The Steep and Thorny Way(52)

“Go far away from Elston, darling.” He put his hat back on his head. “Get yourself educated. Come back with weapons of justice and truth that will kill off the ignorance and fear. Help the innocent live in peace.” He shook his head with a look of warning in his eyes. “But don’t you dare murder anyone. Don’t become like one of them.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You understand me?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Don’t forget me, Hanalee.”

“I won’t.” I pressed my hot hands against my cheeks. “Of course I won’t.”

“But don’t kill for me, either.”

I nodded again. “All right.”

“Now go home. It’s not safe out here. Stop coming out to find me all by yourself.”

“Haven’t you been trying to find me? Isn’t that why you’ve been wandering this road?”

“I’ve been trying to . . .” He swallowed and cast his eyes toward the stretch of highway behind me, while the fog spilled over his shoulders. “To make it back home. To protect your home from those boys.”

“Which boys?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said, and the fog closed around him like a fist.

All I saw were his legs and his shoes.

“Daddy?”

“There’s nothing worse,” he said from within the haze, “than luring boys who aren’t yet even men into a life of hatred.”

The mist snaked around his legs and swallowed him up entirely, robbing me of my view of him. I stood alone on the road, in the devil’s circle, racking my brain to remember if Laurence had been sitting in the Paulissens’ pew that Christmas Eve that Daddy died. As hard as I tried, as much as I strained to remember Fleur seated beside both her mother and her brother, I couldn’t help but think Laurence wasn’t there.

“Was Laurence at the Dry Dock?” I asked into the darkness. “Was he one of the boys?”

“Maybe,” I heard my father say in a voice grown distant and hushed. “They covered their faces in those ungodly hoods. I’m sorry. I should have been stronger.”





CHAPTER 19





NEVER DOUBT I LOVE


I TORE THROUGH THE WOODS TO the Paulissens’ shed, intent on telling Joe what I’d gleaned from my encounter. I’d forgotten all about the body in the river and Mrs. Adder howling with grief against her husband’s side. I’d even forgotten that Joe had had to leave the shack.

I threw open the door, and a cold streak of remembrance shot through my veins. The little building sat in darkness. A small strip of moonlight showed me the cot, empty and bare, parked against the right wall. The rectangular card house still stood on the floor by the foot of the bed, but nothing else—no books nor blankets nor carpetbags—indicated signs of a recent habitation.

“Oh, Joe.” I covered my face with my hands. “I forgot. Oh, God.”

I turned and whisked myself back over the creek and through the trees and hedges to my family’s property. The white sliver of a moon ducked behind treetops and the traveling fog, which rolled across the land, blanketing the world in a mist that chilled and smothered. To find my way, I relied on my memories of the pathways, as well as the strange golden luminescence of the woods that Mildred’s potion always offered. Gray-green moss dangled like fringe-covered sleeves from the arms of the branches overhead.

I pushed down my fears and pressed onward.

On the easternmost edge of our land stood the weather-beaten stable I’d mentioned to Joe. I sprinted toward its dark silhouette, my feet clapping across the ground and hope surging through my blood. The roof sat crooked; the boards of the walls had warped from summer suns and nine long months of rain each year. Yet the structure remained upright, intact enough to hide Joe.

I grabbed the handle and hoisted open the door with a whine of rusted hinges. The scent of horse manure hit my nose, despite the animals’ long absence. Mama had sold off our mare and stallion the summer before, to make ends meet, before Uncle Clyde proposed to her last fall.

“Joe?” I asked into the dark void in front of me.

Something moved from within—a rustle in the hay.

I jumped back and asked, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me.”

Joe’s voice.

“Holy hell!” I grabbed my throat. “Are—oh, God. Oh, Christ.” I sank to my knees in the all-consuming blackness. “You’re not a ghost now, too, are you?”

Joe struck a match and set his kerosene lantern aglow in a far corner, brightening his face and a blue button-down shirt.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“They found a body—one that looked like you—up by the river, by St. Johns.”

“Well”—he shook out the match—“it’s not me.”

“You’re not a ghost?”

“If I were, don’t you think I’d find a better place to haunt than a rickety old stable that reeks of horse shit?”

I shoved the door closed and stumbled toward him across hay. A floorboard buckled under my weight, tripping me, and I had to hold my arms out to my sides to keep from falling.

Joe pushed himself off the ground. “Are you all right?”