Ruin Falls (34 page)

Terry headed for a cooler that was stored in a root cellar on the other side of the barn. “Anyway, Dorothy seems a better choice to me. Let’s just call her that.”

Katrina rose, and as she did the baby on her chest slid out of the sling. Abby let out a yelp, trying to dive for it, until the sight before her resolved.

The baby wasn’t falling out of the sling; he—or it could’ve been a
she
with that gossamer froth of hair—was climbing out. Extricating him- or herself from the wrap of cloth before standing up on the floor. This wasn’t any baby, or even a toddler; instead, it was a good-sized preschooler.

Katrina hoisted the child into her arms as she sent Abby a calm, tolerant look. “Children are forced into independence so early in our culture.” She glanced down tenderly. Now that it wasn’t curled beneath the sling like a larva, the child actually overlapped a large portion of Katrina’s body. “These years we’ve had to breastfeed have been so special, especially once Carthage could really communicate.”

Abby was trying to come up with a reply when the door to the barn slid back with a solid
thud
and sunlight filled the new space, only to be blocked by a body.

Kurt had come back. He looked a mess, soaked and muddy.

“The children should be fed now and put to bed in here,” he said.

Kurt gestured to a neat row of sleeping bags, rolled like slugs on the far side of the barn. They had spent several hours cleaning the
bedrooms and living room of the farmhouse, making them habitable for sleeping. But there seemed to be an unspoken desire to stay together, sharing their warmth in one communal sleeping space in the barn. Blankets were laid out on the floor, touching one another in a connected mesh. The children also enjoyed camping out under the stars.

As if reading her thoughts, Kurt went on in his mild tone. “No campouts tonight. In fact, don’t let the children out for any reason. No one can be on the grounds. Is that understood?”

Abby watched Terry and Katrina nod in unison.

“Paul is finishing up by the pond,” Kurt went on. “Don’t wait for him.”

Carthage started circling in Kurt’s direction, but something made him suddenly swerve off course. Not
him
. Carthage had to be a she. She began to whimper, clambering up Katrina’s body like a ladder.

Kurt was studying them. “You keep that child close to you, don’t you?”

Katrina inclined her head in a shy nod. The brusque, confident woman was gone. She looked younger, smaller even, eager to please.

“Give it an identity of its own,” Kurt said. “And if you ever put it in that contraption again, I will cut it off your body, along with your breast. Is that also understood?”

Katrina’s face went a sickly white.

“Good,” Kurt said. “I’ll send the children in now. And ladies …?”

They all looked up at once.

“This door will be locked from the outside.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

L
iz bolted for the stairs with the bag, her mother-in-law’s voice a distant, seashell rush.

“It doesn’t have a key,” Mary said. “Perhaps we can pick the lock—”

“I’ve got it,” Liz shouted over her shoulder.

She snatched up the key from a little dish on her bedside table. A place for special things, mementoes. The key had felt like a last tangible link to Paul, and thus to her children, though she’d lost hope of ever using it.

Liz inserted the key into the slit in the box, gave a twist, and lifted the lid.

Crushed inside, barely able to fit, was a pillow.

Liz lifted it out, not with an air of wonder or closure—
Ah, so that was it all along
—but instead cloaked by pure bafflement. Only what had she expected? A treasure map to Paul and the Shoemaker’s lair with an
X
marking the spot? Maybe not that, but bedclothes certainly would’ve been even lower on the list.

The pillow was thin and flat, not only from being crammed into a box, but also because it was made of cheap foam with little loft. The pillowcase was polyester in an ugly calamine pink.

Liz suddenly released the fabric as if it were burning.

She began to back away, staring at the pillow as if it had the potential to harm her.

As if it had the potential to kill.

She walked to the bedroom door on numb feet, the vile artifact held out in front of her. In the hall, she met the sloped form of her mother-in-law. Liz came to a sudden stop.

On Mary’s face was the expression of understanding that had been missing from her own.

Liz thrust out the pillow, and her mother-in-law reared back as if a pistol had been shoved into her face.

Or a different sort of murder weapon.

