When she arrived at the Catholic church on the town square, she noted with satisfaction that the door was already unlocked despite the early hour. Indeed, since Monsignor Vernon had come to Blackstone several years ago, seven o’clock mass was celebrated daily. Though she well knew that there were those in town who felt that the monsignor’s Catholicism was out of step with their own, Martha Ward was not among them. From the day he arrived—from some small town out in Washington State, she recalled—Martha knew she’d found a kindred spirit. “I always leave the church open for prayer,” he’d told her, “and I’ll always be available to hear your confession.” Not that Martha had much to confess. She made it a point to live a life of virtue. Still, she often found it comforting to talk to Monsignor.
Inside the church, Martha dipped her fingers in the font of holy water, genuflected, then walked slowly down the aisle, her eyes fixed on the face of the crucified Christ that loomed above the altar. Genuflecting again, she slipped into the first pew, dropped to her knees and began the first of her prayers. A few minutes later, catching a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye, she knew that Monsignor Vernon was in the confessional, waiting for her.
“Something is preying on you this morning,” the priest said softly when Martha’s confession was done and he’d handed down her penance, then absolved her. “I can feel that your heart is heavy.”
Martha sat silently for a few seconds, her fingers working at her beads, hesitant to reveal her shame. But what choice had she? “It’s my daughter,” she whispered, her voice quavering. “She is pregnant, Father. But she isn’t married.” Did she hear a shocked gasp? She was almost certain she did.
She clutched the beads more tightly.
“You must pray,” the priest said, his voice low but distinct. “Your daughter has committed a mortal sin, and you must pray for her. Pray for her to see the error of her ways. Pray for her to turn away from sin and find her way back to the Church. Pray for her to find her way into the arms of the Lord so her baby may be saved.”
Martha waited, but no other words came to her from the other side of the screen. When she finally left the confessional, the church was once again empty, except for her. Returning to the pew, she dropped to her knees.
The words she’d heard in the confessional echoed in her mind.
Pray for her to find her way into the arms of the Lord so her baby may be saved.
Over and over again the monsignor’s resonant voice echoed in her mind, until the words took on the cadence of a chant that resounded louder and louder, filling the entire church and penetrating to the very core of her being.
It was as if she’d been spoken to by the Lord Himself. Martha Ward felt transfigured.
The Lord would show her the way.
Andrea would be saved.
As soon as she was wide enough awake to remember where she was and why she was there, Andrea Ward felt her good intentions of the previous day evaporate. She reached over to the nightstand, felt for her cigarettes, and lit one with the dragon’s head lighter her cousin had given her yesterday afternoon. Sucking the first puff of smoke deep into her lungs, she choked, then fell victim to a fit of coughing. When the coughing finally subsided, she dropped back onto the single thin pillow that had been allotted to the bed—her mother had never believed that more than one could possibly be necessary—and wondered why she’d bothered to wake up at all.
Nothing had changed overnight. She was still pregnant, still jobless, and Gary had still run out on her. But now she was back home in Blackstone, and her mother was condemning her for her sins, and Rebecca—
Rebecca! Christ! Though it was true that her cousin had tried to be nice to her, so what? Since her accident, Rebecca was even more useless than she’d been before, if that was possible. Sweet, maybe, but useless. Which meant Rebecca wasn’t going to be any good to her at all.
Stop it! Andrea commanded herself. None of this is Rebecca’s fault. You got yourself into this mess, so now it’s up to you to get yourself out of it!
Stubbing the cigarette out in the soap dish she’d commandeered from the bathroom to serve as an ashtray, Andrea slid off the bed, only to feel a wave of nausea break over her as she stood. Running to the bathroom, she made it just in time to throw up into the toilet. Groping, she found the handle on the side of the tank and flushed the bowl, but as she started to get to her feet, her stomach recoiled again, a foul mixture of acid and bile rising in her throat, and she sank again to her knees. Whimpering, she stayed crouched on the floor waiting for the nausea to pass, and after retching two more times, decided to risk standing up once again. She was turning on the water to rinse the residue of vomit from her mouth when she heard a tapping at the door, immediately followed by Rebecca’s voice.
“Are you all right, Andrea? Can I help?”
“No one can help,” Andrea groaned. “Just go away, okay?”
There was a silence, followed by the sound of her cousin’s footsteps retreating back toward the staircase. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair, darkening badly at the roots, lay against her scalp in a limp, oily tangle. To her own eye, she looked at least ten years older than she was. She looked worn. She looked the way she felt. Hopeless.
How on earth would she manage to keep all the promises she’d made yesterday?
Andrea went back to her room, put on the same blouse and faded jeans she’d worn the day before, and finally went downstairs. She found Rebecca in the kitchen. Two places were set at the table. As Andrea sank down into one of the chairs, Rebecca put a glass of orange juice in front of her, and a plate containing an English muffin thickly coated with butter and bright orange marmalade.
Just the sight of it made Andrea’s stomach churn again. “All I want is a cup of coffee,” she pleaded.
