He should have called for his father. He should have screamed until the neighbors on the other side of Route 12 could hear him. Instead, he ran in the opposite direction, and he sat in the woods crying, until Cobalt found him. By then, Rachel had been taken away. In a matter of hours, on a perfect summer day, the house where they lived had become completely empty, even though there were still three people living inside.
“I want to hear whatever you want to tell me,” Jorie tells James Morris. “I’m trying to understand.”
He laughs at the notion. It’s not so much that he doesn’t believe her, it’s that he knows what she wants is impossible. All the same, he leads her down to the place where Hell’s Pond used to be, the mucky inlet Jorie spied on her drive in. This is where the truck had been found when the water was drained as a way to stop the spread of mosquitoes.
“He must have parked down here, and afterward he decided to roll the truck into the pond so no one could find a trace of him.”
Jorie crouches down. The shallows are thick with smarnveed and needle rush. King rails nest here, along with mallards and those swamp sparrows that always sound like women crying when they call to each other, It’s cool in the shadows at the edge of the water and everything smells like earth and salt. The air is tinged green, and little fish swim through the few pools that are left, each one drying up in the heat of the day, evaporating by the second.
“Those were her favorite flowers.” James Morris nods to a ring of rose mallow, luminous and pink in the brackish water. “She used to put on my father’s high boots and tromp through the mud and get a whole basket of them, and our house would be full of them. I told her there were rice rats out there, but that didn’t stop her. She was the kind of girl who was always better at everything than everyone else was. Dancing, climbing trees, even using my father’s shotgun. She had twenty-twenty vision. She could see things nobody else could.”
When they turn back, they don’t speak as they follow the path their footprints have made. Joric is thinking of baskets of mallows. She is thinking of a girl pulling on her father’s old green boots. The more she imagines this, the more her head hurts, until it is pounding. At the turnoff, they leave the path through the woods and head back through the field. As they make their way through the tall grass, the dog flushes some woodcocks out from the reeds and runs off barking. James whistles through his teeth. “Hey, Fergus,” he calls, and the dog comes racing back, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. James Morris reaches down and pats the dog’s head, and in that moment Jorie sees the man in all his loneliness. Right then she knows that she is walking beside a shattered individual who has never gotten beyond that terrible day. James Morris might as well still be ten years old for all the good being a man will do him. For an instant, as they traversc the cornfield, Jorie feels likc holding his hand.
“I’m thinking of getting my boy a dog,” she says as they near the house.
James Morris looks at her, hard. “You’ve got a son with him?”
“I’ve been married to him for thirteen years. We’ve had a regular life. Just like other people’s.”
The heat is crackly, a sure sign of rain later in the evening. But for now the sky is still ablaze with light, azure above them. “It used to be like other people’s, but that was before you knew what he was. Now it sounds like you had nothing.” It’s taken years for such a sweet boy to turn ill-tempered, but he’s managed it, almost. “Isn’t that right?”
The red dust that had risen as they tramped through the fields has begun to settle on Jorie’s skin so that she looks slightly sunburned. “All this time I’ve loved him, and now what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to walk away? just like that? Chalk every day we had together up to one big lie?”
“You want to see who you married?” James Morris’s tone is soft, but its also growly, like his dog’s, like that of any man who’s kept things inside until they’ve simmered into a stew of fury and regret. “Because if you want to see, I’ll show you.”
It’s a threat, and James’s voice breaks, but allowing her into the house is also a gift of sorts, Jorie understands that. As he opens the screen door, it’s an invitation into his pain. It’s not often that a closed-up man like James Morris makes an offer such as this, so Jorie nods. She looks back at him, straight into his beautiful face with its lines of sorrow and hard work.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. James Morris says as she steps inside. ”Don’t say I didn’t tell you to get into your car and drive away ”
He takes her inside, where the rooms are dusty and cool. There are photographs on the mantel- James Morris’s parents in happier days, aunts and uncles from Annapolis and Virginia that he hasn’t seen for more than a decade, the old dog Cobalt, and the next dog as well, a swcct-tempered Doberman, mistakenly taken for a deer and shot a few years back. In the center of the mantel are the photographs of Rachel. Jorie approaches for a closer look, though she feels even dizzier inside this darkened house than she did out in the hot fields.
