Twin brothers vie for a family empire built on cruelty, deceit, and dark secrets.

DISINTEGRATION

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright (c)2010 Scott Nicholson

Published by Haunted Computer Books

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

Ebook creation by Dellaster Design

Other books by Scott Nicholson

The Skull Ring

Speed Dating with the Dead

The Red Church

Drummer Boy

As I Die Lying

Burial to Follow

Flowers

Ashes

The First

Curtains: Mystery Stories

Gateway Drug

Murdermouth: Zombie Bits

Forever Never Ends

Transparent Lovers

Creative Spirit

Troubled

Solom

The Gorge

October Girls (as L.C. Glazebrook)

Table of Contents

Cover

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

About the Author

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About the Ebook

CHAPTER ONE

Jacob Wells smelled smoke seventeen seconds before hell opened its door.

The Appalachian night was just cool enough to require a quilt on top of the bedspread, and he'd sought Renee's body heat beneath the sheet. One of his wife's legs was tangled in his, the nail of her big toe digging into his ankle. The weight of her head pressed into that familiar space above his armpit and her hair spilled across his shoulder. Drowsy, he tried to remember where he was, then saw the red glaring numbers. 1:14.

The alarm was set for six a.m., an ugly hour that always came too soon. Jacob rarely slept before reaching the long side of midnight. Every night his sleep shrank, his dreams crammed into tighter and darker crevices, his thoughts spiraling like dirty water down a drain. He had failed, and the knowledge had dull teeth that ground him from the guts up.

Tonight, the dream had been of a mirror that he had somehow fallen into, as if it were a silvery, sunlight sea. He tried to drag himself out, because he couldn't breathe. When he reached out of the mirror, though, his reflection was on the other side, pushing him back down. Desperate, he grabbed his reflection and pulled it into the mirror with him, and they wrestled in that bottomless, soundless void, joining into one writhing mass that sank and sank ever further from the light.

His eyes snapped open to the black sheet of the ceiling. The pillow was damp at his neck. A breeze blew from somewhere, a crack in the door or window, carrying the March odors of mud and daffodils. Renee stirred beside him, nudging him with a sleepy elbow. Her snores were soft and feminine.

Her scent flooded his nostrils, meadow shampoo and the lingering tang of their lovemaking. She had always been clean, a chronic neat freak, almost to the point of obsession. She loathed perfume, though, and was comfortable with her own natural odors. That was one of Jacob's favorite things about her. He took another sniff, as if he could carry its memory back into his dreams to give him comfort.

The sniff brought unease instead of comfort. Something was out of place in the too-thick air. Jacob pulled himself from drowsiness. No mistake.

Smoke.

They'd had candles on the nightstand, a ritual dating back to their initial shy fumbling in college when soft light hid minor flaws and made pupils attractively large. But the candles were long cold, and this aroma wasn't thick and waxy.

It had a chemical sting, and beneath that, the brusque body of burning wood.

Jacob swam the rest of the way up from the waters of half-sleep and pushed Renee's leg away. Maybe one of the neighbors was burning brush. It was the time of year for yard work, when leaves and ice-damaged branches were raked into large piles in that first spring bloom of homeowner energy. But who would start a brush fire an hour after midnight?

Renee mumbled into the pillows where her face had fallen. Jacob swung his legs over the side of the bed, squeaking the springs. He switched on the bedside lamp. On the nightstand, shielded by a slight sheen of dust, was a framed photograph of Mattie. Except for the crooked primary teeth in her grin, she looked like a miniature of Renee--sea-green eyes, reddish-blond hair, a faint splash of freckles on the swells of her cheeks. Jacob looked at the trusting face.

Another photograph was behind it, lost in shadows.

He sniffed again. Smoke, for sure.

He stood, wide awake, the air thicker now and tingling his sinuses. He grabbed his polar fleece robe, still damp from the shower, and hurried to the door.

"Jakie?" Renee mumbled, disoriented amid the piled covers and squinting against the intrusion of light. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," he said. They'd locked the door, a habit since Mattie had walked in on them one night two years ago, after which they'd spent fifteen minutes of improvisational theater explaining why grown-ups were silly enough to exercise in bed. Now the lock seemed to work the opposite way, keeping Jacob imprisoned instead of the rest of the world out.

As Jacob fumbled with the lock, a whisper of warm air crawled across his toes.

"What's that smell?" Renee asked. She was fully awake now, too.

Jacob swung the door open, and that was when hell came calling, rolling forward in a whoosh of yellow and red, fingers and tongues of flame stabbing and licking, Satan's gate thrown wide in welcome.

The heat singed his eyebrows, the smoke slapped him like an open palm. He raised his arms against the rush of heat.

"Jake!" Renee screamed from the bed.

"Call 9-1-1."

"Oh, God. Mattie."

"I'll get her. You get out."

He slammed the door closed behind him, hoping it would buy Renee an extra minute. He ducked and scrambled on all fours, keeping his head low where the oxygen was less polluted. The flames crackled like bunched cellophane and he could smell the steam off his bathrobe.

Mattie's room was three doors down, three easy doors, past the laundry room and the vacant nursery and around the corner, where she shared the largest upstairs room with a dozen stuffed animals, two hundred books, and a wooden locomotive large enough to ride.

Jacob crawled forward, the carpet scuffing his bare knees. The floor was warm, and he wondered how far the fire had spread, if it had already sucked the downstairs into its hungry, blue-white heart. The alarm hadn't gone off. The smoke detector clung to the ceiling as a mute witness to disaster.

"Mattie." He licked his lips, throat dry as a crack pipe. He called her name again, and the word sounded like the desperate bleat of a dying sheep.

He passed the laundry room, its door ajar, flames barely making entry there. Before bedtime, Renee had put her work clothes in the dryer, a nylon navy pants suit with a blouse that would look good with a briefcase. If the dryer had ignited, then the room would be gutted. So the fire's origins were elsewhere.

Not that it mattered where the fire started. All that mattered was where it ended.

Jacob forced himself past the nursery, not daring to slow, because slowing would make him think of the empty crib inside, and he had no time.

The best antidote for failure was pain, and the heat shined his skin, pinked the back of his hands, stretched his forehead taut, and invaded his lungs. Still he crawled.

"Mattie!" he yelled, but the name may as well have been shouted against the swirling walls of a typhoon.

He reached the bend in the hall. The current of air was stronger now as the draft poured up the staircase. The flames leaped with new anger at the influx of oxygen. Jacob was dizzy from smoke inhalation and asphyxia, but he wouldn't let himself drop to the floor. He couldn't fail again.

All he had to do was reach Mattie's room, break the window, and collect her in his arms, then jump two floors into the rhododendron hedge below.

He could do it, though the hairs on his arms were electrified wires and his eyeballs felt like boiled grapes.

Mattie's door was just ahead, closed against the storm of fire. The great yellow-and-red beast chewed the ceiling, licked paint from the walls, clawed at the stair railing. A light fixture fell, shattering three feet to Jacob's left. He crawled onward, ignoring the shards of glass gouging his hands and knees.

He would not fail.

The door beckoned, its rectangular shape lost in the shimmering haze. Jacob blinked moisture into his eyes and focused on the doorknob. Its brass reflected the conflagration, a kaleidoscope sunburst, acid lemon, nuclear tangerine.

Ten more feet.

He shoved himself forward, commanded his worthless limbs to work, embraced the pain. His lungs were two bricks of ash, his sinuses raw. In the crackling laughter of the surrounding blaze, Jacob heard soft whispers: Sleep, surrender, lie down and lose.

His eyes begged to be closed. The smoke churned and twisted in dark hurricanes. The golden maelstrom swelled with new passion as it reached the framing lumber behind the walls, tasted pine and found it sweet. The house shook in its first death throes. The smoke detector finally reached critical mass and emitted a piercing staccato of beeps.

The doorknob became Jacob's grail. Failure's gravity pressed upon him from all directions, as heavy as molten lead. He squirmed forward like some pathetic primitive creature crawling up from steamy slime. Sense of purpose had almost abandoned him, and his muscles screamed in rebellion as he kept moving.

The door.

Open it.

Because behind it lay everything.

Mattie.

Her birthday was February 3rd. Six weeks ago. He'd given her a 35mm camera and a bird book, Renee had given her a bicycle. The cake was chocolate, the nine candles arranged to form an M. The neighborhood kids sat around the table squealing while Mattie smiled amid the splendor of bright ribbons and wrapping paper. Princess for a day.

Princess for every day, in Jacob's heart.

He couldn't surrender.

The flames seemed to whisper his father's voice: A Wells never fails.

He rose, his body wracked with fever, the flames whining and screaming, pieces of construction falling downstairs, large timbers and shelves and furniture. He could only imagine the chaos below them, heat like liquid, and wondered if the floor would collapse before he made it through Mattie's door. Steam rose from the carpet, its threads curling and shriveling.

"Mommy..."

At first Jacob thought Mattie had called out, but the voice was muted, metallic.

The voice came again: "Wish me."

Jacob had given Mattie a Rock Star Barbie for Christmas that recorded short sound bites. While the quality and tone were the same as pull-string dolls, the newer technology allowed the owner to record bits of song for playback. Mattie and Jacob had a blast playing silly messages back and forth, but she couldn't know about "Wish me." The recording erupted into giggles, a perverted mirth that blended into the chaotic and crackling symphony of holocaust.

Broken toys. Nothing but broken toys.

He reached for the doorknob, patted it with his fingers. He knew that if he opened the door, the oxygen would create a backdraft. He wasn't sure if the draft would blow inward or outward, or how much he'd endanger Mattie with the act.

"Mattie!" he shouted again, his voice lost in fire, becoming the fire, all one now, an angry, all-consuming, sky-eating roar. The detector was an electric hawk, shrieking overhead.

"Daddy?"

No recording. She was there, alive.

He cupped his blistered hands and yelled. "Move away from the door, honey."

"Daddy?" Sobs surrounded the word, joined by tears that would evaporate before reaching the floor.

"Move back." A sock lay by the door, somehow missed by Renee's latest compulsive clean sweep. He rolled it over his fingers and grasped the knob. It was like sticking his hand in a forge, as if he were trying to meld his fingers into some sort of cold weapon.

The fire crowded behind him like a spectator, swelled, held its breath in waiting.

Jacob twisted the knob and pulled back, the gap in the door showed dark, then yellow and red and blue and white leaped through the opening like twisted and howling sheets of wet metal.

The flames lapped at Jacob, raced over his body, singed the hair on his arms and chest and groin. He fell backward against the hot gale while the fire kicked the door wide. The oxygen lifeblood of the fire pulsed forward in both directions and funneled toward the fuel of the hall. Jacob rolled over, heart heavy as a hearthstone as he crawled once more toward Mattie's room.

She squatted at the foot of her bed in Winnie the Pooh pajamas, stuffed animals huddled around her for protection. Flames crept from the edges of the ceiling. The wallpaper border featuring Sesame Street characters fell away, showing the darkened faces of Big Bird, Elmo, and the Cookie Monster.

"Stay down, honey," Jacob yelled, his breath a swarm of razors as it slashed his windpipe.

"Daddy," she said, pleading, as if she were like the smoke detector and had been programmed for one terrible sound.

He forced himself to rise into a crouch and moved through the orange rectangle of the burning doorway. He could see her eyes now, so wide, so scared, eyes like Renee's, and then fear for Renee gripped him, sluiced through his bloodstream like menthol, and he wondered why he had left his wife alone.

Because you're not like him. Because you can't fail.

He couldn't fail. Not Jacob Daniel Wells, the man who had it all. Not bulletproof Jake, who could buy his luck and whose ladders led only upwards. Not the man with the Midas touch, who had gold at his fingertips and gold for guilt and gold now eating his house and flesh and family, taking back everything it had ever given.

No. It wasn't taking Mattie. He wouldn't let it.

He clawed toward her, blew the smoke aside, huffed and puffed like the wolf in Mattie's bedtime story. Fire hissed at him, outraged by his defiance. Its insistent voice tickled the dry paper of his eardrums and filled his head: Surrender.

Only one of us can have everything, and it's not you.

"No," he shouted, reaching for Mattie. Because he saw her, all of her, the smoke parting as if the fire's master wanted to play one final, cruel joke of revelation.

Her pajamas had melted to her skin. Her body quivered, cold and hot, her flesh shrink-wrapped to her bones. Her stuffed alligator had dissolved into a goo of synthetic fibers around her hand. She couldn't speak, couldn't scream. Except with her eyes.

And her eyes screamed plenty.

"Wish me," they said.

He touched her, afraid to touch her, not knowing where she was least damaged. He was oblivious to the fire now, as if it were a Red Sea that had parted, a miracle that allowed him not escape but a single path for his eternal soul.

Then he lifted her, the window exploded from the heat and the stress of collapsed wood, the detector gave a last long wail of agony, the ceiling folded in, the fire stoked itself, the embers made their bed upon his back, the night pressed its black boot upon them both, and his last thought was that he'd forgotten to give Mattie a goodnight kiss when he'd tucked her in.

And he couldn't now, because she had no lips.

CHAPTER TWO

This dream was one of darkness, set in a cool, timeless place, like the underwater bottom of a grotto.

Jacob found he didn't need to breathe this time. Breathing had been a bother all along, an endless exercise in futility, air in and out toward no purpose. Suffocating was so much easier. Breathlessness almost seemed a natural state.

Far above, like a distant moon over a thick sky, was a soft circle of light. Its gravity disturbed his peace, a slight but insistent pull that mirrored the moon's effect on ocean tides. He tried to fight, but his muscles urged him to surrender, to drift upward. His arms and legs floated effortlessly in the cold waters of the grotto, his lungs took their fill, his eyes stared at the hazy circle of light that grew ever larger.

As he ascended, the layers of dreams separated like a series of skins, peeled away until he was pink and naked and raw. And now the moon was brighter, the water warmer, the sky pressing closer. His lungs ached, the soothing liquid rushing out only to be replaced by jagged stones. The tug of gravity intensified, pulling him faster toward a surface of confusion.

Jacob wanted to scream, but the grotto ate his words. The swelling brightness of the moon corresponded to bright feelings in his fingers, sparks of ice, arctic static.

The moon grew whiter, took over the world, and he recognized the energy that now flowed through his body.

Pain.

He awoke to razors and needles and shards of glass and the dull crush of tons. For a panicked moment, he thought he was being cremated alive, that he'd been brought back to consciousness for one final torment before the deliverance of eternal slumber.

Then the pain lost its thousand sharp edges and became a giant cresting wave of agony, one whose amplitude rose ever higher. The wave turned into a scream that crashed with the echo of his daughter's name.

Matilda Suzanne Aldridge Wells.

Matilda after Renee's mother, a woman who had hated her own name. Suzanne because that was Jacob's first choice, and they'd haggled about hyphenating Mattie's last name. Aldridge-Wells. But Renee pointed out that she herself had taken the Wells name and the hyphen wouldn't make sense unless she changed back to her maiden name. Or else Jake would have to take Renee's name. In either case, the paperwork was too daunting: social security forms, credit cards, insurance policies, Jake's business records, trappings of a modern American society where every person had a number and too many parents were making up confusing names for their children.

And Matilda became Mattie, though Jacob called her "Matilda" in the soft twilight of her room, in the space between bedtime stories and night-night kisses, or on those rare occasions when Mattie's misbehavior ranked as a full-name offense. She was Matilda at both extremes of emotion, in deep anger and gentle, aching appreciation. And that was the name that crossed his lips now, as he plunged up through the surface and the moon exploded around him.

"What's that?" came a foreign voice, probably the voice of that strange moon pushed by a dry wind.

"Matilda." His own ears couldn't recognize the sound that passed his lips.

"Don't speak, Mr. Wells."

Jacob tried to speak anyway, but felt the tube that lay on his tongue and snaked down his throat. He blinked into the bright lunar face but its haziness remained. Gauze lay across his eyes. He shivered in the white light, afraid of everything, wishing the grotto would suck him back down into its placid waters.

A gentle hand touched his arm and he yelped at the contact. A machine hissed in a rhythm that both mimicked and mocked life. It was breathing for him, sending oxygen into the tube, through his lungs and heart and bloodstream. Jacob tried to lift his head, but it felt impossibly heavy, a chunk of charred granite.

"Relax, Mr. Wells."

The voice was soothing, distant. Jacob licked his lips around the tube. Through the gauze, he could make out the brown face, the white coat, the spotlight he'd mistaken for the moon.

"Thirsty," Jacob said, having trouble with the sibilant due to the dryness of his mouth.

"You've got an IV," the distant voice said. The voice was richly accented, West African or something equally exotic. "It may be a day or two before you can drink again."

Jacob blinked against the gauze, his eyes stinging. After a moment of looking at the vague shapes of machinery and the tubes dangling around him, he closed his eyes. "Where am I?"

"Littlejohn Memorial."

Hospital.

Kingsboro, North Carolina.

Where he'd once lived and probably still did.

So this wasn't heaven, or even an antechamber to the land of the dead. Or perhaps it was. Maybe this was his punishment, a purgatory of pain and equipment, a life sentence for his failures.

"How long...?" Jacob wasn't sure what he wanted to ask. How long he'd been dead? How long before he wasn't dead anymore?

"You've been here thirty-six hours. You're a very lucky man. Upper airway edema, second-degree burns over fifty percent of your body, a dislocated hip." A hand touched Jacob's arm again. "I'm Dr. Masutu."

Jacob shivered, his flesh cold but his skin like that of a baked potato, rough and hot and dry. He flexed his fingers and they felt like water balloons. The doctor must have noticed the movement.

"You're a little swollen at the moment. It's typical for burn victims to gain twenty or thirty pounds due to fluid buildup. Your metabolism is in hyperactive mode right now, trying to heal your injuries."

A memory sparked in Jacob's head, but it was swept away by a yellow wave of pain. The wave rushed up the beaches of his soul, the foam tickled him, and then the pain receded. The pain reminded him of something, as if it were part of him and he should not be spared. His tongue was thick against the tube and he couldn't feel his teeth.

"I've adjusted your morphine drip," Dr. Masutu said. "Now that you're awake, you'll probably feel a little discomfort. Unfortunately, we have to go easy on the suppressants because your respiratory system is overtaxed."

Doctors always used the word "discomfort" in place of "pain."

"And extra antibiotics," the doctor continued. "The burns will heal, but it's a dangerous time for your body. Because your system is fighting so hard to grow new skin and replace your fluids, you're vulnerable to infections. But we're going to be just fine."

Jacob felt himself sliding back into the languor of the grotto. Something the doctor had said, one word among that stream of syllables, caused him to open his eyes just before he succumbed to darkness.

Burns.

Burns meant heat.

Heat meant fire.

Fire meant that the other dream was not a dream, and the memory of flames eating the walls returned. The past built itself on blackened timbers, stacked like logs, nailed itself together into a wobbly house.

Fire. House.

And a name.

Then words meant nothing, because he was in the grotto again, its water soft against his skin. Cool darkness reclaimed him, and he welcomed it.

***

A familiar voice accompanied him on his next journey to the surface.

"Honey? Can you hear me?"

Jacob could hear Renee, but couldn't respond. His tongue was like a sock, his mouth a leather shoe. He forced his eyes open and the spotlight stung them. The gauze had been removed. The corners of the room swam on the edges of his vision.

"Doctor, he opened his eyes."

He sensed movement, and shadows fell across his face. His hands and feet were numb. His chest was cold, and for a moment he thought he was naked. Jacob rolled his eyes down far enough to see that a loose sheet covered his body. Or maybe it was a shroud.

"Welcome back, Mr. Wells," came a voice that he dimly recognized. "It's Dr. Masutu."

Jacob's lips parted, and he pushed his tongue out enough to feel the chapped skin around his mouth. His cheeks were coated with a cold gel. He tried to raise his arm and wipe it away, but the doctor caught his hand.

"Easy does it. You still have a drip in that arm."

Jacob looked into the dark, featureless face of the man above him. Then he saw the person to the right of the doctor. The shape of the hair was familiar, the way it curled out at shoulder length. He tried to focus on her but his head throbbed, shattering his vision into tiny shards of meaningless images. He closed his eyes again.

"Relax, honey. Take it slow," Renee said.

Take it slow. She'd whispered that the first time they'd made love, when Jacob and Renee were fellow sophomores at North Carolina State. Before Mattie and the other one. Before Joshua came back.

Jacob had taken it slow many times, but never as slow as he did now. Because gravity still pressed upon him, each machine-assisted breath brought embers of agony, and his limbs felt like alien parasites leeched to his torso. He tried to collect the pieces of himself, to reacquaint flesh with bone, to integrate his organs into a functioning cooperative. He gave up. The only connection between his many parts was a network of pain.

"Renee," he said in a wheeze.

"Don't talk."

He wasn't talking. He was gasping, choking, mouthing nonsense air. He opened his eyes again.

Renee bent over him, and her face filled the hazy circle where the spotlight had been. She was nothing but eyes and a slash of teeth. The eyes were like lost binary stars against the endless depth of space.

Those eyes looked familiar.

Whose eyes? Green like that--

And it all came back in a scream, the fire, the collapsing roof, Mattie amid her scorched stuffed animals. He fought to sit upright but was far too weak. The movement sent a rocket flare of agony up his left hip.

"Where's Mattie?" he said, this time summoning enough air to fill the room with his words. They echoed off the room's sterile surfaces of tile, chrome, and glass.

He couldn't see Renee well enough to be sure, but her face seemed to collapse in upon itself, like a flower gone putrid in steam.

"Shhh, honey," she whispered. "We can talk about that later."

Later? How could she possibly think he would make it to later unless he knew? Giant claws scratched at his intestines, a monster inside him wanting to tear itself free. He fought it down as if it were a rush of nausea. "Where is she?"

Renee turned her head toward the doctor, and they must have shared a look. Dr. Masutu gave a stiff nod. Renee's hand took his, and her small fingers were slick in the ointment that coated his skin. He squeezed weakly, begging with all the meager strength he could summon.

"Where?" he whispered, already knowing, never wanting to know.

"The fire--when the second floor collapsed and threw you out of the fire, she was still there and--she got burned bad--"

Her voice cracked in synch with the breaking of Jacob's heart.

Not Mattie.

Not. Not. Not.

She was the Happy Sunshine Girl, who played doctor to make her dolls better and held tea parties for her stuffed animals. She was the favorite in her class among all the teachers at Middlewood Elementary. She loved soccer and jump rope and Sunday morning cartoons, the ones that came on just before the scary preacher shows. She was beautiful, the thing that spiritually bound him to Renee, the creature that connected him to the future rather than a past he loathed.

A strange sound poured out of his lungs, the internal monster turning into a vomit of voice. If not for the raw pain of its passing through his throat, he wouldn't have recognized the voice as his own.

Renee squeezed more tightly, two hands now, as he twisted in the sheets. Dr. Masutu moved around the bed, trying to calm him with incomprehensible medical terminology. Jacob thrashed his head from side to side, the ceiling a blur of silver and white streaks.

"It's all going to be okay," Renee said, choking, her face close to his, her breath cool on his cheek.

The monster ripped his insides, claw and tooth and sharp bone. The monster laughed, rattling the truth against his rib cage like a scythe strumming a xylophone. The monster chewed his aortic chambers, spitting pieces of flesh in its triumph. The pain inside met the pain outside and rose into an unbearable crescendo.

Jacob wailed, a plea to God, a damning of God.

He sobbed and coughed, pushed at the tube in his mouth with his tongue.

He had promised himself that he would be stronger this time, that he'd protect her from Joshua. He would protect all of them. But he had failed again. And that knowledge slashed him with its acid talons.

Renee dabbed a tissue against his eyes. Her whisper was as soft as the steady wheezing of the respirator: "Jake."

"Where is she?" he repeated, his teeth clenched around the tube. He looked in the mirror above the sink as if Mattie were in the room.

Dr. Masutu moved closer, a model of crisp efficiency. "You'd best leave, Mrs. Wells. We can't risk an additional sedative with his respiratory system so stressed."

Jacob clutched her hand, muscles tight with desperation. Sweat broke loose on his face. "Where is she?"

Renee stepped away and the ointment caused Jacob to lose his grip. He stared at the back of his hand, at the white blisters, at the pink skin peeling away. His wedding ring was gone. Everything was gone. Joshua had taken it.

"She's here," Renee said.

He sat up and dizziness swarmed in. The room tilted, Dr. Masutu's face grew alternately larger and smaller, Renee bobbed like a ship moving away toward the horizon.

Jacob tried to move his legs, but they were mutinous. He lunged for the edge of the bed and collapsed on the railing. His IV bag fell over and spattered open against the cold tiles. Dr. Masutu gripped him by the shoulders and tried to ease him back onto the bed.

"Easy, Mr. Wells," the doctor said. His breath smelled of disinfectant, the first odor Jacob had noticed since awakening.

"I want to see her. Where is she?" he screamed at Renee. He didn't care if she lied. He just needed an answer, any answer, or the hard concrete in his chest would let no more air pass.

Renee stopped at the door, hunched and shivering. She cupped her hands and leaned against the wall, slowly sliding down its surface like the victim of a firing squad.

"Mr. Wells," the doctor said, pulling him against the pillow. "Don't make me have to call for assistance."

"Fuck you," Jacob said, yanking free and pulling himself onto the rail. He caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror, a wild-eyed lab animal breaking free of a cruel experiment, its flesh mottled red. Then he went over. The respirator tube must have become disconnected, because oxygen escaped with a snakelike hiss. The loose tube protruded from Jacob's mouth as his torso struck the floor, one leg tangled in the bed rails, the other twisted in the sheets. He kicked free, ignoring the pain that chopped him with its hundred dull axes.

He scrabbled across the floor like a paraplegic crab, Dr. Masutu in a hurry somewhere across the room, Renee shaking. The tiles were cool against his skin, and the thin hospital gown had come undone. The strings dangled down the backs of his legs, lit firecracker fuses. His whole body was heating up, swollen dynamite, a bilious volcano about to erupt.

He reached Renee and pulled her hands from her face. Her green eyes were drowned with red, her face twenty years older than he remembered it. She was a stranger, he was a stranger, and neither belonged to this world. Not where things like this happened.

Jacob grabbed the respirator tube with one hand and pulled it from his throat. A piece of skin broke free from his lip and clung to the clear plastic. If only he could tear himself away a piece at a time, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, and undo his own existence. But even if he vanished, Joshua would still be there, and then Joshua would have everything.

"Tell... me...," he said. "Where?"

She turned away and sobbed some words against the white surface of the wall.

He touched her hair, fought an urge to clamp his fingers around the strands and slam the truth out of her.

Her words were invisible bullets: "You said it wouldn't happen again."

Dr. Masutu moved somewhere above them, and someone else had entered the room. They may as well have been shadows on the wall, for all Jacob noticed or cared. Dr. Masutu shouted some sort of command, but Jacob obeyed only one master now and that was his naked need to know.

"Where is she?" He grabbed Renee's chin, forced her to face him. Hands grabbed at him, plowing new furrows of agony on his shoulders.

"Where do you think?" Renee's lips trembled, bitten through in spots, cheeks shiny with tears. She appeared to have escaped the fire without injury. At least any visible, physical hurt.

"She's in the hospital, isn't she?"

"You said nothing would ever happen to her."

"Please, Mr. Wells," came Dr. Masutu's voice as if from another land, one where reason prevailed and patients were expected to will themselves back to health.

Jacob elbowed the doctor away and climbed onto Renee, his left leg skewed limp and useless. Half of him wanted to crawl inside her and hide, to seek those soft places that had always offered him sanctuary. The other half wanted her to bleed, to suffer, to choke on her words. And that half was taking over.

He drew back his hand to slap her. Dr. Masutu tried to grab his wrist, but he squirmed free, losing another piece of skin in the process. He swept his hand toward her face and her eyes locked on his, not blinking against the blow. Inviting him. Daring him.

And he stopped.

She couldn't win. Not like this.

He collapsed into a fetal position, the ointment sticky against the tiles. The floor smelled of pine cleanser and bleach. Dr. Masutu gave directions to the nurse, and someone was mopping up fluid. Dr. Masutu knelt and took Jacob's arm. This time, Jacob didn't resist as the needle entered the inner crook of his elbow.

"Mattie is in the hospital, Jakie," Renee said.

Numbness crept up his arm, rushed into his head, and the drug massaged his brain with its icy fingers.

"On the bottom floor," Renee said, as Jacob slipped back into the grotto, surrendered once more to the black soothing liquid of unconsciousness.

He drowned at Renee's last words: "In the morgue."

CHAPTER THREE

Renee didn't know what was more terrible, burying an older child or burying an infant.

Mothers should not outlast their children. Mothers should go first, by any rule of the universe, under any decree of a caring God.

She wiped her eyes and the dishwater stung. She only had three plates, and they were all clean, but she washed them again anyway. Same with the coffee cup. She had scrubbed it until no hint of brown remained. If she rubbed the cup any harder, she would wear through its ceramic skin.

The apartment was devoid of any personality. Beige couch, matching armchair, solid oak table in the kitchenette with matching benches. Bare walls of antique white, a drab sea of gray carpet. Perfectly lifeless.

She was afraid she would never feel alive again. Sure, her lungs inflated and her heart pumped blood, her fingers and toes moved, her eyes blinked. But life was more than the sum of working parts.

Once, while making love to Jacob in their first year of marriage, she had the sensation of floating outside her body. She saw the two of them below, Jacob on his back, her with blonde hair dangling as they moved in a smooth and careless rhythm of hips.

"How happy and alive they look," the disembodied part of herself had thought. Even without her glasses, she could see with great clarity from her ethereal vantage point. A voyeuristic guilt tugged her back into her flesh and the sensation had passed, but not the notion that she was totally and absurdly right where God had wanted her to be.

She experienced that same discorporate sensation last year when the tractor was lowering Christine's coffin into the rectangular, red hollow of the Earth. There had been no pleasure in the sensation that time, only an aloof split, and then she rose like a polluted balloon. She swept over the scene on a September wind, cold, brittle, bound for the dead of winter. The cemetery stones jutted like broken icebergs, the greater part of their mystery unseen beneath the surface. The ancient maple by the steel gate had already lost its leaves and stood as helpless as the priest while the tractor's engine whined. Jacob stood in a dark wool coat, holding Mattie against him. Mattie wore black mittens, and their ends were damp because she had wiped her nose with them.

The tractor stripped a gear in its winch box and the coffin jerked, the chain from which it was suspended digging into the well-shined surface. Lawrence McMasters, the funeral director, kept his lips pursed in practiced, stoic sorrow as he tried to usher the grieving family away.

The Renee she'd left behind on the ground couldn't take her eyes from the coffin, which began to spin awkwardly two feet deep into its final resting place, knocking against the earthen sides of the grave and raining dirt. The tractor operator cursed and Father Rose crossed himself. Jacob called Renee's name and then Christine's, and Renee was grateful that the main service had been at St. Mary's and that the graveside service was restricted to immediate family.

A family whose membership was now reduced.

She witnessed the debacle from the distant safety of the sky, and remembered looking down at herself with pity, though part of her was glad to be momentarily free of the pain.

She had no delusions of being an angel. In that bleak stretch of impossible perspective, she saw herself as she really was: scared, fragile, clinging to the threads of a reality whose fabric threatened to unravel.

It wasn't at all how she viewed herself in the mirror, when vanity battled insecurity and the face was always familiar, plain, and far too old. That woman standing beside the oblong hole was an utter stranger, alone and futureless, unconnected to the flesh she had created and nurtured.

The escape was all too brief, and the wind pulled her spirit back into her body, or the illusion dissolved, or the dissociative episode of grief ended. And all that was left was the coffin swinging from the end of the chain like the tool of a brutal hypnotist.

Dishes. She plunged her hands back into the soapy water. The plates needed to sparkle like those in detergent commercials. Out, out, damned spots.

There was a knock on the door. She hadn't had a visitor in several days, when the last of her friends had paid their obligatory sympathies. Her best girlfriend Kim, who knew secrets about her that even Jacob hadn't plumbed, had resigned herself to the fact that Renee wanted to get through it on her own. A stubborn blonde, that's what Kim had called her, and if she ever needed a shoulder to cry on, give a call. Otherwise, here's a casserole and don't hurry about returning the dish.

Renee dried her hands on a towel that was wrapped around the refrigerator handle. She didn't want company right now. The house was a mess. No, "house" wasn't the right word, house had connotations of home, and what had once been her home was now a heap of dark, dead ashes. This apartment wasn't home, it was a temporary sleep chamber of the soul.

The knock came again, more insistent, authoritative. Be polite, she told herself. A good hostess. Mrs. Jacob Wells. She opened the door.

It was Kingsboro's fire chief, stocky, dressed in an informal uniform of dark trousers and blue shirt. Her red hair was tied back but the sun caught some stray strands that glowed like firecracker fuses. Renee wondered if her hair color had led the woman to her career choice, the result of some homeopathic psychological pull. Or maybe she'd suffered some long-ago disaster of her own that had compelled her into public service.

"Hello?"

Renee had forgotten the woman's name, since their first meeting had been in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The Tragedy, with a capital T. That was how she referred to the night, both in forced conversation and in the hidden depths of her private thoughts. But now she saw the name above the badge, Davidson, and remembered they had spoken at some length, but couldn't recall a word either of them had said.

"Davidson, Kingsboro Fire Department. Sorry to bother you again."

"That's okay," Renee said, struggling to drive images of The Tragedy from her mind: the confusion as she rolled from the blankets, the stench of chemical smoke, the winking numerals of the alarm clock, Jacob's shouting, her attempt to follow him before the flames cut her off, the flight down the stairs, the descent into hell, the escape into night air, and then the continuing descent into a deeper hell.

"I'd like to ask you a few more questions. May I come in?"

Renee stood aside, and the sliding of the invisible mask over her face was an almost physical sensation. "Please excuse the mess. And wipe your feet."

Davidson looked down at her boots, which she had wiped on the outdoor welcome mat. She wiped again, then once more on the carpeted rug inside. Renee led Davidson to the couch and sat across from her in the armchair. The apartment seemed too small.

"First of all," Davidson said, "I'm sorry for your loss. If we'd had any chance for a rescue--"

"I know. I'm sure you guys did everything you could. Nobody's blaming you." Because Renee bore all the blame, except for that one dark sliver she allowed Jacob.

"I understand how difficult this is, but we need some more information to help us determine the cause."

"You already have my statement."

"Yes, ma'am. But that was made in what we like to call 'the heat of the moment.'" She smiled, but the expression on Renee's face made it fade fast. Davidson's voice shifted into an official monotone. "People sometimes remember things later, after they've settled their minds a little bit. Could you please go over the sequence of events one more time?"

Renee closed her eyes and tried to separate the actual events from her nightmares of the past two weeks. The reality and the nightmare had fused into one giant hell storm, a series of flickering images that seared her psyche and hot-wired her nerves. "I woke up," she said finally. "And Jake was sitting on the edge of the bed."

"Are you sure? You didn't wake up first and then wake him up?"

"No. I'm a heavy sleeper--" Renee rubbed at her swollen eyelids. "I mean, I used to be a heavy sleeper. Jake always had to poke me in the ribs to get me to stop snoring. Or so he says. I'm still not convinced that I snore, and I challenged him to make a tape recording to prove it. Seems unladylike somehow, breathing through your nose like a lumberjack in a cartoon."

Davidson nodded, and Renee knew she was babbling, but the act of recollection had pushed her to the dangerous cliff edge, the wind was blowing, the abyss was black and deep, and her balance wasn't what it should be. Renee rushed on, afraid that if she paused, she would go back to that scary place inside that had beckoned her with the promise of isolation and safety.

"I woke up and I looked at the clock because I thought it was morning and time to get Mattie ready for school. I feel it's a wife's duty to have breakfast on the table, get the family off to a good start. That's our deal, Jake works and I take care of the house. I mean, nothing personal, you being a woman in a man's job, that must be hard, especially here in the mountains where everybody's so conservative."

That almost made Davidson flinch, but her firewall face kept its grim countenance. "It's tough enough being a woman no matter what," she said.

"When Jake woke me up, I smelled smoke, and of course I thought of Mattie first thing. I yelled at Jake, but he told me to stay, he'd take care of her. We practiced, of course. We had fire drills and we put those little child ID stickers on the window and we had one of those rope ladders under the bed. Everything you're supposed to do. But the real thing is never like a drill, and I don't think you could ever practice the way it really happens. But I guess you know that better than anybody.

"I followed Jake to the door, even though he told me to stay, because I usually obey him, but I was half-asleep and confused and then the smoke made me dizzy. I was about to go into the hallway when Jacob screamed at me and slammed the door, and I trusted him to save Mattie--"

Renee's throat caught for the first time, breaking the unthinking stream of words. The fire chief waited, making no gesture of sympathy. Chapped, coarse hands, ones comfortable around an axe handle. And a wet blade of grass clung to the toe of her boot. Lying was easier now. Renee sniffed and continued.

"I waited for maybe a minute, then put my hand on the door. It was hot, and I remembered what they say about fire needing air to breathe. The alarm was going crazy--"

"Excuse me. Did your husband wake you up, or did the alarm?"

Renee shook her head. In the nightmare, the alarm was blasting like a freighter's fog horn and Jacob had the blanket over her head, pulling it tight, cutting off her air and muffling her screams. "I think the alarm was already going. But it had gone off before, like when Jacob stayed up late and burned some toast or something, and the sound didn't wake me up right away. It sort of turned into whatever I was dreaming and became a part of it. I told you I was a heavy sleeper. Jacob says I ought to get tested for sleep apnea, because that can kill you."

"Okay. You're standing at the door waiting for your husband to tell you when to come out?"

"Yeah. I think he told me to jump out the window, but we had the fire ladder under Mattie's bed. When we practiced, we all met in Mattie's room and then climbed out her window, so I thought maybe the fire wasn't too bad yet, he was going to get everything ready, then take Mattie down and come back for me. I couldn't see any fire, just the smoke, so I didn't know what it was like out there."

"Did you see flames before your husband closed the door? Out in the hall, I mean?"

"I saw a reflection of light in the dresser mirror, right before I stood up. I was still in bed and barely awake. I couldn't tell if the reflection was the fire or if Jacob had turned on the hall light or something. He yelled at me to call 9-1-1 and I tried to find my glasses and couldn't, so I punched in the numbers from memory. I must have got it wrong the first time because I had to try again."

"But you looked at the clock?"

"Yeah. It was one something, but I didn't have my glasses on, so I thought the first two numerals were a 'seven,' which is why I thought it might be morning. That's another thing that makes it confusing when I wake up, because my eyesight is really bad without my glasses. I can barely even recognize myself in the mirror without them."

"How long did you wait at the bedroom door?"

"Maybe two more minutes, then I heard something crackling and I guess something downstairs fell over, because there was a loud bang and that's when I first started getting really worried. I was wide awake by then."

"We believe the fire started downstairs," Davidson said. "The sliding glass door was open, and a couple of the kitchen windows. The fire was able to get a good rolling start with a cross-draft like that. It probably had eaten up half the downstairs before the smoke got thick enough to set off the fire detectors upstairs. Tell me, was it usual for you folks to leave the sliding glass door open?"

"That's Jacob again. He's restless, he sometimes gets up in the middle of the night and works downstairs. He makes a snack and gets on the computer and sometimes he might be gone half the night. I hardly notice, because I'm a heavy sleeper. But he likes fresh air, and this is a safe neighborhood."

Renee paused, reminded by Davidson's stare that she and Jacob and Mattie no longer lived in the house on Elk Avenue. She looked around at the pale walls of her new lifeless life.

"Are you sure Jacob woke you up? Was he in the bed when you first heard the alarm?"

"Yeah. That's what he told me. And I can see it plain as day, him sitting up with his back to me, the streetlight coming through the curtains just a little, and then he ran and threw on his robe and went out the door, and I was just starting to get out of bed. And I could hear the alarm, I remember that, and then I reached on the bedside table for my glasses but they must have fallen to the floor."

"So you found them, because I remember you had them on when we arrived."

"No, that was my extra pair. People with normal vision don't know what it's like, but I could hardly find my way out the door. Then when I finally heard Jacob yell at me, and yell Mattie's name, I opened the door and all I could see was a blur of yellow and red flames and black smoke and the house looked like it was caving in and Jacob told me to run, he'd get Mattie and meet me outside. All I could think of was to get down the stairs, fast, but I should have jumped out the window because the downstairs was one big fire and the smoke was hurting me and I was dizzy, but I was lucky I went when I did because I just made it out the sliding glass door when it sounded like the floor collapsed."

"Was the sliding glass door open when you went downstairs, or did you have to open it?"

Renee appraised the squat, red-headed woman. What right did she have to act suspicious, play macho, barge in and dance on Mattie's grave? Davidson had probably watched too many forensic crime shows on television, and now an accident could never be just an accident. Somebody always had to have something to hide.

"It was open," Renee said. "You already said that."

Davidson nodded again, the stub of head dipping, the facial features as inflexible as a rubber fright mask. "That's right. I forgot. I'd better write all this down."

The fire chief leaned forward and pulled a small composition pad from her back pocket. A tiny scrap of paper fell from the wire rings of the pad. Renee stared at the scrap, which fluttered to a rest beside Davidson's left foot. She almost leaned over and picked it up, but didn't want to come near the fire chief's leg.

"So you're down the stairs and outside," Davidson said, marking in the pad. "Then what?"

"I ran into the yard and looked up at Mattie's window. I couldn't see anything, and by then the fire was too hot for me to go back inside. I ran to the car--"

"There were two cars in the driveway. Was yours the SUV or the Subaru sedan?"

"Subaru. I grabbed my purse--"

"Your purse. You leave your purse in an unlocked car?"

"It's a safe neighborhood, like I told you. And I hardly ever carry much money. But I figured I needed my glasses or I'd be useless, I wouldn't be able to help Jacob and Mattie when they came out through the window. I carry an extra pair in my purse."

"Did you see anything unusual?"

"Besides the house on fire?"

Davidson's lips pressed together like those of a meditating toad. "Please, Mrs. Wells. I know this is difficult, but I'm only doing my job. Did you see anyone around?"

"No. Some of the lights came on in the houses down the street and I believe some dogs were barking. But all I can remember is the sound of the fire, the wood snapping and the walls creaking and the glass breaking. Then I started screaming and the scream turned into a siren and you guys showed up and I was scared because Jacob should have been out by then. The roof caved in a little and the firemen were beating on the front door with axes and I think I went crazy because all I could do was scream and Jacob and Mattie still didn't come out and they still didn't come out and they're still in there."

Renee realized she'd forgotten Davidson and found herself staring at the wall as if a film of the event had been projected there.

Davidson stood up, folded her pad and tucked it away. "I'm sorry, ma'am. This is the hardest part of the job, believe me. I'll let you know if we need anything else."

Renee glanced at the scrap of paper and followed the fire chief to the door. Davidson stood on the porch a moment, looking out over the mountain ridges. "She's home with the Lord, Mrs. Wells. It was a hard way to get there, but the getting there is the main thing."

Renee nodded, eyes bleary, wanting the awkward moment to end. Catholicism had failed her when she needed faith the most. She'd viewed Mattie's death through the lenses of a dozen philosophies and religions, yet all of them blurred into the same dead end. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, go toward the light, ride the karmic wheel, take the stairway to heaven. None of them made sense. And none of them lessened the pain.

She closed the door and went to retrieve the tiny scrap of paper from the floor, putting what she had of a home into perfect order.

CHAPTER FOUR

Littlejohn Hospital lay on the edge of town, the shining bridge between Kingsboro's urban future and its rural past. A shopping center and cluster of medical complexes were islands in the sea of asphalt leading up to the front entrance, while a cow pasture sprawled to the rear, waiting for the right developer to come along. In the street three stories below Jacob's room, Memorial Day traffic hissed in pointless conflict. Someone in the hall spat a tubercular laugh full of fatalistic cheer.

Jacob sat up and stared at the black screen of the television. The tubes were gone now and the burns had mostly healed, though portions of his body still received twice-daily applications of silvadene ointment. He was taking multiple courses of antibiotics, and the worst was over, according to Dr. Masutu. But the doctor was an optimist. The worst had only just begun.

Jacob looked at the tray on the table beside him. A fly landed on the scrambled eggs and tracked across the rubbery yellow surface. As a toddler, Mattie had called them "home flies," a cute corruption of the phrase "house flies." He watched the fly reach the tar pit of pancake syrup. It struggled, broke free, cut a lazy circle in the air, then lit again in the same sticky spot.

Renee entered the room. "Knock, knock."

Jacob closed his eyes and sank against the pillows. The darkness behind his eyelids was far too inviting.

"I hear you'll be going home in a few days," she said.

"Home," he said.

"You know what I mean."

"The wonderful Dr. Masutu explained the formula to me. One week of hospitalization for every ten percent of body burn."

"Then you should have been released last week."

"The burns feel better," he lied. "They're trying to fix the stuff that's broken on the inside."

"I took an apartment. The insurance company gave me some money until they sort things out. Donald set me up with one. I tried to pay but he said M & W would absorb it, since you own half of it."

"Which apartments?"

"Ivy Terrace."

"Nice. We only opened them last year."

"I didn't know you built them."

"Didn't build them, really. I got a commission on the land sale, subdivided a few lots, went in as a silent partner. M & W just collects the rent."

"I got a two-bedroom unit," she said, as relieved as he to avoid conversation. She opened a National Geographic.

Jacob let his gaze crawl back to the window. He'd trusted his partner, Donald Meekins, to take care of her until he got out. Donald had phoned his hospital room but Jacob had refused to talk to him. He was afraid of what he might say. The cash flow would be tight for a couple of months, but at least they had insurance.

He counted the houses on the hillside opposite the hospital. There were at least two good-sized tracts that were prime spots for development. With Kingsboro Hospital opening a new cancer wing and cardiac care facility, more wealthy seniors would be moving from Florida and New York to the North Carolina mountains. Those seniors needed homes, preferably close to health care services. M & W had built a country club outside of town, complete with an eighteen-hole golf course, but those homes had all been sold. New homes were needed for all the future cancer victims. Abnormal growth was a growth industry.

"It's too quiet in here," Renee said.

He heard a click and the television came on. One of those stupid morning shows, Early NBC or ABC Sunrise or whatever. He opened his eyes. At least he could focus on the screen instead of Renee. A man in a blue suit was interviewing a woman who kept pulling at the hem of her short skirt, wanting to show off her legs while still projecting wholesomeness and modesty. Cut.

"I really like this commercial," he said. On the screen, a lizard spoke in an Australian accent, trying to entice the viewer into buying a particular brand of car insurance.

"About the insurance," she said, as if the commercial had triggered an opportunity to bring up the subject. "I didn't want to do too much without you. But I needed a roof over my head."

"She was worth a lot, wasn't she?"

"You bastard. Don't start that again. We're going to have to deal with some things, and we may as well be civil about it."

"The money, you mean."

"Shut up. All I'm asking is that you sign the papers and let's get on with our lives. Whatever we can salvage, that is."

