Devil's Oven (12 page)

Was it her imagination, or did he look the slightest bit sheepish, or perhaps embarrassed?

“Come on,” she said. “Now you really do need a shower.”

She left the bedroom, hoping he would follow. He did.

As they started down the hallway, she felt something tug at the ponytail hanging down her back. Her pulse quickened. This time, the tug was more insistent, even playful. She looked back over her shoulder. Anthony wasn’t smiling, but his head was tilted slightly, like he was trying to concentrate. He reached for her ponytail again.

“I’m sorry. I-I forgot my phone.”

Ivy stopped. She leaned around Anthony’s bulk to see the pregnant bridesmaid standing at the opposite end of the hallway. Anthony turned at the girl’s voice as well, and the girl’s eyes widened, taking in Anthony’s naked form. She didn’t look away until Ivy pushed around Anthony to stand between them.

“You didn’t ring the doorbell!” Ivy cried. “Why didn’t you ring the doorbell?”

“I didn’t mean…” The girl started backing away, but her eyes were drawn back to Anthony, who filled the hallway. She stared as though she had stumbled upon some rare animal in the forest. “It’s my phone,” the girl said. “I didn’t mean to come in. Everyone’s out in the car.”

Behind her, Ivy could hear Anthony breathing heavily. She almost looked back, but she was afraid to see the look on his face.

“Wait,” Ivy said. “Go wait on the porch.”

•  •  •

After the girl fled, Ivy realized she had been holding her breath and let out a long sigh.

The very worst that could happen had happened. She had no idea if the girl even knew anything about the murder at the Git ’n’ Go. If she did, it was all over. Ivy closed her eyes against the image of Thora lying on the floor, limp as a doll.
What in God’s world am I doing?

Maybe the girl didn’t know. Or didn’t care. Teenagers were like that—ignorant. Ivy was an adult. Why shouldn’t she have a man in her house, even a naked man? It was her right, and nobody’s business but her own. Women she knew were always having affairs. They couldn’t keep their mouths shut about them, telling her about their younger, older, sex-crazed, or drunken lovers as she hemmed their designer blue jeans and or let out their dresses, confiding in her as though she were a hairdresser or bartender. Even Lila Tucker, one of the area’s most visibly married women—a woman Ivy had known almost her whole life—had dropped hints. But of course, no one would expect it of Ivy Luttrell. The virginal Ivy Luttrell. The motherless, harelipped Ivy Luttrell.

What people thought of her didn’t matter. It never had. She looked up at Anthony.

“It’s not right, Ivy,”
Thora had said. “
He’s all wrong. And I think he’s dangerous.”

The girl seemed to have had no effect on Anthony at all. Did that mean he didn’t want to kill just anyone? Maybe killing people was just a periodic need he had. Was it possible he chose his victims for a reason?

He turned away from her and continued down the hall to the bathroom. As he walked, he reached out one finger and trailed it along the wall until he came to the bathroom. Ivy was still amazed by the muscularity of his body, the physical power that seemed to ripple beneath his skin. He was beautiful.

He disappeared inside the bathroom and she heard the water come on in the shower.

•  •  •

The pregnant girl stood on the porch, staring up at the mountain. When she heard Ivy open the door, she came to meet her on the threshold. Bass thundered from the neon blue compact car idling in the driveway behind her, but the girls inside weren’t paying any attention to what was happening on the porch.

Instead of immediately taking her cell phone from Ivy, the girl reached for Ivy’s wrist. Her fingers were ice cold, and Ivy instinctively tried to pull away. But the girl held her fast, her dark brown eyes looking directly into Ivy’s. Her oval face was free of makeup and, Ivy thought, as plain as an old shoe. The only thing even vaguely exotic about her was the delicate silver ring at the pointed end of one over-plucked eyebrow.

“The Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior doesn’t call me to judge you.” The girl spoke with a confidence that astonished Ivy. “Judgment comes from Him. Not me. Okay?”

She let go of Ivy and took the phone. “We’re all sinners, but we’re forgiven by His grace.” A wide, sympathetic smile transformed her face into something lovely.

Ivy stared after her as the girl hurried down the porch steps and got into the waiting car. She waved at Ivy as they drove off, the pounding music fading as they turned onto the highway.

