by Jodi Picoult
It turned out he'd never kept that appointment with the psychiatrist.
"You tell me," she said, "why I'm supposed to believe you now."
Ross looked off into the distance, his eyes fixed on a poster urging people to donate organs. He began to tell her a story, then, of a woman who had disappeared. Frightened . . . fragile . . . beautiful . . . curious: Ross balanced adjective upon adjective to form a friable house of cards that might collapse at any moment; and suddenly this Lia Beaumont might have been standing between them, shaking and unsure.
One word snagged in Shelby's mind. "Married?" she repeated.
"She's terrified of him."
"Ross--"
He shook his head. "It's not like that," he said. Shelby knew he was lying; she just wasn't certain if Ross realized it, too. "I'm worried about her. She has nowhere to go. She wants out, but she can't find her way there. I think . . . I think she might try to kill herself."
How do you like it? she thought, but before she could speak she noticed her brother's face. It was an expression she knew so well--one she had worn a thousand times, every time she looked up and saw the sun, or stared at Ethan's seasoned, sleeping face. It was an expression she had seen Ross wear, after his suicide attempt. Sometimes, when you come up against a wall of reality, there simply is not a way to get around it. He has fallen in love with her, Shelby thought, and that's not going to change a thing.
Her voice rocked him gently. "Ross, you can't save them all."
He reared back as if Shelby had slapped him again. "Just once," he said softly. "Just once would be nice." Staggering to his feet, he ran out of the hospital and as far away from this memory as he could.
The sun swallowed his uncle up, like the fiery breath of a dragon, the moment he raced out of the sliding-glass doors. Ethan kicked the bottom of his chair, which made the whole row shake, since they were attached. His mother sat beside him, her face buried in her hands, like she did when they watched Friday the 13th and she couldn't bear to see someone hacked into pieces. "What's with Uncle Ross?" Ethan said. "If that lady isn't in the hospital, isn't that a good thing?"
His mother blinked. "You were listening."
"Duh. I was, like, two feet away."
His mother sighed, and Ethan knew she was doing the math in her head: how old he was, chronologically, multiplied by how old he was, emotionally, divided by some standard number for childhood innocence. "One time he tried to save someone's life, and he wound up losing something very important to him." She tightened her hold on his hand. "You know Uncle Ross was in a car accident with the woman he was going to marry. Ross was the person who was hurt the least, and he carried Aimee out of the car to the side of the road. But the other car, the one that hit them--there was a driver still stuck in there. He left Aimee while he went to see if that person was all right."
"And she died," Ethan breathed, the last puzzle piece fitting snug in his mind.
"Mmm-hmm. Aimee didn't look that bad on the outside, which is why Uncle Ross thought it was okay to leave her alone for a second--but inside, her organs? They were bleeding badly. She was taken to the hospital, but the doctors couldn't do anything."
"Like me," Ethan said simply. His mother turned her face away.
He swung his legs a little, made the row of seats move again. "Mom, would Aimee have gotten better if Uncle Ross had stayed with her?"
"No, honey."
"Does he know that?"
"I think so."
Ethan thought about this for a second. "But her dying-- it wasn't his fault."
His mother stared at him the way she did every now and then, as if she were going to be given a pop quiz on his features. "Sometimes that doesn't make a difference," she said.
Lucy slept a lot. Sometimes she dreamed that she was sleeping, and she could see herself lying on the bed. Sometimes she dreamed that she was being chased, but her legs didn't move fast enough anymore. Once, she imagined that a giant had eaten her, and she curled up right in a cavity in his back molar where she slept and slept and slept.
She still screamed in her sleep, but her throat was too tired to let it out.
Every now and then a voice would slice like a knife. Her mother, begging her to get up and eat a little something. Granny Ruby, remarking on how much better Lucy looked now, couldn't everyone see the roses in her cheeks? She heard them from a distance. She had fallen down a well and was doing a backfloat, staring up at the sun.
