The Dark Divine (8 page)

“Maryanne Duke,” he said. “I was delivering Thanksgiving packages for Dad to all the widows. Maryanne was my last delivery. And there she was, sprawled on her porch.” Jude’s face splotched with red. “One of the paramedics said she must have fainted with weakness while leaving her house.

“Dad called Maryanne’s daughter in Milwaukee. She’s mad. She said it was Dad’s fault. Said that he should have taken better care of Maryanne, that he should have made her go to the doctor.” Jude wiped at his nose. “People expect him to work miracles. But how can you work miracles in a world where an old woman lay on her porch for over twenty-four hours and nobody stopped?” Lines furrowed around his eyes. “She was frozen, Grace. Frozen.”

“What?” Maryanne lived in Oak Park. It wasn’t nearly as bad as where Daniel was staying, but it was definitely a less desirable area. My head felt like I’d been standing over an open bottle of oil solvent too long. How many people could have passed her by? “She has a lot of potted plants on her porch, and with the railing … that’s probably why nobody found her.” At least that’s what I wanted to believe.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” Jude said. “Something
had
found her. Some animal or something … some
scavenger. She had all these gashes on her legs. And her throat, it was open all the way to her esophagus. I thought that’s what had killed her, but the paramedics said she’d been dead and cold for a long time before it happened. There was no blood.”

“What?” I gasped. My dog, Daisy, jagged through my mind. Her little throat ripped open. I pushed the thought down with my rising stomach. I couldn’t let myself picture Maryanne the same way.

“Angela Duke said it was Dad’s fault, but it wasn’t.” Jude bowed his head. “It was mine.”

“How could any of this possibly be your fault?”

“I told her that if she’d gone to the doctor, then she would be able to sing in the program. I made her feel guilty.” Tears welled in his eyes. “When I found her, she was wearing her green Sunday dress and that hat with the peacock feather she always wears when she sings.” Jude burrowed his forehead into my shoulder. “She was trying to make it to the church. She was trying to sing her solo.” His body lurched against mine, and he began to sob.

The world spun even faster. I couldn’t believe I’d been singing while an old woman I’d known all my life was dying in the cold—alone. My legs gave out. I sank to the ground. Jude came with me. I sat in the middle of the driveway and held my brother’s head to my shoulder. He sobbed and sobbed. I rubbed my hand up and down his back and thought of the only other time we
had held each other like that. Only I was the one who’d needed comforting then.

FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO

It was a hot May night. I’d opened my window before bed and was awakened by echoing voices around two in the morning. Even now, when I can’t sleep, I still hear those voices—like phantom whispers on the night wind.

My bedroom was on north end of the house—the side facing Daniel’s home. His window must have been open, too. The shouting got louder. I heard a crash and the sounds of ripping canvas. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stay put. I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin until I did something. So I went to the one person I knew I could rely on most.

“Jude, are you awake?” I peeked into his room.

“Yes.” He sat on the edge of his bed.

Jude’s room was the one next to mine at the time—before my parents turned it into a nursery for James. Those horrible voices wafted in through his open window. They weren’t as loud as they had been in my room, but they were just as chilling. My parents’ bedroom was on the far south side of the house. If their window wasn’t open, they probably wouldn’t hear a thing.

“We have to do something,” I whispered. “I think Daniel’s father hits him.”

“He does worse,” Jude said quietly. “Daniel told me.”

I sat next to Jude on the bed. “Then we have to help him.”

“Daniel made me blood-brother swear I wouldn’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“But that’s a secret, and secrets are wrong. We have to tell.”

“But
I
can’t,” Jude said. “I promised.”

A vicious roar erupted in the background, followed by the loud cracking of splintering wood. I heard a muffled plea cut off by a horrible smacking sound—like the noise the mallet made when my mom pounded out meat on the kitchen counter.

Six hard smacks and a thundering crash, and then it fell silent. So silent I wanted to scream just to break it. Then there was this tiny sound—a whimpering, doglike cry.

I clutched at Jude’s arm and leaned my head on his shoulder. He brushed his hand through my tangled hair.

“Then
I’ll
tell,” I said. “So you don’t have to.” Jude held me until I had enough courage to wake my parents.

Daniel’s father split before the police arrived. But
my
father persuaded the judge to let Daniel stay with us while his mother figured things out. Daniel was with us for weeks, then months, and then a little over a year. But even though his fractured skull healed
miraculously fast, he never seemed the same to me. Sometimes he was happier than I’d ever seen him, and then other times I would catch this pointed look in his eyes when he was with Jude—like he knew my brother had broken his trust.

DINNER

I sat at the table and ate dinner by myself for the first time in ages. Jude said he wasn’t hungry and went down to the basement, Charity was in her room, James had already gone to bed, and Mom and Dad were in the study with the double doors pulled closed. As I picked at my plate of reheated macaroni casserole and beef Stroganoff, I suddenly felt smug toward Daniel, like I was glad he was wrong about my perfect family dinners. Then I knew thinking that was wrong. I shouldn’t want bad things to happen to my family, just to prove something to Daniel. Why should he make me feel guilty or stupid for having a family that wanted to eat together and talk about our lives?

