The Book of James (29 page)

so much.” He picked up a twig and snapped it in half. “Eventual y Virginia will tell her.”

“If Nick didn’t already.” They were both silent.

“Cora.” Harrison’s voice was soft. “The time has come to get

her out of here. Remember, we said we’d wait and watch and when

the time was right . . .”

“I love this spot.” Cora turned in a circle. “I should do some-

thing here. I don’t know why I didn’t before, you know, have a little gazebo built, or . . . I don’t know, something . . .”

Harrison took her arm. “I’ve been watching her. I’ve been try-

ing to put it all together, figure it out. If she knew, she would have dropped some sort of hint. But she
is
looking for something. It’s a THE BOOK
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237

dangerous thing having her on this property.” He pushed off the

tree and stood next to her. “We agreed to do it my way . . .”

“In thy love for me, reduce my enemies to silence . . .”
She stared into the distance.

“Cora . . .”

“And bring destruction on all who oppress me . . .”

“Cora.”

She was startled by his voice. “Psalm 143—that’s it, Harry.

Bring destruction on all who oppress me.”

Harrison looked down at her and shook his head. “God, help

you,” he muttered. “I’m going to tend to Virginia. Meet me here

tomorrow. Ten a.m. We’ll come up with a plan to get rid of her.

Understand? One way or the other.”

He moved through the brush and was gone. But Cora stood

transfixed, the words of the Psalm 143 playing over and over in

her head.
An enemy has hunted me down, has ground my living

body under foot and plunged me into darkness like a man long dead,
so that my spirit fails me and my heart is dazed with despair . . .

Deliver me, Lord, from my enemies . . . and bring destruction on all
who oppress me.

The words sung in her head as she tromped quickly through

the trees toward the house. God had given her an answer. She

knew what she had to do.

I banged on Dylan’s door the next day and then let myself in before anyone answered. Samantha came bounding down the stairs in

jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She had a pair of black Converse high-tops in her hand.

“What excitement do you have planned for today?” She looked

young in that outfit. We’d celebrated her thirty-first birthday over the summer, but she could’ve passed for twenty-two without

question.

“The library. Could it get any better than that?”

“And what about tomorrow? Why don’t we just stay home and

watch PBS?”

“Shut up and get moving. The train leaves in half an hour. Oh,

and did you ever get a chance to read those letters I gave you?”

She shook her head. “I forgot about them—but I wil .”

We got off at Suburban Station and walked to the library on the

Parkway. The huge stone building was on the road that stretched

from city hall to the art museum. The fountain in the oval out front was still alive with water, and the trees were turning a yellowish gold. The flags of various countries waved from the streetlights

THE BOOK
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239

that dotted the street. For the first time, I acknowledged that

Philadelphia had a charisma and real y was a beautiful city.

We went to the second floor where the archives were kept and

took a seat at the microfiche machines.

“Something happened at that house when Nick was a child.

I’m not even sure how old he was. But I do know it probably would have hit the papers.”

“So we have to look through every single
Philadelphia Inquirer
for how many years?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three years—or until we find it.”

“Are you kidding me? We could be here for weeks. That’s hun-

dreds of papers for one year alone. Did you try looking it up on

the Internet?”

“I did. I was on my phone all morning trying to see if anything

popped up. Nada. I can’t think of any other way.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s get going. I have a headache already.”

I turned on the machine and rolled the film. Headlines about

the Iran hostage situation, Ayatol ah Khomeini, and the Carter

administration were prominent. It was hard not to get engrossed,

and I found myself stopping from time to time to read an entire

piece. My shoulders and neck grew sore. Samantha was very quiet.

I peeked into her cubicle to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep,

but she was hard at work and didn’t even notice me. I owed her

big for this one, and I knew she’d never let me forget it. I finished with all the film on my table before Samantha looked up from her

machine.

“Nothing.” She rubbed her shoulder with one hand. “I looked

at every page. This is like looking for one maggot in an enormous sack of rice.”

“Nice metaphor, Sam. But it’s here somewhere.” The look on

her face spoke volumes. “I think we’re done for today, don’t worry.”

Before I pulled out the film, my screen briefly showed a grainy

black-and-white photograph of children playing in a fountain at

240

ELLEN J. GREEN

Eakins Oval on the Parkway, not far from where we now sat. I stared at it and rubbed my forehead. The boy in my photograph drowned

in a swimming hole in the park. A boy mysteriously disappeared

from Cora’s property. Both strange stories, murky, unclear. There was a connection between the two. I just didn’t know what.

“I’m counting to ten and then I’m heading down the street

for a drink.” Samantha stood behind me, her purse tucked under

her arm.

I pulled the film from the machine; the last images of wet chil-

dren faded to black.

The call came late that night. I was almost asleep when I heard my cell phone ringing. It jolted me upright, and I dug the phone out of my purse. The numbers glowed from the digital clock on the

nightstand. One thirty.

A female voice was on the other end. “Yes, who am I speak-

ing to?”

“You called me,” I mumbled into the phone.

“This is Chestnut Hill Hospital Emergency Department cal -

ing. We have a Samantha Cameron here, and this is the first num-

ber we found in her cell phone.”

I was wide awake. “What?”

“Are you related to her?”

“I’m her friend.” I was confused. There was momentary silence.

“What’s your name?”

“Mackenzie Carlisle,” I answered. If I hadn’t been awake before,

I was now.

“She was hit by a car and is here in the ER. The doctor is with

her now.” I thought I might be sick. “In Chestnut Hil . It’s on the outskirts of Philadelphia.”

242

ELLEN J. GREEN

“I’m here in Chestnut Hil .”

“I assumed because of the number that you were in . . .” She

hesitated. “Maine—207 is Maine?”