"We probably saved a ton on the cremation, since the job was half-done when you turned the body over to the aftercare vultures."

"I had to make arrangements. I couldn't wait--"

"--for me to attend my own daughter's funeral?"

Renee jabbed at the television remote and muted the sound. Jacob watched the silent interview guest fighting her hem line. The woman's knees were a little too knobby for his taste. Back when he had taste, that was. He turned his attention to the fly in the syrup.

Wasn't there a saying about the fly in the ointment? Dr. Masutu's tranquilizer worked miracles, freed his mind to explore the foolish. Jacob had stopped fighting, and the injections had been replaced with twice-daily pills. Diazepam. The quicker-picker-upper.

Or the easier-to-forgetter.

Or the don't-give-a-damner.

"Jake, we're going to have to talk about it."

"There's nothing left to talk about."

"There's plenty."

"There's nothing. It's all gone."

"No. There's still us."

"There's no more 'us.' There's just you and me. Or maybe just you."

"Don't talk like that. You've always despised failure. That's not the Wells way."

"I've had a lot of time to think. Hospitals are good for that, maybe even better than prisons." Jacob pulled the straw from his milk carton and poked it into the syrup near the fly. The fly's wings beat frantically.

"I know this is terrible. But maybe we can get through it together. Start over."

"The way we did after Christine? You saw how that one turned out."

Renee finally sat, in the oak and mauve vinyl chair near the window. The sun had grown a shade more yellow outside, rising above the fog that hazed the horizon. In the old world, the happy distant past, Jacob would be at his desk at the M & W office, talking on the phone, cutting deals, lining up subcontractors. Or else out on the job site, looking at blueprints as a bulldozer ripped brown gashes in the mountainside.

Developing.

That was an interesting word, with several connotations. Developers made things happen. But development was also the term for a baby's trek through the cycle, from microscopic fertilized egg to alien peanut creature to bawling, squealing reality.

"Funny, isn't it?" he said. "The kids were born in this hospital."

"That's not so funny."

"Think about it. They took their first breaths from this very same air. The same sick air." He waved the hand that held the straw and the fly finally broke free and arced across the room like a crippled bomber returning from a death run.

The door swung open. A nurse came in, a male with a sour expression and two days of stubble. He stared at Renee as if she were the patient, then wiped his palms against his hospital blues and slipped on rubber gloves. He squeezed ointment from a tube and rubbed it softly into the skin of Jacob's arms.

"You're looking good, my man," the nurse said. His ID nameplate read "Steve Poccora" and his picture beneath it was clean-shaven and smiling. The smile looked as if it had been computer-generated in a photo manipulation program.

"The doctor says I'm getting better every minute," Jacob said.

"Aren't we all?" Poccora said. Then, to Renee, "We'll have him home to you in no time."

"No hurry," Renee said.

Poccora started to grin at the joke, sensed the coldness in the room for the first time, then rubbed the ointment faster. Jacob barely felt the contact. The skin had roughened and much of the damaged layer had sloughed off. He was new in a way, pink as a baby, slick as a snake after molting.

If only he could shed his soul as easily. He'd read that the body completely remade itself every seven years as cells died and were replaced. That meant he'd been a different man when Mattie was born. A better man.

Less like Joshua.

"How's the appetite?" the nurse asked.

"Crazy," Jacob said. "Renee smuggled me in two buckets of the Colonel's finest."

"That's why you didn't like the cafeteria grub." Steve Poccora moved the rolling table with the food tray to the corner of the room. "You didn't touch it. Figured you'd be used to it by now."

"Mez compliments au chef," Jacob said in mutilated French.

The nurse took his blood pressure and pulse, wrote numbers on a chart. "Your diastolic's a little high, but nothing to be worried about."

"Do I look like I'm worried?" Jacob asked.

"He's not the worrying type," Renee said. "I do that for both of us."

Poccora looked from one to the other, as if deciding not to be the birdie in their badminton game. "Yell if you need anything."

"'Scream' is more likely." On the television, the talk show host had a parrot perched on his shoulder. The bird's trainer stood nearby, holding up a snack food. The host looked nervous, as if he feared an embarrassing episode involving droppings. The bird gave a soundless squawk, warming up for a ribald wisecrack.

Poccora picked up the food tray. "I hate parrots," he said, looking at the television. "They always get to cut you down, but you can't make a snappy comeback. They're too dumb to get it. Like talking to a ventriloquist's dummy."

"The worst ones are the dummies who look just like the ventriloquist," Jacob said. "They let their evil side out."

"Hey, you try being nice when some guy has his hand shoved up your rectum," Poccora said.

"They call that a 'prostate exam.'"

The nurse started to laugh, then gave up. He walked between them with the food tray, paused at the door. "You sure you don't want any of these pancakes?"

Jacob looked around the room for the fly. "No, Steve. They're all yours."

Steve dipped a finger into the syrup and pretended to lick it. "Hate to see good food go to waste. But this is no good. I know the infections that go through this place."

He left, and the forced humor shifted back to unbearable tension.

"Where do we start?" Renee asked after twenty seconds of silence.

"Please. You're starting to sound like my old shrinks." He fumbled for the remote, wanting to punch up the volume.

"Let's start at the beginning, then."

"The beginning. My first big mistake."

"Jake, don't do this."

"You're the one who wants it to be over. Isn't that what you've wanted all along? It's just pathetic that you needed this kind of excuse to get your nerve up." The tears were hot in his eyes, burning with the memory of the fire and all the rest of it.

His thumb pressed the volume button. Renee moved forward with angry speed and slapped the remote from his hand. He stared at the silent television as its colors blurred in his watery vision.

"Talk to me, you bastard," she said.

His throat was tight, rasped raw from the ventilator tube that had been stuffed into his lungs. He tried to convince himself that the fire had damaged him, taken the soft words from his tongue, leaving a handful of ash in the cavity where his heart used to beat. Part of him wished he had died in the fire. Part of him had died in the fire. But not the right part, the half that needed killing.

Renee's breath was on his cheek, but he was miles away, in the dark, searching for that cool grotto that the drugs carved in the stony recesses of his skull.

"You can't keep your eyes closed forever."

"Long enough."

"That won't make it go away. We've got to deal with it. You can't crawl into your shell and pretend it never happened."

"Take the money. It doesn't matter."

"Donald called me. He wanted to know when you'll be ready to go back to work." "I'm through." And he was. M & W Ventures, Inc., had built ten apartment complexes, a half-dozen subdivisions, three shopping centers, the country club, and a pair of chain motels. That qualified as a life's work, didn't it? Even for the son of Warren Wells. Maybe Donald Meekins could take the oversize prop scissors they used for ceremonial ribbon cuttings and snip the W off the corporation's name.

Jacob had made his mark on the world. A reputation you could take to the bank. Something you could use for collateral.

He could lose everything, his kids, his wife, his soul, but still those buildings would stand, a testament to willpower and vision. Asphalt to pave his way to a better future. Steel bones, concrete flesh, and a blueprint for his soul. Material evidence for Judgment Day, a devil's bargain.

"You're not through," Renee said. "I won't let you be through."

He wondered how much of it had been for her. Where did spousal support cross the line into need, what separated encouragement from the shrewish demand for perfection and achievement? Was it his own insecurity that drove him, or was her relentless desire for his success the whip that kept him in a lather? Was she the ventriloquist whose hand had guided him through his lockstep sleepwalk of greed?

No. She didn't deserve that much credit. Where he'd been, where he was going, were decisions shaped in the forge of his guts. He could blame other people, and that was fast becoming his latest survival tactic, but the justifications always rang hollow.

In the end, it comes down to you and the stranger in the mirror.

"Leave me," he said.

"It's not going away, even if I do."

Jacob smiled. The movement was painful to his chapped lips. "It's already gone." He felt the thump on his chest from the weight of the remote control she had tossed there.

"You and your fucking martyr act," she said. "As if you're the only one who has to suffer."

"I'll give you the damned divorce. Anything you want. The money, the cars, the house..."

The house. Which was nothing but a heap of charcoal in one of Kingsboro's squarest subdivisions.

"And the kids," he said, his voice taking on a shrill giddiness. "You can have the kids. No arguments from me. I don't even want visitation rights."

"Jakie."

He clenched the sheet with both hands, tried to squeeze juice from it, pressed his teeth together until his temples ached.

"Calm down. You're scaring me." She moved to the head of the bed, reaching for the button that would signal the nurse's desk.

"You should be scared."

"Do you think this is any easier for me?"

Jacob looked at her, the green eyes made large by her lenses. He was supposed to love this woman. He knew it, something strong tugged the inside of his chest, a deep memory turned over in the grave of his sleeping heart. How could something so sure and real have turned into this? How could an eternal bond dissolve like mist exposed to the bright glare of morning?

"I'm sorry," he said. That stupid, useless word crawled out of his dry mouth. He couldn't stop it. The response was automatic. He'd said that word so often in the past ten months.

"This is impossible," she said. She pulled her purse to her lap, opened it, took out a pair of clip-on sunglasses, and flipped the dark lenses over her eyes. Jacob was glad her eyes were gone. Now he could look at her fully.

"There's something else," she said. She brought a crumpled envelope from the purse. "I guess you wanted to get in one last little twist of the knife."

"What are you talking about?"

Renee fished a note from the envelope and read it. "'Hope you liked the housewarming present. Yours always, J.'"

Jacob's stomach became a great claw clutching at his other abdominal organs. "Where did you get that?"

"I found it in my car. I guess you figured it wouldn't burn since I was parked on the street that night."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's your handwriting, Jake. Don't play any more games. Please." A solitary tear slid from beneath the black curve of one plastic lens.

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

"The fire, Jake. The investigators think it might have been arson."

"I know. They talked to me about it last week. I told them I don't know why anybody would want to set fire to our house. There's nothing special about it. It's not even the best one on the block."

"But this note--" Her voice broke and all she could do was hold the beige paper in the air before her face.

"--is nothing," Jake said, his pulse like a frantic clock ticking against his eardrums, a timer for an explosion. "Throw it away."

"It's your handwriting. And the insurance--"

"Don't talk crazy, honey."

"I'm just confused. None of it makes sense. And Mattie... Oh, Jake." She squeezed the paper into a ball, stood so fast that her purse fell and scattered its contents across the antiseptic floor. She leaned over him and put her head gently on his chest.

He reached out a wounded hand and stroked her hair. "Shh. It's going to be okay. I promise."

"Please don't let it end like this," she said, her sobs making the narrow hospital bed shake.

"Everything's going to be good as new," he said, his heart jumping so much he was sure she could feel it through the thin cotton of his hospital gown. "Trust me. I'm not going to let anyone take you away from me."

Especially Joshua. No, he wouldn't let Joshua win this time. Not again. Not like always.

As he spoke soothing words and petted her with one hand, his other hand eased across her body to the paper in her fist. He tugged gently and she let go. He glanced at it, saw the cursive letters leaning to the left. Familiar handwriting. He tucked the paper underneath his sheet, secretly, and let her finish crying.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jacob Wells was released from the hospital on May twenty-ninth.

Steve Poccora wheeled him from his room to the elevator on the day of his release. Jacob insisted he was fine, but Poccora said it was hospital policy to treat everybody like infirms until they reached the door.

"After that, it's your business," Poccora said. "Trip and break your leg, for all I care. But we can't have you suing us for something that happens on the inside."

Jacob couldn't tell if the nurse was joking. So he sat in the wheelchair and watched the elevator lights blink as they passed each floor down to ground level. The elevator opened and a man Jacob recognized from the Chamber of Commerce stepped on with a bouquet of pink roses, tulips, and Queen Anne's lace. Jacob couldn't recall the man's name, though he had the thick neck and jowly, red complexion of a former football player. Probably someone in masonry supplies.

"Jacob," the man said, flashing his money smile. "How's it going? You doing okay?"

"Never been better."

The smile faded. "Listen, sorry to hear about... you know."

"Don't mention it."

"I've been praying for you."

"That helps. Thanks."

The man pointed to the flowers. "For my wife. She's in maternity. We just had our third."

Jacob nodded, staring past him at the hospital lobby, the wax sheen of the industrial tiles, the patient information desk staffed by an old lady with pince-nez glasses. Poccora wheeled him out of the elevator and the doors closed with a soft hiss, cutting off the smell of the flowers.

"Dawson," Jacob said.

"Huh?" Poccora said.

"The man's name was Dawson. You ever do that, draw a blank when you're talking to somebody, then it pops right into your head later?"

"No, man. I think you've been in here too long."

They reached the glass entrance and Poccora stopped the wheelchair. Jacob sat looking at the world outside, a changed world, a lesser world.

"End of the ride," Poccora said.

"Yeah," Jacob said.

"Your wife picking you up?"

"Yeah. She's right outside. I phoned her from the room."

"Good. You two ought to work things out. Take care of each other. Maybe you can have another kid someday."

Jacob stood. Though he had been walking the halls for the last few days, his legs were cotton candy. He waved to Poccora and went through the exit, wondering how much of himself he'd left in the hospital. The outdoors was welcome after the stale, recycled indoor air, but it somehow left an aftertaste of smoke on his tongue.

The mountains were thick and bright green with new growth and a late spring rain had washed the dust from the streets. Kingsboro had only two cab companies, each of those operated by solitary drivers who kept their own hours. Jacob could have called Donald, or any one of half a dozen friends and business associates, but the walk seemed a worthwhile challenge after the weeks spent in the hospital bed. Besides, a borrowed ride might corner him into conversation.

The talk would go to banal matters such as whether the Atlanta Braves would finally do it this year or how the late snows had affected the golf course at the country club. Anything except what Renee had called "the eighty-ton elephant in the living room." Jacob's loss. Or plural losses, depending on how deep into personal history the friend was willing to go. He never wanted to hear the words "I'm sorry" again.

The burns had healed better than he deserved. The skin was still a little shiny and tight, but with no permanent scarring. Dr. Masutu said he was lucky. If the house hadn't collapsed and spat him out when it did, the carbon monoxide might have finished him off. The doctor had tried to convince him that his daughter had been doomed no matter what Jacob had done, but Jacob didn't believe it.

He'd originally considered going by the office, sitting behind his desk and seeing if M & W Ventures still held any appeal at all. But there were too many reminders, too many photographs. His desk was just another piece of a broken past. He headed down the sidewalk, away from downtown. He had no more destinations, only a long journey away from places he had known.

On the eastern side of town, Kingsboro was a schizophrenic mix of land uses. Medical offices were clustered around the hospital like brick vultures around carrion, while some old farmhouses sat back from the road behind them, their gardens showing the first green shoots of corn and potatoes. A nearby gas station had pumps that didn't accept credit cards and its lot was a black crumble of concrete, yet a glossy sign heralded the modern British energy conglomerate that had taken over. A row of faded apartments slewed up a slight rise of earth beyond the hospital, some of the windows held together with masking tape. Soaring above those flat rooftops was a glistening, seven-story Holiday Inn.

His father had built the Holiday Inn. It was Warren Wells' last attempt at an Appalachian Tower of Babel before his death. Jacob averted his eyes from the inn, the tallest building on the landscape. But his father touched something on every horizon, from the community arts center along the highway to the recreation fields in the plains along the river that bore the Wells name. Warren Wells had built too much of this town, his civic stench lingering in a hundred corridors. Jacob had succumbed to the allure of following in those loud footsteps.

Being born here was enough of a mistake, and being born who he was made it even worse. But he'd compounded it by returning. He had once thought his escape was complete. Then along came Renee with her drive for him to succeed, and she pushed him to the only territory where victories mattered, where his accomplishments had a measuring stick. Victory from the ground up.

Now Kingsboro was where he buried his dead.

After a mile, the sidewalk ended and he walked along the clumped grass that edged the road. His breath was hard and cold and his heart beat too rapidly, but he forced his feet forward. Cars roared past, pickup trucks loaded with lumber and sewer pipes, soccer dads in SUV's, little old ladies on their way to the hairdresser, cable television techs in their long vans. Something purred in Jacob's jacket pocket. He stuck his hand in the pocket, pulled out the cell phone, and stared at it as if it were an alien artifact. Renee must have brought the jacket to the hospital, the phone planted as a ploy to bring him back around to his old self.

Jacob the developer, the builder, the one who carried the bloodline. Jacob the upstanding citizen and loving husband. Jacob, father of two--

He turned and hurled the phone as far as he could, wrenching his shoulder with the effort. The small, silver rectangle spun end over end, disappearing into a tall thicket of briars and scrub hemlock. A warped wall made of wooden slats marked the edge of a mobile home park behind the weeds. A hand-painted sign in English and Spanish offered weekly rentals, cash only. Crumpled beer cans and cellophane food wrappers clung to the weeds. This place was in dire need of a bulldozer, a cosmic clean sweep.

He walked on, the traffic thinning, his head throbbing under the midmorning sun. The birds had started their journey north, and species the likes of which he'd rarely seen passed overhead or twittered from pine branches. The land gave way to clusters of small houses, old but neatly kept, owned by people whose ancestors had bartered away the property that had made outsiders wealthy. Jacob was tired and his legs weak from lack of use, but he kept moving in a pitiful yearning for escape.

But he knew that, no matter how fast or how far he fled, he couldn't outrun himself.

A car came growling up behind him, slowed, passed. He glanced at its dented green flanks and immediately assigned its driver to the lower class. It was a 1970s family car, a gas-swigging chunk of Chevrolet steel that only a rural American could drive without shame. The windows were tinted so he couldn't match a face to such a metal monstrosity.

The car slowed again, its brake lights blinking twenty feet ahead of Jacob. The car idled in a throaty rasp of rusted muffler. Jacob kept walking. He moved past the car, looking up the road, wondering where all the traffic had gone. Even along this residential stretch beyond the town limits, there were too few roads to avoid a steady stream of vehicles.

The Chevy's engine accelerated and its exhaust hung on the damp air. The car eased up alongside Jacob again, and sweat crept beneath his eyes and scalp line. He glanced toward the car, not turning his head, and saw only his own reflection in the tinted passenger window. The car kept pace with Jacob, and he fought the urge to break into a run.

Maybe this was a robbery set-up. The crime rate was low in Kingsboro, but people were people everywhere and occasionally someone grew desperate. Jacob was dressed in a tailor-cut suit, not the kind of person usually seen on the side of a road. He was out of his element, in a place he didn't belong, pale and trembling due to his long recovery. The predators of every species had a knack for culling the weak, picking out the perfect victims.

He walked faster, eyes shifting over to the Chevy. Its engine was the only sound in that tight stretch of valley. Even the birds had vanished. The road curved out of sight in both directions, behind hills turning green with spring. The trailer park was around the bend in its own clutter. One lone farmhouse was visible in a carved pocket of the woods, but it appeared uninhabited, shutters drawn and driveway empty, the doors of its adjacent barn bolted and locked. A hand-painted "For Sale" sign was staked in the scraggly yard.

The car scooted ahead, then paused and idled until he caught up to it.

If only he had the cell phone. Even if he called for help, though, what would he tell the police? He was being stalked by a car? They couldn't arrive in time to help him anyway. He could leave the side of the road, cut over the ditch, and head between the trees. But the car had issued no overt threat, the driver holding a steady course, not veering from between the lines. The only menace was in its slow crawl, though its motor grumbled in an imagined hunger.

A robber, that's all. Nothing worse.

Jacob increased his pace to just short of a jog. Still the car remained alongside him. He didn't have a watch, but the car must have followed him for at least thirty seconds. Surely another car would have come by during that time. It was as if the road had been blocked off at each end of the mountain valley so this showdown could be staged in private.

His lungs were taut and aching, his legs about to collapse and fold. He was too out of shape. Even if he ran, the driver would have no trouble chasing him down. Fighting was out of the question. How do you fight four tons of blind steel?

You know it's him.

Maybe someone was only trying to scare him. Some of his business competitors accused him of dirty tricks, such as planting money among members of the county planning board whenever he had a variance request coming up. He'd had disputes with a few contractors, and a couple of times he had refused to pay when work wasn't done to specifications. He had an inside track on property that had been foreclosed through mortgage defaults or tax liens, and his deals had put more than one family out on the street, though they always had it coming. Was it his fault that some people didn't pay their bills on time?

Just being a Wells was plenty enough reason to be a target. These mountain people had long memories, and Warren Wells had shafted a dozen men. In some cases, he'd also shafted their wives, in a crueler but less economically damaging way. Jacob had inherited miles of built-up resentment along with the numerous tracts of commercial property.

The driver of the green car could be anybody. Someone he knew in high school? Or someone who knew Joshua? Some people still confused him with his brother, and Joshua had made plenty of enemies. Joshua, though, had been smart enough to leave town and never look back.

It's anybody. Not him.

Jacob's legs refused his command for them to move faster, and he could hardly muster the energy for another step. So he stopped, bent over slightly to catch his breath, and turned to the passenger side of the car. He reached out as if to open the door.

The Chevrolet groaned, its engine racing, and the rear wheels spun on the asphalt. The warm smell of rubber and burnt oil assaulted Jacob's nose. The car rocketed away, its tires screaming and the rear end fishtailing. The back windshield was tinted, a small Rebel flag decal on its lower left corner. One brake light was broken and dangled by wires above the peeling chrome bumper. The car accelerated around the curve before he could read the muddied tag number, but its orange, green, and white color scheme indicated Tennessee plates.

The car careened up the valley, pistons whining in rage, moving much too fast for the winding road. The backfire echoed off the hills, fading as the car negotiated deeper into the country until it disappeared from hearing. In the sudden silence, Jacob felt the pounding of his pulse against his eardrums. Other sounds filled the void--birds in the forest, a small airplane lost against the sky, a distant dog barking in territorial defense.

Jacob crouched, limp from terror. A chill enveloped him. He pulled his jacket more tightly around him and stared at the road ahead, then back. He didn't know where he was. How had he gotten out here on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere?

Not again.

He hadn't experienced a fugue state since his teens, when Joshua was playing his cruel tricks. The fugues were a protective mechanism, one of the shrinks had assured him. Nothing serious, certainly nothing that would put him in a rubber room. It was a reaction to extreme stress, that was all. Besides, that was long ago, and he didn't black out anymore.

Except, if you were suffering periods of forgetfulness, you wouldn't remember, would you?

Anything could have happened and you wouldn't know it.

A sound arose from the back side of the hill, the whisper of wheels on asphalt.

Jacob expected the green Chevy to come screaming around the curve, headlights glittering like a murderer's eyes, bumper bright in the sun. He had no strength to flee. He would only be able to stand and watch as its front grill loomed closer and then chewed him into its chrome jaws.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pray. But prayer was a ritual, a practiced art, not an escape hatch for the lapsed and faithless. The whisper grew louder, but without the accompanying growl of an overdriven engine. It wasn't the Chevy.

He blinked as the pickup drove past. The vehicle slowed then backed up until it idled in the lane across from him. The driver's-side window descended, but even before Jacob recognized the dark, tousled head topped with its ever-present gray wool toboggan, he read the logo on the door: Smalley Construction.

Chick Smalley blew a frayed rope of cigarette smoke into the air, then said, "Mr. Wells, what you doing out in these parts? You break down or something?"

Smalley had done some subcontracting work for M & W Ventures. He had plumbing and electrical licenses and could also do drywall or roofing when sober. He never missed a deadline but neither did he miss a chance to fly fish when the mood struck him. He never lied about his preferences. If the fish were biting, he'd call the boss and tell him to go to hell for the morning. He'd work three times as hard in the afternoon to make it up, and that reputation kept him busy enough to make all the living he seemed to desire.

"Hi, Chick," Jacob said. He put his hands in his pockets so that Smalley wouldn't see them trembling. "Did you pass a car a minute ago, a junker Chevy with tinted windows?"

"Nope," Smalley said, looking in the ditch ahead as if expecting to see Jacob's wrecked vehicle. "You get runned off the road? Flat tire?"

"I was just--" Just what the hell was he doing out here? He couldn't explain the encounter with the Chevy and was afraid he'd sound like a lunatic if he tried. Already he doubted if the incident had even happened. But there were the skid marks, twin black snakes crawling away from him on the surface of the road.

"You're looking rough, Mr. Wells. You need a ride back to town?"

A car came around the curve, another behind it. Traffic had returned to normal. Whatever strange spell had descended upon the valley had lifted. Jacob felt foolish standing on the side of the road and he'd lost his appetite for directionless wandering. He hurried across the lane and climbed into the passenger side of the pickup.

Smalley put the truck in gear. "Just dump that stuff in the floor," he said, grinding out his cigarette and accelerating. Jacob pushed rags, a tape measure, a vial of plumber's putty, a caulking gun, and some ragged outdoors magazines aside to make room, then clutched the dashboard in a spasm of dizziness. It must have been the tobacco smoke, a reminder of his recent tragedy. Smoke would forever bring a longing ache, and fire would always take him back to that hellish night.

"Shit, Mr. Wells, you look white as a Confederate ghost. Want me to take you to the hospital?"

"No," Jacob yelled, more forcefully than he'd intended. "Take me ho--"

He had no home. The knowledge hit him like God's fist. He looked out the window at the trees blurring past, the varying shades of green as the vegetation juiced itself in preparation for summer. This was a hostile planet, a land of pain and strangeness. You could buy pieces of it, hold up deeds and titles, but in the end all you had was the dirt above you, the dirt that busted through your coffin and filled your mouth and lungs. In the end, you didn't own the land, it owned you, it sucked you under and crushed you and hugged you and smothered you with affection, its worms kissing you into slumber, its weight greater than the tonnage of guilt and fear and rage that you carried in your living flesh.

"Do you know where Ivy Terrace is?" he finally asked.

"Them apartments you built up on the west side?" Smalley peered at him as if deciding whether to go to the hospital after all.

"Yeah. Can you take me there?" He reached for his back pocket. "I'll pay you, of course."

"Oh, no, you don't. Work is work and favors is favors. Remember that next time somebody else needs a hand."

Jacob glanced in the side mirror, and for a moment thought he saw the green Chevy roaring up from behind. He wiped at his eyes.

"I heard about what happened," Smalley said, keeping his eyes on the road as the clusters of neighboring houses grew denser. Jacob hadn't realized how far he had walked. The sun had already started its downward slide toward afternoon.

"Hard to figure the ways of the Lord sometimes," Smalley said. He reached to a stained and frayed work coat beside him and pushed it across the seat toward Jacob. "The way I figure, He did plenty of suffering up on the cross, so we all get to do a little in our turn."

Jacob looked out the window, thinking of Mattie, remembering the way she had sat on his foot as a toddler and urged him to make it "giddy-up." What did Smalley know about suffering? He didn't have a family, or any responsibility. He had a fly rod in his shotgun rack and a truck bed full of scrap lumber and rusty tools. He had a nicotine habit and dirty nails.

Smalley fumbled in the folds of the coat, opening it so that Jacob could see the bottle. The amber liquid lay greasy and thick within the confines of the glass, rolling back and forth in waves with the motion of the truck. "But the Lord gave us means to ease our suffering. That's a real blessing, you ask me."

Jacob looked at the bottle, the slick brass cap, the brown label that suggested an easy afternoon on the plantation. He pictured himself showing up on Renee's doorstep half-drunk, an excuse to launch into an abusive rage.

No, not half. Jacob hadn't been half-drunk in over a decade.

"No, thanks," he said, more to himself than Smalley.

"Suit yourself. Say, you got any work coming up?"

Jacob didn't want to tell the man that M & W Ventures was done. Renee should be the first to know, followed by his partner. Maybe Donald would buy him out and keep the earth machines well fed, continue stacking bricks and laying pavement and raising monuments to progress and ego. Taking up the Wells mantle without benefit of the bloodline. "I've been out of touch," he said.

"Yeah. I reckon so."

They circled the back end of town, past the gray warehouses and boarded-up shops that lined the abandoned railroad. Jacob used to think of this section as a slum, acres and acres in need of a wrecking ball, an urban renewal project he had once calculated as a long-term investment. Turn the old textile mill into a mini-mall, charge outrageous rent for small shops whose proprietors could peddle "handcrafted" Appalachian baskets and quilts that were actually mass-produced by exploited labor in Taiwan. The consumer was only buying an emotion, after all. A mountain town back-street offered plenty of nostalgia for those who longed for better days that had never really existed.

For the first time, Jacob saw the beauty of the broken glass that sparkled in the dying sun. The ragweed that grew in clumps along the leaning chain-link fence had outlasted the concrete. The stinking brown creek, marred by oil runoff, carried away the dregs of growth. Here and there between the buildings, a honey locust made a reach for the sky, bristling with thorns and defiance.

Smalley shifted gears and turned up the hill onto a private drive. A wooden sign with a fieldstone base heralded "Ivy Terrace." The sign was landscaped, ringed with pine straw and non-native pansies. Nestled among the hardwood trees on the ridge were the apartments that Jacob had helped develop. More of his false ego, a mock testament to the ephemeral nature of ambition.

And behind one of those doors was Renee. Another mock testament.

"Stop," Jacob said.

Smalley glanced at him and eased in the clutch. When the truck slowed, Jacob pushed open the passenger door and eased to the ground. He reached in and pulled the bottle of liquor from its hiding place.

"A small blessing," Jacob said.

"Don't blame you none. Give me a holler if you got any work for me."

"I'll do that, Chick."

"I'll be praying for you."

"It can't hurt none."

Nothing could hurt, not anymore. Smalley turned the truck around and headed back toward town. Jacob tucked the bottle inside his coat and headed for the shrubs that had been part of a landscaping scheme he had once designed, never realizing until now the type of concealment it provided. He found a gap in the rhododendrons and crawled among the twisted branches. The space had been used before. Empty beer bottles, a condom wrapper, a mottled, crushed French fries container, and a sprinkling of cigarette butts marked it as the territory of the transient. Jacob instantly felt at home.

He twisted the metal cap from the liquor bottle and toasted the distant sky, which was barely visible through the thick, waxy leaves. "To our mutual suffering," he said.

The first taste was harsh and welcoming. The second was merely welcoming.

CHAPTER SIX

Renee cradled the phone against her ear. She'd chipped her fingernail polish opening a can of Tab. Sitting in an apartment she wasn't paying for, talking of money, made her lightheaded. Despite the wealth Jacob had accumulated early in their marriage, this money seemed unreal, almost sickening. "It's two million dollars, Kim."

"Holy crud," came her best friend's voice from the speaker. Kim worked as a technician at the hospital, testing blood samples. The sound of hospital business occasionally came through in the background, doctors being paged, carts rattling by, the ringing of nurses' bells.

"That doesn't make up for it. Not a bit."

"I know, honey. We've been through that. You don't have any more tears left to cry."

"I was the beneficiary. Jacob set it up that way. After Christine died, he insured the three of us for a million dollars each. Said that's how his father always did it."

"And you let him?"

"Well, it's the kind of thing you don't think about much. You can't let it weigh on you, that tragedy might strike again. I figured we'd used up more than our share with Christine."

"I know you guys are movers and shakers, but a million is a million, even with inflation. What are you guys going to do with the money?"

"That's just it. He's hiding from all this."

"Forget about him for a minute. What do you want?"

Renee looked at the urn on the mantel. She didn't want the ashes around as a constant reminder of The Tragedy. She carried around enough reminders inside her.

She'd hoped Jacob would pull himself together and get through his grieving process, decide with her what they should do with the ashes. It had been over two months and he still refused to have any contact with her. "I want Jake to be happy. That's all that's left for me, Kim."

"Your parents gone?"

"Yeah, they left last week. Dad's not doing too well. Said now he didn't have any grandchildren to spoil. Mom helped, but I can't talk to her about the heavy stuff."

"Well, I'm here whenever you need me."

Renee's throat caught and the tears welled up without warning. She stuck a finger behind her glasses and brushed at her eyelashes. "I can't do this much longer. I want Jake."

"Didn't he get weird after Christine?"

Renee's chest clenched around her heart. "Yeah. He went AWOL, but I was so focused on Mattie that I hardly noticed."

"He'll work it out in time. He'll see how much he needs you. You know what I've always said about men."

Renee barked a half-sob, half-laugh. "'They can't see the light because their heads are up their butts.'"

"In the meantime, you need to invest that money. What's done is done but you still have to live."

"I guess so."

"It's what Mattie would want."

"Sure."

"And, if worse comes to worse, you can always ditch Jacob and move in with me."

"You're not my type. You're too emotionally stable and your place is too messy."

"Yeah, that's always been my problem."

A shadow broke the sunlight that slanted through the curtains. Someone was outside her door. Her apartment, like all the others at Ivy Terrace, had a private entrance. The top stories were accessed by a shared set of stairs, but each had its own deck. She waited for a knock but none came. It must have been an errant courier.

"I'd better be getting back to work," Kim said, tugging Renee back to the phone.

"Things crazy at the lab?"

"You know how blood is. People just can't seem to live without it."

"Okay, thanks for letting me whine."

"Renee?"

"Yeah?"

"I hate to say this, but you made a million the hard way."

"I'd pay a hundred times that to have Mattie back."

"I know. It just seems a little strange, that's all. Like a silver lining in a black-as-hell cloud."

"Yeah." She didn't want to start crying again. "Oh, there was one thing I wanted to ask you, since you've been here awhile. Do you know anything about Joshua Wells?"

"Jacob's brother? I've only been here a few years longer than you. I heard some stories, but apparently he left town years ago."

"What kind of stories?"

"The usual, troubled-rich-kid stuff. Vandalism, shoplifting, drugs, soliciting hookers. What, Jacob never told you?"

"I guess he was ashamed. He's always going on about living up to the Wells name."

"Get that man some help. Get both of you some help. Now I've really got to run. I have some Type O that's just crying out to be HIV-negative."

"Bye, Kim." She hung up and looked at the window again.

The shadow was back. The deck planking squeaked with footsteps. She wondered if Davidson was snooping around. She was about to go to the door when the phone rang.

She looked from the door to the phone. Ivy Terrace was upscale, safe. And she had locked the door. She always locked the door. It was Jake who was careless about such things, like leaving the sliding glass door open on the night of the fire--

She picked up the phone. "Hello?"

The line hissed with empty electronics. Four seconds passed.

"Kim?" she said.

"It's me."

"Jake! I've been worried sick. Where are you?"

"The place I said I'd never go."

"What? You sound terrible. Do you have a cold?"

"I got another present for you."

"I don't want a present. I want you to talk to me."

Jacob's voice grew fainter. "Special delivery."

He added something she couldn't hear because a car with a busted muffler roared through the parking lot outside.

"Jake, we need some counseling. We need to work things out. About the money and about us."

"Mattie," he said.

"Yes, that, too. We need to return her to the dirt. It's something we should do together, no matter how you feel about me."

"My daughter."

"Mine, too."

"I didn't know."

"Jake, are you okay? Please don't tell me you're still drinking. You know what stress does to you."

"The door," he said, and the line went dead.

Was he the one who'd been outside her door? The phone signal had been clear and steady, not fluctuating the way most wireless signals did in the mountains. There was a pay phone in the apartment's laundry room, but whoever was at the door wouldn't have reached it in the interim between her seeing the shadow and answering the phone.

Renee brushed her hair and grabbed her purse. After what Kim had said about Joshua Wells, she planned to go to the Kingsboro police department and check on his criminal record. She'd heard long-time residents mention him once in a while, but she knew little about him other than that he'd moved out of town shortly after his mother's death. Joshua hadn't even shown up at the reading of Warren Wells' will. Of course, Jacob had already been guaranteed the money, so she couldn't blame him.

She opened the door and was reaching for her sunglasses when the package flopped at her feet. It must have been leaning against the door. It was in plain cardboard about the size of a saltines box. She went to the edge of the deck and peered over the side, expecting to see a UPS or FedEx van. The parking lot was nearly empty, the tenants off to day jobs and errands.

She picked up the package. It bore no label. The box was light, and might even have been empty. She carried it inside to the narrow table in the kitchenette, got a butcher knife, and slit the tape between the top two folds of cardboard.

As she peeled the flaps back, the odor of stale charcoal assailed her. Inside was a stained bundle of white cloth. She touched it, and then recognized the lace brocade around the small collar. It was the dress Mattie had worn at her First Communion.

She pulled the dress out, knocking the box to the floor with the motion. The dress was silk, and the bottom half of it had burned away. One sleeve had been torn off, and a black rip ran the length of the abbreviated back. Despite the ruin of the dress, it evoked an image of a beatific Mattie bowing before Father Rose, accepting the round wafer from the priest and putting it between her lips.

"Matilda Suzanne," Renee whispered, pressing the garment to her cheek. "Oh, my baby."

They had picked out the dress together, Mattie insisting on a "grown-up girl's dress," not one of the plain ones with a bow tied in the rear. She'd worn white socks and black shoes with single straps and the slightest rise in the heels. Her hair had been pinned back with lacquered white barrettes in the shape of doves. Though this was her big sister's day, Christine had also worn a tiny white dress, adorned with some milk spit-up on the front.

The memory so overwhelmed Renee that she wasn't aware how long she stood there, rocking back and forth, the cloying stench of scorched fabric in her nostrils. After a time, the dress grew heavy in her hands, a relic that was both treasured and despised. It should have burned up in the fire. She had prayed for understanding, she had accepted the loss as one of God's mysterious workings, and she had wiped clean the slate of her soul. Yet here came this piece of a miserable past back into her life.

No, God hadn't delivered this. Jacob had.

The phone call, his cryptic phrases, the mocking voice, almost as if he were blaming her. Taunting her. Torturing her.

He wasn't himself. The realization broke her heart all over again. She had promised to be strong for him, to bring him back from whatever abyss failure had pushed him into. But how could she rescue him when she didn't know who he was? How could she save him when it took all her energy to save herself?

Jacob must have visited the charred wreckage of the house. Maybe Mattie's dress had been caught in some strange backdraft and wafted away from the flames into the surrounding woods. With all the commotion and activity, no one would have noticed, nor recognized its significance. But Jacob knew. He'd attended the communion, one of his rare visits to St. Mary's.

The dress had leaked bits of charred cloth onto the floor. Renee spread the garment across the table, then knelt and collected the pieces. As she touched the black scraps, they broke into smaller pieces. They were disintegrating even as she tried to collect them, and her desperation to save the scraps only made them crumble faster.

She gave up and washed her hands in the kitchen sink. The black specks swirled down the drain, lost to her forever, gone to some lightless place of decomposition and decay.

Maybe Jacob was breaking down in the same way. She couldn't let that happen. She dried her hands, grabbed her purse, and went outside into the sunlight. The wind off the white pines swept away the charred smell, and her head was clear by the time she reached her car.

The police department lay behind the Fuller County courthouse in Kingsboro, in the old part of downtown that had thrived before chain restaurants and big-box retailers pulled most shoppers to the main thoroughfares. The records office was headed by a stern woman with glasses as thick as Renee's whose steel-gray hair suggested she had been employed there long before the advent of computers. Renee tapped at the bulletproof window until the woman looked up from her desk, lips pursed as if she had just eaten the lemon wedge from the iced tea in front of her. The woman pushed back her chair with a complaint of springs and sauntered over to the service window.

Renee pushed a button and spoke into a microphone mounted on the window ledge. "Yes, ma'am, I'm looking for any records you have on Joshua Wells."

"Joshua Wells?" The woman tilted her head back and peered at Renee as if studying an insect. The speaker made her sound as if she were asking for an order at a drive-through window.

"Yes, ma'am."

Renee thought the woman was going to ask her why she wanted the records, but she said, "Do you have a middle name?"

For an instant, Renee thought she meant her own name, then realized that even a town as small as Kingsboro might have had several Joshua Wellses. "No, sorry. Can I just have them all?"

The woman made a chewing motion, then said, "It's public record. All you have to do is pay the fees."

The woman pointed to a sign on the wall that was lost amid the clutter of "Most Wanted" posters, meeting reminders, and communication codes. Searches were five dollars and copies were fifty cents each.

"That's fine," Renee said.

"It'll be a minute. That's Wells, W-E-L-L-S, right?"

"Yes. Like Warren Wells."

"Oh, yeah. 'Joshua' was his kid's name, wasn't it? One of them, anyway."

Renee nodded. The woman went to a computer and typed in the name without sitting down. She frowned at the screen, and soon came back to the window. "There's not any."

"That has to be a mistake. I understand he had been charged with several crimes."

"Could be a couple of things," the woman said. "Maybe the records were ordered expunged by a judge, or they could have been sealed if he was a juvenile at the time of the offense."

"What's the age for being tried as an adult?"

"Depends. For most crimes, it's sixteen."

"Okay, sorry to trouble you."

So either Kim had been wrong, or Joshua's crimes had occurred during his early teens. Renee paid with a twenty and declined a receipt. While the woman made change, Renee pressed the button and asked, "Did you know Joshua Wells personally?"

The woman shook her head, experienced at deflecting any probe for off-limits information. "No. He made the papers once in a while, for sports and things. He was an all-star pitcher before he dropped out of high school. I heard he moved after that."

Newspaper. She decided her next stop was the library, where she could go through the microfiche files of the Kingsboro Times-Herald. At least she'd be able to put a face with a name and start filling in the puzzle. She'd seen his picture in the Wells house when she'd had dinner there before her marriage, but both the boys had been adolescents then. Identical twins often developed different facial features over time.

She was nearly to the door when another thought occurred to her. She knew little about Jacob's past. Her probing had met a sullen wall that had no chinks. Sure, she knew Warren Wells had made millions in real estate, that his mother had died in a tragic fall, and that Jacob had disliked his parents. But he hadn't opened up about his past and had left no paper trail. He didn't even own a high school yearbook.

She returned to the service window. The records officer was just settling back into her desk. Instead of waiting for the woman to return to the window, Renee pressed the button and asked for a search on Jacob Wells.

The clerk's eyes narrowed. "You with the newspaper?"

"No, just a citizen."

"He's done a lot for this town. Just remember that."

How could Renee forget?

The woman sipped her tea as she operated the keyboard. She squinted at her computer screen and the printer on a filing cabinet beside her desk began scrolling out papers. She brought the stack of papers back to the window and slid them through the slot. "That will be eight more dollars."

Renee paid and flipped through the papers, her heart pounding. The names in the "suspect" line of the reports read "Jacob Warren Wells." Her Jacob.

Vandalism in the high school parking lot, suspect allegedly gouged the paint on a number of vehicles with a set of keys. Arson, suspect allegedly set some boxes on fire inside a hotel during a Christmas tree growers' convention. Misdemeanor shoplifting and underage possession of alcohol, suspect allegedly stole two bottles of wine from a convenience store. Misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance, suspect allegedly caught smoking marijuana under the high school stadium bleachers. Obstructing and delaying a police officer, suspect allegedly gave his brother's driver license during a traffic stop in an attempt at deception.

Arson again, this time at the construction site of a building under development by Warren Wells. Charges were later dropped when the fire was attributed to "accidental causes."

The last arrest report was the most incredible, the most difficult to imagine. Cruelty to animals, suspect allegedly suffocated a cat by sealing it inside a plastic bag.

"Is that the one you were looking for?" the woman said, watching her.

Renee shook her head. This must be another Jacob Warren Wells. But the address listed on the reports was 121 White River Road, the same one Jacob had used the few times he'd mailed postcards home during college.

"That was the other Wells twin, wasn't it?" the records officer said. "The one who lost the child in the fire?"

"It must be a mistake." She didn't push the microphone button, but the woman was close enough to hear her through the slot.

The woman drew back from the glass as if offended. "We're not perfect around here, but we can't be wrong that many times."

"Jacob and Joshua," Renee said, the papers like toxic freight in her hands.

"You know what they say about twins," the woman said, speaking off the record for the first time, eyes like wet beetles behind her glasses. "One of them always turns out bad."

Renee took her change and went outside, into a world whose sun was too brilliant to allow dark things to hide.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"I sympathize with you, Jacob. Really, I do. If I could bend on this, you know I'd do it for you in a heartbeat."

The words were spoken with a practiced precision. Rayburn Jones tented his fingers and leaned back in his leather chair, his eyes like oil drops, bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lamps. The computer monitor to Jones's left had an aquarium screen saver across which sedate and colorful fish drifted without fear of predators. The maple top of the desk was like the surface of a still, dark lake. The office could have served as a museum set for the subspecies known as "insurance adjuster."

"I don't understand." Jacob wiped at the stubble on his chin. He could smell the stink of his own sweat.

"I'm afraid we can't pay out any more money until the case is settled. You know how it is. These things go back to the underwriters, they smell something funny, and they clamp down on the money flow."

"That damned fire chief--"

"I'm sure you're aware anytime there's even the smallest doubt, we have to be a little more careful." Jones leaned forward. "Please don't take it personally, Jacob. Nobody's saying the fire was deliberately set. But the paperwork has to go through clean."

Jacob's breath was rapid, the air in the room suddenly too thin. Blood rushed to his face. His side ached. He spoke through clenched teeth. "My daughter died in that fire."

Jones glanced at a framed family portrait that showed his own three daughters wearing curls, ribbons, and smiles. "I appreciate the depth of your tragedy, Jacob. My Anne was on Mattie's soccer team, remember? I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through."

Jones's steady tone was infuriating. Jacob slipped a trembling hand into his pocket, touched the cool metal flask. If only he could take a drink, he'd be able to handle this. "I've talked with the fire chief. She said there were some loose ends but nothing that would lead her to call in the State Bureau of Investigation."

"She still hasn't filed a final report and it's been nearly three months. I'm afraid I can't make any more disbursements until the official determination is made. Your wife received the short-term settlement to cover temporary living expenses, but that's all we can do right now. Believe me, as soon as I get the nod from corporate, I'll deliver the check to you personally."

Jacob didn't tell Jones he'd only seen Renee once since his release from the hospital. That encounter had been an accident. He was at the bank withdrawing a hundred dollars from their joint savings account when the teller signaled the manager. Renee was in an upstairs office that overlooked the bank's lobby, talking to someone whose suit looked as crisp as new bills. She saw Jacob through the glass walls and mouthed his name, then ran for the office door and downstairs.

He ducked outside before she could catch him. The hedges and shrubs had become his ally, his natural environment, and he'd moved among them until he was several businesses away from the bank. She finally gave up the search. He waited until she finished her dealings and watched her drive away. Jacob had put that day's expenses, for liquor and a motel room, on his credit card instead of paying cash. Prior success had given him one clear benefit in his new life: he had a $50,000 limit on his platinum VISA.

"The house was valued at three quarters of a million," Jacob said. "A lot of custom woodwork. And contents were insured for another quarter million."

"Please, Jacob. We go way back. Don't make this more difficult than it already is."

"It's not difficult at all. You bury your kids and that's that. No more crying over spilled milk. Fold the tent and move on."

"Jacob."

Jacob pressed the bottoms of his fists against the top of Jones's polished desk. "You shook my hand at those Chamber dinners, pushed through the paperwork so my developments were covered, cashed my premiums like clockwork. Now when I need you, you've turned into a goddamned machine."

