Noah drove up Route 11 to the only place that he would’ve gone in the same circumstances, the only spot on earth where he’d want to diffuse anger or heartbreak. A short drive later he found Rachel standing atop the Woodstock Tower.
He didn’t know what to expect when he ascended the final flight of stairs and stepped onto the tower’s silver platform. Stephanie had appeared inconsolable. Rachel, however, looked calm and cool, reserved, measured. He circled around her and stood face to face.
“You all right?” he asked.
Rachel was chewing on the corner of her lower lip. Under other circumstances he would have mentioned how adorable he thought it was. “Rach? You want to talk about it?”
She took a deep breath, and for an instant Noah was sure she had something to say. But the words never came. She resumed chewing on her lip and stepped away from him toward the rail. Her eyes studied something in the distance.
Noah remained where he stood and watched her from behind. It was growing dark and he wondered just how far into the valley she could really see in the blue-gray dusk. He let another minute pass and then stepped up at her side. “You two had a fight, I can guess. I hope it wasn’t about the wedding.”
No reply.
“Whatever is wrong, whatever this is all about, it might be easier if you let me help you.”
Nothing.
“You know that I love you. You also know that the greatest moment of my life will be marrying the woman I love, at the place I love, in the valley I love. We’re family, Rachel. Or we’re almost family, anyway. And this is what families do. No matter how hard it is, this is why we’re here for one another.”
Rachel began to shake her head left and right, but it wasn’t obvious to Noah whether she was responding to him in some way or to her own thoughts. He stayed quiet and waited for another cue. When it didn’t come, he leaned in and kissed her on the side of her head. Then he took a few steps backward, sat on the platform with his back against the opposite side. Then he waited.
Noah felt like an hour had passed before Rachel began shaking her head again at the night sky. “Family?” she said, looking up. “This is what a family does? I don’t even know what that means. Family. My mother is a liar.” Her eyes went to the ground below and after several breaths, she continued. “Daniel is a liar, too. And my real father—the one who brought me into the world? Who knows? At least he never lied. I mean maybe, even with all his problems, maybe he was really the most normal of any of the adults in my life. And now he’s dead?”
Noah rose but held himself in the distance. He inched back against the rail and held the top bar, fighting every instinct to pull her in and lift whatever heavy weight would make it all go away. “What do you mean?”
“Dead, Noah. Dead. He’s gone.”
“I thought he had—” Noah breathed and rewound. “I thought he left.”
“So did I.”
“How? What happened?”
“Killed. Killed by my mother’s hands.”
Noah could tell Rachel’s shoulders were beginning to quiver and he stepped forward to put his hands on them.
“I should go back, shouldn’t I? Should I go back?” The words tumbled out awkwardly in stifled breaths. “I should go back. I should ask.” The words were nearly unintelligible.
Noah struggled to catch his breath. “Rachel . . . I’m . . .”
Chapter 26
Noah left his father’s vehicle on the mountain and drove them back to Domus Jefferson in his own truck. Rachel said little on the drive except for the words, “No matter what she says, I will not stay there tonight.”
Noah took her hand. “When it’s over, I’ll get your bag and you can stay at A&P’s. All right?”
“Mm-hmm.” They rode on, the only sound coming when Rachel rolled down her window and stuck her hand into the rushing wind.
They arrived at the Inn, and Noah turned off the truck. After a few more moments of quiet, Rachel put her hand on the door handle and said, “I’m ready.”
Noah led her to the Inn and had her wait in a rocker on the porch. “Right back,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.”
Noah found the family gathered in the dining room. “Could I talk to dad and Aunt Sam alone?”
When the others cleared, Noah asked Samantha and his father to sit. “Where’s Stephanie?”
“Upstairs,” Samantha said. “Last time Rain checked on her, she was still a wreck, circled up in a ball, refusing to talk.”
“How’s Rachel?” Malcolm asked. “Where is she?”
Noah set his phone on the table in front of him and spun it in a circle with his index finger. “We’ve got a problem.”
