The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (19 page)

twenty-nine

jolene

Jolene had been home
from the half-day workshop at school for only thirty minutes and was happily raking last year’s mulch out of the flower beds, enjoying the sun’s warmth on her bare shoulders, when the sound of a car pulling up at the curb made her turn. Her smile faded when Iris stepped out of the car. The sight of her former friend sent a toxic mix of guilt and anger pulsing through every blood vessel. When Rachel got out of the passenger’s seat, she puckered her brow and hurried toward the street.

She acknowledged Iris with a cool nod, and asked Rachel, “What’s wrong? I thought you’d already left for the concert.”

“Abby’s picking me up in half an hour. We’ll still be there in plenty of time.” Rachel clipped off the last word and gave Iris a beseeching look.

Jolene’s grip on the rake tightened. She looked from her daughter to Iris, confused.

When Rachel didn’t say anything more, Iris said, “Rachel has something she needs to tell you. Maybe we should sit down?”

Thoroughly worried now—What could Rachel have to say that involved Iris?—Jolene led the way around the house to the deck. “I just mopped,” she explained.

“This is fine.” Iris brushed a twig off the aluminum chair and sat. Jolene joined her, clasping her hands together on the table. Rachel remained standing. The air was uncharacteristically still for Colorado and Jolene heard the far-off drone of an airliner overhead.

“What is this about?” Jolene said in the voice she used to coax students into admitting plagiarism or other infractions, the voice that said she knew they really wanted to confess and atone.

“I … it’s about …” Rachel trailed off. “I can’t,” she told Iris.

Iris gave the girl an encouraging smile. “Rachel has a friend …” she started, and then paused, waiting for Rachel to leap in.

“Jenny. It’s about Jenny,” Rachel said. Then the story poured out of her, details about how her father beat Jenny, about her injuries, about Rachel trying to raise money to help her friend escape.

Jolene felt bombarded, shell-shocked, when Rachel fell silent, watching her anxiously. She couldn’t imagine mild-mannered Leland Naylor beating his children. Surely Rachel had gotten it wrong. Where had Rachel said she was getting money to give Jenny? Those details had been fuzzy. And why, oh why, had Rachel confided this story to Iris of all people? A hot, caustic feeling surged like bile in Jolene’s throat. Rachel was
her
daughter, not Iris’s. Iris had no right to her daughter’s confidences. She found herself gripping the edge of the patio table, the wood biting into her palm. Iris had put Rachel up to this, hoping to embarrass the Community somehow. Jolene thrust her chin out and said stiffly, “I’m not—”

Iris’s voice, soft, but with an undertone of warning, cut across what she was going to say. “You have to believe her.”

Jolene bit her lip, her gaze flying to Iris who leaned forward a little bit, opening herself to Jolene’s scrutiny. In Iris’s vulnerability, Jolene suddenly saw her friend trembling in the church twenty-three years ago, where she stood accused of lying. With her back to the altar, she had faced the Community, her features twisted with desperation as she searched for help from those who loved her, her gaze lighting on her parents, her brother, Jolene. Her face had gradually hardened in the jumpy candlelight, smoothed itself into blankness, as she realized she had been abandoned. Sacrificed. Jolene couldn’t stand the thought of her daughter’s face going all waxy like that, of her pupils shrinking to pinpricks so it looked like she had left herself. She reached for Rachel’s hand.

“You did the right thing telling me, honey,” she said. “It was very brave of you.”

“You believe me?”

The combination of hope and doubt in her daughter’s voice brought tears to Jolene’s eyes. “Of course I believe you,” she said strongly, willing at that moment to accuse Leland Naylor and anyone else in the Community of terrorism or devil worship if that’s what it took to reassure Rachel that she always and forever had her back. “We’ll talk to your father tonight and see what our next step should be. We’ll need to call the police.” The thought almost made Jolene hyperventilate—the Community members would be scandalized, disbelieving, and Esther would be furious, saying that such things should be handled within the Community—but if Rachel was right, they had a duty to protect Jenny and her siblings.

Rachel squeezed her hand hard enough to make Jolene wince.

“I guess my work here is done,” Iris said mock-seriously, pushing back from the table.

“Thank you,” Rachel said, flinging her arms around the taller woman. Jolene gasped at how much the affectionate gesture stung. When was the last time Rachel had hugged her like that?

The hug clearly took Iris by surprise and she stood stiffly for a moment, before hugging Rachel in return, her dark hair contrasting sharply with Rachel’s bright hair. “Happy to help,” she said, “although you did all the hard work. Just remember, no more of you-know-what.” She wagged a finger at Rachel.

“Thank you, Iris,” Jolene called as Iris rounded the corner of the house. She smiled at the uplifted hand she got in return, and then turned to Rachel. “What is ‘you-know-what’?” she asked.

thirty

iris

Iris drove away from
the Community, headed for the hospital, feeling something almost like affection for Rachel. Despite her errors in judgment, her heart was in the right place and she’d had the courage to do the right thing … with a little prompting. Jolene and Zach had done well with both their kids, she had to admit, the thought of Aaron making her wince. She had used him last night, like—The unspeakable thought that popped into her head made her swerve onto the verge. She guided the car back onto the road, a plume of dust streaming behind it, and let the thought re-enter her brain. She’d used him like Pastor Matt had used her. Her muscles clenched and she found it hard to breathe, her lungs shutting down like a faucet had been turned off.

