Angel Fire East (20 page)

He thought again of going after the demons, of making a run at them while they were all gathered together somewhere, waiting out the storm. It remained a tempting image. But Nest was right. It was a one-in-a-million shot, and it required energy he did not have to spare.

More debilitating than his exhaustion was his loneliness and despair. He had denied it for a long time, shrugging off the emptiness inside, pretending that for him such things didn’t matter. But they did. He was a Knight of the Word, but he was human, too.

It was seeing Josie again that triggered the feelings, of course. But it was returning to Hopewell and Nest Freemark as well, to a town that seemed so much like the one he had grown up in and to the last member of a family that seemed so much like his own. Just being here, he found himself trying to recapture a small part of his past. He might tell himself that he wasn’t here for that, but the truth was simple and direct. He wanted to reaffirm his humanity. He wanted to step outside his armor and let himself feel what it was to be human again.

He drove down Lincoln Highway until it became Fourth Avenue, then turned left toward the river. He found his way without effort, the directions still imprinted on his memory, fresh after all these years. He steered the Taurus down the dead-end street to the old wooden two-story and parked by the curb. He switched off the headlights and engine and sat staring at the house, thinking over what he was about to do.

It isn’t as if you have to decide now,
he told himself.
How can you know what will happen after so long?

But he did. His instincts screamed it at him. The certainty of it burned through his hesitation and doubt.

He got out of the car, locked it, limped through the blowing snow and drifts, climbed the porch steps, and knocked. He had to knock twice more before she opened the door.

She stared at him. “John?”

She spoke his name as if it were unfamiliar to her, as if she had just learned it. Her blue eyes were bright and wondering, and gave full and open consideration to the fact that he was standing there when by all rights he shouldn’t be. She was wearing jeans and a print shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She had been cooking, he guessed. He did not move to enter or even to speak, but simply waited.

She reached out finally with one hand and pulled him inside, closing the door behind him. She was grinning now, shaking her head. He found himself studying the spray of freckles that lay across the bridge of her nose and over both cheeks. He found himself wanting to touch her tousled blond hair.

Then he was looking into her eyes and thinking he was right, there had never been anyone like her.

She brushed snow from his shoulders and began unzipping his coat. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, watching her fingers as they worked the zipper downward. “You’ve never been predictable, have you? What are you doing here? You said you weren’t coming!”

His face felt flushed and heated. “I guess I should have called.”

She laughed. “You didn’t call for fifteen years, John. Why should you call now? Come on, get that coat off.”

She helped him pull off the parka, gloves, and scarf, and bent to unlace his boots as well. In stocking feet, leaning on his still-damp staff for support, he followed her from the entry into the kitchen. She motioned him to a chair at the two-person breakfast table, poured him a cup of hot cider, and spent a few moments adjusting various knobs and dials on the stove and range. Savory smells rose from casseroles and cooking pans.

“Have you eaten?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. He shook his head. “Good. Me, either. We’ll eat in a little while.”

She went back to work, leaving him alone at the table to sip cider. He watched her silently, enjoying the fluidity of her movements, the suppleness of her body. She seemed so young, as if age had decided to brush against her only momentarily. When she looked at him and smiled—that dazzling, wondrous smile—he could barely believe that fifteen years had passed.

He knew he loved her and wondered at his failure to recognize it before. He did not know why he loved her, not in a rational sense, because looking at the fact of it too closely would shatter it like glass. He could not parcel it out like pieces of a puzzle, one for each part of the larger picture. It was not so simply explained. But it was real and true, and he felt it so deeply he thought he would cry.

She sat with him after a while and asked about Nest and Bennett and the children, skipping quickly from one topic to the next, filling the space with words and laughter, avoiding close looks and long pauses. She did not ask where he had been or why he had a child. She did not ask why she had not heard from him in fifteen years. She let him be, perhaps sensing that he was here in part because he could expect that from her, that what had drawn them together in the first place was that it was enough for them to share each other’s company.

She set the breakfast table for dinner, keeping it casual, serving from the counter and setting the plates on the table. The meal was pot roast with bread and salad, and he ate it hungrily. He could feel his tension and emptiness drain away, and he found himself smiling for the first time in weeks.

“I’m glad you came,” she told him at one point. “This will sound silly, but even after you said you couldn’t, I thought maybe you would anyway.”

“I feel a little strange about that,” he admitted, looking at her. He wanted to look at her forever. He wanted to study her until he knew everything there was to know. Then he realized he was staring and dropped his gaze. “I didn’t want to be with a lot of people I didn’t know. I didn’t want to be with a lot of people, period. In a strange house, at Christmas. I thought I would go looking for . . .” He trailed off, glancing up at her. “I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know why I said I wouldn’t come earlier. Well, I do, but it’s hard to explain. It’s . . . it’s complicated.”