Faces were printed on the backs of her eyelids: her mother, Granny Ruby, and the lady who came. The one who had been hanging from the tree, the one who stood by the edge of her bed and sat with her, now, on the couch, so close that Lucy's feet were freezing.
It was this woman, Lucy realized, who was supposed to be gone now. But since she'd started on the medicine, the woman was more clear than ever--the blue scan of her skin and the way sadness got stuck in the corners of her eyes, like little bits of sleep. She wasn't as scary to Lucy anymore. In fact, it was like she knew. She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.
It was the first time Eli could remember being called in on a reverse vandalism charge. But Rod van Vleet had called dispatch, complaining that the demolished house was being rebuilt, somehow. Overnight, the frame of the whole downstairs had been erected again. Clearly, he said, it was the Abenaki. He wanted the Comtosook police to catch them in the act.
Eli glanced over at Watson, who apparently believed that the chemicals in dog saliva might dissolve the passenger-seat window if applied liberally. They had already been to the campsite where the Abenaki were staying. With the exception of Az Thompson, everyone had been fast asleep. Yet moments later, as he and Watson stepped onto the Pike property, he could easily see why van Vleet was concerned: inside the temporary safety fencing, the demolished house seemed to be knitting itself back together.
Beside him, Watson whined and backed away. "Scaredy-dog," Eli murmured, and he pushed down the wire fence so that he could step over it. The reconstruction reminded him of shattered bones--support beams and roof joists healing in a way that wasn't quite right, but that managed to bear the weight all the same. More interesting, though, was the fact that the house had gone past the framing stage. Plaster had been haphazardly smoothed into the downstairs walls. In some places, clapboards were already hanging. It would have taken an entire building crew weeks to accomplish this; for it to have happened overnight was impossible.
Eli moved carefully over the rubble and shattered glass, and Watson, gathering courage, followed. There were no front steps yet, so he had to climb into the open doorway. Eli shined his flashlight around, assessing. Inside, patches of Sheetrock were missing and doorways were not square, but this structure was solid and standing. He could smell fresh paint.
"If the Indians did this," Eli said softly to Watson, "I'll eat my hat. Which, come to think of it, would taste better than most of the stuff in our fridge." He crept carefully into each room, unsure if the splintered floors would hold him. When he rattled the banister on the stairs, it tumbled to the ground. Steps shifted beneath his boots; Eli bent down to see that they had not yet been nailed into permanence.
The second floor of the old Pike house was less complete. One whole wall opened out onto the night; the roof was a blanket of stars. Only two rooms seemed to be finished--a large bedroom off at the end of the hall, and the bathroom beside it. Eli's feet crushed tufts of plaster and glass as he walked, and he glanced at Watson, worried for the dog's safety.
The sound of running water drew his attention, and Eli turned toward the bathroom. He thought back to last night's dream. His woman, again. This time she was opening a door. She wore a white bathrobe and had a blue towel twisted over her hair, as if she'd just gotten out of the shower. She had been looking at him like he had all the answers.
Watson hunkered down on his belly and began to whimper. Then he turned tail and flew down the stairs, loose boards scattering in his wake. "Some K
-9 unit you are," Eli murmured, edging his way into the bathroom. The rush of water grew louder, although a sweep with his flashlight revealed no fixtures and no pipes. When the beam reflected into his eyes, Eli squinted, then moved closer to find a mirror mounted on the wall. It was a miracle that something this fragile had survived the wrecking ball, given that so much glass was ground up in the soles of his shoes. The surface was foggy, and he touched it gently with his forefinger, expecting to clear a spot . . . yet nothing happened. Had he not known better, he would have thought the mirror had steamed up from the inside out.
As Eli held the flashlight a little closer to see how the mirror was attached to the wall, the haze cleared in the shape of two hands, prints rising from behind the glass. Eli had his gun drawn immediately, pointed--where? At the wall? The mirror? How could you beat an enemy you couldn't see?