A moment’s thought told her that she was over-reacting. She was not like Pastor Matt. Aaron, and all the young men she slept with, were legally adults, not vulnerable teens. She was not in a position of authority over them. Quite the contrary, actually; she was nothing to them. She breathed shallowly, testing her lungs, and then more deeply. She stilled owed Aaron an apology and she called him, leaving a voice message inviting him to breakfast the next day. Breakfast was a nice, safe meal with no sexual overtones, unlike dinner that looked ahead to darkness and beds. Iris pulled into the hospital parking lot, dismissing the idea that she owed any of her other sex partners apologies. She wasn’t entering some damn twelve-step program that would have her saying “I’m so sorry for having hot, mutually gratifying sex with you” to dozens of men around the country. Her celibacy, going cold turkey with sex, was about her, not about the men she’d slept with.

As if to contradict herself, she pulled out her phone and dialed.

“Lansing.”

The single word sent a spiral of warmth curling through her and it took her a moment to find her voice. “I’ve decided to be celibate.”

A long pause made her wonder, agonizingly, if he recognized her voice.

“Permanently?”

His humorous undertone, free of judgment, let her relax back against the seat with a small laugh. “Maybe.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Whatever you need, Iris.”

“Things are a little more complicated here than I anticipated, so it might be another week or two before I get back. Maybe we could get together, have dinner?” The beeping of a delivery van backing up cut through her last words.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good to know.”

“Thanks for calling.”

She swallowed around a lump in her throat. “Thanks for
answering.”

She hung up with a feeling of well-being, a fragile sense of connection, that entering the hospital obscured but didn’t destroy. Not giving herself time to re-think the visit, Iris hopped on the elevator and wound her way through the halls. She heard voices as she approached Pastor Matt’s room, and let them stop her short of his door. Deciding to retreat and return again another day, she was startled when a compact, lab-coated figure shot through the door and almost collided with her.

“Oh, so sorry,” the woman said, pushing black-rimmed glasses up her pointy nose. The nose made her look like a fox, an impression her henna-red hair, pulled back in a loose knot, reinforced. She had the muscled build of a gymnast and exuded an energy that suggested she mainlined caffeine. A gold chain made up of oval links thick as a pencil looked too heavy against her thin neck. “Dr. Valeria Shaull” was embroidered over the white coat’s pocket.

Thin brows arched up, wrinkling her forward as she studied Iris. “Have you come to visit Mr. Brozek? I don’t think I’ve seen you before?”

Her voice was enquiring, not suspicious, but a lie came immediately to Iris. “I’m his niece,” she said. “From Portland. I couldn’t get here before now. My job,” she said vaguely. “Uh, how’s he doing?”

Dr. Shaull nodded rapidly. “It’s a miracle,” she said, “a medical miracle. I can only think of two, three other cases in medical history of a patient emerging from a minimally responsive state like this after more than ten years. It’s mind-boggling how the brain sometimes heals itself, given time. Medical science can’t explain it. Not yet. It’s early days, of course, but we can already see huge improvements in his cognition and speech, although speech is still difficult for him and he sticks to short phrases and struggles to find the right words. He recognizes his children now, although of course he thinks it’s still 1991.”

“Of course,” Iris said, although she’d given the matter no thought.
How weird.
What must it be like to fall asleep in 1991 and wake up to a world with Internet, terrorism, cell phones, e-books, and who knew what other medical and scientific advances? The first Gulf War had barely happened when Pastor Matt fell into his coma, and Ronald Reagan was still alive. He’d never heard the name Monica Lewinsky or seen the Twin Towers collapse.

“Does he remember the attack?” Iris asked. If he did, maybe Pastor Matt’s testimony could free her father.

Dr. Shaull shook her head. “He suffered a lot of head trauma, including to the temporal lobe and the hippocampus. He appears to have no memory of the attack itself or the week preceding it. He may re-gain some of those memories as he heals, but he may not. Many of his other memories seem disjointed, non-sequential, or displaced in time, according to your cousins.”

It took Iris a moment to realize she was referring to Esther and Zach.

An orderly in striped scrubs wheeled an elderly woman past them, greeting Dr. Shaull. “Let’s see if he recognizes you,” Dr. Shaull said, startling Iris.

“I don’t think—”

The doctor re-entered the room, confident Iris was following. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to study the human brain, you know,” she said over her shoulder. “We’re doing MRIs, studies. For a neurologist like me, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. No, even rarer than that. Studying Mr. Brozek could do more to advance our knowledge of how the brain heals itself, re-wires itself, than decades of lab work. Mr. Brozek,” she said, “you’ve got a new visitor.” She beckoned impatiently at Iris.

