The Chair (31 page)

“Mark Jefferies wants to meet the legend.”

“He does, hmm?”

“Badly.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Why?”

Nicole didn’t answer.

Two boys, eight, maybe nine years old, stumbled past them, one with an old NFL Junior Football grasped in his arms, the other tugging on it with his arms and the full weight of his body.

“Give it up!” The boy without yanked hard on the ball.

“Make me!” the other said, twisting to pull away.

“I will!”

Corin grimaced as the war raged between the two boys. Had he and Shasta fought the same war thousands of times as they’d grown up? Or was it ten thousand? He smiled. Their fights always ended in them making up and building a jump for their bicycles or climbing the tallest tree in the woods across the street from their house.

But their war ended ten years ago, after he’d made his brother ski off a ledge into a world where one side had retreated beyond the battlefield to a realm Corin couldn’t reach.

The pain of yesterday’s conversation continued to echo in his mind as loud as summer thunder. Corin gave a quick shake of his head, as if to purge his mind, and then turned to Nicole. “
Are
you the lady from the legend?”

“Corin, you don’t need to ask me that question again. You know who I am. You need to choose to believe or not believe. In me. In the chair. In yourself.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Choose to believe you are the one the chair is to go to. That you will write the next chapter in the legend, because I think deep inside, you believe fully in the chair and are coming to believe in its Maker.”

She was right; he had taken the idea of the chair deep into his heart. Strongly. It gave him a purpose. Something of lore, of legend. Not a comic book, but real life.

“But you were supposed to give the book to a daughter, a direct descendant, not some stranger.” Corin hesitated and rubbed the bench with the palms of his hands. “Did you never marry? Didn’t you have a daughter to pass the chair to?”

“Yes, I married.” Nicole pursed her lips and stared at the lake.

“And?”

“And yes, I had a daughter.”

Corin wasn’t sure how to ask the next question so he simply stated it. “And is she alive?”

“She is not.”

“I’m sorry.”

“As am I.” She patted his hand then. “Thank you, Corin.”

For the first time, Nicole’s eyes clouded and moisture filled them. She tried to laugh as she wiped her cheek with the back of her fingers. “It was a long time ago.”

“What was?”

“Nothing.” Nicole blinked back more tears.

“I didn’t mean to pry.”

She smoothed back her hair and didn’t speak till at least a minute had passed. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t let me. She thought my belief in the chair was crazy.” Nicole massaged the top of her hand with the other. “She didn’t want me talking to her children about it and made me swear I would never contact them.”

“Did you keep your promise?”

She turned and offered Corin a sad smile. “No, I did not.”

“Do you regret breaking that promise?”

“No.”

“Why—?”

“Have you decided if you’ll follow the One who made the chair?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“When you’ve made your decision, I think it will be time to tell you why I gave the chair to you.” Nicole stood and held her hands out to Corin and he took them. “This was a delight, but I must go. Those clouds look like rain and I want to get home before the skies open up.” She squeezed his hands twice, then turned to go. “Don’t worry,” she called out over her shoulder as she clipped away, “we’ll chat again soon.”

“When?”

“Sooner or later.”

Corin puffed out a long sigh and decided to head for the cemetery. He needed to talk to his parents.

C
orin drove away from his meeting with Nicole hoping the rain would hold off till he reached the cemetery and was finished with his time there. It didn’t. A light mist filtered down out of the darkening sky and blanketed his windshield as he pulled into the parking lot.

It was empty except for his car. It didn’t surprise him. Who else came to graveyards in the evening unless it was October 31 or prank night for high school kids looking for a rush? Corin did it to be alone.

After he slid out of his car and locked the doors, he shuffled down the familiar path that would take him to his parents’ matching headstones. Two minutes later he slipped to his knees in front of their graves, the dampness of the lawn seeping through his jeans, chilling his knees. He didn’t care. The loamy smell of the soil filled his head and he breathed it in deeply.

“Watching us grow up, did you ever think Shasta and I would arrive at this spot? Two kids who did everything together, who made you wear grooves in the road taking us to the emergency room after one of our adventures.”

Like the time they were six and four and jumped off the roof and discovered that Superman and Batman capes didn’t automatically make them fly.

“All you wanted for us was to be friends—and you got your dream. And left us thinking we’d be best friends forever. But if you’ve watched lately, the dream crashed and burned.” He glanced from his mom’s headstone to his dad’s. “And now it looks like the final chance for restoration has vanished. Just thought you should know.”

He jammed his hands into his coat pocket. “What did you think of my final try? Did you think Shasta could sit in my magical chair and it would heal him and we’d be jumping dirt bikes over canyons again? Did we ever tell you about the time Shasta came six inches from landing his bike three hundred feet down in the Metus River and almost beat you to this cemetery?”

The lamppost to his right flickered and then went out as if on cue, smothering him in the darkening twilight. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Dad. So sorry.”

Corin closed his eyes and instantly images flooded his mind. First the accident, the numbness in Shasta’s eyes as he lay on the slope waiting for the ski patrol, soft flakes of snow landing on his face and Corin realizing in a flash why his brother didn’t brush them off.

