Second Glance (48 page)

Eli and his wife had not had children before she ran off with another man. He wondered, now, what he would have done if she’d not only taken herself away, but also his baby. He imagined that no matter how it came about, losing a child was something that you kept coming back to, like the hole in your gum when you lost a tooth or a scar you’d worry with your fingertips—a disfigurement that you felt over and over. “Ethan seems like a great kid,” Eli said.

“A handful of years with him still beats a lifetime with anyone else.” She smiled. “He had some advice for me about this date. So did Ross.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Ross told me never to trust a man who makes people confess for a living.”

“And Ethan?”

“I may just hang onto his pearl of wisdom for a while longer,” Shelby laughed.

Eli leaned back in his seat. “Your brother, he’s interesting.”

“That’s a nice way of saying it,” Shelby replied, buttering her bread. “More often, I hear terms like
drifter
and
fuck-up
.”

“You don’t think of him like that.”

“No. I think he’s lost. And that’s a circumstance that only lasts as long as it takes to be found by someone else.” A curl fell out of her topknot; she tucked it behind her ear.

“Happiness comes easier to some people than others. Ross wants to be happy; he wants it more than anyone I’ve ever met. But asking him to actually find his way there . . . well, that’s like asking him to spread his arms and fly. He just can’t, is all.”

“What about you?” he asked. “You take care of Ethan and you stand up for Ross. But who’s watching out for you?”

Eli reached for Shelby’s hand, which was wrapped too tightly around the stem of her wineglass. He watched her mouth relax, and then, in the moment it took for her to remember herself, she pulled away. “Here I am confabulating about myself—”

“Why do you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Use words no one else understands.”

“It means—”

“I don’t care,” Eli said. “I just want to know why you never say what you really mean.”

He thought she would sidestep the question, but she met his gaze. “With words, you know what you’re getting. When I know the right thing to say, there aren’t any surprises.”

He leaned in a little. “Go ahead. Ask me the
wrong
thing.”

She hesitated, then lowered her voice, as if there were other people around. “Why
me
, Eli?”

He stood up and drew her close, as if this might be the way to answer her question.

“Why?” Shelby repeated.

“Because dancing’s what you do on the second date,” Eli said, deliberately misunderstanding her. He tucked her tighter, feeling her head beneath his chin, her jaw against his collarbone.

“There isn’t any music.”

“You think?” Eli said softly, and he rocked Shelby in his arms until she too heard the silver sound of nothing at all.

Ross stood at the highest ledge of the granite quarry, watching his nephew scramble over huge chips and pillars left by yesterday’s blasting that hadn’t yet been mined. It surprised him, after being so reckless with his own life, to feel so incredibly nervous watching someone he loved taking a risk. But in return for helping Ross at the Pike property, Ethan asked to spend one night living on the edge—literally. And because he deserved it, Ross had been determined to make it happen.

He had gotten the permission of the security guard—Az Thompson. With Shelby gone on her date, Ross knew he had a good few hours to take Ethan on this field trip. Az stood beside Ross, watching Ethan shimmy up a long sloping piece of rose-colored granite. “You won’t get in trouble for this, will you?” Ross asked.

“Only if the kid hurts himself.”

“He better not.”

“Will
you
get in trouble for this?” Az asked.

“Probably,” Ross admitted. “I’m supposed to be taking care of him.” He kicked at a pebble, which fell over the lip of the quarry to strike hundreds of feet below. “Speaking of which, I never thanked you for the other night.”

“No need.”

Ross shook his head. “I . . . well, a lot happened just before you got to me. I found my ghost.”

“I heard.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I wasn’t the one who needed convincing,” Az said.

“Eli Rochert said you’re going to do some kind of ceremony?”

“Friday, at dawn. You coming?”

Ross could not speak for a moment. Eli had explained that the ritual would be a private one, limited to the officials needed to dig up the remains and the Abenaki spiritual leaders. He was not an official, and he was not Abenaki; therefore, he had no illusions about being invited. He had even told himself that seeing the remains of this woman who’d come alive only for him would be like losing her all over again.

Yet there was a part of him that wanted so badly to be present. Because if Lia’s body was being put to rest, chances were that her spirit would come to bear witness. And if she saw Ross, maybe this time she would not leave.

“I’ll be there,” Ross said quietly.

Az crossed his arms over his chest. “What they should be doing, instead of digging up this grave, is burying Spencer Pike alive.”

Ross looked hard at Az. Az, who had protested the development of the Pike property before there was any concrete proof. Az, who was old enough to have heard about Spencer Pike’s crusade for sterilization. Eli had told him that the old man had moved to Comtosook in the seventies, and that he’d come from the Midwest. But Shelby had said that in the 1930s some of the Abenaki had migrated to escape what was happening in Vermont—joining up with the Ojibway in Michigan and Minnesota and Wisconsin. They had taken their stories. And Az would have listened.

“How much,” Ross asked, “did you know?”

Az shrugged. “Enough.”

“You didn’t tell anyone. You could have walked right up to Eli and told him about Spencer Pike and eugenics.”

“Why bring up something that hurts so much, if it’s not going to change anything?”

“But it does. It keeps it from happening again.”

