. You’ve done all you could. And I…I should get back to work now.”

  Jack opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Yeah. I suppose so.” He turned and went out the way he had come.

  Erik picked up his brush again and doggedly returned to his task. All he wanted to do was get through the day somehow. Then he could go home, go through the motions of the evening—dinner, and a little time with the kids.