The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  The world tilted under Jolene and she steadied herself with a hand on the door jamb. “Here? I’m not—I can’t—” Revulsion rose in her and she wanted to shout that she wouldn’t allow that man in their house. She closed her lips over the words, knowing she couldn’t explain them to Zach. No more could she tell him she’d just begun to sight a kind of freedom on the horizon, with Aaron moved out and Rachel already taking her PSATs. She still had her students, and her wife-of-the-pastor responsibilities in the Community, but she’d begun to think about the benefits of life as an empty nester. The thought of caring for anyone new, much less her father-in-law, made her feel like someone had chained cinder blocks to her feet and tossed her into a lake. She could almost see bubbles drifting toward the surface far, far above her.

  “We can’t decide something like this on the spur of the moment,” she said, trying to sound calmly rational.

  “We’ll need to discuss it with Esther, of course,” Zach said, opening the door and standing aside for her to enter, “but I can’t see why she’d object. The important thing is that he be cared for by family. Praise the Lord that we have the blessings of food and shelter and love to share.” The door banged shut behind them.

  “Praise the Lord,” Jolene echoed hollowly, wondering how her husband could be oblivious to the tectonic plates shifting beneath the surface of their oh-so-placid and insufficiently-appreciated-until-just-this-moment lives. Why couldn’t Matthew Brozek have had the decency to die twenty-three years ago?

  four

  iris

  It started to drizzle shortly before Iris left Jane’s Wednesday afternoon and she biked home in a steady rain, compiling a mental list of reasons not to go back like Jane suggested. With rain and damp hair obscuring her vision, she coasted almost to a stop in front of her house before she saw the pickup parked at her curb. It was dark blue, heavy duty, with yellow script that read “Lansing Landscape” on the door. She disentangled herself from the bike, wondering if the landscaper had the wrong address. A man stepped from the cab holding up a familiar leather jacket and Iris relaxed her grip on the bicycle, which she had automatically swung in front of her.

  “Greg. How did you know where I lived?” Lassie had told him, she realized.

  “You forgot your jacket,” Greg said, handing it over, clearly pleased with himself. His fingers brushed hers, transmitting warmth. He looked older in the daylight. The rain made his dark blond hair curl around his face and he smiled, inviting her to share in his pleasure that he was here, that he had been attracted enough to find her.

  Iris realized she was chilled. She regarded him through wet lashes. He was a ready-made distraction from her thoughts. She’d planned to bring him home last night, after all. “I need a shower and then lunch,” she finally said.

  “I’m up for both.”

  His confidence surprised a small laugh out of Iris. “You may make sandwiches while I shower,” she said, wheeling the bike up the sidewalk and unlocking the door. She maneuvered the bike into the small entryway and shoved it up against the wall. Tossing her wet windbreaker over the bicycle, she invited Greg to do the same with his jacket. His hip bumped hers as he draped the coat off the handlebars. His presence shrunk the hall, made it feel close, and the warm, spicy scent of him filled the cramped space.

  “Kitchen’s that way,” she said, backing toward the hall that led to her bedroom. “Bread’s in the—”

  Greg’s hand caught hers. She barely had time to register its size and roughness before he pulled her close. “Okay?” he whispered, hesitating just long enough to let her object if she wanted to, before locking his arms around her and kissing her with unexpected expertise. His body was solid, muscled, and she felt unusually fragile pressed against the length of him. Her head swam—low blood sugar, she told herself—so she clutched at his shoulders to steady herself.

  Iris broke the kiss after long, blood-stirring minutes and drew back slightly to study Greg’s face, not sure how she felt about him taking the initiative, and knowing she should at least find out his last name, if he liked the Trailblazers, had a job or a girlfriend, or preferred Thai to Italian. But the need to silence the memories that last night’s news had aroused, to bury them in an avalanche of sensation was too strong. Her lips slightly swollen, she said, “You know this is only sex, right?”

  “Whatever you say.” Kissing her again, he lifted her so her feet just cleared the floor and walked her down the hall to the open bedroom door.