"Check your policy. No one's accusing you of negligence, but the fire could have had any number of causes, some that might not be covered. And, if you don't mind a little advice from a friend, clean up the drinking. That's not helping. If corporate sends in some investigators, that's the first thing they'll jump on."

Jacob stood and reached for the ornately carved business card dispenser that had two brass pens protruding from it. He yanked one of the pens from its sheath and pointed it at Jones. "See if I ever write you another goddamned check."

Jones stood, too, six feet three and outweighing Jacob by fifty pounds. "I knew your daddy, Jacob. A fine man. I see some of him in you. I watched you come along and get your foot in the door, and you were ready to really make something of yourself. You don't know how proud he was when he learned you wanted to take up the business. But it's getting lost in this mess you're making."

Daddy. That was the last person Jacob wanted to think about. Daddy had been cut from solid Republican cloth, as sentimental as a brick. Jacob always wanted to be better than him in some way, whether it was spiritual or psychological, but instead had ended up competing with the old man's memory on the playing field of commerce, where the game always favored the unimaginative and the sociopathic. Whenever Jacob looked in the mirror, he saw some of the old bastard looking back at him.

And Joshua. Except Joshua was always smirking.

But he could muster no more rage, not at Daddy, not at Joshua, and not at Rayburn Jones. His heart, the last little bit that wasn't completely dead, was still full of Mattie. He cherished the pain and let it nourish him in the dark hollow of his soul. The pain was a furnace that consumed the alcohol and ambition and even the anger. The pain was his comfort, the suffering a twisted blessing that dragged him through the days, his closest companion.

He felt a hundred years old. He'd lost everything and only money could make it better. Only money could make the problem go away. "Sorry, Ray. I just can't think straight anymore."

Jones moved around the desk and put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. It was a condescending gesture, but was also Jacob's first human contact since leaving the hospital, not counting the bartender's touching his palm while returning change.

"Do yourself a favor, Jacob. Get some help. See somebody." Jones looked through the office door to make sure none of the other agents were eavesdropping. "It's hard as hell when you're a man. Nobody will let you cry, and you can't let yourself do it even when you're alone."

"She was all I had left, Ray." Jacob choked down a sob, knew he would sound like a blubbering drunk if he let himself slip and break.

Rayburn Jones patted him on the back, cool and manly. "No. You've got Renee, and you've got the rest of your life. What would Mattie think if she saw you like this?"

Jacob rolled his eyes heavenward. In the blur of tears, the ceiling tiles could have been the thick, white cotton of holy clouds. But he couldn't see Mattie's face. If she were up there, she was just as far from him as ever.

She couldn't forgive him because she wasn't here anymore.

Anger drove the moistness from his eyes. "Sorry I lost my temper, Ray. I know it's not your fault. You've got procedures to follow."

Jones gave a grim smile. "Hang in there. You've got some savings, don't you?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Ray. I'll check back soon." Jacob wasn't going to tell him about the million-dollar policy on Mattie, eight hundred thousand of that for accidental death. The policy was made under Renee's name through another insurance agent. He didn't know if she'd filed the claim yet. The Wells financial philosophy had been to have all developments and properties appraised for as large an amount as possible, borrow as much against them as the banks allowed, and over-insure everything.

As Rayburn Jones had once told Jacob, you didn't buy insurance because you expected to collect. You certainly didn't bet the life of your loved ones. But in the final amortization of things, tragedy was just another wise investment. The safe play.

Insurance agents and undertakers took their pounds of flesh. The cops and firefighters and ambulance drivers cashed their paychecks whether you lived or died. Hospitals stayed open by overcharging those with major medical coverage, even the patients on deathbeds, so the poor could die alongside the rich. Churches collected the wages of sin, at least from those whose guilt compelled them to tithe. The system worked.

Jacob turned to leave, bracing himself for the exposed walk back through the main office. Before the fire, he had moved between those desks with his head high and shoulders square, a smile for the ladies and a handshake for the men. He had been a Wells, a Somebody, a pillar of the community. Now he was just another object of pity. They avoided each other's eyes.

And they didn't even know the worst of it. They hadn't seen him huddled in the Ivy Terrace laurel thicket, a sheet of construction plastic tied overhead for a roof, a bundle of blankets for a bed. He took his liquor a bottle at a time, so the litter hadn't piled up, but the Beanie Weenies, sardines, and Pop-Tarts had left their silver bones around him and wrecked his digestion. His view of the world was not from a panoramic ivory-tower turret, but rather a narrow gap in the waxy leaves that allowed him to watch his wife's apartment door.

It was not just a matter of perspective. It was point of view. He was at the wrong point.

Back under the sunshine of the parking lot, Jacob looked out at the vast green ridges that surrounded Kingsboro. The tops of houses were scattered among the slopes, and a few oversize displays of success rose above the tree line. He'd never blamed anyone for building up high, and the views allowed Realtors to demand outrageous lot prices. Jacob himself had put together a few cabin subdivisions, some of which had led to the slaughter of hundreds of old-growth hardwoods. Money didn't grow on trees, but paper came from trees and money was printed on paper. The progression had once seemed logical.

Instead of running through the forest and screaming at the top of his lungs, he had to walk with feigned dignity a couple of blocks to the counselor's office. He knew he should change his jacket, at least. He'd slept in the shirt for three nights running and the white collar had turned a dingy shade of ivory. His shoes were scuffed and muddy. The uniform was all wrong for the business at hand. But he couldn't muster the energy for a shower and shave, and most of his clothes had burned up in the fire. The real estate mogul's stage costume he once wore was now smoke, mingled with the melted electrical wiring and the ash of rayon carpet, entwined with the soul of his dead daughter.

If only he hadn't stopped by the M & W office in the middle of the night, drunk and looking for money. He'd cleaned out the petty cash drawer, flipped through his mail, and found her note:

"Meet me at Total Wellness at 3 p.m. Wednesday. Please. I love you. Renee."

It was a waste of time, and he didn't want to expose their pain to a stranger. He'd had enough of counselors when he was a teenager. But he owed her something. He wasn't sure what, but if he gave her an hour, maybe she would shut up and leave him alone. She'd brought out the heavy artillery, the bravest lie or the most pathetic truth: "I love you."

Total Wellness was a two-story building set off the highway in a business park. It combined a daycare, substance abuse center, and counseling services and was subsidized by various government funds. The behavioral health care industry was booming in these days of escalating stress, all bright brick and painted columns, the sun and clouds reflecting off the windows. Jacob cut through the lawn, no longer a man for sidewalks and other ordinary routes.

Shouts arose from the daycare's playground. Jacob couldn't imagine a worse sound. The high-pitched laughter was broken glass in his ears. How dare those children be happy and healthy when all those tomorrows ahead were denied to Mattie and Christine? Through the whitewashed fence, he could see the swing sets, tangled hair, and pale, dirty faces.

He stopped, his lungs like stone.

Mattie stood behind the fence, her arm thrust between the tall pickets. Her upturned hand was curled into a small fist.

Her fingers slowly uncurled, and gray ash poured from her palm.

Jacob reeled, the sky spun, and he found himself on his hands and knees, his face pressed against the grass. Vomit sluiced up from his gut, razing a raw path through his throat and stinging his nasal cavity. Tears filled his eyes as he coughed and spat the dregs of undigested liquor and bile. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked back at the fence.

Mattie was gone. A dark red ball floated over the playground fence, hung a moment at the apex of its arc then fell as if gravity held a grudge. The giggles continued, an adult supervisor shouted, and one of the kids began bawling. Someone was watching Jacob from a window, and he forced himself to stand and head for the counseling center.

They would think he was just another drunk putting in a court-ordered visit. The disguise fit too readily. He swallowed and the acid burned its way back to his stomach. A drink would help, but he was dehydrated and knew the liquor wouldn't stay down. Jacob staggered through the double doors.

A woman with a pinched face slid open a glass window at the counter and sniffed like a rodent. "May I help you, sir?"

Help. That was a good one. "I have an appointment."

"With whom?" She flipped through a notebook. "Or are you looking for the AA meeting? That's in Room 117, down the hall to your left."

"I'm in no shape for quitting," he said. "I'm with Rheinsfeldt."

"Oh." The clerk checked the book. "Excuse me, Mr. Wells. I didn't recognize you."

Jacob was sure he'd never met the woman. But his photo was on file at the local newspaper, and between the Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis Club, he appeared in its pages at least twice a year. His development projects often came before various planning boards, sometimes bringing opposition from the neighborhoods where M & W's bulldozers disturbed morning sleep and residential character. And, of, course, the fire had been front-page news.

He licked his chapped lips. "Has Mrs. Wells arrived?"

"No, sir, but if you'll have a seat, I'll let Dr. Rheinsfeldt know you're here."

"That's okay, I'll do it myself." Jacob pushed open the door that led to the private offices, feeling the clerk's stare on his back. He wanted to show up for the appointment early and chat with the doctor for a couple of minutes, so that Renee would walk through the door already on the defensive. Jacob had learned from past experience that psychologists naturally gravitated to whichever side seemed most in need of "curing."

Jacob read the names on the doors as he went down the hall. A cadre of wise and caring souls sat behind those doors, with leather chairs and computers and rows of books on the shelves. Their heads were filled with questions and they deluded themselves into thinking they served a noble purpose. Their meat was anger and pain, their drink was pity disguised as sympathy. They had all the crude hunger of vampires and slightly less moral conscience.

The patients were perhaps even more complicit in the cycle of mutual dependency. They sat, wept, shared personal troubles that would be worthy of canned laughter if displayed in a television sitcom. The best part was they only had to open their souls for a single hour, and then they could stumble into the sunshine believing they had shed themselves of a bothersome skin. They could pretend they were a step closer to wholeness, but Jacob knew the whole was always less than the sum of its parts.

Because, where he went, so did Joshua.

He took a drink from a water fountain in the hall, then slipped into the rest room and swallowed as much of the whiskey as he could stomach. He rinsed his mouth and splashed water onto his face. A pale, pinched face stared back at him from the mirror. With his bloodshot eyes and swollen eyelids, he could easily pass for a crier. If you wanted to win a joint counseling session, imagined tears scored more points than honest and soul-deep revelations. He should know. He'd won all of his counseling sessions as a child.

Dr. Rheinsfeldt's office was the last on the left wing. The door was open. Rheinsfeldt was a shriveled, shrunken troll doll of a woman, her hair as wild and wispy as Einstein's. She pretended not to see him, as if giving him an opportunity to case the room. Let the rat sniff the cheese before you send it on a run through the maze, Jacob thought.

Magazines were spread haphazardly across the coffee table in the center of the room, smart stuff: Science News, Consumer Reports, Smithsonian. A spotless glass ashtray lay on top of them, one virgin cigarette resting in a notch on the rim. A single shelf on the wall bowed under the weight of thick hardcovers. The dusty books looked as if they had been undisturbed since the days of Jung.

Rheinsfeldt closed the magazine she had been reading, unfolded her rubbery legs from beneath her torso, and reached for the cigarette. She put it in her mouth and spoke around its stem. "You must be Jacob Wells."

Jacob looked into the hall behind him. "Oh, you're talking to me."

"A sense of the absurd. I like that. Please come in and have a seat."

The room had two chairs and a small couch, arranged in a triangle. This was the first and most obvious test. Rheinsfeldt would slide his peg into a certain shape of hole depending upon where he sat. If he chose the chair beside hers, it would reflect urgency and desperation, a desire for an ally. On the other hand, if he sat on the couch, then Renee might be expected to sit beside him in a show of matrimonial support. He decided on the third alternative, the middle of the couch, which left no room for Renee on either side of him. When he sat, Rheinsfeldt's dark eyes glimmered with satisfaction, as if she had suspected such a move from the start.

"Most couples arrive for counseling sessions together," Rheinsfeldt said, removing the unlit cigarette from her mouth and placing it in her small purse.

"Renee believes in being punctual. I believe in being early."

"Ah. All relationships are built on conflict. Why should marriage be any different?"

"Have you ever been married?"

"What, are you crazy?"

"Then why should we listen to anything you have to say?"

"Because, Jacob, I can't tell you anything. All I can do is help you hear yourself."

Jacob looked at the walls. Rheinsfeldt's gaze was like a hundred needles trying to pin him to a cork board. He looked out the window, but it was small and revealed only a square of boring blue. The room's walls and ceiling came at him as if he was in a trash compactor, and he closed his eyes.

Renee's entrance was heralded by her hair conditioner, a minty brand that used to arouse instant erotic feelings in Jacob. Now it was the stench of failure, as sickening as wood smoke. He forced himself to look at her, knowing those green eyes would remind him of Mattie.

He realized with horror that he couldn't quite recall the rest of Mattie's face.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Renee looked around the room at the incomprehensible art, anywhere but at Jacob's face. She couldn't decide if Dr. Rheinsfeldt's tastes in interior decoration were personal or clinical. The woman herself was squat and toadish, eyes dark with looming advice. She gave the impression of someone whose interpersonal relationships had been dramatic and brief.

"Where to begin?" Rheinsfeldt said.

"You're supposed to ask, 'What brings you both here today?'" Jacob said. He stank of liquor and a sour rot. "Didn't they teach you that in shrink school?"

"Don't mind him," Renee said. She could barely stand to look at him. If those police reports were true, she didn't know the man she'd shared the last ten years of her life with.

There you go again," he said.

"He's been drinking," she said to Rheinsfeldt.

"Have you been drinking, Jacob?"

"Maybe." He crossed his arms and slumped down in the couch.

"Okay. This isn't a treatment program," Rheinsfeldt said. "You can do that later if you need to and want to. Right now, let's get a dialogue going about this other thing."

"The thing," Renee said. Reduced to a single vague noun, The Tragedy seemed to have lost its power. She tried to see the two of them through Rheinsfeldt's eyes: a wild-eyed, frantic woman and a drunken, unshaven man in filthy clothes. Renee's right hand went to her wedding band and she twisted it until her knuckle was red.

"I read the papers," Rheinsfeldt said. "Everybody's heard of the Wells family and the fire. I think that's where we need to start. That's where the pain is. The death of a child--I can only imagine."

"No," Renee said. "The pain started before that."

"Tell me."

"Don't you dare," Jacob said.

Renee forced herself to look at him. His jaw trembled, cheeks still pink where the new skin had formed. He looked like an alien, a Hollywood stunt double with a lump of putty piled on his shoulders, broken marbles stuck in for eyes. He ran the back of his hand over his lips and jerked forward, as if wanting to beat her to the punch line of some pointless joke.

"She's always been like this," he blurted.

"Always?" Rheinsfeldt said. "When was that?"

"When we first got together," Renee said. "He pretended to open up, but there was always something hidden away. He didn't even tell me his family was rich until we had dated for half a year." "She was always after the money," Jacob said.

"See what I mean?" Renee said to Rheinsfeldt. "How can he even talk about money when our children are dead?"

"Jacob? That sounds like a pretty damning observation."

"I take half the blame for Christine."

"Christine," Rheinsfeldt said. "That was last year?"

Renee opened her purse and brought out tissues, ignoring the box of Kleenex on the edge of the table. The box was too perfectly positioned, its calculated alignment not matching the chaos of the room. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. "Christine was a SIDS baby."

"I'm terribly sorry. How was the marriage going before then?"

"It wasn't heaven but we were working on it, for the sake of the children."

"I hate to say it, but that's not the only reason for making a marriage work. You're not just a mother, you're also a human being, with wants and needs of your own."

"I'm not a mother anymore." Renee felt the familiar pressure in her chest, swallowed hard, and squeezed the damp tissue.

"And she wants way more than she needs," Jacob said.

"I understand your anger," Rheinsfeldt said. "You have a right to be angry for such a loss."

"Jacob hasn't been himself lately," Renee cut in, hating herself for defending him. "He was under a lot of pressure in his business. Jacob never talked much about it, but his partner told me the company was burned by a couple of contractors and--"

"You don't know anything about land development," Jacob said. "All you know is a big house and nice appliances, LL Bean and Nieman Marcus catalogs."

"Let's get back to Christine," Rheinsfeldt said. "I know you'd rather not talk about it, but--"

"It was a Tuesday," Renee said, and her hands grew cold even though the room was as stifling as a coffin in hell. Jacob had never let her talk about Christine, and though Renee and Kim had cried together a dozen times afterwards, she still ached to spill it all again, as if the act of psychological spewing would purge the poison from her system. "I'd just got off the phone with my mother. Christine was down for her afternoon nap, she was as steady as a clock, naps at ten and three. I had soup on. I was trying to save money then, figuring with two children we had a lot of college to pay for one day. The soup was boiling over--"

"She called me at work that morning to gripe," Jacob said. "Said she was tired of cutting her fingers to get rid of leftover vegetable scraps and why couldn't she just put some groceries on the credit card--"

"Let her finish, Jacob."

Renee felt a sick but grateful smile slide across her face. Rheinsfeldt was as tough as any prison warden, and she seemed to be on Renee's side. "I burned my fingers," Renee said. "That's what the medics said when they arrived. I don't remember much after that, but I took the pot off and then went to check on Christine because it was nearly four and about time for Mattie to get home from school."

"That's when she found her," Jacob said.

"What did you see?" Rheinsfeldt asked Renee.

"You have to keep it a secret, don't you? I mean, patient-doctor privilege or whatever?"

"Yes. Everything you say in this room stays in this room. Except the parts you take with you."

Renee looked at Jacob, expecting to see hatred in those stranger's eyes, but he only nodded in resignation. She would tell it the way he wanted. She'd once promised in front of God to honor and obey him.

"I went in, and Mattie was standing over the crib. I didn't hear her, but she must have come through the sliding glass doors in back and up the stairs. She was pale and her lips moved but she wasn't making a sound. And neither was Christine. You have any children? No? Then you probably don't know babies are never absolutely quiet, no matter what. Even when they're asleep, they twitch or sigh or wheeze or kick the blankies."

"Christine was way too quiet," Jacob said. "Blue."

"It was the blankies," Renee said, and the words came easy, just as they had when she talked to the rescue squad and then the doctors and then the police. She's said them so often that the words were a recitation. "There's this new thing where you're not supposed to let babies sleep on their stomachs, so I had blankies in there to prop her up on her back. But somehow she turned and got under them. She--"

"Mattie knew something was wrong right away," Jacob said. "It was Mattie who called 9-1-1 while Renee tried to revive Christine."

"How terrible," Rheinsfeldt said, and the wrinkled troll-doll face looked almost sad. "Where were you?" she asked Jacob.

"On a job site. We were clearing for a subdivision. If it wasn't for the cell phone--"

"You mean Mattie didn't call you first?"

"I told Mattie to call 9-1-1," Renee said. "What the hell is this? We had enough of that stuff from the police. We're the victims, remember?"

"I'm just trying to understand," Rheinsfeldt said, her eyes seeming to grow a shade darker and more obscure.

"It wouldn't have mattered anyway," Jacob said. "The ME fixed the time of death at around 3:15. Christine must have smothered shortly after Renee put her down."

"You know the only thing that's kept me from losing my mind?" Renee saw that Jacob was paying attention now. If only he'd paid that much attention in the immediate aftermath, when depression crushed her like God snuffing a cigarette.

"What?" Rheinsfeldt asked. The woman didn't take any kind of notes. Maybe she was arrogant enough to count on memory, but Renee knew that memory could lie. Memory told you all the lies you wanted to hear. You could count on it to deceive you.

"Because it seems like it happened to somebody else. I mean, I know I was there, I know I had the baby, but she was gone so fast, I can tell myself she was never born. And don't preach to me about denial, or the value of acceptance. This is how I grieve--by not letting it have happened, at least not to me."

Jacob put his head in his hands and spoke to the floor. "I tried not to blame her."

"How did you deal with it as a couple?" the doctor asked. "Focus on each other? On Mattie?"

Renee pondered the different responses. The truth was not an option. "Jacob threw himself into his work. He pulled away from me, but we each drew closer to Mattie. I took her to visit my parents for a week, and then we took a cruise to the Cayman Islands. The water's so blue there."

"Jacob wasn't with you?"

"No. That subdivision deal--"

"The Realtor balked," Jacob said. He sounded sober now, as if the hard hammers of business considerations had knocked him awake. "We had a nice row of tract houses, half of them pre-sold. The realty company said we were charging too much, that we were cutting our own throats because we were trying to turn over some upscale houses on the other side of town. The company undercut us and siphoned off some of our buyers, and we took a bath on the mortgages. Never build on spec in this town unless you own the bank."

"But what about Mattie?" Rheinsfeldt said, nonplussed by Jacob's passionate diversion. "How did you relate to her after Christine's death?"

"I don't know," Jacob said. "I just felt so helpless. My old man would have told me to pull my balls out of the sand and keep them swinging. When you get a raw deal, you turn it around. So we--me and my partner--decided it was a good time to buy if it looked like prices were dropping. So we went in on a few lots around town, high-end commercial space."

"He gave me money instead of himself," Renee said.

"I figured the best way to focus on Mattie was to spoil her like crazy," Jacob said. "And it took money. The cruise, riding lessons, Disney World, shopping trips to Charlotte."

Renee didn't like Rheinsfeldt's reaction. The counselor's lips curled as if valuing money was somehow distasteful. She had no comprehension of what it meant to be a Wells.

"It isn't unusual to throw yourself into practical pursuits when faced with an emotional tragedy," Rheinsfeldt said. "But how did you feel on the inside?"

"Inside?" One of Jacob's eyelids twitched. "I don't have any inside anymore."

"Please, Jake," Renee said. "Don't change into...you know."

He stood, paced, stopped at the window. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to snatch up the potted geraniums and hurl them against the wall. He turned, fists clenched. "You could never understand, not in a million goddamned years."

Renee wasn't sure whether Jacob was addressing her or Rheinsfeldt, because his eyes kept swiveling in their sockets. She figured the words were meant for her. She'd heard them plenty enough.

Rheinsfeldt didn't flinch, just sat in her chair with professional poise. "How did you feel on the inside?" she repeated.

"Like my guts were on fire. All the time. I had stomach trouble, diarrhea, pain so intense that Tylenol couldn't touch it."

"Guilt, perhaps?" Rheinsfeldt's tone was that of a game show host whose contestant was coming up short in the final round.

"No, the guilt was all mine," Renee said. The tears were hot in her eyes. She didn't try to hold them back. Damn, she was getting good at this. "I'm the one who put Christine down for the nap, I'm the one who arranged the blankets. I'm the one who brought her into this awful world."

"Do you really believe it's awful? If so, you wouldn't have had any children in the first place."

"Mattie was an accident," Renee said, and Jacob stopped pacing by the window.

"An accident?" Rheinsfeldt sniffed blood in the psychological pool. "So perhaps that contributed to Jacob's desire to spoil her. Maybe he didn't think--"

"He didn't think. That's the point. We had it all planned, get the business going and get settled, accumulate some wealth, and then talk about having a family."

"How old were you then?"

"Twenty-two," Jacob said.

"Twenty-one," Renee said. "We know which night we got pregnant." She looked at Jacob and the pain in his face was worth millions. "Tell her, Jakie."

He turned to the window again. The sky was dull and blue, limitless, like her love.

"We always used condoms, even after we were married," she told Rheinsfeldt, though she was really talking to Jacob, delivering the words as if they were nails in flesh. "The pill gave me migraines, and the diaphragm and foam were so messy. One night in August, Jacob had gone out for drinks with one of his old college classmates--yes, he'd started drinking again around that time. I think it was the fear of success, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, I don't even know who these classmates were, but it must have been some party, because Jake came in at about four in the morning. It was dark and I was half asleep, but he crawled on me like an animal. I tried to push him away. I'm no prude but I like a little foreplay, plus he didn't put on a condom. He forced himself in."

"Jacob?" Rheinsfeldt interrupted, as if fearing that Renee was gaining control of the session.

"She liked it," Jacob said to the window. "It was probably the best night of her life."

Renee squirmed. Jacob had been more passionate that night than any other, almost as if he knew he was planting a baby inside her. Almost as if he wanted a child. And some small part of her had accepted it, had pulled him more deeply into her.

The sex hadn't been as intense even when they were deliberately trying for the one that would be Christine. Stinking of whiskey and sweat, tongue like an attacking viper, and body like a weapon, his excitement had swept her up and over the edge of the universe. And she hated his causing her loss of control.

And here he was, about to do it again: make her lose control. She forced herself to think of Christine, small and blue-skinned against the blanket. And Mattie, lost amid the big fire that had burned away the last bridge that connected her to their happy past.

"Three times," Renee said. "You wanted to make sure, didn't you, Jake?"

"You didn't fight it," he said.

"I'm not supposed to fight it," she said. "You married me, remember?"

"Everybody makes mistakes."

"We made them together."

"A Wells never fails."

Renee swallowed hard, trying to push the anger down her throat. It lodged there, making each breath an effort. The sudden silence in the room was thick and oppressive. Rheinsfeldt edged forward with serpentine ease.

"Obviously, you loved each other enough to carry the baby to term," the doctor said. "And Jacob is a successful businessman. It sounds like you two were getting everything you wanted. What part of your common dream didn't work out?"

"After that encounter, Jacob wouldn't touch me for weeks," Renee said. "Like I was the dirty one, or maybe he was embarrassed by his passion. He was gone when I woke up and didn't come home until the afternoon. We fought a few times, threw things, nothing too physical, mostly yelling, then him storming out."

The doctor nodded as if such behavior were perfectly normal. "Why did you behave that way, Jacob?"

"I was afraid she was pregnant."

"Why was that so frightening? Was it the responsibility?"

"No. The bloodline. I was afraid I would be a lousy father, just like I was taught."

"Taught?"

"By my own lousy father."

"Jacob, this sounds like an issue we'll need to work on privately. But for today, let's see if we can understand this one little piece of the puzzle."

"He sobered up when I missed my period and we got the test results," Renee said. "He was the perfect husband, worked hard all day, phoned me before and after lunch, showered me with attention when he got home. It was like being newlyweds again."

"And the honeymoon ended?"

"Mattie was a quick delivery. She looked so much like Jacob. Not in the features, maybe, since she got my eyes, but in the way she smiled and laughed. The way her eyebrows scrunched when she was upset."

"She was beautiful," Jacob said, heading toward the door. "Better than we deserved. I'm done."

"I hate you," Renee said.

Jacob kept walking.

"We need something for you guys to work on," Rheinsfeldt said to Jacob's back. "Something to build on for the next session."

Jacob went around the corner and was gone.

"See?" Renee said. "It's impossible."

Rheinsfeldt pulled a tissue from the box on the table and held it out to her. Renee took it but didn't wipe the tears away, didn't stanch the thin streams of mucus running down her nostrils. She knew she looked a wreck, cheeks blotched, eyelids swollen.

Rheinsfeldt put a reassuring hand on her knee. "Considering Jacob's history, you might be forced to commit him involuntarily."

"History?"

Rheinsfeldt's compassionate expression melded into an impenetrable mask. "You didn't know."

CHAPTER NINE

Jacob left the building and hurried past the playground, afraid he would see the vision of Mattie again. If the hallucinations started, the carefully constructed wall inside his head might crumble, brick by brick. Already, darkness broke through the chinks. And the things inside the darkness might slither out if the gap widened.

The session was a mistake. Nothing had changed since his teens. You couldn't trust them. You couldn't trust her.

He turned the corner and headed down Buffalo Trace Lane. The county historical society said the street had once been a path where buffalo traveled to the high grazing lands in the summer. The Cherokee and Catawba hunted there, put up temporary meat camps, and moved into the valleys when the frost came. Now all the buffalo were gone, slaughtered in order to build the roads that bore their name. Jacob's throat was raw from the bout of vomiting. The air of the town tasted like old coins. A bank's neon clock said 4:37. Back in his old life, Jacob would probably have an appointment somewhere, with a developer or tenant or maybe a loan officer. In his old life, he would be running late.

Back in Rheinsfeldt's office, Renee was probably crying. Rheinsfeldt would swallow it all in her eagerness to help, and Jacob would be "the problem child" again. Now that he was gone, they could conspire against him. Just like always.

Renee loved that story about the night Mattie was conceived. He'd been drunk. He wouldn't have remembered it at all without her help. But once she'd reminded him, it had been burned into his mind forever. And Mattie was the result, and she was also burned.

Forever.

He needed some cash. The credit card was nearly topped out. He didn't have a postal address so he couldn't apply for another. The way all the financial and credit institutions were tied together, you couldn't slip through the net if you were carrying heavy debt.

He moved like muddy water down the sidewalk as Kingsboro dragged him toward its heart. The town his father had helped nurture now bristled with concrete menace, the old three-story buildings blocking the surrounding mountains. The hardware store where his grandfather bought cut nails and hand tools now sold polyvinyl bird baths and plastic signs that said things like "Forget the dog... beware of the OWNER." A girl sat on a bench by the door, Kingsboro's version of a Goth, tiny swells of adolescence on her chest and black lipstick smeared by the cell phone she was holding. She rolled her eyes at Jacob as if he were of a different, dangerous species.

He was.

Three men stood outside the drugstore, one of them smoking. They laughed at the idle afternoon, fingering their pockets in the shade. Jacob recognized the middle one as a roofer who had held some M & W contracts. The man's left arm was in a sling, and Jacob wondered if the injury was accompanied by a workman's compensation claim against one of his fellow developers.

"Howdy, Jacob," the roofer said. Jacob ran through a mental list of names, trying to match one with the face. His father had taught him that showing interest in workers as human beings made them more productive. That meant better profit margins. Warren Wells' philosophy was built on the idea that every person had a role in his empire. "Hi, fellows," Jacob said, deciding to include them all. He used their native tongue, that of the Southern mountain boy. He'd perfected it as a youngster, though it never came as naturally to him as it did to Joshua. "Nice afternoon, ain't it?"

"Yep," the man in the sling said. "We been missing you at church."

The roofer was a member of the choir. Jacob had to mentally remove the stubble, comb his hair, and press him into a suit and tie, but he could picture the roofer praising the Lord, singing about trading this house for a mansion in the sky, a mighty fortress is our God, worthy is the lamb, grace that is greater than all our sin, it is well with my soul, I surrender all. And the blood. Lots of hymns about the revelations of cities charred with fire, oceans boiling with blood, a coming judgment spelled out against the dark, gathering clouds.

"I know," Jacob said. "I've been missing it myself."Father Rose had stopped by several times while Jacob was in the hospital. Jacob had at first refused to talk to him, then asked the preacher the question that had no answer. Why did God let the innocent suffer? When the standard answer came, of the Lord knowing best and that all was in His blessed hands, Jacob had become so angry that he wanted to strangle the old man. He'd shouted and cursed at the priest until the nurse came and gave Jacob a shot. The priest was gone when Jacob came back from the dark grotto. No doubt Father Rose hadn't mentioned the incident to the congregation, merely asked the church members to pray for Jacob's and Renee's acceptance of their loss.

"The Lord's always there to help you heal," the roofer said.

The Lord had too many agents of healing, that was the problem. From Dr. Masutu to Rheinsfeldt to Father Rose, Jacob was bound for glory no matter what. God probably needed a developer to help house all those angels. Real estate followed the universal law of supply and demand. When the value went up, only the richest could buy.

"I'm getting better," Jacob said to the roofer. His chest hurt and he was thirsty.

"Terrible thing, to lose a daughter like that."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Jacob wondered if those words were actually in the Bible, or if they were like most religious uttering and simply repeated until they became meaningless, a hollow mantra, an oral admission of helplessness and resignation.

"That He does," the man with the cigarette said. The wind rose and the American flag on the pole in front of town hall snapped to brisk attention. A woman came out of the drugstore carrying an orange-and-white-striped prescription bag. Jacob recognized her as also being a choir member. Her face was twisted as if it had been kicked by a horse. She nodded to Jacob and went to stand beside the man in the sling.

"We're praying for you, Mr. Wells," she said. "You and the missus."

"It can't hurt none," Jacob said.

Nothing could hurt, not anymore. Not when his skin was new and his heart was encased in emotional scar tissue. Prayers and arrows could not penetrate. He looked at his bare wrist as if he had an appointment, then said good-bye and hurried away. He went past town hall, a brick building that bore a portrait of his father in the lobby. Next to town hall was the downtown fire station. He glanced at his reflection in the glass door and saw a hunched, sickly man.

Then the door swung open and the fire chief, Davidson, came out. Her belt was too tight and her stomach strained against the waistband of her pants. Her thick biceps were tight against her short shirt sleeves. Sweat darkened the blue shirt beneath her armpits.

"Mr. Wells, I've been trying to get hold of you," she said.

"I've been trying to get hold of me myself."

"The report came back from the SBI. I did the initial scene, and I didn't see anything that set off alarms. But when there's a fatality, we have to give it a closer look. The spalling and the depth of the charred remains suggested that it started near the sliding glass door by your computer."

"My wife already told you that."

"There was some question about why it spread so fast. The state lab did a gas analysis and didn't find any trace of an accelerant. When a house gets eaten up in less than twenty minutes, you would expect to find some lighter fluid, gasoline, or something as simple as the impression of a matchstick."

"You're talking arson."

Davidson gave a dutiful nod of the head. "That's why we asked about any enemies, problems at work, that kind of thing. And of course there was the autopsy..."

Jacob turned away and looked at the skyline, the tarred tops of buildings, a transmission tower glinting silver on a distant hill. He couldn't think of Mattie lying cold on a stainless steel table, black skin peeling and flaking like that of an overly toasted marshmallow, the sharp blades of strangers probing into her scalded organs. Easier to see her as four pounds of ash, dust, and bone bits resting in a ceramic urn in Renee's apartment. She was part of the sky now, he tried to tell himself, up there in a Catholic heaven singing about mighty fortresses and worthy lambs.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wells. But we had to look at the lungs for signs of smoke inhalation."

"I told you she was still alive when I reached her. And I couldn't goddamned save her."

"Not that we have any reason to suspect foul play, but the smoke damage confirmed she was still breathing when the fire started. Arson is sometimes used to hide a murder, but it doesn't work very well. Murderers have this idea that their sin will be purified by fire or something."

Jacob wanted to grab the stocky woman by her shoulders and shove her against the brick wall. His left eyelid twitched and his lips were tight against his teeth. He forced himself to breathe through his mouth, swallow deeply as directed by those television self-help gurus. The air was thick as smoke, the air was a hot snake sliding down his throat, the air was broken glass in his lungs.

Child murder was a different, poisonous atmosphere.

Davidson examined him with cool amphibian eyes. "My report's going to say an accident caused by the wiring. Something shorted out in the wall socket, probably an electrical surge caused by the computer, and a fluke spark touched some papers near the desk. The papers apparently smoldered for several minutes before catching on. With the bookcase right there, and so much wood used in the construction, that would account for the rapid spread."

"What about the smoke detectors?"

"Weak back-up batteries. The same surge that started the fire must have shut down their main power. I'd guess the batteries came with the original installation. Most people never think to check their detectors because they get so used to seeing the little red test lights always on."

"So this means you finally believe us?"

"It's not a case of believing or not believing," Davidson said. "It's about removing any shadow of a doubt. For all of us."

"You think I was afraid somebody burned my house down? That maybe they were trying to kill me and got Mattie instead?"

"It's a brutal planet, Mr. Wells. And there's the inescapable coincidence that your house was insured for a million dollars. Your wife and child were insured for a million each in the event of accidental death. And you were insured for five million. It could have been an eight-million-dollar fire."

Jacob peered into the bottomless grottoes of Davidson's eyes. "But then nobody would have been around to collect."

"Somebody would come out pretty flush no matter which way it turned out, don't you think?"

"And it just happened to be us." Jacob wiped the dry corners of his mouth. One of the large bay doors of the fire station groaned and revealed a gap of darkness at its bottom. The aluminum panels of the door lurched and lifted with a grating sound. The broadband radio on Davidson's hip hissed static.

"My wife couldn't have started the fire," Jacob said. "She was in bed with me."

"She was standing outside the house when the first responders arrived."

"You don't know Renee." Neither did Jacob.

"I'm trained to look at the evidence, Mr. Wells. Nothing personal. But people do strange things for money. Anyway, it looks like she's come out of this better than you have."

Jacob looked down at his soiled shirt. One of the sleeve buttons was missing. The knees of his pants were scuffed and the toe boxes of his shoes were caked with dried mud. He wore no socks. He'd dressed better than this in his most decadent student days, when he would sometimes wake up on a strange couch with a throbbing head and memories as elusive as an opium dream.

"She didn't do it," he said.

"Take it easy. I'm trying to tell you what the lab results were. But from what I've seen and heard, her story just doesn't hold together."

"You're going to have the police charge her with something?"

"I don't have any evidence. But I'm not finished yet."

The bay door was fully open now. The silver grill of the fire truck caught the late afternoon sunlight. Inside the station, a man in yellow rubber pants began unraveling a canvas-covered hose. The traffic on the street grew thicker as everyone cheated five o'clock in order to beat the evening rush. A car horn sounded, but Jacob kept his gaze on Davidson.

"She lost her child, and all you can think about is walking her through hell again," Jacob said. "What kind of monster are you?"

"The hungry kind, Mr. Wells. Because I don't go away 'til I'm satisfied."

"We'll not speak to you anymore without a lawyer."

"That only applies to police interrogation. I have a public duty to determine the cause of the fire. That goes beyond victims and insurance policies and hardship. It's all about the cold, gray facts."

"I hope you choke on them."

"Of course, the police are the first to get a copy of my report."

Jacob turned his back and stomped down the sidewalk. His skin was clammy and he was far too sober. Kingsboro's windows leered at him, alternately flashing his reflection and allowing him to see into the faces of the storefronts. He passed a pawn shop featuring carpenter's tools and old Nintendo cartridges, a music store with a garish neon sign in the shape of a guitar, a home decorating store that stank of new carpet. Strangers swept past him, heading for sit-down restaurants and television news. Most of these people were not from old local blood. The locals kept away from downtown during rush hour. They rose early and worked late, immune to the cancer of the clock.

Jacob turned the corner and was relieved to no longer feel Davidson's eyes on his back. Renee would never do anything like that. She couldn't. She had been in bed, he'd been the first to awaken, the first to smell smoke, the first to try to reach Mattie. Even if Renee wanted him dead, she would never put Mattie at risk. Davidson didn't know a damned thing. Just another dyke wishing she had a pecker, a gun to notch when she brought down one of Kingsboro's big boys.

The town thinned, the buildings now broken by vacant lots and blank alleys. A closed furniture factory, one of the casualties of free-trade agreements, slouched behind its chain-link fence like a defeated beast. Behind the factory stretched a parcel of chalky brown dirt that was ribbed with erosion, a real estate deal gone south. Jacob walked faster, the breeze drying his sweat.

He was approaching a vacant Methodist church when he heard the familiar rusty death rattle. The green Chevy with the tinted windows roared into the parking lot behind him. Jacob panicked and looked for an escape route. He could turn and run into the closest store, a jeweler's specializing in engraved gold, but somehow the rules of this strange psychological showdown required that no outsiders be involved. He ran toward the adjoining lot and hurtled a sagging chain-link fence. The property was the site of a bank under construction, another temple of Kingsboro's new economy.

The Chevy accelerated and closed the sixty feet in seconds. The brakes squealed and the tires grabbed pavement as the driver realized that Jacob was beyond the bite of his bumper. Jacob ducked between a ditch-digging machine and a stack of cool cinder blocks. The Chevy eased out of the parking lot and turned onto the construction property. A crew of Hispanic workers were pouring a concrete floor at the far end of the building, but they were too busy with wet cement to notice Jacob or the car. Jacob pressed deep into the shadows and waited for the Chevy's next move. The car crept forward like a cat that had cornered a mouse, patient and confident and playful.

Jacob eyed the distance between his hiding place and the steel-girded shell of the building. He would never make it before the Chevy delivered its killing blow. He couldn't run back to the parking lot without being cut off. His best chance was to slip down the rear of the property, where a creek bordered a stand of jack pines. The car couldn't reach him there unless it was the sort of mythical beast that could sprout wings and fly.

He fumbled for the flask and pulled it from his pocket. Evan Williams, eighty-six proof. His blood had chilled at the first sound of the car, and his numb fingers fought with the lid. He closed his eyes and let the liquor settle into a hot ball in his stomach.

The car idled, purring like a giant asthmatic dragon. Jacob knew it would never give up on its prey. Even if he beat it to the creek and made for the safety of the undergrowth, the Chevy would find him again. Jacob took another harsh swallow, the heat inside expanding into frustration and anger. What behavior would the dragon least expect from its chosen victim?

He stood, shouted, and charged the car. He raised the liquor bottle as if it were a battle mace. The sight of Jacob approaching like a suicide bomber must have unnerved the driver, because the car's engine didn't rev in anticipation of combat. The car neither attacked nor retreated.

Jacob reached the driver's-side, his fingers tight around the neck of the bottle, its contents dribbling out and running down his sleeve. He pulled the bottle back to smash the window when he saw his reflection in the tinted glass. He hardly recognized himself, so great was his dissipation over the recent weeks. Fear and rage had contorted his face. A crazed stranger looked back at him, a string of drool dangling from bared teeth, hair tangled, dark wedges of flesh ringing his bloodshot eyes. His arm froze in shock and revulsion.

The driver's side window descended slowly and once again Jacob was face to face with himself.

CHAPTER TEN

"You ain't changed a bit, brother."

Jacob looked into the grinning mirror image and his muscles tensed to bring the bottle down in a smashing arc. But, as always, his self-hatred faltered when it counted most. The bottle slipped from his fingers and bounced off the packed dirt.

"Why?" Jacob said through clenched teeth.

His twin brother looked down at the liquor bottle. "Since when did upstanding citizens start drinking five-dollar bourbon straight from the bottle? I thought that junk was for white trash like me."

"What are you doing here?" Jacob repeated.

"This is the 'Town That Wells Built,' ain't it? If a man can't return to his ancestral home, where else can he go?" Joshua gunned the engine. "What do you think of my new ride?"

"What's the idea of stalking me?"

"Hey, lighten up, Jake. Still got that little problem with paranoia? I thought you saw somebody about that."

"Fuck you, Josh."

"You're as pissed off as a snake in duct tape. But get over it, because we got business. Family business."

Jacob wanted to tear himself away, to run for the safety of the woods, because this threat was bigger and sharper and more dangerous than a homicidal car. But those intense hazel eyes mesmerized him and melted the years away. His lungs hurt, and he realized he'd been holding his breath. "I've got nothing to say to you. Go away."

"This ain't like blowing out the candles on our birthday cake together. Just because you make a wish don't mean it comes true."

Wish me. The night of the fire. "You don't belong here anymore."

"We came up from the same dark hole, Jakie Boy." Joshua's breath was fetid and thick, mingling with the car exhaust. "And I been in the hole a long, long time. Gets lonely down there. But I guess you're figuring that out for yourself."

"I don't owe you anything."

"No, because all of it's already mine. You was just holding it for me."

Now that the initial shock had passed, Jacob could see the small differences between him and Joshua that only a few people would notice, the subtle marks of time and gravity. Joshua had a nearly invisible scar above his right eyebrow. Joshua had never tried to control his alcoholism, so the broken blood vessels beneath the skin of his face were more apparent. His teeth were also more yellow and uneven than Jacob's, the result of different eating habits and lack of dental care. But the rest of the features would fool anyone short of a well-trained detective. Joshua even had the same hair length and density of stubble, as if he'd been observing Jacob's slide into self-destruction and had made an intentional effort to copy it.

Not that Joshua had ever needed a role model for this particular type of decline. He'd always been inspired on his own. He'd stripped himself of the Wells taint and moved into a rat-infested mobile home just across the border in east Tennessee. While Jacob had been staging his decadent poet's act in college, Joshua was piloting charter bass boats on Watauga Lake for thirty bucks a day, a cooler of beer at his feet.

"You got your share," Jacob said. "Now go away."

"I had a piece," Joshua responded with a smirk. "That pie tastes so good, I want the whole thing now."

With an effort of will, Jacob broke Joshua's stare and looked past him to the gloomy interior of the Chevy. The upholstery was torn and the passenger seat was patched with silver tape. The car smelled of cigarette butts and fast food grease. Two rubber shrunken heads hung from the rearview mirror, their duplicate stretched lips and wizened eye sockets a nightmarish replica of Joshua's grinning face.

"Got company," Joshua said, nodding past him toward the construction crew. One of the workers, a white man in an orange hard hat and blue jumpsuit, was approaching. "I reckon the sign at the entrance that said 'Private Property, Keep Out,' wasn't just a suggestion. People take everything so serious these days. Property rights, deeds, ownership. 'What's mine is mine' and all that happy shit. It's a selfish world, ain't it, Jakie Boy?"

Jacob said nothing, watching the man in the hard hat approach. "I'll have them call the cops."

"Oh, you just go ahead and do that. I'm sure they'd be all ears when I started telling them the truth."

"You don't know the truth."

"The truth is what you make it. There's what really happened, and there's the way you set it in your mind so you can live with yourself."

"You weren't supposed to come back." He'd figured his twin brother was gone for good, the seed split for a final time. But the bond was stronger than flesh and ran deeper than blood.

Or maybe only exactly as deep as blood.

"Get in," Joshua said. Not a command, not an invitation. Just words.

Jacob hesitated as the man in the hard hat took off his gloves and punched at the numbers on a cell phone. The tiny electronic box looked out of place in those thick, scarred hands, as if a Neanderthal had come upon the controls of a time machine. But this machine would summon the police, and Jacob didn't want to be thrust under their gaze any more than he already was. He might be guilty of crimes he couldn't remember.

Jacob crossed to the passenger side of the decrepit automobile. The handle didn't work, so he waited for Joshua to open the door. Foam chunks dribbled from a split in the vinyl as he settled into the seat. The man in the hard hat held the phone to his ear. Joshua backed up in an arc so that the man could get a good look at the license plate, then punched the accelerator and threw up a cloud of dust and gravel. The Chevy had a four-on-the-floor gear shift, and as they exited the construction site and hit the street, Joshua grabbed second and tore a long shriek from the rear tires.

"You haven't changed a bit, either," Jacob said.

"I'm as ugly as I ever was."

Lunch hour had just ended, so the traffic wasn't heavy. But Joshua's driving tactics made the street seem crowded and narrow. The speedometer needle bounced at fifty-five as the car wove through the thirty-five-mile per hour zone. They passed an old man in a Mercedes SUV who mouthed a curse at them, but Joshua had already cut the SUV off before the driver reached the horn.

"Where are we going?" Jacob asked.

"Where else? There's only one place good enough for the two of us. That place we said we'd never go."

Jacob had the sensation that the car itself was stationary, that instead the world was whirring by in an insane and jumbled blur of color. The business district was brick red and concrete gray, glass green and power-pole brown. The road was a hard river that flowed backward to a black underground source. This moment had always existed, this now was forever, this vehicle was an embryo in which the two of them were bound. He would never escape the creature that had stolen half of his genetic material.

Joshua slid a cassette into the tape deck. Vintage Johnny Cash, falling into a ring of fire. Joshua joined in the chorus: "Burns, burns, burns."

