The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (15 page)

“It didn’t sound like rape.”

The words disappeared almost immediately, swallowed by the acres of fabric in the room, but they rang in Iris’s head. “I was fourteen the first time. Fourteen.”

“I know that now,” Jolene cried, struggling past a rack of costumes to reach Iris. The yellow dress’s hanger snagged on something and she dropped it. “I know it was rape, I mean. But I didn’t understand then. I’m so, so sorry. I’ve felt horrible about not speaking up every day since you left. Every. Single. Day. I know I don’t deserve it, but please forgive me.”

Iris held both arms at shoulder height, palms out, to keep Jolene from coming closer. “You could have stopped it. You could have stopped it all, but you didn’t. You want me to forgive you?”

Jolene nodded miserably, tears streaming down her face.

“Well, I don’t. I do not forgive you. Do you want to know what happens to a fifteen-year-old runaway? A girl? I can tell you about the hunger, the fear, the shoplifting and pickpocketing to eat, the sex.”

Jolene started to put her hands over her ears, but then lowered them, as if she owed it to Iris to listen.

“Oh, yes, there was lots of sex. Some of it for money. I was beaten up a couple of times, knifed once, raped. When I started to make some money, I took self-defense lessons because I was never going to be at someone’s
mercy
again.” Shards of memory sliced at her and the sick fear she’d felt when the knife slashed toward her made her stomach lurch. She kicked at one of the rolling racks and it shot across the floor, banging into the wall. “You could have stopped it. Could have told the Community I was telling the truth, but you chose not to.”

“He was Zach’s father! I was so afraid of hurting Zach, of how he’d react … But that’s no excuse.”

Iris’s gaze raked Jolene. She didn’t look pretty now, with her eyes and nose reddened from crying, her hair in disarray. “I’ve had enough therapy to know Matthew Brozek was—is—a criminal. You’re his accomplice.”

“No! I—”

Iris strode to the door and flung it open, letting light and the sound of clanging lockers and students changing classes into the dim room. She was going to explode if she didn’t get out of here. Pushing through the tide of high-schoolers that hemmed her in and buffeted her with backpacks and sharp-cornered books, she forced her way toward the exit, a square of light from the window of a door marked “FIRE EXIT ONLY.” Moving faster and faster as she neared the door, she slammed both hands against the bar.

twenty-five

iris

Iris barely made it
through the door before she was running flat out, uncaring of the startled looks she got or the harsh pulsing of the fire alarm. Her speed
whanged
her into the side of the new rental car and she paused a moment, gasping, before wrenching the door open and peeling out of the lot with a squeal of tires.
Jolene knew, but never said—
She shook her head to dislodge the feelings of betrayal and embarrassment and anger that caromed inside her like a pinball. She hadn’t thought about where she was going, but she was unsurprised when she found herself pulling into the motel parking lot fifteen minutes later. A cluster of cars were parked near the Welshes’ house and she wondered if Mrs. Welsh was hosting a Tupperware party or a coffee klatch. She didn’t want to be here.

Reversing the car, she pulled away from the motel, took a deep breath, and dialed Cade’s number. She was in the mood for confrontation and she wanted to know why he hadn’t mentioned being in Lone Pine that night. He came on the line as she was passing the lay-by where the bus used to pick them up, and she skidded into it. “Top of the rockslide in forty-five minutes,” she told Cade when he said he could meet her for lunch. “Bring lunch and water—we’ll have a picnic.” She hung up, hoping the climb would give her enough time to figure out what to say to him.

She’d often climbed the slide her last couple of years in Lone Pine, after the cliff had birthed the river of boulders and stones that slid into the ravine, burying Penelope Welsh under millions of tons of rock. All the kids had loved the climb which made the canyon rim on the far side accessible from the Lone Pine side. She knotted her boot laces, locked the car door, and started down the path, blocking the memory of Jolene saying how she had climbed the rocks to ponder her options when she learned she was pregnant. Iris jolted to a stop. Jolene had admitted to being alone that night, on the slide, when the police report said Jolene and Zach had spent the evening together, studying at Jolene’s house. If Jolene was telling the truth now, neither one of them had an alibi and they both had reasons to be mad at—and afraid of—Pastor Matt.

Iris resumed hiking. Trees and shrubs had grown up among the boulders since she last climbed it and the slide looked less barren. She wanted barren. Stark. Unforgiving. Leaving the path that led to Lone Pine, she started up the slide, having to concentrate to avoid getting a foot stuck between two rocks or skidding on scree. She was grateful for the need to pay attention. She didn’t want to think. After only ten minutes of climbing, her breaths came heavily and she paused to suck in air, cursing the altitude. Bicycling the streets of Portland, she decided, did not adequately prepare one to go rock climbing at better than six thousand feet. Acres of rock stretched around her, soaking up the sun. Dark clouds slunk over the mountaintops, promising shade and maybe rain later. The giant spruce tree with its cool circle of shade used to be just about here … A frisson shivered up Iris’s back. The tree, and Penelope’s skeleton, might be directly below her, buried on the ravine floor, two hundred feet down.