“May I?” Jorie says. and when James Morris shrugs, she picks up a photo of Rachel at five, front teeth missing, red hair cut in bangs. The silver frame is shockingly cool in Jorie’s hands, like stones in a river or hail from above. She replaces that photograph and turns to the next, Rachel on horseback, her smile gorgeous, and then the next, Rachel in a party dress, her hair carefully curled, and then one that James tells her was taken two weeks before she died, Rachel and her mother at the shore, arms around each other, mouths wide with laughter.
Rachel was beautiful, Jorie can see that even in the half-light of the living room. She was a real live girl with hopes and dreams who loved the beach at Ocean City and collected stray cats, dozens of which she kept in the barn. She was a girl who walked into the swamp searching for rose mallows. and who had once raced her horse. Sugar, all the way to the pharmacy in the center of town, where she yodeled at the top of her lungs, then galloped her way home through the woods, all for a dollar bet made with her brother.
“She looks like someone I would have liked,” Jorie says. “Oh, yeah. Everyone liked her. even Nancy Kerr, who was the shyest girl you’d ever met back then. Rachel had more best friends than most people had acquaintances. That was Rachel.”
When James signals, Jorie follows him down the hall, past the kitchen, past his own bedroom, to a closed door. Jorie can feel her head pounding again. Her legs feel heavy; if they hadn’t turned to lead, surely she would have run, back into the burnished light of the field, the red light of the road, the blue-black light of her hotel room.
James Morris eyes her carefully to see if she’s changed her mind.
“Go on,” Jorie tells him. This is what she came here For She knows whose room this was.
James opens the door into a fifteen-year-old-girl’s bedroom where everything has remained the same- there are her stuffed animals, the white curtains and the pink wallpaper patterned with flowers, a design that’s nearly unrecognizable, faded from the constant stream of sunlight. There is the dressing table on which there are barrettes, and bracelets, and bottles of cologne that have evaporated within their glass stoppers. Her books are piled upon her desk, and across one wall are ribbons from the horse shows she’d entered, along with awards from dancing school.
Jorie goes to the dressing table and picks up the hairbrush. Three strands of red hair are still caught there, twisted like gold. It’s colder in this room than it was in the rest of the house; it’s icy, as a matter of fact, and the air, trapped for so many years, is difficult to breathe. Jorie forces herself to look at the single bed, up against the wall.
“My mother spent two weeks scrubbing the blood, and later on she rcplastercd and painted, but it never went away Maybe you can’t see it anymore, but I know it’s there.”
Jorie narrows her eyes and sees a shape not unlike the coroner’s sketch of Rachel’s birthmark.
“Its a butterfly,” Jorie says.
“It’s blood,” James Morris informs her. “You ne
ver get rid of it. ”
James opens the closet and all at once the room smells sweet. Sachet, Jorie thinks, lily, of the valley, the same scent she herself had loved as a girl. Rachel’s dresses are still there, fifteen years out of date, but still pretty. There are her blouses and her shoes, her winter boots with the laces threadbare. There are her mittens, her winter parka, her Easter coat with its gold buttons. There are her blue jeans, neatly folded over hangers. On the shelf along one wall are piles of sweaters and of underwear ; as she peers through the dim light, Jorie notices that the socks are a far smaller size than the ones Collie wears.
James Morris can hardly talk. He never comes into this room anymore, and this is why
“This is what we lost,” he tells Joric,
Jorie walks the perimeter of the room. She wants to remember how the sunlight falls in through the gauzy curtains, how wide the pine floorboards are, how the silver barrettes on the dressing table are placed in a pink glass dish. She stops in front of the night table. There is a diary, pale blue leatherette trimmed in gold.