"You're a sorry son of a bitch," Jacob said.

"I wish I could have been there when it happened. Remember in the old days, when we used to share everything? I'm jealous, Jake."

"No, you're not. And my life is mine. Even when it turns to hell."

"A million dollars. Plus the house, what's that, another three-quarters? You make the old man look like a piker. At least when he played the system, he tried to slip under the radar. You laugh in its fucking face and dare God to catch you."

"You don't know anything about it."

"They got newspapers, even where I been living. I've always managed to scrape up enough to subscribe to the old Times-Herald. A man's got to stay up on things if he wants to better himself. But all I read about was how Jacob Wells did this, Jacob Wells did that."

Here Joshua shifted out of his rural accent so easily that he might have been a drama professor. "'Upholding the heritage of community service started by one of Kingsboro's early patriarchs.' I started to wonder if they was really talking about my older brother, or if some imposter had done took his place."

"I'm only older than you by seventeen minutes."

"Still, that was good enough for the old man to make you the Number One Son."

"Lucky fucking me."

They reached the outskirts, heading west toward soft, rolling farmland. In the pastures, cattle bent their brown necks for the new growth. Barns stood peeling red paint against the breeze. Here and there a tractor bit steel teeth into the earth, demanding a future harvest of the dark soil. Along the highway, shadows filled the inside of an abandoned produce stand, a forlorn stack of wooden board bones and chicken wire skin that had been around since the days of sharecropping.

The Johnny Cash song ended, gave way to "Walls of a Prison."

"You're a clever bastard, Jake. First, you pulled the wool over the old man's eyes, fed him that line about how you wanted to carry on his life's work. Stepped into M & W like it was a pair of broken-in shoes. Played that 'settling down' role so good you could have put Tom Hanks to shame."

"It wasn't a game, Josh. I was... confused, that's all. I tried to get away, pretend I was somebody I could never be. But you can't escape who you are, can you? When I came back here, I was facing up to it."

"Confused, huh? Is that what Daddy paid all those doctors for? To get you unconfused, fill you full of his brainless bullshit?"

"You'd just as soon piss on his grave as cut the grass. But you bailed out. You never got to know him."

"I took my hand out of his pocket. No matter how many millions, it wasn't worth the price. Even the devil offers a better deal than that. The pointy-tailed son of a bitch with the pitchfork only asks for one soul. Warren Wells wanted two."

"You haven't answered me yet. Why did you come back?"

Joshua took his eyes from the highway and tapped the shrunken heads that hung from the mirror. The taut-skinned plastic skulls seemed to sway and dance in delight, clacking against one another in a noise that resembled chuckling. "Haven't you heard the old saying? Two heads are better than one, Jakie Boy?"

Now Johnny Cash was singing "I Don't Like It, But I Guess Things Happen That Way."

"How's Carlita?" Jacob asked, his gut in knots.

"Fine as ever."

"Where is she?"

"You want to see her?"

"Yeah."

Joshua reached up and squeezed one of the rubber mirror ornaments, making its face distort into a leer. "Wish me."

"We don't play that game anymore."

"Wish me."

Jacob felt the years fall away. "Wish me a kingdom and make me a king."

Joshua's crazed cackle drowned out the rumbling muffler.

They reached White River Road and drove parallel to the water for several miles, then crossed an old wooden bridge. Jacob looked at the cold currents passing below them. The water was up, fed by the melting snows that had seeped from the granite slopes weeks before. The banks were lush and verdant, the saplings arching toward the sun, fighting toward the canopy of the established oak, wild cherry, honey locust, and sugar maple. The land across the river was changed in a subtle way, as if its skin were somehow more vibrant, its dirt thicker, its trees more commanding and stark. The hills hinted at old secrets, a land thrust up by the pressure of hell's forge and then worn down over the eons by heaven's rain.

This was home.

Jacob hadn't been here in years, not since the afternoon call that informed him of their father's death and then during the burial that followed. The man-made aspects of the landscape were unchanged: the long barn with its tin roof catching the sunlight, the split-rail fence running along the sweeping curve of the drive, the two-story white Colonial that perched on the hill like a military command post. It was the property itself that was different, possessed of some unseen aura of menace. Or maybe Jacob himself had changed, and the memory of his past came rushing at him like a ghost wind.

"What do you think, Jake? Daddy would be proud, wouldn't he?"

Jacob glared up at the window on the second floor, the room that he had once shared with his twin brother.

"Hey, now, don't go frowny-face on me," Joshua said. "Daddy gave me the keys to the kingdom. Since I can't sell it, it's a hundred-and-forty-acre pain in the ass. A patch of hell with back taxes."

"You've painted it the way it was when we were children."

"Bugs the hell out of you, don't it? You'd think the old man would want us to profit from his death, judging from the way he sold out his own family. But lifelong philosophies have a way of changing when you're on your deathbed."

"There's no 'deathbed' when you suffer a sudden heart attack."

"There you go again, getting all mixed up. That was a long time ago and none of it matters now. All that matters is making up for lost time. Setting things right."

As they approached the house, the years fell away, and Jacob could see himself in shorts and sneakers, riding the tire swing beneath the apple tree in the side yard. His childhood seemed part dream, part nightmare, viewed through the gauze of old wounds. He could almost hear his father shouting from the den, demanding that someone bring his pipe and newspaper. He could almost hear the crash of glass, the dull thump of bone-filled meat tumbling down the stairs--

He closed his eyes as the Chevy came to a stop beside the front porch. The abrasive engine was an affront to the stillness of the estate. The place deserved to be allowed to rest in peace. The house was as much of a coffin as the shiniest metal-encased box down at McMasters Funeral Home, this one holding the corpse of an entire family instead of one person's moldering mound of flesh and bone.

Joshua killed the engine and Johnny Cash's train-wreck voice cut off in mid-verse. "I was tempted to move back in, you know. Figured I'd play royalty, see what being a Wells was like. But it takes money, scratch, boatloads of Franklins, and I wasn't in the mood to join the working class just to stay in Kingsboro. A million ain't what it used to be. And it ain't nearly enough."

"I'll get you the rest, but you promised to stay away."

"You worry too much about things that ain't none of your business. Just like always. Seems like you'd be better off taking care of your own business instead of worrying about mine."

"Go to hell."

"Short trip." Joshua opened his door and got out, took an exaggerated gasp of fresh air. "Ah, the sweet smell of Wells country. Or is that chicken shit?"

Jacob stared at the twin shrunken heads. For the first time, he noticed that one of them had tiny cuts on its face, as if someone had slashed the rubber with a sharp knife. One ear was melted and charred, the nylon hair above it singed. Psycho voodoo, another of Joshua's mind games.

Joshua leaned forward and pressed his face against the tinted windshield, making a distorted dark mash of his nose. "Ain't you coming in? You're gonna hurt my feelings."

From the porch, Jacob couldn't resist taking in the panoramic view.

"Prime territory, half of it good bottom land," Joshua said, as if he'd sold real estate all his life. "Convenient to town yet with all the peace and quiet you can stand without going crazy. Do you know how much this would bring if you parceled it out right? Especially the way the second-home market is booming here in the mountains."

"Not interested."

"Come on, Jake. You've got money now. It don't matter where it came from, neither. I'd be the last one to ever pass judgment on a thing like that."

"I don't have the money. Renee got it."

Joshua's grin froze, a speck of saliva on his lower lip glistening in the sun as he stood by the car. "What are you talking about?"

"We separated. She blames me because of the fire. And Mattie." Jacob faced the breeze so his tears would dry. He wouldn't give Joshua the pleasure of his pain.

Joshua pounded the bottom of his fist on the Chevy's hood, denting the sheet metal. "Damn. I should have known she'd try some stunt like that. Leave it to a dumb bitch to take ever goddamned thing you got and still cry for more, more, more--"

"It's not her fault. I just--"

"And after you stood by her when Christine died."

Jacob turned, his fists clenched. "You don't know anything about that. Shut the hell up."

"She was family to me, too. I meant to send a card, but how do you say you're sorry when something like that happens?"

Jacob had been asking himself that same question for nearly a year. Christine's death had been different, tragic in a quieter way. Christine meant "follower of Christ," Renee's choice. Coming from Joshua's lips, the name now sounded like a grim cosmic joke.

"So when my other child dies, you pop up out of nowhere," Jacob said.

"Misery loves company," Joshua said. "Just like the good old days."

He reached up and rattled the brass pipes of a wind chime that hung from the porch's support beam. A die-stamped metal sparrow perched atop the chime, its crevices gritty with age. The chime had been there as far back as Jacob could remember. Their mother had tapped it with her cane to summon them to dinner or bedtime, and the soft notes were a reminder of long summer nights in the forest or games in the barn.

Joshua mimicked their mother's high voice as he climbed the porch steps. "Time to come in, boys." His voice rose to a piercing shrillness. "Jake! Josh!"

Joshua took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, then stood aside. The damp, woody odor of the trapped air enveloped Jacob. Joshua gave him a gentle nudge in the back.

Jacob took a tentative step forward, on the threshold of a life he'd spent a decade burying. A long Oriental carpet led into the foyer where the dining room, sitting room, stairs, and hall intersected. The framed photographs of dead Wells ancestors hung on the walls, dim with dust. A rustic butcher-block table stood on uneven legs against the far wall, topped by a gray doily and an empty crystal vase. A wrought iron coatrack skulked in the corner like a sharp-edged stalker. A path was worn in the center of the oak stair treads. The bottom baluster was still splintered from their mother's fall. Except for the smell and cobwebs, everything was as it had been on Jacob's last visit. The day they'd buried Warren Wells. This house was a museum of pain, a mausoleum of bad memories.

Jacob waded forward, as if the past were a wet stack of calendars. Even Joshua's voice, coming from behind him, sounded years younger. "I haven't had the power turned on. No phone, neither. Didn't want anybody to know I was around."

Jacob finally mustered enough oxygen to speak. "How long are you staying?"

"That's up to you." Joshua lit a cigarette and the acrid smoke helped drive the stench of failure from the foyer.

Jacob reached the entrance to the sitting room. Books lined the shelves around the central fireplace, the burnt umber of the leather a complement to the bricks. Spread across the mantel was a collection of knickknacks, clay cats, glass figurines, hand-carved exotica from across the world. Their mother had been a collector and had wiped down the objects weekly, spacing them in such a precise manner that she could tell if a piece had been shifted even so much as a centimeter. She would have slammed her cane against the floor in anguish to see the figures now, clouded by accumulated dust.

Joshua crossed the sitting room, his boots shedding dried mud. He flicked his cigarette ash into the fireplace, picked up a crystal poodle, and held it to the muted light that leaked through the drapes. He rubbed a finger across the animal's head then raised his arm as if to fling the object against the grate. Instead, he tossed his cigarette onto the brick apron of the hearth, mashed it out with his foot, and returned the poodle to its proper place in the menagerie.

"It's a little chilly in here," Joshua said. He pulled a couple of thin books from the nearest shelf. "Hemingway. Dad's favorite writer. I think we ought to build a fire."

Jacob sat in a Queen Anne chair, a piece of furniture not designed for comfort. If the foyer was a hallway into the past of the entire Wells family, this room was solely his mother's, stiff and formal and brutal, as severe as a prison cell. Jacob had rarely spent time here during his childhood, and he perched on the edge of the chair as if expecting his dead mother to clatter around the corner, cane-first, and shout at him not to disturb anything. He breathed shallowly, afraid even to stir the air too much.

Joshua stooped and opened one of the volumes to the front pages. "First edition, what do you know?"

He tossed the books onto the log irons, where they lay like clumsy giant moths with paper wings. He pulled out his lighter. "Welcome home, Jake."

He flicked the flint wheel and stared into the dancing flame. The flame touched the brown pages and burst into brighter life, sending shadows crawling along the curtains. Joshua grinned, his eyes sparkling with the reflected fire. He echoed familiar words, written words:

"Hope you like the housewarming present."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Donald Meekins was definitely avoiding her.

Renee looked at her watch. She'd been waiting for twenty minutes in the little room with Jeffrey Snow, who sat at his desk and occasionally looked at her over his computer. Jeffrey was fresh out of college and had been hired by M & W Ventures after the previous office manager had been caught kneeling under Donald's desk by none other than Mrs. Meekins. Jeffrey was as far from blonde and bouncy as they came, with a weak chin and faded gray eyes, and his name wasn't Staci and he didn't sign his name with a little heart over the letter I. He had just the proper amount of stern bookishness to cow tenants who were behind on the rent and enough equanimity to divert those who clamored for repairs or a new paint job.

"Can I knock?" she asked Jeffrey.

"He's on an important phone call. Long distance."

"I see. Has Jacob been by?"

"Mr. Wells?" Jeffrey looked around the office as if expecting to see him in one of the chairs by the rubber tree. "I haven't seen him, ma'am."

"This week?"

"Not since the accid--" Jeffrey pulled at his tie as if it were cutting off the oxygen to his brain. "Not since March."

"He got my message, so he must have come by at least once."

"He still has a key."

"I guess things are a mess around here. I know Jacob and Donald were in the middle of a big land deal west of town. The way the economy's going, you can't afford to sit on anything."

Jeffrey tapped at the keyboard as if randomly plugging in numbers to escape her. "I wouldn't know about that, ma'am. I only keep track of the leases."

"I like Ivy Terrace. Easy to keep clean."

"Yes, ma'am. And Donald paid you up three months ahead. That qualifies you for a five percent discount if you renew."

"We'll be building another house soon," she lied. "When we get things straightened out."

Renee stood and arched her back, stiff from the long wait. She looked at the telephone on Jeffrey's desk. There were three lines in the system, each with a red indicator light. One line each for Donald and Jacob, and one line for Jeffrey. None of them were lit.

Renee picked up her purse from the floor beside her chair. Jeffrey did a bad job of hiding his relief at her leaving. "Tell Donald I'll give him a call later," she said.

"Certainly, Mrs. Wells."

Renee waited for Jeffrey's attention to return to the computer screen, and then she marched past him, twisted the knob to Donald's office, and flung the door open. Donald was behind the saltwater aquarium looking at the miniature undersea world, his face distorted by water and glass. The fish moved in darting patterns of color, nervous in their narrow world.

"Bring any bait?" Donald asked.

"No. Just some dynamite."

The light in the room was soft, the furnishings heavy and dark against walls of paneled walnut. Donald had built his environment to match his personality. Aside from the fish, the only bold color in the office was the plaid upholstery in the wooden case that held a clutch of dusty golf trophies. Along the rear wall was a bookshelf that was bare except for some piles of loose papers. A filing cabinet beside the desk looked as if it had been placed there for effect instead of utility. Donald came around the aquarium and approached Renee with the slow steps of a condemned man climbing the scaffold.

Renee searched his eyes for any sign of emotion. She hadn't seen him since the funeral. She wondered if he knew about Jacob's history of mental illness or if Warren Wells had cleaned up that mess along with all the others.

Donald smiled, his face tanned to health club perfection, the several rows of deep wrinkles on his forehead giving him the appearance of concern. His hair was shoe-polish black and he resembled an overgrown ventriloquist's dummy. "How's it going?"

"Oh, you know." She didn't want to cry here. She wouldn't think of Mattie or Christine. Not this time. Not now. Not unless she had to.

"Jacob loved her so much. This must be killing him."

"You've talked to him, then?"

"No. I've been trying to reach him. He won't return my calls. I can't reach him on the cell and he didn't give me the number of your new place."

"You haven't seen him?" She watched his face. He was a businessman, a speculator, an adulterer. A proven liar, and good at it.

"Of course, I expect him to take some time to recover, get through this at his own speed. But we need a plan to tide things over until then. We've got some big deals hanging in the balance."

She couldn't reconcile her image of Donald with the man who'd nearly wrecked his own marriage through a foolish affair. He seemed as cold and passionless as his fish. Jacob said Donald was an asset to the company, though, a partner who knew which palms had to be greased to push a deal through. This metaphorical grease seemed to cling to his skin, and probably left him slick under the folds of his expensive but drab suit.

"Jacob told me to touch base for him. I thought he'd been in a couple of times." The walls seemed to close in on Renee. She had left the office door open and thought about making an escape. But this job wouldn't be finished until the final nail was driven in the coffin.

Donald glanced at the door and lowered his voice. "Do you trust your husband?"

"He's my husband."

"I don't know how much he tells you--"

"We're partners, Donald. I make deposits for him."

"Okay, then," Donald said, slipping into his smarmy business manner. "You know we'll lose our purchase option if we don't make the second payment on the Martin property. And we've got a couple of contractors breathing down our necks for some major past dues. I know this has been devastating, but I'd hate to see Jacob lose everything his father worked for."

Renee stared at Donald, whose eyes were watery and narrow. "He'll come through. He's a Wells."

"I know, 'A Wells never fails,' but--"

He glanced at the door again, went silently past Renee and closed it. Then he faced her, wearing what she imagined was the same grave expression he used when pleading for a zoning variance before a municipal planning board. "I've been worried about him. Ever since Christine died, maybe even before that, he was taking too many chances, overreaching and gambling. The real estate market's way too soft for the moves he was making, especially in commercial development. I don't know how much he told you, but when he went into his funk after Christine died, the company nearly collapsed."

All she had done, all the sacrifices she'd made, were for Jacob Wells and their future together. This wasn't the plan. She'd been bailing a leaky boat and hadn't known it. As with the Titanic, there hadn't been enough life preservers to go around.

"It's not that bad," she said. "We were doing fine. There was plenty of money."

"Borrowed money. He was getting big loans to buy up land and inflating the values on all the appraisals. It's fairly common practice, but it's like juggling live hand grenades. One or two you can handle, but five or six and one's bound to go off sooner or later."

"How much does he owe?"

"A million three."

She looked at the aquarium. A large fish with an extravagant top fin darted toward the ceramic sunken ship, chasing away a school of blue and silver fish. The soft bubbling of the aerator and the hum of the fluorescent lights were the only sounds in the room.

"You didn't know," Donald said.

She fought an urge to go to the shelves and arrange the loose papers into neat stacks. Donald put a hand out as if he were going to touch her shoulder then changed his mind.

"I'm sorry," he said. "About Mattie. About your house. Nobody deserves such bad luck."

She wished she had a better confessor. A Catholic priest hidden away in a dark booth, or a shrink whose breath smelled of exotic beer and goat cheese. But she was going to shatter right there in front of Mr. Smooth himself, an acquaintance, someone who knew only the wrong half of the story.

"He put too much pressure on himself," Renee said. "Jacob always wanted to make his father proud. Part of him wants to outdo Warren Wells, but in this town he never had a chance."

She'd brought him here. She'd seen through his street-poet act at college and she'd known all about his wealth before the second date, though she pretended otherwise. The Wells family turmoil aroused little interest, and she was happy to let him enjoy his secrecy. She cared about the future, not the past. But she'd assumed the past involved silly prom dates and inattentive parents, not intensive therapy for a dissociative disorder.

"You want to sit down?" Donald waved toward the brown sofa.

Renee couldn't bear the thought of sitting where Donald and Staci might have wallowed in vapid passion. "What about last year? How bad was it?"

He held his finger and thumb about an inch apart. "I was this close to looking for some more investors to save our asses. But Jacob wouldn't hear of it. Said we'd get a break, something would come through soon."

"And it did."

"Like I said, the insurance from the fire--hey, I'm sorry, I'm an insensitive bastard. I didn't mean it that way."

"I'm getting over it," she said. Donald had never lost a child. He wouldn't know that you never got over it.

"The million can get us through the short run, but he's taken too many chances. God, I can't believe he didn't tell you all this."

"That Wells pride. He wouldn't borrow a water hose if his pants were on fire."

"Personally, I was ready to declare bankruptcy, start over in something with a future, like maybe pharmaceutical sales. But Jake just kept telling me the market would turn and we'd be okay, we just needed to hold out until we got a break."

"And he got a big insurance payoff just in the nick of time."

"That's why I asked if you'd made the deposit. I figured you'd at least have the check for the house. And, knowing Jake's business habits, I'll bet he had the family insured to the eyeballs."

"Mattie's only been dead three months." The fish turned into bright blurred streaks in her vision.

"The Christine money?"

None of his business. "That was my baby girl, Donald."

"Sure, but the living have got to keep living, right? That's what Old Man Wells said and Jacob's got so much of that blood in him, I forget he's human sometimes. I figured he'd be throwing himself into his work, getting the ball rolling again. Dealing with it his way."

"His way. What the hell do you know about 'his way'?"

"Don't shoot the messenger, Renee. You can't bring Mattie and Christine back no matter how much you hate me. Right now you ought to be worried about bringing Jake back."

She wanted to slap Donald, take out her anger and frustration. But Donald was right. Jacob was the real target, as elusive as any prey, his survival instinct intact. Her bait of the marriage counselor hadn't worked.

The electronic rattle of the phone interrupted them. Jeffrey's voice came over the intercom: "Mr. Meekins, line three. It sounds like Mr. Wells. He asked for Mrs. Wells."

How had he known she was there? Was he watching her?

"Hello?" Donald cradled the phone between his head and shoulder and nodded to Renee. "Listen, Jake, where are you? Things are going to hell in a handbasket here--"

He held up his hand as if warding off a tirade from the other end of the line. "Okay, here she is. But I need to talk to you after you're done with her."

Renee took the phone from Donald and squeezed it against her ear as if by force of pressure she could bring Jacob to her. "Jake?"

"Yeah."

"Where are you?"

"The place I said I'd never go."

"Come see me."

"I already did."

"What's wrong?"

Jacob's phrasing was strange, slightly slurred, his voice made thin by the compression of the phone line. Just like the phone call about the package. "Well, let me add it up," he said. "You cremated my daughter while I was drugged to hell in a hospital bed. You moved out and set up your own little nest before I had a chance to make things right. And now you're conspiring with my business partner while I'm here trying to pull everything together."

Her rib cage muscles clamped tight around her heart. "Jake?"

"I saw the way he looked at you. Like a wolf at a pork chop. And you--well, we know how you are."

Donald hovered close, wiggling his finger as if he wanted to listen. Renee raised her elbow to keep him away.

"We need to talk." Her throat was tight, as if someone had shoved a large, dry stone down her windpipe.

"There ain't nothing left to talk about."

"We've got to fix this. I know you're hurting over Mattie, but so am I. We need each other. That's the only way we can make it. And I know about--"

"All you need is Donnie Boy."

The tears broke forth, hot as blood on her cheeks. "Jake, you're talking crazy."

She immediately regretted using that word. Dr. Rheinsfeldt had explained that dissociative conditions came in several forms, and Jacob had exhibited some of the milder symptoms. Fugue states and amnesia didn't sound so mild to Renee, but at least he hadn't lost his identity or descended into any of the other horrible conditions Rheinsfeldt had described.

Donald retreated to the aquarium, his expression revealing his distaste for Renee's emotional outburst. If he only knew what his partner was saying about him, the tanning-bed brown of his skin might have flushed to red.

"Listen," came the voice from the end of the line. "Don't waste your breath lying. I don't care what you do no more. But I need you to do something."

"Please, Jake. You need help."

"Oh, yeah. Right. A round of skull sessions. Fixed me up good the last time, didn't they?"

"It's not just for you, honey. For us."

"There ain't no 'us.' There's just you and me and him."

"You're drifting like you did after Christine died."

"Except there's one major difference... Mattie's dead, too."

"The doctor said drinking is risky in your condition."

"I'm sober as a fuckin' Republican judge."

"Tell me where you are," she said. "I'll be right there."

"I'll bet you would. Because you're probably playing Donald, too. I reckon he got a million or two laying around."

"Jacob, seriously." She didn't know how she was still breathing. Some animal part of her brain had taken over her functioning. All she felt was the numb weight of the phone and the grief grinding her soul into ethereal sausage. Sometime during the last blurred minute, Donald had slipped out of the room.

Even though she could have screamed, she whispered instead. "Listen. You know you're not yourself. When Christine died--"

"When Christine fucking died. Stop pretending."

"It was a hard time for us, Jake. Mattie, too."

"The problem with Mattie was she was too much like you."

"You--" She pulled the phone away from her head, clamped it in her fist and looked for a corner in which to hurl this insanity from her life.

But she was compelled to listen again. The line carried only shallow static for fifteen seconds.

"You want to know the deal?" he said.

"Yeah," she whispered. At least Donald had the decency to close the door behind him. Now she could slip to her knees on the floor, let the tears crawl down without restraint. It took all her willpower to remind herself Jacob was ill. She would have to endure, that's all.

"Okay. Here's what I want you to do. You got the money?"

She nodded to no one. "I've got the money."

"Good. I want you to bring it to the cemetery."

There was only one cemetery in their lives. Heavenly Meadows, where Christine was buried. "Why there?"

"Family reunion, honeybunches."

Honeybunches. Jacob had only called her that once before. Years ago, during that hot August night Mattie was conceived in violent passion. He was cracking and she wasn't sure she had enough band-aids this time around. She summoned enough air to respond. "When?"

"Thursday morning. And no doctors or police."

"Please, Jake--"

"And tell Donnie Boy to go fuck himself. Unless you want to help him with that."

"Can't you see what's happening to you?"

"Sure, honeybunches. Like you said, I'm not myself. See you Thursday."

Before she could warn him to stay away from the Wells farm, the soft click came that cut her off from the man she loved.

Renee was finished crying by the time Donald returned. She promised to be strong, for Jacob and the memories of her children, and for the God who had promised blessings for those who kept the faith. But some rewards were only paid upon pain of death.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Sure, honeybunches. Like you said, I'm not myself. See you Thursday." Joshua hung up the phone and turned to face Jacob. "Damn. It was real hard to keep the Tennessee out of my voice. How did you get such a sissy accent?"

"I like what you've done to the place," Jacob said.

"Mom always did have great taste in ugly. She and old Queen Victoria had a lot in common. In fact, if it wasn't for us being born, I'd have sworn she never got laid in her life. Can I ask you something, brother to brother?"

Jacob rubbed the itching skin of his cheek, still raw from healing. "I could never keep a secret from you."

"How do you get through it?"

"Get through what?"

"Your damned kids. How do you deal with it when they die? I mean, ain't it supposed to ruin your life, make you blame God and all that shit?"

"You get by." Jacob squirmed in the uncomfortable chair.

"No, really." Joshua lit another cigarette, crossed the floor and loomed over Jacob. "How does it feel? You got to be honest with me. We always shared everything. Or at least we did, until dear old Daddy came between us. But he's out of the way now, so it can be just like old times."

"You wouldn't understand. You have to love somebody before you know what it's like to lose them." Jacob's gaze crawled past his twin brother to the fireplace, where he saw Mattie's peeling face in the curls of flame. He was relieved that he could remember his daughter, but frightened that she would always carry that association.

"Hey, I know what love's all about. It's about getting what you need. Ain't that right?"

"Shut up."

"You loved Mom. She's dead. You loved Dad. He's dead. I guess you loved your kids. They're both dead. And Renee--"

Jacob clenched his fists, leapt up, and shoved Joshua, who dropped his cigarette and staggered back against the bookcase. He fell with exaggerated awkwardness, knocking over the fire poker and ash shovel. A few books tumbled to the floor.

Joshua wiped at his mouth where a thin line of blood had collected in one corner. "They lose and you win, huh? A Wells never fails."

"I never asked for any of it."

"But you got it all, don't you? And every time somebody dies, you get a little more."

"I'll wring your goddamned neck if you don't shut up."

"Jake, Jake, Jake." Joshua wheezed a laugh. "You looked in a mirror lately? We're not kids anymore."

"I don't have to put up with your shit. I put up with plenty of it when we were kids, but you're right. Those days are over. And you can add one more person to my list of dead people." Jacob started for the door, then whirled and jabbed out with his finger. "You."

Joshua rose, the poker in his hand. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Jacob kept walking, entered the foyer with its high ceiling and haunted walls. The front door was locked. The shiny, key-operated deadbolt was new, its bright glint out of place in that dim room.

"You're home, Jacob," Joshua said, tapping the poker on the floor as if it were a cane. "Get used to it."

Jacob yanked on the door. One of his parents' favorite punishments was to lock naughty children in their rooms, and many of the doors in the house could be locked from either side. "I'll bust a window if I have to. Or your head."

"Such anger. I thought the doctors taught you to deal with it. But it's handy to claim you don't remember what happened."

"What do you want?"

"What have I always wanted? To be you, hotshot. I had the bad luck of sliding into the world after you did. And you beat me to everything else, too."

"Look, I didn't want Dad's blessing, I didn't want the inheritance, and I sure as hell didn't want any Wells birthright. I fought against that with every breath, same as you."

"Until just before he died. Funny how that happened. How you got in good when it counted."

Jacob pressed his hands over his ears. If only he could shut off that taunting, accusing voice. Or maybe squeeze hard enough for the memories to squirt from his brain like pus from a festering boil. He hadn't gone to Warren Wells' deathbed and begged for forgiveness, had he? But he couldn't shake the image of that pale wrinkled hand reaching to pat his head, and those watery blue eyes staring in pride and victory.

Joshua approached, the poker raised before him like a fencer's foil, his lips curled in triumph. Jacob had nowhere to run. Even if the door were open, there was no place in the world to escape the past. He stared into the face that looked like a savage mirror, a reminder of all those dark secrets and sick, hidden things.

Joshua stood close enough for Jacob to smell the stale cigarette tar on his lips. "Take it easy, brother. You're acting like you're here against your will. As if you haven't thought of this house every single day of your adult life."

Joshua put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. The hand was as cold as a lizard tucked under a creek rock. "Come on. Let me show you to your room."

Jacob let himself be led across the foyer to the polished stairs with their worn runners. They paused as if both were admiring the splintered baluster, an awesome relic that had resisted repair. Then Joshua nudged him up the stairs. Each riser took Jacob closer to the past, though memory seemed to elude him. Instead of clear and prolonged reels, he saw the events of their childhood in flashes of blurred and fractured images.

Step. On the floor, the sun shining through the window, making a yellow river between them, Joshua bringing a wooden train caboose down hard on Jacob's knee. Step. Jacob's fingers caught in the corner of the crib, his screams filling the world, Joshua grinning while yanking the covers away.

Step. In the dark behind the curtain, holding his breath, something terrible scratching at the door.

Step. Mother entering their room, smiling, bearing a silver tray with China teapot and mugs.

Step. Father smirking around his pipe, holding out a dollar bill and seeing which of his sons could leap the highest and be the first to snatch it.

Step. The window broken, the jagged glass smeared with the dark blood of the bird that had flown into its own reflection.

Step. In the night, Joshua giggling from his bed across the room. A separate giggle echoing from the closet. Jacob with his head under the suffocating safety of the pillow.

Step. Mother at the head of the stairs, her legs trembling, eyes gone wild toward the ceiling.

Step. Jacob's comic book collection scattered across the floor, the crotches of the cartoon women neatly clipped out.

Step. An arm reaching up from beneath the bed, fingers pale in the moonlight.

Step. Father locking the closet door, threatening to leave the boys in there until they turned to skeletons if they didn't learn to behave.

Step. A fleeting stench of sulfur, then a small flame crawling up the sheets.

Step. Joshua making him promise to never tell, cross his heart and hope to die.

Step. The doctor bending over, smelling of sweet decay, his round face bright with kindness.

Step. Mother with the silver tray, this time bearing pills and a glass of water.

Step. A scattering of coins on the walnut dresser. Joshua with three whole dollars because he was Father's favorite.

Step. Rummaging through Joshua's laundry, trying on his brother's favorite red shirt. It fit perfectly, better than any of Jacob's own clothes.

Step. Jacob with his head under the pillow. The closet door creaking open.

Step. The doctor telling him it was just a dream, and dreams could be scary, couldn't they? But, see, there's nothing here now.

Step. Mother at the head of the stairs.

Step. Father at the head of the stairs.

Step. A crashing sound, bone softer than wood, meat with little give.

Step. Promise not to tell ever.

Step. Jacob at the head of the stairs.

He blinked and looked around. The dust was like a fine silver-gray carpet, the threads shimmering and almost ethereal in the dying daylight. The hall was paneled with cherry. The closed doors stood like solid slabs of unforgiving darkness. Cracks as crooked as the legs of spiders stretched across the ceiling.

The last door on the right led to the room he and Joshua had shared as young children. Despite the expansiveness of the house, Mother had insisted the boys be together as much as possible. Their parents' bedroom was two doors down, the neighboring room serving first as a nursery, then as a guest room after the boys had been weaned from the crib. It wasn't until Jacob and Joshua were twelve that they each were allowed their own rooms. But when Jacob thought of the house, he didn't think of "his" room. He thought of "their" room. To him, the room on the corner with the view of the barn and the field beside the river was where he had grown up.

That's where his feet carried him now. The floorboards creaked with damp age, though he still unconsciously avoided the weak spot that had first alerted his parents to his sleepwalking. How many times had he walked this strip of faded carpet? Probably more times than he remembered.

"Attaboy," Joshua said. "Don't fight it no more."

Jacob must have entered a brief fugue state, because the next thing he knew, he was standing between the twin bunks that stood against opposite walls. Jacob's childhood bed now seemed too impossibly small to have held all those terrors and shivers. The closet door at the foot of the bed was ajar and he studied the harsh angle of blackness for any signs of movement.

Joshua sat on his own bed and made an awkward attempt to stretch out. "Brings back a lot of memories, don't it?"

"Not really," he lied. "My childhood is just sort of one long blur. Why would I want to remember it?"

Joshua sat up with a hard groan of bedsprings. "Because I want you to, dear brother. Those were best days of my life, and I'd like to have them back."

Jacob shook off the malaise that had engulfed him. "Is that why you hate me? Because I finally had some happiness? Because I succeeded while you ended up in a slave-wage job in Tennessee? Because I had a loving wife and kids while you were shacking up with some trailer-trash slut? Because I left all this behind and you had to live in it day after day because it's all you ever had? Is that why you hate me?"

Joshua smiled, his lips like those of the zombie-doll heads hanging from his car mirror. "I don't hate you. I love you. Why else would I go to all this trouble?"

"It's not trouble. It's luck. You happen to show up here just when I hit bottom."

"You got a nice, soft pile of green to catch your fall."

Jacob stared into Joshua's eyes, those deep, soulless, hazel-ringed holes that swallowed any light that struck them. He wondered how closely his own eyes matched Joshua's. In the mirror, he never saw himself as merciless. But he wondered how others saw him. Could anyone really escape the corrupt taint of their genes?

"I'm not like you, Joshua. I don't feed on the pain of others."

"Like hell. You turned into the old man. A chip off the fucking block. As much as we used to despise him, looks like he had the last laugh after all."

"You didn't even know him. At least he had enough of a soul left at the end that he could face his sins and apologize. But you don't even think about making amends. You just keep on digging a deeper hole, getting closer to hell with every shovelful."

"Mighty fancy words for a make-believe poet. But at least I'm not burying my kids."

Joshua reached to the shelf above his bed. The shelf was built into the wall and held the artifacts of a lost childhood. A ragged teddy bear flopped against a baseball glove, and an amputee G.I. Joe doll stood sentry over a stack of baseball cards crimped by a rubber band. Without looking, Joshua ran his hand over a Rubik's cube and a dented Tonka dump truck. He pushed the toys aside and pulled a dusty book from the recesses of the shelf.

Jacob recognized it instantly, though he hadn't seen it in more than a decade. "My diary. How did you get that?"

"It's my story, too, Jakie. Hell, I coulda wrote it for you if I wasn't so lazy."

Jacob stood. The past was sealed in its vault, yesterdays were the stuff that filled coffins, memories were for those who lacked the strength to bury them. Skeletons weren't meant for closets, they were to be hammered into a thousand bone fragments and scattered to the far corners of the world. Driven to dust. No evidence must ever remain.

No evidence...

"Give me that." Jacob's blood was frigid lava.

Joshua leaned back against a faded pillow, cracked the book to somewhere in the middle, and began reading, all trace of his rural accent gone.

"'January 17: Cold and gray. Looks like snow. Joshua got me in trouble in school today. He marked over part of my homework and drew pictures of naked girls. He made an A and I got sent to the principal's office.'"

Joshua looked past the diary, his grin that of a devilish boy's. "Hey, I'd forgotten all about that. Good thing you wrote it down, or it might never have happened. What else did you say about me?"

"That's none of your business. Give me that."

Joshua flipped through a couple of pages, the paper rustling like the lungs of a dying man. "Oooh, here's a good one. 'February 3: Cynthia Chaney sat with me at lunch today. I had peanut butter and jelly. She gets free lunch because her family is so poor. Cynthia said she's scared of Joshua because he spies on girls going into the restroom.' Hell, brother, you ought to give up real estate and go to Hollywood. With some of this stuff you make up, you're bound to be a hit."

"That really happened. It's all true."

"Bullshit. I was the one who ate lunch with Cynthia Chaney. Walked her home. Screwed her in the bushes behind the trailer park. She had this crazy idea that I was gonna marry her and rescue her from her pathetic excuse for a life. Dumb bitch."

"Cynthia was a nice girl. She couldn't help it that you ruined her."

"Cry me a goddamned river. Any girl that spreads her legs when you whisper the word 'love' deserves everything she gets."

"She had to move to Florida after the abortion."

"If you believe all the other stupid sluts. I'd bet money she was looking for an excuse to drop out of school and came up with that one because nobody would blame her. People are real good at arranging the truth to fit their needs. And I wasn't the only one to ride that little pony, anyway."

"The next day..." Jacob looked out the window, the anger seeping out of him along with his strength. "Cynthia thought I was you. She came up to me behind the gym and kissed me on the mouth, said meet her at lunch and make plans for running away together."

Joshua laughed. "Told you she was a dumb bitch. You probably felt sorry for her. Shows how messed up you were back then. Hell, I knew it two years before the doctors did. Didn't take a college degree to hear those loose screws rattling around inside your skull."

"Give me the diary."

"Wait. We're about to get to the good part. 'March 3: I wonder what it's like to be Joshua. They say twins often share a psychic bond that goes beyond anything that DNA can explain. This book I read said that's why twins separated at birth will often lead lives that seem amazingly parallel.' Hey, that's a good one. 'Psychic bond.' Do you really believe that crap, or is it some screwy shit the doctors told you?"

"We're alike in a lot of ways. In ways that make me ashamed. But Dad thought I was the troubled one. I guess you're right about people seeing what they want to see."

The sun was slanting through the window at a low angle, illuminating the dusty clutter under Joshua's bed. That thing about monsters under the bed, the hand rising up to snatch children away to that dark land beneath, had been nothing but a story. Yet as the shadows of the room grew deeper, Jacob sat on his childhood bed and had to fight an urge to pull his feet up from the floor and tuck them under his knees. The monsters were long gone, their power to scare sealed away in the dead hollows of closets and empty toy boxes.

Joshua turned a few more pages and a piece of crinkled celluloid fell out of the diary. Joshua picked it up, glanced at it then spun it over to Jacob as if it were a square Frisbee. Jacob caught it. The Polaroid portrayed him and Joshua in matching blue sailor suits, aged about seven. It must have been early summer, because neither wore shoes. It took Jacob a moment to recognize himself as the one on the right, the one who held a small sailboat. Jacob had loved that sailboat and had slept with it on the windowsill at the head of his bed.

Then one day Joshua had torn it from his hands and set it loose in the river, where it plunged over the tumbling, rocky currents and headed for a plunging froth of falls. Jacob had raced after the boat, almost jumping in the river to save it, but he couldn't swim and the water was fat and brown from recent rains. He ran along the riverbank as the briars and scrub locusts ripped jagged red lines across his arms and legs. He finally watched, helplessly tangled, as the sailboat careened against a protruding monolith of granite and shattered into bright scraps of painted wood and cloth.

"'April 11,'" Joshua read. "'Mother is sick again. She stayed in bed all day and I had to bring her soup. She wouldn't eat any solid food. Medicine and wine. Her face is pale and her hair somehow turned gray over these past few weeks. Father stays downstairs in his study. Joshua hides when it's time to take food to Mother. We should get a nurse for her.'"

Joshua slammed the diary closed. "Mommy's little pet, weren't you?"

"It was an accident," Jacob said, looking out the window, seeing the broken sailboat in his mind, splinters in the foam.

"Nothing's an accident. We get everything we deserve."

"No." The river rose up, dark waters rimmed with white teeth.

"You pushed her, Jacob."

"No." The river opened like a large mouth, the cold current inviting him inside.

"You killed your own fucking mother."

Jacob rubbed the bottoms of his fists against his eyes, trying to wipe the sight of that broken sailboat out of his mind. Somewhere, far from here, its wreckage must have reached the bottom of a calm sea.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Renee drove by the remains of their house Wednesday just as the sun hit the far tops of the Blue Ridge. She had meant to keep going, but found herself turning into the driveway as if she were back from a run to the grocery store. The block footprint of the building lay like a lidless coffin. Yellow plastic tape still stretched around the charred wreckage, though it was ripped in places, the pieces fluttering like the tails of tangled kites.

At the rear of the backyard, a small storage shed had been blackened but otherwise undamaged. The branches of the oaks and maples nearest the house were stunted and bare, crippled fingers among the vibrant spring foliage. A split-rail fence along the western side of the property had been knocked down, probably by one of the tanker trucks. The front yard was crisscrossed with ruts, the sidewalk cracked, mail-box leaning like a penitent drunken priest.

A few blackened timbers poked up from the sunken pit of debris. Twisted metal and smoky stones were scattered in the dead embers. The refrigerator had once held pictures of Mattie in her soccer uniform, foolproof recipes, wrinkled tests with red letter A's circled at the top, all stuck to the door with colorful magnets. Now the rusty appliance lay on its side, adorned with nothing but shards of gray glass.

She shouldn't have come. The fire chief, Davidson, had told her the scene investigation was complete, though some evidence was being tested in the state lab. She and Jacob were welcome to salvage anything they wanted. Davidson said they could even come in with a front end loader and dump truck and clear the remains, get a fresh start on the existing foundation.

Remains.

Easy for Davidson to say, a woman who was married to her work and whose only responsibility was to duty. Maybe Davidson, in the privacy of her lonely bed, could cry over firefighters killed in televised tragedies or mourn victims of distant wars. But Davidson didn't have some of the flesh of her own flesh seared into these ruins. Renee did. She wore the smoke like a burial shroud, and the loss was a hot bed of eternal coals in her chest.

She sat in her car for a moment, looking up the street at the perfect houses with bright lights, television, and laughter behind the drawn curtains. She hated those people. They had no right to fortune and happiness. Renee had built her life from the ground up, driven each nail carefully, caulked every opening to prevent hard winds from penetrating. Yet she had failed somewhere. You could worry all you wanted about locks and safety lights, take every precaution, but tragedy still kicked in the front door, walked up the stairs, and whispered, "Nice to see you again."

Or maybe it slipped in a back door that someone else left open...

A BMW drove by, one of the flattened and ugly newer models, probably driven by a perfect mother from the far side of the subdivision. One whose children were brushing their teeth and getting ready for a night of sweet dreams. A woman whose children were full of blood and breath and chicken soup. A woman with copper-bottomed skillets hanging in sequential order, arranged by descending size. A woman who watched Dr. Phil with a knowing, sympathetic smile, secure that her marriage had no hidden cracks or stress fractures.

Renee got out of the car. The air was damp with summer dew and thick with the stench of burnt wood. She was amazed that so little of the house remained. Curls of wire, warped pipe, some dark, wet mounds of gypsum, and a few clumps of charred clothes were scattered among the black embers. Something caught and reflected the dying sunlight, a bright beacon in the blackness.

It was the hand mirror her mother had given her, a family heirloom. Renee had passed it down to Mattie. The ornate silver framing had melted into shapeless slag, dark ashes stuck to the metal, but the glass was intact.

Renee edged the line of cinder blocks that had served as the basement wall. She was wearing slacks, and her shoes would be ruined, but she worked her way down into the hole that had once been her house. A jagged strip of sheet metal cut into her ankle. She hissed the beginning of a cuss word then stopped herself, as if she were committing sacrilege on hallowed ground. The burnt wood crumbled under her feet, black dust rising and clogging her throat and nostrils.

She reached the spot fifteen feet from the wall where the hand mirror's surface gleamed between the twisted hulks of two rafters. She pushed a path to the mirror and picked it up, then knelt in the rubble and placed it against her heart.

When she had given the mirror to Mattie, she had told her the story of Snow White, and how the wicked stepmother had asked the mirror about beautiful women.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" Renee had said, in her most gravelly, cruel voice.

"Who, Mommy, who?" Mattie replied, bouncing her bottom on the bed, eyes wide enough to reveal white sclera all around the pupils.

Renee turned the mirror around so that Mattie could see herself, rosy lips and crooked baby teeth, softly curving nose and pink cheeks, hair as golden as her mother's, but much finer. "Why, you are, silly," Renee had said.

She looked up at the darkening sky. That magical moment had taken place twenty feet above her, on the second floor in a land of happily ever after. And the mirror had absorbed that moment into its family legend, so that Mattie could never look into the mirror without wrinkling her nose and saying, "Why, you are, silly," sometimes changing the emphasis of the words to say, "Why, you are silly." Renee couldn't believe the daughter who had owned the mirror was now less substantial than the twilight haze that hung in the trees.

Renee jerked the mirror up and peered into its blurred surface with the childish hope that she might catch Mattie's reflection. But the silver-backed face had slipped off with the spirit of the girl who had died in the fire.

When you die, you take all your reflections with you.

How much different Mattie's ceremony had been than the disaster with Christine's. It was more than just Jacob's absence. A coffin, even as small as the one that held Christine, carried the suggestion of a human form. Planting a loved one at least gave the illusion of renewal. Sliding a pot into the square concrete sleeve of a mausoleum wall brought no sense of completion, even after the greasy-haired man in coveralls had screwed the wrought-iron cover into place.

She tilted the mirror so she could see her own face in the dim light. She had aged, and her skin was tired and drawn. Her eyes were streaked with lightning bolts of red, her jaws clenched with tension. But she wasn't looking for physical signs of reassurance. She was searching herself to see if her face still held any hope.

"A Wells never fails," she whispered. "But I'm not a Wells."

A noise came from the rear of the property, where a line of azalea and forsythia gave way to an untamed tangle of forest. Probably some dog was sniffing around, drawn by the strange smells. Maybe to its hypersensitive nose, the aroma of roasted meat still wafted--

Renee stomped back to the block wall, the mirror under her arm. She carefully perched the mirror on the grass outside the rubble, then lifted herself up. She'd scuffed the knees of her slacks, and her hands were black. She wiped her hands but the stains remained. The noise came again from the forest edge, where street-lighted gray met night black.

"Who's there?" she said. She wasn't scared. Someone who had just lost a child, had lost two children, had already faced the worst. Ordinary fear no longer had any power over her.

A stifled giggle came from the shadows. Probably one of the neighborhood kids, responding to a dare.

Betcha won't go over there, Scaredy Fraidy Baby. Betcha won't touch the house where Mattie died. Especially in the dark.