An instant later that scene was replaced by the rippling surface of Lake Vereor. He wasn’t sleeping, but the pictures in his head were just as vivid as if he were buried deep in the dream. A shake of his head did nothing to rid him of the terror. He tried to stand but instead tumbled onto his side and his eyes closed and he entered the world between dreaming and waking.

This time no light filtered through the surface of the water five feet over his head. There was only darkness as his dad yanked on his life jacket.

Water flowed around his body, pressing in on him as if he was hundreds of feet down, pressing into his eardrums like ice picks.

His dad dove a second time. A third. A fourth.

But it no longer mattered. All the air had been purged from his lungs and now they were full of water.

There was no panic this time, no determination to reach the surface, no life in his fingers to scrawl his desire to live into his dad’s forearms. Only acceptance that all hope was gone.

And the fear. Deeper this time than it had ever been.

Corin shrank inside himself till he was smaller than an atom, but still the fear came and found him, mocked him, and a moment later devoured him.

He woke to the kiss of soft rain on his face, the lamp to his left flickering off and on, and the smell of damp soil.

The vision or dream—he couldn’t tell which it had been—faded quickly but left him with a thought that lingered like a chilling fog.

Death would win, had won, had always held him in the palm of its hand, and would never let him slip through its fingers.

W
hen Corin arrived at his store on Wednesday morning, A. C. stood leaning against the front door with two oversized chocolate muffins and two large cups of what he assumed was industrial-strength coffee and a big grin on his face; an I-want-something grin.

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d bribe you into letting me take another ride in your chair.”

Corin laughed. “What now? Broken toenail?” He opened the door and held it for A. C.

“Nah, I just want to sit in it. Find that peace again.” A. C. lumbered in and set the muffins and coffee on Corin’s sales counter.

“You’re going all spiritual on me?”

“Haven’t you thought about it? About God since all this started happening?”

He had. More than once. More than twice. The idea had been pinging around his brain long before Nicole had brought it up the day before. “Yeah.” Corin flicked on the store lights. “I have.” He turned but A. C. must have already ambled back to the vault.

Corin was halfway back when A. C. pounded toward him, face white, eyes intense.

“You all right?”

“It’s gone!”

“What’s gone?”

“What do you mean what, the chair!” A. C. paced the lamp aisle like he was getting ready to punch something. “Did you hide it?”

“No.”

“Don’t rock me, are you serious?”

Corin pushed past him and walked to the vault.

It was empty. Corin’s face flushed.

“That chair healed me.” A. C. slammed his palm on the vault door. “It could have helped a lot of people. It could have helped your brother.”

“It’s okay, A. C.”

The big man turned to Corin. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What?”

“You don’t seem that upset.”

“It’s okay; I’m not thrilled about this, but it’s okay.”

“The chair is gone, Corin. It’s not okay. We lost it!”

“No, we didn’t.” Corin offered his friend a slight smile.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“You built a duplicate.”

Corin nodded. “Just in case.” He waved his hands. “Reconstructing the chair was intense. The thing mesmerized me. So simple, so complex. It took me seven tries before I got it right, and even then I wasn’t even close.”

“But close enough. You fooled them.”

“Apparently.”

“You are brilliant, Roscoe.” A. C. smiled, but a moment later his mood darkened. “But we still have the issue of someone breaking into your store and stealing what they think is the chair.”

“Exactly. We’re not talking vandalism anymore; we’re talking a full-out crime. No signs of forced entry, which means they’re pros. Probably thought they’d have a few days before I found the ‘chair’ was missing. And yes, I fooled them for a while. But once they figure out it isn’t the real chair, they’ll come after it again.”

Corin paced in front of vault. “I built the duplicate just in case something like this happened, but I wanted to believe it wouldn’t.” He crossed his hands on top of his head. “Wrong.”

“Who? Who took it?”

“Jefferies. I suppose it could have been someone else I haven’t bumped into, but that’s where I’d place my bet.”

“So where is the real one?”

“Safe.”

A. C. laughed. “Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“You’re not going to tell me.” His friend cocked his head. “Thanks for the trust.”

“I trust you. I don’t trust them. If you don’t know, you don’t have to lie. Something you’re not good at.”

“Where do you go from here?”

“Get in touch with my new pals down at the police department, explain what happened, watch them serve me up with platitudes, and walk off with nothing but a ‘we’ll try to locate your old piece of wood and track down the people who took it.’”

“Don’t you think you’re in a little over your head?”

Corin glared at him.

“Sorry, wrong metaphor.”

“No worries.”

“I’m just saying this is beyond you at this point. You need to get someone else involved. To protect you.”

“Who?”

A. C. threw his arms wide. “Me.”

Corin shut the vault and spun the combination. “I don’t need protection. I have a feeling this thing is going to be over soon, one way or another.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wish I knew.”

As Corin drove home that night, he tried Tesser but there was no answer. Next he tried Nicole. Something she’d said made him realize who she was. And who he was to her. Waiting till she could confirm what he suspected wouldn’t be easy.