•  •  •

Ivy woke in darkness, the prayers she had been dreaming on her lips. She needed forgiveness. She needed luck. She needed patience. Most of all, she needed patience. Anthony was as thoughtless as a seven-year-old, and more dangerous than she could have ever imagined a man to be. She held tightly to the hope that he would change, that he would become something better. What was wrong with wanting someone she might love unconditionally, someone who might be kinder to her than Thora? And the way to teach Anthony kindness was to show him kindness.

 When she heard the far-off jangle of the Christmas bells she’d hung on the front door, she knew she hadn’t awakened soon enough. She had propped open the bedroom door and worn comfortable clothes to bed so she would be ready if he tried to go out. But she had slept through his leaving the guest room, and he was already gone. Had he even bothered to get dressed?

She rushed to the front of the house to find the front door standing open and the porch dark. Outside, her breath fogged the air. The temperature was freezing, or dangerously close to it.

Grabbing a flashlight, she slipped on her rubber gardening clogs and ran into the yard. She looked toward the highway first, knowing he probably hadn’t gone that way.

Up on the hillside the trailer was dark, but that didn’t mean Anthony wasn’t inside. He never seemed to mind being in the dark.

She was only halfway up the hill when she heard the hysterical yipping of a dog or coyote off to the east. She stopped and changed direction. Never before in her life would she have followed such a sound, especially at night. But it worried her. Worried was her new second nature.

She battled with the voices in her head—a chorus of voices, Thora’s among them—about whether her worry made any sense. They told her that Anthony couldn’t be hurt, that he couldn’t feel anything because he was already dead. Dead, like Thora. But no!
She
had restored him, restored his life, hadn’t she?
Her
blood,
her
life. Anthony was a part of her in a way that no one else in the world could ever be. He had come from the mountain as a gift, and she had done her part.

Could she have helped Thora? Did she have that kind of power? Every time she thought about Thora lying in the big freezer, she flushed with shame. It had happened too fast. There hadn’t even been time for an ambulance, let alone thoughts of something less...normal.
No, there was nothing
. Nothing she could have done.

Now, with the mountain rising above her, dark against a deeper darkness, she understood what she might have done. Could still do. Bury Thora on the mountain.

Ahead, she saw a terrible vision—the majestic outline of a man, an animal flailing at the end of his outstretched arms. The animal’s yipping had become a strangled, desperate whine. Ivy could feel its terror in her own gut, as though she were the one dying, she were the one whose panicked eyes were quickly draining of light and life.

She dropped the flashlight, screaming Anthony’s name.

Before she could reach them, Anthony gave the animal a final shake and let it fall to the ground. Silhouette hid the details of his face, but she knew he was smiling.

Without looking back, Anthony ran for the shelter of the mountain’s blackened forest.

By the time she reached where he had been standing, he was gone. The winter-starved coyote at her feet was still. She knelt, laying her hand on its ragged coat. Nothing.

“Anthony,” she said. The word hung in the air, but there was no one else to hear it.

Giving Anthony life had only brought more death into the world.
Unintended consequences
was a favorite phrase of the pastor at church.
Damn dangerous things.
 

The coyote’s back legs gave a sudden kick and its body shuddered, releasing a foul odor. Ivy felt a sharp pang of guilt, but there was nothing she could do. The vultures or, God forbid, other coyotes would take care of the carcass.

She shushed her way through the grass to retrieve the glowing flashlight. Her stomach was upset and her hands shaking when she picked up the thing, so the beam bobbed as she walked. A hundred feet or so from the dead coyote, she heard a rustling in the brush above her. Cutting the beam up the hillside, she called Anthony’s name. More rustling. But the light only revealed a pair of flat gold discs—an animal’s eyes.

“Go!” she shouted. “Get!”

The animal stared for a moment, but when she feinted toward it, the eyes blinked, and disappeared.

•  •  •

Inside the house, Ivy slipped off her clogs and started to lock the front door, her hands still shaking. But she thought better of it. Anthony was certain to come back. This was his home now. He would soon be hungry. Tired.