Starting off again, she conserved her energy by moving more slowly, taking care where she planted her feet. The canyon wall was only two-tenths of a mile away, and she was only gaining a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet in altitude, Iris figured, but the instability of the rocks worked all her muscles. On the thought, a rock twisted beneath her foot and she fell forward, catching herself with a hand on a basketball-sized rock. She got an immediate impression of water, and of the shadow of something swimming overhead. The sensation was so strong she leaned forward and touched her tongue to the rock, expecting to taste salt. Only grit and dust. Scraping her tongue against the roof of her mouth to clean it, she remembered Colorado used to be an inland sea. Maybe Penelope’s turquoise had also been underwater, millions of years ago, and that’s why she had gotten such a strong sense of water when she held the stone. That didn’t explain the terror she’d felt, however.

Ten minutes later she reached her arms over the canyon’s lip, searching for purchase. Before she could lever herself over the edge, strong hands gripped her wrists. She squeaked with surprise.

“Got you.” It was Cade’s voice and she let him help her over
the edge.

Flopping onto her back, she lay for a moment, staring straight up into the blue. Then Cade’s upside-down face moved into her field of view. He grinned and handed her a bottled water. She swished some in her mouth to loosen the dirt that clung to her tongue and teeth, and drank. Cade handed her a second bottle without comment. He looked incongruous in his suit slacks and button-down shirt, his wingtips filmed with dust. She thanked him, stood and dusted herself off as best she could. “So, what’s for lunch?”

Clouds scudded the sky by the time they finished the burgers Cade had brought, a towering anvil-shaped mass promising thunderstorms. Iris had forgotten how quickly the weather changed in Colorado and wished she’d asked Cade to bring her a heavier jacket. Wind gusted fitfully and the temperature had dropped several degrees.

“I hadn’t planned on this,” Cade said, biting into an oversized oatmeal cookie.

“What had you planned?”

“An exciting sandwich at my desk, working on a workman’s comp case. This is better.”

She didn’t know if he meant the cookie or being out of the office, picnicking on a canyon rim with her. The lines on his tanned face relaxed as he chewed, making him look younger, more like the man she’d dated so many eons ago. His black hair, tied back in its short ponytail, gleamed, looking barbered rather than rebellious. Zipping her jacket to her neck against the chill, Iris bit into her peanut butter cookie. He’d remembered her favorite.

“Remember when we used to come here?” Cade asked, staring out over the ravine. He lit a cigarette, making sure the smoke drifted away from her.

“Of course.” Looking west, they had watched magnificent sunsets over Pikes Peak, content to sit with hands linked as the sky turned from pink to mauve and then inky blue. They’d brought a blanket and spread it out, and lain kissing for hours, until Iris’s lips and cheeks were chapped and red from beard burn. They’d made love here, too, not their first time, but once when an electrical storm sent sheets of lightning ripping from cloud to cloud and the air was fresh with the scent of ozone and birds’ calls. The lightning had ensured their privacy as sane people sheltered inside, and its electricity had charged the air. From the look Cade slanted her, Iris suspected he was remembering their lovemaking.

She wondered if he thought that’s why she’d asked him to meet her here. Maybe he thought she was interested in reprising that evening. Was she? There was still a chemistry between them, even though it was muted, like the scent from an empty perfume bottle not properly stoppered. Mostly evaporated, but still lingering. She imagined his hands caressing her bare skin and shivered. She was suddenly certain he had a blanket in his trunk.

Reminding herself that he had lied to her, by omission if nothing else, she stuffed the uneaten half of her cookie into the bag and weighted it with a rock so it wouldn’t blow away. “I talked to Jolene. Did you know she married Zach Brozek?”

Cade propped himself on his elbows, canting his body toward her. “I heard.”

“They’ve got two kids. She teaches.” Taking a deep breath, Iris added, “She said she saw your car that night. In the church parking lot. You didn’t tell me you were there, Cade. I think that’s strange.” She kept her voice as neutral as she could, not wanting to sound like she was accusing him of anything.

His mouth tightened and he looked away from her to the west and the approaching clouds. “You want to know why I was there?”

She nodded, but he didn’t see it. “Fine. I’ll tell you.” He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and faced her, a strand of black hair swinging forward where it had come loose from his ponytail. His face was stony. “That bastard chased you away. That predatory, megalomaniac fuck abused you and punished you and chased you away from your home. And me. Your parents let it happen, didn’t lift a finger to help you. I wanted to punish
him
for what he did to you. And us.”

Iris stirred, uneasy with Cade’s intensity. He was no longer the detached lawyer; he’d morphed into the enraged eighteen-year-old he’d been a quarter century earlier. “I wanted to beat him to a pulp.”

“You didn’t—” Iris was surprised by how much she didn’t want to hear Cade admit to the crimes.

