Loreena's Gift Read online

  “I need to know,” Saul said, quietly, as if hoping Crystal wouldn’t hear.

  “Another time,” Loreena said. How could she explain it with the girl listening?

  Saul dug into his pocket. The pack crinkled again. He was smoking too many. Loreena thought about saying something, but then bit her tongue. It probably helped with the pain. He flicked the lighter, inhaled. The next exhale was long. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea.”

  “What?”

  “Bringing you along tonight.” He paused and eased himself back on the hood until he was lying down. “I should have known.”

  “Yeah,” Crystal said. “You think?”

  Loreena wanted to tell her to shut up. Another interruption and she would. “Would they really send someone else?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Yes,” Crystal said. “And soon. Probably tomorrow. The next day, at the latest.”

  “They won’t know,” Loreena said.

  “Know what?” Crystal asked.

  Loreena hesitated. “I’m not talking to you.”

  “Listen, sis, I’m in this too.”

  “I’m not talking to you!”

  Crystal approached then, fast footsteps that took her around the front of the car and over to where Loreena leaned against the hood.

  “Hey, hey.” Saul sat up, barked a curse word at the pain.

  “You going to let her talk to me like that?”

  “Just relax, all right?”

  “Sure. It’s all so relaxing.” Crystal paused just in front of Loreena, as if considering her next move.

  Loreena walked away from her and stopped at the fender, putting Saul’s body between them again.

  “What do you mean, they won’t know?” he asked.

  She leaned her hip against the metal. “When it happens. It looks like a heart attack.”

  “When it happens?”

  She turned her head away from the smoke and spoke quietly, hoping Crystal would have a hard time following. “Ben was the first one. He wanted me to see the new rose, the purple one he got. He’d been looking for one, like what Mom used to have.”

  “He planted it some time before I left,” Saul said.

  She was surprised he remembered. He’d been gone so much then. “I had sort of forgotten about it, but that evening, he wanted to show me. He offered to help me down the stairs. I took his hand. My palm, against his.” She pressed her palms together, showing him. “He was always wearing gloves to do his work, but for some reason…” She shook her head.

  In the distance, a siren wailed. Loreena turned toward the sound. They had discovered Dirk’s body already. All those people coming out of the bar. Someone had to have seen it by now.

  “Ben? Our gardener?” Saul kept his voice low. “He died right after I left.”

  “You didn’t come to the funeral.”

  The siren pitched up again, cried out over the night air, and then drifted off to the right.

  “They’re going to the bar,” Crystal said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What are you saying?” Saul said. “You took his hand, and what?”

  “Something happens.” She turned her toe in the dirt. “When I take their hands. Something…weird.”

  “We gotta go,” Crystal said.

  “Hang on.” Saul turned toward his sister, his legs dangling over the fender. “You telling me you killed Ben?”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Loreena rubbed her face. Her teeth were still chattering. She couldn’t get warm. “Something happens, when I take someone’s hand. It’s like…” She paused. “Like Crystal said. I’m poison or something.”

  “What?”

  The siren sounded like it was getting closer. “Are they coming this way?” Crystal asked.

  Saul slid off the hood and took a few steps forward. “They’re headed out there.”

  Loreena imagined the red and blue lights streaking across the darkness below. How long before the officers started questioning the customers? How long before they investigated the body? How long before they heard Saul’s name and connected him to the whole thing?

  “We need to go,” Crystal repeated.

  “You don’t need to be so retarded,” Loreena snapped, irritated the girl couldn’t keep quiet. “I told you. They won’t be able to tell anything. There are no marks. No signs. His heart just stopped.”

  “Yeah?” Crystal stormed around the front of the car and came to stand in front of her. “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s happened before.” Loreena stood up straight. “A lot of times.”

  “More than Ben?” Saul turned around.

  Loreena crossed her arms, still facing Crystal’s direction. “Uncle and I. When someone’s dying.”