  An hour and a half later, after a hot shower where the water pulsing against their bodies made the sex that much more urgent, and a leisurely and surprisingly intimate round of lovemaking on the bed, Iris rolled over, naked, to face Greg. He smiled and smoothed an index finger over her eyebrow. Rain pounded steadily against the roof.

  “You are not twenty-four,” she said.

  He looked surprised. “No, I’m twenty-nine. What made you think I was twenty-four?”

  “Lassie.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t actually said Greg was twenty-four. What kind of game was Lassie playing?

  Greg laughed. “He and my sister are quite the pair. You’d think I was twelve the way they treat me sometimes.”

  “What’s your last name?” That seemed like the bare minimum she ought to know about a man who’d taken her out of herself so completely she felt disoriented. She folded her fingers around the obsidian pendant at her neck to ground herself.

  “Lansing. Gregory Allen Lansing.”

  Remembering the script on the pickup truck, Iris asked, “You own a landscape company?”

  “Yep. I’m a landscape architect. I’ve owned the business since I got out of college, and I paid back my main investors—Mom and Dad—eighteen months ago.”

  Iris raised her brows but said nothing. His career explained the solid muscles, the farmer’s tan, the callused hands. There was more to Greg than she’d expected when she set out to pick him up at Lassie’s. The thought of Lassie’s reaction gave her pause. “Does … your sister know you’re here?” She winced as soon as the words left her mouth. What a stupid-ass question to ask an adult man.

  “Does it matter?” Greg sounded amused.

  Lassie’s friendship mattered, but he had no right to pass judgment on who she slept with. With any luck, he wouldn’t find out that she and Greg had spent a rainy afternoon together in bed. “You know I’m thirty-eight?” If he called her a “cougar,” he was out the door.

  “No one would take you for a day over thirty-six,” he assured her, running his hand over her flat abdomen.

  Momentarily taken aback, she slapped at his hand, and then laughed. “I guess I deserved that.”

  “What made you run off last night?”

  His words stopped Iris mid-laugh. The newscaster’s voice sounded in her mind, telling her that Pastor Matt had emerged from his coma. She rolled away from Greg, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. When she sat up, the sheet slipped to her lap, and a chill mottled her arms. Reaching for the green sweatshirt bunched on the wicker rocking chair, she pulled it over her head, then stood and found her discarded panties, stepping into them unselfconsciously. “Nothing. It wasn’t about you. I didn’t feel well.” Leave it alone.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Iris gave him a look.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘not yet,’” he said, not one whit abashed. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and grinned sleepily at her, not taking the hint that he should be getting dressed.

  His nose was crooked, like it had been broken, and Iris wondered if he’d been in a fight, or an accident of some kind. He needed a haircut, too. “I’m hungry, and I’ve got work to do,” she said.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Greg said, rolling onto his side and closing his eyes. “I need a nap.”

  Iris stared at him. He was asleep. In her bed. Strangely, his tanned torso didn’t look as alien as it should
against the white of her sheets and comforter, the willow-patterned wallpaper the landlord’s grandmother had probably chosen. It wouldn’t hurt anything if he slept here while she ate and worked in her studio. But he’d have to leave as soon as he woke up. Her boy toys did not have spend-the-night privileges.

  five

  iris

  Iris padded barefoot into the kitchen. Scrambling an egg with chives and nuking it, she ate, standing over the farmhouse sink and gazing absently out the window onto what was probably the most out-of-control yard in the greater Portland area. Almost a foot high in spots, and studded with dandelions and weeds, the grass could have hidden a tiger. A jungle gym, abandoned by a previous tenant, rusted near the back fence, swings jittering to the raindrops’ beat. Rose bushes rioted in a bramble of thorns, buds clenched. Lashed by the rain, it all looked even more depressing than usual, and Iris turned her back on it. She hadn’t planned to stay this long, so it hadn’t seemed worthwhile investing any effort in subduing the yard.