Kids had their own way of dealing with tragedy. They poked dead things with sticks, resorted to morbid humor. They scared themselves silly on purpose. They went looking for ghosts.

Isn't that what you're doing?

No. Her ghosts had dissolved, slipped through her fingers as she watched, and all she had was a bottomless mirror.

Mattie had been so brave about Christine's death. Part of it had been Mattie's ignorance of death's permanence. Christine was still so new to the world. Mattie hadn't gotten the opportunity to form a sisterly bond. The closest she had come was taking her turn holding Christine, rocking her when she suffered colic, and singing "Hush Little Baby."

And Mattie had, even more than Jacob, brought Renee through the foggy months of anguish. Mattie needed her. Not just for the everyday things like clean clothes and rides home from school, but for advice on what to do when Tommy Winegarden tried to kiss her on the playground. Or an explanation of how tadpoles could turn into frogs when they didn't even have any legs. Or why Jesus loved the little children but let them smother in their blankies.

The giggle came again. It hadn't been her imagination.

"Hello?" Renee called to the trees, wondering which of Mattie's friends was hiding there. Sydney, Brett, or Noelle.

The only response was a snapping of twigs and the hushed rustle of branches.

She walked toward the noise, the marred mirror held before her like a talisman.

"Don't be afraid. I just want to talk to you."

Sydney Minter, two houses down, had come over one afternoon to play Barbies with Mattie. They both pretended dolls were really lame. Then Renee showed them how they could make a house of wooden blocks and have Barbie crash G.I. Joe's jeep into it and, afterward, Mattie's room grew loud with happy shouts and fantasized combat. Renee hadn't seen the Minters at Mattie's service.

She reached the cold fringe of the woods and tried once more. "Come out where I can see you. I miss her, too."

The giggle came again, and this time it carried no wariness, no hesitancy. It was followed by a low, rasping reply from a counterfeit voice: "Wish me."

The voice sounded electronic, as if coming from a toy. Mattie had owned a Barbie doll that allowed the owner to record bits of song so the doll could sing "like a real rock star." This sentence carried that same compressed, static-filled quality, as if someone had whispered into the device at close range and then played it back on an amplified setting.

Who would play such a cruel joke? No child would be so vicious to a grieving mother. Nor as creative in cunning. Renee lifted the mirror as if to hurl it in the direction of the voice or deflect the unreal mirth. "What do you want?"

The reply came ten seconds later, from a different dark space behind the wall of trees. Again with the electronic stage voice of someone imitating a B-movie demon: "I saw what happened."

"What happened where?"

A pause, time for record and playback. "The night of the fire."

Renee fought her way among the sharp, grasping limbs of the landscaped bushes, ignoring the scratches to her skin. "Stay where you are," she said, her breath and heartbeat filling her ears.

She plunged into the woods, a pine branch slapping her face and making her eyes water. The canopy of leaves overhead merged into a ceiling of utter blackness, and only a few jagged strips of distant light leaked between the tree trunks. She spun, confused, trying to orient herself toward the direction of the voice.

This time, it came from behind her, deeper in the forest. "He went through the door."

"What door?"

Another five seconds for record and playback. "The door that swings both ways." The source of the voice was retreating even as it spoke. Renee couldn't tell if it was child or adult, male or female. She held her breath, crouching with her mouth open, gauging the location of the footfalls. As she listened, her mind raced in wild synchronicity with her pulse.

Door that swings both ways.

Was it a riddle of some kind? Or was it all some elaborate prank played by the Minter kids or the Bennington boy or some faceless brat from one of the anonymous, perfect homes?

Or had someone seen something on the night of the fire and was afraid to tell?

She ran in the direction of the noise. The black trunks of trees seemed to rise up on all sides, as if they had been placed in a perfect disarray to confuse her. Low limbs slapped at her legs, ripping her slacks. The forest was like a live creature, drawing her into its wild heart. Renee clawed brittle twigs away from her face as her hair tangled in the arching branches. She tore free and lurched past a massive oak then found herself in a clearing.

In the starlight, she could make out a worn path. It led to a creek. The path disappeared into a thicket of briars, locust, and crabapple on the other side, a dense and bristling wall through which no human could pass.

Renee bent to the creek and splashed water on her cut face. She heard no footsteps, no false recorded voices, only the soft laughing of the water. She held up the mirror and saw herself, a wicked witch with bruised eyes, a viper's nest of hair, blood trickling from the bridge of her nose.

She looked down at the water's edge. Lying on a cold gray boulder was a tiny plastic object of faded yellow.

She stooped and picked it up, and it made a clacking sound.

A rattle.

It had belonged to Christine.

Beyond it, in the hollow between two water-worn stones, lay a bundle of fabric. Renee retrieved it, looked into the frozen smile of Rock Star Barbie. The doll should have burned along with the house. It was clean, its hair untangled, the glittering clothes laundry fresh.

She turned the doll over and felt for the button that would trigger the audio clip. She found it.

"Housewarming present."

Renee sat by the creek for long minutes, listening to the wind in the trees, the bright music of the currents, the sharp chirrup of insects. As the last daylight faded and the sounds of the night merged into a single symphony, she stood, brushed the dirt from her clothes, and tucked the rattle and doll into her pocket.

Someone knew.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jacob awoke with his mouth dry, heart pounding in his ears, wrists aching. He thought he smelled smoke and realized he'd been dreaming of the house burning down. His back was stiff. He rolled over and looked across the room. Joshua's bed was empty.

The windowsill was gray with approaching dawn. He sat up and rolled his shoulders and neck, loosening the sore muscles. The smoke he'd smelled was from a cigarette. Joshua stood by the door, smiling, scratching in the stained armpit of his T-shirt.

"Morning, brother. How did you sleep?"

"Worse than ever."

"You got no peace of mind. Them shrinks didn't do you a bit of good."

"How long do I have to stay here?"

Joshua flicked his cigarette, sending ashes onto the rug. "You act like I'm holding you here against your will." He laughed, the barking of a thirsty dog. "I ain't my brother's keeper. Pretty funny, huh?"

"Can I go, then?"

"It's a long walk back to town."

"I'll call a cab."

"Sorry. I can't let you use the phone. You might say something we'll both regret."

"Okay, then. I'll walk."

"So you don't want to wait for your dear, sweet honeybunches of a wife."

"Leave her out of this."

"That ain't the deal."

Jacob looked at the closet. The door was closed. He wondered what was hidden behind it. "You have the house. And what I already paid you. Isn't that enough?"

"What the hell good is this old place since I can't sell it? Nothing but a snake den of memories that sneak out and bite you. You owe me plenty more, Jake. You've owed me for a long time. Now it's time to pay up."

"Whatever you want. Just leave us alone."

"'Us'? I thought you'd decided your wife was a cheating bitch who deserved to die."

Jacob rubbed his eyes with the tops of his fists. "No. I didn't say that. You said it, didn't you?"

"Jake, how many times do I got to tell you? I'm only doing what's best for you. I'm only doing what you would do, if you had the cojones."

Jacob leaned forward, straining, and looked under the bed. Nothing. "You never took care of me."

"Better than the old man ever did, that's for sure."

"Because he loved you the best."

"Love? The old man? Them words don't go together."

"He did all of this for us, Josh. He wanted both of us to carry on for him."

"Except I never wanted it. Not the fucking legacy, not the place in the community, not the life given in tireless service to others. I just wanted the money. But Dad fucked me over by leaving me the house instead. Laughed all the way to the goddamned grave, with you sitting there holding his bedpan and a fresh copy of the will."

Jacob's head throbbed and his tongue rasped against the roof of his mouth, the result of too much whiskey. He looked around the room. The only time he had ever desired ownership of this house was when the lawyer cracked open the will and announced that it belonged to Joshua. Maybe he should have bought it then. Surely the lawyer could have found a way around the covenant that prevented its sale.

The room seemed smaller and less forbidding than it had in their youth. Two baseball gloves hung on a row of pegs above the dresser. One was right-handed, one left-handed. Jacob had learned about transverse twins, and how the embryo split and the two halves developed as mirror opposites, facing each other, confronting each other. Jacob clenched his right hand. Joshua, as a lefty, had always been the better baseball player, especially as a pitcher.

That was one of the few ways their grade school teachers could ever tell them apart: by the hand with which they wrote. Occasionally Joshua would force Jacob to cover for him while he was off skipping school or smoking marijuana under the football stadium bleachers. Jacob had practiced writing with his left hand until the print was legible. He didn't want to disappoint Joshua, and of course Joshua wielded the ultimate weapon against him.

Jacob had often imagined the two of them facing each other in the womb, fighting for Mom's physical resources and sapping her strength. Then, at the moment of release, struggling toward the bright opening above in a desperate, winner-take-all race. As if they each knew the prizes that awaited and the stakes of life and death.

"Renee doesn't know about you," Jacob said.

"She knows enough." Joshua went to the window.

Outside, the sun had risen but was veiled in ragged clouds. A spring breeze whistled through the shutters and a loose slat knocked against the exterior wall. Tap tap tap.

Mother had made that same sound walking down the hall after her stroke, tapping with her cane. Jacob could picture her hunched inside a peach flannel nightgown and wearing frayed slippers, ankles streaked with thick blue veins. Her body trembled as she slid a foot forward, balanced herself, swung the cane and planted its tip against the floor, adjusted her weight on the handle, and slid the second foot beside the first. Repeated over and over, slowly, until she reached the stairs. Then the tap of the cane would be broken by the clatter of her spidery hand against the railing.

"We had some good times in the old barn, didn't we?" Joshua said, without turning.

"The chickens didn't."

"Heh. So you remember that, huh?"

Jacob grew faint and wanted to lean back on the bed but was afraid Joshua would take it as a sign of weakness. His lightheadedness was partially due to the hangover, but Joshua's torture of the animals still had the power to shock him. The things Joshua did with a lit cigarette and that place where the guinea hens' eggs came out...

He swallowed a hard knot of liquor nausea. "Daddy never did figure out why the hens quit laying."

"The Gentleman Farmer. What a joke. He just wanted a big driveway so he could see his enemies coming from a long way off. That Wells paranoia runs deep, don't it, brother?"

"You could have sent me a letter. I would have paid you and you wouldn't have had to come back."

"It's more fun this way." Joshua went to the closet, grinned, and opened the door. Jacob closed his eyes. The creak of the hinges hadn't changed in two decades. The sound was still a dry scream combined with a perverted snicker.

"Wish me, Jake," Joshua said, and they may as well have been eleven years old again. Wish Me started out as a game where one of them would guess which toy the other boy was holding in his bed across the dark room. Then Wish Me evolved into an elaborate fantasy in which they pretended to be someone else.

From Captain Kangaroo to Pete Rose to Batman to Shaggy on the "Scooby Doo" cartoon, they would run through the heroes of the day. Then Joshua started on monster movies, Dracula and the Mummy, using sinister voices that were as creepy as those of swarthy Hollywood actors. Instead of staying on his own bed, Joshua would sneak across the dark floor and slide under Jacob's.

"Wish me a monster with fangs and red eyes," Joshua would whisper in the darkness.

Jacob would barely be able to breathe and his vocal chords grew as tight as banjo strings. "I'm not afraid of you."

"It's not me you're afraid of. It's the Sock Monster." And the sock would climb over the edge of the mattress, Joshua's hand inside, scratching softly against the blankets. And no matter how many times Jacob told himself it was only a hand, the menace in Joshua's voice made the Sock Monster a real and terrible threat. And Jacob would squirm away and bunch up near the headboard, only to find the Sock Monster crawling through the bed's gap to snap and claw at his flesh.

All the while, as he pinched and poked, Joshua laughed and made cruel comments in his creepy fake voice. He would keep up the Sock Monster game until he was bored or tired, then he would say, "Do you give, you big sissy?"

By that time, Jacob would be curled into a shuddering and whimpering ball.

"Suck that snot back up your nose and tell me you give."

"I give," he said when he could part his clenched teeth.

Each morning, Jacob never failed to find a sock under the bed, pocked with small round spots of dried blood. His blood. As if the Sock Monster had really dug teeth into him, pulled his hair out by the roots, gnawed his fingers and toes.

Eventually, Joshua stopped sliding under the bed and began hiding in the closet instead. That's when things really started getting nasty. And Jacob was eleven again.

"Wish me, Jake," Joshua repeated, and Jacob opened his eyes to find himself in the present, in the room he never thought he'd see again except in occasional nightmares.

"I don't want to play."

"You better. Or I'll tell."

"I'm not twelve anymore."

"No, but the statute of limitations don't run out on murder."

"It wasn't murder."

"Well, I guess in a court of law they'd call it manslaughter or reckless endangerment or something to make sure you got off with a slap on the wrist. Since you're so upstanding and all. But we both know it's a killing no matter what name you give it."

Jacob felt as if his ribs were splintered and digging deep into the meat of his lungs and heart. "I was just a kid."

"That cane was her life, Jakie Boy. She hardly ever took a step without it. Even when she sat and read the newspaper, or dusted her little knickknacks, that cane was right there with her. She probably could have beat off a rabid mountain lion with that thing. She sure enough knew how to whoop us with it."

"She shouldn't have hit me. Not right there on the elbow, where it made my arm go numb."

"You always was the type to carry a grudge. Look what you done to me. Let me live like scum while you rode that golden ticket to the top. And I reckon you figured Momma was in the way, too."

"She shouldn't have hit me."

"The stroke crippled her up a little, but it didn't hurt her mind a bit. Helped her focus. Just made her hate us that much more. You remember why she hit you?"

"Because I was in striking distance."

"No. That was the other times. This time, it was because you broke her little ceramic rooster."

"I didn't break her ceramic rooster."

Joshua laughed, lit another cigarette, sucked in the burning tobacco as if it were a hit of eternal life. "Hey, I tried to tell her, but she didn't believe me. So I reckon it was either you or somebody who looked a lot like you."

"You bastard."

"When the eagle head of that cane knocked against your bone, I heard it clear across the house. Figured it served you right. Still, that wasn't no excuse to mess with her cane like that."

"You're the one who snuck into their room and stole it."

"As a favor. You're my brother."

Jacob had a little pocket knife, a Case with two blades that their father had given him for a Christmas present. When Joshua brought him the cane that night, Jacob slid it under his blankets and kept it there until he heard Joshua snoring across the room. Jacob had intended to mar the cane in some way, maybe carve his initials or try to raise a few splinters to catch his mother's skin. But he'd found a soft vein in the wood near the bottom and he worked the knife deep into it, gouging until the cane had a little flexibility. Jacob thought maybe the cane would crack as Momma swung it at him and missed. He never dreamed it would give way while she was descending from the top of the stairs.

An accident, they had said. Warren Wells was the one who found her, sprawled and twisted at the bottom of the stairs, one shattered leg poking through a broken baluster. Dad didn't scream or moan or even shed a tear. He didn't bother calling 9-1-1. With the calmness of an undertaker, he had called the sheriff's department and then the ambulance service, telling them not to hurry. He seemed more upset over the broken baluster than over his wife's death.

She was insured for two million, after all.

"I didn't mean for her to get hurt," Jacob said.

"That's a good one. Ever notice how everybody close to you ends up getting hurt sooner or later? And never on purpose?"

"Except you. I could never hurt you enough, and you're the only one I ever wanted to kill."

Jacob looked out the window at the top of the barn. The morning sun caught the hills beyond the house, capped them with the golden anger of dawn. The light glinted off the barn's tin roof and the drops of dew that lay across the surrounding meadows sparkled like leaky diamonds. As a child, Jacob had often awakened before anyone else in the house, even his insomniac mother, and he would go out into the fields alone to breathe the air of an unspoiled day.

"When's the last time you visited her grave?" Joshua said.

Jacob realized Joshua was staring at the family cemetery on the top of the ridge, where a few stone markers were fenced off from the cattle. Cemeteries required permanent easements. The land could never be used unless the bodies were disinterred and moved to other resting places. When Jacob had learned of that legal detail, he had forever become a believer in cremation. There were no laws governing the disposal of ashes, and such a send-off didn't damage real estate values.

"Why would I visit Mom's grave?"

"Ain't her I was talking about."

"Mattie doesn't have a grave."

"The other one. Christine."

"That burial was for Renee. She was still Catholic then."

"So you think the dead sleep better in tiny pieces, scattered on the wind?"

"Except for those like you who go to hell."

"Mattie could have been buried here," Joshua said, nodding toward the family plot that held three generations of the Wells dead. "You know kin is always welcome under home ground."

Something thumped outside the room, a sound eerily similar to the one Mother had made while tumbling to her death down the stairs. Jacob tried to stand, then gave up.

"We have a guest," Joshua said, showing teeth that were brown from tobacco.

"Renee?"

"No, she's Thursday, remember."

"Not..."

"Heh. I'm sure you two will have a lot to talk about. It ain't been that long, has it?" Joshua called out of the room. "Honey, we're in here."

Jacob lay back on the bed again, his head swimming, his pulse sluicing through the veins of his temples like liquid barbed wire. He wondered how quickly a physical addiction to alcohol could cause a case of delirium tremens. Footsteps came down the hall and stopped at the doorway. He closed his eyes against the dawn.

"Hello, stranger," she said.

He didn't have to look to picture her. Her face was dark, the tan color of a worn football, eyes as black as midnight crows. She was several inches shorter than Joshua but she'd be standing straight, her breasts small and firm beneath the men's shirt she always wore. Her hands would have their first wrinkles now, the fingernails chipped. Her hair was thick and dark and flowed down her back to her waist. Drinking would have been hard on the skin around her eyes, and he wondered if she had let her hygiene deteriorate to match the environment in which she lived. But she had made her bed, tangled its blankets, stained its sheets, and now she could lie in it and rot for all Jacob cared.

"He's in a mood," Joshua said.

"Poor chiquito," she said. "He always was the sensitive type."

Her voice hadn't changed over the years. It was still that same husky silk that even a telephone line couldn't diminish, the clipped accent not much influenced by her exposure to eastern Tennessee. He could even smell her now, a woodsy, animal odor, a wisp of sweat, a perfume that blended patchouli and cinnamon. Beneath that lay the faintest scent of her vagina, as if she and Jacob had made love in the bed across the room from him as he slept.

Or maybe that was just his imagination. She would never do such a thing. Nothing to tease him or hurt him. Or remind him that he would never be Joshua, no matter how much he tried.

"Come on, look at me," she said, and all that old bravado was back, her cruel and tantalizing indifference. He wished he could run to her, throw his arms around her, clamp his hands around her throat, kiss her and slap her and bite her lip.

But in the end, all he could do was obey her. Just like always.

"Carlita," he said.

Her eyes were hard and flat, dry obsidian marbles. That was all he allowed himself to absorb at first glance. It was drink to a drunk, heroin to a junkie, d-Con to a starving rat.

"Your face is red," she said. "Are you blushing?"

"Jake got a little too close to the campfire while he was roasting his weenie," Joshua said.

"Oh, that thing. I didn't know you still had one," she said to Jacob.

Life had marked her, the plows of time and hardship dragging furrows into her face. But her lips were as robust as October persimmons, though the corner of her mouth twisted in disdain. She had probably been born with that mannerism, hatched in the dirty hut of an illegal immigrant's shack in Piney Flats, where the Christmas tree farms leached their insecticides into the slow-moving creeks. On land that Warren Wells had owned and lorded over.

He couldn't look away from her eyes. They were as deep and dark as that grotto into which he had descended while hospitalized. They held the promise of cool suffocation, a slow and pitiless drowning. Though her skin had changed, losing some of that caramel luster, her eyes were untouched by the years that had passed since he had last seen her. Those eyes were as ancient as Mayan idols.

"How is the wife and kids?" she asked.

Jacob looked at Joshua, who smiled as if he had swallowed a greasy lizard. "You told her, didn't you?" Jacob managed.

Joshua shrugged and snuffed his cigarette against the wall. "Family secrets."

Jacob's head throbbed, the sun now high and bright and piercing him as if its needles were sewing his skin to his flesh. "I need a drink."

"Drinking is a want, not a need," Joshua said.

Carlita lifted her bottle of beer and drank. The bottle was beaded with moist drops of water, further arousing Jacob's thirst. She twisted her mouth again and pressed the Corona Light to her forehead, the motion causing her unbridled breasts to sway beneath her checked flannel shirt. Her denim jeans were tight around the curves of her thighs. She hadn't borne any children. She had moved too fast to be pinned down, had evaded all sperm that swam upstream against her unwelcoming currents.

Jacob closed his eyes again and turned his face against the pillow. His back was sore.

"Sorry to hear about your kids," she said. "That's mal mucho."

"Joshua," Jacob said, eyes clenched shut. He actually whimpered. "Make her stop."

Carlita came closer. Her beer breath wafted on his face. She whispered, "Told you it would never work. You cannot run away from who you are."

"Joshua," Jacob repeated, his voice cracking like a teenager's. "I'll give you anything. Just let me go."

Carlita's lips brushed against his cheek. He fought a slithering snake of vomit that wended up his esophagus. Despite his revulsion, a rush of warm blood surged through his groin.

"You didn't need them, Cacatua," she whispered. "Just me. Just me."

Jacob screamed, or maybe something inside him tore open and the sound that filled his ears was the wrenching of flesh from bone.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn't tell if seconds or minutes had passed. Drops of cool sweat clung to him like tiny leeches. Carlita and Joshua were sitting on the bed across the room, holding hands. They shared a kiss, no tongue, like kids with braces who were trying something new.

"I'll give you anything," Jacob said. "Just make it go away."

"Anything?" Joshua said.

"Yes."

"Sounds like what we wanted, don't it, babe?" Joshua said to Carlita.

"He filthy rich, a gringo pig," Carlita said. "Right now he just plain filthy."

"She's right, brother, you're really starting to stink up the joint. If dear old Momma was here, she'd rap a cane across your knuckles and give you a bath."

"Renee will bring the money," Jacob said.

"I know."

"Can I go now?"

"Sure, big brother. You're a guest here. You're free to leave any time you want."

Jacob lifted his hands and rubbed his wrists together where the ropes had chafed and cut through his skin. "Untie me, then."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Renee knelt on the cool grass. The morning clouds overhead were irregular, a jagged wash of gray rubbing against the lard-like lumps of white cumulus. She couldn't arrange the clouds, nor tidy the twisted trees that lined the edge of Heavenly Meadows. The shrubs along the low stone fence hadn't been trimmed since autumn and bristled with ungainly new growth. A chipped mausoleum stood at the top of the rise, its columns and facade done in a Roman style as if polytheism were acceptable as long as the tenants paid their rent. The world was irregular and obscene, the cracks in the mausoleum much too large for her to repair. Even the grave markers were arrayed in uneven rows, the older ones on the top of the hill worn and leaning, some bearing small, tattered American flags. She picked the stray bits of uneven grass from Christine's grave.

"She loves me, she loves me not," Renee heard herself saying, and the smell of plucked grass sent her to a fantasy playground where Mattie and Christine ran together, hand in hand. But the image made no sense, even for a daydream, because Christine had never even crawled, let alone walked.

"She loves me," Renee said, then changed to "Hail Mary, full of grace." Instead of rosary beads, she clutched the dirty pink rattle she'd found in the forest behind their burned-down house. Several priests had warned her in sermons that all the great and wondrous gifts of God could be stripped away in the blink of an eye, but that even the deepest sorrow could be tempered through abiding faith. She'd always thought those sermons had been addressed to other people, those whose sinful and cluttered lives invited disaster. Bad things didn't happen to good people in a just world guided by a merciful God.

She was praying over Christine's body because Mattie had no fixed location, no single point at which to hurl grief. Jacob's belief in a unifying, universal energy seemed terribly large and empty to her. Such an afterlife was the spiritual equivalent of ashes tossed onto the cosmic winds. She didn't want Mattie spending eternity in such a place. That's why she'd pressed Jacob to allow the children to be christened and baptized as Catholics. For all the good it did.

Renee finished her run through the cycle of sorrowful mysteries and stood. The grass had stained the knees of her pants. She would have to throw them away. Her apartment didn't have a washer and dryer, and she hated the dank, dim laundry room beside the property management office. She wasn't sure when she'd be returning to the apartment, anyway.

The money was in her jacket pocket in a crumpled paper sack, like something out of a crime movie. Twenty-seven one hundred dollar bills. All that was left. The profit of Christine's death.

A million in insurance coverage had been nothing. That barely replenished what Jacob had swiped from the M & W accounts, the bad real estate deals, foolish donations to charity that had become an obligation because of his name. Now they had another million coming, and all it cost was Mattie.

She wiped her eyes and turned. Someone stood at the far edge of the cemetery, cloaked in the morning shadows. She thought at first it was a caretaker, one of those hunched and reclusive figures prone to working in memorial parks. Then she remembered the whispered taunts from the woods the night before.

Renee put her hand in her pocket, searching for her key. Her car was by the gate fifty yards away. But she didn't need to run. She was in no danger. If her stalker had wanted to harm her, last night provided the perfect opportunity.

She headed toward the trees that clustered in the older part of the graveyard. The figure slipped back into the laurel undergrowth. The park had only one entrance, so the person would have to climb over the wall to avoid being seen. Renee fought the urge to hurry. She veered toward the wall, which bordered the rear of a strip mall. The buildings were brick, masonry oozing from the cracks as if a messy kindergartner had been in charge of construction. Jack vines, kudzu, and poison sumac climbed the wall and thorny locusts grew on the slope of the drop-off leading to the strip mall. No one in his right mind would scale the wall and scramble down that hazardous and itchy embankment.

She was nearly to the undergrowth when she heard the voice. Small and childlike, but not the same recorded voice from the night before.

"Wish me," the voice said.

The words came like one-two punches, one deep in the hollow of her stomach and the other flush against her forehead.

Jacob had taught Mattie the game. Wish Me usually came into play on long car trips, when fast-food stops and the occasional bathroom break weren't enough to drive away a child's boredom. Wish Me was usually a giggle game, descending into silliness such as "Wish me a zebra and paint the stripes like a rainbow." Or, "Wish me a million dollars and let's go to the candy store."

"Come out, Jacob," Renee said, surprised she could still issue breaths from behind her clenched rib cage.

The voice came again. "Wish me."

"I don't want to wish," she said, recalling Rheinsfeldt's summary of dissociative behavior. It was possible Jacob didn't realize he was stalking her. "I want to know why you're hiding."

"Follow me," the voice said. A branch snapped.

"We already played that game."

"Wish me your deepest wish."

"I don't have any wishes left."

"Except to know."

The laurel was tangled and dense, and the disarray of the branches filled Renee with a deep dread. She required order, and this organic chaos was beyond her control. This patch of forest lived for itself, grasping for the sky and rain, pushing up out of the earth like a corpse seeking a refund. Last night, the darkness had allowed her to block out the discordant surroundings as she gave chase to the person who had eluded her. But here in the warm glare of a perfect spring day, she couldn't deceive herself.

Disorder. All was disorder.

She glanced back at her car parked by the gate, at the highway below the cemetery where trucks hauled frozen turkeys and Coca-Cola, venting black diesel exhaust into the air. All she had to do was get in her car and drive away, leave all this madness behind.

"I can't follow you, Jacob," she said.

"Wish me." A monotone, as if from a talking doll whose microchips stole souls, a Rock Star Barbie whose plastic had become flesh and who now went by the name of Wells.

She took a tentative step into the laurel thicket. The branches crisscrossed like the arms of stunted witches, a coven of crazed and grasping creatures. "Where are we going?"

"To the door that swings both ways."

The same riddle as the night before. It must have been Jacob that had lured her away from the charred remains of their house.

"What do you want?" Renee asked again, expecting another riddle or taunt.

"Mattie sent me."

Renee's fear downshifted into helpless anger. "She's dead, Jacob."

Three ravens swooped across the cemetery, their wings steady. Almost simultaneously, they lit on separate gravestones. One landed on Christine's marker, a blue-gray slab of marble that had been shaped and etched by a professional sculptor rather than a monument company. She fought an urge to rush toward the bird, waving her arms and shouting, before its droppings could spoil the luster of the marble. Jacob had commissioned the monument complete with a lamb on top, and though he'd never mentioned a price, she suspected it was at least $10,000.

"Do you have the mirror?"

"I told you last night, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Who's the fairest of them all?"

"Mattie."

"Mattie. Not Christine."

The silver-plated mirror was heavy in her jacket pocket, covered by the brown bag.

She looked back at Christine's grave. The ravens were hopping along the ground, searching the grass for insects and worms. Nasty birds. But at least they were moving away from her baby.

A truck pulling a small flat-bed trailer stopped at the gate. On the trailer sat a stand-behind lawn mower and several gas-powered Weed Eaters. A man got out of the truck and pushed the gate wide. He waved to Renee.

"He sees you," Renee said.

"He thinks you're talking to yourself."

"Wish me, then," came the voice. "Wish me the money."

"Why can't you face me?" She glanced back at the groundskeeper, who was ignoring her, busy checking the fuel levels in his machines.

A shuffle of leaves came from within the thick stand of vegetation, the sound moving away from Renee and closer to the vine-clotted wall. Renee stooped and surveyed the ground beneath the lower branches. A worn path appeared to run just inside the perimeter of the wall. Cigarette butts and two crushed and dirty beer cans lay in the weeds. She took a deep breath, wondering if she could force herself to crawl through the narrow opening, where bugs and spider webs and dirt and thorns awaited.

The groundskeeper started his lawnmower and the gargle of the four-stroke engine drowned out whatever words the hidden stranger might have said. The three ravens lifted into the air, and with a crisp flapping of wings they soared over the thicket and settled on the roof of the strip mall. A stagnant puddle of water stretched across the wrinkled tar roof. On the water's surface, the sky was reflected, the thin silver clouds floating, the sun suspended, two seemingly endless worlds meeting in the face of a mirror.

She pulled the mirror out of her pocket, looked into it, and saw Mattie. Her racing heart fluttered, skipped a beat then thundered on toward its eventual finish line.

"Who's the fairest of them all?" Jacob shouted.

Her hand clenched around the mirror handle. She forced herself to look at the reflection again. Nothing but her wild, glittering eyes, hair as crazy as that of a rubber Halloween mask's, mouth creased with anxiety. She touched her hair, tried to smooth it straight, then gave up and slipped the mirror back into her pocket.

"Wish me," she yelled into the thicket. The lawnmower was coming close on its first lap around the cemetery, the blade trimming to putting-green closeness. The mower would soon be rolling over Christine, disturbing her sleep. She would awaken crying. She would need a blankie and a snuggle, "Hush Little Baby," her mother's breast.

Renee stepped back a few yards and the man on the lawnmower rode past her, lifting one gloved hand and nodding, the machine throwing clippings into the thicket. He was wearing headphones, his boots and jean cuffs stained green. The smell of cut grass filled Renee's nostrils, irking her allergies. The mower roared onward and soon the man disappeared behind the mausoleum and the far side of the hill. In the relative quiet, Renee called into the thicket again. "Wish me, Jacob."

"Wish me the fire didn't happen."

At her feet, a greasy earthworm stretched itself toward the shade, carrying off bits of the buried dead. Renee shut her eyes and pulled the brown paper bag from her pocket. "I brought the money."

The lawn mower buzzed over the hill, following the inside curve of the far wall. The groundskeeper was hunched over the handles, oblivious to everything but whatever amplified audio source was bombarding his ears.

"Throw it to me," Jacob said.

Renee peered into the tangled growth, trying to spot movement. She twisted the bag into a denser package and hurled it with all her strength. It landed against a hemlock, caught in the branches for a second, then vanished into the shadows. Renee knew this was her best chance, but her knees were weak, and she felt like a skeleton shivering on an October wire.

She was afraid to see her husband, afraid of what he'd become.

"Is this all?" he said.

"All that's left."

"I need more."

"Jacob, you don't have to--"

"I'm not fucking Jacob, all right?"

"Please, honey."

"Wish me."

"Let me get you some help. This has been hard on both of us. Dr. Rheinsfeldt--"

"Wish me, goddamn it."

Tears stung Renee's eyes. Grief caused one kind of crying, anger brought on another. Hopelessness brought a third kind, a clear, sulfuric emission that was more akin to bleeding than weeping.

"Wish you what?" she whispered over the distant hum of the mower.

"Wish me a million dollars so we can live happily ever after."

"Jacob, please."

She brought the mirror from her pocket, afraid to look into its surface. The mirror lied. Mattie and Christine had both been the fairest. Tied for first, the most beautiful princesses in all the kingdom. They should both be reflected in that mirror, and they deserved to have lived happily ever after.

"Jacob," she called. "Come by the apartment. I'll give you the rest."

The lawn mower had completed its circuit and was making a return path toward Renee. She could think of no reason to continue standing there. Jacob wouldn't come out. He was hiding because he was ashamed. He had lost face in more ways than one.

The fire, the new pink skin of his cheeks and forehead, his raw nose, the eyelashes that were singed short and stunted. Jacob had died in that fire as surely as Mattie had. She needed to bring his new incarnation back from the ashes, a reluctant phoenix. That was her only remaining purpose, her last chance at redemption.

In the end, it always came down to the selfish need to mortgage your own sorry soul.

"Wish me, Jacob," she shouted, voice cracking.

The lawn mower came closer, roaring like a swarm of man-eating bees, its exhaust hanging blue and pungent in the air. The groundskeeper eyed her, slowed the mower as it approached, shouted "Are you okay?"

She nodded. Grief. Playing a role to fit the surroundings.

We all wear masks, all the time, happily every after. Wish me not to be in my daughter's graveyard.

The man adjusted his headphones, hit the throttle, and accelerated across the grass. Exhaust rose, bitter and gray. The mower lurched toward the mausoleum, weaving between the oldest rows of markers. The smoke settled, thick as a battlefield's.

The smoke. Gray now. Surrounding her. Gushing from the thicket.

The woods were on fire.

"Jacob!"

The first bright flames leapt from the evergreen branches, leaf litter crackling, the wind lifting the smoke and pushing it across the earthen beds of the dead. Renee thought she heard a final "Wish me," or it may have been the roaring echo of an earlier fire, one whose embers glowed deep and red and ceaseless inside her heart.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Carlita had taken Joshua's virginity at the age of fourteen, the same age at which Jacob had discovered the brutal numbness of alcohol.

On the backside of a hill on the southern corner of the Warren Wells property, a row of cramped mobile homes housed the Mexicans who worked the Christmas tree farms, spraying pesticides and planting seedlings to replace the spruces and Fraser firs that had been harvested in previous years. Many of the workers had temporary agricultural visas, enduring thirty-hour bus rides each season to earn American dollars. Illegal aliens were cheaper and never complained about working conditions, so the papers were often passed to different hands if a worker said "No mas" and caught an early bus back to Guadalajara.

"Who the hell can tell a Jose from a Joaquin?" Warren Wells used to say in his unassailable logic. "They're all brown beaners to me."

The twins were fascinated with the small tribe of strangers that were their closest neighbors. Jacob wasn't allowed to go near the tree fields because of the pesticides, whose stench cloyed the air for weeks after a spraying. Mom had warned of the drunken fighting that went on in the Piney Flats camp, and she implored her husband to hire "honest white men" who attended Baptist church and kept their drinking and violence behind closed doors where it belonged. It was at the family dinner table that Jacob's imagination had fired, and the dark-skinned men he had seen moving like silent ghosts between the Fraser firs took on a mythic quality. After Mom died, the twins found more and more freedom as Warren Wells grew preoccupied with his ever-expanding empire.

He and Joshua had talked about them one night in July, weeks before the sailboat incident. Dad was on the porch smoking and looking out over the mountains, plotting ways to buy and build on more of them. Joshua had played a game of "Wish Me," and Jacob had answered, "Wish me a peek into the Mexican camp."

"You're too chickenshit for that, brother."

"No, I'm not."

"You wouldn't last five minutes. They fight cocks and spit blood."

Unformed sexual imagery flashed in Jacob's mind. "How do you know?"

"Don't you know nothing? What do you think I'm doing after school while you're up here doing your stupid homework?"

"Liar."

"I'll wish you, then. Put on your pants and shoes and let's go." Joshua sat up in bed, the crescent summer moon bathing his shoulders, his eyes glinting like wet beetles.

"No way. Mom will kill us."

"She'll have to catch us first." Joshua slipped on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he put on his jeans. His legs and arms were more muscular than Jacob's, and the hair that rose from his groin to his belly button was thicker than his twin brother's. Joshua always said that though he had been born second, he had become a man first.

Jacob trembled with a mixture of dread and excitement as he hurriedly dressed. They climbed out the window onto the sloping roof, edged to the back of the house then worked their way down by leveraging against a long metal pipe that contained the utility lines.

The dew was cool and crickets fidgeted their legs. Fireflies blinked against the black curtain of forest and a sullen moon hid behind clouds of warship gray. Jacob's heart jumped like a trapped rat in his chest as he followed Joshua past the barn and across the hay fields. From the top of the rise, he looked back and saw the Wells house with its small yellow squares of light. The structure appeared to be a stage set, a lifeless thing that was waiting for something to happen.

They slipped into the trees and down a worn path the Mexican workers used when they carried hand tools from the barn. A creek ran below the trail, and its silver music played against the night sounds of the woods. The canopy overhead blocked most of the moonlight, but Joshua appeared to carry a map and compass in his head, leading Jacob through the stands of oak, buckeye, and maple without pausing to get his bearings. Soon they emerged into the regimented rows of Fraser fir, the trees a little taller than the boys and soon to feel the chain saws of autumnal harvest. At the bottom of the slope, the trees gave way to seedlings and a clearing where the box-like trailers lined an uneven dirt road. Music and laughter spilled from the open door of one of the trailers then someone shouted what sounded like a curse in Spanish.

"They're playing cards," Joshua said. "They do that on weeknights. They only fight cocks on Saturday night."

As if to punctuate Joshua's words, a rooster let out a cackle, seven hours too early. Joshua could make out the gray walls of a pen behind the trailers, chicken wire wound between crooked posts and plywood nailed across the openings.

"How many times have you been here?" Jacob asked.

"Not enough. Not yet."

They hunched and crept through the dwindling firs, then crouched just beyond a power pole whose lamp cast a cone of pale bluish light. Inside the noisy trailer, men sat around a table, shirts off, skin moist in the heat. Cigarette smoke wended out the door and rose toward the moon. The clink of glass was sharp and dangerous, as if bottles would soon be broken and used as weapons. The men were talking rapidly in Spanish, flipping cards, stacking American bills.

"They're gambling," Jacob said.

"Big deal."

A short, barrel-chested man exited the trailer and stood in the soft rectangle of light that spilled from the door. He wore a ragged bandanna on his head and smoked a turd-colored cigarillo. He hawked loudly, spat toward the darkness, then fished at the front of his pants and sent a stream of piss arcing into the dusty yard.

"Over here," Joshua whispered, shifting between the brittle bones of dead ornamental shrubs. "This is where the action is."

They worked their way to a tumbled outbuilding near the chicken shack. The shed was constructed of warped planks, tarpaper, and bulging plywood. Joshua opened the door with a shriek of rusty hinges, and Jacob glanced back at the urinating Mexican. The man swatted at a mosquito, sending his stream oscillating out in front of him. The boys entered the shed, the only light a dim, lesser gray that knifed between the wall's cracks.

Jacob bumped his head on something dangling from the ceiling, and a rain of grit went down the back of his shirt. He put his hand up and felt the leathery object. It was a salted rack of ribs, smoked and cured and hung where the rats and dogs couldn't get it. The room smelled of wet hay and used motor oil, and the air was stale. Joshua moved to the wall, motioning Jacob forward, his arm like a strobe against the lighted cracks.

There was a knothole in the wall the size of a silver dollar. "Cheap peep show," Joshua said.

Jacob squinted through the hole and couldn't see anything at first. Then he realized he was looking at one of the rear mobile homes. He rolled the gaze of his right eye downward and saw a window, its dirty curtain like a soft gauze veiling the scene beyond the glass. On the bed was a girl with black hair and eyes, reading a book by candlelight. She wore a bathrobe whose whiteness was in sharp contrast to her tan skin. She appeared to be slightly younger than Jacob and Joshua, though the swells on her chest beneath the robe suggested an early push toward maturity.

"What do you think?" Joshua said, as if he were showing off a star baseball card fresh out of the pack.

Jacob's heart turned a sick flip but he couldn't tear his face from the knothole. The girl stretched her legs and the robe parted below her waist, revealing pink panties. She must have just finished a shower, because wet hair was plastered to her cheeks. She worked her lips as if trying to pronounce the words in the book, and the sight of her moist tongue brought an electric tingle to Jacob's groin.

"Hot tamale, huh?" Joshua said. "How would you like to roll up in a burrito with that?"

Jacob finally forced himself away from the wall. "How long have you been spying on her?"

"Long enough. I figure she's the daughter of one of the workers, and they smuggled her up here. Because there ain't no damn way the government's going to give a work visa to an underage girl."

"An illegal immigrant? Like down in Texas and California?"

"Like all the way to North Carolina. Right here in Wells Country."

Jacob ached to take another look, though his stomach clenched with guilt. This was sneaky and wrong. This was something that perverts did, like Melvin Ricks, the janitor, who had been fired by the high school for drilling a hole in the wall to the girl's locker room.

There was only one door to the shed. "What if they catch you?"

"I only come at night, when they're already drunk," Joshua said. "Besides, what are they going to do? Tell Dad and get fired? Report me to the cops? They'd check everybody in the place for green cards and half these beaners would be on the next bus to Brownsville."

Jacob swallowed what felt like a sharp stone lodged in his throat. "Have you seen her naked?"

Joshua's grin flashed in the dimness. "Better than that."

"Bullshit."

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. "Ten bucks and your run of Hulk comics says so."

"I don't gamble."

"Hang around here awhile and you'll get over it."

An unintelligible shout came from the trailer that hosted the card game, followed by laughter. "Sounds like somebody hit a full house," Joshua said. "Some idiot probably just lost two weeks' worth of trimming branches. Dumb fucks."

Jacob scarcely heard, because his cheek was pressed against the wall again, his one-eyed gaze crawling between the curtain and up the curving insides of the girl's thighs. He felt a small stir of air. Joshua had opened the shed door. The door closed with a rattle of metal, followed by the sound of a latch slamming home.

"Joshua," Jacob said with a whispered hiss. "Let me out of here."

"Keep watching, bro', and I'll show you what it means to be a Wells."

Jacob scrambled over the scrap metal, bundled straw, and tree baling equipment until he reached the door. He tried his weight against it then nudged it with his shoulder. He was afraid to make too much noise and risk drawing the attention of the card players. Despite Joshua's assessment, he could think of a number of ways the Mexicans could vent their anger at a gringo pervert.

He heard a tinny knock then Joshua called out, "Carlita, it's me."

Jacob listened for a moment and scrambled back to the knothole. He got there in time to see the trailer door close. Joshua was nowhere to be seen. Until he stepped into the girl's bedroom, moved to the window, and opened the curtains. He winked, then the room went dark as Carlita leaned over, her robe parted and rumpled, and blew out the candle.

Jacob wasn't sure how long he sat in the shed, huddled in a ball. The card game went on and on, the laughter sharpening while the Spanish banter grew more gruff and slurred. After perhaps an hour, Jacob looked through the knothole to find the girl's window was still dark. He tried to picture Joshua, the girl lying beneath him with the robe parted, their limbs entwined.

Two men left the card game and stood outside the shed, passing a bottle, talking quietly in words that Jacob couldn't understand. One of them went into the girl's trailer, and Jacob expected shouts as the couple was caught in the act. Instead, a light came on in the room, an overhead bulb this time instead of the candle. Joshua lay on the bed, the blankets pulled up to his bare chest. The girl was nowhere in sight. Joshua lifted his head and flashed Jacob two fingers in a sign of peace or victory. Or maybe that he'd done it two times.

Someone fumbled with the latch to the shed door.

Jacob looked around. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he could make out some agricultural equipment in the back of the room, fertilizer spreaders and watering tanks. He pushed away from the wall and clambered under the machines just as the door opened. Someone entered the room, clinking glass against the wooden door frame.

The man slumped into the loose stack of hay, hummed a drunken ballad that contained references to senoritas and corazon, then the toneless notes drifted into snores. When the snores became gravelly and steady, Jacob slipped from his hiding place and knelt by the door again. The half-light lay on the bottle by the man's side, causing the liquid within to glow. Jacob took the bottle and returned to his vigil by the knothole.

He twisted off the lid and smelled the contents. He knew it was liquor, because his father had a cabinet of the stuff kept under lock and key that was occasionally broken out for dinner guests. Medicine to dull pain, Warren Wells had said.

Joshua was still on the bed, and the girl was with him now, her bare back to the window as she slid astride him. She threw her head back and Joshua's fingers gripped her waist. She moved back and forth, her firm buttocks flexing with the gentle motion. Jacob sipped the liquor, barely aware of the burning on his tongue and in his throat. He took another swallow as the girl writhed faster, rocking as if on a hobby horse. The trot turned to a gallop and Jacob wasn't sure how much of the liquor he'd drunk but his head swam and his hand ached to reach for the heat inside his pants. The girl began crying out, and Joshua was yelling and groaning, the girl's skin red around the imprint of his fingers. Her flailing black hair fell across her shoulders as she ground her hips against Joshua, and with one great shudder and shriek, she went rigid.

Jacob drained the last of the bottle's contents as the couple slowed their movements and the girl collapsed on top of his twin brother. Jacob's head was thick; he was angry and aroused and nauseated. The card game must have ended, because silence filled the camp. He leaned his face against the wall and closed his eyes.

The next thing he knew, Joshua was shoving him awake. "Come on, goober, we better get home."

Jacob felt as if a plow had speared his skull. He blinked, looked past the door at the graying of dawn, the Mexican asleep in the hay, the empty bottle at his feet.

Joshua picked up the bottle and laughed. "Jose Cuervo, huh? Cheap crap. I'll bet you feel like Pancho Villa's army camped out in your mouth."

Thirst scorched Jacob's throat. He tried to clear it but he couldn't swallow. A knot of dry vomit worked its way up past his lungs. "That girl--"

"Carlita," Joshua said. His hair was mussed, his eyes bright. "Mmm, mmm, moy bien chiquita."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jacob wasn't sure if he was jealous or simply angry because Joshua had kept a secret. His thoughts were foggy and his eyes were dry as stones.

"Because you wouldn't have believed me."

"Then why did you bring me out here?"

"Because I hate you." A rooster crowed, then another. Joshua nodded to the sleeping man. "They'll be going to work soon. Dear old Daddy can't make a profit off them if they sleep all day. Let's get out of here."

They headed back across the Christmas tree field, Jacob staggering and holding his stomach. The revelry that had colored the camp the night before had died with darkness, and now the trailers looked rumpled and sad. A Dodge van was parked out front, its side door gone, the rear window broken. Jacob knelt in the grass and tried to vomit, but all that came up was a caked, greenish-yellow substance. He crawled several yards with the stuff trailing from his lips until Joshua yanked him to his feet.

"Shape up, Jake. You don't want nobody to suspect nothing back at the house."