Az raised a brow. “Do you really believe that?”

Ross started to nod, but then realized he would be lying. The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn’t had time to do. “Gray Wolf,” he said suddenly. “You know what happened to him, don’t you?”

The old man stared up at the yellow eye of the moon. “Where I used to live, every few years, there would be rumors about people seeing him. In line at the bank, or sitting in the back of a bus, or dealing in a casino.”

“Like Elvis.” Ross smiled. He should have known better. Reality sometimes morphed into legend, but the equation never went the other way. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, really. The guy’s probably dead by now.”

“I’m 102,” Az said softly, “but who’s counting.”

TEN

“I
killed her.” Az pressed the small wad of gauze to the spot on his arm where blood had just been drawn and looked calmly at the detective sitting across from him in the examination room.

Eli didn’t even blink. “The evidence doesn’t suggest that.”

“Far as I know, there’s still a warrant out for me.”

Ross put down the tongue depressor that he’d dressed with a cotton ball hairdo, a makeshift puppet. After confessing his identity, Az had agreed to meet with Eli. Ross half expected him to skip town again—but he’d been waiting on the steps of the police station when Ross had arrived. He’d allowed Eli to fingerprint him, and even Ross could see those telltale arches, the same ones that had been on Gray Wolf’s fingerprint card from the State Prison. And when Eli had gone one step further and asked Az for a blood sample for DNA typing, the old man was the one who suggested they do it right away.

But why confess after seventy years?

“I killed her,” Az repeated. “I found a girl who grew up like royalty, and explained she wasn’t a princess after all. It doesn’t matter if I wound that rope around her neck, if I was even there that night. She wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t told her she was my daughter.”

“You must have realized that finding out the truth wouldn’t be easy for her,” Eli said.

“I wasn’t thinking of the choices she’d have to make. I just wanted to get to know her, because she was what I’d be leaving behind in this world. Only it didn’t work out that way.”

“Did you tell Pike, too?”

“No.”

“Do you think Lia told him?”

“I think she was afraid to,” Az said. “He’d locked her up the week before. She had been suicidal—and he said he wanted to keep an eye on her, keep her from hurting herself. In Spencer Pike’s mind, announcing you were a Gypsy was just as self-destructive.” “Why didn’t you take her out of there?” Ross accused. “You could have saved her.” And yet, he knew that even if Az Thompson had spirited Lia off to Canada to have her child, she still would not be his. She would be an old woman. The only reason he had ever met her at all was because she
had
died when she did.

“Her husband beat me up and threw me out. By the time I came back for her, the place was a murder scene . . . and Spencer Pike was telling the cops I’d done it. The reason I’ve lived so long is that it’s my punishment. I met her, but then had to spend the rest of my life without her.”

Ross stared, surprised to hear Az voice the very same pain that
he
felt.

Eli shook his head. “I remember when you moved here, Az. I was a kid. You came back to Comtosook, knowing that you could still be arrested for something you didn’t do?”

“I came back because I promised someone I loved that I would.” Az pulled the Band-Aid from the crook of his elbow, where only the tiniest dot indicated the question of his identity. “You ask me, that’s all it takes.”

It turned out that sneaking into a rest home wasn’t very difficult if you happened to be the same age as most of its patrons. He moved through the halls like the ghost he nearly was, squinting at the names on the doors until he found the one he wanted.

Inside, Spencer Pike lay twisted in his sheets, his face as white as the belly of a whale, his IV hooked up to a patient-controlled analgesia pump. His thumb pressed hard on a nurse’s call button, and his breath came in small shallow pants. “I need more morphine!”

The answer was tinny, distant. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pike. You can’t have any more tonight.”

With a roar of pain, he threw the PCA button down. He lay on his side, his features twisted with agony. Even after the other man slipped out of the shadows, it took a few moments for Pike to focus on his face. And then, there was no sign of recognition. “Who
are
you?” he gasped.

There was no right way to answer. In his life, he had been so many different people: John Delacour, Gray Wolf, Az Thompson. He had been called an Indian, a Gypsy, a murderer, a miracle. Yet the only identity he had ever wanted was the one that had been denied him—Lily’s husband, Lia’s father.

Maybe Spencer Pike was delirious from the narcotics or the haze of his illness; maybe he saw courage in Az’s eyes and mistook it for understanding. But something made him reach across the six inches of physical space and miles of distance between them to grasp Az’s hand. “Please,” he begged. “Help me.”

It rocked Az to the core to realize that he and Spencer Pike had something in common after all: they would die alone, and their grief would die with them. He looked at the broken man in front of him who had ruined so many lives. “Help me die,” Pike breathed.

It would be so easy. A pillow, held down for thirty seconds. A hand covering the parched and bitter mouth. No one need ever know, and Az would have his biblical justice: a life for a life.

But it was what Pike wanted.

Az felt the bands around his heart break free. “No,” he said, and he walked out of the room without a second glance.

The Comtosook Police Department had hired six part-timers to keep the media away from the site of the disinterment. Gathered around the open graves were Wesley Sneap, Eli, Az and several hand-picked Abenaki, and Ross. The stench of time rose from the earth, thick as cinnamon.