Jane Was Here (30 page)

She wasn’t really there. It must be Shaarinen filling his head, messing with his courage.

But Shaarinen is gone. They chased him off.

Gita could explain what happened at the pond. She always fits the pieces together.

“Over here!” Brett beckons with the machete.

Pushing through the trees, they arrive at a clearing. In the center is a primitive lean-to shack made of old splintered planks.

Brett approaches the latched door, putting his finger to his lips. Knocking lightly, he calls, “Anybody home?” He presses his ear to the wood. Getting no response, he lifts the door latch, flashing a conspiratorial grin. “Let’s check it out.”

Collin can’t see much of interest inside the shack. Just a bench and some camp stuff: utensils, a folding stove, a large skillet, a box of glass jars, measuring cups and spoons, coffee filters, and plastic gallon jugs of water.

Propping up the hinged flip board to let in some air, Brett starts poking around under the bench. Finding a metal footlocker, he tries the catch; it’s locked.

Collin moans impatiently, “I gotta pee.”

“Go outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Only too happy to comply, Collin goes behind the shack. Pointing his stream at the base of an oak tree, he lifts his eyes to the leaves overhead.

He spots a sliver of pink showing through the rich greenery. Pulling up his shorts, he ducks under the oak’s canopy, pushing aside branches for a better view. Something is squashed into a crook of the tree, at arm’s length. As he rises on tiptoes, reaching toward it, his fingertips touch nylon fabric. With a little jump, he catches hold of the object, tugging; it falls into his hands.

Jane’s duffel.

He listens for his dad thumping around inside the cabin, then opens the zipper on the duffel, finding her toiletry kit and balled-up purple anorak inside. His knees tremble; an ecstasy he has never felt seizes him: rapture mixed with rage.

All along his father has been looking for
Jane
. He is still possessed by the demon. Even though she’s been gone from their house for almost a week, Brett’s concern is all for her, with none left for Collin.

But now, with Jane’s duffel in his hand, the power of knowledge is Collin’s, with none left for his dad. Because Collin will keep it a secret. He stuffs the bag back in its hiding place.

When Brett emerges from the shack, Collin is squatting on his heels, pretending to examine a bug. His dad looks deflated. “Not much here. Guess we should keep following the wall.”

As they set off downhill, Brett points out the flattened grasses alongside the stone wall, trodden by someone making numerous trips to the shack: “Probably a hunter. That shack was a hunting blind. You can tell by the flip board. That’s how the hunter makes an opening so he can see game approaching and stick his rifle out to shoot it.”

I am the hunter. The reincarnation of Yenu Krishna, the Tawny
One destined to track down and defeat Shaarinen. You’ll never find Jane. Not until we destroy her. Can’t wait to tell Gita.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
WO

J
ane scrapes dirt from the rock with the spade, then slips her fingers underneath, exerting all her strength to dislodge the big stone. Her nails are broken to the quick from digging a little further down every day. By now the hole is four feet deep, the rim almost to her shoulders as she stands in it to work. Over in the shade sits the leather satchel she unearthed last week. Inside she found, wrapped in a silk square, Jane Pettigrew’s crumbling letters. She has read and reread the letters, each time finishing in tears and clamorous questions.
Did Lysander come for me that day? Did we run away together? Why did I bury my bag? What happened to me? Why can’t I remember?
She digs because she does not know what else to do. Perhaps she will find something else that might provide answers, something that was buried further down, beneath the satchel. She climbs out to drink from the water jug. Her empty stomach is growing fretful. When the sun is low, she will take the battery lantern from the shack and climb down Rowell Hill to look for food, searching the outskirts of town for an unoccupied house with an empty driveway and unlocked door.

As she continues digging, the shovel clanks against something, meeting resistance. When she clears the soil away, she finds yet another rock. Wearily she scours more dirt off it, then realizes: this stone is bigger than any of the others. To uncover its edges she will have to widen the hole. Even if she is able to do so, how will she lift it by herself?

Despondent, she pulls herself up from the hole, lying on her back in the grass. A pine tree looms sympathetically over her, brushing her face with cool shadows.

Eden, we called this place. Truly it is heaven.

She closes her eyes; feels the vague weight of the gold brooch over her breast where she pins it to her shirt every morning before leaving the shack, wary of leaving it in her duffel in the tree.
Ellis gave it to me
…

Light and shadow play on the carmine underside of her eyelids. As she melts into drowsiness, a shivery wave ripples from her toes to her head.

She feels lifted infinitesimally from her body and then gently settled back again, somehow rearranged.

The ground throbs under her head: a sinister drumming sound reaches her ears.

A horse’s galloping hooves, fading away.

Then a fiery pain explodes in her abdomen. Her eyes fly open. She sits up, momentarily blinded by dizziness, hand moving to her belly.

When she looks down, she is wearing a long white skirt, its linen fabric wrinkled, crushed, and the front drenched with fresh blood. Is it hers or someone else’s? Her chemise is torn away from her bosom.

The pain in her abdomen intensifies, burning.
Help— oh, help!

Struggling to her knees, she looks about desperately.

She is in a maze of low scrub trees, her blue-ribboned straw bonnet lying nearby in the dirt. Her satchel is flung onto a patch of grass, striped by the amber rays of a descending sun.

Must move. Walk to safety, before nightfall. Shan’t think about the blood. God has spared me—I am alive. And help is near—Lysander waits—in Eden—!

