The Returning (5 page)

“
So you think your mom should just spend the rest of her life alone?
” Rebekah had once asked.

“
She’s not alone. She’s got me
.”

“
Yeah, sure, like that’s going to keep her happy for the next thirty years. You know she’s going to find herself another man someday. Then what?
”

“
Simple. I’ll do what I did with the last one. I’ll just get rid of him
.”

“
How’d you do that?
”

“
I have ways of making things happen
.”

Lena was mysterious and strange and fun, and Rebekah knew she didn’t have to worry about losing her friendship. But what about the others? And most important, what about David? What would he think? He was the best thing to happen to her in a long time. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing him.

Someone tapped at the door. “Beka, supper’s ready.”

Rebekah sighed. “All right, Mom. Just a minute.”

She heard Billy say something in the kitchen and then her father’s reply.

Strange to hear his voice. Strange to think he was here.

“
I’ve got a secret for you, Bekaboo
.”

Oh yeah, that was what he called her. Bekaboo. It used to make her laugh.

“
What is it, Daddy?
”

“
Promise not to tell?
”

She nodded.

He leaned down and tickled her ear with a whisper. “
You’re the apple of my eye
.”

“
I’m an apple in your eye?
” she squealed.

“
Not
in
my eye, silly
. Of
my eye. You’re the apple of my eye
.”

“
But what does that mean, Daddy?
”

“
It means of all the people in the world, I love you the most
.”

She almost asked him if he loved her more than he loved Mama and Billy, but she didn’t bother. Of course he did. That was easy to believe.

“
Daddy?
”

“
Yeah, Beka?
”

“
You’re the apple in my eye too
.”

Another tap on the door. “Beka, I don’t want to have to tell you again. Everybody’s waiting on you.”

Rebekah sat up and blew out the candle. The stupid thing wasn’t doing any good anyway.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

“
Billy would like to say grace
,” Andrea said.

John glanced apologetically at his son and laid down the fork he had only just picked up. When had this family started saying grace?

Billy lowered his head, and John followed suit. Then he listened as his son prayed quietly over the food. “God is great. God is good. Lord, thank you for all the food. Amen.”

When John opened his eyes, he smiled at the boy and said, “Thank you, Billy.”

“Welcome, Dad.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“From the Sunday school teacher. She’s nice.”

“They let Billy sit in on the little kids’ class,” Rebekah said smugly.

“I don’t just sit in,” Billy objected. “I’m a helper.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I am!”

“Listen, cut it out, you two.”

“She started it, Mom.”

“Let’s drop it, Billy.”

Billy and Rebekah glared at each other briefly before turning back to their food.

When the table was quiet again, John asked, “So you go to church, Billy?”

“Sure I do.” He punctuated his sentence with an energetic nod.

John looked at Andrea for an explanation. “He walks up to Grace Chapel Sunday mornings,” she said. “It’s not far. When it’s cold, I drive him.”

John remembered the white frame church just up the road and around the bend. “Oh? Well, I’m glad you’re going, Billy.”

“Yeah, just think, Billy,” Rebekah said, “you won’t have to go to church alone anymore, since Dad found religion in prison.”

“Rebekah!”

“Well, you said so yourself, Mom. You said he got that jailhouse religion.” She thrust her chin up and looked toward the ceiling. “ ‘I’m saved by Jesus, so give me points for good behavior and get me out of here.’ ”

“That’s enough, Beka.”

“Of course, it only lasts till they
do
get out and then—”

“I said that’s enough, Rebekah!”

“—they go right back to being jerks. It’s all a farce. Just wait and see.”

“Beka, I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

John steeled himself against the conflict brewing across the table. He didn’t want the meal ending up in angry words, maybe tears. An argument between men behind bars was one thing, but a confrontation between one’s wife and daughter—that was a whole different playing field, far more unnerving. He knew he should step in, be the warden with the authority to subdue the riot. But before he could think of anything to say, Billy took over.

“Listen, Beka,” Billy scolded, “stop fighting. If you can’t be nice, you can . . . you can . . . go to your room!”

Rebekah shrieked with laughter. “Like you can tell me what to do!”

“I’m the older brother.”

“And that makes you the boss of me? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not saying I’m your boss. I’m just saying, this is Dad’s first night home. If you want to be ugly, go be ugly somewhere else.”

Rebekah sneered, then shrugged Billy off and went back to eating. John looked around the table at the others. Andrea, red-faced, pushed her bangs off her forehead and reached for her glass of water. Phoebe rolled a pea around her plate with her fork. Billy munched happily on a dinner roll.

John swallowed, then cleared his throat. “So, Billy,” he said, “how do you like working for Uncle Owen?”

Even as he spoke, he chided himself for sidestepping Rebekah’s comments. He should have met them head on. He should have told her it was true, that he was different now, that he was not the man she’d seen being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. That somewhere between that day and this he had found not religion, but something better, something real. He should have told her, but instead, he had veered back toward the ease of small talk.

John gradually became aware that Billy was answering his question. “It’s great, Dad. It’s really great. I make money and put it in the bank.”

