Devil's Oven (33 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

We’re going to find him!

The girl, Jolene, led the way up the narrow trail as though she had spent her life on the mountain. The sun was almost fully over the horizon, but the pearl light still surrounded her—a Jolene-shaped outline that drove the shadows from the brush and brambles straining toward the path.

She was so familiar. When she first came to the house, Ivy’s instinct had been to drive her away. The light around her was achingly bright, as though an angel had entered the front door without any warning. There had been times in her life when she saw people swathed in faint colors: pink around a little girl at church, turquoise blue around a nurse at the doctor’s office, wavering green attached to the rude man who came to fill the propane tank. She had told Thora about them, but Thora had looked at her queerly and then laughed. So she hadn’t told her about Jolene.

When they neared the place where she always stopped to rest, Jolene stopped even before she did.

“Listen,” Jolene said.

The sound of distant sirens broke the quiet.

“Ivy.”

Jolene reached out her hand.

When Ivy took it, all vestiges of the recent night disappeared, and the sun was high above them. Early spring was overtaken by full summer. Leafed-out branches and tendrils of poison ivy strained onto the path.

Ivy felt smaller than she could ever remember feeling.

As they continued up the mountain, she glanced up at the woman whose hand she held. Her mother’s pale white hair, identical to her own, swung at her shoulders, and she had a daisy tucked behind one ear. Her gauzy, blue broom skirt fell in tiers from her hips, and her sandals were rough and brown, sturdy enough for hiking. Across her chest was a long strap with a canteen at the end of it.

Ivy hurried to keep up and held fast to her mother’s hand. She didn’t want to be left behind. Their walks up the mountain had gotten less and less frequent, because her mother seemed worried. Unhappy. She was most unhappy when Ivy’s father was home. He had begun closing himself in their bedroom in the trailer, and the noises coming from behind the door frightened them all. Thora stayed away from the trailer as much as she could.

Her mother looked down at her and smiled.

“Come on, baby. Let’s get there and back before everyone gets home.”

Ivy was as anxious as her mother to get to the cabin site. In her other hand, she carried a bouquet of daisies and zinnias from the garden they had planted down by the barn. She remembered that she had used to give her father flowers, but now he hated them.

•  •  •

When they reached the cabin site, Ivy ran to the hearthstone and laid down the bouquet. The ground around the stone was bare. Nothing would grow here, her mother had told her. Too much sadness.

Ivy knew that the right side of the hearth was where the cradle of the baby who had once lived there had sat during the day. “At night, he would sleep at his mama’s bedside so she could reach him when he cried,” her mother had told her. She loved to hear the stories about how the baby’s sister would dance with their mother in the yard, their mother singing songs—in French, no less—that would make the birds in the trees jealous. Ivy had tried to tell Thora the stories, but Thora wouldn’t listen.

They sat on the hearthstone and ate the grapes and graham crackers her mother had packed into the pink gingham rucksack she’d sewn for Ivy. When they were done, her mother plaited Ivy’s hair and had her hold the end of it while she got up to look for some flexible stem or plant to secure it with.

While she waited, Ivy took Lolly Dolly out of her pocket and sat it beside her so the doll could watch her trace letters in the dirt with her fingertip. Her mother had shown her how to write her name, trailing the end of the “y” off and adding tiny fingerprint leaves so it looked like real ivy.

Hearing her mother’s voice, she looked around, but couldn’t see her.

She jumped up.

“Mama?”

She peered around the wild hedge of rhododendrons that grew at the western edge of the site. Her mother stood facing a man who looked like a giant. The giant was staring at her mother, smiling. But it wasn’t a good kind of smile. He looked like he wanted to eat her.

“Don’t worry, baby,” her mother called to her. “He’s not going to hurt you. I promise.”

Should she believe her? Her mother didn’t lie. Not even about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or if there were peas in the shepherd’s pie. Still, there was something wrong with the man. He wasn’t someone they knew. Strangers up on the mountain weren’t safe. Thora told her all the time that there might be strangers on the mountain who could hurt her. She knew she should run.

