The Eternal Ones (5 page)

 

 

 

[Draft e-mail dated October 8, 2001. Not addressed. Second page not found]

 

Haven lay on her bed with the last scrap of paper still clutched in her hand and her brain filled with little but static. Each of her father’s notes had been a small bomb. Together they had blown away Haven’s reality. Suddenly she was no longer just Haven Jane Moore, daughter of Ernest and Mae. If the notes were to be believed, she had once been someone else. A girl named Constance. And her visions weren’t fantasies or hallucinations. They were scenes from a past that was every bit as real as the present.

The whole notion was going to take some getting used to. Haven was almost certain that the word
reincarnation
had never been spoken in her presence—by her father or anyone else. She had come across the idea in books, of course, and she knew it played a role in any number of faiths. And she knew hers wasn’t one of them. Still, she had to admit, reincarnation was far more appealing than the alternatives. Deep down, Haven had always worried that she might be insane or possesed by a demon. It was a relief to finally have a third option on the table.

As Haven listened to the chorus of crickets and frogs outside her window, a thought drifted through her mind. If her visions were showing her real events—then Ethan must have been real too. Haven dug back through her father’s notes until she found the letter he’d written.

 

 

The idea jolted Haven to her feet. If Constance had died and returned to earth as someone new, then Ethan must have come back as well. And Haven was supposed to look for him. She stood electrified in the center of her bedroom, her heart pounding and hands shaking. She thought of the boy she’d seen on television just moments before she had fainted. Could Iain Morrow be the person she was meant to find? She couldn’t deny that there had been something about his smile that had recalled Ethan’s lopsided grin. And he
did
live in New York. . . .

And yet Haven refused to believe it. The idea was all too strange to take seriously. The Ethan that Constance had loved would never have returned to earth as a billionaire murder suspect. Haven dropped down on the mattress and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping she could summon a vision. Another visit to Constance’s life might provide a clue that could lead her to the real Ethan. But the visions refused to arrive on cue. Finally, after tears of frustration, Haven fell asleep next to the box filled with her father’s notes.

 

EARLY IN THE MORNING, she began to smell smoke. Choking and wheezing, she tried to force her eyes open, but she found herself pulled further and further into the darkness, until she emerged on the other side.

“Oooh. You don’t look so good,” Morgan Murphy informed her. “You aren’t coming down with something are you?”

Haven had been staring at the wall of the home economics classroom, waiting for Beau to finish pinning Morgan’s prom dress. The girl must have heard about her latest fainting spell, Haven realized without surprise. Few secrets survived the Snope City gossip mill, and Imogene loved to talk.

“Don’t move, Morgan,” Beau ordered gruffly. “Unless you want a dozen pins sticking out of your pretty little back.”

“I’m fine,” Haven insisted, refusing to let eight years of resentment bubble up to the surface. “Never felt better. What do you think?”

She yanked the sheet off the full-length mirror and let the voluptuous blonde admire her new dress. Emerald green wasn’t the color Haven would have chosen for her, but Morgan always got her way. She’d also insisted on a neckline that showed a little more cleavage than was customary at a Blue Mountain prom. But for the four hundred dollars Morgan was paying, Haven would have designed her a sequined bikini.

Ignoring Morgan’s
ooh
s and
ahh
s, Haven gazed at her own ghostly reflection. She hadn’t bothered to tame her black curls that morning. The circles under her eyes were the color of eggplant, and the freckles sprinkled across her nose resembled some exotic strain of skin disease. The face had never really felt like her own, and now Haven knew why. She turned to the window, trying to forget the fire still raging in her head. Outside the classroom the kids from the neighboring elementary school were at recess. Haven watched them kick up little orange clouds of dust as they zigged and zagged across the dry dirt field.

“You know, Beau, Bradley says there’s a guy over in Unicoi who’s like you,” she heard Morgan remark.

“Like what?” Beau responded, adding a few pins to the back of the dress.

“
You know
.” Morgan giggled. “Homo
sex
ual. Maybe you two could go out on a date. Ouch! Was that a pin?”

“Yeah, sorry. I slipped,” Beau said. “I’m not looking for love right now, Morgan. And even if I was, I doubt I’d go looking in Unicoi. I like men with a full set of teeth.”

“Is that some sorta sex thing?” Morgan asked coyly just as Mrs. Buchanan entered the classroom with a cake tray balanced on one meaty hand.