Jacob took one last look at the girl's window, thought of that miraculous skin against the soft terry cloth of the robe, the black hair, the curves and muscles of her legs. He spat his mouth clear. "Did you...um...?"

Joshua patted him on the back. "A Wells never fails."

They made it back to the house, and Jacob was able to shower and have breakfast before Old Man Wells made it to the table. Dad drank his coffee and checked the stocks in the newspaper. Joshua sat in silence, wearing a faint smile of amusement. The greasy bacon and eggs sat in Jacob's stomach like steel shavings and rubber, but the nausea passed and his hands no longer trembled. It was Friday, so he and Joshua would have to walk the half mile to catch the school bus down by the bridge.

"What are you boys doing after school?" Dad asked.

"I thought we'd go down to the workers' camp," Joshua said, catching Jacob's gaze and holding it. "I'm thinking of taking Spanish next semester and figured I could get a few free lessons."

"You stay away from there. Those beaners are rough. They're hard workers, but if they didn't work so cheap, I wouldn't bother with them. When they're drunk, they get mean. They'd cut each other's throat for a nickel."

"I don't think our workers drink, Dad," Joshua said.

Dad actually looked over the newspaper at that. "They all drink. So don't be hanging around there. If you want to learn Spanish, we can hire a tutor."

"But I want to learn about the tree industry," Joshua said, and Jacob was stunned by the glib cunning of his brother. Joshua knew how to trick Jacob, all right, but his recent conquest must have fueled his arrogance, because there he was bullshitting Dad, the king of the bullshitters.

"I can teach you about the trees when the time comes," Dad said, turning his attention back to the Dow Jones average.

"What if something happened to you? One of us would have to know what to do."

"Nothing's going to happen to me."

"It happened to Mom, didn't it?"

Dad folded the paper, crossed the kitchen, poured his coffee down the sink, and rinsed his glass. He left the room, and a minute later the front door closed, followed by the sound of his truck engine.

Joshua leaned back in his chair and grinned like a dyspeptic weasel. "What's really cool is one day one of us is going to have to carry on."

Jacob put his head on the table, head in his hands. He wondered if he could skip school without Dad finding out. "Are you in love with her?"

"What's that, pukeface?"

"Is she your girlfriend?"

"Love. You really believe that shit, don't you?"

Jacob wanted to ask what it was like, her hot, slick skin on his, her lips brushing his face, the secret folds opened. He wanted to know how Joshua could enjoy all those wonders and then remain so callous towards them.

He'd always been afraid that the twins were too much alike, that his and Joshua's shadow would always be merged and neither would escape the other. That morning, he saw for the first time how little alike they actually were, as if they didn't even belong to the same species.

"Wish me," Jacob said.

"I can't wish you sober, Jake. Only time can do that."

"No, wish me to be you one time."

"You like Carlita, huh? Want a taste of taco sauce?"

"Wish me."

"Well, you're already going to be me this afternoon, remember? My algebra test. The one I missed and you're going to make up for. Mrs. Runyon will never know the difference. And don't forget to write with your left hand."

"How come you can't take it?"

"You're smarter. Besides, me and Carlita are going to hang out under the bridge. Do a little fishing." He smiled. "One day I might teach you how to use a pole, when you're big enough."

"What if I don't want to take your damned test?"

"Come on, now. The cane, remember?"

Jacob burped and the acid sluiced up his throat. He swore to himself he would never try liquor again. And he was going to quit letting Joshua threaten him, because Joshua was as much to blame for Mother's death as he was. He was done letting Joshua push him around. But, first, he was going to find a way to finish that test early so he could find himself a good hiding place in the weeds beside the bridge.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dust.

Which of the tiny specks were Mattie, and which were bits of dead skin, moth wings, dandelion fluff, or lost sea sand?

Jacob looked down into his palm, then at the urn on the faux mantel of Renee's living room. The urn was cold in its solitude, cast in black porcelain with dark gold piping around the rim. Overwrought solemnity, the best money could buy.

Jacob let the dust sift through his palm to the floor, knowing Renee would twitch with the urge to get out the vacuum cleaner. "I need the rest of it."

"I gave it to you already."

"I can make him go away."

"By buying your father's place? I thought you hated that house. You always said it brought back bad memories."

"I'm not buying the place. I'm giving it to my brother."

"Joshua? The man whose name you could barely stand to say? The one you kept secret from me because you were so ashamed?"

"I owe him. I took everything my father left. I tricked Joshua out of his birthright because I thought I could put it to better use."

"You said he refused to take any inheritance. 'I don't want nothing the old man ever touched.'"

"I got the money and the real estate, Joshua got the home place. But he can't sell or rent it because of the covenants Dad put on it. Since he doesn't want to live there, he basically got nothing. While I got to finish building the Wells empire."

"Since when did you start feeling guilty about that? If you're going to feel guilty for something, maybe you should show some emotion over the death of your daughter."

Renee stood with the sleeves of her tan sweater tucked into her fists. Her eyes held enough fire and light to drive the chill out of Jacob's heart, but the combustible places inside him had long since been walled off. He felt like a trespasser in her apartment, in this new life she was trying to make. One where the kids were nothing but photographs on the wall, pieces of slick paper in polished picture frames. A life where Jacob was nothing more than temporary clutter.

"I've dealt with Mattie's death in my own way," he said.

"Great. Thanks a lot for leaving me behind while you did it."

Jacob looked at her, wondering if he'd ever really known her. Or maybe he had never known himself. "You've been talking to that damned Rheinsfeldt again, ain't you?"

"Yes, and I'm starting to figure out some things. She said you had some traumatic experience--or probably several--that caused your adolescent disorder."

"'Disorder.' As if everything has to be in order."

"And now this brother thing. Like maybe if you make amends with Joshua, pay him off, you can buy his love and maybe get your father back that way. But maybe you can't fit all the pieces together again."

"Money makes a good glue."

"They won't release the settlement, Jacob. Not until the investigation's complete. You know that."

"I didn't start the fire. Even if you hate me now, you know I'd never do anything that stupid."

"I'm not so sure anymore. I don't know which Jacob you are."

That's what they always say.

Jacob fought the urge to rush across the room and slap her. He forced his fist open and stretched his fingers. Some of the dust from the urn still clung to his moist palm.

Jacob took his gaze from Renee's tear-streaked face and looked at the urn. How could such a small jar hold those millions of memories, the hopscotch chalk on the sidewalk, Big Bird's Firehouse, the sticky trip to Disneyland, the juice boxes of midget league soccer? How could his precious little girl be reduced to such a finite space when she had once contained multitudes of possibilities?

"Fine, then."

"What the hell do you expect?" Renee said. "You've gone off the deep end again and you won't let me help. You run away from the hospital, hide from Donald and me, start drinking, then you stand in the woods and try to freak me out, pretending you're somebody else. What the hell am I supposed to do? Lock you in the nuthouse again?"

"That was a long time ago and I'm much better now. I'm a grown-up. I know how to deal with my problems."

"You didn't handle your mother's death very well. You go crazy when you lose a child. And we're both twice as crazy now. Don't you see that helping each other is the only hope?"

"Rheinsfeldt and her touchy-feely 'dialoging to wellness.' That doesn't sound like much hope to me. Because when it was over, if it was ever over, then all we'd have would be each other."

"Maybe that's enough." Renee said.

"Two million would be enough."

"I told you. The twenty-seven hundred was the last of it."

"Give it here."

Renee's jaw was twisted and tight. "I already gave it to you. At the cemetery."

"Quit bullshitting me, Renee. If you want to trick me into thinking I'm cracking up, you got to do better than that."

She shook her head, the tears no longer flowing but lying on her cheeks in thin, bright tracks. Jacob almost felt sorry for her, this woman he had loved for nearly a decade. She had lost as much as he had. Perhaps her suffering was even worse, because she believed in a merciful God, and God had proven the worthlessness of her faith.

"I don't have it," she said. "Talk to Donald. He'll tell you. You're ruined, Jacob. There's no money left, the banks are foreclosing on your property, and even if you get your insurance money, it's going to be too late to bail you out this time."

"No. I'm a Wells, damn it. This is my town. They can't take it away from me."

"Sorry, Jake. You shouldn't have dropped out of your own life."

"Give me your keys," he said.

"No. It's my car."

"Our car. Don't forget whose name's on the title. Wells."

"Just like the house, huh? And there's nothing left of it but ashes. Everything we owned together is ashes now. Everything a Wells ever touched."

They both looked at the urn. It had the power of a sacred relic, an icon that marked not the abiding mystery of faith and life but the absolute consuming nadir of despair and failure.

"I'll drive you back to the Wells farm," she said.

"I can't stay there."

"You can't sleep in the bushes."

Jacob looked at the couch, then down the hall at the starched covers of her bed. When you turn your back on your life, you leave everything behind, even those things that once seemed valuable. "Take me by the ruins, then. Show me where the person called to you from the woods."

"That was you, Jake."

"It wasn't. I swear."

But he couldn't be sure. Maybe visiting the scene of the nightmare would rob it of its power. He had nothing left to lose. Except two million dollars, his wife, and the Wells homestead.

They drove to Buffalo Trace Lane in silence, Renee keeping her purse in her lap, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The town seemed like a movie set to Jacob, a false-front stage for the Wells illusion. He hadn't owned Kingsboro. All he had was a name heavier than blocks, girders, and bricks.

As they pulled into the driveway, Jacob was struck by the harsh emptiness of the lot, as if the blank space in the sky required the satisfying geometry of walls and roof in order to be complete. The rectangular bed of ashes lay like a black, sunken grave. The yellow crime scene tape had drooped, and in places it was broken and fluttering in the breeze like the tails of crippled kites. The trees around the ruin were scorched, the branches stunted and bare. New blackberry vines had thrust from the dead embers scattered beyond the block foundation, as if sharp and painful edges were the next natural evolutionary step here.

Renee stopped the engine and sat with her hands in her lap. "We're home."

Jacob looked up to where the second floor would have been, to the haunted air of Mattie's vanished window. "I tried to save her. You believe that, don't you?"

"I was there, Jake. I remember."

"But you couldn't see. All that smoke."

"Like I told the fire chief."

"We were cut off from each other. You had to go downstairs. It was the only way out."

"I thought you and Mattie were already safe, or I never would have left." Renee adjusted her glasses on her nose, as if using a memory trick to recall her half of the story. "But I had to get my glasses out of the car."

"And the back door was open."

"The door that swings both ways."

"Huh?" Jacob imagined flames licking at the afternoon sky, a daytime Armageddon, a cleansing wave pushed up from the bowels of hell.

"The door that swings both ways. Like you told me the night you were hiding in the woods."

"I wasn't hiding in the woods."

"Something about the door, Jake. And when you smelled the smoke, you told me to wait in the bedroom. Like you were afraid of what I might see."

"I didn't want you to see Mattie. I wanted to protect you. Both of you. Like I couldn't protect Christine."

That sounded good. He swallowed.

The charred flecks of Christine's crib lay somewhere in the burned-out basement, along with a menagerie of stuffed animals, hair brushes, Barbie dolls, and an Easy-bake oven. The Weebles and Lego and Strawberry Shortcake and Pooh pajamas. Tweety Bird sleepers and Dr. Seuss videos. Purple plastic bracelets and silver wigs, sneakers that lit up with red LED's when a girl danced. The solid things were the only believable reminders of Mattie, because memory clung not to her smile in the sunshine but to her face in the fire.

"Jake, I can't talk to Chief Davidson anymore. She suspects something."

"It won't be much longer. The SBI has run about every test they have. They'll have to close the case soon, and we'll get our money."

"It's not ours, though. You want to give it to Joshua."

A car came up the road behind them, slowing as it passed the driveway. Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror. The Nelsons from 217, who lived around the corner. Their house had a thousand square feet less of floor space than the one he'd built here. With the insurance money, he could build an even larger one, an envy-inspiring Wells monument that would be three stories and--

He wouldn't rebuild here. This wasn't his home anymore. He belonged in Joshua's house. And Joshua would get the two million, money from the fire and Mattie. Fair was fair. Jacob opened the door and got out of the car.

The air carried a faint charred aroma in its heavy dampness. If he'd believed in spirits, he could imagine Mattie hovering over the bed of dead embers, picking among the ruins for the ghosts of toys. He touched his face, recalled the searing heat that must have been ten times as intense to her. The fire had robbed her of oxygen, suffocating her in its selfish consumption. The greedy fingers of flames had stroked and groped and seized, had pulled all that lay before it into its arms.

The fire had risen from a muted spark and swelled to a stubborn, hungry thing. The fire refused to recognize its limits. Therefore, it was the fire's fault, not his.

Never his.

Because a Wells never fails.

Renee came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. He shivered. She had always been colder than Carlita. "Jacob, what are we going to do?"

"Wait."

"But what happens after that? M & W is wiped out."

"The partnership can declare bankruptcy. The claimants can't touch the insurance money. That's mine."

"Ours. A joint asset."

"Ours." The word had lost most of its meaning. Still, if she wanted to believe in a fantasy future, it would make things that much simpler. Betrayal worked best when it came as a surprise. Enemies were the only people you could trust, because they were predictable. The only trouble was figuring out which ones were enemies.

"Why did your brother come back?"

"He's a Wells. He's part of me." In a way that Renee would never be. Her blood, no matter how hot it ran or how much of it spilled for him, would never have the purity of Joshua's. Even Mattie and Christine were diluted, only half Wells.

"Somebody knows, Jake."

"Nobody knows."

She pulled the Rock Star Barbie out of her purse. "Remember this?"

The fire, laying on the floor, screaming "Wish me" against the crackling chorus of flames. "Mattie's doll."

Renee triggered its audio chip and it bleated "Housewarming present."

"Some kid playing a joke, maybe. Some drunk. Or crazy bum." Not like him. Not him.

"I found it in the woods."

"Forget it. Nobody saw nothing."

"Let me show you something," she said.

Jacob looked up the road, half expecting to see Davidson round the corner in her fat-wheeled SUV, all chrome and insignia and fog lights. If she smelled arson, she would hang the crime on somebody. And an arson that caused a child's death would be a second degree murder charge at a minimum.

Renee tugged his sleeve, dragged him toward the woods. As they passed the wreckage, he wondered what the clutter meant to her, how the skeletal block wall and blackened wood and scorched appliances played against her obsessive-compulsive disorder. She'd wanted to clear the forest, level the oak and maple and birch and install landscaping, to regiment the wilderness and line the shrubs in a God-pleasing order. Jacob had convinced her that they wouldn't be in the house long enough for the plants to reach maturity, and she had settled for flower beds along the front walk.

He fumbled at his shirt pocket and touched the pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights, the same brand as Joshua's.

"I found this, too." She pulled the plastic rattle out of her pocket and shook it, though the sound elicited sharp pricks of regret.

"That was in the nursery," Jacob said.

"Should have been."

Jacob took the rattle in his left hand and shook it. It bore the face of a generic bear, its painted eyes long since flaked off. The handle was worn, but it felt familiar inside Jacob's grip. He had rattled the bear himself, as a tiny child whose twin lay in the crib beside him, whose mother leaned over in severe judgment, whose father stayed well away. Years that Jacob had rarely mentioned, no matter how deeply Renee had dug.

It was one of the few relics Jacob had kept when he left home. It had been in his college apartment, and Renee had found it in one of her frantic bouts of cleaning. He'd shrugged it off, but Renee found it sweet and enduring that a rebellious, scatter-brained poet hung on to a childhood toy.

And, by rights, the rattle should have been a melted lump of slag deep in the black bowels of the house.

"Somebody was in the house, Jake."

"He couldn't have known."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Who do think?" Jacob gripped the rattle hard enough that the plastic cracked.

"Is that why you're giving him the money? Is he blackmailing you?"

Jacob stared back at the house, at the black bed of charred ruins that may as well have been a mirror of their souls. He pulled out the pack of cigarettes and tapped one free, shaking the rattle in the process.

"When did you take up smoking?" she asked.

"I've always smoked."

He flicked the lighter and touched it to the cigarette tip, fighting the impulse to also apply the flame to the rattle.

Better late than never.

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

"I love you." As if that were an answer.

She took the cigarette from his fingers. "Then let's do this together."

She tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her foot. "A Wells never fails, and two Wells are better than one," she said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As Renee drove Jacob to Dr. Rheinsfeldt's office, she looked over at the passenger seat and admired her handiwork. He'd moved into her apartment, cleaned up, and bought a couple of new suits. It was off-the-rack, Belk's stuff, but it would have to do until the money began rolling again. And it would. A shave and a splash of cologne, three weeks of sobriety to get the bugs off his skin, and he was ready to climb back onto the throne. Kingsboro was waiting for him to stand up and be a Wells, to take the town's future in his hands and push it into a prosperous new era.

Attitude was the important thing. They had mourned enough. The SBI had turned in the final incident report, and the fire had been ruled "Cause undetermined." Not quite as good as a ruling of "accidental," which would mean that a definitive source of the fire had been found. As it was, the open-ended ruling left a cloud of suspicion lingering, but the insurance company was now compelled to pay. Two million dollars, minus the $20,000 that Renee had received for emergency housing and living expenses.

Now they were bound together, joined for the future, and Jacob wouldn't be able to shake her. He had accepted the new arrangement with sullen resentment, but she had explained that no other options remained. A husband and wife didn't keep secrets from each other, and now they had to close ranks. They could deal with the rest of it after they squared the books of M & W Ventures and shut up Donald Meekins. They'd already signed the necessary forms, and Rayburn Jones had treated them like old friends, pleased to see Jacob back in Rotarian form. Jacob seemed to sit a little straighter, his eyes brighter and wider, confidence returning.

They'd not talked about Joshua. Renee hoped he'd given up and left town.

"This is important," Renee said, pulling into the parking lot of Total Wellness. "I know we each have to deal with grief in our own way, but the community will forgive you faster if you seek help. And don't forget to act humble."

"Humble," Jacob said. "I can manage that."

"We don't even have to talk about the girls if you don't want to."

"Whatever the doctor thinks is best."

Summer was giving way to autumn, the grass taking on a blue-green shade and the oaks on the lawn in full red canopy. The sky was blue and the clouds high and white, and the sadness had faded enough that Renee could once again believe that God watched over them all.

She saw Rheinsfeldt at the second-floor window, looking down on them as they came up the sidewalk. Renee started to wave then wondered if that was a breach of etiquette. Maybe therapists didn't acknowledge their clients outside the confines of the confessional chamber. Jacob didn't notice the doctor, his gaze fixed on a hill in the distance where grading machines were at work notching a red gash in the slope.

"That's Wade Thompson's crew," Jacob said. "We had an option on that land before all this recent trouble. I think he's aiming for student apartments. I would have gone for condominiums myself. Fewer headaches and a quicker return."

He was sounding like the Jake of old, the one with plans and ambition. The man she had helped build, and the only version of him she was able to love. She had no use for the broken Jake who drank cheap liquor in the bushes and cowered at the mention of his brother. This reborn Jake had a bounce in his step and his complexion had gone to a healthy blush, the mottled and burned skin almost completely healed.

"Be patient, honey," she said. "We're going to get it all back. A Wells never fails."

"And two Wells are better than one."

The receptionist recognized Jacob. "Good morning, Mr. Wells," the receptionist said, smiling in a way that would have made Renee jealous had she not been so pleased that another woman found her husband worthy of charm. "Please sign here."

As he signed them in, Renee interrupted him. "Jake?"

"Yes?" He looked down and saw he'd been writing with his left hand. "Oh."

He switched to his right and finished his signature. They barely had time to pick up magazines, Home Design for him and Entertainment Weekly for her, before they were summoned down the hall to Dr. Rheinsfeldt's office.

"So," the doctor said, taking the couch this time. The room smelled of potpourri and long-burnt incense. The furniture had been rearranged, and Renee wondered if a chair had been taken out especially for their visit. With only one chair in the room, besides the small chair at the computer desk, one of them would be forced to sit beside the doctor. Divide and conquer, maybe that was the doctor's strategy.

That was fine with Renee. This outcome was already determined, so Dr. Rheinsfeldt could use whatever technique she desired. "We've decided to start over," she said.

"That's good," the doctor said, pursing her Prussian mouth in a manner that suggested she was displeased. "Willingness is half the battle."

Jacob sat beside the doctor. "I realized I was blaming myself for what happened," he said. "And then I blamed my wife."

"You realize there's no blame here," Rheinsfeldt said. "Just a tragic accident."

Renee and Jacob exchanged looks. The doctor went on, oblivious of their feelings. "When we suffer a loss, we each must design our own grieving process. Some people cry their eyes out all the way up to the funeral, then calm down and never seem to be bothered again. Others show no emotion and go around cold and dead on the inside for months or even years. It's not uncommon to slip into clinical depression"--she looked at Jacob over the top of her glasses frame--"especially if substance abuse is involved. And with your history, Jacob--"

"I'm done with all that." Jacob tugged at his tie, centering the knot under his throat. "I owe it to Mattie and Christine to keep living."

"The other thing," Renee said, "is he's coming to grips with his past."

Rheinsfeldt ignored her, focusing on Jacob. "From your records, that seems to be the origin of your trauma."

"I think Jacob and his twin brother were competing for their father's affection, and Jacob always felt he never shined as brightly as his brother," Renee said. "At least in his father's eyes."

"I'm aware of Warren Wells," Rheinsfeldt said. "He was a consummate overachiever, apparently. And your twin brother?"

"It doesn't matter now," Jacob said.

"I sense anger," Rheinsfeldt said.

"I have a right to be angry. Joshua played mean tricks on me all during our childhood. Even though we were physically identical, he was somehow stronger and more willful than I was. He always had the best-looking girlfriends, the star positions on the sports teams, the best grades. Even when I did his homework for him."

"So you felt inferior to him?"

"At first. Then, when I decided that I was going away as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, it didn't bother me anymore. Mom died and everything changed."

"You felt abandoned?"

"No. I felt relieved. Dad was just distant and reproachful. Mom actively despised us."

"Were you... physically abused?"

"No." Jacob's eyes fixed on the floor. "That would be too simple."

"Jacob's never been violent with me," Renee said. "He wouldn't spank Mattie. I always had to be the disciplinarian."

"Does that cause you resentment?" Dr. Rheinsfeldt asked her.

"Maybe, but let's focus on Jacob," Renee said. "I think he needs it more than I do right now."

"Tell me more about Joshua," the doctor asked Jacob.

"I went away to college, determined that I was never coming back here. I even toyed with the idea of changing my name. I just wanted to forget that I was a Wells, especially after Dad put all this pressure on us to follow in his footsteps."

"How did he do that? You said he was aloof."

"He had his ways. He was a slave master, a plantation owner born in the wrong time. He was a conqueror, not a father. With him, it was all about winning."

"And Joshua pleased him more than you did? Or, you at least perceived it that way?"

"Joshua had a way of... I don't know, dodging responsibility, shifting blame. If a lamp was broken, it was always my fault. If the newspaper was rumpled, I'd be the one who had no respect for the property of others. A bad report card, and I'd be the one not performing up to my abilities, even if my grades were better than Joshua's."

Renee leaned forward and touched Jacob's knee, encouraging him to continue. He was exposing his inner workings, the ones he'd always hidden from her. He was serious about wanting to start over. And getting the story straight was important.

"I started getting headaches, mostly when I was around Joshua," he said. "We'd always shared the same room, though we lived in a big house. I think it made Mom happy. She liked the idea that her sons were close. Gave her a feeling that she had done a good job of raising us."

"Did she?"

Jacob looked at the window, not seeing the curtains or the sliver of outside world between them. "Who knows? I suppose you judge your parents by how your own life turns out."

"Do you blame your mother for leaving you?"

"I'm not angry with my mother," Jacob said. "I guess I was angry at Dad. That's why I tried so hard to get away. If it wasn't for Renee--"

The sorrow slipped out of his eyes, replaced by a glint of determination. He would do it for her and their future together. Maybe one day they could start a new family. She loved him.

"She's the one who turned me around, cleaned me up, made me take some pride in myself," Jacob said. "It sounds strange, but she made me understand what it means to be a Wells."

"Do you think you turned Renee into a mother figure?"

"I don't think so," Jacob said. "Renee is different from my mother in most ways."

"Except the cleanliness," Renee cut in again. "You always said we were both neat freaks."

"But that wasn't what attracted me to you," Jacob said, talking to her now as if the doctor wasn't in the room. "It was your atmosphere, the way you carried yourself. Like you knew what you were about."

"And, being a bit scattered yourself, you saw a chance to impose some order on your life," the doctor said.

"Maybe," Jacob said. "That, and the conversation."

"Sex," Renee said. The sex hadn't been great at first. Jacob had been tentative, restrained, as if carrying a burden of guilt. It had taken months before he really opened up and became considerate and expressive. It had started with the night he'd come home drunk and taken her forcefully, with an animal passion that receded into such deep tenderness that she had wept during her final round of orgasms. The night that Mattie had been conceived.

"I was trying to come off as a gentleman."

"Remember that we only have one rule in this room," the doctor said. "Absolute honesty at all times."

Renee nodded at him. Jacob had never been a good liar. Despite his success at business, despite the long Wells tradition of deception, despite his hatred of his parents and twin brother, Jacob's blood had never turned cold enough to qualify him as a sociopath. She knew him better than he knew himself. She gave him a smile of support.

"Let's go back to your adolescent fugue states," Rheinsfeldt said. "What happened during them?"

"I would experience periods of forgetfulness. Most of the time they would only last a minute or two. Like I'd be in school, listening to the teacher start a math problem, then all of a sudden I'd hear the bell ring and all the kids would be getting out of their seats to change classes. The chalkboard would be full and I'd look down at my paper and see all these notes to myself. Notes that had nothing to do with the class work."

"Notes?"

"To my brother, mostly. We used to play a game called 'Wish Me.' Just a silly game where you wish something impossible. Except Joshua always made it scary."

"Scary?"

"In our room at night. He'd hide under my bed and be the Sock Monster. Put a sock over his hand and sneak up and pinch me. I'd say, 'Wish me away from the Sock Monster.' But he'd say, 'Wishes don't come true for rotten little boys.' And he'd twist my ears or snatch my toes or claw my face."

"No wonder you harbor anger toward him," Rheinsfeldt said, tapping the unlit cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. Renee was sure the doctor would be delighted to have the twins in the same room. Though she'd never met Joshua, Renee couldn't help loathing him after all the pain he'd caused her husband. And, of course, he might be dangerous in other ways. He was a rival.

"I covered up for him," Jacob said. "He was the black sheep, always getting in trouble, messing around with girls, disobeying Dad."

"And you were the responsible one?"

"Not always. But"--he looked at Renee, eyes unreadable--"he made me pretend to be him sometimes."

The doctor straightened. "During your dissociative disorder?"

"Nothing serious," Jacob said. "He'd skip a class and make me cover for him. So I would be the one who was marked absent. He had a Saturday job as a carpenter's helper, and if he had a date with a girl, I'd have to fill in. And the carpenters would get mad at me because I didn't know how to do the work. We were so identical that no one ever caught on. Except Josh is left-handed, so I had to learn to be ambidextrous."

"Did you ever pretend to be Joshua at home? Did you try to fool your parents?"

"Dad could always tell us apart. Like I said, Joshua always was his favorite, the one he finally decided would carry on the family tradition. I was the afterthought, even though I was born first. Mom seemed to ignore both of us equally. I don't think she cared enough to learn our individual mannerisms."

"After you left home, how did you feel?"

"Liberated. Like I could finally breathe for the first time in my life."

"And your fugue states?"

"I didn't have any after that. But there was one I still worry about."

"Really. Please tell us."

The room's cloying sweetness gave Renee a headache. Jacob had kept so much from her. She glanced at him, at his eyes that would always remind her of Mattie's. She studied his features more closely but saw nothing of Christine there. Christine had been hers, if only for two months.

"Joshua used to torture the guinea hens," Jacob said. "Dad kept them around so he could pretend to be the gentleman farmer, but we never collected their eggs. They mostly just ran wild around the woods. Joshua would corner them in the barn and shove things inside them--cigarette butts, pieces of corn, pencil erasers. He always made me watch."

"How could he force you? What sort of power did he hold over you?"

Jacob shrugged. "He was a Wells."

"Did your brother ever have counseling?"

"No, but I did. Because of the blanking out. They even ran brain scans. Dad thought it was for something else. Adjustment problems, or whatever the guidance counselor at school called it. Like he'd ever notice a difference."

"Ah," Rheinsfeldt said, with a knowing smile, confident her profession had successfully addressed Jacob's earlier problems. "So which fugue bothered you?"

"The one where I came awake in the barn. Joshua was standing there holding a bloody hatchet. There were six hens scattered around the floor of the barn. Joshua said I'd gone crazy and chopped their heads off. My hands were coated with blood. One of the hens wasn't dead yet, and it scratched its way across the dirty hay, one wing drooping to the ground. Its head lay at my feet, the eyes blinking at me as I watched the light fade out of them. And I can't understand why I'd ever do such a thing." Jacob looked at his hands as if the chicken blood was still slick on his fingers.

"Repressed memory," the doctor said. "People often block out traumatic events. It's the brain's way of protecting itself. Protecting us from ourselves, one might say."

"Anyway, once I got away from Dad and Joshua, everything was wonderful. I met Renee and she allowed me to be myself. I know it sounds corny, but once I got some distance, I began to miss Kingsboro."

"Did your father approve of Renee?"

"Once he figured out she would set me on the path to success. His idea of success. Real estate development, civic pride, big shot dreams, and money. Lots of money."

"Yet you don't resent your wife? After all, it sounds like she had the same kind of power over you that Joshua had, and your father had, only she used it in a more constructive manner."

Renee didn't like the doctor's shrewd lick of the lips. Her power over Jacob was unreliable. Love could only work so much magic. After that, all she had was words.

And the threat of secrets.

But Jacob didn't follow the doctor down that path of reasoning. "I would be nothing without Renee. After Christine--after that first tragedy--we really pulled together. We decided to dedicate the rest of our lives to making Mattie happy. Like maybe if we loved her twice as much, somehow Christine's short life wouldn't have been completely wasted."

Renee pulled a tissue from the box on the table. She was glad it was unscented, though some of the room's smell had settled into the fibers. She wiped her eyes and nose, determined not to break down. This was for Jake. She didn't need to add drama.

"And after Mattie died?" the doctor said, visibly taking measure of the dampness in Jacob's eyes. "After our session?"

"I lost it," Jacob said. "The drinking, avoiding Renee, shirking my business responsibilities. Pretty much everything I worked for and believed in was gone."

"And you were angry?"

"Damned right."

"And you needed someone to blame?"

"Sure."

"He blamed me," Renee said. "And it was partly my fault. If I had gone to Mattie's room with him, maybe together we could have saved her."

"No," Jacob said. "We have to move past that. It was just an awful, terrible accident. I'm sorry."

She wanted to trust him, wanted to believe he was back to his regular self. The Jacob he'd promised to be, the one who would remake Kingsboro in his image. But she had to know where his loyalty really lay, and who had the most power over him.

"Joshua's back in town," she said to Rheinsfeldt. "And I'm afraid Jacob's fugue states are coming back, too."

Rheinsfeldt's mouth opened in either surprise or pleasure. She stood on her thick legs and crossed to the telephone, pressed a button and spoke toward it. "Judy, cancel my next appointment. Thank you."

Then the doctor returned to the couch, plucked the unlit cigarette, and puffed on it as if frustrated by the lack of smoke. She faced Renee. "Tell us all about it."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jacob chose the Dodge Ram pickup truck over the Mercedes. The truck projected a blue-collar, hands-on attitude. He'd tried to talk Renee into getting a new car, but she said they should be frugal for a while. Otherwise, people might talk.

He'd had some money left over even after replacing what he'd embezzled from the M & W accounts. He'd had to concoct a few receipts by creating dummy subcontracting firms, landscapers and plumbers and excavators, the same companies he'd used to drain off most of Donald Meekins' money in the first place. And then there was the payoff to Joshua...

But now he was out of the red and ready to unleash the bulldozers on a sleepy Kingsboro.

It was September, a prime month for groundbreaking in the mountains. He leaned against his truck, which had a fine sprinkling of red dust on its black hood. This side of the hill overlooking the old part of town would yield maybe a dozen houses, and the view would add tens of thousands of dollars to the asking prices. One of the homes was already under construction, log cabin kits with lots of glass to catch the southern exposure. The subdivision road was cut and graveled, and chain saws ripped the air as workers cleared the adjoining lots. The well hadn't been drilled yet, so no water lines were connected. Two fifty-five gallon drums of water stood by the housing site for use by the block masons. The work crew was Mexican, dark-faced and solemn, shouting to one another over the noise of their machines. Jacob appreciated the Wells tradition he'd carried on, employing immigrant workers who were there on temporary visas. He didn't care if their papers were in order. They worked under the table, for cash, with none of the onerous paperwork.

He looked over the sprawling valley below. Kingsboro's western end consisted of flat and low buildings. The hospital rose above the urban skyline to the east, along with the Holiday Inn that Jacob thought of as his own creation. A new strip mall was being built along the main thoroughfare, the work of some outfit from Texas. Jacob wasn't threatened by it, though. Four thousand square feet of floor space, four storefronts, nothing major. Probably end up as a craft shop, a Christian bookstore, a laundromat, and an investment agency. Besides, they were building out, not up, and Jacob knew his real mark would be made by adjusting the skyline. Right now, the First Baptist Church was the highest structure in Kingsboro, eighty feet if you counted the steeple. Warren Wells had won the contract by becoming a member of the congregation the instant he'd heard the church was collecting tithes for a building fund.

"What do you think, Jacob?" Donald asked. Donald rarely visited the field sites, preferring the controlled environment of his office. He'd been pleased to have his partner back, because they both knew that Donald would never survive if he had to deal with real people, those who had to work with their hands and lived from paycheck to paycheck. He enjoyed the suit crowd, the financiers and bankers and attorneys. But lately he'd taken a much greater interest in the company's enterprises on the ground level.

"We should get this subdivision wrapped up by October," Jacob said.

"I've already got some people lined up to buy."

"Good, because we can use that capital to get some other things rolling. I feel a hot streak coming on."

"Hope it lasts the winter, but I'm ready to get back to the air-conditioned office." Donald wiped at his brow. The sun was glaring, though the seasonal humidity had yet to settle in the Southern Appalachians. Donald's jacket and tie were out of place on the scarred stretch of earth.

"There," Jacob said, pointing to a mixed stand of evergreens and hardwoods across the valley. A two-lane ribbon of asphalt wound up the slope and few roofs were visible through the canopy, but most of the mountain was undeveloped.

Donald put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Another subdivision. And in a couple of years, Kingsboro will be ready for a business park."

"I don't know, Jake. We've done pretty well with this safe residential stuff. We tend to lose our asses when we gamble on commercial projects."

Jacob's lips tightened. The Comfort Suites deal had lost a quarter million due to rain. The bad weather had delayed the pouring of the foundation and slab, and that set all the other contractors back. Some of those who had committed went on to other jobs and Jacob had to use all his muscle to get them lined up again. Meanwhile, the interest on the borrowed money had compounded and Donald had to get rid of a few rental properties to cover the difference. But Donald didn't seem to appreciate the accomplishment of a shiny new lodging establishment, of what it meant to the community and other businesses. All Donald could see was the bottom line.

"We'll be okay," Jacob said. He reached out and swatted Donald on the shoulder. The collective sounds of hammers, drills and chain saws blended into a symphony of progress. It was the music of money, yes, but it was also the song of a better town.

"I don't know. Jeffrey's been looking over the receipts and believes he's spotted some holes. Probably some math mistakes, but it seems like enough that we might want to have our annual audit a little early this year."

"How early?"

"November, maybe. I'm sure it's nothing, but mistakes can eat away our asset base if we don't catch them fast. And if we've overpaid some people, we need to recoup before the money's all spent."

"Well, I wouldn't put too much faith in Jeffrey. He's a receptionist, not an accountant."

"He's good on the phone," Donald said. "And he annoys the tenants if they call up and make maintenance requests."

"He's too expensive, though. And I think he's bad for business."

"What do you mean?"

"What you said. Sure, he rubs tenants the wrong way, and that's fine when it's just apartments, but if we move into office and professional rentals--"

"Wait a second, Jake. Don't be rushing into anything. I know you've got a hole in your life, but some wild plans aren't going to fill it."

"I think we should get rid of Jeffrey and hire Renee. We'd save on insurance because she's already covered under my policy. She'd work for a lower salary, too." Jacob looked past Donald to a man who was installing and squaring a door on one of the houses. "She needs something to keep her busy. I don't want her dwelling on the past."

Donald straightened his tie and grimaced. After a moment, he said, "Well, as long as my wife understands this was your idea and not mine. Any female in the office can spell trouble for me."

"Only if you can't keep it in your pants, Donald."

"Jake, I swear I've never even looked at your wife--"

Jacob grinned. "Just kidding. Damn, you're really jumpy."

"Yeah. This accounting thing scares me, I guess. I'm at the age where I want to play it safe."

"Play it safe when you're dead." Jacob spread his arms toward Kingsboro. "We've got the whole world to conquer."

Donald pursed his lips then nodded. "Okay. We'll give Jeffrey two weeks' notice and two weeks' severance pay."

"Renee will be good for business. She has an eye for detail."

"Fine." Donald waved his hand. "I'll go tell Jeffrey the news. I'll tell him we had too many tenants complaining about him and we both need to move in a new direction. The usual."

Donald climbed into his Lexus and eased down the gravel road toward Kingsboro. Jacob went to his truck to get his bagged lunch out of the cab. Renee had been feeding him lots of carrots and celery, along with high-protein foods like peanut butter sandwiches and those granola energy bars. He'd regained most of the weight he'd lost while in the hospital, and working outdoors had driven the pallor from his skin. Jacob settled behind the seat, turned on the radio to hear the weather forecast, and opened the bag.

Inside was a bundle of wax paper. He lifted it out and unwrapped the package, wondering what surprise Renee had left for him this time. The chicken head rolled out, bounced off his knee, and settled onto the floor board with a meaty plop. The wax paper was smeared with dried blood. Written on one corner in black marker were the words, "Don't chicken out."

Beneath that, the initial "J." Leaning to the left.

Jacob knelt and examined the chicken head. It was a guinea, the same breed that used to run wild on the Wells farm. A ring of congealed blood circled the hatchet wound. The dull onyx of one eye showed through the crescent slit of the eyelids. The beak was parted as if in a gasp or scream.

The cell phone on the seat beside him emitted its electronic bleat. Renee had given him a new one when he'd purchased the truck, a tacit acknowledgment that Jacob was back to normal. The children's spirits had been laid to rest in their hearts and they would move on. Happily ever after wasn't an option anymore, but neither was mutual suicide.

Jacob flipped open the phone, looking through the windshield at the house under construction. "Hello?"

"How was your lunch?"

"I told you not to call me anymore. You're out of my life now. You and Carlita can head back to your Tennessee trailer park, or hang around Daddy's house until your damned skeletons collect cobwebs. But we're through."

"Dear brother," Joshua said. "We're not even halfway through. Because you still owe me a million. And brothers always keep their promises, don't they?"

"I'm not scared anymore. Nobody would believe you if you went to the police."

"I don't have to go to the police. I just need to talk to your wife."

The cords in Jacob's neck grew taut and heat rushed to his face. "Damn it. You leave her out of this."

"No way, bro'. We're all in it together. Like one big, happy family. Ain't that right, Carlita?"

Jacob heard a whisper of air on the phone's speaker as Carlita took the phone. "My buena, Jake," she said in her sultry, smoke-scarred voice. "Like the good old days, si?"

Jacob hated the automatic response she aroused in him, that same blend of guilt and dread and excitement. Like something forbidden, overripe fruit that smelled sweet but was utterly corrupt inside. "I'm not playing your games anymore," he said, his chest aching.

"Oh, but you invented this game, silly chiquito. Wish me, remember?"

"But it's over. You've got your million."

"And you have your life back, yes? Just the way it was."

"It will never be like it was." Jacob wiped the sweat from his face. Even with the cab door open, the late-summer heat stifled him.

"Well, you can't blame a girl for wishing," she said. She lowered her voice to a whisper that curled into his soul like fingers beneath his waistband. "And two Wells give twice as much water. Gets me twice as wet."

Jacob couldn't think of a reply. That had been one of Carlita's favorite lines when they were sixteen. Joshua had probably come up with it. Carlita's creativity was never revealed in language. Hers was the cunning of the viper, one that sought out warm, camouflaged crevices and patiently waited to dispense venom.

Joshua came back on the phone. "I never was no good at math, but the way I figure it, we always shared everything fifty-fifty, all the way back to Daddy's sick little sperm. And now you got everything back and I still got nothing. Another million ain't so much to ask, when you look at it that way."

"No. You've got your million. I'll be lucky if I get away with it this time. My partner's already sniffing around like he smells shit on his shoes."

"Hey, Jake, I thought you was big time now. Tall in the saddle and all that. I mean, you got this new housing development going up. Got to be some bucks coming in."

Up at the construction site, two Mexicans were dropping shingle scraps over the side of the roof, hollering out warnings in Spanish in case any workers were on the ground below. It was the kind of careless action that made Jacob glad the safety inspectors only came around at the first of each month. He'd have to talk to the contractor. Even though he wasn't responsible for any worker's compensation claims, a few accidents would push up his liability insurance rates. "How did you know I was working again?"

"I got wheels, remember? And I got eyes."

"Where are you?" Jacob had assumed Joshua was staying out at the estate, waking up at noon and working up to a good drunk by four o'clock. Half the day spent in bed with Carlita, with the occasional time off for runs to the convenience store for Budweiser and Marlboro Lights. A million dollars was plenty of money for that kind of life. Even working in tandem, Joshua and Carlita would never be able to spend it all before either their livers or their lungs gave out.

"Been keeping an eye on my investment," Joshua said.

Jacob's stomach clenched. He rose in his seat and scooted out of the cab, kicking the chicken's head to the dirt. What if Joshua were outside Renee's apartment right now, or watching her in the laundry? Maybe they had followed her to the grocery store or post office, and were lying in wait to pop up and introduce themselves.

"Where, damn it?" Jacob said.

"See, there's this funny thing about twins. No matter how far apart they are, or what gets in between them, they somehow get tugged together. Like God meant it to be."

"Don't you dare talk about God. If God were real, my daughters would be alive and we never would have been born."

"That don't make no sense."

"You're watching me, aren't you?" Jacob paced around the truck, scanning the woods behind the construction site. The property above M & W's planned subdivision belonged to a Texas corporation. A few logging roads crisscrossed the mountaintop, but their entrances were gated. Joshua's behemoth Chevy would never manage those rutted roads.

"It was Carlita's idea. She's got a thing for you, you know."

"No. That was a long time ago. A different lifetime."

"That same life where you killed your mom?"

Jacob had to restrain himself from hurling the cell phone across the field. "Where are you?"

"You'll see us when the time is right. Now, about that money you owe me."

"Why can't you be happy with what you have? You got the property and the house, and whatever you left across the state line. That's more than you ever deserved."

"Except Dad left you about eight million, if I remember right. Daddy didn't believe in share and share alike, and I reckon you didn't, neither."

"Go away. Please. I've paid you back enough."

"Damn it, Jake. You still ain't figured it out. It ain't about the money. It's about the fun."

"Screw you."

Carlita was back on the phone. "Hey, what's this about fun? It's been a long time, hasn't it, gringo? Is your wife taking caring of you?"

"You don't have any business here, Carlita." Jacob was helpless against her. He felt as if he was over a bottomless pit, clinging to a thin rope with slick hands. Unbidden, that feeling from the hospital swept over him, the one of being submerged in dark, suffocating water. Down in the silent cold where they couldn't get him.

"But we have so much more to share," Carlita said, taunting him. "I mean, the boy of fourteen didn't know what he was doing. I'll bet your wife has taught you a few tricks since then."

Jacob heard her cigarette lighter click before she inhaled. The sound triggered flames in his head. Joshua must have whispered something to her because he heard the muted buzzing.

"Josh said to say, 'Where there's smoke,'" she said. "I don't know what it means. You are both muy loco. Made for each other."

"Let me talk to him." A sick feeling wended through Jacob's stomach, a fiery snake of unease.

"Remember under the bridge?" Carlita said. "I know you do. A boy never forgets something like that."

Jacob stabbed the 'End' button and folded the phone. He sat on the truck's bumper, not trusting his legs. The grinding of the chain saws merged with the buzzing in his ears, and every hammer blow from the roof drove nails into his skull. The phone rang again. And again.

Six times.

They were watching.

He activated the signal and pressed the phone to the side of his head.

It was Joshua. "Ain't that just like a woman? They won't let bygones be bygones."

Then his tone changed, the clumsy rural grammar vanished. "But the past does have a price, brother. Remember that."

The signal died.

Jacob loosened the top buttons on his flannel shirt and then breathed into his hands, hoping his hyperventilation would fade before he passed out. He worked his way back to the cab, supporting himself using the truck's frame. He had just settled into the driver's seat and closed his eyes when shouts arose from the house. The words were in Spanish, and Jacob didn't immediately grasp their meaning. Then the word "fuego" stood out.

Fire.

Billows of black smoke erupted from the open squares of window frames. The roofers scrambled down the ladder, their tools forgotten, the paper from the bags of shingles fluttering in the breeze. The crew leader, a muscular white man in a gray, mottled tank top, ran out of the structure's interior. The other carpenters raced to the water drums, filling five-gallon buckets and hurrying back to the house. The crew leader grabbed one of the buckets and started to enter the building, but the heat forced him back. Flames were already visible, licking around the front door that had just been installed.

Jacob tried to move, but it was as if cement had been poured into his veins and solidified there, creating a dense and immovable weight. He finally was able to move his lips, completing the phrase Carlita had suggested.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Renee ran the vacuum cleaner over the rug, lost in the hum of tidiness. The windows were open and the breeze caused the curtains to lift and swell. Renee preferred the fresh air and the scent of the pines that grew along the creek outside. The sunlight gave the room a soft, feathery aspect that she found pleasing.

They wouldn't be in the apartment much longer. She had enjoyed their time together here. It had reminded her of the days in Jacob's college apartment, cluttered and crowded and close. Back before Mattie and Christine and--

She would not think of those things. The future mattered, not the past. They were already planning on building a new home. Jacob wanted a larger house than the one that had burned, but Renee wasn't sure she wanted something so big and empty. However, the nest wouldn't be empty forever. After all the pain and sacrifice in their lives, they were due some happiness.

She flipped the vacuum cleaner switch then stooped to check the floor. When Jacob came home after visiting a job site, he often tracked mud across the carpet. She had asked him to take off his boots at the door, but the apartment had no foyer and she was just as bothered by the dirty boots sitting out in the open as she was by the footprints. She tucked the vacuum cleaner in the closet. In the new house, she promised herself, the closets would be deep enough to keep everything out of sight.