Marjorie had told Liz how it had happened, that Michael Brady had been smothered to death in the hospital the night before he was supposed to be moved to rehab. He was going to live out the rest of his days ensnared by tubes and machines.

This was the pillow Coach Allgood had used to put Michael out of his misery.

The cloth sheath was hospital pink, and now that Liz had put the pieces together, it was clear that this pillow had never graced someone’s bedroom, or any place a person would sleep voluntarily. It was another macabre piece of Paul’s memorial, a form of tribute that couldn’t be left outside in the elements.

“How did you get this lockbox?” Liz asked. “Did you know what was inside?”

Mary fought to straighten. “Paul gave the box to me all those years ago. He asked me to hold on to it for him.” A pause. “But no. I never tried to open it.” A longer break before she spoke again. “I suppose Paul knew that I wouldn’t.”

“Why did Paul have the pillow Allgood used to kill Michael Brady?”

Mary’s gaze snagged hers. “Coach Allgood didn’t use that pillow.”

The floor seemed to pitch and slant beneath Liz’s feet, tilting like the deck on a ship. “He didn’t?”

Mary shook her head, a slow, jerky back and forth.

“What did he use, then?” Liz asked. “And why did Paul have this?”

It took a moment for Liz to recognize the look on Mary’s face. It was the expression someone wore just before they were about to be sick. “Paul had that pillow,” Mary said, pausing as if to swallow something back, “because Mr. Allgood didn’t kill poor Michael.”

Rocking underfoot again.

Liz looked at Mary, though she suddenly sensed that she might not want to.

“Paul did,” she said.

Mary’s whole body sagged as if the disclosure had scooped her out inside. She steadied herself against the door frame. “I’m sorry,” she said in her whispery, spider-thread voice. “I shouldn’t have—I never should have told you that.” Mary pressed a hand to her lips, too late to hold any words in. “If I had known what was in the lockbox, I wouldn’t have come.”

She turned and began making her way downstairs.

Liz was trying to take in the loss of the level ground she had only just staked out when she realized that Mary’s rare emergence was about to come to an end. Her mother-in-law would scuttle back into her home and never be seen again. Liz began running, following Mary’s route.

Mary got to the driveway just as Liz reached the front hall.

Through the window Liz saw her mother-in-law place one foot on the ridged step of the pickup truck before summoning the strength to hoist herself inside.

Liz yanked the door open.

Mary sat down in the truck, staring out into the night without seeming to see anything. The engine started with a choke.

“Mary!” Liz cried. “Wait!”

Tires ground up the gravel as her mother-in-law began to navigate the curving drive in reverse. Liz took the porch steps as one, then raced after the truck. She reached the hood and thumped on it. Mary braked, startled. She rolled down the window.

Liz looked into the cab of the truck.

“Elizabeth,” Mary said quietly. “No more, please. That secret
wasn’t mine to reveal.” She clamped both hands around the steering wheel. “And I can’t see that it helps you anyway. I should’ve checked the box myself before coming.”

Liz thrust her hand into the truck. She wanted to stop Mary from sealing herself up inside. Or maybe she just wanted to make contact.

The truck’s motor died. Liz couldn’t tell whether Mary had turned it off, or whether the engine had simply given up. Either way, her mother-in-law started to speak in a river rush.

“Coach Allgood arrived at the hospital right after Paul did it,” Mary said. “Folks were keeping a round-the-clock vigil, and the coach’s shift followed Paul’s.”

Liz stared up at the moonless sky, hoping the dark would mask her tears.

“Mr. Allgood stepped in,” Mary continued, her own cheeks glistening. “What a good man. He sent Paul away like he’d never been there at all. I suspect he must’ve felt he was responsible.”

“Yes,” Liz whispered. “He did.”

A current of air moved across the night.

“Matthew said that the coach wasn’t, though,” Mary said, a hiss to her whisper. “He told Paul that he should be held accountable for his actions, both accidental and deliberate. But Mr. Allgood believed that Paul was going to accomplish great things, and that his freedom needed to be preserved.”

Liz swiped angrily at her eyes. Had Matthew been a father whom Paul counted on for counsel, perhaps Paul would’ve heeded his advice to confess. The coach wouldn’t have had to give up his life for a crime he didn’t commit, and Paul wouldn’t have gotten away with murder, which ensured that he’d never truly be free again.