She reaches for her satchel and bonnet, stumbles to her feet. Each step brings agony; yet she wills herself forward.

She must find her way back to the wall.

The distant bleating of sheep guides her to a breach in the trees, where she sees the familiar rock fence bounding Farmer Quirk’s acres of pasture. Summoning the last of her strength, Jane follows it north, too intent to acknowledge her pain or weep for her terrifying condition.

A horse stands tethered inside the glade ahead.

He is there.

Only a few more steps, and she is pushing the branches aside, staggering into the clearing.

To her shock, it is empty, except for the plastic water jug by the stump where she left it. The shovel leaning in the hole. Her pants covered with dirt from her labors.

The bloody skirt, the pain that cleaved her—gone. His horse gone. A cry in her heart:
Lysander! Where are you?

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

P
earl stands anxiously in the corner of the curtained hospital cubicle while a resident examines her mother. He pokes the mole on her cheek with his plastic-gloved finger. When he brings it away, there’s a smear of blood on the tip.

“When did it start bleeding?”

“This morning.”

Marly hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, arguing that they couldn’t afford the time off from work to drive all the way to Quikabukket.

Pearl can’t very well tell Marly that she quit her job weeks ago.

Already she has made more money off Seth Poonchwalla than she could have earned in six months at Valyou Mart. Seth brings her pleasure, but she doesn’t love him—maybe because the whole thing started off as a money transaction, or because he’s going off to college at MIT in a few weeks. Whatever the reason, love is not in the equation. But she is happy. All her life Pearl has personified her mother’s folly, her error in judgment. Now she is somebody’s idea of a sex goddess.

She still keeps up the pretense of working, allowing Marly to drop her off at the Graynier Outlet Center every morning. She spends the day at the food court, or in the multiplex, or shopping for clothes for her going-away wardrobe. Soon Pearl will be so gone from this nasty bunghole town.

The only thing that might keep her in Graynier is her mother’s alarming decline. Plagued by nightmares, Marly stays up until dawn. The woman who used to be all sun and bubbles, who never left the house without a pound of makeup on, is now surly and secretive, and never even looks in a mirror, as if afraid of what she’ll see. Pearl was the one who noticed the black blotch growing on her mother’s cheek. Then this morning it started to leak blood.

The resident sends them upstairs to the chief of dermatology, a woman with minty breath and binoculars on her eyeglasses. She measures the mole, calling it “remarkable,” takes several photos, then dictates rapidly into a cell phone.

She turns to her patient. “In all probability this is a melanoma. It must be excised at once. A biopsy will determine if it has metastasized.”

Then she schedules Marly’s surgery for the following morning.

HER EMPLOYER AT
the Graynier B & B is not happy to get Marly’s call. “You want another entire day off to have a mole removed?”

“It’s an outpatient procedure. I’ll be back at work in the morning.”

Mrs. McBee snorts. “What’s next, liposuction?”

“I might have cancer.”

In the silence that follows, Marly can almost hear the gears clicking in the old woman’s head: runaway hospital bills…rising employer insurance premiums…

“Don’t bother to come back.”

“You’re—you’re firing me?”

“I’m downsizing.”

On the drive home Pearl rages, “The old bitch. I hope she clocks out for good.”

Sending her mother to bed, Pearl brings her a bowl of chips and a cold beer on a tray. “Want your vibrator, too?”

Though Marly knows Pearl is just trying to make her laugh, nothing can stem the tide of anguish flooding her body.

Things could be worse.

And now they are.

“If they cut this thing out, I’m going to look like a monster.”

“Mom, you have to do it.”

Marly turns her face to the pillow. “I’m so ashamed.”

“For what?”

“Pearl…” She brings her eyes back to her daughter. “Honey, I’m a whore.”

“So?” Pearl shifts nervously, reaching for her mother’s untouched beer. “Like, what’s your point?”

“I am a bad person.”

“Mom!”

“Why else would God be punishing me?”

Pearl rolls her eyes. “Shut up with that religious crap.”

“I’ve tried to bear up my whole life the best I could. But He has it in for me.” Marly starts to cry. “It must be for something bad I did.”

“You mean, like having
me
?” Rising from the mattress, Pearl snatches back the tray. “God’s a crock. Your life sucks, that’s all.” She stomps out of the room.

There must be someone else Marly can talk to.

Reverend Crowley would be unsympathetic.

Her lovers? Face it, there’s no love there.

What about Hoyt?

She has been thinking a lot about Hoyt lately. Every time she puts her hand in the drawer for a pair of undies, her fingers encounter the cool metal of his gun. And every day she waits for the mail to bring the results of the DNA test she sent for, using Hoyt’s pubic hair and a hair from Pearl’s comb.

Once she proves Hoyt is Pearl’s father, he’ll have a change of heart. He’ll beg her forgiveness, embrace his daughter, take his place as the head of the family, get his act together to support them, have the front of her car repaired. No more toting her cross alone. This is the one hope that hasn’t died with Marly’s former optimism.

Like the sermon used to go:
“For the Lord is a God of Justice.”
So her luck is way overdue to turn around. It’s only fair.

FIGHTING THE EFFECTS
of four days without sleep, Hoyt has been lying in wait for the intruder’s return when, at 6 p.m., the electricity goes off in his house.