She checked her watch. Twenty minutes to get to the office by the end of lunch break. She'd been unsure about working for M & W, but Jacob's enthusiasm had won her over. Now she was glad she'd taken the job, because she saw her husband several times during the day and they often ate lunch together. Twice they'd even sneaked away to the apartment and had daytime sex just like in the early years of their relationship. A suffused glow had been born inside her, a feeling that she was rebuilding him. She now had a noble purpose, one that would help heal the wounds caused by the loss of her children. The saving of one man might make up for her failure to save two children. Maybe that counted in God's eyes.

As the last act of her daily ritual, she placed a fresh flower on the mantel by Mattie's urn. A laurel, because the species had just broken into seasonal bloom and grew from black mountain soil. Rich and full of life, the opposite of the gray ashes inside the ceramic shell.

"Wish me, Mattie," she whispered. "Wish me that you're in a better place."

She bowed her head slightly and crossed herself, then went out into the Thursday sunshine. As she unlocked her car, she noticed an out-of-date, rusty Chevrolet beside hers, one of the wide gas guzzlers popular when her parents were young. It was an ugly green, with faded gray primer on one fender and bald tires. The windows were tinted to a shade much darker than was allowed by law. She'd never seen the car in the parking lot before, and new tenants were required to register their vehicles with the M & W office. Perhaps the car belonged to a visitor.

She was backing out of her space when the green car's engine rumbled to life, accompanied by a belch of black smoke from its rear. She waited, giving the car room to exit in front of her, but the car didn't move.

So much for random acts of kindness. She waved to indicate that she was going ahead then eased forward. The Chevy lurched, cutting her off. Renee slammed the brakes, her restraint harness digging into her shoulder, stopping her car inches from the Chevy. She frowned toward the tinted windshield, uneasy because she couldn't see the driver's face.

Irritated, she motioned the Chevy forward again. The Chevy idled unevenly.

Renee rolled down her window and leaned her head out. "Please," she shouted. "I'm in a hurry."

She looked around the apartment complex and considered hitting her horn. That would disturb the tenants' peace, though. Rudeness was out of place at Ivy Terrace. Instead of waiting, she backed up and steered around the Chevy.

It shot a few feet forward, the engine rasping with mechanical emphysema. Renee accelerated past, veering in a wider circuit toward the parking lot entrance. Once she was clear, she slowed then looked in her rearview mirror to see the Chevy rumbling up behind her. She cut onto the highway without stopping and the Chevy followed suit, its tires squealing from the inertia of the heavy steel chassis. Renee gripped the steering wheel with all her strength and glanced down at the speedometer. She was already ten miles over the speed limit in the residential zone, but the Chevy was weaving close behind her, its approach steady.

Renee wasn't an aggressive driver, but fear caused her foot to nudge down on the gas pedal. Houses blurred by on each side of her, the tall oaks along the street forming a tunnel, and cars in the oncoming lane gave her a wide berth. She checked the mirror again. The Chevy was within twenty feet, its dented grill like the grin of a chrome cannibal. A signal light was just ahead, changing to yellow. Renee measured the distance, held her breath, and floored it, shooting through the intersection under the red.

The Chevy ignored the stop signal, bouncing as it came after her. A car horn blared, and a man emptying cans into a garbage truck jumped back onto the curb. An Amoco gas station was just ahead on the right. Renee slowed as if to pull in. The Chevy crossed the double yellow stripes into the oncoming lane and edged alongside her flank.

Renee's window was still down, and her hair whipped about her face, briefly blinding her. Over the busted muffler of the Chevy, she heard music, and it was like a scene out of those old Smokey and the Bandit movies with Burt Reynolds as the lead-footed moonshine runner. The bass line thumped and the guitars jangled, and a half-familiar male voice wailed something about blisters, great big blisters on his heart.

Renee figured the Chevy would pull in beside the gas pumps and trap her there, or maybe run her down if she dashed for the inside of the convenience store. But that notion was just as crazy as the idea that she was in a car chase. She eased off the pedal and took the right turn just before the gas station. The Chevy braked, its wheels smoking, and cut around a pickup and a caved-in telephone booth in the gas station parking lot. Her pursuer made up the lost ground in less than thirty seconds. Renee was afraid to push the Subaru past 70 on the narrow two-lane, though she was now in a rural area and therefore less likely to be blindsided from a driveway. But a remote stretch of road also offered fewer witnesses if the Chevy's driver forced her off the pavement.

She glanced in the mirror again, desperate to see the face of her tormentor. The black glaze of windshield gave away nothing. But if the Chevy were chasing her, what would it do if it caught her?

She might finally see Joshua's face.

And she might get some answers.

The best way to conquer fear was to face it, even if it killed you in the process.

The terrain swept steeply upward to her right, the slope covered with second-growth forest. To her left was a spread of pasture, the grass almost blue with summer ripeness. A herd of Black Angus steers dotted the field, heads all pointed toward the shade of the trees. Renee saw a place to pull over, a dirt driveway that led to a wobbly-looking feed shed. She slowed and made the turn, checking the Chevy in the mirror, bracing in case Joshua decided to ram her from behind. She killed the engine and waited, her window open. A farmhouse sat in the notch of a valley, and the roofs of a few houses were visible in the hills across the road.

The Chevy slowed and pulled alongside her, and again she heard the country-tinged beat and the sweet whiskey smoke of the vocals. The lyrics soared into a chorus about a ring of fire, and then Renee identified the singer. Johnny Cash. She hadn't known much about him, but had seen a television special on his career shortly after his death. "The Man in Black," the narrator had called him.

Renee didn't wait for the Chevy's engine to die. She got out and rounded the front of the car, knowing she was vulnerable, almost daring the car to leap forward. She glared straight at where the driver would be sitting. She would get her answers now, with no more secrets or games. She was about to pound on the tinted driver's-side window when the door opened.

A plume of gray smoke issued from the vehicle's interior, accompanied by Johnny Cash's repetitive ring of fire fade-out. Then the Chevy's engine gave a couple of thunderous, dying coughs and fell silent. Renee heard the wind in the trees and a metallic squeak from the driver's seat. Her muscles tensed, half of her coiling to pounce while the other half wanted to flee across the field.

Come on, Joshua. You can't be any worse than I've imagined.

A woman stepped out of the car, tall and dark-skinned, pretty, but hard around the eyes. She looked Hispanic, with thick, black eyelashes and flat raven hair. Her yellow cotton blouse was tied in a knot beneath her breasts, her brown stomach flat with a tiny dark cave at her navel. She wore cut-off blue jean shorts and a cheap pair of pink flip-flops. She tapped her cigarette and smirked.

"You're not him," Renee said.

"Neither are you," the woman said, her accent a blend of tobacco-road Southern and back-alley Spanish, a little rolling of the r with the vowels drawn out.

"Why were you chasing me?"

"We need to talk." The woman leaned against the Chevy.

"Why couldn't you use the phone like anybody else?"

"Because I had to be sure," she said. "And I didn't want Jacob to know."

"Who are you?"

"Carlita. A friend of your husband."

"Jacob never mentioned you."

Carlita laughed then coughed. She tossed her cigarette into the ditch. "No wonder."

"What about my husband?" Renee wished she had her cell phone. A car whizzed down the road and past before she could make up her mind to flag it down.

"Jacob's been a very bad boy. He gets a little loco." Carlita cocked her hip and tilted her head, letting her black hair spill across her shoulders. Her mouth twisted into a wry curve. "It's not my fault. But you know how he is, si?"

"Hold on," Renee said. "First you're trying to run me off the road, and now you're talking like we're old friends."

"We're nearly sisters," Carlita said. "And Joshua's told me so much about you."

"But I've never met Joshua. Jacob won't talk about him. They had a falling out years ago, before I even met Jacob."

"Jacob's got his--how you say?--his delusion. He thinks Joshua tricked their father to get the house and land. He thinks Joshua's after his money now. But Joshua just wants to make up, to bring the family together."

Renee shook her head. "Jacob hates that house. He said it's full of bad memories."

"Do you trust your husband?"

"Of course I do. I mean, we've had some tough times lately--"

"The children. A terrible thing."

Renee's heart stuttered then lurched inside her chest. She could scarcely recognize her own voice when she spoke. "How did you know?"

"Like sisters, remember? Sisters keep secrets from the rest of the world, not each other."

"I'm not your sister, and if you don't start making sense, I'll--" She looked at the ground for something to throw. A pile of oak stakes, used for curing tobacco, lay beside the gate. The tips were sharp enough to skewer a vampire. Her hands trembled and her vision blurred from anger and tears.

"Don't go like that," Carlita said, her voice flat, as if she had been threatened so often it now aroused only weariness. "I'm trying to help."

"By chasing me down and then dumping all this on my head?"

"I'm doing it for Joshua, because I love him, and I want him to be happy."

"So you make him happy by making me miserable?"

"I'm worried what Jacob might do to him."

"Jacob wouldn't hurt a fly. He's the kindest man I've ever known."

"But you see what he's like when someone stands in his way. Big trouble."

"Not my Jacob."

"You don't know him."

"I know him plenty."

"Then you know he's in love with me."

The woman's accent made the word even more foreign. "Love?"

"We've been lovers for many years."

Renee had always wondered about the expression "seeing red." She thought it was figurative, based on an emotional connotation. Now she knew it was real, because the red madness squeezed from the backs of her eyelids and the hidden crevices inside her skull. A sick and strange energy flowed through her, cruel electricity sparked by demonic lightning.

"Bitch." Renee launched herself at the woman, knowing she was out of shape and undersized, no match for her sinewy opponent.

But the red tidal wave of rage flooded her, used her body like a puppet, flung her flesh against Carlita. Her hands curled into fists and raised to smash that dark, somber face, to punch out those bottomless brown eyes, to tear away the lips that had uttered such an obscene claim.

The momentum of Renee's assault carried them both across the Chevy's warm hood. The sheet metal dented as Renee rolled atop Carlita, one hand gripping the woman's hair. Carlita grunted, breath tinged with tobacco and beer. Renee slapped her and scrambled astride her waist as Carlita twisted and tried to kick off her attacker. One foot bounced off Renee's shin but she barely felt it. Carlita's forearm shoved into Renee's stomach, taking her breath as the pain rippled out from the point of contact.

Renee bent her head forward and realized with horror that she was about to sink her teeth into the woman's cheek. She froze, then went limp and slid down Carlita's body, aware of the woman's unrestrained breasts beneath the thin shirt. Aware of the woman's heat, her soft but powerful thighs, her robust Hispanic lips, everything that was feminine and dangerous and attractive to men.

Any man. Even a man like a Jacob.

She pushed away and slid down the bumper to the ground, her legs weak. She couldn't wrap her mind around the idea. Jacob didn't even glance at sun-bathing college girls and he didn't ogle stars on television shows.

She trusted him.

Didn't she?

Despite his fugues and his forgetful lapses and his occasional, inexplicable anger.

Carlita sat on the hood, her legs crossed under her as if she were folding into a yoga position. She fished a cellophane-wrapped pack from her pocket, tapped it, and offered the brown tip of a cigarette to Renee. "Give it time," she said.

Renee shook her head, refusing both the cigarette and the advice.

Carlita lit one and rubbed her cheek. "You fight like you mean it."

"What about you and Jacob?"

"I didn't want to tell it this way. A man should be honest about his heart. But men, they never are."

A pickup drove down the road toward them, slowing, the driver waving before speeding up again. A country boy checking to make sure everything was all right. As if anything would ever be all right again. Renee thought about flagging him down and sending for the police, but she didn't want any more attention drawn to the Wells family.

Now that the anger had faded, Renee felt deflated. She could barely muster a whisper. "Tell me. Please."

"I lived on the Wells farm when I was young. My father and brother worked the Christmas trees, and I helped in the vegetable garden, picking tomatoes and green beans. Migrant workers, up on temporary permits. Mi padre said it was the only way out of Mexico. That's when I met Joshua."

"You mean Warren Wells let his son date a Mexican? From what Jacob's told me, your people--I mean, the workers--were not people he respected."

Carlita smoked around a smile. "We didn't date. He came by the camp when the men were out in the fields. I was in the shed, shelling beans. He walked in like he owned the place and sat down beside me. I was just a scared girl, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. My English was okay even back then. I'd been coming to North Carolina with my family for years, mostly when padre worked soybeans and tobacco down by the coast, sometimes peaches. One thing led to another, and Joshua took the basket of beans from me and set it to the side, then laid me down on the hay."

"God. He raped you?"

Carlita gave a coarse laugh. "Oh, no. I wanted to see what a gringo was like. I only had a few of the camp boys before then, and mi padre would have killed me if he caught me. It was a danger and that makes it fun when you're a teenage girl. Comprende?"

"Not really. I kept my virginity until I met Jacob," she lied. "And I only gave it up then because I knew we were going to be married."

"Maybe I was thinking some of that. We were to stay nine months on our visas, go back to Guadalajara in December after all the trees were cut. I thought if Joshua got me pregnant, I'd get my ring and a green card."

Renee was shocked at the confession. "What does this have to do with Jacob?"

"After that first time, Joshua and me were doing it every minute we could sneak away. He liked it and I thought the more we did it, the faster I get a gringo baby in my belly." She slapped her bare abdomen and added with bitterness, "Turned out I'm no good in there. Seed won't take root."

Renee wondered if never having a baby was worse than losing two children. She decided nothing could be worse than that. "So you had to go back to Mexico?"

"No. His father fixed it up so we didn't have to go back right away. Joshua said it was because we were cheap. Said, 'Daddy don't have to pay no white-man wages.' Jacob used to follow Joshua sometimes when he came to the camp. I think he was jealous."

"I'm sorry. You don't know Jacob."

"Maybe you don't, hey, senora? He used to watch us while we did it. One day, under the bridge, I saw him hiding in the bushes. He came out and said he was going to tell their father if I didn't let him do it, too."

Renee's intestines clenched as if they harbored a nest of snakes. "Did you let him?"

"Joshua went loco, beat him up. Said he was the oldest so he always got to go first. Said to come back when he had something to offer in return."

"And?"

"Jacob finally did come back. Eight years ago. Right after he married you."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The house stood like a watchtower on the hill overlooking the river. Jacob gunned the pickup across the bridge and up the driveway then slewed to a stop, knocking over a handrail that led up the steps. He ran into the shade of the porch and beat on the door with both fists. "Josh. Open this damned door."

The knob turned and the door parted. Joshua held a Mason jar full of iced tea, a ragged wedge of lemon sticking to the rim. "Howdy, brother. Nice of you to drop by. We're getting to be just like family again."

"You set the fire at the construction site."

"Jake, don't be like that. Come on in and have a drink."

Jacob didn't move, his fists still clenched. "They're watching me. They'll be suspicious."

"Look, don't tell me the thing wasn't insured. I know you. You're a chip off the old block. Even when you lose, you make money, just like Warren Wells." Joshua looked up at the family cemetery, a twisted grin on his stubbly face.

"Arson is a serious crime."

"The fire chief showed up, didn't she?"

"They investigate every structure fire. You know that."

"But she didn't find nothing. Had to be an accident. A worker dropped a cigarette by the kerosene can, right?"

Jacob frowned, loathing himself for letting his twin dominate his life for so long, even in absence. "She said they'd do more tests, but that was her preliminary ruling."

"They'll sniff around and try to scare you, but in the end they'll pay. And then you can pay me."

"I'll pay. Just leave my wife out of it."

"Oh, Jakie Boy. The game don't play that way. She's in way too deep to be left out. She's family."

"Damn it, we're trying to make it work. I don't want to lose her."

"You mean you can't afford to lose her yet."

Jacob looked off the porch to the rise of hills, the meadow sloping away to the river, the long sandy drive, the distant bridge. "I've kept my part of the bargain," Jacob said. "Now get your ass back to Tennessee."

"I kinda like it here now."

"I should have killed you when I had the chance."

"Seeing Carlita got you fired up."

"You told her, didn't you? About Mom?"

"Family secrets stay in the family," Joshua said. "Ain't that what you always said?"

"Does she know you poisoned your own dad?"

"Why don't you come on in, have a cold one? I'm drinking Corona today. A little taste of Mexico while Carlita's away."

"Is she back in Tennessee?"

"Hell if I know. She took the keys and left before I got up. You know how women are. You know how she is."

"You should keep her out of it."

"Oh, but she's right smack between us, ain't she?" Joshua jerked his head toward the inside of the house. "She ought to be in them family portraits, arms around you and me, Mom and Dad in the back row grinning like a couple of skulls."

"Shut up."

"Like a couple of skulls."

"I didn't kill them."

"No. Dad was all me."

"You didn't have to. The cancer had already reached his liver. He wouldn't have lived more than six months."

"I wasn't going to let the bastard cheat me out of the fun."

"I didn't know he'd changed the will."

"Sure." Joshua pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, stabbed it between his chapped lips, and mopped the sweat from his greasy forehead with the back of his hand. "We thought it was fifty-fifty. But he played us to the end, just like he did our whole lives."

"Once in a while I'd catch him looking at that broken cane, at the splinters in the wood. Like he knew."

"No damned wonder," Joshua said around the cigarette. "The only reason he didn't kill her is you beat him to it."

"I didn't--"

"Cut the shit, Jake. It's in your blood. It's what we do." He fired the cigarette, holding the Bic aloft, the flame's reflection bobbing in each of his dark pupils. He rattled the shrinking ice cubes in his jar of tea, the noise like bones shaken in a glass coffin. The lighter disappeared into his pocket, easy to retrieve in case arson was required.

And it often was, Jacob knew. "Nobody would believe you if you told them."

"Does it matter? A small town like this, the newspaper would be on it like green flies on sugar shit. They'd drag you through the mud until you were so dirty it wouldn't matter what the truth was. It's not every day that a boy kills his Momma. Then they'd start connecting the dots on the other stuff."

"You'd go to jail, too."

Joshua inhaled the tobacco as if it were his last gasp of oxygen, then pushed it out of his lungs. "I got nothing to lose. Ain't no prison worse than waking up pissed off and poor every day. Besides, I didn't leave no evidence. Dad was eating those pills anyway. A little digitalis and cyanide wasn't nothing."

Warren Wells' friends had heaped sympathy on the twins. People like Rayburn Jones and the family attorney, Herbert Isaacs, talked about how the sons had been so noble, coming back to the farm to help their ailing father get out a final tree crop. The funeral was held at Three Springs Baptist Church, where Warren Wells had served as a deacon in his middle age, before his fervor shifted toward hoarding treasures of the Earth rather than of the spirit. During the memorial service, Joshua had disguised his giggles as sobs. Jacob felt no emotion at all.

The day after the burial in the family cemetery, Herbert Isaacs gathered the family in the study of the Wells house and read them the will. That's when Joshua learned he'd received the property instead of the running money he'd yearned for. Jacob received a lion's share of the eight million dollars in other assets, some real estate holdings, and various stocks and bonds, while five more distant relatives had each received title to business properties in downtown Kingsboro. Warren Wells' final laugh had been to place a covenant on Joshua's bequest that prevented him from selling it, and the taxes on the hundred-and-forty-acre estate all but assured that Joshua would have to keep a job to pay them. Otherwise, the county could put a lien on the property and leave Joshua with nothing but an unprofitable patricide.

In that one desperate act, Joshua had failed to live up to a family legacy that required all dark deeds to pay dividends.

"Can't sell it, and you can't make a nickel on farming. Even the Christmas trees have gone to hell, nobody set out seedlings and the rest got too big and scruffy for market."

"A million can last a long time in Tennessee, though."

Joshua grinned, showing his uneven, opossum's teeth. "Like I said, Kingsboro ain't so bad if you got money."

"Get out of my town."

"Now, now, Jacob. We're just now getting used to each other. Kind of brings back the early days, when we were two of a kind."

"We were opposites."

Transverse twins, their doctor had called them. Developing in the womb face-to-face, mirror images of each other. Joshua born left-handed, with his heart shifted to the right side of his chest, and in the mysterious properties of the brain's hemispheres, more prone to mechanical and mathematical skills yet lacking a deep emotional pool. Jacob had been the left-brained one, the sensitive and reclusive child, easily dominated. Desperate for his parents' love but always failing to win it, while Joshua had extracted it from them like a butcher taking hearts in a slaughterhouse.

"We're alike," Joshua said, then added with an ugly wink, "We want the same things."

"You're wrong. I've changed."

"I saw how you looked at Carlita. She's put in a few hard years, but she's still a saucy little taco, ain't she?"

"I'm done. Like I said, I'm going to work it out with Renee. After all the hard times, I owe it to her."

"Sure." Joshua flipped his spent cigarette into the grass at the fringe of the porch, and a thin thread of its smoke curled to the sky. "Come on in, sit a spell. Act like folks."

Jacob stared at the dying, orange end of the cigarette. If Jacob burned down the house that Wells built, then Joshua would have to go home. Not this home, but to his real home, a dirty trailer across the state line, where Confederate flags flew from ATV's and waffle houses and pawn shops filled what passed for a business district.

"You deserve this place," Jacob heard himself saying, though in his mind, yellow fingers of flames groped their way up the wooden walls, clutched at the eaves and fascia, scratched the shingles.

Joshua grunted. "I'll bet you got to shitbag shyster Isaacs when you found out Dad had cancer, played him like a fiddle. Got him to change the will while I was poisoning the old rat. I wonder how much he bagged out of the deal."

"You were Dad's favorite, remember?"

"Only when he couldn't tell us apart."

Jacob took another look at the barn, remembering the bloody carnage of Joshua's chicken-slaughtering spree. Forensic psychologists said many serial killers served their internship by practicing on animals. According to the profile, many were also late bed wetters. But Jacob, not Joshua, was the one who had awakened to damp sheets at the age of seven, who sneaked out of bed and bundled up the offending linen before his twin brother woke across the room. He was never clever enough, because Mother wouldn't let anyone else do laundry. And she always took glee in hanging his yellowed sheets out on the line, knowing the farmhands and their father would see them.

Jacob pushed past Joshua into the house. The house that should have been his.

He headed up the darkened stairs, each thump and clatter of his mother's falling body echoing in his head. There among the shadows, in the alcove just at the end of hall, he saw a pale face. A child's face, floating, ethereal, shaped by the distant mist of a memory. He brushed the memory away, because memories couldn't be trusted, especially those born in this house.

Joshua shouted from below, but Jacob couldn't make out the words. Their childhood room was just ahead. He flung the door open and burst inside. The sun poured through the open window, the curtains golden and soft. His bed was still rumpled and the ropes that Joshua had used weeks before to tie him down were still attached to the bedstead. Joshua's bed looked as if it had been unused, and he wondered if Joshua and Carlita had taken over the master bedroom.

Jacob opened the closet. No Sock Monster, no bloodied chicken heads, no broken toys. The closet was empty, except for the upper shelf above the rod. He pulled out the broken cane with its yellowed ivory handle that was carved in the shape of an eagle head. He ran his hand over the splintered edges, feeling the grain where he had worked the knife fifteen years before. He hadn't known it would break. He hadn't wanted to kill his mother, no matter how much she hated him.

"Two million is a suitable bargain," Joshua said from the doorway, all trace of his rural Southern accent gone. Joshua the actor, the pleaser, the manipulator. The one who had fooled their parents with a pretense of devotion.

"I have to know it's going to end."

"Guilt is a currency one borrows from the soul," Joshua said. "And only one person can meet that debt."

"I think Dad might have suspected something. Maybe that's why he left me the money. As a kind of payoff."

"He knew about Carlita, that's why." Joshua's redneck accent returned, as if he were speaking in tongues. "He didn't want no son of his shacking up with a Mexican."

"He didn't like Renee, either."

"You know the Old Man. He figured out her value. Simple as that."

"I love her."

"Sure you do. A Wells always loves his woman until she stands in the way of what you really want."

"I don't want this."

"You shoulda thought of that back when you were spying on me and Carlita."

"I never saw nothing like that before."

"Your accent, Jake. It's coming back."

"I can't help it." And he couldn't. This room, the ghosts in the walls, the pasts both real and imagined, all shifted in and out of substance. The floor seemed to move beneath his feet, and he reached for the closet door to steady himself.

"Why do you think I married her, Jake?"

"So she could get her green card."

"That didn't matter back then. That was before they got so crazy about terrorists. Illegals could hang around a few years and sneak into the system sideways. There's only one reason I married her."

Jacob held onto the closet door, the one on which his childhood nightmares had been projected. His stomach fluttered, his heart pumped ground glass through his vascular system. This room, the bed that had soaked up his wet dreams and urine, the space beneath the bed where Joshua had staged his best games, the window through which the world had grown smaller and uglier. The walls closed in and he could barely breathe.

"I married her because you wanted her," Joshua said. "It was the only thing I could take from you."

"No," he said, but the lie tasted like closet dust.

"And you only wanted her because she was mine."

He shook his head and sweat and misery fell from his scalp.

"Because you saw what it was like to be close to someone," Joshua said. "It wasn't just the screwing, though that sure enough drove you crazy. You think I didn't know you were watching? Why do you reckon I took you to the work camp that night? I wanted you to see what you were missing. I wanted you to see that you'd never be me, no matter how goddamned hard you tried."

"I never wanted to be you."

"That ain't what those shrinks said. And Dad was sure pissed off, having one of his sons turn out to be a skullfuck."

"Those were... emotional difficulties... adjustment disorders."

"Twenty-dollar words for 'skullfucked.'"

Jacob felt as if the closet door were squeezing closed with half of him caught in the middle. He blinked and the room stopped moving. "One of the doctors said it might be genetic."

"Still passing the blame, huh? Why can't you just accept that you were fucked from your first breath. That you should have died inside Mom's nasty belly and left everything to me like it was supposed to be."

Jacob slipped to his knees, and he felt weak, eleven years old again, then nine, then seven. Joshua reached out his left hand and there was the Sock Monster, bloody and pointy and gray. Joshua worked the filthy sock like a puppet, using his "Wish Me" voice.

"Wish me to make you go away," said the sock, and Joshua's stage voice echoed through the tunnel of years, chasing him, grabbing at him, scratching him.

He kicked out and crawled backwards into the safety of the closet. The door slammed and the dark dropped over him, but in his mind the Sock Monster still reached, reached, reached.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The fire chief, Davidson, was waiting in the M & W office when Renee arrived twenty minutes late. The door to Donald Meekins' office was closed. He must have been in a meeting or he would have locked the outer office door.

Davidson stood as rigid as a soldier. "Where is your husband?"

"That's what I want to know." Renee's eyes were puffy and dewy. Having a cheating husband tended to do that to a woman. But she was well aware of his ability to keep secrets. Their deepest bond was their mutual dishonesty.

"I'm sorry to do this here, but I need to talk to both of you. Together."

"There's not a 'together' anymore."

"Sorry, Mrs. Wells. I don't mean to pry in personal business. But after the fire at your husband's construction site, I had to go back and look at the evidence collected when your house burned down."

"You said the SBI ruled it accidental."

"Not exactly. What they ruled was 'undetermined cause.'"

Renee wiped her nose with a ragged Kleenex she pulled from her pocket. She hated to be seen like this. Her hair was tangled and sweaty, her cheeks bright with shock and sorrow. She wouldn't have come to the office after her encounter with Carlita, but she was hoping to confront Jacob.

And to get a look at the fine print on the company life-insurance policy.

"We've had a couple of recent arson cases, so I had to go back and look at all of this year's suspicious fires. There was one out at the cemetery, and the groundskeeper said he saw a woman near the woods where it started. An attorney's office caught six weeks ago, took out the back of the building before we got it under control. Started inside, with what looked like a short where a computer was plugged in. The office belonged to Herbert Isaacs. Is that name familiar?"

"No, unless he rented from M & W. Then I might have seen his name on a statement or something." Renee couldn't think straight. She had to get rid of Davidson until she could sort things out with Jacob. She shouldn't be talking before she knew which story they were going to use.

"Herbert Isaacs was the attorney for Jacob's father, who was the developer of the office building. So I figured maybe there was an extra key around here and somebody had access without breaking and entering."

"That's quite a leap."

"Usually, arsonists have a modus operandi, a way of working that's as distinctive as fingerprints, and that gives them away. But this time, four different fires, four different causes."

"Sounds like random accidents to me. That would account for the difference."

"Three of them have the Wells name in common. Four, if you count the fact that a Wells is buried in the cemetery."

Renee tossed the moist tissue in the garbage can and tried to smile. Something had broken inside her, and her gut ached from the forearm blow that Carlita had given her. She rubbed her stomach. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mrs. Wells, I'm starting to believe you were the woman the groundskeeper saw."

"Is it a crime for a woman to visit her daughter's grave?" Renee channeled the anger she felt toward Carlita and Jacob and focused it on Davidson. "If I'm under suspicion, perhaps I should talk to a lawyer before I answer any more questions. But since I don't see the police with you, then I'm starting to believe you're blowing smoke."

Davidson pursed her thin lips, her eyes narrowed to slits. She pulled a plastic baggie from the back of her trousers. In it lay a rumpled piece of paper. "I found this at the scene when I went back for another look at your house. It was in the basement, laying there in the chunks of charcoal. Somebody must have left it there to be found, otherwise it would have burned. And it's fairly recent or the weather would have made the ink fade."

Renee couldn't help reaching for the baggie, but Davidson pulled it away. "Let me read it to you," the fire chief said. "'Hope you like the housewarming present. J.'"

Davidson observed Renee as if she were a germ on a microscope slide, but Renee's face had turned to stone.

"Pretty strange, huh? Fingerprints match Jacob's. He had a record as a teen, some minor vandalism at school, and he set fire to a bridge though no charges were filed. He was also arrested for assault, but the victim was a Mexican and didn't want to press charges. Your fingerprints aren't on file, but you've touched this before, haven't you?"

Renee let her face bend enough for a smile. "If you think Jacob burned down his own house, he'd be pretty stupid to leave something like that at the scene."

"I don't think your husband is stupid. But I can count two million reasons for him to cover it up."

"The house was only insured for a million."

Davidson's eyes grew grim, her short-cropped hair making her look like a severe monk who frowned on joy in others. "Your daughter was worth another million."

"That wasn't supposed to happen," Renee said, eyes roaming to the framed Rembrandt print on the wall, a Flemish village locked in time, a place where no children burned. She wouldn't face it. It was inside, hidden away, entombed. Nothing but ash. "That was an accident."

"You didn't know, did you? About the insurance on your daughter?"

"Of course I did," she said. A million per child. She accepted it because she had remade that person she used to be, shaped her past until she could live with the consequences. She had simply changed what she believed. That wasn't wrong, was it? Not with her soul and sanity at stake.

"Here's what I think happened," Davidson said. "Your husband had some money troubles. We don't know how deep he was under, but the detectives will have plenty of time to sort that out once we get this arson charge to stick. So he needed money fast, and here was this nice, new house worth maybe $300,000 but insured with contents for a million. All it takes is one electrical short and your husband turns a huge overnight profit. If not for one little mistake, he probably would have got away clean."

One little mistake.

The fire chief had reduced Mattie's life to three words. Davidson would never know how Mattie's little foot had kicked in the womb, high up under the rib, so powerfully that she and Jacob had joked about their future soccer star. Davidson hadn't sat Mattie in her lap and read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," hadn't watched Strawberry Shortcake videos and made Rice Krispies treats, hadn't seen Mattie in ballerina's tights skipping across a gym floor, hadn't brushed Mattie's luxuriant hair and shared purple fingernail polish and silly necklaces. Davidson didn't know about their daughter's sixteen million heartbeats, each one a blessing beyond measure, or the remaining millions of which God had cheated them.

"Jacob didn't do it," Renee blurted out, wanting to convince herself. "I think it was Joshua who started the fire."

"Joshua?"

"His twin brother. He's always been jealous because Jacob is successful. He wants to destroy Jacob, bring him down to his level, drag him down to hell."

Davidson tapped the baggie against her thick thigh. "Joshua Wells, huh? He hasn't been around here in years."

"You know him?"

"Knew of him. I went to the high school at the other end of the county, but everybody knew about the Wells boys, their dad being rich and all. Funny, but Jacob was always the troublemaker, the boy with his name in the newspaper, not the other one."

"You've got it wrong." Renee remembered what Carlita had told her about Jacob's mysterious twin. Desperation gripped her guts. "Joshua--he did all those bad things and blamed them on Jacob. I know Jacob. He's honest and kind."

"The evil twin did it, huh?" Davidson didn't appear as if she relished her sardonic joke. "Are you trying to sell your story to the 'Lifetime Channel' or something?"

"Jacob didn't start the fire at our house. I was there, remember?"

"Nothing personal, Mrs. Wells, but I don't believe you. Either of you. And when I take another look at these four fires, I'm going to find something. Then it will be the police knocking on your door, not me."

A well of spite rose in Renee. "Fine. At least I won't have to smell your sweat anymore."

At the end of the hall, the door to Donald Meekins' office opened. A redheaded woman with freckles came out, straightening her natural-fiber blouse. Renee recognized her as one of the company's tenants, a massage therapist who rented an office downtown. Donald followed her, his laughter ceasing when he saw Renee with a woman in a uniform.

The redhead raised her eyebrows, but Donald said, "Come back next week and we'll work out that lease extension, Miss Adamson. Just call Renee to set up the appointment."

"Thank you, sir," Miss Adamson said, fortunate to have made her living in alternative health rather than acting. "I look forward to doing business with you."

Donald reached up to adjust his tie then must have realized how that would look. "Yes. Thank you. Well, see you next week."

Miss Adamson smiled on her way past Renee to the exit, wobbling like a foal on her four-inch heels. After she was gone, Donald asked Davidson, "Can I help you?"

"I just needed to fill out some forms to do fire inspections at some of your apartments. Mrs. Wells here helped me out."

Donald squinted at her brass nameplate and nodded in his haste to duck back inside his office. "Well, after all the fires we've been having, I guess that's a good thing."

"Stop, drop, and roll and all that," Davidson said. "I'd better get back to my truck. Somebody might be trying to steal a fire hydrant."

"Okay, thank you," he said, overusing the phrase, grateful for everything today. Miss Adamson had a rare talent for emotional healing, it seemed. Donald went into his office and closed the door.

"He thinks Jacob has had a run of bad luck," Renee said.

"Sometimes people make their luck," Davidson said. She slipped the baggie with the note into her pocket.

"You should check that for Joshua's fingerprints," Renee said. "Or do identical twins have the same fingerprints?"

"No, their fingerprints are different. It's the DNA that's the same."

"It wasn't Jacob."

"You seem like a nice woman. You just married the wrong man, that's all. I wish I didn't have to nail you."

Davidson left without a backward glance. Renee sat at her desk and picked up the phone and tried Jacob's cell number. The signal was too weak.

She remembered showing Jacob the note while he was in the hospital, but she thought it was still in her purse. Maybe she'd dropped it when she went back to the ruins, the night she'd found the mirror. The night she'd followed the stranger into the woods. She should have burned it.

At least now she knew who the stranger was. The arsonist.

Joshua.

A man she'd never met, but one who must harbor as much hatred for her as he did his twin brother. Enough hatred to want to kill them both. But only Mattie had paid.

But why? If he wanted revenge, why had he waited so many years? What did he have against Jacob? There was a German word "Doppelganger," which meant a spiritual double. If Jacob's dissociative disorder was genetic, then maybe Joshua suffered delusions, too.

Unless Carlita was telling the truth, and Jacob was really in love with her. That would make Joshua jealous, wouldn't it? The brothers had been competitive, and Joshua had always come up short.

She couldn't make that final leap. She knew Jacob. They were closer than twins could ever be. They had survived two major tragedies together, they had pulled each other back from the mortgage of despair. They were developing themselves, building a new and brighter future on the ashes of the past. Two Wells were better than one.

Renee sat at her desk and tried to concentrate on her work, running a database of water bills. The numbers on the computer screen fuzzed before her eyes. The clock moved in a slow crawl, but Jacob didn't walk through the door. She tried the phone again.

He answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Jake! Where are you?"

"Where the door swings both ways."

"No, Jake, don't play games. We need to--"

"Finish it. Good-bye."

She pushed herself away from the desk and went out, not bothering to tell Donald she was leaving. She would find Jacob and confront him about Carlita. Jacob might be an arsonist and an insurance fraud but he wasn't a cheater. But if he'd gone home again, the place he despised, then Joshua's blackmail must have taken a darker turn.

Though she hadn't traveled that end of the county much, she was familiar with the two-lane highway that ran west along the river. Beyond the valley of Kingsboro, the road was twisty and the houses more sparse across the slopes. The forests were lush with pine, oak, and hickory. Much of the bottomland along the river held rows of yellowing tobacco or corn, and cattle grazed while serving out their sentences in idyllic, barbed-wire death camps.

The bridge came into view, and she recognized its wooden rails that peeled gray paint. Beneath that bridge, according to Carlita, Jacob had spied on his brother making love. Except Carlita didn't regard Joshua's affections as love. She spoke of it as a mutual addiction, a degrading need, a bond of desperation. Apparently only Jacob was capable of loving Carlita, in whatever form the woman imagined it. An image flashed through her mind of Jacob on top of Carlita, his pale sweating skin against her muscular dark body, her thighs straddling his hips, their limbs tangled in profane passion.

The Wells house stood on the hill, as stark as she remembered it, and through the trees she saw Jacob's new pickup. But the rusty green Chevrolet wasn't there. Jacob was alone in the house.

She slowed as she crossed the bridge, her hands so tight on the steering wheel that her knuckles were white. She looked over the rail at the water racing below, the currents sweeping around boulders and spilling over little falls, fueled by a hundred springs that welled from the mountains beyond. Jacob had told her a story once about a sailboat he'd had as a child, and how it had been smashed in the river. She wondered if Joshua had received a sailboat just like it, since twins often got the same presents.

The house was quiet as she parked. No one came out on the porch. Up close, the house had a shabby look, as if it hadn't been tended, with dusty windows and a few siding boards buckled out. The old barn stood on a nearby rise of meadow, and blue-gray hens worried the grass in the structure's shade. Jacob had tried to take her inside the barn during their engagement visit, but the thought of dust, manure, and vermin had repelled her. She shivered as she recalled Jacob's story of the animal torture.

Renee knocked. "Jacob?"

Maybe Joshua had never been here, and the blackmail had been a ruse. Perhaps Jacob had come here to wait for Carlita. A perfect little love nest. Maybe he was waiting in bed right now, with some candles and mineral oil and imported beer. She tried the knob. Locked.

She walked around the house, pulling herself up by the ledge of the big mullioned windows on the first floor, digging the toes of her pumps into the siding. The dining room was empty except for an oval wooden table coated with dust. On that long-ago night, Warren Wells had sat there at the head, with Renee seated between him and Jacob. Beyond the table was a fireplace, with small figurines lined along the mantel, their order apparently unchanged since her first visit. She dropped back to the ground and continued around the house. The back door was open.

"Jacob?"

The doorway led into the kitchen, which was spacious but dark despite the sunny day. She tried the light switch. Nothing. As her eyes adjusted, she made out a metal card table near the refrigerator that was covered in pizza boxes, empty beer bottles, and opened tin cans of food. Under the table sat a white Styrofoam cooler. Someone had been staying here.

She tried to count all those times Jacob had been out late, running errands or visiting a job site after hours. After he left the hospital, he'd disappeared for a few weeks. He'd claimed he'd been sleeping in the woods, but his memory had been damaged by the drinking. Maybe his fugue states were the ultimate cover story. After all, you couldn't be caught in a lie if you didn't remember where you had been. Or whom you were with.

Maybe Jacob had taken up smoking again.

She went through the hall to the stairs. The daylight was weaker here, the surrounding rooms walled off from the sun by thick drapes. The house smelled of must, stale smoke, and old cooking grease. Cigarette ash dotted some of the tin cans and butts lay scattered on the tiled floor. She paused and listened, wondering if Jacob had heard her arrival and was now hiding.

Renee started up the steps. She watched where she placed her foot, careful not to make the wood creak. If Jacob were up to something, better to catch him in the act. She took two steps, and then grabbed the railing to distribute her weight more easily. Her hand touched something slick and moist.

She pulled her hand back and put it near her face. Even in the bad light, there was no mistake.

Blood.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dark.

Where the Sock Monster lived.

And all the other beasts, the hundreds of creatures that had once crawled from beneath the bed and clutched at him, digging into his flesh, pulling him to pieces.

That's what Jacob had told the first doctor, shortly after his mother died.

No, not "died," came the Sock Monster's voice from an unseen corner of the closet. She was killed.

The original diagnosis had been an identity disorder, attendant paranoia with an underlying persecution complex. But the doctor consulted with Warren Wells and agreed to change the diagnosis to "adjustment disorder," a temporary failure in the coping mechanism. That way, Jacob could recover and go about his business of becoming a Wells.

Two years later, on the lost Saturday, Warren Wells had found his son unconscious in the barn, surrounded by the headless corpses of two dozen guinea hens, a bloody hatchet by his side. That time, the doctor had suggested a borderline personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies. Warren Wells had trumped it with his own diagnosis: "Boys will be boys."

And that was the last doctor, until Rheinsfeldt.

A couple of the trailers in the migrant camp had burned down the next year, but that was in the late winter, when most of the Mexicans had gone to the coast to work soybeans and cotton. The only family living in the camp had been Carlita's, but she and Joshua had recently married and moved to Tennessee. Jacob slipped out of the big, frigid house that night, tired of the brooding air that surrounded his father after his "only son" had married outside his own ethnic group. Jacob had spent the evening with a stolen bottle of tequila, sipping in the shed and staring at the blank, black window of one of the trailers.

The fire wasn't his fault. It was like anger, or seeing red, something that burned so hot inside that it caught fire to things on the outside, too. A match that lit itself.

Then off to college, where excessive drinking brought endless rounds of fugue states. Except those were easily explainable, and as far as Jacob knew, he never committed any violent acts during them. Sure, sometimes he'd wake up with blood in his mouth, or bits of broken glass in the creases of his clothes, but he'd never been arrested. Then he'd met Renee and the rage dissolved.

But she didn't know Joshua.

The half of him that could be neither restored nor excised.

In the dark, Joshua was always with him, whispering, taunting, tempting.

Jacob had never been able to explain it to the doctors. Even shrinks like Rheinsfeldt were too smart for their own good, thumbing through their thick manuals looking for Latin words to describe him. If they had only listened, they would have known it wasn't his words he spoke. He only said what Joshua would say.

Carlita understood that part. Carlita was primal, carnal, an animal spirit. She saw that Jacob and Joshua were the same, and could love them both. Not even their mother and father could do that. Where everyone else tried to pull them apart, make them separate beings, Carlita accepted them the way they were.

She was the only person Jacob could ever trust, the only person who seduced him into letting down his guard.

And, like all mistakes of love, this one carried a deep price.

Now, curled in the darkness, his nose in the dust and mildew, he knew he was foolish to ever think he could escape Joshua. Even if he killed his brother, the voice wouldn't go away. Even if he paid him millions of dollars, and Joshua moved to Mexico, Jacob would still be wed to his twin. Joshua was part of him. Sometimes he even thought he was more Joshua than he was himself, because only Joshua would be afraid of the dark like this.

Not Jacob.

Because Jacob was brave, wasn't he? Jacob took care of business. Jacob did the dirty work for both of them.

Had he really hit Joshua, just before the closet door had slammed shut? He spread his fingers and moved them slowly across the floor. He touched the heavy eagle head of the cane. The hooked beak was slick and wet. He lifted the cane and smiled.

You didn't have to be afraid just because you were in the dark.

When there were two of you, you were never alone.

Right, Joshua?

Footsteps.

Coming up the stairs.

Mother. You've had a terrible fall. Why don't you lie down and rest?

He giggled in the dark, the sound swallowed by the dead air of the closet. Your imagination could get the better of you if you weren't careful. As Dad always said, "Dreams are for dreamers, but the rest of us have to live in the real world."

The footsteps came closer.

It must be Joshua, that other one that lived outside his head, coming to taunt him some more. Or demand more money.

But Jacob would be ready this time.

He gripped the cane.

Kill him then burn the house down.

Closer footsteps.

Then her voice. "Jacob?"

His stomach clenched.

Her. Did she know?

He'd kept Joshua a secret because she wouldn't understand. They never did.

And he had sacrificed everything for her, hadn't he? Moved back to Kingsboro, took over the Wells holdings, tried to build up some momentum in a tough market. All so she could say she had made him successful. Gave her children so she would find the ultimate female fulfillment, the most obvious and unbreakable sign of commitment.

But even those commitments could be broken.

He loved her, and when you loved somebody, you owed them everything.

Carlita understood that, but Renee never would.

"Jacob?" She was across the room now, probably near the window. Or the bed.

He raised himself onto his hands and knees. He heard the swick of fabric as she parted the curtains, and a sword of light appeared at the base of the closet door. How long had he been here? Days?

No. The blood would have dried. He hadn't forgotten anything. This wasn't a fugue state.

He was... confused, that was all.

That silly Joshua stuff was the kind of thing a scared kid would dream up. He was a grown man, his own man. He called softly through the door. "Carlita?"

The sword of light was broken by her shadow. "Jacob? Are you in there? Are you okay?"

"Yes. Joshua locked me in here. Let me out."

"There's blood everywhere."

How many times had he hit Joshua? He couldn't remember. Obviously not enough, or Joshua's body would be lying in the room.

The door handle turned then the door rattled in its frame. "It's locked."

Jacob stood the cane in the corner. No need for her to see it, or the blood that spattered the eagle head of the handle. She wouldn't understand. They never did.

He raised himself on his knees and fumbled for the eye-hook he'd installed as a teenager, so he'd have a place to hide from his family when the barn was too cold. Nobody ever expected a closet to be locked from the inside. Joshua had found out, though, and had installed a latch on the outside, too.

"The door swings both ways," Joshua had said. "You can lock me out, but I can also lock you in."

Jacob pushed the metal latch up and it fell against wood. As the door opened and the sudden daylight blinded him, he stared up at the figure before him. Blinking, he said, "I did it for you."

"What, Jake? What did you do?"

Not her. It was the other one.

Renee.

Blood dotted the floor like the footprints of a rabid animal. The sunlight made crazy rainbow diamonds on the window glass. The sky was a mirror, the sky was a mirror, the sky was a mirror.

"I did it for us," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"What's going on, Jake?" Renee asked, patting Jacob's shoulder. Her husband was wild-eyed and pale, on his knees, clothes wrinkled. Why had he locked himself in the closet?

"It's Joshua," Jacob said. "He's the one who burned the house down. He's the one who killed Mattie."

She tried to comprehend the words but couldn't. Mattie died in an accident. Even Davidson had said so. If you repeated the story often enough, it became true.

She looked around the room, saw the twin beds, their blankets tangled. One of the sheets was stained with rust-brown circles.

She drew back, but he reached and grabbed her hands and looked up at her, a bizarre mockery of the moment when he'd asked for her hand in marriage. "He took the insurance money," Jacob said. "He said Dad cheated him out of his inheritance."

"Jacob, we'd better get you to a doctor."

"We have to find him, or he'll tell."

