Only Love Can Break Your Heart (27 page)

“That’s some book you brought this week, Leigh,” I said. “How did you pick that one out?”

“Oh, everyone in the Bible study is reading it,” she said. “With everything that’s happened, the director of Christian education at Holy Comforter has decided we all ought to get up to speed on the latest knowledge of SRA.”

“SRA?” Cinnamon asked.

“Satanic ritual abuse,” Leigh said.

“I thought you were talking about those standardized tests we took in elementary school,” Paul said.

“You hush, Paul Askew,” Leigh said. “You know precisely what I’m talking about. SRA has been all over the news, with the McMartin Preschool trial and whatnot.”

Even before the Twin Oaks killings, congregants of various churches had been circulating books and pamphlets containing information about cult activity and satanic ritual abuse. Still, no one—least of all Leigh—could pretend that the sudden interest in SRA around Spencerville had much to do with the McMartin Preschool trial. The whole town knew about the bullet in the leg by then, and Leigh’s bizarre scaling of the roof of Twin Oaks, and the borrowed track shoes. Everyone also knew that Paul and Leigh’s alibi was dubious and that they both had good reasons to hate the Culvers, who lived just a few hundred yards away from us. It certainly didn’t look good that the murders had occurred within two months of Paul’s showing up out of nowhere after seven years missing, as if he had come back to settle a score. Add to that Paul and Leigh’s former association with a child-molesting hippie guru and the rumors of Leigh’s horrific late-term abortion, which seemed to bear discomfiting resemblance to the grisly narrative of
Rebecca Recalls
.

“How does one become an expert on satanic ritual abuse?” Paul asked.

“Some of the leading authorities are survivors,” she said. “It’s a true story. These cults are spreading all over the country.”

“I was in what most people would call a cult,” Paul said. “So were you. Do you think we have repressed memories of satanic ritual abuse?”

“I’ve thought about that,” Leigh said. “But no, Paul. As much as I’ve tried to forget, I remember it all.”

None of us knew what to say. It was the first time I’d heard Paul make any overt reference to New Nazareth, the first time Leigh had mentioned it since she’d first told me the story.

“We saw you over at school today,” Cinnamon said to Leigh. “What was that all about?”

Leigh laughed.

“You were right,” she said to Paul. “She is very direct.”

“Sorry,” Cinnamon said. “Just curious.”

“I don’t mind,” Leigh said. “It’s pretty simple. Since people have been saying such awful things about me, I thought I should just go have a talk with Mr. Carwile. He’s such a nice man. He was very interested in what I had to say.”

“I’m sure he was,” Paul said.

“So what did you tell him?” I asked.

“Everything I could think of,” Leigh said. “Everything they wanted to know.”

“I wish you would have listened to Rayner, Leigh,” Paul said.

“Please, Paul,” Leigh said. “The day I look to Rayner Newcomb for advice on anything is the day I have myself committed.”

I glanced at Cinnamon, expecting to catch her stifling a giggle. Instead she looked on earnestly.

“Embarrassing as it was, I told them about falling into the creek and then ending up over at Rayner’s with Paul. Then they started asking about me and the Culvers—about Charles and the wedding and so forth. We ended up talking a lot about the past. You have no idea how good it felt to just unload all those things. When I told them about climbing up on the Culvers’ roof to see the angels, I realized that I hadn’t even thought about it much myself since it happened. Boy, that was crazy of me, wasn’t it?”

No one said a word.

“It was pretty simple,” Leigh continued. “I’d stopped taking my Thorazine. I was tired of feeling . . . well, tired. Numb. Half-asleep. I’d been feeling so good lately, so good that I thought I was ready to be—I don’t know—
normal
again. It’s very hard to accept that this is who I am now—that this is what it will always be like.”

Paul reached down and grasped Leigh’s shoulder. She took his hand and kissed it.

“Well,” Leigh continued, “I had been thinking for a while that I’d like to see Mrs. Culver and apologize to her for how I had embarrassed her family. And I wanted to give her back the ring and tell her that I wasn’t angry with Charles about the way things ended between us. I had Paul back, after all. It seemed like it was meant to be.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Right when I got to Twin Oaks,” she said, “I had my vision.”

“Your vision?” Cinnamon asked.

“Of the angels, swirling around above me. I know everyone thinks I’m mad,” she said, “and I understand the chemical explanations. But these visions are more real to me than anyone here in this room.”

She smiled.

“The world we see is just a partial impression of what’s all around us,” she said.

She studied the palms of her upturned hands.

“To see such beauty,” she said, “is overwhelming.”