“It’s a cell phone. I’ll be right there.” I hung up and stood. I ran in circles for a minute. I couldn’t think. I had on a white T-shirt and drawstring pajama bottoms. I grabbed a pair of jeans, pushed

my feet into sneakers, threw my purse over my shoulder, and ran

out into the yard. I had to get to Dylan’s. I just kept thinking if I got to Dylan’s, everything would be okay. Samantha would be there

and everything would be okay. This would all have been some hor-

rible mistake. I ran the six blocks without stopping.

The house was dark. The front door was locked. I rang the bell

repeatedly and banged on the door with my fists as hard as I could.

It hurt each time they hit the wood, but I couldn’t stop. I was about to run around to the back of the house and see if the sliding door was unlocked when the front door flew open. Dylan squinted at

me in the darkness. He wore only boxer shorts and a gray T-shirt.

His hair was flattened to his head on one side.

“Where’s Samantha?”

He took a step back and turned around. “I don’t know. I have

to go to work tomorrow.” He started back into the living room.

“I got a call from the hospital. They said she’s in the emergency room. Where is she?” I was screaming. He took two steps at a time and opened her door. I was right behind him. Her bed was empty.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I leaned against the wal .

“What hospital?” I didn’t answer him. “Mackenzie, what hos-

pital?” He was shaking me. My stomach lurched and I started to

dry heave on the carpet. Nothing came out. Air wouldn’t go into

my lungs, and I started to hyperventilate.

“Chestnut Hil ,” I said final y.

“Get dressed, let’s go. Hurry.” I kicked off my sneakers and

dropped my pajama bottoms in the hal way. Dylan went back into

his room to change. He came back as I was pulling my jeans up

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243

over my hips. I pushed my feet back into my sneakers and followed him down the stairs.

The emergency-room lights were bright and nauseating. All I

could see was Nick lying on a stretcher with a sheet pulled up to his neck. The doctor, a middle-aged woman, came to me in the

waiting room.

“You’re Samantha Cameron’s nearest relative?” she asked.

“I’m the only one here. Her parents are in Maine.”

“She’s stabilized, but I want to prepare you, she doesn’t look

good. Her right leg was shattered in several places. She’s lucky that it didn’t hit her hip, or we might be looking at a replacement.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Sit down.” She pointed to a seat.

“I don’t want to sit down! I asked you if she was going to be

okay,” I yelled. I wasn’t going to just sit down and try to be calm to appease anyone.

“She has a severe concussion and a hairline fracture of the

skul . That’s the worst of her injuries. We’re admitting her, and we need to monitor her to make sure there’s no brain swelling. That’s our main concern. If she gets through the next few days, we should be okay. The rest of it is relatively minor. Her leg was shattered in several places, as I already told you, and she has a laceration on her left cheek. It’s been sutured.”

“Can I see her?”

“She’s sleeping—we medicated her—but you can go in until we

take her to her room.”

Samantha was stretched out on the bed in a hospital gown. Her

head was bandaged on the left side, and she had another bandage

across her left cheek. Her right leg was bound in a fiberglass cast.

Her eyes were closed. I sat down, and the tears started coming.

They fell down my face one after the other. My life lately seemed to revolve around hospitals. What the hell had she been doing?

Where was she going when she was hit?

244

ELLEN J. GREEN

I remembered back to the night of Nick’s accident, to waiting

for hours while he was in surgery. The look on the doctor’s face

when he came out of the OR. The feelings of disbelief. I had to see his body. I couldn’t accept it otherwise. When I did, it was almost too much.

The week after that was nothing but a blur. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I remember crying until my pillow was soaked through. My

doctor prescribed Xanax, and Samantha forced the pil s down my

throat.

Now I was reliving that experience, only it was Samantha

lying in the bed. I held her hand and just let myself cry. It was my fault that she was in Philadelphia. If I hadn’t insisted that we go to Boston that weekend, Nick would still be alive. If I’d tried a little harder to convince my mother to go one more round of chemo,

maybe things would have turned out differently. Everyone who got

close to me seemed to get hurt.

When they came to move Samantha to her room, I wouldn’t

let go. I felt Dylan’s hand on my arm. He pried my fingers off her and pulled me down the hal way.

Three police officers waited for me near the entrance to the

emergency room. I gave them my name and the address of Cora’s

house.

“Do you know where she was going?” one asked. He was short

and balding and took notes while we spoke.

I looked at Dylan. “I left her around eleven. I thought she was

going to bed.”

“I didn’t hear her go out. I went to sleep around midnight,” he

added. The policeman jotted it on his small pad.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She was run down crossing Highland Avenue. No eyewit-

nesses. A woman heard the noise of the impact and the screeching

of wheels and looked out the window. Lucky she did, because she

saw your friend laid out on the ground and called an ambulance.

THE BOOK
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245

But she didn’t see the car. So we don’t have much to go on. The only thing we can do is wait for her to wake up and see if she remembers anything that might give us a lead.”

“Oh, God.” The image of a car slamming into Samantha

appeared before my eyes and wouldn’t go away. I heard the screeching of tires and I saw her body fly through the air.

Dylan put his hand on my back. “If you hear anything at al ,

please call her,” he said. He gave the officer my cell-phone number.

The officer wrote it down and nodded.

“We’ll keep talking to people in the neighborhood on the off

chance that somebody saw something.” With that, they turned and

left. I had Samantha’s purse in my hand. They’d given it to me to take home. I unzipped it and rummaged through her belongings.

Wallet, keys, sunglasses, gum. Lipstick. Normal stuff. No papers of any kind. The letters I’d given her weren’t there. Maybe she’d been reading them and left them at Dylan’s.

“Let’s go to your house,” I said.