The welcoming smile on Rebecca’s face faded into a look of uncertainty. “Is that good for the baby? I think I read—”
Andrea glared at her cousin. “I have news for you,” she said. “I don’t give a good goddamn what you read.” As Rebecca’s eyes glistened with tears, Andrea felt a twinge of guilt. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But it hasn’t been a great morning so far. I didn’t sleep more than an hour, and then I started puking my brains out. Right now my life isn’t going real well, you know? Anyway, I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“It’s all right.” Rebecca picked up the plate and glass and moved them to the counter, then poured her cousin a cup of coffee.
“Where’s Mother?” Andrea asked. “She can’t be asleep—she always thought being in bed after six was some kind of sin.”
“Sometimes she goes to church,” Rebecca explained. “Especially when she’s worried about something.”
Andrea rolled her eyes. “Well, I think we can both guess what she’s praying about this morning, huh? What’ll you bet she starts in on me the minute she gets home?”
“Aunt Martha’s been good to me,” Rebecca said. “And she only wants what’s best for you too. She worries about you all the time.”
“Worries about me?” Andrea cried, her voice mocking. Her hands shaking with sudden anger, she lit another cigarette. “Let me tell you something, Rebecca. Mother never worried about anyone in her whole life. All she worries about is who’s sinning, and whether she’s going to Heaven or not. Well, I have a news flash for her too—if Heaven is where nice, loving mothers go, then it’s way too late for her already!”
Rebecca recoiled from Andrea’s venom. “She’s not that bad.”
“Isn’t she?” Andrea shot back. “Let me show you something.” Standing so abruptly she nearly toppled her chair, Andrea left the kitchen and walked quickly through the house until she came to the closed doors to the room that had once been her father’s den. Shoving the doors open, she stepped inside. “Did you know this is where I grew up?” she asked. Using the dragon’s head, she began lighting the candles lined up on her mother’s small altar, then lit the ones that stood beneath the icons of the Holy M
other and half a dozen saints.
“This is the way it always was, Rebecca,” she said as the dark room began to glow with the shadowy light of the shimmering candle flames. “Ever since I was a little girl, this is how it was. I had to come in here and pray every morning, and every day after school, and every night before I went to bed. And you know what, Rebecca? I never even got to see what it looked like in real light. Well, let’s find out, shall we?”
Crossing the room first to the window on the left of the altar, then to the one on the right, Andrea pulled the heavy drapes back. As the bright daylight washed away the candles’ glow, the room seemed to change. The walls—once painted white—were grimy with the soot of the thousands of candles that had been burned in the chapel, and the upholstery on the prie-dieu was revealed to be stained and threadbare. The statues of the saints, their colors showing garishly in the daylight, were as grime-streaked as the walls. “Why wouldn’t I have gotten out of here as soon as I could? What kind of woman would raise a child in a place like this?”
“But she loves you—” Rebecca began.
Andrea didn’t let her finish. “It wasn’t love, Rebecca! It was insanity. Don’t you get it? She’s nuts. Or isn’t it just her anymore? Has she gotten to you too now? Or was it the accident? Did it make you so stupid you can’t see what she’s like? God! Why did I come back here?” Throwing her cigarette onto the carpet, she ground it out with her heel, then stormed out of the room, and raced up the stairs.
Rebecca picked up the cigarette butt and did her best to scratch the burned surface of the carpet away, then hurriedly pulled the drapes, plunging the room once more into the gloom that hid its flaws. Blowing out the candles, she pulled the chapel door closed just as Andrea reappeared at the foot of the stairs, wearing a coat and clutching the keys to her car in her hand.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked.
Andrea’s eyes fixed darkly on her for a brief second. “Why would you care?” she demanded. Then, before Rebecca could reply, she was gone.
An hour later Rebecca had cleaned up the kitchen, her room next to the dining room, and Andrea’s room too. She’d been on her way downstairs to have a last cup of coffee before going to work, but when she heard the music in the chapel begin and realized her aunt was back from church, she changed her mind and started down Harvard Street toward the library instead. She was still half an hour early, though, and since Germaine Wagner had never given her a key to the library, she decided to go over to the Red Hen and have her cup of coffee there. She was just pulling the door to the diner open when she heard a car horn honk and turned to see Oliver Metcalf nosing his car into an empty slot in front of the movie theater next to the diner.
“If you sit with me, I’ll pay,” Oliver said after he’d parked and approached her.
“You don’t have to do that,” Rebecca replied. “I have my own money, you know.”
“Great,” Oliver said, holding the diner’s door open. “Then you can pay. How’s that?”
“That would be nice,” Rebecca told him. “Everybody’s always offering to pay for me, like I’m still a little girl. And it’s stupid, since I’m almost thirty.”
Oliver feigned shock. “I had no idea,” he said. “If you’re that old, then you can buy me a doughnut too.” They settled onto a pair of stools at the counter, and Oliver smiled at her. “How did Andrea like her present?”