The trail of blood spots that led out of the room and downstairs. Jacob didn't appear to be wounded. "No. We can call the police on your cell phone. If your brother's hurt, we can get help for him."

Lord, Jakie, what did you do to him? Are you so obsessed with Carlita that you'll assault your own brother?

She needed time to figure things out. If Jacob was in trouble, they'd get through it together, just like they always had. She pulled Jacob to his feet.

"Come on," she said. "Are you hurt?"

"No." He looked past her through the window, and she turned to see the afternoon sun bathing the family cemetery and the barn beyond that. "The camp. That's where he went."

"Did you hurt him?"

"We should call the police."

"No police. We'll take care of it ourselves, the way we always have." She took his hand and led him into the hallway, listening for footsteps. If Joshua was in the house, he would have heard her calling. Unless he was unconscious. Or dead.

Her hand went cold at the thought that she might be touching a murderer.

No. This was no murderer. This was her husband.

Wasn't it? Because this was the real world and Jacob loved only her. Sure, they'd had their tragedies, but everyone did. It came with the territory of breathing. Things would make sense once they got away from this place. She wondered if Joshua had insured the Wells home and how briskly it might burn with all that woodwork.

As they descended the stairs, Jacob said, "He would have killed her."

"Killed who?"

"Mother. That's just the way he is."

"She died in an accident, Jacob," she said, then realized this was where it happened. She had slipped on the stairs and tumbled down, her brittle bones clattering against the railing. A broken neck. Nobody's fault.

"Yeah," Jacob said, though his eyes gazed down the flight of stairs as if the body were still sprawled there. "That's just what Joshua said. An accident."

When they reached the landing, she told Jacob to wait for her in the truck.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to look for Joshua."

"I told you, he's gone to the camp."

"I know, honey. But you're confused right now."

It's for his own good. He's safer that way. And it's my job to protect him. For the family.

She waited for Jacob to pass through the kitchen and into the sunshine. After he was around the corner, she closed and latched the door, then entered the living room. Books were askew on the shelves, some of them lying open and face down on the floor. Figurines, many of them now reduced to shards of plaster and ceramic, were scattered across the stone hearth. A beer bottle lay on its side by one of the chairs, a pool of dried amber surrounding it. The fireplace contained layers of fine black ash, as if someone had burned stacks of paper. Jacob's cell phone was a melted pile of slag in the center.

She glanced between the curtains and saw Jacob in his truck.

Renee checked the dining room. She could almost see the ghost of Warren Wells sitting at the table, lording over his family, demanding clean fingernails and perfect place settings and food of the proper temperature. She could understand his desire for perfection. She shared it. Perhaps that was what Jacob had seen in her, what he had fallen in love with. It was something Carlita or no other woman could give him.

A drive to be absolute.

She had dared him to be a Wells, and he became one. She was the success story as much as her husband was. Others might measure success by acres developed, income realized, charities supported, or community awards received. But her success was internal, eternal, spiritual. She had saved him from himself.

But at such a great cost. Still, sacrifices were necessary.

And she couldn't lose now. Not when the payoff was so close.

A Wells never fails.

She entered a room that appeared to have been Warren Wells' study. It was dark, with heavy curtains blocking the one slim window. A desk sat in the middle of the floor, a lone piece of paper on it.

She picked it up, carried it to the window and read it through the slit of leaking light: "IOU eight million dollars for pain and suffering." The "eight" had been crossed out, and beneath it "two" had been scrawled in pencil.

It was signed "J." Just like note she'd shown Jacob in the hospital, the same one Davidson found at the scene of their burned-down house. The letters slanted to the left.

Eight million. That was roughly the value of Jacob's inheritance, including the Wells share of M & W Ventures.

"I don't reckon we've met. At least not formal-like."

She spun, crinkling the paper. He stood in the doorway, in silhouette, with the living room window at his back. She recognized the voice. The one from the woods behind her destroyed home, from the thicket in the cemetery, the one she'd heard on the phone. Even though it had been disguised before, the timbre of the words were plain, close enough to Jacob's to be startling, yet in a flatter, lazier accent.

"Joshua?"

He stepped into the room, and it had to be Joshua, because he resembled Jacob so much that she had to look twice to note the differences. The main one was the gash above his right eye, raw and wet, needing stitches. His grin was harder, more cynical, and his teeth were chipped and stained yellow. His hair was oily, slicked back and uneven. This was her brother-in-law, the man who bore the same blood and had sprung from the same seed as her husband.

This was family.

Joshua wiped at his eyebrow then cleaned his hand on his trousers. "Your husband got a mean streak in him," he said, in an exaggerated drawl. "I don't know where in the world he got it from."

"I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but we're calling the police."

"That'd be just fine with me, ma'am. Then I can tell them all about what Jacob done."

"He hasn't done anything."

Joshua limped forward. "He done plenty."

Now the light caught his face, and his eyes were moss brown and somber like Jacob's, his chin and cheeks in the same geometric proportions, his build of the same angular strength. Except for the cruelty in his eyes, he was as handsome as her husband.

"Stay away from me, or I'll yell for Jacob."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. 'Cause you might need me to save you from him."

"You're crazy. Jacob told me about you."

"Not nearly enough, I'll bet. Did he tell you about when we were kids? About how he managed to blame everything on me, how he'd steal all my toys? How he turned Dad against me until they drove me out of the family?"

Renee maneuvered so the desk was between her and Joshua. She didn't like the crease of his smile, the mad sparks in his pupils. Jacob must still be sitting in the truck, waiting for her.

"What about the eight million dollars?" she said.

"Fair's fair," he said. "That's what Jake stole from me, and that's what he's going to give me back."

"He didn't steal anything. I saw your father's will. Jake got the money and you got the house and land."

"It shoulda been mine. Jacob got it all turned around."

"We can't give you any more money."

"That ain't the way this works. Two million more or I tell all of it."

"You're the one who started the fires. They're talking a murder charge now."

He moved forward, winced, and supported himself by leaning against the desk. His breath reeked of stale beer and smoke, and the odor of perspiration rose from his clothes. He was feral, desperate, beyond law and order.

Boom-boom-boom. The hollow echo of fists pounding on the back door. Jacob's unintelligible, muffled voice came from outside.

"Two million," Joshua said to her. "Ain't you got any more people to kill? Ask him about his mother."

He turned and limped out of the study, pausing once, stained teeth gritted. The wound over his eye had broken open again and a large red tear rolled down his cheek. "And ask him about my kid."

Then Joshua was gone, leaving Renee looking from the paper in her hand to the Wells family portrait on the wall. After a moment, she slipped the paper in the pocket of her pants suit and ran through the house, her heels clattering on the hardwood floor. The front door slammed, and the deadbolt was locked by the time she reached it. Through a glass pane in the door she could see Jacob's truck and her car, both with their hoods up.

She ran through the living room and kitchen and fumbled with the old-fashioned lock on the back door, throwing the door open. Jacob stood on the back step, his arms apart. From each of his hands, a nest of wires dangled like dead snakes.

"He cut our ignition wires," Jacob said. "This is just like him."

"I saw him, Jake."

Jacob's eyes narrowed and shifted back and forth in their sockets. "Where?"

"Inside. He wants more money. I thought we were done with him."

"I told you he was crazy. Gets it from his daddy."

"He said to ask you about your mother. And his kid."

Jacob flung the wires to the ground and pushed past her into the house. His feet rumbled up the stairs, then he shouted Joshua's name. She followed him, afraid that Joshua would jump out of the shadows and hold a knife to her throat. She should have known they couldn't buy their way back to a perfect world, especially after what had happened to Mattie and Christine.

Renee had entered the Wells world, had been seduced by the promise of power. But she thought she could change him, salvage him. Even after the accidents.

Love could work miracles. Love could heal all wounds. Love could patch the broken places inside Jacob. But, first, she had to get him far away from Joshua, at whatever price.

She had reached the foot of the stairs when Jacob appeared on the top landing, his face nearly unrecognizable in the darkness. His hands twitched at his sides. "He's not here," he said.

"I told you, he ran out the front. He was bleeding, Jake. Did you beat him up?"

"How could I ever hurt my dear brother?" Jacob descended, taking one slow step after another. "My own flesh and blood. I'd just as soon kill myself."

"Jake?"

He continued his descent, steady, sure, retracing the path down which his mother had fallen to her death. Fallen, or pushed? What if Joshua were telling the truth? How much could she trust Jacob?

A test. Love passed all its tests in a perfect world.

"I know about Carlita."

Jacob stopped and hovered above her, close enough that she could see the corners of his lips curl upward. "You wouldn't understand. They never do."

"Jake?"

He continued down the stairs, a funeral march, eyes vacant. "He's at the camp. With her."

Renee grabbed his sleeve as he passed. "Let's just go. We can walk if we have to. It's only a mile to the highway."

His words shifted into an accent she'd never heard him use before. "What's owed got to be paid. It's the Wells way."

"He told me to ask you about his kid. But Carlita told me she couldn't have kids."

"She don't know nothing. A dumbfuck beaner who spreads her legs for any gringo with a grin and a dollar."

"Do you love her?" She tugged at his arm, but his gaze was fixed out the door, beyond the world outside, staring into a land that no one else was allowed to visit.

"Joshua don't," Jacob said. "He loves himself. That's just the way he is."

"I don't give a damn about Joshua. All I care about is us."

"There ain't no 'us,' honey. There's only you and me and him and her."

He shoved away from her grasp and headed out of the dank house into the sunshine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The cemetery on the ridge was thick with weeds and briars, the graves untended, the markers askew. It was fenced with locust posts, and guinea hens had scratched in the dirt around the stones. A few sprigs of honey locust rose along the fence line, old field succession that would one day reclaim this neglected ground. Jacob's grandmother and grandfather had been buried there, along with his father's only brother. The Wells family hadn't owned this land long enough to lay out a decent array of corpses. The ones under this soil were linked only by DNA, with dust and decay their common denominator.

Jacob stopped by the fence to catch his breath. He read the names of the two largest stones, which stood side by side in the center of the plot. Warren Harding Wells and Nancy Elizabeth Wells. He had rarely thought of his mother as someone with a name. Having a name might have made her more human and real to him. Maybe Joshua wouldn't have killed her if she had been "Nancy Wells" instead of "Mother."

He was glad that Christine and Mattie weren't buried here. Bad enough to be polluted by Wells blood without having to spend eternity among them. The cemetery had enough room for a dozen more, and no doubt Warren Wells had harbored dreams of his sons one day resting together at his feet. The deviant division of Nancy's egg would have come full circle and made its final reunion.

Jacob looked back at the house. Renee was trying to start her car, the engine turning over with dry disinterest. She'd probably look for the cell phone, too. They never understood, and they never took your word for it, either.

He looked at the barn, where Joshua might be laying in ambush. The barn door hung askew, one of the rollers broken, and the hayloft opening was as black as winter sin. Joshua might be able to secure a weapon, a hatchet or scythe, some rusted remnant of the Christmas tree enterprise. Joshua might get weak and kill him, just when Jacob was about to give him back his birthright.

No, Joshua was as desperate for resolution as Jacob was, and the deal could only go down in one place--the shabby camp where it had begun.

The guinea hens emerged from the trees at the edge of the pasture, expecting to be fed. They were striped like granite, with rippling bands of dark blue and light gray. Some ancestral memory kept them lingering around the barn, raising their broods, fleeing the occasional fox or red-tailed hawk. They had staked out their territory, and not even the scent of the man who had once slaughtered their kind would roust them.

Guineas were stupid, and Jacob hated all stupid creatures. He knew he should get to the camp, because Carlita would be waiting.

Renee was now hurrying toward him, coming up the rise, her dress shoes slowing her down. He waited until she was close enough so that he could hear her shouts, then he turned from the cemetery. She had never been to this part of the farm, and he didn't want to lose her. Joshua would never forgive him if Renee missed all the fun.

The slope grew uneven beneath his feet, the trail eroded since the days when cattle had made their way to the barn from far pastures. The sun was heading down toward the tops of the mountains, over where Tennessee and North Carolina collided in monstrous, rocky waves and the autumn trees screamed red and yellow as if on fire. Jacob could smell his own sweat, the crisp acid of dying oak leaves, and rabbit tobacco. Joshua didn't deserve this place.

He turned once to see Renee cresting the hill behind him, now rid of her shoes. Her hair trailed behind her, golden in the late-afternoon sun. No wonder Joshua loved her so. She was an ideal, a floating dream image of womanhood, someone who was loyal and stable and strong. A woman who could build a better man. She understood what it meant to be a Wells.

Well, most of it.

He reached the first of the Fraser firs, Christmas trees that were too deformed for market and had been left to grow wild. They threw long shadows as he ran between the rows, stumps of harvested trees dotting the hillside. Briars tore at his pants legs, and he knew Renee would have trouble following with her bare feet. He considered stopping, letting her catch up, but the roofs of the migrant camp were below him now, the tottering shed from where he'd first watched Carlita and Joshua, the land giving way to a sheer drop behind the mobile homes, falling away to the river. The blackened ruins of two fire-gutted trailers stood near the ledge, shards of ragged alloy spiking toward the sky.

The road to the camp ran parallel to the river, twin tracks of brown dirt bounded by oaks and white pines. A narrow, wobbly bridge spanned the river, leading to the tree fields and upper pastures. Jacob had driven the road many times, and had walked it many more, the long way home. All those nights spent following Joshua, watching as Carlita surrendered herself, wrapped her brown limbs around him and shouted his name.

Joshua.

That had been the problem. She'd always called out "Joshua."

He picked up the pace, excited now. Soon she wouldn't call him "Joshua" any more.

The rusty, green Chevy was parked in front of the last mobile home. No doubt, Carlita was cleaning the cut on Joshua's face, kissing his brow and telling him it would soon be over. His loco brother would bother him no more. They would be away from this place, wealthy, and then they could live as they were meant.

The grin felt like it was splitting his face. It wasn't easy being a Wells, becoming a Wells. But the end was near. He would get all the good things he deserved.

Jacob gained speed as he ran down the slope, his legs rejuvenated. Time seemed to fall away, and he was sixteen again, the hills lush with trees, a thread of campfire smoke rising from the migrant camp, bacon in the wind. It was the day after their birthday, and both of the boys had taken their driver's tests and gotten their licenses. Joshua said they should celebrate, said he had a special present for his favorite brother. He told Jacob to come by the camp that afternoon. There was a green bow on the shed door, and when he opened the door, heart like a jackhammer in his chest, he heard the grunting in the shadows, the frantic whisper of his brother's name, then laughter. Joshua lay on top of Carlita, his skin pale against her brownness, the hay strewn around them as they wallowed, the air thick with dust. Joshua groaned and pushed himself to his knees, looked at his brother in the doorway.

"Happy birthday to us," he said.

And sixteen-year-old Jacob took a step inside, fumbling for the buttons on his shirt. Carlita didn't rise, just lay on her back and smiled, her breasts lifting with her breath, the dark patch between her spread legs glistening in the half-light. Jacob's trembling fingers finally managed to free the shirt, and he shucked his shoes, and he was approaching her, unbuckling his belt, wondering if he could do it with his little brother watching, when the back of his head erupted in a thunderclap of red agony.

The thirty-three-year-old Jacob rubbed his head now, remembering the dull throb, the rising from the gray mist to find himself on his stomach on the dirt floor of the shed. An ax handle lay beside him. His clothes were scattered, his pants around his knees, his wallet gone. Joshua had stolen his driver's license, and Jacob had never gotten it back.

He now reached the camp and moved past the Chevy, peering through the tinted window to make sure the key was in the ignition. Carlita would want to make a fast getaway. That's the way women were, especially when they wanted to rip out a man's heart and show it to him while it was still beating, laughing all the while.

They would be in the last mobile home, the one with the faded silver stripe down the side and translucent polyvinyl taped over the windows.

The door was unlocked. He looked back up the hill and saw Renee's silhouette against the sundown. If she didn't fall, she'd be right on time. He yanked open the door. "Joshua!"

Joshua and Carlita sat on a couch in the dark living room. The couch looked to have been inhabited by rats, with cotton dribbling from its stitches. A brick propped up one corner. Carlita was leaning into Joshua, and he had his arm around her.

"Let's go, Carlita," Jacob said. "He's got his."

"Not so fast," Joshua said. "Two more million."

"You can get it from Renee."

"You ain't much of a horse trader, are you?"

"I just want it over with."

Carlita looked at him with those maddening brown eyes. "Why do you bring that crazy woman into this, Joshua?"

"Nothing for you to worry about. We're just giving you what you wanted all these years."

"I want to go back to Tennessee."

"Get in the car, then," Jacob said.

Carlita looked at Joshua, who squeezed her shoulder and lifted his arm from her body. He gave her a little shove. "You heard your husband. You promised to honor and obey, till death do us part."

Carlita stood, her breasts swaying beneath her shirt, her ripeness in defiance of time and truth. Jacob licked his lips. He wondered how much she had changed, if she was still as moist and frantic as she had been that long-ago night of the trade. She'd lived hard in the meantime, and Jacob planned to let her live harder. Much harder.

"How you going to do her?" Joshua asked him.

"By accident, the way we always do it. I figure the river. It was dark, she slipped, hit her head on the rocks."

"Too bad you can't burn her up, huh?" Joshua's stained grin was like that of an opossum's in a chicken house.

"Don't want to push my luck," Jacob said.

"You'll get all kinds of sympathy for your loss. If you get away with it."

"I don't like this," Carlita said to Josh. "I thought we take the money and go home."

"Jake and me, we made a new deal." Joshua took a long swallow from the bottle in his lap. "I get the house and money, the fancy stuff. I get his good life, and he gets mine. I finally get to be a Wells, and he gets... well, he gets what he wants."

"He gets your life?" Carlita shook her head. "You have no life."

Jacob was aroused by the memory of her writhing under him, panting and urgent then pushing him over to climb on top, then accepting him from behind, from the side, demanding, hungry, a wild thing that Renee could never be. Opening up parts of himself that he didn't know existed. She had made him feel alive. She had made him want to kill.

Jacob smiled and took her by the wrist. "Get in the car."

"The gas mileage sucks," Joshua said. "And don't drive drunk because the tag's expired. You ain't got enough money to bail yourself out of jail."

"We'll manage," Jacob said. "We'll get by on love, right, Carlita?"

"You're both loco," she said.

He pulled her to the doorway. Carlita slapped at his arm, eyes imploring Joshua to help her. She spat at Jacob, a wad of her saliva sticking to his pink cheek before beginning a slow crawl down his face. "Let me go, pig."

"Just head on along," Joshua said. "After a month or two, you won't even know the difference. Jacob will never do it as good as me, but hey, you never noticed before."

"Before?"

Jacob grinned. "Didn't you wonder about that night?"

"Which night?"

Joshua hoisted his tall boy of Budweiser and showed the bobbing knot of his neck as he swallowed. "Ten years ago. When we first made the trade."

Jacob dragged Carlita to the door, but her legs collapsed and she became dead weight. The mobile home shook with their struggle, teetering on its cinder block pillars. Renee's voice came from outside, calling Jacob.

"Now for my part of the deal," Joshua said. He rose from the couch, staggering, eyes bright and red. He tossed his Budweiser can into the corner of the living room, stirring a cockroach. His belch tainted the air as he pushed past Jacob and Carlita. "Here I am, honey," he called.

Jacob wrapped his arms around Carlita and hauled her outside. She grabbed the door jamb, kicking her feet, but Jacob could hardly feel the blows against his shin. Her fingernails skreeched against the metalworks of the door, then he yanked her free.

Renee had reached the Chevy and leaned against it, catching her breath. Her hair was tangled, the knees of her pants torn and the bare skin stitched with blood and briars.

"Come on inside, honey," Joshua said to her. "We got a lot to talk about."

"Jacob?" She twisted her head in confusion.

"What?" Joshua said.

Jacob still loved her, in a strange way, and he almost regretted what he'd have to do. But she'd wanted to be a Wells, she'd signed up for the company plan, and she was worth two million dollars dead.

Sometimes that's just the way it went. Sometimes you were worth more dead than alive.

Just ask Mattie.

Jacob dragged Carlita to the Chevy. She elbowed him in the side, and he fought an urge to slap her. That's what Joshua would do, slap her silly and throw her down on the ground. He wasn't Joshua. Not yet.

Renee grabbed him, trying to pull him away from Carlita. "Leave her alone."

Jacob shrugged away from her grip and flung the driver's-side door open. Held by only one arm, Carlita squirmed free and spun, spittle flying from her mouth, fists raised in front of her. Jacob closed on her, cornered her between the mobile home and the toolshed. He backed her toward the shed. She dodged to the left, but he tackled her and they wrestled on the ground.

"You stinking bastard," Carlita said, her blows raining on his back with the sound like that of a dull drum.

"Jacob!" Renee called, but Joshua held her now. She writhed against him, much like she probably had when Joshua was planting the seed that became Mattie.

Enraged by the memory, Jacob picked up Carlita and shoved her into the toolshed, then slammed the door and snapped the hasp.

"Jake!" Renee screamed. "Help me."

"Right here, babe," Joshua said, laughing as he pinned her against the Chevy, obviously enjoying the contact as she squirmed beneath him.

"You're crazy," she said to him. "What have you done to Jacob?"

"I let him be himself," Joshua said. "That's something you never did."

"How the hell do you know what I did or didn't do?"

Joshua reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handheld tape recorder. He pressed a button and thumbed up the volume. The hiss of the tape drowned out the roar of the river below then came Jacob's voice, compressed and flattened, but recognizable, eerily similar to the voice of the Rock Star Barbie.

"It's the only way, honey," Jacob said on the tape. "The fire will start downstairs. When the alarm goes off, I'll get Mattie and we'll meet you outside. That way no one will suspect anything."

Jacob approached the Chevy and smiled as Renee's voice came on the tape: "I'm worried, Jake."

He mouthed the words that he'd said next, in sync with the tape. "A million dollars, honey."

Joshua clicked the tape recorder off as Renee slumped in surrender. Carlita must have found something blunt and wooden, because she was hammering on the shed door, causing slivers of wood to fall from the planks. The wind had risen, and the air had gone cool with the dying of the day. The sun now touched the ridge, an obscene orange ball whose light smeared the clouds into stained rags and sent fingers of hellish flame across the homestead.

"You taped it," Renee said to Jacob.

"You know how I feel about insurance."

"Goddamn you, you taped it."

"If we got caught, I wasn't going to go down alone."

Joshua slid the tape recorder into his shirt pocket. Though Renee had stopped struggling, he kept her pinned against the car's fender. Or maybe he just enjoyed the heat of her body. "A Wells never fails."

"And two Wells are better than one," Jacob said.

"You're insane," Renee said between sobs. "Both of you."

"Shit," Joshua said. "I ain't the one that killed my own kid for money."

"Yes, you are," Jacob said. "I never would have done that. But you would."

"Hell, I started the fire, but you're the one that fucked up. You were supposed to get her out of there."

Jacob grinned, and the expression felt like a live snake across his face. "I tried. But maybe I didn't try as hard as I could."

Renee stared at him, then past him, eyes wide and blank. "Jakie. Oh, Jakie."

"I couldn't let her live," Jacob said to Renee. "You can see that, can't you?"

"Oh, Jesus, Jacob."

Joshua spat. "What the hell, it was another million, right?"

"It's all Christine's fault. She died natural and it paid good. Mattie was just too healthy."

Renee sagged and Joshua released her. She fell to her knees, sobs wracking her shoulders. She tried to speak, but the words became gasps. The sunset threw the migrant camp into a golden light, the color of Jacob's memories. Of watching Carlita and Joshua through the window, of fantasizing that he was his younger brother, that he could trade his life for Joshua's.

Only he couldn't trade fifty-fifty. He was too deeply in debt.

"Two million for two kids," Joshua said to Renee. "And two million for you. But I'm taking a down payment first. I got a feeling you ain't had a real man in years."

"What about the autopsy?" Jacob said.

"Shit. Semen got DNA, don't it?"

"Well, we got the same DNA, so go for it."

Renee looked at Jacob, wondering about the next breath and how it could possibly force itself from the sky and into her constricted, brick-hard lungs. She'd pushed him to this. She was the one that put value in material things. She wanted the Wells world, the power, the land, the respect. She'd wanted to be a Wells more than Jacob ever had.

Mattie, that was an accident. But Christine...

As if he could read her thoughts, Jacob said, "I didn't kill Mattie for the money."

He sat on the Chevy's hood and lit a cigarette, then blew smoke into Joshua's face. "I killed her because she was yours."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Renee's muscles were damp rags. Her tongue was swollen in her mouth, her throat tight. The ringing in her ears was so intense she might have misheard Jacob.

Mattie was Joshua's?

The revelation made the horizon blur on the edge of her vision and the sky was an obscene and smothering ocean above her. Her head throbbed, her eyeballs ached, her jaws clenched. Her intestines felt as if they had been yanked from her gut and knotted around her larynx. But beneath the sick pressure in her rib cage was a small and sick glow of joy--she bore no blame for Mattie's death.

It was all Jacob's fault.

But what was Joshua saying about Christine?

She couldn't understand, didn't want to. The pounding on the shed door was like the beat of a bruised wooden heart, and Carlita's Spanish curses and screams came in muffled arrhythmia behind it. The sun cast doomsday lava over the land. Renee closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but it was too late. The knowledge had entered and could never be purged.

Jacob had killed their children.

"Get up," Joshua shouted at her in his rough, smoky voice. She opened her eyes to the scarred tips of his boots. She lifted her head, though gravity was an unforgiving enemy.

"Hear what he just said?" Joshua said.

She couldn't speak. Words had become gravel in her lungs.

"He torched our kid," Joshua said. "Ain't that just like a Wells?"

She shook her head and an impossible smile came to her lips. The sunset was warm on her face, the air pine-sweet, the river churning and cold below. This was the far end of the world, this land that had created the Wells twins. The gates of hell must surely be somewhere nearby, waiting for them all to enter.

"Our kid." Joshua snorted with derision. "Reckon my seed took where his wouldn't."

She tried to arrange his words into a sensible structure. Language had become an elusive snake burrowing into a moist hole in the riverbank. All she knew was the song of the river, its sibilant rush, its bright splashing against stones, slithering toward a place far away.

That August night when Jacob had taken her by force, had spent his passion into her again and again, when she'd fully opened herself to him and let him reach and join in that most sacred sanctuary. It hadn't been Jacob after all. It had been Joshua.

Even in that drunken darkness, she should have known. Maybe she had known but deceived herself. Maybe she'd craved that side of Jacob he would never let slip from his control. And the wanting had brought Joshua to her.

Wish me, cooed the mad voice in her head. Wish me that two Wells are better than one.

"Come on," Joshua said, reaching down and grabbing her arm. He pulled Renee to her feet and put an arm around her. His sweat drowned out the wet smell of the river. She leaned against him, a rag doll with a hot wire girding its spine.

"Well, Jake, let's get 'er done," Joshua said. "Sounds like Carlita's getting a mite restless."

"Wait a second," Jacob said. "Don't you get it? I killed your goddamned kid."

"Big whoop-dee-shit."

"I won, see? I fucked you over harder than you ever fucked me. I'm more of a Wells than you are."

"Oh, I get it now. That blame thing. It's all my fault you killed Momma, right?" Joshua slipped a cigarette between his lips and lit it. When he exhaled, the smoke strangled Renee. "You won nothing," he said to Jacob.

"Carlita," Jacob replied.

"You could have had her for a few thousand, dumbass. My first time, it only cost twenty bucks. But four million ain't bad."

Jacob nodded at Renee. "Paid in full, brother."

Renee's legs trembled. Her mind was crushed by the wild clouds above, the fog of God's breath, the rising twilight that darkened the eastern horizon. Joshua eased her toward the Chevy.

Two million.

Her line on Jacob's M & W insurance policy.

Jacob was getting rid of her, too. Cashing her in, just as he had done their children.

Means to an end.

And Jacob's end was to become his brother.

"I figure the bridge," Joshua said.

"Not bad," Jacob said. "She lost her footing in the dark, fell into the river, and smashed her head on the rocks. Blacked out and drowned. Another tragedy."

"Them Wells sure do got bad luck."

"The grieving husband and father. No one will blame me for marrying Carlita so soon after my loss."

"And the money suits me. Carlita's kind is a dime a dozen. I don't know what it is about her that drove you so donkeyshit."

"She was yours."

Joshua opened the car door on the rear driver's side. Renee tried to pull away, but he shoved her into the stinking seat amid the fast-food wrappers and empty beer cans. Jacob climbed in behind her and slammed the door while Joshua got behind the wheel. Renee sat up but Jacob put his weight on top of her.

His mouth pressed against her ear. "Sorry about the kids. But this is the only way."

"You're crazy," she managed to say.

"No, Joshua's crazy. Because this is the kind of thing I would never do unless I was him."

Joshua started the car with a rumble of pipes. Music blasted from the speakers, Johnny Cash singing about the green, green grass of home. She crawled across the seat and lunged for the door, but the handle was missing. She tried to climb over the seat but Jacob grabbed her hair and yanked. The engine gunned and the car lurched forward, bouncing on sprung shocks as it crawled along the narrow dirt road.

Renee slumped against the rear of the seat, her head turned toward the dark window. Only the outlines of the trees were visible and the ridges were black humps against a violet sky. Johnny Cash hit the last verse of the ballad, awakening from a dream to find himself in prison facing a death sentence.

"Why, Jakie?" she said to the window. In the dashboard's dim glow, she could see his reflection in the window. His twisted face, narrowed eyes, and bright scarred skin made him look like a demon.

"Because you wanted me to," he said.

Joshua reached down to the floorboard and pulled out a can of beer. He steered with his elbow while he popped the tab. Foam sprayed across the windshield, lathering the twin troll heads that hung from the mirror. "No, she wanted me to," Joshua said. "Ain't that right, honey?"

"Shut up," she said. "You made Jake do this."

"It was his idea. All I did was nudge him along. See, I always wanted what was best for him. Not like you."

"I gave him everything." She turned to Jacob. "I gave you everything."

The tears came and it was as if she was looking through greased glass. Jacob sneered at her and said, "You gave Joshua everything. You had Mattie for him."

Her voice cracked like her mind was cracking. "I didn't know."

"I thought Christine would make up for it. But she wasn't as perfect as Mattie. She wasn't a Wells."

"How could you?"

"Christine was easy. No whimpers with a plastic bag, no blood, no questions asked."

Renee said nothing. She was next to die, but she didn't care anymore. Perhaps in heaven she would have her children back. She could spend an eternity begging their forgiveness, and maybe one day on the far side of forever, they would love her again.

Johnny Cash went into a song about a highwayman, dying and coming back again and again. The vocal part was taken over by Willie Nelson, then by someone she couldn't recognize. She lost herself in the slick guitars, a "Wish me" game of dissociation and despair.

Joshua finished his beer and tossed the can behind him. The car hit a rut and he bounced high enough that his head hit the roof. He cursed and slowed down a little. The night had become liquid and the Chevy moved through it like a bottom feeder.

"I mean, you're sweet and all," Joshua said to her. "But you ain't as sweet as money."

"You know what's funny?" Jacob said to his brother.

"What?"

"You're going to be richer than the old man."

"Shit fire. That's great. Maybe I'll dig the old bastard up and prop his skeleton at the dinner table. Piss in his coffee cup."

"He always did love you best."

"Naw. That was Momma."

"You would have killed her if I hadn't gotten to it first."

"Well, you beat me at one thing, I reckon."

The Johnny Cash was winding down in a repetitive guitar riff. Joshua stopped the car and killed the engine. "Here we are."

He opened his door and the dome light blinked on. Renee could hear the river churning below. She recalled her drive over the bridge and pictured the water thirty feet below. It wasn't a far enough fall to kill her unless her head hit a rock. But bad luck followed the Wells family.

And, sometimes, you had to make your luck.

Joshua left the door open after he exited, and the dome light cast a dirty yellow glow. Jacob grabbed Renee's wrist, his face a mask of wicked joy. She didn't struggle. These two men had already torn her to shreds. There was nothing left worth fighting over.

Joshua opened the back door. "Bring her on."

Jacob's Southern accent returned, a bizarre replica of his brother's. "Reckon we ought to bash her head in first, or just chuck her over the side?"

"You want to make sure. It ain't the kind of thing you leave up to chance. What if she turns up alive six miles downstream?"

"That would be sand in the craw, all right."

"You do it. You'll enjoy it more than I will."

"Why, thanks, Josh. I appreciate it."

"I'm Jacob, remember? Don't go getting all confused on me, or we'll never get the story straight."

"Right, Jake. You're the Wells now. I'm just pig shit, rolling around with a Mexican whore in a Tennessee trailer park."

"And you're going to love every minute of it. I know I did, but now it's time for the big switcheroo."

Jacob's hand tightened around Renee's wrist, sending sparks of pain up her arm. Joshua handed his brother something, and Renee saw its rusty bulk in the dome light.

A pipe wrench.

She could almost see the police report: Blunt head trauma, followed by asphyxiation due to drowning.

Jacob's latest accidental victim.

And who would be next? Joshua? Carlita? Or would he plant more seed, each sprout insured for a million dollars?

"Hold her for a sec." Joshua got out of the driver's side and went to the back door. He yanked it open and leaned in, his breath sour with beer and cigarettes and the lingering tang of salsa. "Come here, sweetie."

Renee backed away, kicking, until she was across the seat. Joshua climbed in, and now she recognized that perverse grin, one glimpsed in the dim light of a night nearly a decade ago. The night of Mattie's conception.

She shoved her foot toward his face. He caught it and his eyes twinkled in the greasy dome light, the cut on his forehead oozing blood again. "Hmm. She still got a little fight in her. Tempting me to go one more round. What say, brother, wanna watch just for old times' sake?"

Jacob yanked her wrist. "I can fantasize about it later. Right now, we better get her in the river."

Joshua's face sagged, his smoker's wrinkles deepening. "Reckon so. Give the water more time to wash away evidence."

"Besides, we'll still have Carlita."

Renee wondered if they would play this sick game the rest of their lives. Swapping partners, playing with money and murder, tricking each other. But that was the future. She had none.

Joshua dragged her by the ankle. She grabbed for the armrest but it came off in her hand. Her fingernails broke as she clawed at the nylon seat covering. No saving grip there.

Jacob released her and got out of the car to join his brother. She knew this was her final chance. The passenger door was open, though it seemed miles away.

She twisted upward, reaching for the front seat, but Jacob had her other leg now and she was being worried between them like a butcher-shop bone in the mouths of two dogs.

"Treat her like a wishbone, brother," Jacob said.

"I'm wishing for two million goddamned dollars. On three. One... "

She wriggled, nothing.

"Two... "

"Jacob," she said. "Honey?"

But the word was a lie. Even his name was a lie. He had always been Joshua.

"Three."

She was jerked into the moist night.

***

"Do her," Joshua said.

He had Renee pinned to the rail, shoulders leaning toward the river, facing the whispering, frothing water below. Jacob tested the heft of the pipe wrench. How would she hit if she had actually fallen?

No, not "if." When.

Think it out, Jakie, just like always. Momma's cane... an accident. Could have happened to anybody. Anybody with a murderous son, that is.

Christine. That one had been the saddest. But she was barely formed, not even talking. All I did was save her from the life of a Wells. So that was a mercy killing.

Mattie. Too bad about her. But she was Joshua's fault all the way, from sperm to burn victim.

The moon was out, the clouds like violet sheep counting down to a restless sleep. He wondered if blood would spatter onto the bridge railing. He'd have to strike her at an angle, so the pattern would fly out and into the water.

"Smash her up," Joshua urged. "Just like you did the chickens."

The wrench grew heavy in Jacob's hand. "I didn't do the chickens."

Joshua, holding Renee's arms behind her back, his crotch pressed against her rear, gave a thrust of his hips, causing the wooden railing to squeak with their combined weight. "Hell, yeah. You went donkeyshit, brother. Chopping their heads off, licking blood from the hatchet--"

"Stop it."

Red. The night had gone from purple to red.

"You're one sick fuck, all right."

"Shut up. That wasn't me. It was never me."

"Tell it to the judge. I got a date with two million bucks."

"I was only doing what you'd do, if you had the brains." Jacob gripped the wrench so tight his hand hurt. The metal was slick with his sweat. He thought of the fingerprints he would leave behind. And the DNA, which he shared with Joshua. The DNA one of them had passed to Mattie.

And maybe Christine. He didn't know how often Joshua had slipped into his bed over the years.

The blood in the Chevy would be Joshua's. The cops would figure it out. Even though Jacob had the same blood.

"Do it, Jakie," Renee wheezed from constricted lungs. "Just like we talked about."

Joshua turned toward him, his face as twisted as the rubberized troll heads hanging from the rearview mirror. Confusion. The dumb bastard had been late out of the womb, and had always been two steps behind his entire life.

Jacob swung the wrench.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"Blood everywhere," Jacob said, mopping at the stains on the railing.

"No murder is perfect."

"And you should know."

"Live and learn. I guess you should go get Carlita. Think you guys will be happy together?"

"What do you care? You're getting what you want."

"Sure." With Joshua dead, Jacob would inherit the house. As Jacob's wife, no one would question her receiving it in the divorce settlement.

Jacob leaned over the railing. "He's downriver now. As drunk as he was, nobody will question a fall."

Renee glanced at her husband's exposed neck, alabaster in the moon's warm glow. The wrench lay on the seat of the Chevy. She could have it out and bring it down in a matter of seconds.

No. She loved him. And because she loved him, he owed her plenty.

Besides, another "fall" would be too coincidental. Divorce would be much cleaner.

Jacob didn't know it yet, but Renee planned on taking the two million, too. It wasn't blackmail. It was simply the price of pain and suffering.

"Go to Carlita," she said.

Jacob came to her, took her hands. He almost kissed her. Then he glanced up at the hill, where the Wells house stood dark and brooding, as if remembering some memory tucked in a far, dusty closet. The first flickers teased the windows, and smoke drifted on the air. Davidson and her crew would be on the way soon, late as always, left to sift through the ashes of the Wells family secrets.

"See you in court," Jacob said. He walked around the Chevy and slid behind the steering wheel. He looked at home there.

He grabbed the wrinkled pack of cigarettes and stuffed one in his mouth. He lit it, then reached under the seat and pulled out a beer. Warm, it sprayed foam all over his pants when he pulled the tab. He reached up and tapped the twin rubber heads, sending them swinging.

Jacob would never be Joshua, but he would enjoy trying.

He reached for the ignition and the engine burst to angry life. He shifted and backed the car off the bridge, waving before turning off the dome light.

Renee watched the headlight beams bouncing up the road.

She patted her belly.

She'd never mentioned it to Jacob. Three months along.

Of course, on one of those dark nights, it could have been Joshua who entered her bed and rode her into pregnancy. Stranger things had happened.

Not that it mattered.

A Wells was a Wells, after all. One was as good as the other.

And, if things didn't turn out as planned, there was always life insurance for the child.

A woman lived and loved, and a woman often lost. But, no matter what, a woman always learned.

THE END

About the Author

I have written 12 novels, including The Red Church, Speed Dating with the Dead, Disintegration, and The Skull Ring.

Other electronic works include Burial to Follow and the story collections Ashes, The First, Murdermouth, Gateway Drug, and Flowers. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I write for a newspaper, play guitar, raise an organic garden, and work as a freelance fiction editor.

Come to the Haunted Computer, become a Spooky Microchip, and help me build my next book. You'll also find writing tips, free fiction, and survival tips.

Talk to me athauntedcomputer@yahoo.com, "hauntedcomputer" on Twitter, or hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try. If you hated it, why not try another one anyway? What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, and what does kill you is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.

More thrillers you should buy because they are good and cheap:

THE RED CHURCH

Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

Stoker Award finalist and alternate selection of the Mystery Guild

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, "Free me." People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall's return.

The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

Learn more about The Red Church and the real Appalachian church that inspired the novel www.hauntedcomputer.com/redchurch.htm

***

DRUMMER BOY

Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as "The Jangling Hole," and the wind carries a whispered name.

An old man who grew up at the foot of the mountain believes something inside the Hole has been disturbed by a developer's bulldozers. Sheriff Frank Littlefield, haunted by his own past failures, must stand against a public enemy that has no fear of bullets, bars, or mortal justice. A local reporter believes the supernatural mysteries are more than just mountain folk tales.

On the eve of a Civil War reenactment, the town of Titusville prepares to host a staged battle. The weekend warriors aren't aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from over.

And one misfit kid is all that stands between the town and the cold mouth of hell...

Learn more about Drummer Boy and the Appalachian legend that inspired the novel: www.hauntedcomputer.com/drummerboy.htm

***

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.

With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now Julia has a head full of memories, but she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's body and soul...

Learn more about The Skull Ring and False Recovered Memory Syndrome: www.hauntedcomputer.com/skullring.htm

***

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Southern Appalachian mountains... a man's promise to his late wife that he'd summon her spirit... a daughter whose imagination goes to dark places... and demonic evil lurking in the remote hotel's basement, just waiting to be awoken.

When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn't believe in ghosts. But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged. And when people start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels, can't be trusted, and demons don't like to play alone...

Learn more about Speed Dating with the Dead and the 2008 paranormal conference and inn that inspired the novel: www.hauntedcomputer.com/speeddating.htm

***

AS I DIE LYING

By Scott Nicholson

Richard Coldiron's first and last novel follows his metafictional journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren't so friendly.

There's Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard's disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse. They reside in the various rooms of his skull, a place known as the Bone House, and take turns rearranging the furniture. As Richard works on his autobiography, his minor characters struggle with their various redemptive arcs.

Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he's about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard's nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

Now Richard doesn't know which voice to trust. The book's been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron's head: http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/dielying.htm

***

BURIAL TO FOLLOW

By Scott Nicholson

When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it's up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles... or else.

Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology "Brimstone Turnpike."

Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer: www.hauntedcomputer.com/burialtofollow.htm

***

FLOWERS

By Scott Nicholson

Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy for young adult readers, such as "When You Wear These Shoes" and "In the Heart of November." Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.

Learn more about the young-adult collection Flowers and the award-winning "The Vampire Shortstop": www.hauntedcomputer.com/flowers.htm

***

ASHES

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.

Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes: www.hauntedcomputer.com/ashes.htm

***

THE FIRST

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction flavor these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.

Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First: www.hauntedcomputer.com/the first.htm

***

MURDERMOUTH: ZOMBIE BITS

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-'em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart...Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry's "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard."

Learn more about Murdermouth: Zombie Bits and see zombie art: www.hauntedcomputer.com/murdermouth.htm

***

CURTAINS: MYSTERY STORIES

By Scott Nicholson

A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes "How to Build Your Own Coffin" and Year's Best Fantasy & Horror selection "Dog Person," as well as the psychological thrillers "Letters and Lies," "Sewing Circle," and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.

Learn more about Gateway Drug: Mystery Stories: http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/curtains.htm

***

FOREVER NEVER ENDS

By Scott Nicholson

It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.

The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.

A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author's preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.

Learn more about the science fiction thriller Forever Never Ends: www.hauntedcomputer.com/foreverneverends.htm

***

TROUBLED

By Scott Nicholson

When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it's a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren't easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people's minds.

Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain's electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Kracowski is working for a secret society called the Trust, but also has his own agenda in exploring the nature of the soul. His experiments have an unexpected side effect, though. The electromagnetic fields used in his experiments are summoning the ghosts of the patients who died at Wendover back when it was a psychiatric ward.

Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counselors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he's afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can't safely hide inside his own head anymore.

Meanwhile, the Trust is installing sophisticated equipment in the home's basement, aggressively probing the threshold between life and death. And they've brought in another scientist who doesn't share Dr. Kracowski's reluctance to push the limits.

This scientist is a pioneer in ESP induction, and he performed most of his work on a very special subject: his son, Freeman Mills. The author's preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Forever Never Ends: www.hauntedcomputer.com/troubled.htm

***

CREATIVE SPIRIT

By Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist's retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains. Drawn both by the ghost stories surrounding the manor and her own sense of destiny, Anna signs up for the retreat.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.

Sylva Hartley is an old mountain witchwoman who is connected to Ephram Korban both before and after his death. Her knowledge of Appalachian folk spells and potions has bound her to the manor in a deeper and darker way. Sylva harbors a family secret that refuses to stay slumbering in its grave.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. The house's brooding atmosphere affects the creative visions of the visiting artists. A mysterious woman in white calls to Anna from the forest, while Mason is driven by the whispers of an unseen critic. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

It's a power that Korban craves for himself, because he walks a shadowy land where passions burn cold and even the ghosts are haunted. The author's preferred edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback release The Manor.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Creative Spirit: www.hauntedcomputer.com/creativespirit.htm

***

SOLOM

By Scott Nicholson

Katy Logan wasn't quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.

Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon's family for 150 years.

But the move has been anything but stress-free, because the man she married seems more interested in the region's rural Baptist sects than in his new wife. The Smith family secrets run deep: Gordon teases Katy and Jett with a story about a wicked scarecrow that comes in from the fields at night to slake an unnatural thirst. Gordon's great-grandfather was a horseback preacher who mysteriously disappeared while on a mission one wintry night, and some say a rival preacher did him in.

Gordon's first wife Rebecca died under equally mysterious circumstances, and Katy's starting to believe Rebecca's spirit is still in the house. The scent of lilacs drifts across the kitchen, doors slam shut with no one else home, and the kitchen curtains flutter even when the windows are closed. Katy becomes obsessed with Rebecca's recipes and clothes, and she finds herself driven to find out more about Rebecca to emulate her and therefore please Gordon. To make matters worse, Gordon's herd of goats watches Katy every time she leaves the house, fixing their rectangular pupils on her as if waiting for some silent command.

Jett is worried about Mom, but she has worries of her own. A Goth girl in a rural elementary school, she gets teased for being different. She misses her dad, and feels guilty because her drug abuse forced Mom to enter a hasty marriage with Gordon. The pressure leads her back to drugs despite her promise to Mom. Now she fears the drugs are blowing her mind. She's starting to hallucinate, and the goats, scarecrows, and a strange man in a black hat are all part of her madness.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. They whisper the legends around the pot-bellied stove at the general store, they pray for protection from him in their little white churches, they think about him as they gather hay, harvest corn, and work their gardens. The brave ones talk about him, believing him dead and buried, but nobody dares to utter his name.

The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it's time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?

Learn more about the paranormal thriller Solom: www.hauntedcomputer.com/solom.htm

Contact me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com because I'd love to know what you think--even if you want to cut my fingers off and feed them to a demon. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.

Thanks to Neal Hock, Vicki Tyley, Gail Lang, Pamela Haworth, and Andy Weeks.

This is a work of fiction. All people, incidents, and places are solely the products of the author's imagination. The writer begins the journey, but you complete it...

Scott

hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com

About the Ebook

This ebook edition of Disintegration was created by Dellaster Design.

Quality ebook creation for writers. Learn more at:
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Table of Contents

Cover

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

About the Author

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About the Ebook