The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (5 page)

Greg’s brows soared. “This is sudden, isn’t it? Was it something I said?”

Iris had to smile at his look of exaggerated concern. “It’s not all about you, you know.”

He mimed shock. “Hm. Then what is it about? The same thing as the night we met?”

She didn’t answer. Keeping her gaze locked on his, Iris grasped her sweater’s hem and pulled it over her head. She could spare half an hour for goodbye sex. She was conscious of an unusual twinge of regret.

Greg’s gaze flicked over her partial nakedness and then returned to her eyes. He didn’t move toward her as she expected. “What is this? One for the road?”

Iris re-donned the sweater, embarrassed and disappointed, and irritated with herself for both emotions. “Apparently not. As we established at the beginning this is sex. S-E-X.” A draft drifted across her toes, chilling them, and she curled them under. A car with a defective muffler rumbled past the house.

“Can’t it be more?” He crossed to her then, stopping two feet in front of her. He looked down into her face but made no attempt to touch her.

“No.” The word was out before Iris gave it any thought. One of the reasons she preferred much younger men was that they were no more interested in long-term relationships than she was. She shed herself with record speed of the ones who thought they were falling in love with her.

“No,” she said again, conscious of annoyance that Greg wasn’t playing by the rules. She started past him, but he didn’t move. Rather than shove him aside, she dropped back a step, bumping against the fridge, and gave him a stony look.

“I like you, Iris, and I think you like me. Can’t we give this some time, see where it goes?”

His gentleness startled and scared Iris. “There’s nowhere for it to go. Now, I’ve got to pack, so if you’ll let me by—”

Greg backed off and Iris passed him, headed for her bedroom. She went straight to the closet, knowing Greg had followed her. The closet held the slight wet wool smell it always got when it rained. She yanked a pair of jeans from a hanger so it clinked against its neighbors. Closet music. Grabbing her weekender suitcase, Iris carried it to the rumpled bed and threw the lid open. She layered the jeans with undies and sweaters while Greg watched.

“Doesn’t look like you’ll be gone long.” He nodded at the small suitcase.

Iris didn’t respond, retrieving socks from her drawer. The suitcase bucked as he sat on the bed. She didn’t look up, fetching the open box of condoms from her bedside table and tossing it into the bag.

Greg actually laughed. “Subtle.”

His healthy self-confidence grated on emotions left raw by her failures. She faced him, arms stiff at her sides. “Look, I picked you up because I thought you were a hot twenty-four-year-old who could scratch my itch for a night or two. Well, itch scratched.”

“So—wham, bam, thank-you-sir?”

Iris flung a pair of sneakers into her bag. When she started for the dresser again, Greg stood and put a hand on her arm. “Don’t you think you owe me—”

“I don’t owe you anything.” Iris moved away from his touch. “We’ve known each other—what?—two weeks?”

His brown eyes held her gaze steadily.

“Don’t,” she whispered. She couldn’t have told him what she meant, and he didn’t ask.

After a long moment, he turned and walked out. Iris stayed still, listening to the fading footsteps, the squeak and clunk as the front door opened and closed. When he was gone, she unballed the T-shirt she’d unconsciously mangled, smoothed it, and laid it in the suitcase, blinking back tears. Her stomach felt all hollow, like it had when she’d fractured the emerald. Stupid. The emerald was unique, irreplaceable; men were a dime a dozen. Returning to the closet, she gazed blurrily at her meager selection of “good” slacks and blouses, wondering if the prison had rules about visitors’ attire. As long as she was going to be in Colorado anyway, she’d make time to visit her father.

seven

iris

The arid Colorado Springs
climate sucked the moisture from Iris’s mouth and skin when she stepped out of the airport Thursday morning.
We’re not in Portland anymore, Toto
. She downed half of the bottled water she’d bought on the concourse, and paused on the sidewalk, considering returning to the terminal and scurrying onto a flight back to Portland … or anywhere that wasn’t here. No. She would do what she’d come to do. Pikes Peak dominated the skyline and, despite herself, she felt an unwanted sense of homecoming. There was something so purple mountains majesty, so immutable and somehow benevolent about that peak which sheltered the city from the worst of winter’s storms and created a safe zone in summer from tornadoes which violated ranches and towns farther east on the plains.

With a purposeful stride, she headed across the street to the rental car kiosks. Accepting the keys to the Ford Focus, she loaded her suitcase, laptop, and the jewelry-making supplies she rarely traveled without into the trunk. Then she sat. Visiting days at the prison were Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays the website said, so she couldn’t see her father until tomorrow. That left only one other destination. The thought of seeing Pastor Matt made her fingers icy. They were stiff as she turned the key.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
She thought about the fractured emerald.
What a lie
. She could drive out to Lone Pine, instead, see how the town had changed, maybe go by the hospital tomorrow.
No
. She’d come here to confront Pastor Matt. Putting it off would only make it harder, like removing a Band-aid bit by bit instead of just ripping it away. She’d face him now, get it over with and get on with her life. She gulped half her water, wishing it was a martini, and set it back in the holder with a trembling hand. Depressing the accelerator, she headed for the airport exit and drove into the past.