Swallowing hard, Iris lifted a leaden foot and put it down on the threshold. Her body followed and she found herself staring into the
well-lighted space, her gaze resting on the seams in the linoleum and the way the sun coming through the blinds striped the bed … anywhere but at the man in the bed.

“Do you recognize her, Matthew?” Dr. Shaull asked.

Iris forced herself to look, to let her eyes drift up the expanse of white sheet to a hand held awkwardly at shoulder height, palm outward, fingers curled. Blue veins twisted from the back of his wrists to large, prominent knuckles. His fingernails were too long, thickened and ridged. Iris stared at them, fascinated.

Following Iris’s line of sight, the doctor said matter-of-factly, “Contractures. The muscles contract when a patient is essentially immobilized for as long as Mr. Brozek was. Come closer so he can get a look at you.”

Fighting an almost overwhelming urge to turn and run, Iris moved closer, her feet dragging. Her peripheral vision grayed out when she reached the foot of the bed and she realized she wasn’t breathing. She sucked in a long audible breath. Then, she closed her eyes briefly and opened them to look full into Pastor Matt’s face.

He was old. She supposed she should have expected that—he was in his seventies, after all. Buzz-cut hair stubbled his skull, and what there was of it was white. He was clean-shaven, but his eyebrows were long and bushy, a few wiry hairs poking forward. It looked like no one had thought to trim his brows in years. He was thinner than he’d been, parchment-like skin covering broad cheekbones and sinking into the hollows with no trace of the ruddy glow he’d had. His skin was relatively unlined for a man his age and Iris realized that must be because he’d quit smiling, frowning, and squinting almost a quarter century earlier. Blue eyes so like Esther’s it was uncanny, gazed into hers from rheumy corneas as viscous as egg whites. Pastor Matt stretched out one of his restricted arms and said, “Mercy.”

Iris jumped back a good foot and Dr. Shaull raised her brows questioningly.

“My name’s Iris,” she managed to whisper.

“Not to worry,” Dr. Shaull said, patting Pastor Matt’s hand. “You’ll remember in time. It’s possible he’s reliving the attack,” she said in a low voice to Iris, “asking for mercy like that. He gets agitated sometimes and says it over and over again: ‘mercy, mercy, mercy.’” A
beep
sounded from her waist and she checked a pager. “I’ve got to run. You two enjoy a good visit. Don’t expect much,” she told Iris. With a brisk nod, she hurried from the room and Iris was alone with Pastor Matt.

“Mercy,” he said again, his blue eyes locked on hers. The way he said her name, the slight over-emphasis on the sibilant, slammed her back into Outback Cottage, where his weight pressed her into the sofa as he whispered her name over and over again through lips that grazed her ear.

“You bastard,” she bit out. “You
bastard
.”

He didn’t react to the word or the fury in her voice, and his eyes never wavered from hers. In them, she read knowledge. Knowledge of her flesh, of her most intimate corners, of the way she expelled her breath with a little
heh
when he brought her to orgasm. His memories, smothered by the coma for so long, were alive again. He was remembering her acquiescence, her complicity, her eagerness … she could see it in his eyes and hear it in the way he said her name. Taking a step toward him, she latched onto the metal guardrail that rimmed the bed and rattled it. “You bastard!”

She didn’t realize she’d screamed the word until a nurse ran in. “What are you—?”

The bed shuddered from the force of Iris’s shaking and Pastor Matt’s head bobbled. He slid sideways. The nurse grabbed her around the waist, trying to pull her away from the bed. An orderly arrived moments later, summoned by the nurse’s cries for help, and pried Iris’s whitened fingers up one at a time. Detached from the bed, she staggered backward in the nurse’s arms and they thudded against the wall. More people appeared in the doorway and Iris stared at the concerned and angry faces. Staggering to her feet, she offered the nurse a hand. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean—”

“I’ve called security,” the orderly cut in.

The nurse ignored Iris’s hand, struggled to her feet, and went immediately to check on Pastor Matt. Aghast at her behavior, and weakened by the flood of emotions that had thundered through her, Iris stumbled toward the door. The orderly moved to block her, then hesitated, looking to the nurse for guidance, but she was strapping a blood pressure cuff around Pastor Matt’s arm. Iris reached the door and wedged through the small crowd of patients and visitors, most of them aged or infirm and disinclined to stop her. Agitated whispers and speculation followed her down the hall. Her feet thwapped the floor and the sound of the thwaps coming faster and faster told her she was running. She hurtled down the stairs and past startled faces in the reception area, barely registering Esther’s presence, and burst through the doors into the sunshine.

She was three miles down the road with no memory of getting into the car or starting it when she began to shake. She pulled into a grocery store parking lot and parked on its fringe, far from shoppers. Tears pushed against her eyelids but she scrunched them back. She had vowed long ago that Pastor Matt would never again have the power to make her cry. Instead, she struck the steering wheel with her palm and the impact vibrated up her arm, making her elbow ache. She did it again, knowing she’d bruised her palm, but welcoming a pain that had nothing to do with what had happened in Outback Cottage.