“I get that,” Cinnamon said. “Totally.”

Paul lit another cigarette.

“You’ve really got to quit, Paul,” Leigh said.

“I quit everything else that’s bad for me,” he said. “Let me have this one thing.”

“For your health, darling,” she said.

“You sneak one every now and then,” he replied.

“Only because you’re a terrible
enabler
,” Leigh said.

Here they were, thrown together again, playfully chiding each other like an old married couple. Wasn’t that what I’d always wanted?

“What did you think the police thought of your story?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sure they just think I’m a loon,” Leigh said.

“Do you think they believed you about being over at Rayner’s on Thursday night?” Paul asked.

“You never know,” she said. “There’s no love for Rayner Newcomb on the Twin Oaks Task Force.”

“He has that effect on people,” Paul said.

“So how did you and Bobby Carwile leave things?” I asked.

“Unresolved,” she said.

I walked to the window and looked out across the field to Twin Oaks. The patrol car had left with Charles and Patricia and whatever they had come for.

“They were there earlier,” I said. “Charles and Patricia. With Bobby Carwile. But they’re gone now.”

“We went over to peep at the murder house,” Cinnamon said.

“That’s what the kids at school are calling it,” I said.

“We almost got caught,” Cinnamon said.

“They drove up while we were there,” I said. “We had to hide behind the house. Did you know Charles was in town?”

“I saw him yesterday, over at Kiki Baumberger’s,” Leigh said. “I went over to see Patricia, and he happened to be there. We had a nice visit, all things considered.”

“Sounds a little awkward to me,” said Cinnamon.

“It was a bit chilly, to tell you the truth,” Leigh said. “I don’t think Charles is convinced I’m not somehow responsible for all of this. Then again, he’s the first to point out that a lot of people over the years have wanted his father dead.”

“How is Patricia?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s distraught,” Leigh said.

“She’ll feel better once she collects her inheritance,” Paul said.

“But there is no inheritance,” Leigh said. “Mr. Culver lost almost everything in the same deal that ruined your poor father. They’d been living off Charles for months. Patricia had no idea her father had been paying her allowance with money given to him by Charles.”

The Culvers’ lives had seemed to go on completely untouched by the disaster that had left us penniless and on the verge of losing our home. It had never occurred to any of us that Brad Culver might have been just as broke as the Old Man. Again I remembered what Paul had told me—that the Culvers would get theirs. Boy, did they ever, I thought. Once more I thought of Patricia—how desperate she must have felt, losing her parents that way and also learning that she was going to have to find a way to survive just like the rest of us mortals.

“Poor Patricia,” I said, almost unconsciously and with complete sincerity.

“She’s understandably mortified,” Leigh said. “She and Charles don’t have the chummiest relationship. But for now, she’s going to have to depend on him.”

“Or get a job,” Paul said, lighting another cigarette. “Bless her heart.”

26

AT THE NEXT REHEARSAL,
we ran Cinnamon’s scenes as Alan’s mother. Cinnamon struggled vainly to put on the guise of a sorely repressed religious fanatic. I tried to reassure myself that she would be more convincing in costume. Observing her awkward efforts, I began to suspect that Rex LaPage’s casting of Cinnamon was not a gesture of charitable goodwill but rather one of perverse irony. To her credit, Cinnamon went at it gamely, with a sort of wink-and-nod self-awareness.

When Cinnamon was done, LaPage called for a ten-minute break to go over lighting cues with the stage crew. We drifted to the rear of the house. Cinnamon took a seat in the back row and lit up.

“What’d you think?” she asked.

“You were great,” I said. “Really.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” she said.

“I mean it,” I said.

Cinnamon abruptly stood and pointed.

“Look,” she said.

Someone was striding purposefully down the aisle toward the stage. When he reached the orchestra pit, his face came into the footlights. It was Paul.

“Excuse me, sir,” Mr. LaPage said, his voice high and shrill. “Can I help you?”

I ran over to Paul.

“It’s my brother, Mr. LaPage,” I said.

Whispers fluttered among the students lingering in the wings and scattered around the house. Richard’s brother, they must have been saying. The murderer. For weeks the cast and crew had politely ignored the elephant in the room—that is, the fact that one of the play’s two leads slept under the same roof as the prime suspect in the Twin Oaks slayings. But I knew people were talking about it. Now here he was, right in their midst—the Boone’s Ferry bogeyman himself.

“What is it, Paul?” I asked.

Rayner must have found something out, I thought. Paul was going to be arrested. He’d ditched his tail somehow and risked everything to say a hasty good-bye before running away again, this time forever.