The look from Samantha to her brother said, I told you.
“Rachel’s mom unloaded some stuff tonight. I guess the wedding and Rachel wanting her dad to be there, all of it pretty much triggered the avalanche, you know?”
“No, son, we don’t. What avalanche?”
Noah spun the phone again. “Do you think you can get Stephanie down here? Rachel needs to hear some things.”
“You’re talking in circles, son.”
Noah looked at him. “Rachel has always lived with the idea that her real dad was alive somewhere. Rachel thought he just couldn’t handle it all so he left them and started over. I guess he was pretty rough on them sometimes. They fought a lot and whatever. But she’s gotten postcards from him, one or two a year since she was a kid.” At once Noah realized Stephanie could still be awake, and he knew from growing up in the home how easily voices and secrets traveled from one room to another.
Noah leaned over and said quietly, “Her mother came clean tonight that he’s dead.” He looked at the door and turned down the volume even more. “I think she killed him.”
“What?” Samantha and Malcolm said in unison.
Noah looked again at the door separating the dining room from the living room, as if expecting Stephanie to burst through it before he was ready. “Can you get her down here?”
Malcolm eased away from the table and stood, but Samantha stopped him. “Let me.”
During the five minutes before the storm, Malcolm took two Excedrin at the kitchen sink, said a prayer, and let the others know the Inn was off-limits for the time being.
Noah invited Rachel in from the porch and poured her a glass of milk at the table. “Need anything else, Rach?”
Samantha appeared through the door before she could answer.
“Well,” Noah said, “how did—”
Stephanie followed a step behind. Her eyes were red and puffy, her cheeks raw, her hair a tangled mess of bottle blonde. She forced a painful smile at Rachel but didn’t seem to notice anyone else in the room. Samantha pulled out a chair and Stephanie sat.
“Rachel,” Samantha began. “Mrs. Kaplan wants to talk and I think I should sit here with you, would that be OK?”
Rachel nodded.
“And how about my brother and Noah? Would it be all right if they stayed with us, too?”
She nodded again.
“Mrs. Kaplan, you know I’m the Shenandoah County sheriff. I have no jurisdiction and there is no warrant for you here or anywhere else, as far as I know. So you don’t need to be afraid to tell us whatever you’d like to. If I feel I should make a call, based on my duty in law enforcement, then I will. But this is just us having a conversation, OK?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why don’t you tell us why your daughter is so upset.”
Stephanie looked at Rachel and began, her voice thin and constricted. “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen, Rachel. When you said you wanted your father to be at the wedding, your wedding, I lost myself. I just . . .”
Stephanie turned to Samantha. “I’ve always wanted to tell her. I have. I’ve meant to, and I would have before the wedding, I swear I would have. But it just . . . It just happened tonight. Maybe it was right . . .” Stephanie wiped her eyes but found them dry.
“Go on,” Samantha said.
“You have a right to be upset, Rachel,” Stephanie continued. “You do. All these years of wondering. The lies, so many of them.” She looked at Noah. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. You know I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Noah had never experienced the odd nervous energy bursting from his veins. He held Rachel’s hands in his and had to remind himself not to squeeze too hard.
Stephanie looked back at her daughter across the table and let the others slide into the background of the Inn. “Your father was complex, Rachel. He loved with passion, and he lived with passion. He had days—weeks, really—when he was kind and so controlled. I loved him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and put her mouth against a forearm. “I loved him. Of course I loved him, I married him because I loved him. He was good. And I don’t know why he changed sometimes, I don’t know what happened inside him, but he would change. We would return from an errand or a walk and he’d explode inside the house. Cursing and breaking things. He made lists of the things I did wrong. Long lists. If I burned a meal or forgot to wash a shirt or forgot to reorganize his tool belt, he would sit at the kitchen table and make his list. If I asked him why he was late, he would make a list. If I wouldn’t give myself to him, he would make a list. Lists, lists, lists. Always counting and reading and keeping score.” She paused and studied the backs of her hands. “I don’t know why he did it. He just did. He just did.”
