The Returning (32 page)

“Okay,” he said, “I think I’ve got one.”

She shut her eyes and waited.

He shifted on the bed, cleared his throat quietly. Then in a halting voice he sang, “ ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. . . .’ ”

“Just grab a couple of bottles,” Lena said. “I’ll get some guy to help me with the rest.”

Rebekah pulled a pint of scotch and another of vodka out of the box. Both bottles were half empty. “So,” she said, “you don’t think your mom will notice these are missing?”

Lena shrugged her bare shoulders. She wore a strapless tube top and a pair of black shorts, and even in the twilight Rebekah could see that her face was heavily made-up. Her eyes were dark with liner, and her mouth was as moist and plump as an overripe plum. “Mom isn’t noticing much of anything right now.”

Rebekah glanced away, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry, Lena.”

“She’ll get over it. She always does.”

“Yeah, but maybe . . .” Rebekah looked at her friend and tried to hold her gaze. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe she should talk to somebody, get some sort of help.”

“She doesn’t need help. She just needs to actually find a decent guy, someone who isn’t just out to use her.”

Rebekah stiffened. “Listen, Lena, we’ve already been all through that. What I’m saying is, maybe your mom needs to stop drinking so much.”

“And maybe you need to mind your own business,” Lena shot back.

For a moment Rebekah was tempted to put the bottles down, get back in her own car, and leave. She told herself it would be easy. She could just go home and tell her parents she wasn’t feeling well and had decided not to spend the night at Lena’s after all. But before she could make a move, Lena said, “Listen, Beka, I’m sorry. Let’s just drop it, okay? Come on.” She nodded toward the Castle. “Let’s get inside.”

The front door had been padlocked once, but that was years ago. After the original lock was jimmied and tossed, no one had ever replaced it. No one knew exactly who owned the Castle now, though the story around Conesus Lake was that a check for the property taxes arrived every year from someplace in New Mexico. Several times during the summer a crew of workers showed up with riding lawnmowers and tree-trimming equipment to take care of the grounds. The hum of the mowers and the buzz of the chainsaw carried easily across the water to the Sheldons’ cottage on the other side. Whenever these caretakers came, Rebekah’s mother stood on their porch watching and listening. She shook her head at the commotion and wondered aloud why anyone would keep up the lawn while the house itself was simply allowed to fall apart. She said the place ought to be torn down and the property divided up and sold to people who actually wanted to live on the lake. Which was just like a grown-up, Rebekah thought. Leave it to her mother to want to get rid of one of the few places in Conesus that held any interest at all for the teenagers.

At least that’s how she’d felt about it last year. This year, when Lena pushed open the front door, Rebekah felt something pull at her nerves, the way a violinist plucks at a string. She didn’t want to go inside. Just the creaking of the door alone filled her with dread. But she could hardly back out now.

Just inside the door, on a small table in the generous entryway, a Coleman lantern hissed out a circle of light and gave off the stench of kerosene. Beyond that, about twenty feet away, another lantern glowed, and then another. The girls knew the drill. That path of light led the way to the kitchen, where they’d find the doorway to the party. Rebekah and Lena followed the lanterns through the still-furnished parlor and beyond that, a library with shelves that didn’t stop until they reached the ceiling. Arthur P. King, the original owner of the house, had either been well-read or had wanted to look as though he was. The air inside the rooms was damp and heavy and smelled of mold and stagnant water.

The kitchen reeked of something else, something putrid, like an animal had got stuck in the drainpipe and died. Rebekah stepped lightly and shuddered to think of what must live in this so-called Castle. When King Arthur exited the place by drowning, all sorts of animals probably moved in. What was there to stop them? Squirrels, spiders, rats, snakes—they were probably all neighbors somewhere within the walls of this huge place. Why hadn’t she thought about that last year? Or maybe she had, briefly—though as the night wore on she had no doubt cared less and less about the wildlife. She had probably cared less and less about anything at all.

Laughter broke through the front door as another group of kids spilled into the entryway. “The party can start now,” someone hollered. “We’re here!”

“Idiots,” Lena whispered.

Another voice called out, “Yeah, we brought the coke.”

More laughter. Rebekah sneered. “They brought Coke, and they think they’re the life of the party?”

Lena turned to look at her. In the glow of lantern light her face showed disbelief. “They’re talking about cocaine, stupid.”

“Cocaine?” Rebekah stopped short in the middle of the kitchen. “You think they brought cocaine?”

Lena shrugged. “Who knows. More likely it’s crushed aspirin. They probably can’t wait to watch the first person snort a line of Excedrin up their nose.”

