The Steep and Thorny Way(40)

I sank my head into my hands and swallowed down a bitter taste. The weight and shape of a missing person impressed itself upon the room. Instead of my mother, I wished Fleur sat beside me. Or Joe. Or my father. All the wrong people were gathered around me.

“Are you all right, Hanalee?” wheezed the sheriff.

“I’m not feeling well right now. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

No one responded at first, so I stared through my fingers at my black-trimmed Keds. Mud streaked the white canvas. Leaves in the shape of dead moths caked the sides.

“Dr. Koning told me,” said the sheriff, “he worries that you and Joe have gotten the wrong idea about him. He fears Joe might want to hurt him.”

“Does he want to hurt me, Hanalee?” asked Uncle Clyde. “Is Joe armed?”

My head remained lowered, and I lied through clenched teeth. “Joe is on his way to Washington. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. Just let him go—please. Leave him alone.”

“What do you think we should do about her?” asked Mama. “I can’t determine if she’s telling the truth.”

“Bring her to the Fourth of July picnic this afternoon,” said the sheriff. “Let’s see if Joe decides to show up.”

Mama squeezed my right leg. “I don’t want her running off again.”

“She won’t run off,” said Uncle Clyde. “Will you, Hanalee?”

I bit down on my bottom lip until all I could feel was the spiked pressure of teeth stabbing my flesh.

“Hanalee?” asked my stepfather again.

I lifted my face to my right and met Uncle Clyde’s bespectacled eyes for the first time since he’d chased me out to the woods.

My stepfather held his jaw and his shoulders stiff. “It’s sweet of you to continue to mourn your father, but it’s time to put his death in the past.”

The reverend piped up: “That’s wise advice, Hanalee. His death was simply a tragic accident. Nothing more. Allow your father to rest in peace.”

I released my lip from my teeth and felt my throat thicken, the muscles in my back tighten. “Well, that’s precisely the problem.” I swallowed. “My father isn’t resting in peace.”





CHAPTER 14





CAST THY NIGHTED COLOR OFF


WHEN A PERSON SPEAKS OF HER father’s ghost, I discovered that other people in the room tend to agree that she might, indeed, require an end to her interrogation. Sheriff Rink released me from the questioning, and Mama allowed me to disappear upstairs to my room with a glass of water and a slice of raspberry strudel, although she refused to look at me when she handed me my food and my glass, and her fingers quivered.

“We’ll talk more later” was all that she said.

As I made my way upstairs, the gathering of adults in the living room ceased talking, but once I closed my bedroom door, their voices rose and fell with incoherent rumblings down below the soles of my feet. I sat on my bed and devoured the strudel, and I downed the water so quickly, I choked. Then I felt guilty. I wondered if Joe had anything to eat inside that picnic basket that I’d lugged around the woods. I also fretted over the idea of Fleur sitting at her kitchen table with her mother and brother, picking at her breakfast with her fork, not knowing whether I’d been found.

The discussions rumbled on downstairs. I set the dish and the cup down on the floor and heard the crinkling of the Klan pamphlet tucked inside my pocket. I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper and read the penciled notes again.


Konklave, July 2, 1923. New members needed. White, Protestant boys aged twelve to eighteen.

Initiation planned. Necktie party?

The problem of Joe Adder. Moral degenerate.

Pancake breakfast set for Saturday at the Dry Dock. Money raised will repair potholes on Main Street.

A headache erupted between my eyes. I massaged the bridge of my nose and chewed upon the idea of the Junior Order of Klansmen meeting only two days earlier, right after Joe showed up back in Elston. Young local Klan members, aged twelve to eighteen, had discussed the “problem” of Joe’s presence the same night I had wandered down the unlit highway with Necromancer’s Nectar burning through my veins. The car that had passed me after I dove onto my belly may have very well contained Klan members—young men and their adult supervisors, driving home from talks of initiations and pancake breakfasts and the reverend’s wayward son.

My eyes strayed down to the last lines of the notes:


Pancake breakfast set for Saturday at the Dry Dock. Money raised will repair potholes on Main Street.

The nape of my neck tingled. Something didn’t feel right about those lines, even though the sentences appeared to be the most benevolent of them all. I reread the sentences, my heart rate doubling, and then I saw it—the word that unsettled me.


Dock.

I shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t make sense.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples and tried to think back to Joe’s account of my father’s last words to him. My mind went blank, but I knew the word doc—or Dock—was involved. I dropped to my knees on the floor, slid the basket of toys out from beneath my bed, and yanked out the newsprint containing my note.

I put full blame on the doc.

Or, perhaps I should have written . . .