“Good for you, son.” John nodded. “So you like working at the restaurant? You like bussing tables?”

“Yeah, Dad. It’s fun. You’ll like it too. It’s going to be great, Dad, having you there.”

John felt humiliation wiggle through him. He’d wanted to have a job waiting for him when he came home, and he’d asked Owen to help him find work. Owen told him he wasn’t likely to find much in a town the size of Conesus, but he could have a position at the restaurant if he wanted. John agreed, hoping for something like assistant manager, but Owen said the only spot he could slip him into right now was cleaning tables.

“It’s only temporary, you know, Billy,” John said. “Maybe only a few weeks. Just until I can find something—” He almost said “better” but stopped himself. “Just until I can find something more in my line of work.”

“And what would that be, Dad?” Rebekah asked, her eyes steely.

She was trying to goad him, John knew, though her question was valid. What line of work was he in? He’d been in life insurance, mortgages, real estate. He’d sold municipal bonds, cruise packages, vacuum cleaners. In Virginia Beach he’d been working as an ad rep for the small local magazine his brother owned. Jared had convinced him the position might lead to something better, which was why he’d pulled up roots in the first place and moved the family from Rochester, New York, to Virginia Beach, Virginia. But then there’d been the accident and the arrest and . . .

The piece of speared meat at the end of his fork stopped midway between the plate and his mouth. His stomach felt sour. His head spun to think of how his life had turned in all the wrong directions. What if he had never let Jared talk him into moving to Virginia? What if he had never driven that particular stretch of road on that particular night? And for that matter, to get right to the source of the mess, what if years ago he had been able to finish college instead of having to quit to get married?

“You know, Dad,” Billy said, smiling brightly, “you might like the restaurant so much, you won’t want to leave. You can stay there with me.”

John nodded slowly. “Sure, son,” he said. “Maybe.”

He moved his gaze to the lake, saw the water shiver as the wind slid over its back. It was a beautiful sight, especially the way the sunlight danced in a chorus line on a watery stage. He certainly hadn’t seen anything like that in a while. He was home and he was free and he wasn’t going back—not to the prison of concrete and steel and not to the inner prison of soul-wrenching despair.

He turned to his wife. “So Owen’s still making good with the restaurant business, huh?”

She answered him, but he wasn’t really listening to what she said. And though they strove toward something like conversation until the meal was done, John was all the while tamping down memories of clanging bars and prison guards and the dull-eyed face of a lost young man peering into the window of his car.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

John thought often about the man
he’d killed. He wondered who the guy was, wondered even what his name was. No one knew. He’d had no identification on him, and afterward, as he lay in the morgue with a “John Doe” tag on his right big toe, no one claimed him. He’d been buried in a common grave without a soul to grieve for him. Except for John.

After all this time John had never quite stopped grieving. He was saddened mostly by the fact that the man was young. The medical examiner thought he was somewhere around twenty-five, maybe thirty. He was an unkempt, bearded guy with a stench great enough to reach even John’s rum-sodden brain and linger there so that John thought he could smell the unwashed flesh now. Even as he sat on the porch overlooking a star-pocked lake on his first night of freedom.

“You coming to bed?” Andrea asked. “It’s nearly midnight, you know.” She stood inside the screen door, as though she needed something—some protective barrier—between them.

John looked up at her from the glider where he sat. “I’m not tired. But you go on.” He thought she looked relieved.

“All right.”

“The kids asleep?” he asked.

She nodded. “For the time being. Phoebe usually wakes up in the night and moves over to Billy’s room.”

“How come?”

“She’s scared.”

John waited for more, but Andrea didn’t go on.

“But he’s only got that rollaway that’s hardly big enough for him.”

“She takes her pillow over and sleeps on the floor. So be careful to step around her if you go to the bathroom in the night.”

Billy didn’t have a room. Not really. Between the front room and the bathroom was a hall wide enough to fit the rollaway bed on one side and a chest of drawers on the other. That was his space.

“Phoebe wouldn’t rather sleep in the bed with Rebekah?”

“No. She’s scared,” Andrea repeated. “Of her own sister?”

“No, of the room.”

John frowned. “She think it’s haunted or something?”

“She’s a kid, John. Kids get funny ideas.”

“I guess so.”

They were quiet a moment. Andrea seemed to want to say something, so John waited.

Finally she spoke. “Beka has been having nightmares lately. Sometimes she wakes up screaming, so don’t be alarmed if you hear her.”

“Why is she having nightmares?”

“I don’t know. Probably adolescent anxiety or something.”

“Does she say what they’re about?”

“She says she doesn’t remember them once she wakes up.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“She’ll outgrow them.”

“Yeah, I hope so. Maybe that’s why Phoebe moves to Billy’s room. Hard to sleep with someone screaming in your ear.”

Andrea smiled wanly. “I suppose. Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

She turned and climbed the stairs. John watched her disappear. He was afraid of the bedroom on the second floor, but not because of ghosts.

He turned back to the lake and to the memories that had been clawing at his mind since dinner. The man had been a drifter; he may have been on the road for years, looking for something. He’d never find it now. John had put an end to all that.