Part 34 (2/2)

June 2000 Salem Falls, New Hamps.h.i.+re Delilah threw up after the lunch crush ended and before the supper crowd arrived. She sat at the small card table in the kitchen, a Handi Wipes towelette wet down and plastered against her forehead. ”She's burning up, Roy,” said Darla.

”I'm fine. I just can't stand cooking clam chowder is all.”

Roy folded his arms across his chest. ”You've been making meatloaf.”

Delilah's runny red eyes focused on Roy, and she managed a tiny smile. ”Guess I'm sick, boss,” she said softly.

He squatted down so that he was at eye level. ”Now I'm worried. The Dee I know would never in a million years admit to it.”

Delilah rested her heavy head on her hands. ”Maybe in another million years, I'll feel good enough to argue that point.”

”One of those summer viruses,” Darla said. Looking at Roy, she added, ”I just hope she didn't give it to everyone who ate here this morning.”

Roy eyed her big frame uneasily. ”I could carry her up to my place ...”

”No, her son's coming to take her home. I called him twenty minutes ago.” Darla blinked at him. ”So what are we gonna do?”

”Roy's gonna take over as my replacement, aren't you, Roy?” Delilah said. ”On account of otherwise, this diner's going to close ... and that would kill Addie.”

”I can't do that,” he whispered. ”You know why.”

Delilah shrugged. ”Sometimes we don't have a choice about what life throws us. And right now, it's throwing you a spatula.”

At that moment, Delilah's son came into the kitchen. She let herself be lifted and supported by him, a lumberyard supervisor who was every inch as tall and forbidding as his mother. ”You all try to get along without me,” she said, and left.

Roy glanced at the flat black face of the grill, the steam rising like a song. He wouldn't be cooking, really. He'd just be finis.h.i.+ng up what Delilah had started.

He inched toward the line where food was prepared. He could feel the ridges on the chopping block where knives had edged out their history the better part of the past twenty years. And he waited for his heart to stop, just like Margaret's had.

Roy, you daydreaming again or are you gonna cook me up Adam and Eve on a raft?

Just like that, he could hear his wife's voice again, teasing him about how long it could possibly take to fry two eggs and set them on a piece of toast. He could see her reaching up on tiptoe to put her ticket in the circular holder. He could feel the ache of the scar he'd gotten when she'd sneaked behind the line to kiss him and, lost in the moment, he'd pressed his hand flat on the open waffle iron.

”In the weeds,” he whispered, cook's lingo for being overburdened.

”Here.” Darla held out a white chef's coat so old it had moth holes in some places. ”Addie told me she'd been saving this for you.”

Roy took it slowly, then shrugged it on. To his surprise, it fit. He'd imagined that he'd grown a size or two, thick around his middle with stubbornness. Darla watched him b.u.t.ton up, and she smiled a little. ”Don't you look smart,” she said softly.

She cleared her throat suddenly, as if she was wary of giving in to her emotions in front of someone else. ”What's the special tonight?” she asked briskly.

Roy curled his hand around the base of a wooden spoon, the gesture first tentative, then coming smoother, as if he were an old-time big leaguer lifting a bat once again. ”Anything,” he said with pride. ”You tell them I'll cook them whatever they want.”

Addie sat on a wicker chair across from Reverend Marsh and his daughter, and took a sip of her iced tea. ”Thank you,” she said. ”This is lovely.”

The reverend was a skinny stick of a man with an Adam's apple that jutted out like a burl. His daughter's hands were folded neatly in her lap; her eyes were fixed on a spot on the porch floor. Catherine Marsh no longer had long, silky dark tresses, an athletic body, and a winning smile. She was thinner, swimming in her oversize T-s.h.i.+rt and carpenter jeans, and her hair was cropped short. Addie stared at the girl as she traced a circle on the sweating side of her gla.s.s. Did Jack do this to you? Did Jack do this to you?

”I'm delighted you sought me out,” the reverend said. ”Sometimes I think today's papers are so frightened to explore religion they veer too far toward an atheist's position.”

After getting Catherine Marsh's name, Addie had looked her up in the local phone book. The Right Reverend Ellidor Marsh was listed in Goffeysboro, a tiny town thirty miles east of Loyal. Addie had called, knowing he would never invite her to his home to discuss the statutory rape of his daughter, and pretended to be a reporter on a nonsecular beat.

”I have something to confess,” she said now, setting her iced tea down.

The reverend smiled and tugged at his white collar. ”I get a lot of that,” he joked. ”But technically, I'll have to send you down the road to Father Ivey.”

”I'm not a reporter,” Addie blurted out.

Catherine Marsh's gaze lifted for the first time since she'd come, at her father's beckoning, to join them. ”I'm here because of Jack St. Bride,” Addie said.

What happened next was like an unexpected nor'easter: The Reverend Marsh's complacent demeanor was swept away only to be replaced with a cold fury so intense that it was easy to imagine him hurling d.a.m.nation from a pulpit. ”Do not mention that man's name in my presence.”

”Reverend Marsh-”

”Do you know what it's like to realize that your daughter's been ruined by a man twice as old as she is? By a man whose moral compa.s.s is so defunct he can't see the wrong in seducing an innocent?”

”Daddy-”

”No!” Ellidor thundered. ”I won't hear any of it, Catherine. I won't. And you, weak as any woman ... weak as your own mother ... believing that you loved loved him.” him.”

”Reverend Marsh, I just wanted to know-”

”You want to know about Jack St. Bride? He's a calculating, depraved pervert who baited my daughter like a Pied Piper and used her own innocence against her to get her into his bed. He's a sinner of the worst kind-the sort of man who pulls angels out of heaven and drags them down for the fall. I hope he rots in h.e.l.l for what he did to my child.”

Catherine's features twisted in agony, or memory. Ellidor stood abruptly and hauled his daughter up against his side. ”Please leave,” he bit out, and he started inside.

Addie's head whirled. As condemnations went, this was fairly clear-Marsh truly believed his daughter had been wronged. And who knew a child better than her parent? It meant that the charge of s.e.xual a.s.sault against a minor a year ago in Loyal had not been a misunderstanding. A horrible offense had occurred, and Jack had been at the root of it.

He had lied to her about Catherine Marsh. And, most likely, about Gillian Duncan.

Still, something made her call out at the last minute. ”Catherine!”

The girl turned, anch.o.r.ed by the reverend.

”Is that what happened?” Addie asked softly.

Catherine's glance slid to her father. She nodded, then let herself be swallowed up by his anger and buoyed into the house.

And that, more than anything, made Addie give up hope of Jack's innocence. After all, she had been like Catherine, years ago. She had survived a rape. And that was something no woman would ever consciously choose to claim as a memory-no, it was something that scarred you so deeply you couldn't forget.

Sitting up is so hard, when her head is this heavy. Heavy as the moon, dropped to the ground. Heavy with thoughts ... things she should not be doing, things she can't quite remember now.

Someone comes to help her. A hand with hair on the back, sprinkled like pepper. Those hands, the pepper hands, reach for her, cup her breast as she tumbles down again. Her own hand, smooth and white, pus.h.i.+ng at the ridge of his erection.

Blessed be.

Meg sat up in bed, wild-eyed, the covers falling away from her. The memories were like the ocean at the Cape, where they'd gone on vacation last summer. They kept running after her, and no matter what she did to try to keep them away, they managed to find her feet and suck her more firmly into the sand.

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