  Saul came closer. “Uncle knows about this?”

  “When it happened, with Ben…” Loreena turned away from Crystal and stepped toward her brother. The siren was fading off south of town. “Uncle found me. He called me back. I told him what had happened, what I could remember. It’s a long story, but then there was a member of the church that was dying. Congestive heart failure. He couldn’t even get out of bed. Uncle took me to him. To make me feel better, maybe, I don’t know.” She was talking too much, but it felt good to say it. How many times had she wished she could tell him?

  “Don is having you do this?” An edge crept into Saul’s voice. “He’s taking you to kill these people?”

  “It’s not killing. Not like…” Tonight. How could she explain it? What that first time had been like? How her uncle had been surprised at first, and then so determined to make it all right, all in God’s plan. “I just take them over, you know, to where they’re going.”

  “Going?”

  “Their Heaven or whatever. So they won’t be in pain anymore.”

  “Heaven?” Saul exhaled a cloud of smoke and then chuckled nervously. “You know this sounds crazy.”

  Loreena could see the purple rose petal in front of her. “Last time. Before tonight. On the bank of the lake, there was a purple rose. It looked like Salvador. Just like him.”

  Saul twitched as if he’d been bitten. “You can see stuff?”

  The scene came to her then—the lake, the water that tasted like honey, the quiet of the forest, and she yearned for the other side, the side where she could see what seemed to be clues. If she went there again, would there be a trail to follow, or some way to send a message back? For surely the rose had been a message. How likely was it that Russell had purple roses somewhere in his version of Heaven?

  Saul leaned in and whispered, “Have you seen Mom?”

  The night fell quiet, the siren silenced. Loreena touched Saul’s chest. “Only the rose. Last time, on my way back. It was just there, waiting. Like a sign.”

  Saul didn’t answer, but she could hear his breaths had grown shallow.

  “What do you mean, last time?” Crystal asked from behind her. Loreena whirled around. “What is she talking about?”

  Saul stepped away and walked toward the edge of the viewpoint.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.” Crystal tugged on Loreena’s jacket. “What do you mean, last time?”

  “No one saw anything,” Saul said. “No one was there but us, right?” He paced back and forth. “We gotta get back. Loreena, you need to act normal. For Uncle, I mean.”

  “I won’t tell him anything.”

  Crystal pulled harder on Loreena’s jacket, jerking the collar away from her neck. She came close again, too close, pushing Loreena back against the front of the car. “This ‘last time.’ You talking about my father?” When Loreena said nothing, Crystal slapped her in the face. “You do something to him? You do this thing with your hands? Did you?” Another slap, and another. Loreena covered her face with her arms and the blows moved to her stomach, harder now. “What did you do? Tell me! Did you do this to him?”

  Another blow and then it stopped. Saul had pu
lled the girl back. Crystal grunted and turned her assault on him. Loreena heard a few more slaps, a groan, and boots sliding in the dirt. Crystal landed with a thump near the back tire.

  “She killed my father! That’s what she was doing there. That’s why they were all acting so weird. She did it!”

  “Shut up!” Saul said. “Get in the car. We’re going.” He stepped around her and opened the door.

  Loreena straightened, her head spinning, and followed him. He let her get in and then slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Loreena thought for a minute he might leave the girl behind, but then the other door opened and Crystal crawled into the passenger’s seat.

  “You’re mine, bitch!” she said.

  “Knock it off!” Saul put the car in reverse and backed out.

  “You remember that! You’re fucking mine.”

  They were all silent the rest of the way back. Saul drove fast down the hill, taking the corners so quickly the tires squealed. Loreena held on in back, imagining any minute the vehicle was going to sail over the edge and smash nose first into the ground below, but soon she felt the familiar turns of the route home, and then the gradual incline as they went up Mary Hill Lane. Saul slowed in front of the house and pulled into the driveway. The wind stopped.