He could taste his heart. The hands pressed harder on the reverse side of the mirror. Then, right to left, backward, a finger drew letters through the steam. H-E-L-P.
"Holy shit," Eli breathed, and then suddenly the mirror was wiped clear before his eyes, showing him his panic. He backed out of the bathroom, scrambling down the unsteady staircase toward Watson. With the dog at his heels, Eli jumped out of the open doorway. He had just hurdled the temporary fencing around the structure when the house suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree, so bright that Eli turned, struck by the incongruous beauty of a beacon in the middle of the woods.
All this, in a building where there had not been electricity for twenty years.
Ross could smell death. It lingered in the halls, cloaked in the scent of ammonia and bed linens and chalky pills. It peeked at him from around the corner. He wondered if the residents who came through the nursing home's door ever looked back, knowing they would not be leaving.
He had come here today, intent on throwing himself into research in the hopes that it might edge thoughts of Lia from his mind. In a week's time he had not seen her; had not heard from her. Instead, he received an endless stream of calls from Rod van Vleet. Did Ross know that the Pike house was putting itself back together? That a cop had actually filed a report saying that all the lights had turned on inside--when there were no power lines?
Ross was a firm believer that you could not force circumstance. You could buckle your seat belt, but still crash the car. You could throw yourself in front of an oncoming train, but somehow survive. You could wait for years to find a ghost, and then have one sneak up on you when you were too busy falling in love with a woman to pay attention. To that end, he made the conscious decision to stop waiting for Lia. When he least expected her, that was when she would show up.
He had come to the nursing home unannounced because he didn't know if Spencer Pike would agree to see him. And now that he sat across from the old man, Ross felt pity for him. The only animated part of Pike were his eyes, a blue that snapped smart as a flag. The rest of him was weathered, twisted like the roots of a tree forced to grow in too small a space.
"Screw the cinnamon raisin," Spencer Pike said.
"I'm sorry?"
"It's a lousy excuse for a bagel. You ask me, not that anyone has, damn it, a bagel isn't supposed to be sweet. It's like a sandwich, for the love of God. Does anyone put jelly on their ham and cheese?" He leaned forward. "You work for van Vleet; you can tell him I said so."
"Technically I don't work for the Redhook Group," Ross said.
"You in insurance?"
"No."
"A lawyer?"
"No."
"You own a bagel chain?"
"Uh, no."
Pike shrugged. "Well, two out of three. What do you want to know?"
"I understand that the land was originally your wife's . . . that it transferred to you upon her death, because you didn't have children."
"That's wrong."
Ross looked up from his notepad. "That's the information in her will."
"Well, it's still wrong. Cissy and I had a baby, but it was stillborn."
"I'm sorry."
Pike smoothed his hands over the blanket on his lap. "It was a long, long time ago."
"The reason I'm here, Mr. Pike, is to see if you know the history of the land before you acquired it."
"It was in my wife's family. Passed down from mother to daughter for several generations."
"Did the land ever belong to the Abenaki?"
Pike turned slowly. "The who?"
"The Native Americans who've been protesting the development of the property."
"I know who they are!" Pike's face grew red as a beet, and he began to cough. A nurse came over, gave Ross a dirty look, and spoke in low tones to Spencer Pike until his breathing had steadied. "They can't give you any proof it's a burial ground, can they?"
"Certain . . . circumstances," Ross said carefully, "have led to the opinion that the property might be haunted."
"Oh, it's haunted all right. But not by any Indians. My wife died on that property," Pike said, the words deep and ragged.
The stillborn; the untimely death of Cissy Pike; the possibility of a restless spirit--it was coming together for Ross. "In childbirth?"
Pike shook his head. "She was murdered. By an Abenaki."
During her lunch break Shelby took a five-minute walk from the library to the Gas & Grocery, where she usually picked up a sandwich. But these days, thanks to the New York Times article, the little general store was swamped by reporters trying to get their own story of the land dispute that, quite literally, would not settle. She took one look at Abe Huppinworth, nictitating at her from the porch as he swept the ever-present array of rose petals, and abruptly turned in the other direction.
