Dora"s voice was very soft. "I never meant to hurt him, Cal. And I couldn"t let you hurt him either."

The door swung open, and he was there, sprawled on his back, a swath of blood across his white shirt, one hand rising toward me, weak and trembling, his eyes beseeching me as he labored to speak.

"Leaving was the only thing I could do," Dora said.

I saw a wink of gold in the light, the ring lying at the edge of a scarlet pool, a b.l.o.o.d.y knife flung a few inches away. His voice sounded in the stillness, faint and deathly, but loud enough for me to hear the faith it carried, the sure and certain knowledge that I had come to save him: Cal.

"I loved William," Dora said. "I hope he knows that."

He lifted his arms toward me, expecting me to rush to his aid, but I stood, frozen, staring down at him, listening to the rattle of his breath, the single word that managed to rise above it: Cal.

"But I couldn"t love him in that way."

He stared at me wonderingly, baffled that I remained in place, towering above him, putting all that agonized confusion into a question carried on my name: Cal?

I looked at him with cold, dead eyes, no longer my brother Billy, but only a sack of breath whose breathing blocked my way to Dora. In a single shuddering instant, I felt all my pa.s.sion surge in a mute and blackened prayer: Die, William. Die!

It was an instant, nothing more, a single, explosive second, followed by a terrible seizure of recognition and self-loathing. "Dear G.o.d," I cried, dropped to my knees, gathered my brother into my arms, rushed him to the car, and raced to Doc Bradshaw"s office, calling to him again and again, my voice like a lifeline flung to him across the engulfing waters, Billy, hold on, please, hold on, watching helplessly as he sank, Billy, please, Billy, deeper and deeper, drowning in his own lungs, Billy, Billy, until a final bubble of blood burst on his lips, carrying the name of the one he"d dreamed of all his life, Dora.

"You have to tell William that I loved him," she said.

Billy...

I looked at her softly. "I will."

"But, Cal, never tell him..."

... please...

"... about you."

"No," I said. "No, I never will."

... forgive me.

She rose, a curious relief lifting her, pleased that we"d come through this final meeting with what she took for grace. "Come," she said. "Come with me. I want to show you something."

She led me to the garden, then along its quiet lanes, pointing out the desert plants that grew there, how little they required, sunlight, a taste of rain. She would remain with the Sisters for another few weeks, she said, then move to some other place, where she hoped to serve in some way, "be of use at last," as she phrased it.

Finally, at the end of the day, as we stood beside my car, she drew the small porcelain figure she"d taken from Ed Dillard"s house from her pocket, a young girl with long, blond hair, placed it in my hand, and folded my fingers around it. "For you," she said. "Good-bye, Cal."

"Good-bye, Dora."

She stood in the drive as I pulled away. In the mirror, I saw her lift her hand in a last farewell, then grow small, a point of light, and finally disappear.

Had my soul been made of bone, I would have heard it crack.

Chapter Twenty-six.

Henry Mason"s long illness had overwhelmed him by the time I got back to Port Alma. He"d died in Portland Hospital, though not before penning a full confession of what he"d done, Dora"s letter to Billy folded inside it.

"Henry wanted you to see these," Hap said when he showed both to me.

In his letter, Henry described in an oddly formal language how he"d carefully copied Dora"s script, writing fraudulent entries in the ledgers, never expecting the books to be checked. "I was, of course, aware," he wrote, "that even should William review the books, he would never accuse Miss March of stealing from him. For it was common knowledge, often spoken of by the staff, that he was in love with her."

The money had been for his r.e.t.a.r.ded daughter Lois, Henry added. He"d stolen it because he was dying and needed to provide for her. "It remains my hope," he wrote, "that some provision can be made for Lois, as she cannot, in my absence, provide for herself."

As to Billy"s death, it had occurred somewhat differently than I"d imagined it on the afternoon I"d sat with Dora in the convent garden. I"d been right that Henry had accused Dora of embezzlement, and right that Billy had seen through the ruse. But I"d been wrong about my brother"s reaction. For rather than flying into a rage, he"d simply demanded to know where Dora was, what Henry had said or done to send her fleeing from Port Alma. Henry had attempted to leave, rushed through the kitchen, Billy in pursuit. It was there, according to Henry, that Billy tripped suddenly, a shattered leg giving way, and tumbled forward, knocking the kitchen knife from the table, then falling upon it with all his weight. "On my soul, I swear that I did not murder William Chase," Mason wrote. "My crime was that I left him, knowing that without my a.s.sistance his wound would prove fatal."

"So now we know what happened," Hap said. He waited for my response. When I offered none, he said, "Cal, what would you think about coming back to work for me?"

I shook my head.