But tonight, it was too quiet to eat. I scraped my leftovers down the disposal and went to bed. I lay there for a while until those phantom voices found their way into my head. But then I realized the loud tones came from my own home. My parents were shouting at each other down in the study. They weren’t violent shouts, but angry and annoyed. Mom and Dad occasionally
disagreed and argued, but I had never heard them
fight
before. Dad’s voice was low enough that I could hear his despair, but I couldn’t understand his words. Mom’s voice got louder, angrier, sarcastic.

“Maybe you’re right,” she yelled. “Maybe it is your fault. Maybe you brought this on all of us. And while we’re at it, why don’t we add global warming to the list? Maybe that’s your fault, too.”

I got up and closed my door all the way, slipped back under the covers, and pulled a pillow over my head.

TUESDAY MORNING

Dad usually went jogging early in the morning, but I didn’t hear him go out while I was getting ready for school. The light was on in his study as I passed the closed doors on my way to the kitchen. I almost knocked but decided against it.

“You’re up early,” Mom said as she shoveled a stack of chocolate chip pancakes onto my plate. She’d already made two dozen of them even though none of us—except Dad—usually made our way down to breakfast for another thirty minutes. “I hope you slept well.”

Yeah, with a pillow over my head
.

“I have a meeting with Mr. Barlow this morning.”

“Mm-hmm,” Mom said. She was busy wiping down the already glistening counter. Her loafers reflected in the sheen on the linoleum floor. Mom had a tendency
to get a little OCD when she was stressed. The harder things were for the family, the more she tried to make things sparkle. Like everything was perfectly perfect.

I poked my finger into one of the melting chocolate chips that formed a symmetrical smiling face in my pancake. Mom normally only made her “celebration pancakes” for special occasions. I wondered if she was trying to soften the blow for a discussion about Maryanne—prep us for one of Dad’s sermons about how death is a natural part of life and all. That is, until I saw the look of guilt in her eyes when she placed a glass of orange juice in front of me. The pancakes were a peace offering for her fight with Dad last night.

“Fresh squeezed.” Mom wrung her apron in her hands. “Or would you rather have cranberry? Or maybe white grape?”

“This is fine,” I mumbled, and took a sip.

She frowned.

“It’s great,” I said. “I love fresh squeezed.”

I knew right then that Dad wasn’t coming out of his study this morning. We weren’t going to talk about what happened to Maryanne. And Mom certainly wasn’t going to talk about their fight, either.

Last night Daniel had made me feel guilty for having a family that sat around the dinner table and discussed our lives. But now I realized that we never actually talked about anything that was a problem in
our home. It’s why the rest of my family never mentioned Daniel’s name or discussed what happened the night he disappeared—no matter how many times I’d asked. Talking would be admitting that there was something wrong.

Mom smiled. It looked as syrupy and fake as the imitation maple drizzled on my breakfast. She flitted back to the stove and turned over a couple of pancakes. Her face fell into a frown again, and she dumped the barely over-browned batch into the trash. She still wore the same blouse and slacks from yesterday under her apron. Her fingers were red and chapped from hours of cleaning. This was perfection overdrive, big-time.

I wanted to ask Mom why she would hide her fight with Dad by making ten pounds of pancakes, but Charity came stumbling into the room.

“What smells so good?” she yawned.

“Pancakes!” Mom shooed Charity into a seat with her spatula and presented her with a heaping plate. “There’s maple syrup, boysenberry, whipped cream, and raspberry jam.”

“Awesome.” Charity dug into a container of whipped cream with her fork. “You’re the best, Mom.” Charity gulped down her pancakes and went for seconds. She didn’t seem to notice Mom practically scrubbing a hole into the skillet.

Charity grabbed the raspberry jam and then froze.
Her eyes suddenly seemed glossy, like she was about to cry. The jar slipped out of her fingers and rolled across the table. I caught it just as it went over the edge.

I looked at the label:
FROM THE KITCHEN OF MARYANNE DUKE
.

“It’s okay,” I said, and put my hand on Charity’s shoulder.

“I forgot …,” Charity said softly. “I forgot that it wasn’t a dream.” She pushed her plate away and got up from the table.

“I was just about to start some fried eggs,” Mom said as Charity left the room.

I looked down at my plate. My smiling breakfast stared up at me and I didn’t know if I could stomach any more. I took another sip of my orange juice. It tasted sour. I knew I could convince Jude to give me an early ride to school, but I didn’t want to stick around and watch my mother’s display of perfection start all over again when he came down for breakfast. I wrapped a couple of pancakes in a napkin and got up from the table. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ll eat on the way.”