She seemed unconcerned. “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said.

He nodded and went back to eating. Outside, the wind gusted about the corners and across the eaves of the old house, making strange, whining sounds. Snow blew past the frost-edged windows as if the storm were a reel of film spinning out of control. Ross looked at it and felt time and possibility slipping away.

When he finished his meal, Josie carried their plates to the sink and brought hot tea. They sipped at the tea in silence, listening to the wind, exchanging quick looks that brushed momentarily and slid away.

“I never stopped thinking about you,” he said finally, setting down the tea and looking at her.

She nodded, sipping slowly.

“It’s true. I didn’t write or call, and I was sometimes a long way away from here and lost in some very dark places, but I never stopped.”

He kept his eyes fixed on hers, willing her to believe. She set her cup down, fitting it carefully to the saucer.

“John,” she said. “You’re just here for tonight, aren’t you? You haven’t come back to Hopewell to stay. You don’t plan to ask me to marry you or go away with you or wait for you to come back again. You aren’t going to promise me anything beyond the next few hours.”

He stared at her, taken aback by her directness. He felt the emptiness and solitude begin to return. “No,” he admitted.

She smiled gently. “Because I’d like to think that the one thing we can count on from each other after all this time is honesty. I’m not asking for anything more. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

She leaned forward slightly. “I’ll take those few hours, John. I’ll take them gladly. I would have taken them anytime during the last fifteen years of my life. I thought about you, too. Every day, I thought about you. I prayed for you to come back. At first, I wanted you to come back forever. Then, just for a few years, or a few months, or days, minutes, anything. I couldn’t help myself. I can’t help myself now. I want you so badly, it hurts.”

She brushed nervously at her tousled hair. “So let’s not spend time offering each other explanations or excuses. Let’s not make any promises. Let’s not even talk anymore.”

She rose and came around to stand over him, then bent to kiss him on the mouth. She kept her lips on his, tasting him, exploring gently, her arms coming around his shoulders, her fingers working themselves deep into his hair. She kissed him for a long time, and then she pulled him to his feet.

“I guess you remember I was a bold kind of girl,” she whispered, her face only inches from his own, her arms around his neck, and her body pressed against him. “I haven’t changed. Let’s go upstairs. I bet you remember the way.”

As it turned out, he did.

CHAPTER 19

B
ennett Scott stayed at the Heppler party almost two full hours before making her break, even though she had known before coming what she intended to do. She played with Harper and Little John, to the extent that playing with Little John was possible—such a weird little kid—and helped a couple of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-their-mouths teenage girls supervise the other children in their basement retreat. She visited with the adults—a boring, mind-numbing bunch except for Robert Heppler, who was still a kick—and admired the Christmas decorations. She endured the looks they gave her, the ones that took in her piercings and tattoos and sometimes the needle tracks on her arms, the ones that pitied her or dismissed her as trash. She ate a plate of food from the buffet and managed to sneak a few of the chicken wings and rolls into her purse in the process, knowing she might not get much else to eat for a while. She made a point of being seen and looking happy, so that no one, Nest in particular, would suspect what she was about. She hung in there for as long as she could, and much longer than she had believed possible, and then got out of there when no one was looking.

She said good-bye to Harper first.

“Mommy really, really loves you, baby,” she said, kneeling in front of the little girl in the darkened hallway leading from the rec room to the furnace room while the other children played noisily in the background. “Mommy loves you more than anything in the whole, wide world. Do you believe me?”

Harper nodded uncertainly, dark eyes intense. “Yeth.”

“I know you do, but Mommy likes to hear you say it.” Bennett fought to keep her voice steady. “Mommy has to leave you for a little while, baby. Just a little while, okay? Mommy has to do something.”

“What, Mommy?” Harper asked immediately.

“Just something, baby. But I want you to be good while I’m gone. Nest will take care of you. I want you to do what she tells you and be a real good little girl. Will you promise me?”

“Harper come, too,” she replied. “Come with Mommy.”

The tears sprang to her eyes, and Bennett wiped at them quickly, forcing herself to smile. “I would really like that, baby. But Mommy has to go alone. This is big-people stuff. Not for little girls. Okay?”

Why did she keep asking that?
Okay? Okay?
Like some sort of talking Mommy doll. She couldn’t take any more. She pulled Harper against her fiercely and hugged her tight. “Bye, baby. Gotta go. Love you.”