Stephanie began to cough and Malcolm brought her a bottle of water from the kitchen. She thanked him with a broken smile, torn at the edges and tired.
“I tried to make it work. Obviously I tried. But you had seen so much, hadn’t you, dear? So much you probably don’t even remember, or want to remember. You were so young, too young for those things, weren’t you, dear? Sometimes you hid in a closet by the front door. Sometimes I sent you to the neighbors. Do you remember Alan Richardson? He lived across the hall. He was a nice old man and worked odd hours. Do you remember him?”
Rachel glanced up at Noah and shook her head.
“I don’t know if the other neighbors heard; no one ever said. But he did. Mr. Richardson always heard.” Stephanie took a drink of water and fumbled putting the lid back on.
“It was a Monday. You got on the bus in front of the apartment complex. You were in the first grade with . . . What was her name? Ms. Tinka? Such a nice lady.” Stephanie began to peel off the bottle label.
“You got on the bus and I watched you sit by the window on my side so I could wave good-bye. You always did that. You always sat on the same side so we could wave. Then the bus drove off to the other stop on the other side of the complex. That was that. I went back inside and your father had his tool belt on the table. He was mumbling to himself about being late for the job site. He didn’t want to be late, he said. He couldn’t be late. I stood at the sink and tried to ignore him. I figured it would pass, it always passed, somehow, and I knew he didn’t have time for a knockdown, so I just stood at the sink and rinsed clean dishes from the dish rack.”
Stephanie stopped picking at the label and left it half-dangling from the bottle. Awkward seconds ticked by like ants marching out of order until Samantha reached over and patted Stephanie’s arm. “You’re doing great.”
“I rinsed your cereal bowl over and over, listening to him behind me at the table sorting through his tools and cursing me. Then he slammed something—a hammer, I think; I don’t know—he slammed it hard on the table and shouted at me to get him a piece of paper for his list. I turned around and said, ‘But you’ll be late, dear. I’ll do it later. I promise I’ll do it for you later.’”
“He stood up and threw his chair behind him. ‘You didn’t organize my tools, Stephanie. Why didn’t you organize my tools, Stephanie?’ I kept telling him that I had. I’d done just as he asked. I’d straightened them like I did every night. I know I had. They were exactly where they belonged. Then he slammed the table with both his fists so hard the tool belt popped into the air. ‘Then who? Then who? Then who?’ he screamed at me. ‘Was it Rachel? Was Rachel in my tools?’”
Stephanie had Kleenex in each hand, clenching and gesturing with them, eyes fixed on her daughter. “I told him I didn’t know. I said I hadn’t seen her in his tools. I said she was a good girl. She wouldn’t do something like that. But he was convinced. He was sure she’d played with them and he threatened to teach her a lesson. ‘That little thing will pay,’ he said. ‘She’ll pay to me and the devil. Where is she? Is she at school? When is she home? When does she get home, Stephanie? What time? Will she be late, too, Stephanie?’ I just covered my head and cried. I couldn’t stop crying. He threw his tool belt against the wall. ‘Where’s my paper? Where’s my list?’”
Rachel put her head on the dining room table and Noah, not knowing what else to do, cradled it with his hands.
Without warning Stephanie pushed herself away from the table and stood. She circled the table and knelt at Rachel’s side. “He picked up a wrench off the floor and threw it at me. Then he got on his knees and lunged for a screwdriver. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled at him. ‘It was me. Me. Rachel didn’t move your things, it was me!’ But he got up and came at me and chased me around the table screaming and calling you a liar and telling me how we’d both pay. I tripped on a table leg and fell into the refrigerator. He jumped on top of me and I reached for the only thing I could feel on the floor.”
Rachel’s breathing was quick, and under the table she pushed two nervous clenched fists together.