Rebekah grimaced at the thought. “So what if it really is cocaine, and what if this is the year the police finally decide to bust the party?”

“They won’t, Beka. They never do. Come on.”

“But maybe they will. How do you know they won’t?”

“You’ve never had to deal with the Conesus police, have you?”

“No. Have you?”

“Let’s just say they’re a bunch of morons who don’t know their head from a hole in the ground, and on top of that, they’re not above making a little extra money.”

“What do you mean? Someone bribed them?”

Before Lena could answer, the coke-carrying crowd of half a dozen guys stumbled into the kitchen. One of them shot the beam of a flashlight directly into Rebekah’s eyes. “Hey, girls!” the figure behind the flashlight yelled. “Ready to party?”

“Let’s roll,” Lena responded, and before she knew it, Rebekah found herself following the crowd down the stairs leading to the spacious underground room known as the Dungeon. With its packed-dirt floor and its walls of sweating fieldstone, the name seemed appropriate. Instead of chains and torture racks, though, the room was originally filled with rows of wine racks, several of which remained. Some even contained dusty bottles, though the corks were missing and the contents long gone. The parties at the Castle were now strictly BYOB—Bring Your Own Bottle—which was why the partiers never came empty-handed.

The place was already a busy port of young bodies swimming in and out of the shadows cast by a ring of lanterns. Cigarette smoke hovered over the crowd like fog. Strange computerized music rolled out of an open laptop and seemed to wrap itself around everything in sight, so that even arms and legs appeared bound by its slow staccato beat. It was unlike anything Rebekah had ever heard, and she felt the rhythm of it worming itself into her brain like some sort of parasite.

“Hey, guys,” Lena called out, “here, take these bottles, will you?”

Two guys jumped at the request, taking the bottles from them. “And listen,” Lena went on, “I need someone to carry in a box from my car. Can one of you do that?”

One of them volunteered, and Lena disappeared back up the stairs to lead the guy to her car.

Rebekah was left alone, but not for long. To her relief David stepped out of the crowd and greeted her with a kiss. “Hey, babe, you got here.”

“Yeah.”

“I missed you this week.”

“Me too. You have a good trip?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, it was all right.”

She didn’t even know where he’d gone. He hadn’t told her. She assumed he was off visiting relatives somewhere before school started.

“So what’d I miss?” he said. “Anything cool happen while I was gone?”

Rebekah shrugged casually. “No, same old stuff.”

“Yeah, figures. So do your parents think you’re at Lena’s for the night?”

Rebekah nodded. She liked the way she felt with David’s arm around her, and she relaxed for the first time since parking her car among the grove of trees outside. David would make sure everything was all right.

“Good, good. Cool,” he said. “So we’ve got all night.”

“Yeah.” Rebekah smiled. “All night. Is Jim here?”

“Yeah, he’s here somewhere. What about Lena?”

“She’s gone out with some guy to bring in some stuff from her car.”

“Good stuff, I hope.”

“Straight from her mother’s own stash.”

David laughed. “Everyone needs a mother like that, huh?”

“Yeah.” Rebekah shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“So listen, Bek. We’re going to try something new tonight.”

“We are?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded, looked around the room.

Rebekah thought of the coke. “I’m not sure I want to do anything like that.”

David snickered. “You don’t even know what it is.”

“Yeah I do.”

“No, I bet you don’t. I just learned about it from my cousin a few days ago. Believe me, you’ll love it. It’s over the top. But first things first, huh? How about a drink?”

Rebekah drew in a deep breath. Maybe a drink would help.

David took her hand and led her across the room to an impossibly long table where bottles of booze were laid out like a glassy-eyed field of dreams.

Phoebe breathed softly and evenly. John stopped singing, waited, listened to the child draw in air, let it out. He stood slowly, so as not to wake her.

He looked down at the face illumined by the dim light from the kitchen. How could it be that she was his?

His heart ached with love and with a fierce determination. He wasn’t going to make a mess of things with this child, no matter what. Now that he had her, he was keeping her, and he intended to give her a childhood worth cherishing. As far as the family as a whole was concerned, he knew there was plenty of work ahead of him. He still had messes to untangle with Andrea and Beka, but he was determined to smooth them out, to make amends for his mistakes, to ask forgiveness as many times as forgiveness was needed. Love covered a multitude of sins, even his.

He bent down and gently kissed the child’s warm cheek. She stirred, sighed, rolled over. As he moved quietly across the room, he heard a tiny voice call out from the bed, “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, Phoebe.”

He stepped into the kitchen and turned out the light.