The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (23 page)

thirty-six

jolene

Zach didn’t ask where
Jolene had been when she arrived home, hours later than usual, bringing a King Sooper’s deli chicken and sides for dinner. He sat on the loveseat near the gas fireplace, apparently engrossed in a book on Paul’s biblical letters. He didn’t look up, even when she let the deli bag plop noisily to the counter and rattled the glasses setting the table. Fine. If he was so uninterested in her admittedly uninteresting life, she wasn’t going to volunteer an explanation of what she’d been doing. Come to think of it, she didn’t want him to know that Aaron had slept with Iris, anyway. She wasn’t sure who he’d be most infuriated with, but couldn’t stand for him to be angry with Aaron.

Warming the macaroni and cheese in the microwave, she
wang
ed the door shut with extra energy when she removed the dish. It struck her then, with Rachel’s fate in regards to her thefts undecided, that it was a bad time to engage in silence one-upmanship with Zach. She came to the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room and hesitated. A lamp cast a gentle glow on her husband, making his hair seem blonder and diminishing the lines in his face. Despite that, he looked as worn out as she felt. Maybe it was the way his shoulders slumped forward, as if he were carrying a heavy weight.

When Zach still didn’t look up, she asked in a low voice, assuming Rachel was upstairs, “Did you meet with the elders? About Rachel?”

His head came up then and he looked at her levelly. “Yes.”

“Was Esther there?”

“She is the senior elder.”

“What did you decide?” Jolene tried to keep all worry and judgment out of her voice, but she twined her fingers together tightly.

“I’m not prepared to discuss that now,” said Zach, snapping his book closed. “There will be a special Community meeting tomorrow evening at five. Everyone will gather in the church.” He clicked off the lamp and asked, “Is dinner finally ready?”

“But Rachel … You’re not going to insist on the reckoning stones, are you? You didn’t let Esther—”

Zach spoke sternly. “My sister is a godly woman who cares about the Community and its people. Look how she cared for my father all those years, and is prepared to care for him again. You would do well to emulate her, rather than casting aspersions on her. We need to tell her we’re willing to spare her the burden this time around. We’ll put him in Aaron’s room.”

His pronouncement struck Jolene with the force of a fall from a galloping horse. Even though he’d brought up the idea earlier, she’d assumed that Matthew would go back to the nursing home now that he had returned to a comatose state. She couldn’t have him in the house. Before she recovered herself enough to object, Zach was calling up the stairs. “Rachel. Come down for dinner, please.”

After dinner, eaten in near silence, Zach circumvented Jolene’s plan to talk to him by placing his utensils on his plate and saying, “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to work on my sermon.” He disappeared into his small study and closed the door firmly.

Rachel, scraping chicken bones into the trash, cut her eyes toward her mother. In a whisper, she asked, “Do you know what—”

Jolene shrugged helplessly. She felt impotent, unable to protect her daughter if she didn’t know what was coming, and unwilling to vilify her husband, even in her mind. He would do what was right and just, she told herself, shooing Rachel upstairs and doing the dishes herself so she could have some time alone. A lemony scent drifted up from the dish soap as she squirted it into the sink. Despite the stony front he’d displayed the last couple of days, he was a loving man, a compassionate man. He spent hours each week reading to Mrs. Dorfmann or conversing with other lonely shut-ins. He had done all the cooking and cleaning for weeks after she lost the son between Aaron and Rachel midway through the pregnancy.

And Zach loved Rachel. She smiled faintly at the memory of him on all fours in the living room, letting Rachel pretend he was a unicorn and she a fairy princess. He’d tried to talk her into playing Ruth or Mary on a donkey instead, but agreed to be a unicorn when she insisted. Looking up quickly, Jolene caught a glimpse of a sadly smiling face in the sink window and dropped a spoon, thinking someone was staring in at her. After a confused half-second, she realized the face was hers.

Hastily wiping her soapy hands on a dishcloth, Jolene crossed the living room to the door of Zach’s study and leaned her head against it silently. She stood there, the cool solidity of the wood pressing against her forehead. “I love you,” she said softly.

