The Diviner's Tale (35 page)

A murder of crows cried like a nursery full of squalling babies. I started, opened my eyes, glanced over toward them, and saw instead that she was with me again. Dressed as before in a floral-print white blouse and denim skirt, a beaded choker around her thin neck and some simple silver earrings I hadn't noticed before, but this time she was as alive and breathing as I was. She hadn't aged a day. Standing in the light and shade that dappled her, she stared at me with a mixture of curiosity, shyness, and impatience. She held my apple in one hand. With her other she was pointing past me at something or someone. I swung around and studied the shivering pines and cleft upright karsts of stone for a face buried in the shadows, a concealed figure, but saw nothing. When I turned back, she had lowered her arms and dropped the apple on the ground.

I knew this was Emily Schaefer but knew she couldn't really be there. For just a moment, I pondered whether we weren't both ghosts.

What I felt now was less fear than a curious deepening hope for her, for each of us. There was no reason to try to speak to her, I sensed, so I didn't. But I did want to get a closer look at her face, as this time her eyes were not a washed-out pale near-gray, but of a distinct chestnut cast. They appeared to be damp. Maybe she had been crying, I thought, though not necessarily from sadness.

When I slowly rose and began to edge closer, approaching her as one might a fawn in the wilderness, the girl didn't move but intently stared me in the eye. A flinch in the air behind me, the snap of a finger perhaps, and I looked but no one was there, of course. I shouldn't have expected otherwise. When I turned to Emily again she had somehow managed to climb the tree she'd been standing beneath and was now moving hastily, uncannily, impossibly from branch to branch, an acrobatic wraith in the maze of green. These gestures were accomplished with unworldly expertise. I watched her fully in her element now, my mouth agape, frozen in astonishment and admiration. She moved with grace and overwhelming fluidity and freedom, a weightless spidery silhouette against the sky. I didn't attempt to chase her. What would the point have been?

I wondered, leaving the caves and Henderson's valley, hoping never to return, if there was such a thing as a ghost of conscience. Yes, I thought. And I had just encountered her for the fifth and, as I forevisioned it, final time.

T
HE CLOCK DOWNSTAIRS
chimed once not long before the other sound, a delicate scratching, began. Maybe this sound was followed by a creaking, the type of music made by a child on a swing far away, or the kind sea winds sometimes played in the lighthouse on otherwise quiet Covey evenings. But I couldn't be sure and didn't move.

Charley had left after midnight. Perhaps he forgot something and returned to fetch it, hoping I wasn't quite asleep yet. I had gone to bed soon after he said goodbye, kissing me good night on the porch where we'd been sitting, sipping wine for hours after finishing the fried trout and stuffed eggplant I made for him out of my Fannie Farmer cookbook. We had talked about everything under the sun—the moon, that is—long after I shooed Morgan and Jonah upstairs and tucked them into bed. Now I was still wide awake, having turned out the last of the lights. A deep darkness settled over the house, the moon having set and the stars erased by clouds. All I wanted was to sink into my pillow with a fresh recall of Charley's manner and voice, rehearse once more the stories we had rambled through, some from our childhood, others about how we got to where we were. But as strong and soothing as these thoughts were, they couldn't fully compete with the interweaving images of Emily Schaefer at the caves, not to mention the devastation of the flats below.

The night had reached that riddlesome stretch when a single stroke might mean twelve-thirty as easily as one o'clock, or for that matter one-thirty. So the clock struck that once—it was one—and slow minutes elapsed, during which I realized it couldn't have been Charley since I hadn't heard his car return down Mendes Road. My dormer windows were on the street side. His headlights would have been visible in the leaves of the horse chestnut out front if he swung back into the driveway.

In the blackness I slipped downstairs and checked the doors and windows, which were still secure. Looked outside, saw nothing astir, so returned to bed. Maybe, I encouraged myself, it was one of the posse of stray cats that marauded by most every evening, knowing handouts could be had here. Or the scratching could have been made by any of our nocturnal visitors, our resident skunks, coons, possums with their tiny albino eyes pink as babies' tongues, who launched into life when the sun was gone. I listened for another half-hour, hearing nothing further, before succumbing to exhaustion but not real sleep. The balance of the night was spent in a limbo between uneasy rest and edgy restiveness.