  Maybe it was time to move on. She’d spent more time in Portland than anywhere else since washing up at Lassie’s pub two-plus decades ago, hungry, bone-weary, and willing to put out for food. She’d been here ten years cumulatively, interspersed with years in California and Europe, apprenticed to metalsmiths and jewelry designers, and months-long stays in other parts of the U.S. and the world, scavenging for stones or design ideas to incorporate into her jewelry. Santa Fe or Austin might spark new design ideas, lift her spirits. She was ready for a city with more sunshine.

  The refrigerator hummed on, startling her, and she headed to the studio, the small spare bedroom she’d made into a work area. Tension eased from her shoulders as she crossed the threshold. Her tools—files and pliers, punches and scribes, Bezel rollers, clamps, mandrels, and others—hung in their places, ranged on a pegboard mounted above the counter she’d had installed when she moved in. The big drill press and the tumbler had their own table beneath the window. Semi-precious gems, wire, stones, and other materials lodged in clear plastic drawers. Design ideas seemed to flow more easily in an orderly space than in a cluttered one. Pushing aside the low stool, she crouched and dialed the combination of the wall safe set under the counter. Halfway through, she stopped. She was too jittery to work with the Weston emerald. She stood and picked up a half-finished cuff that lay on the counter. Hooking one foot around the stool’s leg, she drew it toward her and sat.

  The two-inch wide strip of hammered copper had a filament of silver wire soldered at one end. Iris pondered it, then tried twisting the wire into various shapes across the top of the bracelet. None pleased her. Pulling a length of gold wire from a plastic drawer, she twisted it this way and that, twining it with the silver wire, encircling the smooth arc of metal. With a pfft of disgust, she returned the wire to its bin. Her original vision had been of intertwined lengths of gold and silver wire crisscrossing the copper, perhaps studded with a piece or two of polished agate, maybe tiger’s eye. Nothing faceted or sparkly. But it wasn’t coming together. Iris set the cuff down and her gaze slid to the computer on the other side of the room.

  She knew why she couldn’t concentrate, why she couldn’t hold a picture of the bracelet in her mind’s eye, see the way metal and stones needed to come together. Pastor Matt’s face kept getting in the way. Damn him for waking up. Pushing away from the worktop, Iris glided on the castored stool to the computer and powered it up. There couldn’t be any harm in reading a news story or two about Pastor Matt’s recovery. Maybe learning the details would let her push the whole damn thing from her mind, get on with her jewelry making and selling, with deciding where to go from Portland.

  The search terms “Brozek” and “coma” brought up hundreds of articles. After only a brief hesitation, Iris clicked on one at random. Pastor Matt’s face, unchanged from when she’d last seen him, filled the screen. He was smiling, the curve of his mouth pushing up the pads of flesh on his cheeks, squeezing crow’s feet around his blue eyes. His blond hair swept back from its part near his left temple, thick and straight, disciplined with mousse or hairspray. Her clenched teeth made Iris’s ears ache and she forced a yawn, assessing him from a distance of twenty-three years and two thousand miles. Unable to face his smile any longer, Iris scrolled down the page but didn’t find a recent photo.

  Keeping her eyes averted from the snapshot, she read the text. “Matthew Brozek, 72, awoke from a twenty-three-year coma yesterday morning, astonishing doctors and convincing family members that miracles happen. ‘It’s a miracle,’ Brozek’s daughter, Esther Brozek, 41, said with tears in her eyes. ‘Our prayers have been answered. I always knew Daddy would come back to us.’”

  Iris guessed Esther must never have married because she would certainly have taken her husband’s name if she had. Hunh. She’d been sure Esther would be married by twenty-one, maybe even to Noah, although their mother had been against his dating a girl who was older than him. Iris skimmed the medical gobbledy gook that followed, but the technical terms meant little. She’d already gotten the gist: Pastor Matt’s awakening after so long was a one in a bazillion, bona fide medical miracle. Yet another example of God’s—not that there was a God—warped sense of humor. Surely there was a saint, or at least a war widow and single mother of four, who deserved a healing miracle more than Matthew Brozek.