She waited a beat, and when there was only silence, she stroked her hand down the door and returned to the kitchen.

thirty-seven

jolene

Five o’clock Friday came
too soon for Jolene’s comfort. She’d been distracted all day by thoughts of the upcoming meeting and
had not given her students the attention they deserved. Now, getting ready to walk over to the church, to gather with the Community, her stomach felt hollow and she dreaded that Zach would condemn their daughter from the pulpit, would announce that she must be punished with the reckoning stones.

Rachel emerged from the bathroom wearing a defiant expression, a white denim skirt that didn’t quite reach her knees, and a peach cami and turquoise tank top, each thinner than a Bible page. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” she announced before Jolene could object, and stalked out of the house, head held high.

Caught between admiring her daughter’s chutzpah and wanting to strangle her, Jolene sighed and followed her down the road to the church. The sun sat above Pikes Peak, an hour from sliding behind it due to daylight saving time, casting long shadows across the greening ground. As they neared the church, mingling with other Community members making their way to the meeting, Rachel slowed, waiting for Jolene. When Jolene reached her, she slipped her cold fingers into her mother’s hand. Jolene squeezed her hand and gave her a reassuring smile.

They settled into their usual pew, about one-third of the way back from the altar on the left, greeting neighbors. Esther sat in her usual front row seat, facing straight ahead, and Marian Asher and Angel sat across the aisle. Jolene knelt and tried to pray, asking the Lord to calm her spirit, but found herself wondering, midway through the prayer, what kind of punishment Zach would mete out to Rachel. At exactly five o’clock by Jolene’s watch, the five elders rose from their places around the church and walked to the front, arranging themselves in a tight semi-circle facing the gathering. Esther stood in the middle, the only woman, and Zach was on the left end. Jolene clenched her hands into fists and felt Rachel stiffen beside her.

Esther clicked on the microphone and a hum filled the church. The door creaked open. Rachel turned to look and whispered, “It’s Iris. She’s wearing jeans.”

Of course she was. Jolene smiled to herself. Iris might come to the meeting, but she’d do it on her own terms. Jolene knew suddenly, with absolute clarity, what she had to do.

thirty-eight

iris

Iris slid into the
last pew, close to the door and escape, wondering what the hell she was doing at the Community’s meeting. Mrs. Welsh had mentioned it to her, hinting that it involved Rachel, so she’d decided to come. She spotted the backs of Jolene’s and Rachel’s heads and focused on Zach in his dark suit, looking solemn as he stood beside his sister, Quentin Welsh, Joseph Ulm and a man she didn’t recognize. The all-powerful elders. She tensed. Her hand absently traced the grain of the smooth wood and the texture under her fingertips took her back to that last night when she’d stood alone in the front pew, facing the Community, her hands clutching the back of the pew for support.

Candles, not fading sunlight, had lit the church and all the adults of the Community sat in their pews, punishing her with their gazes. Her parents sat in the row behind, but she steadfastly refused to meet their eyes. Only her father’s entreaties had persuaded her to submit to the ritual.

“It would kill your mother if we got asked to leave the Community,” he’d said, face sagging, eyes red from lack of sleep. She’d heard her parents arguing well into the night.

“You want me to lie.”

“Your mother—I—want you to say you’re sorry. Can’t you be sorry?”

Oh, yes, she could be sorry. She hadn’t stopped being sorry she’d told the truth since the moment she blurted it out. She knew that wasn’t how he meant the word, but their refusal to believe her was a raw wound. It didn’t much matter what the rest of the Community thought since her own parents didn’t believe her.

The rough burlap robe scratched her nakedness, but she was barely aware of that discomfort as Pastor Matt denounced her.

“Mercy Asher has sinned against God and this Community by bearing false witness,” he intoned. “She has told lies—ugly, vicious lies—that would rend the fabric that holds this Community together. Prompted by Satan, she alleged that I”—he laid a hand on his chest—“had unclean knowledge of her body, that I committed adultery against my wife.” He gestured toward Glynnis, small and still as a mouse between Esther and Zach in the pew across from Mercy’s. Mercy looked at the woman, but could read nothing on her face, veiled by the dimness. She returned her gaze to her hands where they clutched the pew back. The bones stood out strongly, highlighted by the candle flickering in the pew end holder. A small, perfectly round mole sat below the last knuckle on her right hand.