But she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to leave her mother there with the man. She crawled in among the branches of the rhododendron, trying to hide herself.

“Mama,” she whispered.

Her mother’s voice came back to her. Not in her ears, but inside her head, like a whisper.

“I won’t leave you.”

The man stepped closer to her mother. His chest and neck were torn and ragged like the rotting deer carcasses they sometimes found in the woods. He wasn’t talking. Ivy could tell her mother was talking to him, but she couldn’t hear the words. She wished her father were there. He would make the man go away.

It was so quiet, she could hear her own breathing. Even the birds had gone away.

Her mother held out her hands to the man. His ugly smile got bigger.

Ivy screamed for him to stop, but he didn’t.

Her mother’s voice in her head again: “Shhhhhh. Be brave.”

The forest around them darkened, the light slipping away, and Ivy wanted to run to her mother’s arms, or home and hide beneath her bed.

Now, the only light seemed to be coming from her mother. Ivy could only see the faint shape of her mother’s body; the rest was a brilliant cloud. She looked like an angel. Suddenly, Ivy couldn’t remember her mother’s face. It terrified her more than anything she was seeing.

The man needed to get away from her mother, but now her mother was even closer to him. She raised her hands to his face and that ugly, ugly smile. Ivy thought his smile was even uglier than her own misshapen lip.

Then his smile was gone. He looked confused and afraid. Ivy almost felt sorry for him.
Almost
. As the light from her mother grew, it began to cover him as well.

The ground beneath Ivy started shaking, and a sound like a million coal trucks barreling toward them filled the air.

She screamed for her mother, but her mother and the man had disappeared into the light, which was spreading everywhere. It wasn’t daylight, but another kind of light, glittering white and cold. Colder than the water at the lake where her father took them fishing.

In front of Ivy, the ground began to break open and she was sure they would all be swallowed up. Tree limbs cracked and fell around her, and she clung tightly to the rubbery branches of the rhododendron. The ball of light that held her mother and the man hovered over the crack in the earth. Ivy turned away, hiding her face and squeezing her eyes shut. Behind her, the earth seemed to cry out like an angry animal.
I’m not brave!
She couldn’t save her mother, or herself.

Then it was done.

Ivy opened her eyes. Dawn—a true dawn—had come. High in one of the nearby trees, a squirrel scolded. Such a normal, familiar sound. She wanted to laugh with relief.

She eased herself out of the rhododendron, with much more difficulty than when she had first hidden inside it.

Jolene stood some ten yards away, her black hair tangled, her shoulders rounded with exhaustion. She sank to her knees.

“Anthony?” Ivy ran to where Jolene knelt.

Anthony lay on the ground, naked to the waist, his hair flecked with dirt, his handsome face peaceful in a way Ivy had never seen before.

She knelt beside him, and took his left hand in hers.

Beside her, Jolene was sobbing.

Anthony’s hand was soft, softer than she could have ever imagined. She ran her fingers over his wrist. The stitches she had sewn so carefully (not so carefully, it turned out; he had been awkward with that hand) had disappeared. So had the wounds to his chest and neck. His skin was smooth. Unmarked.

Resting his hand gently on the ground, Ivy touched his neck. Here, too, the stitches were gone. He was perfect. She had never seen such a perfect man.

•  •  •

They walked the trail in silence. It was full morning, and clear. This time, Jolene followed a step behind Ivy. As they approached the trailhead, they could see the police cars parked close to the trailer.

“What if he’s gone when we take them up there?” Ivy said.

“He’s not going anywhere. He’s dead.”

Ivy nodded, feeling suddenly shy. She tucked a hand into her pocket to stroke the homely, armless little doll she had found lying in the dirt. It made her feel safe.

  Jolene touched Ivy’s other hand, but didn’t try to hold it. “I’ll be right there with you,” she said.

Epilogue

Lila pulled her golf visor lower onto her forehead. She wasn’t yet used to the relentless southern sunshine that poured from the sky from early morning until evening. The nearby sandhills weren’t mountains; the tall pine trees offered little cooling shade. It was nothing like home.

