Salvage (34 page)

"Secondary drowning, the doctors said," his mother was saying. "They were able to save you, by some miracle. The dam was proposed near about the same time; I suppose Everett must have made a connection between the two. Thinking perhaps it wasn't God's Will that saved you, but Man's intervention, and maybe you were
meant
to have drowned that day. That maybe God was testing him, like He'd tested Job and Abraham. That if he'd sacrificed you, if he'd
drowned
you, in the same water that would soon come to destroy his church, that God would spare it. Of course it was insane. Muddy thinking."

"Jo thinks—" He corrected himself with a morose glance up the stairs toward her bedroom, where her remains cooled and stiffened on the bedspread. "Jo
thought
the same thing. She thought he was schizophrenic."

"She always was smart as a whip, that Jo. In any case, I don't think he could have gone through with it. I don't think so. But I wasn't about to give him the chance to change his mind."

"Why didn't the others see it? Couldn't you have rallied them against him?"

"By that point, he'd built up their passion to a fever pitch. He'd passed on his delusions to the rest of us, like he was passing on a cold. We
yearned
for confrontation. I know that now. Having to defend your beliefs only makes them stronger. We weren't chaining ourselves to trees to stop some men in bulldozers, like your sister might've done. We were standing in front of a
tidal wave
, praying for a trickle." She chuckled softly, laughing at her own blindness. "It wasn't even all that difficult to convince them to do it, either. And once you've been convinced of such insanity, it's often harder to turn back than to see the madness through to the end. Turning back doesn't just mean you were
wrong
, it means you were
duped
. You have to admit you've been a fool, and that's difficult for most people to do."

"Where was Brother Woodrow during all this?"

"Oh, he was there with Everett. He was always there, whispering in his ear. Like Rasputin."

"So he died with Crouch."

"If it's true your father died down there, Woodrow died with him, I've no doubt of that." She fell silent. The mechanical hiss filled it.

"So why did we leave that day? Why didn't you stay, if you thought there'd be a miracle?"

"Because
I never believed
," she said.

"You didn't?"

"I transcribed every one of Everett's tapes myself. If nothing else, it gave me a front row seat to his machinations. I saw what he was doing somewhere along the line, the only thing I didn't know was whether he'd been doing it
purposefully
or not. Was it the man, or the sickness? Your father used to say, 'Every man has two selves—"

"'—the man who is, and the man he's meant to be,'" Owen finished for her.

"Precisely. Perhaps if I'd understood he'd meant it
literally
, I could have done more for him. For
them
. I suppose that's my cross to bear. I loved those people, and I loved
him
, in spite of it. He was your father, my husband. In sickness and in health, I'd made those vows. There were moments of tenderness, when I'd find it difficult to remember the bad times. I still love him dearly, as crazy as it sounds."

"Love
is
crazy," he said, thinking of Jo, of the easy way they'd fallen into step with each other. "Did he—" He found himself swallowing back tears at the thought. "Mom, do you think he ever loved me?"

"Owen," she said, her tone reproachful. "
Of course
he loved you. He was your
father
."

"So was Gerald."

"And he loved you too, in his way. He always said you reminded him of himself when he was young. So stubborn and impulsive."

"
Gerald
said that?"

"Mm-hmm."

It wasn't exactly a compliment, but maybe he hadn't given Gerald the chance he'd needed to be a father figure. Maybe he'd shut Gerald out because of the way Crouch had abandoned them, which in the end had turned out to be untrue. "You know, I think that's the first time I've heard you say something nice about him," Owen remarked.

"Gerald was sick too, in his way," she said wearily. "I hadn't the strength to see him through it. I'd already tried to save one husband. You know now how that turned out. I certainly wasn't ready to try it again."

"I don't blame you."

"I spent years waiting for the man Everett meant himself to be to step into the light. But the other man had taken him over, and he was ugly, Owen. The Devil wears many faces. Often it's a face you know too well. Still, I'm not sure I would have had the courage to go if not for Howard. He was the angel on my shoulder. He was our lawyer—"

"I know."

