Aftershock & Others (32 page)

But oh no, she couldn’t sell the family home. She’d spent almost every summer of her life at the Lange place. Besides, who would want to leave Nantucket? It was the best place on earth.

She just couldn’t see: The island was paradise to her, but to him it was hell on earth.

Bill fumed. He could
not
survive another winter on this island. He cudgeled his brain for a way out, and came up with a brilliant solution: How about we keep the house but sell off the fifty acres of undeveloped land and use the money from that to buy a place near Boston? We can live there in the winter and still summer here. Cool, huh?

But Julie simply laughed and said she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone but a Lange living on the land where she’d roamed and camped out during her childhood. In fact, she’d been looking into donating it to the conservancy so that it would always remain in its wild, undeveloped state.

Which left Billy three choices, none of which was particularly appealing. He could stay with Julie on Nantucket and devolve into drooling incoherence.

Or he could file for divorce and never see this island again, but that would mean cutting himself off from the Lange estate, all of which would go to Julie when her old man died.

Or Julie could die.

He reluctantly opted for the last. He wasn’t a killer, and not a particularly violent man, but an entire winter on this glorified sandbar had shaken something loose inside. And besides, he deserved to come out of this marriage with something more than a bad memory.

But he’d have to make his move soon, before Julie handed fifty acres of prime land over to the stupid damn conservancy.

So he convinced Julie that the backyard needed some landscaping. And on a bright Friday afternoon in June, after solidifying the plan and setting up all the props he’d need, Bill Morley sat on his back porch and watched the landscapers put the finishing touches on the free-form plantings in the backyard. He waved to them as they left, then waited for Julie to return from town where she’d been running errands and shopping and doing whatever she did.

Carrying a three-iron casually across a shoulder, he met her in the foyer when she came home, and she looked so bright, so cheery, so happy to be alive that he gave her one last chance to change her mind. But Julie barely listened. She brushed off the whole subject, saying she didn’t want to talk about selling houses or land or moving because she had something to tell him.

Whatever it was, she never got the chance. He hit her with the golf club. Hard. Three times. She dropped to the floor like a sack of sand, not moving, not breathing.

As soon as it was dark, Bill began digging up one of the landscapers’ plantings. He removed the burlap-wrapped root ball of a young maple and dug a much larger hole under it. Julie and the three iron went into the bottom of that, the maple went on top of her, and everything was packed down with a nice thick layer of dirt. He wheelbarrowed the leftover soil into the woods she’d planned to give away, and spread it in the brush. He cleaned up before dawn, took a nap, then headed for town.

He parked their car in the Steamship Authority lot and bought two tickets to Hyannis on the next ferry, making sure to purchase them with a credit card. Then he ducked into the men’s room. In a stall, he turned one of Julie’s dark blue sweatshirts inside out and squeezed into it—luckily she liked them big and baggy. He put on the fake mustache he’d bought in Falmouth two weeks before, added big, dark sunglasses, then pulled the sweatshirt hood over his head.

The mustachioed man paid cash for his ticket and waited in line with the rest of the ferry passengers. As he stood there, he used the cover of his sunglasses to check out the women with long blond hair, cataloging their attire. He spotted at least four wearing flowered tops and bell-bottom jeans. Good. Now he knew what he’d say Julie was wearing.

Once aboard, the mustachioed man entered one of the ship’s rest rooms where he broke the sunglasses and threw them in the trash. After flushing the mustache he emerged as Bill Morley with the sweatshirt—now right-side out—balled in his hand. While passengers milled about the aft deck, he discreetly draped the sweatshirt over the back of a chair and headed for the snack bar.

After that he played an increasingly confused, frightened, and eventually panicked young husband looking for his lost wife. He’d gone to get her a cup of coffee, and when he came back she was…gone.