He nodded. “I downed a six-pack and drove to Lone Pine, determined to fuck him up. I knocked on his door and when he opened it, I socked him before he could even say ‘Good evening.’ Landed a punch on his jaw.” His right hand rubbed his left fist, and he rotated his shoulder as if feeling the punch vibrate all the way up his arm again.

“He fell on his ass.” Cade smiled savagely. “I stood over him, feeling almighty and powerful, and a bit dizzy from the beer. I told him to get up, but he wouldn’t. Coward. I kicked him once in the thigh, to try and get him up, but he stayed on the floor, saying something about turning the other cheek. I yelled at him, told him I knew what he’d done to you, called him a sicko, a pervert, every name I could think of. He didn’t budge. I couldn’t bring myself to punch a man who wouldn’t even try to defend himself, and I was feeling sick and thought I heard someone moving around upstairs, so in the end, I just left. Not one of my finer moments.”

He finally met her eyes and Iris realized he was embarrassed
by what he saw as his failure to protect her or avenge her, even after the fact.

“Cade—” She laid a hand on his thigh. His muscles tensed beneath her fingers, and then his hand covered hers and squeezed hard.

“I capped off the evening by vandalizing the church, whacking at things and breaking windows with the baseball bat I had in the car, and then driving off and wrapping my car around a tree. Lone Pine almost became No Pine that night.” His laugh was strained. “I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and added a few hundred thousand dollars of hospital bills to my grandma’s money problems. Leg broken in two places, ruptured spleen, cracked vertebra, and a host of lesser injuries.”

“Ouch.” Cade’s was probably the car her father had heard.

“Yeah, well.”

“That’s why you didn’t want another investigation.”

Cade nodded, watching closely to gauge her reaction. “Yes. My fingerprints weren’t on file back then, and no one thought to print me, so my prints on the door, in the house, got labeled ‘unknown.’ No one knew I was there. I straightened myself out after the accident, Iris. I went to the community college for a couple of years, pulled up my grades, and graduated from the University of Colorado. Then, law school, passing the bar, getting married, having kids. I’m in line for a judgeship in the next election.”

“Congratulations.”

“I don’t need questions coming up about that night and my presence at the Brozek house.”

Iris plucked at a tuft of grass, yanking up each blade individually, then offered them to the wind on her palm. They blew away. She pinned Cade with her eyes. “So, it was okay for my father to continue to rot in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, as long as things continued to be smooth sailing for you? Don’t they call that conflict of interest, counselor?” The wind whipped hair into her face, and she pushed it back. Digging in her pocket, she found an elastic and secured her hair, gaze never leaving Cade’s face.

“That’s not fair.” Cade leaned in, face tight. “It’s not my fault he’s in prison. I didn’t put Brozek in a coma or cause his wife’s heart attack. I didn’t make your dad confess. By the time I was coherent in the hospital and heard about what happened, Neil had confessed and the case was closed. Admitting I’d been there would have served no useful purpose.”

Iris gave him a stony look. “You could have told me.”

“Right. You show up in my office after a twenty-three-year absence, wanting to re-open the case, and I’m supposed to bare my soul, open myself up to prosecution. I don’t think so.”

His words hurt. There’d been a time when they’d bared their souls to each other. At least, she’d bared hers. He was the first person she’d told about the abuse, the one who’d urged her to speak up.
And look how well that turned out
. “It’s going to rain. We should go.” She started to gather up their trash, but his arm on her wrist stopped her.

“Do you ever think about what might have been?”

She gazed into his eyes, brown, liquid with wistfulness or maybe even longing. If she hadn’t spoken up, hadn’t run away, would they have transformed their hot, desperate, first love passion into a solid marriage? Or would they have drifted apart, finding new loves and paths? Or worse, would they have damaged each other, with Cade settling for some meaningless job and never graduating, while she spiraled into the darkness that Pastor Matt’s abuse inclined her to? Pointless questions.

She didn’t move away and he leaned in until their lips met. Iris lost herself in the sensation of his mouth opening under hers, the familiar rasp of his stubbled jaw against her skin. He smelled like warm skin and fabric softener, and tasted of smoke. She closed her eyes and let the heat rise between them, even as the air temperature dipped and the first drop of rain splatted against her cheek.

Cade’s weight pressed her into the ground and sharp-edged pebbles dug into her back and shoulders. His hand, warm and smoother than she remembered, slipped inside her shirt and cupped her breast. His thumb teasing her nipple, and his erection pressing against her thigh triggered her body’s usual responses. As she kissed him, though, she felt sadness welling up, the way water seeped into a sand castle moat at the beach, not displacing the passion, but making
it incongruous. A distant rumble of thunder warned of lightning, but it was far enough away Iris didn’t see the flash. After another half minute of kissing, as Cade’s hand worked the button at her waist, she pushed at his shoulders. He pulled away so readily that she wondered if he felt the same way she did. Or maybe he was thinking about his wife.