She glanced up on her backswing. It was a terrible habit and put her off balance every time. She didn’t have the concentration for golf. She hadn’t had it before, but it was worse, now. Lowering the club slowly, she watched as one of the assistant pros--Todd--crossed the cart path, coming toward her. She looked past him to see if Barbara, the soft-voiced, patient assistant she  had worked with for weeks, was behind him. There was no one else anywhere near the driving range.

I can do this.

The words in her head weren’t any kind of match for the sudden clench of her stomach.

I will stay here.

“Mrs. Tucker.”

Lila forced herself to hold out her gloved hand. She forced herself to smile.

“Barbara had a family emergency, and asked me to take over your lesson today.”

Todd was deeply tanned like the starters and everyone else who worked around the golf course. He had an easy, self-deprecating smile. But his teeth were too white in the sunshine. His mouth too big. When he took her hand, she felt her insides go rigid. If he noticed the change in her, he hid it well.

I can’t do this.

Fifteen minutes later, sitting in her car with the air conditioning blasting from the vents, she tried to remember what she’d said to Todd to excuse herself. Around her the sunlight spiked off the other cars in the parking lot like so much white hot fire. Her memory was blank. Overwhelmed. She prayed that she could get home without having to call her mother-in-law or the housekeeper to come and get her.

•  •  •

Lila drew herself a lukewarm bath and sank into it. The tub wasn’t as large as the one in the master suite, but neither she nor Bud had been comfortable at the thought of moving into his parents’ old rooms. His mother had decamped to the guest house after Bud’s father died, saying that she wanted something smaller. Her kindness to them after Lila’s ordeal--including inviting them to take the house--had stunned both Lila and Bud. Still, the suite sat empty. Bud had talked about remodeling it, but talking about it was as far as they’d gotten.

For a month after the assault, Lila had showered in her clothes. Even now, over a year later, she could hardly bear to look at herself naked. Months and months of therapy had yet to make any kind of difference.

“Lila?”

Bud tapped lightly on the bathroom door and let himself in.

“Hey,” she said. “You came back.”

He smiled. “Of course I came back,” he said. “I always come back.”

Back from there. Back from Alta. Back from seeing Jolene, who had stuck by Ivy through the investigation and the plea deal. Lila didn’t know why. Maybe it was out of some misguided idea of friendship. She thought there was something seriously wrong with both women. They weren’t like other people, with their secrets and bizarre attachment to the mountain. Bud had told her that Jolene had
come from the mountain
--whatever in the hell that meant. 

Bud didn’t need to tell her that he’d seen Jolene, and Lila never asked. She believed him when he told her that there was nothing sexual between him and Jolene. She knew her husband well enough.

“I signed the sale paperwork on the club,” he said. “And I think we’ve got a buyer for the house.”

“Since you’re back, you should call your mother and see if she wants to come over for dinner,” Lila said. Anything to keep from talking about that place. “Will you grab me a towel?”

He watched her get out of the tub with a frank, unashamed stare. His eyes weren’t playful, like they used to be. She knew she was the one who had killed his playfulness. But he wasn’t trying to make her pay. At least not on purpose.

“I thought you should know that Ivy’s out of the mental health center,” he said, handing her the towel.

“Oh,” Lila said.

Ivy’s lawyer had successfully argued Stockholm Syndrome, but Lila knew better. Ivy had scammed everyone with her crazy little seamstress act. She had let that animal into her house, and served him like she was his slave. It didn’t matter that he had finally shown up dead on Devil’s Oven. He had no marks on his body. There was no clue that he was anything more than a killer who had found his way into the mountains and murdered Claude, and Thora, as well as the man the police found under the stage. Why? The police had never established a motive or found a trace of him in the system. No one who mattered had bought Bud’s story about Dwight killing Anthony days and days before Claude’s death. They all assumed that Dwight had lied. But Lila believed. She also suspected that Tripp had known, that he was more involved than any of them understood.

Tripp. The snake in her Eden.

She had tried to hate him. Really tried. But all she could muster was pity.