Ruin Falls (33 page)

“Elizabeth,” she said, not quite meeting Liz’s gaze. “May I come in?”

Liz stepped aside. “What are you doing here?”
Asinine
, she heard Jill say. She wondered what question Jill would’ve come up with to ask.

But Mary’s reply caused tears to strike. “I suppose I came because I’m a mother, too.”

Liz turned, going back into the house. “A mother who chooses to have almost no contact with her child. While I had no control over losing mine.”

Was that true? Or had Liz played a role in what Paul had done by allowing him to be what he’d become?

Mary’s hand wafted down, coming to a rest on Liz’s arm. “I didn’t have a whole lot to do with losing mine either.”

Liz jerked free. “I suppose you’re right. It was Matthew who called
a stupid, tragic accident unforgivable. Saw fit to disavow your son over it.” Mary began to reply, but Liz spoke over her, surprising herself with her shaking rage. “Paul hadn’t even drunk that much. I saw the road they were on. Anybody could’ve crashed their car.”

“Matthew didn’t reject Paul because of the accident,” Mary said.

The pale timbre of her tone was hard to make out. Liz wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She blinked, trying to bring her mother-in-law’s face into focus.

Mary set the bag she was holding down in the entryway. “I’ve always believed that the past belongs where time has taken it,” she said, so low she was almost whispering.

Liz leaned forward and took Mary’s wrists in her hands, surprised to find them strong as stalks. “Mary. This isn’t the past anymore. Please tell me why Matthew disowned Paul.”

Mary looked over her shoulder, the movement rendering her unsteady. She walked to the couch and sank down.

Liz followed but remained standing, looming over her mother-in-law’s bent back.

“That road is a monster,” Mary burst out. It was an utterly spontaneous eruption of words, spoken with uncharacteristic fervor. “We drove there after the accident, too. And Paul was so very young.” Mary raised a hand to her face, wearing lines and divots in it that hadn’t been there a moment before. “They were both so god-awful young.”

Tears seeped from Liz’s eyes; then she felt a charge of fury. Not at Mary, but at herself. What was she doing, standing around weeping instead of ferreting out the reason Mary had come? “What made Matthew turn his back on Paul?”

Mary looked up at her through cloudy eyes. “He called him a dirty, stinking coward.”

The brutality of the statement winded Liz like a fall, or a punch. What a hard, unyielding man Matthew was. And also, how similar were father and son. Only the nature of their denunciation differed.

“Oh yes,” Mary said, an odd note of merriment in her voice. “That’s what he said. Can you imagine saying that to your own flesh and blood?”

“Well,” Liz said. She turned and walked toward the door. “I suppose now I understand how Paul could do something as cruel and drastic as this.”

Mary bowed her head.

“I still don’t understand why you came,” Liz said, looking back. “Just to tell me how much Matthew hates his son? How helpless you were to do anything about it?”

“No,” Mary murmured. “That isn’t it.”

Liz’s hand stilled on the knob.

Mary got up and crossed to Liz at a halting pace. In the entryway, she lifted the shopping bag. Her fist gave a palsied shake.

Liz frowned, but a pulse of faint hope was starting to tick inside her.

“I thought we should both see what’s inside this.”

When her mother-in-law didn’t seem inclined to go on, Liz parted the folds of the bag and peered into the gaping space.

It held the missing lockbox.

THE DINNER HOUR

A
bby was preparing dinner with the other women when they heard it. The blast split the deep quiet around them, inciting a cacophony of bird cries, followed by a high, tailing-off whistle. All three of them looked up at once, but Abby was the first to run for the barn door and heave it open.

“Cody!” she called, a note of alarm in her voice. “Children!”

“Yeah?” Tom shouted back. “Whaddaya want?”

His voice held a faint underlay of menace, but that seemed to be normal for Tom. The boy sounded casual. Nothing wrong.

Abby threaded her way through the trees, coming out behind the barn.

The children were at work netting a berry patch so that it wouldn’t be picked clean before the fruit could ripen next season. Tom, the oldest, was driving stakes into the ground, letting out a karate-like
“Hi-ya”
as each one spiked the earth. Reid and his sister Ally cut lengths of net. Even Cody had been given a job. Abby felt a flush of delight as she watched her little boy solemnly hold a piece of netting so that Ally could affix it to the stake.