  Iris’s hand trembled on the mouse as she closed the web browser and her fingers stroked the obsidian pendant at her neck. I should visit Dad. The thought had recurred a dozen times over the years, but she’d always pushed it aside. She hadn’t undergone four years of therapy, working to come to terms with Pastor Matt’s abuse and her family’s reaction, making her way baby step by baby step toward healing and closure, only to jeopardize her progress by exposing herself to the forces that had ripped her life apart. She shoved herself away from the computer and back to the worktop where the cuff waited.

  Jewelry-making had given her a focus and maybe saved her life years ago. She felt half-silly thinking that, but it was true. As soon as she’d started training with the goldsmith Jane had introduced her to, she’d felt a sense of purpose that made her think she could be more than a runaway, more than a drifter, more than a victim. When she was engaged with a piece she had a pure focus that pushed aside everything else, that walled out worry and anger and anxiety. Wrapping trembling fingers around the cuff, Iris willed herself to connect with the metals, to feel how the design should proceed. She would not not not let Pastor Matt take this from her, too.

  six

  iris

  Two weeks later, Iris sagged on the stool in her workroom, half-drunk mug of coffee cooling at her elbow, discarded design drawings littering the floor where she’d missed the trashcan, and tools and supplies cluttering the counter. She bent her head to either side, trying to loosen the kink in her neck, and flexed her stiff hands. Scanning the counter, her gaze alit on her draw tongs, her loupe, her chasing hammer. Their shapes seemed alien today and she felt a moment of panic that she’d forgotten how to use them. Unconsciously, the fingers of one hand went to the bruise on her temple while the fingers of her other hand worried at the gem she’d removed from the safe an hour ago when she sat down to work.

  She hadn’t meant to get into a fight last night. She took a sip of lukewarm coffee. Okay, maybe she had. She’d spent two frustrating weeks unable to complete a design she liked or even finish the pieces she already had started. Every time she tried to work, something kept her from focusing, hijacked her creative process. Panic had set in after a week—she’d never experienced this kind of block before. She had commissions due to individuals and a collection promised to Jane for a new opening. Even worse than disappointing customers and hurting her reputation and income, and letting Jane down, was the feeling—the conviction—that she wasn’t herself, wasn’t Iris Dashwood, if her brain didn’t sizzle with ideas and her fingers itch to mold gold and silver and other metals into settings that brought stones and gems to life. She
’d fought the empty feeling with frequent sex with the more than willing Greg, and punishing bike rides that left her too worn out to think about what might be disrupting her creativity.

  Last night, with Greg on the coast for a landscaping convention, she’d reduced the copper cuff she’d been working on to a shapeless lump with her acetylene torch and set off to a bar temptingly near the bus depot. Dismayed by her lack of interest in any man who wasn’t Greg, she’d been restless and frustrated and left after her usual two beers. It was midnight. Tossing her keys from hand to hand, she eyed her car in the bar parking lot, and then pivoted to walk toward the depot. She’d logged a lot of miles on buses before washing up in Portland, and the chug of idling engines and blasts of diesel exhaust brought a surge of old feelings: wariness, exhaustion, never-quite-extinguished hope that this town would offer something new and better.

  Thrusting the memories to the back of her mind, Iris stood across the street and scanned the sidewalk outside the depot. Things hadn’t changed much since she’d last done this almost a year ago. She knew what kind of people trolled bus stations preying on runaways: scum, exploiters, lowlife pimps. A man caught her eye almost immediately. In a black leather car coat and jeans, he leaned against the depot’s wall, his shoulders and one foot propped against the brick. In the light shining through the glass doors, he seemed youngish, early twenties, maybe. He was smoking, the cigarette tracing a red arc as he raised it to his lips and lowered it again. A couple of people emerged from the depot, roller bags trundling behind them, and the man straightened and ground out his cigarette with his foot. When a young blond teen exited, looking around nervously, he headed toward her with a loose stride.