She found herself walking into the municipal building before she even realized where she was headed. Lottie, the town clerk, sat at her desk with a diet book. "I just don't get it," she said, glancing up. "They say eleven units, like I'm supposed to eat a condominium."
Lottie, who had weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds the whole time Shelby had been living in Comtosook, closed the book and picked up a celery stick. "You know who invented vegetables, Shelby? The devil." She took a bite. "I ought to know better than to start a diet when I'm already in a bad mood."
"Those reporters bugging you?"
"They're in here sniffing around for God knows what. I finally ran off photocopies of the Pike property's deed this morning, so I wouldn't have to be interrupted." She shook her head. "I imagine it's worse for you."
Shelby shrugged. "We unplug the phone."
"I wish they would go away. I wish it would all go away. Myrt Clooney told me how Wally LaFleur's parrot started singing Edith Piaf ballads, just like that. The coffeemaker, here at the office? We can't get it to brew anything but lemonade." She smiled suddenly at Shelby. "You didn't come here to listen to a fat old lady moan. What can I do for you?"
Ten minutes later, under the pretense of finding a fact for a library patron, Shelby was sitting in the basement of the office, surrounded by boxes of town records. They were rubber-banded by year, but not in order--stacks of yellowed cards chronicling the births and deaths of Comtosook residents from 1877 to the present.
Ross had not asked for her help. Maybe that was why she was here--since their confrontation at the hospital he'd gone out of his way to avoid her, but with a politesse that felt like a knife being twisted: a note left on the counter saying he would be back between 4 and 5 A.M.; a gallon of milk set in the refrigerator to replace the one he had finished. The conversations they were not having had slipped under the carpeting, making it impossible to walk through the house without fear of tripping. Shelby wished she were brave enough to sit her baby brother down, to say, Can't you see I'm only doing this out of love? She was too afraid, though, that he might say the same thing in return.
What she wanted for him was one lucky break to turn the tide and send him swimming back to her. But since she could not find the way to tell Ross that she was sorry for doubting him, she would hand him this information, i
n case it might be apology enough.
The box of deaths from 1930 had survived a flood in the late fifties, and many were so faded with watermarks that Shelby could not read the names of the deceased, much less anything else about their states of affairs. The bottom of the carton was lined with an old Town Annual Report, published along with a calendar for the year 1966. "Comtosook," she read off the cover, "derives from the Abenaki word kodtozik, or 'what is hidden,' referring no doubt to the wealth of granite found in the depths of Angel Quarry."
No doubt, Shelby thought.
She dug a little deeper and came up with the stack of deaths from 1932. These weren't as badly stained, but the rubber band was so brittle it broke off in her hand. The cards spilled across her lap, smelling faintly of sulfur and pressed flowers. Shelby began to scan through them quickly. BERTEL-MAN, ADA. MONROE, RAWLENE. QUINCY, OLIVE.
Two cards were stuck together; Shelby noticed this at nearly the same time she realized that they both were labeled PIKE. The first was a death certificate for an unnamed stillborn infant, 37 weeks. Approximate time of death: 11:32 A.M. Glued onto the back of this was another death certificate, for Mrs. Spencer Pike. Time of death: 11:32 A.M.
Shelby shivered in spite of the heat in the basement. It was not just that this woman, this Mrs. Spencer Pike, who had died when she was only eighteen, had never lived to hold her baby. It was not even that this baby had never drawn a single breath. It had to do with the fixative that had cemented these cards together for so many years. Shelby was no expert, but it could only be blood.
Ruby Weber did not like to admit it, but she was getting old. She told everyone she was seventy-seven, although she was really eighty-three. Her hips moved like rusty hinges, her eyes clouded up when she least expected. Worst of all, she fell asleep in the middle of sentences sometimes, nodding off like, well, an old lady. One of these days she would just fall asleep, she supposed, and forget to wake up.