“We found this, but the key was missing. My mother thought it was disrespectful to read the private thoughts of the dead, but the investigators insisted. They broke it open, but I had them lock it again before they gave it back to us. I figured somebody should respect the person that she was.”
Jorie goes into the hallway, where she hides her face in her hands. She has no right to cry, but she does so anyway. She can’t stop herself James stays in his sister’s room a while longer. He knows when women cry, they’ll eventually stop, or at least that was true for his mother. He waits, and sure enough when he comes out and closes Rachel’s door, Jorie has gotten herself back under control.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I’ll make coffee, James offers with surprising generosity
He shows her to the bathroom, which is uncommonly clean for a man living alone, where Jorie washes her face. The scent of the water is nasty, rusty and filled with salt, but it’s cold, and Jorie’s burning eyes are refreshed. Afterward, she finds her way to the kitchen, and while James Morris fixes coffee, she stands by the back door. It’s so peaceful here, watching the blackbirds swoop across the open sky It’s easier to breathe if she thinks about blackbirds.
“Thanks,” Jorie says when James hands her a mug of hot coffee.
“I don’t have milk or sugar.” James Morris has not had anyone in his kitchen since last Christmas, and even then it was only his nearest neighbors, the ones he sold his land to, good people who insist on bringing him platters of turkey and mashed potatoes and sausage stuffing on the holidays, though he’s told them they needn’t bother. But even his neighbors didn’t come in much past the back door, and he has never offered them anything in return, not even a glass of cloudy water.
“Black is fine,” Jorie assures him. She looks down the driveway as a truck passes by on the road. It’s the kindhearted neighbor, off to the post office, a trip he makes every morning at this time. It’s somebody with an ordinary life of the sort Jorie once had, only weeks ago. “My husband says he wants to take responsibility now. He says he’s a different man.”
James Morris studies Jorie and sips his coffee. He has absolutely no expression in his eyes. It’s the way Collie has been looking lately, as if he’s taken three giant steps back inside himself.
“It was a horrible accident, that’s what he’s said. He knows he should have called the authorities, but his mind shut down. It was a terrible mistake, but he swears he’s not that person anymore.” Jorie hasn’t touched her coffee. In fact, she’s nauseated. It’s all she can do to keep down the breakfast she ordered earlier from room service, just some tea, along with toast and jam. “I wouldn’t have married that person,” she says.
Jorie is not sure why she is defending her husband instead of watching the blackbirds in the trees. She’s seen the room where it happened, she’s seen the girl’s diary, and the brush, and the window he climbed through on that rainy night when the air was sweet and the future was right there before him, his for the taking. She’s seen it all and she’s standing here making excuses. “You can see who I am. I wouldn’t marry the kind of person who killed your sister.”
“But you did.” James Morris slams his coffee cup down on the counter. It’s good china, and the force of hitting it against the counter causes a chip that will, before long, crack the cup in two. “I know why you really came here. You want me to tell you it’s all right, but I’m not going to do that. Because it’s not all right and it never will be. Your husband came here and he killed my sister and she never had the chance to be a different woman the way he’s had the opportunity to be a different man. So what do you say to that? She never got to be a woman at all. She was fifteen, and that’s what she’ll always be. There are no second chances for her.”
If there was a time for Jorie to be frightened of this man, it would be now. It’s been years since James has spoken to anyone about this subject, and the words come pouring out; they’re savage and painful, and if they ever could have been forgiving, the years spent unspoken have turned every syllable into burning ash.
The dog, Fergus, sits on the back porch and whines, concerned for its master, who is usually such a silent, gentle man.
“I see what you’re telling yourself.” James gives a broken laugh. “He’s different. He’s not the same. Well, he’s made up of the same flesh and blood as the thing that crawled in here. I feel about him the same way my mother would have felt. She was a woman who wouldn’t even tolerate anyone shooting a squirrel. She said every creature had a soul, but she changed her mind after what happened. She told me straight out how wrong she’d been. Not every creature has a soul. That’s what she said. Not whoever did this.”