Next morning the twins routed me from bed with coffee and loud music. Morgan had practice—the boys of summer were steadfast as Sisyphus—and Jonah had plans to go back to Nep's. A few leftover fireworks needed dispatching, plus he was going to learn how to solder and see how the acetylene torch fired. Turnabout was fair play. How many mornings had I dragged them from their beds with coffee and jazz on the stereo as impetus to get ready for school when it was blizzarding out? Besides, it meant I could come back and spend some time by myself. Place the call to Julia Bryant and see what was happening with Laura.

If there was sage advice I could have offered Morgan about the Skoler boys when I dropped him off at the ball field, I kept it to myself, knowing he was on top of his own game in more ways than one. Wiser to be restrained and wish him a good practice, asking only what time he would be finished. In Morgan's absence, Jonah asked me what Charley and I colloquied about after he went to bed.

Colloquied,
I marveled. Mispronounced, but another new word.

"Whatever came into our heads," I told him.

"What came into your heads?"

"You guys, his life in Wiscasset, my teaching."

"What about divining?"

"Didn't come up."

"What about the hanged girl?"

"Jonah, why in the world would I want to talk about that?"

"Because her friend is back."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't hear those sounds last night?"

I waited for him to go on.

"Well, I did. Morgan was still sleeping, but I heard something and set up lookout by the window. It was really dark, but I'm pretty sure I saw that Laura girl run from the house to the shed."

"You were having a dream."

"No way. I checked this morning before you got up and somebody'd been in there."

"I did hear a scratching sound, but it was one of the strays."

"It was her," he said with inarguable finality and a mild frown.

Surely Niles hadn't told Jonah that Laura was missing—he was furtive enough when he confided in me—but I decided not to telephone him to find out. The questions that would arise weren't ones I necessarily wanted to answer. If he had told Jonah, was I asking because there was something Jonah had to report? If he hadn't told Jonah, why ask unless Jonah had something to report? The classic damned if you did, damned if you didn't conundrum.

"I guess we'll see. If she's here, she's come for a reason besides sleeping in the shed. Meantime, let's keep this to ourselves, why don't we."

"What about Morgan?"

"I'm not sure. He's got his hands full with those Skoler punks and maybe it's best left alone until, I mean if, she shows herself. If you're wrong—"

"I'm not wrong. But I won't say anything."

During the drive to my parents' house, Jonah and I were each lost in our separate thoughts. We found Nep sitting alone on the porch. Though a little ashen from all the activity and abbreviated rest of the last couple of days, he was still riding high.

"Hello, daughter," he said.

"Hello, pater. I come bearing gifts. Or gift, that is."

"Let's see."

"I hereby present you with one Jonah Brooks."

"And what does a fellow do with a what's-his-name?"

"Shoot off the rest of the firecrackers and hang out in the workshop melting metal and stuff," Jonah said.

"That so."

"That's what you said."

"If I said it before, that before's still good."

He'd gotten pretty adept at covering and I respected the effort.

"If you're too tired, you know, Nep—"

"Never. Chris here's welcome to stay."

I shook my head at Jonah, unnecessarily, as the boy didn't bat an eye. A little guiltily, I told him I had to run and asked if he'd say hello to his grandmother for me. Fact was, I had no interest in recapping my evening with Charley for Rosalie yet and felt a real urgency to return to Mendes Road.

The first place I looked was in the shed, a board-and-batten affair with a cranky wooden door and rusted tin roof, where I found neither the hanged girl nor the runaway girl nor anyone else. True, the shed was such a jumble I wouldn't necessarily have known whether somebody had slept in it or not. I searched the outer edges of our couple of acres, walked down Mendes this side and the other, hiked the thicketed woods behind our place. I even scratched my fingernails on the screened door and one window, trying to replicate the sound I had heard. Familiar, but in the bright light of day I couldn't be sure. Pulling open the heavy cellar door on the side of the house, I called down into the dimness where the warped steps led, "Laura, you there?" No response.