Then she sent Harper back into the rec room and slipped up the stairs. Retrieving her coat from the stack laid out on the sofa in the back bedroom, she made her way down the hallway through the crowds to the front door, telling anyone who looked interested that she was just going to step out for a cigarette. She was lucky; Nest was nowhere in evidence, and she did not have to attempt the lie with her. The note that would explain things was tucked in Nest’s coat pocket. She would find it there later and do the right thing. Bennett could count on Nest for that.

She was not anxious to go out into the cold, and she did not linger once the front door closed behind her. Trudging down the snowy drive with her scarf pulled tight and her collar up, she walked briskly up Spring to Woodlawn and started for home. She would travel light, she had decided much earlier. Not that she had a lot to choose from in any case, but she would leave everything Nest had given her except for the parka and boots. She would take a few pictures of Harper to look at when she wanted to remind herself what it was she was trying to recover, what it was she had lost.

What it was that her addiction had cost her.

All day her need for a fix had been eating at her, driving her to find fresh satisfaction. What Penny had given her last night hadn’t been enough. It was always surprising how quickly the need came back once she had used again, pervasive and demanding. It was like a beast in hiding, always there and always watching, forever hungry and never satisfied, waiting you out. You could be aware of it, you could face it down, and you could pass it by. But you could never be free of it. It followed after you everywhere, staying just out of sight. All it took was one moment of weakness, or despair, or panic, or carelessness, and it would show itself and devour you all over again.

That was what had happened last night. Penny had given her the opportunity and the means, a little encouragement, a friendly face, and she was gone. Penny, with her unkempt red hair, her piss-on-everyone attitude, and her disdain for everything ordinary and common. Bennett knew Penny; she understood her. They were kindred spirits. At least for the time it took to shoot up and get high, and then they were off on their own separate trips, and Bennett was floating in the brightness and peace of that safe harbor drugs provided.

By this morning, when she was alone again and coming down just enough to appreciate what she had done, she understood the truth about herself. She would never change. She would never stop using. Maybe she didn’t even want to, not down deep where it mattered. She was an addict to the core, and she would never be anything else. Using was the most important thing in the world to her, and it didn’t make any difference how many chances she was offered to give it up. It didn’t matter that Nest would try to help her. It didn’t matter that she was in a safe place. It didn’t even matter that she was going to lose Harper.

Or at least it didn’t matter enough to make her believe she could do what was needed.

What she could manage, she decided, was to leave Harper with Nest. What she could manage was to give her daughter a better chance at life than she’d been given. Maybe something good would come of it. Maybe it would persuade her to find a way at last to kick her habit. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, Harper would be better off.

She had been thinking about it all day. She could stand the bad things that happened to her, but not when they spilled over onto Harper. Especially if she was at fault because she was using. She could not bear it; she could not live with it. She was haunted by the possibility. To prevent it from happening, to remove any chance of it, she had to give Harper to Nest.

She shivered inside the parka, the wind harsh and biting as it swept over her in sudden gusts, particles of frozen snow stinging her exposed skin and making her eyes water. Cars lumbered by in the haze, and she wished one would stop and offer her a ride, but none did. When she got to the house, she would be able to get warm for a few minutes before Penny came. Penny would bring drugs and a ride downtown. She would catch the ten o’clock bus out and by morning she would be in another state.

She regretted that she’d had to steal money from Nest to make the break possible, but that was the least of the sins she had committed in her addict’s life and the one most likely to be forgiven first. Nest was her big sister, and a good person, and more family to her than Big Momma and the kids, all of whom were lost to her as surely as her childhood, and good riddance. Sometimes, she missed Jared, though. She remembered how sweet Nest had been on him. Sweet. She laughed aloud. Where had she picked up that word? She hoped Jared was all right somewhere. It would be nice to know he was.

Big Momma was a different matter. She hoped Big Momma was burning in hell.

It took a long time to reach the house. Her face stung and her fingers and toes were numb with cold. She extracted the house key, unlocked the door, and got herself inside. She stood in the entry and breathed in the warmth, waiting for the cold that had settled in her bones to melt. She was coughing, and her chest rattled. She was sick, but she wondered how sick she really was. It had been a long time since she had been to a doctor. Or Harper. Nest would do a better job with things like that.

Harper’s stuffed teddy was sitting by the Christmas tree, and Bennett started to cry.
Harper,
she whispered soundlessly.
Baby.

She called the number Penny had given her. Penny answered and said she’d be right there, and Bennett hung up. Her bag was already packed, so once the call was made there was little to do but wait. She walked out into the living room from the kitchen and stood looking into space. After a moment, she plugged in the tree. The colored lights reflected in the window glass and hall mirror and made her smile. Harper would have a nice Christmas. She glanced down at the present she had made for Harper—a rag doll with her name stitched on the apron, a project Nest had found in a magazine and helped her finish. She wished she could be there to see Harper’s face when she opened it. Maybe she would call from the road, just to say Merry Christmas.