"Did he tell you I used to work for him? I was his legal secretary before I met Everett."

"He never said that, no."

"He didn't like me going to that church, and he sure didn't like me getting close to Everett. He tried to argue me out of making a 'life-altering decision,' as he called it, but I was just as stubborn as your father. As you are. I suppose when he saw he couldn't beat me, he joined me. He joined
us
. He was there for all the picnics and the sermons and the squabbling, but he never believed in Everett, not like the rest of them. He helped us as far as he could with the legal troubles, after what people in town started referring to as the Schism—what your father called the Purification—but I could tell his heart wasn't in it.

"He hadn't gone to a sermon in over a year when he came back one Sunday and sat himself down in the back row. Your father was reciting his speech about you, the one in which God told him to sacrifice his firstborn son to save the church, and Howard stood up and called him a liar. The whole church, there wasn't much left of us by then, but we all turned around to gawk. He was drunk as a skunk and swaying on his feet. He called your father a fraud, a wolf in sheep's clothing, and told the rest of us we were following Everett straight to Hell."

"Wow."

"He'd stood idly by, he said, but he couldn't do it any longer, and anyone who wanted to leave could come with him right then and never look back. 'Like Lot from Sodom,' he said, and that got Everett going, I think. Your father said, 'Nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.' And Howard made a raspberry, thumbing his nose at all of us, I think, and stumbled outside."

"Nobody followed him?"

"Not right then. But I could tell the Dunsmuirs were considering it, because when he said the thing about Sodom, they hugged Little Joelle up tight, and the next Sunday Joan was too sick to attend, and the Sunday after that they had to visit their dying aunt in the town named after Edam's family.

"After the incident in the church, Howard got drunker and drunker, stewing in booze and his own embarrassment. He resigned, he never said another word to me until the night before the valley was to be flooded, when he crept up to the back door. Your father was going back and forth with Woodrow in his office upstairs. It was cold that night, it'd been a crisp fall day and the trees were just about bare, but I wouldn't let Howard inside, and I'm not sure he would have come in if I'd asked him.

"He was drunk, slurring his words, but they struck me as clearly as if they'd been spoken by God Himself. 'Don't do it for me,' he said, 'don't do it for either of us. Do it for the boy. That church is nothing but death, Maggie,' he said. 'The boy is
life
.' And he was right, Owen. All the arguments we've had over the years, all the screaming and pushing back at each other,
you gave me life
. Without you and your sister to care for, I might as well have locked myself in that church with the rest of them."

A flood of emotion overcame him. Tears welled in his eyes, and he let them fall.

"I love you, too, Mom," he said. He heard his mother's sob on the other end, and she blew her nose loudly, not bothering to muffle it. After some sniffling on both ends of the line, Owen said, "Howard told me to tell you he still does, whatever that means."

Margaret sniffled again, cleared her throat. "Howard used to say he wished you were his son, instead of Everett's."

"He did?"

"He loved you like his own. You don't remember?"

No matter how much he learned, he still remembered so little of what had come before. "No," he said. He remembered what Howard had said in the hospital about his relationship with her being strictly platonic, at the behest of his mom. "Did he love you, do you think?"

"Howard?" She sounded taken aback. "Oh, goodness, no! I mean, I don't
think
so. He certainly never indicated anything to me…." A brief pause. "I suppose he
could
have. Why do you ask? Did he say something to you?"

"Never mind, Mom," he said. "I love you. Don't come up here, okay? I'll be back soon."

She promised she wouldn't.

2

Owen headed out to the car in the dark. He'd cleaned up his blood, pouring bleach onto the stains and daubing them with paper towels, wiping his blood from the bathroom door and the tiles by the toilet, feeling guilty and ashamed, as if he were cleaning up evidence of a crime. In a way, he supposed he should feel guilty. If not for him, Jo would still be alive. If not for him, a lot of good people would still be among the living.