She went down the silent hallway to turn on the light in Anthony’s room.
It’s not fair to call it the guest room anymore
. He had formed a kind of nest on the floor with the blankets and sheets from the bed. The room smelled of urine, but so far he hadn’t defecated anywhere but the bathroom. Most of his clothes lay in a pile on the room’s single chair, and nine or ten plastic water and soda bottles stood in neat rows on the dresser. A cupcake wrapper and an empty peanut can sat in the middle of the bare mattress. It was like a young boy’s room. A boy who had bad, indulgent parents.

Surely he would come back.

Glancing again at the pile of clothes, she realized he had been wearing pants and a shirt when she saw him running into the woods. Progress? Maybe.

Inside, she was still nervous. Worried. But as she walked back to her own bedroom, she smiled.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jolene was so grateful to be out of the trailer, she didn’t care that the coffee Lori Ann’s daughter brought to the table tasted like ashes. She emptied two more sugar packets into the sturdy porcelain mug and stirred until the amber crystals melted. Charity and Eli had dropped her at the diner on their way out of town for the day, even though Bud had made Charity swear to keep her in the trailer until she looked better.

Charity had taken her temperature that morning. When she saw there was no fever, she told Jolene she needed to get up off the couch and get some air no matter what Bud said.

“Come to the mall with us,” Charity had said. “Eli’s picking up his monkey suit today. That stuck-up bitch his cousin’s marrying is costing everyone a freaking fortune.”

Jolene had begged off going to the mall even though she was curious. There were so many things she didn’t know, hadn’t seen. After thirty years the world was different— again—but the people were always the same. Naïve. Hopeful. Sometimes they were weak or cruel. Sometimes, like Charity, they surprised her. Strong, vibrant people like Charity didn’t need to be saved.

But it was Eli who understood Jolene. His family had settled on Garrett’s Mountain almost two centuries earlier, even before Jolene’s first life had begun on neighboring Devil’s Oven. The legendary crimes—the vile murders of her father and baby brother—that her mother had committed back then were part of Eli’s familial memory. Nothing that happened on Devil’s Oven surprised him. Jolene was grateful it had been Eli who found her the night she came off the mountain.

Tripp walked into the diner just before nine looking preoccupied, like he wasn’t sure what he was doing there. He wore his DNR uniform with a gun snugged into a black holster on his belt.

“Hey,” Jolene said. “I remember you.”

At the sound of her voice, his face cleared for a second and she knew he had been looking for her. Then he was on guard again. He was so different from Bud. Warier. Bud could never be cruel; Tripp wasn’t safe. Through the confused green of his aura, Jolene could see how he wrestled with himself, and that he had no clue as to what was really happening inside him. His aura was at war with itself, surging blue one moment, overcome with sickly gray the next. His turmoil saddened her. There had been a time in her long, long past when she would have been afraid of him. There was weakness in that confusion. Chaos.

He sat down on the other side of the booth and slid over. “You having breakfast?”

“I ate already,” she said. Another girl might have been flattered that he had been looking for her. Jolene knew it was just a step. Something that had been decided long ago.

He waved at Lori Ann’s daughter and she nodded.

“Lori Ann doesn’t have corn chips on the menu, I guess,” he said.

She laughed. “No. But she does have blueberry pancakes with whipped cream.” They had been wild blueberries, once frozen, but still tiny and tart. She loved the feeling of food passing her lips, tasting salt, sugar, bitter lemons, and the thick sourdough bread that Eli’s mother sent over. Any food, really, except for meat. Charity had even found her standing in front of the refrigerator eating hot sauce from a spoon. All Charity had said was, “Ugh. Gross.”

Charity never asked her any questions, never even wanted to know where she had come from or if she had any people nearby, let alone why she had eaten hot sauce from a spoon. Jolene wondered what Eli could have told her that made her willing to take in a naked stranger as her roommate, then help that stranger get a job.

Tripp Morgan, though, was full of questions. She could almost see them in the air between them. She started first.

“Is she still mad? Mrs. Tucker?” she said.

Then Lori Ann herself was there setting a cup of tea in front of him and asking if he wanted his usual omelet. They talked for a minute as though Jolene weren’t even there, Lori Ann asking questions about Claude Dixon. Jolene listened to him describe coming out of his cabin in the morning and seeing something that looked like a pile of laundry in the driveway.