He’s going on in the manner of a man who’s lost control, and even Fergus, loyal as can be, is shivering out on the porch, the way the dog always does before a storm. Jorie should be frightened, she should be wondering if she’ll get out of this in one piece, but all she can think about is that she’s watching a grown man cry. He doesn’t even seem to notice, he just goes on shouting at her, but she can see who he is, the boy who raced into the field one fine morning, thinking the whole wide world was his home, sweet as new corn, sweet as summer can be.
“Now your husband wants to say it was just a big mistake? Well, nobody forced him to come onto our property. Nobody made him sneak into our house. He did it on his own. When they do bring him down here for trial, I’m going to sit in that courtroom every day, and when they convict him, I’ll be thinking about my mother and how pleased she would have been that at last he had to pay the price.”
The dog is pawing at the screen door, whining low down in its throat. Jorie thinks of Collie, sleeping on the couch with her mother’s dog, Mister. She thinks about how it would be to spend her life without him, to have him snatched by moonlight, wrung out and left like a husk on her doorstep, to find him in her garden on a summer’s day between the rows of sweet peas and strawberries.
“Why do you care what I think, anyway?” James Morris looks exhausted. He’s wishing he hadn’t bothered to answer the phone or allowed Nancy to convince him to talk to a stranger or opened up his door. He wipes his eyes with his large hands. “I’m nothing to you.”
Jorie sets her coffee cup on the counter. She hasn’t taken a sip, all the same, she can tell it’s far too strong, undrinkable at best. She has come here with a puzzle that cannot be solved, she sees that now For if Ethan is the man who murdered Rachel Morris, then who is she? If he is that, what is the life they’ve been living?
Gazing out the back door, wondering herself why she cares so much about what James Morris thinks, Jorie notices that the tallest cypress outside is filled with red-winged blackbirds. Why, they’re everywhere; if you looked quickly you might think there were black flowers growing on that tree, each one streaked with crimson, as though cut and bleeding still.
“The blackbirds came when Rachel
died.” James is looking outside, too. “At first my father thought it was because he burned the scarecrow. He thought the birds would take over the cornfields, but they haven’t. My father’s been gone for eleven years, and my mother for almost that long, but it’s Rachel who seems like she was here yesterday.”
James walks past Jorie and goes out to the porch, where his dog is waiting. He sits in one of the old wooden chairs on the porch, then pets Fergus, who quivers with delight just to be noticed, clearly grateful that the quiet man the dog is accustomed to, that kind and generous master, has returned. Jorie follows James and stands with her back against the same door Rachel walked through every day of her life, off to school and back again, off to work at the general store, off on that last morning of her life. James’s sorrow is there in the set of his shoulders, in the way he looks out at the bald cypress trees, as if there were answers in those dark leaves, to be found somewhere between the blackbirds and the branches. Jorie has the urge to put her hand on his shoulder, but she doesn’t.
“Did you ever think it would be better for you to sell this place and move away? Start up someplace new?”
James Morris lets go of what amounts to a laugh. “Not in my lifetime. I’m here for good. I’m not fit company for people out there in the world.”
“You didn’t have to be nice to me,” Jorie says. “But you were.”
“No, I wasn’t,” James tells her. “I was honest.”
He walks her to her rented car and shakes her hand, but then he doesn’t let go. His loneliness has come up and ambushed him because of the talking he’s been doing. It’s far easier for him not to see people at all, but then, he knew that long before Jorie arrived.
“Did you get what you wanted?” he asks.
His blue eyes are narrowed. He hasn’t trusted anyone for so many years, he certainly isn’t about to trust Jorie; and yet he’s curious.
“I don’t feel like I have anything I want.” Jorie can feel the calluses on his fingers, formed from years of working this land. She thinks of home, and smiles. “Except my son,” she amends.