Mary shifted on the plank of seat, and when she spoke there was a deep thrum to her voice. “I vowed to protect the coach’s sacrifice. No one would ever learn the truth. Until tonight, neither Matthew nor I have ever mentioned the accident, or what followed.”

It was like watching a rind peel away, revealing the full flesh and color of the fruit beneath. Suddenly Liz heard Mary telling Matthew to let Liz into the farmhouse, informing him that Liz would have to spend the night. It was Mary who had accepted the invitation to their
wedding, and Mary who structured the visits, rare as they were, with Ally and Reid.

Mary who had driven here tonight.

Whose hunched back hid iron.

What had Mary done when her son finally made his way back home?

“Paul came back,” Liz said, the words breathy in the dark. “To the farmhouse. He wanted the lockbox.”

There was no statute of limitations on murder. Liz could imagine why Paul had been unable to part with, rid himself of, or destroy this last link to the tragedy that had befallen his best friend. But it was a crucial piece of evidence, and with the coach just released from prison, Paul must’ve been afraid to leave it guarded by only his mother and his merciless father, while he disappeared with the children.

Mary studied her. “He came back. But not for the lockbox. And he didn’t get into the house. Matthew wouldn’t let him inside.”

Liz placed her hand on the ledge beneath the driver’s side window. “What happened?”

Mary’s lips compressed. “Matthew would’ve broken Paul’s fingers if I hadn’t held him back. They scuffled by the entry.” She looked away momentarily. “Fought really. At one point, Paul threw a punch. Or maybe he was just trying to put his hand out, to use his fist as a wedge so Matthew couldn’t close the door. That was the damage you noticed.”

Tiny bits of rubber rimming flaked off beneath Liz’s fingers.

“I stepped in between and led everyone up to the bunker. I took them some sandwiches later,” Mary added.

While Liz had been delirious with fear, imagining her children kidnapped, or worse.

“Even that horrid man,” Mary said. “I don’t care how handsome he is, or that the children hung on his every word. He’s rotten to the core, and more the worse for my son that he couldn’t see it.”

The Shoemaker. Liz felt a cold bath of air all around her.

Mary twisted the ignition key, and the truck started to rattle.

“So why did Paul go to the farm?” Liz asked, her voice rising. “If it
wasn’t for the lockbox, did he want something else? Something he needs out there, wherever he is?”

Mary took one last look through the lowered window. “Oh, Elizabeth, how I hope you get the chance to give Paul what Matthew wouldn’t.”

Liz felt her brows draw down.

“And I hope you get the chance to hold your beautiful children again.”

The pressure in Liz’s face was crushing.

Mary reached out and laid her hand on Liz’s cheek. The touch was gentle, but Liz felt a strength she hadn’t noticed before in Mary’s fingers.

Her mother-in-law shifted into Drive and the truck lurched forward. Mary’s final words carried through the night. “Paul came back to the farm that night to ask his father for forgiveness.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

L
iz couldn’t believe the moon was still absent, concealed by shredded clouds, not even stars visible to offer pinpricks of light.

She could see so much better now.

Matthew’s note. Allgood’s thrumming rage. Even Ally’s statement about Grandpa getting mad, which in retrospect hinted at Mary’s ability to drive things.

Motivations appeared as if they’d been written in ink.

Her husband had always displayed a tendency to play God, believing he could change the whole world. Paul had caused a fate worse than death for his best friend. And in response, he acted to make fate behave differently, using his own hands to free Michael Brady from the prison of his body.

Liz walked back inside, weighty with exhaustion, and wondering what to do with her newfound knowledge. She trudged upstairs and undressed. The distance across the bedroom felt like it encompassed hectares of space. Liz less lay down than fell on the bed, emitting a relieved breath as the mattress rose to greet her.

It was funny. Just before in the driveway, Liz had been noting her newly acquired ability to see, an antenna, hair-fine and acute. But maybe she wasn’t as alert as all that. Either the distraction of the night’s events, or the profundity of the dark outside, had kept her from realizing until now that she wasn’t alone in the room.