She closed her eyes and hugged herself, thinking of how much better she would feel once Penny came with the drugs. She would do just enough to get her through the night and save the rest for later. She would buy all she could. It was great stuff, whatever it was, some sort of crystal, really smooth. She didn’t know how Penny had found anything so good, but it just took you up and up and up. Penny had said she would give it to her for free, but Bennett didn’t believe her. You gave it for free the first time, which was last night. Today it would cost. Because it was costing Penny. It had to be.

The phone rang once, but she left it alone. No one would be calling her. She began to worry that Nest would miss her and come after her before Penny arrived. She brought her small bag to the front door and stood looking out at the streetlit darkness. Cars came and went, a few, not many, indistinct and hazy lumps in the blowing snow. She wondered if it would snow all night. She wondered if the bus would be on time. She wished she had a fix.

By the time a car finally pulled into the driveway her anticipation and need were so high she could feel her skin crawl. She peeked out from behind the window curtain, uncertain who it was, torn between hiding and charging out. When the driver’s door opened and Penny’s Little Orphan Annie head appeared, she let out an audible gasp of relief and rushed to the front door to let her in.

“Ohhh, little girl, you are in some kind of state!” the redhead giggled as she came inside, slamming the door on the wind and the cold and throwing off her coat. “Let’s get you back together again right now!”

They shot up right there in the front entry, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, passing the fixings back and forth, heads bent close, whispering encouragement and laughing. It didn’t matter what was said, what words were used, what thoughts were exchanged. Nothing mattered but the process of injecting the drug and waiting for that first, glorious rush.

Bennett had no idea how much of the stuff she used, but it hit her like a sledgehammer, and she gasped with shock as it began to take hold. She threw back her head and let her mouth hang open, and everything in the world but what she was feeling disappeared.

“There you go,” Penny whispered from somewhere far, far away, her voice distant and soft, barely there at all, hardly anything more than a ripple in the haze. “Bring it on, girl. Momma needs her itch scratched good!”

Bennett laughed and soared and watched everything around her change to cotton candy. She was barely awake when Penny climbed to her feet and opened the front door. She was barely aware of the black-clad old man who walked through and stood looking down at her.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Penny hissed, and her tone of voice was suddenly sharp-edged and taunting. “How’s this for an unexpected surprise? Look who’s joining the party!”

Bennett lifted her eyes dreamily as Findo Gask bent close.

I
t was after nine-thirty before Nest missed Bennett Scott. She was having a good time talking with friends, some of them people she had known since childhood, sharing stories and swapping remembrances. Robert was very much in evidence early on, trying to make up for last night’s provocative comments about John Ross by being overly attentive. She tolerated his efforts for a while because she knew he meant well, but sometimes a little of Robert went a long way. Fortunately, Amy was up and about, though not feeling very much better, and when Nest made a point of beginning a discussion with her about pregnancies and babies, Robert quickly disappeared.

Now and then, Nest would drift down to the rec room to see how the children were doing. She had played in this house as a little girl, so she knew the floor plan well. The rec room was safe and secure. A single entry opened down the stairs from the main hallway. There were no exterior doors or windows. The girls who were baby-sitting knew that only parents and friends were allowed to visit and were instructed to ask for help if there was any problem.

Harper fit right in with the other kids, but Little John parked himself in a corner and wouldn’t move. She kept checking on him, hoping something would change over the course of the evening, but it never did. Her attempts to persuade him to join in proved futile, and eventually she gave up.

Once or twice she caught sight of Bennett, but since her concerns were primarily for the children and Bennett seemed to be doing all right, she didn’t stop to worry about her.

But finally she realized it was getting late and they had to think about making arrangements to get home, and it was then she realized she hadn’t seen Bennett for a while. When she had gone through the house twice without finding her, she tracked down Robert and drew him aside.

“I don’t want to make too much of this, but I can’t find Bennett Scott,” she advised quietly. From her look, he knew right away this wasn’t good.

He raised and lowered one eyebrow in a familiar Robert gesture. “Maybe she went home.”

“Without Harper?”

He shrugged. “Maybe she got sick. Are you sure she’s not here somewhere? You want me to ask around?”

She wheeled away abruptly and went back downstairs to the rec room. Kneeling next to Harper as the little girl worked to make something out of Play-Doh, she asked if her Mommy was there.

Harper barely looked up. “Mommy go bye-bye.”

Nest felt her throat tighten in panic. “Did she tell you this, Harper? Did she tell you bye-bye?”

Harper nodded. “Yeth.”