“Good job, Cody,” Abby heard Ally say.

Ally appeared to be a natural teacher, especially if the lesson had anything to do with plants. The way the kids were getting along promised to be a surprise bonus of this whole venture. Older ones
teaching younger, younger reminding older of a sort of wide-eyed state of innocent delight. Cody, who was destined to remain an only child, seemed to take particular pleasure in the group he had joined. Abby felt more relaxed than she had in months, although she intended to keep a watchful eye, especially where Tom was concerned. He was a big kid, rough, but neither of those things were what concerned her. No, it was that Abby sensed a cold sheen beneath Tom’s loudmouth ways, as if his insides were made of chrome or tin instead of blood and pulpy organs. And the other moms seemed to be similarly wary, although they hadn’t talked about it yet.

In some ways, the reality of this place was turning out to be better than Abby had anticipated, the kids being the most shining example of this. But there were downsides she hadn’t imagined too, and Abby had wondered once or twice what she’d gotten herself and Cody into. This wasn’t some well-planned utopian compound; instead, it was a motley group of people who seemed to be figuring things out as they went along. She and Cody had only been here two days, and she could already tell how many holes there were, gaps that would have to be filled in, with winter fast approaching.

But what choice had she had but to come?

Abby had hoped that Sue, who had put Abby in touch with the women from the chat room, would also join them. Abby and Sue had met in a moms’ group four years ago. But Sue had never given any thought to meeting her cyber friends in person, let alone following where they led. That was an avenue she’d thought of for Abby, Sue explained, when Bill caused the situation to become so desperate.

Sue assumed that once Bill was arrested, Abby would decide against leaving. But the opposite was true. Bill’s assault on the driver—the fact that he’d been willing to hold a bus full of children at gunpoint—only convinced Abby that her ex-husband was capable of the worst. Bill would hire the top criminal lawyer in the country and be out on bail within a week.

Abby took one more look at the brood of kids.

Tom and Reid were pretend sword fighting with the stakes, and Ally was feeding Cody a berry that somehow hadn’t gotten consumed by birds or bears. For a moment, Abby thought about stepping in;
Tom’s thrusts looked especially vicious. But Reid seemed to be holding his own, and after all, Abby wasn’t either boy’s mother. It took a village, but her role as villager hadn’t been fully determined yet.

She couldn’t help wondering about the two missing moms. Kurt’s wife had clearly died: he’d hinted at a grief too deep to share, and Abby held out hope that she could coax him to a greater level of intimacy. It wasn’t Kurt’s looks that drew her, although that dark hair did appear thick enough to lose your fingers in. Abby hadn’t expected this—a utopian singles meet-up—especially not so soon after leaving Bill. But she and Kurt had a connection she’d never experienced with anyone else. In a few scant days, he’d learned things about her that even Bill hadn’t figured out.

The story with Paul was more opaque. Aside from a clipped revelation that his wife would never support what they were doing, Paul hadn’t mentioned Reid and Ally’s mother, although the kids talked about her a lot.

Abby switched her attention back to Cody, whose mouth was bright with berry juice. In addition to being a natural-born teacher, Ally clearly had a gift with flora. She would know what was safe to let Cody eat, and what wasn’t. No need for Abby’s supervision.

Abby turned and walked back to the front of the barn so she could pick up where she had left off, stacking sandwiches on a platter. Peanut butter tonight. Again. They had sixty cartons, each containing twelve jars of all-natural peanut butter, which must have been a real drag to lug in.

The food was the not-surprising part of this place. In fact, it was about what you’d expect in terms of bare-bones monotony when trying to feed a bevy of people with no new supplies arriving. It was supposed to get better. Paul had promised it would. Plus, there were a few slightly more exciting wares, canned goods, home-jarred fruits and veggies, boxes of jerky, which the women had told her were to be saved for the real depths of winter. For now there were still wild onions to forage, mushrooms, greens, and flowers, which Abby figured even the children would come to regard as treats.

The night she and Cody finally got to leave, Abby had run around the condo, grabbing the scant supplies she had off cupboard shelves
and shoving them into bags. Terry had stockpiled these things as a just-in-case for winter, but she wouldn’t let Abby serve them to the children.

