The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (24 page)

thirty-nine

jolene

Jolene couldn’t rid herself
of the notion that Esther was reveling in this moment. Her blond hair gleamed, roots newly touched up, contrasting with the cowl-necked black tunic she wore. It flowed over her elephantine bulk, hiding the individual ripples and bulges of fat, but not her immensity. For some reason, maybe the sight of Esther holding the microphone, a memory of Esther singing in church, her pure soprano floating to the rafters, evoking the voices of angels, came to Jolene and she realized she hadn’t heard Esther sing in decades, not since … . Did the layers of fat weigh her down so she couldn’t lift up her voice in song, Jolene wondered, or had she lost her desire to sing and turned to food for comfort? Chicken or egg?

Before Jolene could puzzle it through, Esther brought the microphone close to her red lips and said, “Thank you for taking time out of your evening to gather with us this evening. You have entrusted the elders and Pastor Zachary with the spiritual guidance of this Community. In that role, we must sometimes discipline members whose sinfulness threatens to undermine the way of life the Lord commands us to follow. We stand before you, sorrowfully, to pronounce judgment on one such sinner today.” She paused. Her blue gaze briefly lighted on Jolene and then landed on Rachel. “Rachel Brozek, stand up.”

Jolene could feel the slight tremors shaking her daughter’s body as she stood. The congregation murmured and rustled. Jolene sensed uneasiness spiked with prurient excitement. The man on Rachel’s far side edged away slightly. Jolene glared at him.

“Rachel Brozek,” Esther intoned, taking a step closer to her niece. “You have confessed to stealing, to breaking one of our Lord’s ten commandments.”

Rachel’s chin came up a notch, but otherwise she stood totally still.

“The elders have met, and even though we agree it is a sign of mercy that you have confessed your sin, we condemn that sin and command you to submit to the discipline of—”

Jolene stood. “I want to confess a sin to all of you.”

Rachel turned, mouth slightly open, to stare at her. Jolene looked each of the elders square in the face, letting her gaze linger on Zach, and then turned her back on them. Facing the congregation and Iris, she said, “Twenty-three years ago, my father-in-law stood right there”—she pointed to Esther—“and shamed my best friend. He sentenced her to the discipline—No, let’s call it what it is—the
punishment
—of the reckoning stones. Many of you remember that night.” She let her gaze travel over the individuals seated in the church, some of whom averted their eyes or looked self-conscious. One woman turned so pale Jolene thought she might faint. “That night has haunted me for a quarter of a century,” Jolene said, “because I could have stopped what happened, and I didn’t.”

She took a deep breath that sounded like a gulp. Jolene met Iris’s eyes and felt strength—and maybe forgiveness?—flowing from her friend. “Pastor Matt made Mercy confess to lying. He made her say he hadn’t molested her, and then we all walked behind her into the woods and stoned her.” Total silence reigned in the church. “I could have told everyone that she wasn’t lying, but I didn’t. I let my friend suffer in unimaginable ways because I wasn’t brave enough, or strong enough to do what I’m doing today: stand up in church and tell the truth.

“Mercy wasn’t lying. Pastor Matt was. He molested Mercy. I saw them together. Naked. Having sex.”

“You evil, lying—” Esther started, the words sputtering through the microphone.

“Jolene! That’s not possible.” Zach’s voice. Jolene didn’t look at him.

Now that the words were out, she felt limp. “I’m sorry, Iris,” she said to her friend, who had left her pew and now had one hand on the door. “I’m so very, very sorry I wasn’t brave enough for you.”
Don’t go
, she pleaded with her eyes.
Don’t hate me
. She didn’t think she could stand it if Iris hated her, even though she didn’t deserve her friendship. Hadn’t deserved it for twenty-three years.

Iris’s face seemed to soften and she met Jolene’s eyes for a long moment. Then, she turned her back on the congregation and pushed through the door, letting in a last blast of sunlight bright as a trumpet call.

Jolene’s shoulders slumped, but then she straightened them again. She turned around to face the elders, “So, if you’re determined to pass judgment on my daughter, you’d better do the same to me.”

Murmurs bubbled around her, people whispering and wondering, condemning and second-guessing. Old friends avoided looking at her, inspecting her surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes or from under their lashes.
I haven’t grown a second head
, she wanted to tell them,
or sprouted horns
. Maybe she should have followed Iris.

Rachel took Jolene’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’re the bravest person I know,” she whispered.