A gasp and angry mutterings rose from the congregation. “You know me better than that,” Pastor Matt said. “You know me for a moral man, an upright man, dedicated to my God, my family, and this Community. I have been your leader for two decades now and I have never felt such sorrow as I do now.” He bowed his head.

Mercy felt rather than saw the scornful, disappointed, and furious looks thrown her way. She raised her gaze from her hands and fixed it on the door. They would lead her through that door when Pastor Matt was done, and into the woods, to wherever they’d led Mr. Carpenter that winter night when she was eight. She tried not to imagine what would happen there. At least it wasn’t snowing.

“Her parents have righteously turned her over to the Community’s justice and mercy and submitted her for the ritual of the reckoning stones,” Pastor Matt continued. Nods and agreement burbled from the congregation and Mercy hated them all. Every one. Well, except Jolene. Her eyes went to Jolene where she stood with her parents. In the gloom, she couldn’t see her eyes, but thought she saw the gleam of tears on her cheeks. Jolene faced her for a moment, but then looked away.

Pastor Matt continued to say ugly things about her, to bemoan her wickedness, to talk about how pained and hurt he was by her lies. He talked about the yeast of sin leavening the whole loaf and she imagined them all trapped in bread dough, expanding, puffing out, and then falling back on themselves in a gluey mess. Her father made a sound and her gaze flitted to him, mere feet away. He tried to give her an encouraging smile, but it was a mere twitch of his lips and she couldn’t bear to see the grief drawn into the lines of his face. The odor of smoke and hot wax clogged her nostrils as a candle guttered.

“The apostle Paul exhorts us to expel the wicked one from among us. ‘When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord,’ he tells us in Corinthians. But this sinner is repentant and we may have mercy upon her. She is prepared, her parents say, to confess her lies publicly to this Community, and beg forgiveness from God and us.”

He paused and bent an expectant look on Mercy. She swallowed hard and whispered something.

“You must proclaim your sin and repentance, Mercy.”

Still looking down, Mercy said in a hoarse voice, “I sinned. I repent.” She could feel his gaze upon her, working its way into her like his fingers had probed the slick, secret parts of her. She forced herself to continue, her throat so dry she coughed, “I am truly sorry and ask God’s forgiveness for my sins.”

For a moment, she thought Pastor Matt would try to force her to say more, to say she’d lied, to beg his forgiveness personally, but he seemed to think better of it. “I forgive you,” he said, laying a heavy hand on her shoulder.

Mercy flinched away from him, from the hot weight of his hand pressing the ropy weave into her skin, wanting to yell that she didn’t forgive
him
, that she’d never forgive him. His grip tightened.

“We will continue the ritual outside,” Pastor Matt said, his hand propelling Mercy out of the pew and down the aisle. Two candle-bearers preceded them. Her feet felt heavy, larger than normal, and she stumbled. Recovering her balance without looking up, she hastened her step until she was on the heels of the acolytes, desperate to reach the now open doors and leave the smoky, close air of the church behind. It was a clear spring night with cool air verging toward chilly now that the sun was fully down. A breeze soughed through the pine boughs and filtered through the loose weave of her penitential robe, raising goose bumps. Her bare toes tried to burrow into the loose dirt as rustlings and footsteps told her the whole congregation had assembled behind her. Her gaze went to the spot where she had clung to the church’s foundation almost a decade earlier, watching big-eyed as Pastor Matt led the snaking line of Community members into the woods. She almost expected to see a little girl there, watching, but there was no one.

Now, he lifted a candle high and they all followed him toward the narrow gap in the trees. The press of people herded Mercy along, keeping her just behind Pastor Matt as the path trended uphill. Pine needles and twigs pricked her feet. Bushy pine boughs and the thin pale arcs of aspen limbs, still unleafed, tangled overhead, denying the moonlight. Night creatures probably scurried and dug in the underbrush, but the tramp of dozens of feet drowned out their noises.