“But granola bars are healthy,” Abby had protested.

Terry had reached for the box, pointing out three sources of sugar in the ingredients, not to mention the soy.

“Soy’s bad for you?” Abby had asked skeptically. “It’s in tofu!”

“Tofu’s quite possibly the single worst thing you could put in your body,” Terry had replied calmly. “You may as well eat a McDonald’s hamburger.”

Abby’s thoughts flew to the Happy Meal Cody had gobbled down the night before.

“Tofu was never meant to be a food,” Terry went on.

Abby had begun to talk about Chinese and Japanese people, soy sauce, but Terry seemed to anticipate her line of argument. “Asians eat small amounts of fermented soy,” she’d said. “In their native countries, Asian people would never eat tofu. It’s an American abomination because soybeans are a cheap and hearty crop.”

Despite their slight level of nuttiness, Abby already liked Terry and Katrina. Terry was a devoted caretaker of the infant another woman had arrived with, the baby now sleeping now in a sunny patch of barn, dust motes twirling in a shaft above her curlicue of a body. And Katrina had her own baby strapped to her chest, although Abby had yet to see it.

“What do you think that noise was?” Abby asked, taking two sandwiches out of Terry’s full hands and adding them to the stack on the platter.

“It was awfully loud,” Katrina said, adjusting the bundle on her chest. “Almost sounded like a—”

“They’re working down at the falls,” Terry interrupted. “They might’ve had to set off an explosive.”

“An
explosive
?” Abby said.

Terry shrugged. “Do you know anything about building a hydro-powered energy source?”

“I do,” Katrina said. “And I can tell you that either it isn’t possible for two men to do at that scale, or else what is possible wouldn’t require
any explosives.” She paused to touch her baby tenderly. “Plus, Paul would be working with the environment, not exploiting it.”

Katrina was one of those women who seemed like she could do everything. Today she had boiled down some thimbleberries she’d harvested—a variety that apparently tended to be left after the animals had eaten everything else—and made jam. She was spreading the mixture on the sandwiches now, reaching underneath her sling every now and then to make sure her baby was latched on.

A noise came from behind the sling; it almost sounded like
mama
. Abby recalled Cody’s earliest days with an inner smile. How lucky Katrina was to have the first word, maybe even the first smile, all of that still ahead of her.

Platter filled, Terry lofted it and brought it over to the table. There was a dilapidated farmhouse on this piece of land, structurally sound but in need of repair, and several salvaged pieces had been moved to the barn. Paul and Kurt had sanded down a door for a table and laid it over two barrels. Another barrel was being turned into a rainwater catchment system. For now they were purifying water from the creek, but the iodine tablets made it taste terrible.

Katrina reached down absently and plugged the baby’s mouth again. She had made burdock tea and she poured some now for Abby and Terry, as nimbly as if she didn’t have ten extra pounds stuck to her chest.

“Maybe there’s a thunderstorm building,” Katrina suggested, handing around the mugs.

Abby glanced toward the barn door, which had been left partway open. “Looks pretty nice out.”

“It’s always nice here,” Terry said. “Until it’s not.”

“That’s true,” Katrina said. “Which reminds me. How are they doing with the woodstove?” She gestured to the place in the barn where it was supposed to be installed. Heating this vast space—used for tasks ranging from food preparation to furniture assembly—was priority number one. After that, the decrepit farmhouse would be tackled. “I was freezing this morning, and so was Carthage.” She reached down and touched the baby.

“It’ll warm up again before real cold sets in,” Terry said decisively.
“They have a little time. Power is more important. They’ll need it for tools before any building can begin.”

Abby sipped her tea. “We should probably call the children in. They must be starving.”

“I’ll do it,” Terry said. “I have to get Dorothy’s bottle ready anyway.”

“Isn’t her name Dorothea?” Abby asked.

Terry glanced at her. “I always shrink at difficult names for kids. Gives them such a trip in life. No offense, Katrina.”

Katrina sat back easily against the rough barn boards. She stroked the lump under the sling. “None taken. Carthage is a family name. And it lets us escape the whole gender imposition thing.”