Only it wasn’t the past, Iris realized almost immediately, confronted by a highway dotted with big box stores, restaurants and traffic where she’d known pronghorn-dotted prairie. She missed seeing the antelope, but had to admit she was relieved by all the changes; she wouldn’t be confronted with uncomfortable reminders at every turn. For the first time, she let herself ponder the changes that almost a quarter century might have wrought on her family and friends, the Community. Her mother would be fifty-seven now, her brother forty. Had the Community grown in her absence, or had it disbanded when Pastor Matt never returned? And Jolene … had her best friend gone to Juilliard and then Broadway as she’d always dreamed? The Community had frowned on that dream, regarding actors as a drug-raddled, immoral lot prone to divorce. Iris had Googled Jolene’s name a couple of times, but never gotten any hits. She probably used a married name, or a stage name, she’d thought.

Steering the car onto Woodmen Road, she focused on the hospital complex just ahead where an on-line article had said Matthew Brozek was. The hospital, like so much else, hadn’t existed when she lived here. A Flight for Life helicopter sat on a pad out front and its blades began to whir. Within seconds it was lifting off, rotors beating the air into submission, to airlift someone from a rollover car crash, Iris imagined. With that sober thought, she parked, entered the hospital and strode to the information desk. She’d never spent much time in hospitals—only the once after the incident in Ames, Iowa, days before her eighteenth birthday. Three days. That had sparked her move to Portland, taking the self-defense classes, and her meeting with Jane, made her realize that drifting from city to city, bunking with whoever had a spare bed, was too dangerous. This hospital was bigger, newer, and didn’t smell like much of anything, thankfully.

Iris conned a very young volunteer into supplying Matthew Brozek’s room number by claiming to be his niece. She got into the elevator, but as the doors started to close she stuck out her arm with a mumbled excuse to the three other occupants and got off, suddenly unable to face a confined space, especially since one of the passengers had a phlegmy cough. At least, that’s what she told herself as she hunted for the stairs. She suspected that she was also delaying the moment when she’d stand face to face with Pastor Matt. She couldn’t afford to do that: she knew she wasn’t going to be able to design again until she’d had it out with him.

A slight burn in her thighs and shortness of breath as she reached the fourth floor reminded Iris that she wasn’t used to the altitude anymore. Pausing to breathe and finish her water, she scanned the area. With a start that made her grip the plastic bottle so hard it crinkled, she realized she was directly across from the room she sought. Before she could find an excuse not to, she approached the half-open door, knocked once and entered.

Her breaths came fast and shallowly, and a dizziness that had nothing to do with the altitude made her grab the door jamb for balance. Sunlight blared through the blinds, striping the floor and making the room too warm. The confined space held a chair, a TV mounted from the ceiling, a potted plant bound with a yellow bow, and a six-foot-high medical gadget or monitor pushed against the wall, silent. A privacy curtain concealed the bed. Could Pastor Matt sense her presence through the thin fabric, hear her breathing? Did he think she was a nurse assistant coming to take his blood pressure?
Not even close.
Two steps brought the curtain within arm’s reach and she rattled it back with a sweep of her hand.

The bed was empty.

Putting a hand across her mouth to stifle the combination gasp and giggle that threatened to erupt, Iris stared at the rumpled bed as if the intensity of her gaze would cause Matthew Brozek to materialize. He couldn’t be checked-out gone, out of her reach. Not when she’d come all this way.

A footstep warned her of someone’s approach before a voice said, “Who are you and what are you doing in my father’s room?”

Iris whirled. A grossly fat woman stood in the doorway. A pale green garment Iris could only think of as a muumuu covered most of her bulk, and a large silver cross on a heavy chain lay on an outcrop of bosom. Her moon face, cushioned by half a dozen chins and framed by an expertly blonded bob, was smooth and pale and flawlessly made-up, with red lips and mascara-fringed eyes of marine blue that glittered within deep pockets of flesh. They gazed at Iris with a mixture of suspicion and anger. Iris would never have recognized her except for those eyes and the clue of “my father’s room.”

This woman had to be Esther Brozek, but it didn’t seem possible that the slim teen Iris had known was buried in the mausoleum of flesh that confronted her. The changes she’d imagined had run along the lines of a few wrinkles or gray hairs … surface changes. Yet, these layers of fat spoke of a wound as deep as Iris’s, of changes as profound. Esther was like an oyster that had added coats of nacre to an irritant, year after year, making it unrecognizable. A quick flush of embarrassment made Iris grip her lips together. Her fantasies about confronting Pastor Matt seemed juvenile in the sterile glare of the hospital room.