Jonah's imagination, I decided as I brewed black tea in the kitchen in a failing effort to stay awake, threatened to become as brazen as his mother's. Which would be a shame. If the fifth turning in my life was any paradigm of what imagination can bring down on someone, I didn't want that happening to my son. Another of Rosalie's childhood verses streamed through my mind as I lay my head down on the table, her favorite passage from Ecclesiastes,
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven
...
a time to be born, and a time to die
...
a time to kill, and a time to heal
...
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak—

"Mrs. Brooks?" gentler than any dream or specter.

I didn't want to open my eyes.

"Are you asleep?"

I raised my head.

"Guess not anymore, right? Sorry," she said, sounding altogether human and looking the worse for wear.

"What are you doing here, Laura?"

"I think you probably know."

That I did or should wasn't for me to address at that moment. I saw the fingers of her right hand were bloodied, not with fresh but dried dark blood with one fingernail badly torn, and her cheek was scraped. I reached out, saying, "My God, what happened?"

"It wasn't my fault," she said. While it didn't answer my question, her response did confirm my suspicion she was in trouble beyond having run away. I led her by the arm to the bathroom, where I washed her hand and cheek as delicately as I could and, after warning her, "This is going to sting," peroxided them. Laura winced but made no complaint when I daubed the disinfectant on her wounds. I then bandaged her hand, saying, "We should take you to the hospital."

"Please don't make me go to any hospital."

"Why not? You're hurt."

"He'll know to look there."

"Who will know, Laura? The same man as before?"

"Yes," she said, surprisingly direct given how oblique and even evasive she had been when I visited her in Cold Spring.

"Roy Skoler, you mean," I said.

"Is that his real name?"

"I don't know. What name does he go by?"

"Christopher."

I felt suddenly nauseated. "Does this Christopher know you're here?"

"I hope not."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Night before the Fourth," she said. "He came to my house, just like he said he would if I tried to get away. My mother'd gone downtown to do some shopping and I was alone in the kitchen when I heard a knock on the front door. I thought, That's weird. Nobody ever knocks. People just ring the bell. I didn't even need to look through the peephole. I just knew."

A razor-sharp mental image of the Bryants' foyer came into focus, and I could easily situate myself at the center of the terror she must have felt. Amazed once more at Laura's innate diviner's intuition, her ability to see through that door, I asked her what she did next.

"I didn't think, I just ran to my room, grabbed my pack."

"You mean you were already packed to leave?"

"Listen, Cassandra. I was packed from the day I got home. I could hear him downstairs in the foyer, shouting, 'Anybody here?' like he was a family friend sticking his head in to borrow a cup of sugar or something."

She was shaking, staring past me over my shoulder with the same disconnected look on her face that I remembered all too well from the first time I laid eyes on her after she emerged from Henderson's valley. Part of me wanted to stop her from continuing. I didn't want her to have to relive this encounter. But if I was going to help her I needed to know, so I waited.

"I heard the downstairs door close and hoped maybe he'd left. But no. I'm pretty sure he was at the bottom of the stairs when he called my name. I couldn't believe what he said next. He used the same line as the first time, like I was really supposed to trust him again?" She let out an exasperated sigh.

"What line?"

"That I needed to be more patient and everything would be all right. That he was sorry about some of the things that happened, but if I came with him he'd take me to my brother, that my brother was friends with him and still wanted to see me."

"That's what lured you away the first time?"

As Laura lowered her head and shook it in despair if not self-disgust at having been duped, I realized she had been telling the truth all along, had neither run away nor been kidnapped as such, but rather been spirited away based on a duplicitous promise. Feeling like some cross-examiner, I asked her how she escaped with him blocking the staircase.

"That was the easy part. There's a servant's staircase, very narrow. Nobody much uses it, except when my brother and I were little we thought of it as our secret stairway down to the kitchen. The minute I heard him start upstairs, I sneaked down the back steps and out the kitchen door. Why I got it in my head to hide up in the tree house instead of running away, I don't know. I guess I still thought if he didn't find me, he'd leave. And besides, my mom was going to be home soon."