Stephanie stood and began rapidly tapping on the table with her knuckles. She looked at Samantha and let the words tumble between them. “It was a flashlight. I hit him in the head with it. He was stunned, so I hit him once more. Then I jumped up and hit him again. It was so heavy and the sound bounced around that tiny kitchen. I struck him five times or ten or more until blood came out of his ear . . . until . . . He stopped.” Stephanie ran out of breath and sputtered, “He just stopped.” Then she lost her balance and fell back into the glass doors of the china cabinet.
Samantha and Malcolm leapt to catch her and guide her to the floor. She leaned against the cabinet and put her head in her hands.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel.” She gripped onto two dry tissues. “But he’s not looking at me anymore. He’s not talking. He’s not breathing.”
“It’s OK, Stephanie,” Samantha said.
“He’s not anything.”
Chapter 27
Rachel wanted to ask questions, but none would come. She could only sit and relive the day her mother described. She still tasted the confusion at being picked up from school, the race out of town in her mother’s rusty car, the snack machine at the motel where they slept that night.
When she felt steady enough to stand, she lifted her head from the table and left the room. She walked with her arms folded to hide the quivering.
Noah retrieved her bag and caught up with her halfway to A&P’s. She was, of course, honored to host Rachel for the evening and had tea brewing for all three of them before the couple could even say thank you.
“One night, two nights—whatever you need, Rachel. You’re always welcome here,” A&P said.
They sat in A&P’s large, lodge-style living room with exposed, thick wooden beams and lodgepole pine furniture. Rachel sipped her tea and eventually relaxed enough to kick off her shoes and slide back into the soft cushions. A&P described the history of her home, how she found it, and why she ended up in the valley to begin with. She stopped when it became clear Rachel wasn’t listening anymore.
“Would you like to talk, dear? I’m an excellent listener.”
Rachel took another sip and set the mug down on a cork coaster on the coffee table. She looked at Noah, but her eyes drifted to photos on the wall over his shoulder. “I feel like I’ve been stabbed.”
She looked at A&P, crossed her legs, pulled at her shorts, looked at Noah and tried to smile but could only shake her head. She looked back at A&P and pulled her feet onto the couch and hugged her legs.
A&P also put her mug down and sat up. “You want to talk?”
Rachel didn’t answer.
“Noah, sweetheart, maybe the two of us could be alone for just a little while. Just the girls.”
He shook his head. “No, I should stay. I should be here, Rachel.”
Rachel looked at him and touched his arm. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Go talk to your parents.”
“You’re sure? I think I should be here.” He looked at A&P. “I need to be here.”
“Just a spell,” A&P assured him.
Noah looked back to Rachel.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“Yes, we’ll be fine,” A&P said. “I’ll take good care.”
“Call or text, OK?” he said to Rachel. Then he kissed her on the cheek and mouthed a thank-you to A&P.
A&P locked the door behind Noah. She took his spot on the couch but kept a safe distance. Then she waited. She didn’t mind the silence.
Rachel rocked back and forth, still hugging her legs, still battling the distinct pain in her gut that only the razor edge of truth can deliver.
“I don’t understand,” she said, resting her head on her knees. “I just don’t understand why she did this. Why she did this, and why she lied for so long.” She began chewing on the corner of her lip. “What do I do now?” she said, and A&P remained, as promised, completely quiet. “What do I do? How do I talk to her? How do I trust that any of this is real?”
Rachel turned her head the opposite direction and felt tears beginning to whisper to her eyes. No tears for her, she thought. No tears.
A&P left the room and returned with a box of Kleenex. She took one for herself and set the box on the coffee table.
“I know he wasn’t a perfect man,” Rachel said to the empty side of the couch. “He wasn’t. And I was just a child, obviously just a child, but I saw things. I heard the words he used and the cold fights he had with her. But they didn’t last that long, did they? Didn’t he always warm to her after? Didn’t he always kiss her and clean up the mess?” She turned back to A&P, eyes dry, but her voice was beginning to waver.
The Wedding Letters Page 13