Surprised and touched, Jolene looked at her daughter, but Rachel had withdrawn her hand and was apparently lost in contemplation of her cuticles as she used her thumbnail to nudge at one. Jolene let herself feel a little bit better. She had done what she needed to do—confessed her sin of omission. She’d kept quiet all those years ago for fear Zach would hate her if she accused his father of something so vile, for fear the Brozeks would keep Zach from marrying her and her baby would be a bastard. Now, she met Zach’s eyes, searching desperately for reassurance.
Do you still love me?
He looked stunned.

Esther attempted to regain control. “As to the matter we are
here to—”

A voice quavered from the back. “I, too, want to confess.”

Jolene turned to see Mrs. Dorfmann standing, hands clutching the pew back, her sightless eyes seemingly fixed on the window beside the pulpit. “I always disliked my daughter-in-law. I spoke badly of her to my son, and undermined their marriage. I sinned against both of them and I am sorry.” Her neighbor steadied her with a hand to her elbow, and Mrs. Dorfmann sat.

“This isn’t—” Esther began. Red flushed the tops of her cheeks and mottled her neck.

A man stood across the aisle from Jolene, looking determined. Jack Phillips, who owned an appliance repair business. “I’ve cheated my customers for years, talking them into purchases and repairs that weren’t really necessary.” Tears streamed down his face. “I ask your forgiveness, and theirs, and promise to try and make restitution.”

“Jack!” His wife gaped at him. Jolene knew her well enough to suspect that she was more upset at the thought of her husband giving money away than she was about his sketchy business practices.

Two other people stood and confessed, one widower admitting to an affair before his wife died, and a woman Jolene knew slightly acknowledging that she was an alcoholic. Jolene thought Marian Asher made a move as if to rise, but she settled back against the pew, pressing into it as if nailed to it. Despite the pain of the confessions, a bubble of peace grew around Jolene. These people were standing with her and Rachel, building a human wall between Rachel and the reckoning stones, stripping themselves naked and daring the elders to stone them. Her throat tightened and her eyes brimmed with tears of gratitude. She sat, pulling Rachel down with her.

Zach stepped forward and removed the microphone from Esther’s grip. For a moment it seemed she would wrestle him for it, but then she released it and stepped aside, her lips thinned and her eyes burning with fury. Jolene unconsciously raised her clenched hands to her lips. Would her husband support her or condemn her? She realized she wasn’t sure, and marveled how you could be married to someone for twenty-three years, sharing all the conversations and intimacies that implied, and not know.

An expectant hush fell over the congregation. It seemed as if everyone leaned forward.

Zach cleared his throat. “Let us pray together the prayer our savior, Jesus Christ, taught us. ‘Our Father …’”

As Jolene prayed the familiar words, her mind raced, worrying about Zach’s reaction and whether she’d irreparably damaged her marriage with her impromptu and belated confession. It wasn’t until they reached the phrase “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” that tears streamed down her face. It seemed that Zach and everyone in the congregation put extra emphasis on those words. Peace welled within her, as if the outflow of tears had made room for it, and she finished the prayer silently in her head, unable to make her lips form the words.

forty

iris

Outside the sanctuary, Iris
drew in two deep breaths and tried to sort through her emotions. Across the church lawn, two squirrels zipped round and round a tree trunk in the gathering dusk, chittering, and she felt like they were inside her head. Anger and regret spiraled inside her. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it. On one level, she could appreciate Jolene confessing her lie of omission in front of everyone, exonerating her, but it was too damned late. She should have spoken up at the time.

Even as the thought darkened her mind, she put herself in Jolene’s place and could understand how hard it would have been for her to speak up. Hell, if she herself hadn’t been worried about Gabby Ulm, she might never have spoken up either. Needing a physical release, Iris headed into the woods as the uppermost branches clung to the last bits of sunlight, following the near-invisible path she’d walked barefoot so long ago. Semi-wishing she could punch someone, and regretting her celibacy resolution, she banged branches out of her way with a downward slash of her arm and hiked quickly, relishing the burn in her thigh muscles.

She reached the clearing in ten minutes, a little surprised by how close it was. It had seemed farther in the dark. New spring grass poked up and Iris scuffed aside the duff to give the little blades more light and look for the stones. There were no ghosts lurking in the clearing, and no stones, either. She swept her foot from side to side, dislodging layers of decayed leaves and plenty of acorns, but only a single quartzite rock the size of a crabapple. She picked it up, smoothed it with her thumb, and put it in her pocket. She wondered who had been responsible for collecting the reckoning stones and carting them to the clearing. She had trouble seeing Pastor Matt trundling them up the path in a wheelbarrow. They’d been stacked neatly in their three little cairns, not dumped haphazardly. Maybe her neatnik mother had arranged them.

