Part 16 (1/2)

And so, when I left the Sentinel a few minutes later, I intended to go directly home. Then, quite unexpectedly, a powerful urge overtook me, a need, strange as it seemed, to be near Dora, feel her presence physically, as if, in some demented way, I wanted to a.s.sure myself that she was real. And so I turned, almost without willing it, like a figure on a music box, and headed toward her cottage.

When I reached it, I could see a yellow light burning in Dora's bedroom window. I saw nothing else until she suddenly glided past the window, her body draped in a dark red robe. From my place among the trees, I saw her bend forward to blow out the candle on the table beside her chair. At that instant, the robe slipped from her shoulders, and I glimpsed her back, the deep scars that gouged it. In the silence, I heard her voice, Because it's never happened to you. Words that should have come to me in warning, but formed a siren song instead.

Chapter Sixteen.

A song that was still echoing in my mind six months later when I pulled up to my father's house, the old man a spectral figure now, lost in grief and intoxication.

He sat in the parlor, the same closed room where we'd placed my brother's coffin, the smell of funeral flowers still faintly in the air, along with the scent of my father's whiskey. The drapes had been drawn since Billy's death. It seemed to me that the shadows in which he sat hour after hour had by then come to possess my father, that he'd chosen to be entombed within them, as dead as his murdered son.

”Any luck, Cal?” he asked wearily.

”Not much.”

”Who'd you talk to?”

I gave him the names of the people I'd spoken with since beginning my search for Dora.

”Preston Forbes?” my father asked. ”He wouldn't be any help.”

”No one was.”

He took a sip of whiskey. ”The G.o.ds use us for their sport, Cal.”

He seemed to fear that any less mythical speculation might overwhelm him, compel him toward some desolate land where even the cla.s.sical and biblical references that had anch.o.r.ed him for so long would prove no more than windblown straw.

And so he preferred to focus on the small details of Billy's death, revisiting them continually.

”There must have been a lot of blood,” he said.

”Yes.”

”Stabbed in the heart. That would explain so much blood.”

Billy had actually been stabbed in the chest, the blade pa.s.sing smoothly between two ribs, then into the soft tissue of his left lung. He'd pulled the knife out himself, then tossed it across the petal-strewn floor.

”Terrible,” my father muttered.

I saw my brother on his back, eyes open, glaring, a hand lifting toward me, his blood gathered beneath him, so that he seemed to float on a thick red stream.

”Terrible,” my father repeated. He tightened his fingers around the gla.s.s. ”His eyes were open,” he said as he brought the gla.s.s to his lips.

”Yes, they were.”

He lowered his head briefly, then lifted it. ”William was high-strung.”

At Billy's funeral he'd stood stoically in his black suit, his eyes fixed on the granite tombstone as if it were the accuracy of the dates carved upon it that really mattered, the cold precision with which they recorded the all-too-brief circuit of my brother's life.

”Like his mother.” He pondered this, then added, ”Emotional. Dora brought his emotions to a head. He was so taken with her.”

”He didn't know her.”

His eyes cut toward me, struck by the firmness of my last remark. ”Did you know her, Cal?”

In an instant, she was before me, staring at me blazingly, as she had on that last night, I can't, Cal. I can't.

”No one knew her, Dad.”

He studied me briefly, his eyes very still. Then he said, ”T.R. came by.”

”I thought he might.”

”He said he'd had a word with you this afternoon. He had some questions for you, he said. He didn't like the answers you gave him.”

”They'll have to do.”

My father leaned forward unsteadily. ”He's worried about you, Cal. About what you're doing. Tracking her down. I'm worried too. The way you look. I don't want to lose another son.”

”I'm going after her,” I said.

”How can you do that, Cal?” He didn't seem surprised, only doubtful of my success. ”You have nothing to go on. No way to find her.”

”I'll go to New York first,” I told him. ”To where she lived before she came here.”

”And do what?”

”Find something maybe. A direction.”

”What if you don't find one?”

”Then I'll head west.”

”West,” my father repeated softly. ”Because of that book you found.”

”It's the only lead I have.”

To my relief, my father asked nothing more about my plans. Instead, it was a favor he wanted.

”If you find her, Cal, don't hurt her. William wouldn't have wanted you to hurt her.” He took another sip from the tumbler, letting the whiskey's warmth draw him toward oblivion. ”He loved her. Remember that. He loved her with all his heart. He'd expect you to do the right thing.”

In my mind, I saw my brother as he'd faced me at the final moment, heard his one-word question: Cal?

My father lowered his head, his mind churning briefly before it threw up a reference. ”She was like Mephistopheles,” he said when he looked up again. ”Not always in h.e.l.l, but always of it. A born deceiver. A thief. A liar.” His eyes bore into me. ”You could smell brimstone in her hair.”