In the past, Blue Mountain High School’s domestic diva hadn’t had much time for Haven and Beau, and they were both surprised when Mrs. Buchanan had offered to lend them her room for fittings at the end of the school day. Her change of heart had coincided with her husband’s brief stay at the Johnson City Regional Hospital. She had riddled his backside with BB pellets after catching him slipping the sausage to her cousin Cheryl. Charges were never pressed, but Mrs. Buchanan’s unfortunate brush with small-town infamy left her a little more gracious toward the likes of Beau and Haven—though neither expected the goodwill to last.

“Don’t you think that dress is a little revealing, Morgan?” Seated at her desk, Mrs. Buchanan began decorating her cake with dainty frosting rosettes. “You know what they say about giving the milk away for free.”

Morgan smiled serenely at the large, prissy woman. “Oh, you’re just old-fashioned, Mrs. Buchanan. This is what you got to do to
keep
a man these days.”

“We designed it to be practical,” Haven added hastily before Mrs. Buchanan had a chance to catch the girl’s gist. “So Morgan can wear it to work after she graduates.”

Beau snickered and Morgan looked confused. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I’m marrying Bradley. Why would I want a
job
?”

“You’re all done, Morgan!” Beau announced, abruptly putting a stop to the conversation. “We’ll finish up the alterations tonight and have the dress to you first thing in the morning.”

“
Thanks
, y’all,” Morgan chirped as she disappeared behind the changing screen. “You know, I’m so glad you guys go to school here! Everybody else is so darn
normal
.” She emerged wearing a pair of tight jeans, a tank top, and an earnest expression. Like most Southern girls, Morgan was an expert when it came to killing with kindness, and she was about to deliver the death knell. “Anyways, you take good care of yourself, Haven Moore. Blue Mountain
needs
people like you!”

“Thanks,” Haven managed, snatching the dress from the busty blonde and wishing she could strangle her with it.

 

AFTER MORGAN WAS GONE, Haven and Beau carried their supplies out to the parking lot without a word passing between them. Once they had climbed into the Deckers’ ancient truck, Beau put his key into the ignition but didn’t fire up the engine.

“There something you want to talk about, Haven?” he asked. “You’ve been kinda quiet all day.”

“I’m just thinking,” she said. Haven didn’t know how to tell Beau what she’d learned when it still didn’t make any sense to her.

“Does this have something to do with your imaginary boyfriend?”

“Maybe.”

“You planning to let me in on the secret?”

“Eventually,” Haven said with a halfhearted smile.

“I’ll let you keep thinking until we get up to the house,” Beau informed her. “Then I’ll get it out of you one way or another. You know my dad taught me a few of the interrogation techniques he picked up in the Army. I’ve been looking for a chance to test them out.”

Gazing out the passenger window at the mountains in the distance, Haven didn’t bother to laugh at the joke.

 

THE GRAVEL ROAD to the Decker house was pitted with craters, and Haven bounced in the seat of Beau’s truck. The fields surrounding the old Decker farmhouse had been sold off long ago, and now it sat at the edge of an enormous trailer park. A squad of little boys on mud-splattered dirt bikes patrolled the narrow roads, a few mangy hunting dogs chasing behind them.

Beau parked the truck by the Deckers’ listing tobacco shed and Haven pulled the cardboard box filled with fabric from the back.

“That you, Haven Moore?” a voice called out from inside as Haven climbed the stairs to the front porch.

“Hey there Mr. Decker,” Haven replied. An older, more weathered version of Beau strode out onto the porch. One sleeve of the man’s work shirt was pinned up and out of the way. “We’ve come to fit you for your gown.”

Ben Decker laughed as he held the screen door open for Haven. “I’m afraid I don’t have the figure to do justice to one of y’all’s dresses.”

“Aw, you don’t have to act all modest for us,” Beau said. “I’ve heard the ladies down at the fabric shop talking about you. From what I gather, they’re great admirers of your figure.”

Beau was joking but he wasn’t exaggerating. Ben Decker might have left an arm behind in Kuwait, but most women in Snope City still considered him the handsomest man in town. His only competition would have been his son, had Beau not been disqualified from the running.

Beau’s father clicked his tongue in mock exasperation as he gave Haven a warm hug. “You going to let him tease an old man like that? It’s downright cruel.”

“I’m not teasing you,” Beau insisted. “And a couple of them ladies ain’t too bad looking, either.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Ben Decker’s ears turned bright red. “You two best mind your own damn business.”

“Just a suggestion,” Beau said, chuckling as he led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. Cozy and warm, it was Haven’s favorite place in the world. She loved the old porcelain stove, the wooden table decorated with a century’s worth of knife marks and water stains, and the pool-blue curtains they’d sewn for the windows. Beau had assumed housekeeping duties after his mother had died of cancer three years earlier, and Haven always marveled at how well he’d done on so little money. The boy had a talent for making things beautiful.