“Come on,” Paul said. “You’ve got to come with me.”

“We’re in the middle of a rehearsal, sir,” said Mr. LaPage, a little more politely.

My mind flashed back to that unforgettable day when I stood in the hallway outside the principal’s office at my elementary school, Paul beside me in his navy blazer and Macon Prep regimental tie, asking me to follow him out the door.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Rocky,” Paul said. “It’s the Old Man.”

WHEN WE REACHED
the hospital, Miss Anita and Leigh were already there, waiting in the hallway.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“No, darling. It’s not his time,” Miss Anita said, as if to suggest she was not guessing. Leigh looked less certain. She had been with the Old Man when it hit, Paul had said.

“Go to your father, boys,” Miss Anita said.

He lay in the bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. My mother sat beside him, caressing his forehead. I came closer and leaned down toward the Old Man’s face. He slipped his hands from beneath the covers and clutched mine and pulled me down so that his sour breath filled my nostrils.

I looked down into his watery eyes. His chin quivered violently. My hands began to throb with pain as he clenched them tighter. It seemed impossible that anyone on the verge of death could have such a grip. He seemed desperate to say something to me—some last bit of wisdom to serve as a lantern on the shadowy path of the future—but he was unable to find the words. This frightened me more even than the shaking or the horror in his eyes—the Old Man rendered incapable of speech.

I peeled my hands from his stiff, powerful fingers and moved to my mother’s side. Paul took my place on the bed. The Old Man pulled him down so that their faces were almost touching and mumbled something incoherent. Paul softly hushed him, as if he were trying to lull an infant to sleep. At last the shaking subsided. The Old Man’s hands relaxed and fell to his side, and his eyes slowly narrowed and closed. His chest rose and fell, exhaling a long, raspy gasp.

Paul stood up from the bed and tiptoed to the door. My mother and I followed him out into the hallway.

“Is he dead?” I asked for the second time.

“No,” my mother said. “No, honey, he’s not dead.”

Of course he wasn’t dead. The machines attached to the wires on his chest and shoulders still beeped. Peering back into the room, I could see his medicine-ball belly still rising and falling.

My mother reached for Paul’s shoulder as if she wanted to hug him. For a moment it seemed as if they were on the verge of making their peace with each other. She stopped short, however, when she looked past him down the hallway, where she saw Bobby Carwile making his way toward us, followed by a uniformed sheriff’s deputy.

“Oh, my,” my mother said.

Carwile grasped his hands in front of his waist.

“Hello, Mrs. Askew,” he said. “Paul.”

“What do you want?” my mother asked, her voice curt, almost angry.

“We just need you to come along and answer a few questions for us, Paul,” Carwile said. “Help us rule some things out.”

“What if I say no?” Paul said.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Carwile said.

“Surely you know why we’re here,” my mother said. “Must you do this now?”

“It’s all right, Alice,” Paul said. “My truck’s in the visitor lot, Bobby. I’ll meet you over at the school.”

“Why don’t you just ride with us, Paul?” Carwile said.

“What for, Bobby?” Paul said. “My escort isn’t going to let me skip town.”

“It’ll be easier if you come with us, Paul,” Carwile replied. “Understand?”

Paul’s eyes widened. Even with the beard disguising the rest of his features, I could see that he was startled—even afraid. The look on Carwile’s face was almost pleading. I realized what was happening. Paul was being arrested; Bobby Carwile just didn’t want to cuff him and read him his rights in the hospital with all those people around and the Old Man on the other side of the door, fighting for what was left of his life. Carwile was trying to be a gentleman about it all.

“All right,” Paul said. “I guess you can give me a ride.”

Miss Anita and Leigh returned just as they were taking Paul away.

“Where are you taking him?” Miss Anita said.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Bobby Carwile said.

“Shame on you, young man,” Miss Anita said, as if he’d made some minor breach of social etiquette like refusing to open a door for a lady.

“It’s all right, Miss Anita,” Paul said.

“I’m coming with you,” Leigh said.

“That would be fine, Miss Bowman,” Carwile said.

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Miss Anita said.

Carwile looked at Paul as if appealing for his assistance. Paul shrugged.

“Her father’s not going to like this one bit, young man,” Miss Anita said.

“Mrs. Holt—” Carwile started.

“It’s all right, Miss Anita,” Leigh said. “I want to go with Paul.”

She smiled and took Paul’s hand. Together they started down the long hallway, flanked by Carwile and his deputy. We stood still as the four of them disappeared around the corner. As soon as they were gone, my mother turned without a word and started down the hall toward the pay phone, where she placed a call to Rayner Newcomb.