"Not my fault," he assured himself, and thought,
Original sin. Blame the child for the crimes of his parents
.

He was sitting in the driver's seat with the engine started, a trash bag of bloodied rags thrown into the back, before he noticed the slip of paper on the passenger seat. It was heavy paper ripped from a book, recycled and textured like cloth—the same paper from Lori's journal. He unfolded it.

Take her home, Owen.

Take her to the lake.

Scrawled in Lori's hand. He stared at the words on the page until they blurred. "She
knew
," he said. Then he shook his head, blinked hard, and read the note again. "No. It's not possible."

But he held the evidence in his hand. Somehow Lori had written about Jo's death, and Jo had torn it out of the journal and left it on the seat for him to find, almost as if the two of them had known she would die here today.

Coincidence
, he thought.
If she'd made it, she would have folded this up and tucked it away for tomorrow, or the next day
.

Owen peered back at the darkened house.

He'd left Jo on her bed, not knowing what to do about her. He'd considered calling the police, but even without his blood, evidence of him having been there was all over that house; he'd touched just about everything—especially Jo. He thought about burying her in the yard, but since she'd been ready to sell, she obviously hadn't wanted to spend the rest of her life there, let alone eternity. He'd struggled over the decision for a long time before electing to leave her there, just for the night. Until he'd laid Crouch and the Blessed Trinity to rest once and for all.

Now, the choice was clear: he had to bring her to the lake.

And hand her over to Crouch? You've gotta be crazy.

What other choice is there?

His shadow stretched out long and gauzy before him under the fat, bright moon, leading the way to the house, which seemed to sigh as he opened the front door. He'd turned off all the lights on his way out. Lit by the moon, long shadows drew across the living room. The refrigerator ticked and rattled in the kitchen. He felt along the wall for the switch, and flicked it on, expecting Crouch and the Blessed Trinity to be standing in his way, but the house was empty.

He padded up the steps to the back room. Jo still lay exactly where he'd left her. Some part of him had expected to find her sitting in front of the vanity by the window, peering at him in the mirror, to be sitting on the edge of the bed, patting the bedspread with a sly grin. He wasn't sure if in these fantasies he'd thought of her as dead or still living; in either case, the thought was morbid.

Not that what he was about to do wasn't equally gruesome, though he supposed undertakers did it several times each day. He slipped his hands under her arms and hoisted her up, so that, to an outsider, it might look as if they'd been dancing and she'd passed out drunk or exhausted in his arms. She was dry now, and still smelled clean, her hair slightly fruity under his nose. Decay hadn't yet begun, and he was grateful for that. If it had, he didn't think he could manage what needed to be done. He wondered idly how long it would take, and supposed she'd be in the lake long before the worst of it began.

Getting her down the stairs took a bit of work, but he managed it without hitting her head on anything, or tripping over her dangling legs. He remembered once having to carry Allison up to bed after she'd had too much to drink; the feeling was remarkably similar, enough that he could easily imagine Jo was just sleeping.

"'Do not weep,'" Owen grunted, while the toes of Jo's bare feet dragged along the hall floor toward the front door, "'for she is not dead but sleeping.'"

The minister had recited this phrase from The Gospel of Luke at Lori's funeral. Owen thought he understood it now. It wouldn't bring her back to him, it didn't diminish the pain of his loss, but he recognized the need for a sense that this life was not the end, that there was more to us than flesh and blood and breath. He felt Jo with him, not the dead woman in his arms but the fiery spirit she'd been. He felt her as a presence very close by, not in his mind but in his heart.
He felt her with him
.

Owen hoisted Jo's lifeless remains onto a knee, to open the front door, and flicked off the living room lights. Out on the porch, with Jo resting in the patio swing, he took one last look at the darkened house, feeling suddenly and desperately alone. Her spirit, her soul, whatever it was he'd felt inside had left him. Just the cool night breeze now, and the trees, and a lonely, unhappy man with a dead woman sitting awkwardly on a patio swing.