"What do you plan to do?"

"I don"t know," I said.

He gave me one of his cautionary looks. "Well, you know it"s not good for a man to ... h.e.l.l, I guess you know what"s good for you."

I knew only what was no longer good for me, prosecuting men and women whose suffering I knew nothing of, spending Sat.u.r.day nights in Royston. Needing love too much.

"I"d better be going," I said.

Hap looked at me sadly. "How are your parents, Cal?"

"Dying," I answered.

For the next three months I did all that was required to sustain them both.

Often, when I sat in the evening with my father, a silence would fall between us, but there were other times when we went over things, remembering what we could bear to remember, holding the rest inside. He remained stoical to the last, refusing all pity or self-pity. "Better to die like Socrates," he said, the last of his cla.s.sical references. "Remembering that you owe someone a chicken."

He died the following spring.

I moved in with my mother a few days later.

During that long, sweltering summer, I fed and dressed her, kept her clean and as comfortable as I could.

In the evenings I would read to her as Billy had, though she made it clear that she could no longer bear the romantic poetry that had, until then, served as her guide through life.

As the airless summer days pa.s.sed, she grew steadily weaker. She lost interest in the play of nature outside her window, the flight of birds in the overhanging sky, her eyes often fixed instead upon the copy of the Sentinel she kept on the table beside her bed, the one that carried Billy"s obituary.

Then, one evening, as I was about to put out the light, she groaned, and I saw something dark gather in her eyes, as if, after a long meditation, she had reached a grim conclusion.

"What is it, Mother?" I asked.

She started to speak, then stopped, her mind turned inward.

"You can tell me."

She looked at me brokenly, her face the shattered bust of the once-proud woman she had been. "I murdered my son."

"No," I said. "No, you didn"t."

Her voice shook with grief and regret. "Snakes, Cal. He was just a little boy, and I put snakes in his head."

"Mother, please."

"Snakes."

She slumped backward, and in that movement I saw the great wall of her self-a.s.surance crumble into dust, the vast confidence she"d once had in her view of life, and remembered what Billy had said so many years before, that without it, she would surely die.

I bolted forward. "You taught Billy how to love," I told her desperately. "And he did it well, Mother. To the very end."

She seemed not to hear me, lifted her hand, and began to make the sign of the cross. "Mea culpa."

"Don"t."

Her hand crossed her breast. "Mea culpa."

"Stop it, please."

"Mea maxima culpa."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from the dark air, held it to my chest. "You never stopped loving him. Never. Not for a second. Not for the briefest ..." My head dropped forward, heavy as a stone. "But I ... I..."

A silence settled upon us. Then, after a time, I felt her fingers in my hair.

"Cal?"

I looked up.

She watched me softly for a moment, then reached for the copy of the Sentinel that lay on the table beside her bed and lifted it toward me.

"What?" I asked.

She said nothing, only continued to hold the paper tremblingly in the air between us.

Then I knew.

"I can"t take over the paper," I told her. "You said it yourself. Years ago. That I didn"t have the heart for it."

She gazed at me more tenderly than she ever had. Her voice was barely a whisper. "Now you do," she said.

She died the next morning. I buried her amid a flurry of red leaves.

A few weeks later, I started the paper up again, honoring what had seemed to me the last wish of a great example.

I rehired the old staff, then added Lois Mason, Henry"s daughter, to it, teaching her to sweep and clean, greet whoever stepped up to the front desk with her childlike smile.

And each Sunday, I visited their graves. To my mother, I brought mountain laurel. To my father, ivy. To Billy, always a single bloodred rose.

Spring came early the next year, melting the snow first from the cliffs of MacAndrews Island, then from the lip of the seawall, finally from the earthen mounds beneath which, in endless night, my brother Billy slept.

"You"re Cal Chase."

I looked up from the rose I"d just placed upon his grave.

"You came by my house in Royston," she said. She offered her hand. "Rachel Ba.s.s." She pointed to a small stone memorial. "My husband. I always come here on the anniversary."

"Of his death?"

She shook her head. "Of his life. I come once a year. On his birthday."

"I come every Sunday."

Her eyes touched the rose. "You must have loved your brother very much."

A wave of grief washed over me. "I can"t get over it," I admitted.

She gazed at me softly. "Maybe you"re not meant to, Cal," she said.

Then she took my arm, and together we made our way down the hill, talking quietly as we pa.s.sed beneath the old iron gate, then moved on beyond it, through the reeds, and over the pebbled ground, to where the gulls dove and circled, crying distantly in the cold blue air, and the sea swept out forever.

If you enjoyed Thomas H. Cook"s.

Places in the Dark,

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of his award-winning novels of

superlative psychological suspense,