“You don’t belong here, whoever you are,” Esther said, surging forward. “This is a private room. All requests for interviews are supposed to come to me. I’ll have to talk to the hospital administrator again.”

“I’m not a reporter,” Iris said. Even though Esther had obscured her once slim figure, her bossy and condescending attitude still shone through.

“Oh. Well, it’s still not appropriate for you to be here, dear.” Her tone had altered, now carrying a disconcerting hint of the unctuousness that had characterized Pastor Matt’s speech. “I know it can be comforting to stand in the presence of the miraculous, of a great healing, but my father is still recovering and I’m afraid he needs rest when he returns from his tests. Are you ill? We can pray.” Esther closed her eyes and held out a hand, clearly expecting Iris to grasp it.

Iris clasped her hands behind her back. “Esther, it’s me.”

As the sound of her name, the fat woman’s eyes flew open. She studied Iris for a long moment before saying with certainty, “I don’t know you.”

“Pretend you’re throwing stones and then maybe my name will come to you.” Iris stood rigidly, her chin jutted forward.

Esther’s mouth dropped open, jiggling her jowls, and her eyes widened. She stood frozen, only the hem of her muumuu fluttering in a stray draft. “Mercy Asher.”

“It’s Iris Dashwood now.”

A flush of color stained Esther’s cheeks. She exhaled heavily and moved toward Iris, an imposing wall of flesh. “Get out. It is
profane
for you to be here, for you to pollute my father’s room with your presence after what you did to him. Get out!” Her voice was a low growl.

“What
I
did to
him
?”

“Your lies.”

“They weren’t—”

“Your filthy, baseless lies! They tore him apart.” Esther thrust her face toward Iris until their noses were mere inches apart. Her breath smelled of mouthwash. “Then your father tried to kill him, and gave my mother a heart attack, all because of what you’d said.” She drew back slightly. “You knew that, right? You heard your father went to prison for what he did? I hope he rots there! No prison could be as awful, as inhumane as the prison my father’s lived in these past twenty-three years, trapped in his own head, unable to walk or talk or communicate in any way, with us but not with us. If your father has been beaten and sodomized repeatedly, it is still less than what he deserves.”

Esther’s words and fury battered Iris. Instinctively, she widened her stance and shifted her balance onto the balls of her feet. If Esther attacked, she’d be ready. Although she was taller and fitter than Esther, she wasn’t going to underestimate the advantage the other woman’s fury and weight gave her.

“Is that what passes for compassion in the Community these days? I guess not much has changed.” Iris would have been happy to sink a punch into the angry woman’s gut, feel the fat close around her fist like bread dough deflating, watch her stagger back. Even as the thought flitted through her mind, she dropped her fists, knowing she couldn’t make Esther the proxy for Pastor Matt. She retreated to the window on the far side of the bed and gazed unseeingly at the mountains.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Mercy Asher,” Esther said, now more weary than spiteful. “You were as good as dead to the Community—some thought you
were
dead—and you should have stayed that way. Nothing good can come of stirring up the past.”

“I’m here to see my father and yours,” Iris said, turning, “and I’m not leaving until I’ve done that. I’ll come back at a better time.”
When you’re not here
.

“There’s no point,” Esther said. She moved to the bed and smoothed the pillow. “You can’t talk to him.”

“We’ll see about—”

Esther shook her perfectly coifed head. “No. He can’t talk. Not really. He hears, because he responds if you say ‘Open your mouth’ or ‘Turn over on your side,’ but his speech and memory are garbled. He seems to think I’m my mother. He’s awake, but he’s not
back
.”

For a fleeting second, Iris wondered if Esther could be lying to make sure she didn’t return and confront Pastor Matt, but Esther’s frame drooped with defeat as she lowered herself slowly into a chair to await her father’s return. Her thighs spilled over the chair’s sides and her meaty forearms enveloped its arms. She looked up. Her sparrow-bright eyes glittered as she observed, “I guess you came all this way from wherever for nothing.”

No. I am going to make him
see
me and acknowledge what he did.
Without a word, Iris edged around the bed and past the seated woman. The door leading to the hall promised escape, but Iris hesitated on the threshold. She looked over her shoulder, flashing on an illustration of Lot’s wife from her childhood Bible, to see Esther had opened a book and was determinedly reading it, her stiff posture giving Iris no opening for … what? An apology? Hardly. A request to start over? Maybe. A brief rundown of what she’d missed the last twenty-three years? Iris stepped into the hall and strode toward the elevator. Whatever she’d come for, she wasn’t going to get it from Esther Brozek.