Iris half-laughed at the thought, surprised that it didn’t bother her. It didn’t really matter how the stones had gotten there. She realized, suddenly, that she hadn’t seen her parents after they removed her robe. They hadn’t thrown stones at her, although she had a clear vision of her brother lobbing at least one. All these years and that realization had never struck her. She wondered at it. Did it make a difference?

Before she’d arrived at any conclusion, her phone buzzed again. Willing now to be distracted from her thoughts, Iris glanced at the display. Lassie.

“Jane fell, but she’s all right now,” he said in answer to her “Hello.” “You probably saved her life by making me go over there.”

Iris’s head buzzed and she had trouble making sense of his words. She had to ask Lassie to repeat himself a couple of times before she fully grasped that Jane had fallen and broken her hip and not been found for at least a day and a half. She was in intensive care.

“I’ll be there tonight some time,” Iris said, already striding out of the clearing. “Tell her to hang on.”

“She’s right here,” Lassie said. “Tell her yourself.”

“Jane?”

“Edgar saved my life,” Jane said, her voice breathy. Iris’s hand tightened on the phone. “He curled up with me on the bathroom floor and helped me stay warm.”

“Useless feline. I’ll teach him to dial 911 as soon as I get there,” Iris said, stumbling on a root.

Jane’s laugh, though weak, reassured her somewhat. “Don’t rush back on my account. Lassie and Karen are here and my son’s on his way. A little surgery in the morning will fix me up right as rain. I’ll be here when you’ve finished what you set out to do.”

“But—” The urge to go to Jane, who felt more like her family, like a mother, than her blood relatives did, was strong.

“Your father only has you.”

Sensing Jane’s exhaustion and pain, Iris promised she’d do as she asked, and hung up. Before she could think about it, she said a prayer of thanks that Jane had been found in time and prayed that the surgery would go well so Jane could resume her normal life. The realization that she was praying made Iris fidget with embarrassment, and she walked faster, resisting the urge to tell God not to get used to hearing from her.

Dust had gentled into night when she emerged onto the church lawn. The meeting had apparently broken up. The last stragglers were making their way down Center Street and a car pulled out of the lot with a clang of loose muffler. Her rental was the only car left. She made her way toward it in the near dark, chilled and tired and cranky from the maelstrom of emotions she’d experienced in the past hour, including her worry about Jane, her doubt that she’d be
able to engineer her father’s freedom, and her confusion about Jolene.

She should seek out Jolene and acknowledge what she’d done today, but she didn’t know what she’d say. Iris fingered her necklace. Her feelings about Jolene were all twisted up in her feelings about the stoning and she couldn’t separate them instantaneously. They were like two delicate chains that had tangled at the bottom of a jewelry box. They need to be coaxed apart, separated link by link with a fine needle and a steady hand. She didn’t have the time or energy to take on the task now. Opening the car’s back door, she searched for the sweatshirt she thought she’d tossed there, unwilling to acknowledge that part of the reason she didn’t want to find Jolene was because she was embarrassed by what Jolene might have seen.

Early on, Iris had met Pastor Matt with her gut twisting with anticipation, guilt, and fear. She’d felt a weird sort of power when his eyes lit with that greedy look when she unbuttoned her blouse, and it awed her that the most respected and beloved man in the Community was in love with her. She became more and more reluctant to meet him as time passed and the full horror of what they were doing worked on her conscience. By the end, it was only his threats that made her give him her body reluctantly and mechanically. Had Jolene seen the infatuated Mercy, or the reluctant Mercy? Iris cringed to think it might have been the former.

Her hand closed over the sweatshirt, inexplicably on the floor, and she pulled it out. As she did, something red tumbled to the ground. Stooping to fish the item out from under the car, Iris recognized Angel’s little Tweety Bird pocketbook, the one she’d had with her on their zoo adventure. A photo and a change purse lay beside it and Iris slid the change purse back into the bag, and glanced at the photograph. It showed a dark-haired man with a military haircut, his arm around a curly-haired, olive-skinned woman with a wide smile.
Noah and his wife
, Iris thought, studying her brother’s attractive face. She’d seen a photo of him somewhere else recently. She frowned, trying to remember, and when the memory came, it hit her with enough force to loosen her grip. The picture fluttered to the ground.