Rebecca’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I thought she liked it when I gave it to her last night, but this morning she just seemed to be mad about everything.” As Oliver listened, she recounted everything that had happened since she’d seen him yesterday. “I just don’t understand,” she finished a few minutes later. “If she hates Aunt Martha so much and thinks she’s crazy, why did she come home?”
“It doesn’t sound like she had anyplace else to go,” Oliver replied. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about what happened this morning. She’s had a bad time, and it must seem to her like her life is nothing but problems. You just happened to be there when she had to blow off some steam, that’s all.”
Rebecca glanced at Oliver, but her gaze quickly shifted away. “But she sounded like she really meant it when she said I was so stupid I can’t see what Aunt Martha’s like.” She was silent for a second, and then, still not looking at Oliver, asked, “Is it true, Oliver? Am I stupid?”
As he had in the car the day before, Oliver turned Rebecca’s face toward him so she had no choice but to look at him. “Of course it’s not true, Rebecca,” he said, his voice gentle. “And I don’t think Andrea meant it. She was just upset, and people say things they don’t mean when they’re upset. So the best thing for you to do is just forget it.” Then, acting on an impulse before letting himself think about it, he leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips. “You’re not stupid,” he whispered into her ear. “You’re a wonderful, lovely woman, and I love you very much.” Then, feeling his face flush with embarrassment, he quickly stood and looked at his watch. “I’m late,” he said. Dropping some money on the counter, and feeling every eye in the diner watching him, he hurried out the door.
Chapter 5
Oliver pulled his car into the parking lot of the white building that had housed Blackstone Memorial Hospital for the last twenty years. There were only three beds, and even they were rarely used: anyone who needed long-term care went either up to Manchester or down to Boston. For the last few months, though, the hospital had been busier than usual; first with Elizabeth McGuire’s tragic miscarriage, then with taking care of Madeline Hartwick. Jules Hartwick’s body had been taken first to Blackstone Memorial too, but even as the ambulance carried it downhill, everyone knew it was only going there as a matter of legal formality.
Oliver was still haunted by that terrible night when he’d found Jules on the steps of the Asylum and seen him plunge the knife deep into his own belly. It seemed to Oliver as if his headaches had been getting even worse lately, and yesterday, when his hand reflexively jerked away from the cigarette lighter Rebecca had bought for Andrea at the flea market, he’d been far more frightened than he let on.
Perhaps, if he hadn’t been suffering from the blinding headaches, he might not have been so frightened by the false message of searing heat that his involuntary nervous system had received. But in combination with the headaches, an idea had begun forming in his mind, and though he told himself it was ridiculous, he hadn’t been able to shake it all night long.
Brain tumor.
How else to explain the sudden onset of the unbearable migraines—when he’d rarely suffered from even mild headaches his whole life? How else to account for the odd flashes of vision—hallucinations—that seemed to accompany the hammering pain, though he could never quite recall their content after the headache passed. And yesterday … When he touched the lighter, he hadn’t had a headache. Yet he could still clearly remember the searing heat he’d felt in the brief instant when his fingers first touched the object.
The searing heat that—impossibly—was no longer there a second later, when Rebecca put the lighter into his hand.
Well, Phil Margolis would undoubtedly have an answer for him. Getting out of the Volvo, Oliver went into the hospital.
“All this does is take a picture of your brain,” Dr. Margolis explained. The CAT scanner sat in a small room that had been renovated specifically to house it after the doctor succeeded in putting together enough funds to buy the used machine five years ago. Serving not only Blackstone, but half a dozen other towns, the scanner had brought in enough money to allow the tiny hospital to operate in the black for the first time in its history. “Lie down on the table, and I’ll strap you in.”
“Do you have to?” Oliver asked. The moment he’d stepped into the room, he felt a wave of panic begin to build inside him. Now, his eyes fixed on the heavy nylon restraining straps, and his palms went suddenly clammy.
“I have to hold you immobile,” Margolis explained. “Any movement of y
our head, and the images will be spoiled. It’s easiest if you’re strapped down.”
Oliver hesitated, wondering where the panic was coming from. He’d never been claustrophobic—at least he didn’t think he had—but for some reason the idea of being strapped to the bed terrified him. But why? It couldn’t have anything to do with Phil Margolis—he’d known the doctor for years.
Could it be he was just frightened of what the CAT scan might show? But that was ridiculous—if there was something wrong with him, he wanted to know about it! “All right,” he said, lying down on the table. Fists clenched, he shut his eyes and steeled himself against the fear that instantly gripped him as the doctor began fastening the straps that would hold him immobile. His heart raced; he could feel the sweat on his palms.
“You okay, Oliver?” the doctor asked.
“Fine.” But he wasn’t fine; he wasn’t fine at all. A terrible fear was overtaking him, an unreasoning terror.
“Okay, we’re all set,” Phil Margolis told him. He stepped out of the room, and a moment later the machine came to life, the scanner starting to move down over his head as it began taking thousands of pictures from every possible angle, which a computer would then knit together to form a perfect image of his brain.
And anything that might be growing inside it.