Morley smiled at how
perfectly the plan had worked. The police and his father-in-law had been suspicious—wasn’t the husband always suspect?—but hadn’t been able to punch a hole in his story. And since Julie wasn’t carrying a speck of life insurance, no clear motive.

The disguise had proved a big help. If he’d stood on line as Bill Morley, someone very well might have remembered that he’d been alone. But as it turned out, no one could say they’d noticed Bill Morley at all, with or without his wife, until he’d begun wandering the decks, looking for her.

But it had been his fellow passengers who’d helped him the most. A number of them swore they’d seen a woman aboard matching Julie’s description. Of course they had—Morley had made sure of that. One couple even identified Julie’s picture. As a result, the long, unsuccessful search focused on the thirty-mile ferry route. No one gave a thought to digging up the yard back on Nantucket.

Final consensus: 1) Julia Lange Morley either fell or jumped unnoticed from the ferry; or 2) she was a victim of foul play—killed or knocked unconscious and transported off the ferry in the trunk of one of the cars riding on the lower deck.

Neither seemed likely, but once one accepted the fact that Julie had embarked but not debarked, those were the possibilities that remained.

Morley had kept the house for a while but didn’t live there. Instead he mortgaged it and used the money to lease an apartment in Greenwich Village. It was the disco seventies, with long nights of dancing, drugs, and debauchery. In the summers he rented out the Lange place for a tidy sum, and forced himself to pay a visit every so often. He was especially interested in the growth of a certain young maple—
his
maple.

And now it seemed his maple had come back to haunt him.

Haunt…poor choice of words.

And perhaps he should start calling it Julie’s maple.

All right: What did he know—really
know
?

Whether through extreme coincidence, fate, or a manipulation of destiny, he had purchased a piece of maple furniture made from the very tree he’d placed over Julie’s corpse nearly thirty years ago. That seemed to be the only hard fact he could rely on.

After that, the assumptions grew murky and fantastic. Much as he hated saying it, he had no choice: The wood from that tree appeared to be possessed.

Two days ago he would have laughed aloud at the very suggestion of a haunted footstool, but after numerous injuries and one potentially fatal close call, Morley was unable to muster even a sneer today.

He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, let alone haunted footstools, but how else to explain the events of the past two days?

But just for the sake of argument, even if it
were
possible for Julie’s soul or essence or whatever to become a part of that young maple as it grew—after all, its roots had fed on the nutrients released by her decomposing body—why wasn’t
JULIE
worked into the grain? Why
ANNA
?

Morley’s second scotch hit him and he felt his eyelids growing heavy. He let them close and drifted into a semiconscious state where floating woodgrains morphed from
JULIE
to
ANNA
and back again…
JULIE
…
ANNA
…
JULIE
…
ANNA
…
JULIE
—

“Dear God!” he cried, awakening with a start.

The flight attendant rushed to his side. “Is something wrong, sir?”

“No,” he gasped. “I’m all right. Really.”

But Morley wasn’t all right. His insides were strangling themselves in a Gordian knot. He’d just had an inkling about Anna, and if he was correct,
nothing
was all right. Nothing at all.

As soon as Morley
was through the airport gate, he found a seat, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Nantucket information. He asked the operator to read off all the names on the short list of doctors practicing on the island. She did, but none of them rang a bell.

“He might not be in practice anymore.” Might not even be alive, though Morley prayed he was. “He was a GP—my wife saw him back in the seventies.”

“That was probably Doc Lawrence. He’s retired now but his home phone’s listed.”

Lawrence! Yes, that was it! He dialed the number and a moment later found himself talking to Charles Lawrence, M.D., elderly, somewhat hard of hearing, but still in possession of most of his marbles.

“Of course I remember your wife. Saw Julie Lange at least twice a summer for one thing or another all the years she was growing up. Did they ever find her?”

“Not a trace.”

“What a shame. Such a nice girl.”

“She certainly was. But let me ask you something, Doctor. I was just out visiting the old place and it occurred to me that Julie had an appointment with you the day before she disappeared. Did you…discover anything that might have upset her?”

“Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. She was absolutely overjoyed about being pregnant.”

Morley was glad he was already sitting as all of LaGuardia seemed to tilt under him. Even so, he feared he might tumble from the chair.

“Hello?” Dr. Lawrence said. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” he croaked. His tongue felt like Velcro.

“You sound as if this is news to you. I assumed she told you.”

“Yes, of course she did,” Morley said, his mind racing. “That’s why we were heading for the mainland—to surprise her father. I never had the heart to tell him after she…”

“Yeah, I know. That made it a double tragedy.”

Morley extricated himself from the conversation as quickly as possible, then sat and stared at nothing, the cell phone resting in his sweating palm, cold damp terror clutching at his heart.

On the last day of her life, Julie had driven into town to run some errands and to see Doc Lawrence for “a check-up.” A check-up…young Bill Morley had been too involved in planning his wife’s demise to question her about that, but now he knew what had been going on. Julie must have missed her period. No such thing as a home pregnancy test back then, so she’d gone to the doctor to have it done. That was what she’d wanted to tell him before he cracked her skull with the three iron.

Julie had often talked about starting a family…not if—
when
. When she talked of a son, she never mentioned a name; but whenever she spoke of having a daughter, she knew what she wanted to call her. A name she loved.

Anna.

Julie had always intended to call her little girl Anna.

Morley felt weak. He closed his eyes. Something had invaded the wood of that tree, and the wood of that tree had invaded his house, his life. Was it Anna, the tiny little life that had been snuffed out along with her mother’s, or was it Julie, seeking vengeance in the name of the child who would never be born?

How did it go? Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

But what of a woman never allowed to be born?

Morley shuddered. It didn’t matter who, really. Either way, measures had to be taken, and he knew exactly what he needed to do.

Night had fallen by
the time Morley got home. He entered his house cautiously, turning on lights in each room, hallway, and staircase before he proceeded. When he reached the living room he went directly to the fireplace, opened the flue, and lit the kindling beneath the stack of aged logs on the grate.

He waited until he had a roaring fire, then went to the hall closet and removed a heavy winter blanket. With this tucked under his arm, Morley headed up the stairs—turning lights on as he went—to the floor where he’d locked the footstool in the spare bedroom.

He hesitated outside the door, heart pounding, hands trembling. He tried the knob—still locked, thank God. He turned the key and opened the door just enough to snake his hand in and turn on the light. Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open.

The footstool lay on its side, exactly as he had left it.

He felt a little silly now. What had he been afraid of? Had he been half expecting it to jump at him?

But Morley was taking no chances. He threw the blanket over the stool, bundled it up, and carried it downstairs where he dumped it in front of the fireplace. Using the log tongs, he pulled the stool free and consigned it to the flames.

He watched the curly maple burn.

He wasn’t sure what he expected next. A scream? The legs of the stool writhing in pain? None of that happened. It simply lay there atop the other logs and…burned. At one point he leaned closer, trying for one last peek at the name hidden in the grain, but the heat drove him back before he could find it.

Anna…his child’s name…he thought he should feel something, but he was empty of all emotions except relief. He never knew her…how could he feel anything for her? And as for Julie…

“It’s too bad you had to die,” he whispered as the varnish on the wood bubbled and blackened. “But you left me no choice. And as for coming back and interfering with my life, that’s not going to happen. I’d all but forgotten about you—and now I’ll go about forgetting you again.”

Morley watched the fabric and padding of the stool dissolve in a burst of flame, watched the wood of the seat and legs char and smoke and burn and crumble. He remained before the fire until every last splinter of the stool had been reduced to ash.

Finally he rose and yawned. A long, hard day, but a fruitful one. He looked around. His home was his again, purged of a malign influence. But how to keep it from re-entering?

Easy: Morley resolved never to buy another stick of furniture that wasn’t at least a hundred years old.