Mercy had no way to keep track of time, but she didn’t think they’d gone too far—less than a mile, certainly—when they entered a small clearing. Ringed by trees in a rough oval, it was no bigger than the inside of the church. Pastor Matt led her to the clearing’s center and, as people filed into the area and dispersed in a loose ring around her, she saw the three cairns and shivered. They stood knee-high, piles of rocks and shadows. Alien. The Community members clustered near them. She saw Noah reach for a stone and then exchange it for another, apparently not liking the feel or heft of the first one. Her eyes fixed on the nearest heap and she saw the stones were small, the size of grapes, maybe, and she remembered what her father had whispered as they made their way toward the church earlier that evening. “You’ll be okay, Mercy,” he’d said as her mother strode ahead. “It’s about punishment, not hurting. I wouldn’t let them really hurt you.”

His words provided small comfort as he and her mother approached. Without looking Mercy in the face, they bent and lifted the hem of her robe. Rising as one, they pulled it up and over her head so she stood naked in the darkened clearing. She braced one arm over her breasts and her other hand went automatically to cover the soft triangle between her legs. Tears started to her eyes then as she felt the Community’s gaze upon her. Her brother’s. Her schoolmates’. Pastor Matt’s. She was grateful for the darkness and was startled when the first stone struck her cheek.

It stung. It was followed by others as the dark, anonymous figures bent and straightened, flinging the pebbles at her with varying degrees of force. They peppered her buttocks and thighs, her arms and back and face. One clicked off her teeth. She gripped her lips together and shut her eyes tightly. A few landed hard enough to bruise and one or two had jagged edges that cut her skin. She hunched her shoulders in. She suddenly knew with fierce clarity why they only conducted this ritual at night. It wasn’t to keep them from more clearly seeing the sinner being stoned, to preserve her modesty, but to keep them from seeing each other. Her eyes flew open with the realization.

She kept her eyes open and began to turn slowly, wanting them to know that she saw them. As she made eye contact with Noah, he slowly let the stone he held dribble from his fingers. Her eyes locked on her next-door neighbor and her Sunday school teacher. She thought she could make out a couple of classmates toward the back, and Mr. Welsh, whose daughter lay buried in the rockslide somewhere. Pastor Matt. Only Jolene stood apart, hands clasped behind her back, shaking her head back and forth as if saying “No” over and over again.

As Mercy turned, intent on letting each person know she saw him or her—
she saw them all
—the rock rain tapered off until one last stone landed short. Her breaths sounded labored in the sudden silence and she worked to breathe more shallowly. Without any conversation, the mob started to fade away, disappearing by ones and twos down the path or fading into the trees behind the clearing. Mercy turned, faster now, and saw she was alone. Even Pastor Matt had sneaked away without her seeing him go. She shivered. Spotting the robe in a crumpled heap, she hurried toward it, bruising her feet on the litter of stones surrounding her, and slipped it on. She welcomed its nubbiness and warmth now, even though the rough fabric rasped her welted and cut skin.

She wasn’t injured—not go-to-the-hospital hurt—but a couple of cuts stung and her fingers touched a bruise on her temple. She was desperately thirsty and wanted to plunge downhill in search of water, but she didn’t want to encounter anyone. She made herself wait. Once she was sure they were all gone, that she wouldn’t run into any of them, she started back down the path. Humiliation hardened into resolve as she limped toward Lone Pine. She would return to her house now—she refused to think of it as “home” any longer—because she couldn’t run away dressed in a burlap sack, with no money or clothes. But as soon as she had gathered together what she needed, she was leaving the Community. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would go.

The microphone’s squeal brought Iris back to herself and she looked around the sanctuary, intent on staying in the here and now. She focused on the pimple on the beefy neck in front of her, the way a sliver of light knifed through the crack where the doors came together and pointed up the aisle … anything to keep the memories of that night at bay.