  “Go, and keep quiet.” Saul flicked on a switch. The light? “Fix your hair. You’ve got dirt on your face.”

  She did as he told her. “Will you come back?”

  He paused. “We’ll figure it out. Just go.”

  “But—”

  “Loreena.” He leaned back between the seats. “Whatever this is. I don’t know. But you saved my life tonight, okay? Now come on.” He got out of the car and held the door open.

  “Saved your life tonight,” Crystal mumbled, “so you can lose it tomorrow.”

  “As if you cared,” Loreena said.

  “Hey!”

  Crystal turned around in the seat but Loreena dove out Saul’s door. The ground felt good under her feet. Standing in front of her brother, she hesitated, and then reached out and embraced him. He returned the hug, but quickly, and then guided her toward the rounded stones. “Remember. You don’t know anything. You heard the guy threatening me. That’s all.”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t know.”

  “But keep yourself out of it, all right? He was after me. You were just there, that’s all. Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  When the Mustang’s growl faded into the distance, Loreena stood in the driveway, listening. It wasn’t long before the night grew quiet again. She turned and walked toward the house, past the angel Haley, and up the stairs. At the third one—the one where she had stood when she took Ben’s hand—she paused. What was she going to say to her uncle? She didn’t know, but she was too tired to wait, too desperate for a hot bath and her warm bed. She stepped onto the welcome mat and checked her hair once more.

  Uncle Don opened the door. “Loreena?”

  She stood waiting on the porch.

  He approached, took her wrists, and turned her hands palm up. An audible sigh escaped his lips. “Thank God.” He hugged her close. “You were wearing your gloves. Thank God.”

  5

  Two Sundays later, Uncle Don preached about forgiveness. Jesus loved his disciples even though they failed him, he said in his soothing voice from the pulpit, and never blamed them or shamed them or withdrew his affection, no matter what sins they had committed. On the contrary, whenever he found them lacking, he seemed to love them more.

  Loreena had lost eight pounds since her night out with Saul. Her stomach growled as she sat waiting at the organ, hands bare, feet encased in heels and held tight under the bench. Whether Jesus had forgiven her she didn’t know, but if her uncle were to have his suspicions confirmed, she couldn’t imagine he’d ever forgive her, to say nothing of Saul. He would probably never speak to Saul again.

  Loreena had played the piano at Russell’s funeral the Sunday after the disaster at the bar, but neither Crystal nor Saul had attended. Deborah didn’t say much after the service was over. Townspeople, relatives, and friends flooded her with hugs and kisses and expressions of sympathy, each in turn moving in to try to shore her up with love and kindness. When Loreena finally caught her alone in the kitchen getting a cup of hot tea, she asked about Crystal, if Deborah had seen her, but the woman said no and then started to cry. Loreena had held her until she’d stepped back, taken her tea, and walked away, her footsteps much slower than usual on the tile floor of the church basement.

  The following Monday, two police officers came to the house. One had an authoritative voice and used a lot of “ma’ams” while talking to her. The other hardly spoke at all. Loreena clung to the couch like a cat while she answered their questions. Yes, she had been at Chelsie’s Bar. Yes, she’d heard the man beating up her brother, heard her brother crying out. No, she hadn’t realized the man had died. It had all been so confusing. No, her brother wasn’t carrying a gun, had never carried a gun, as far as she knew. No, he hadn’t argued with the man, only tried to get away from him. Question after question she answered as best she could, as truthfully as she could, leaving only the last part out, the part she couldn’t talk about. As to what had happened after the men went into the parking lot, she didn’t know. She had wandered around calling for her brother for how long, she couldn’t remember, until she finally found him, beaten and bloody, on the ground. With her help, he had managed to get back to the car, after which he drove her home. Since then, she hadn’t seen him or talked to him, and frankly, she was worried something worse had happened.

  The officers left about thirty minutes after they’d arrived. Uncle Don spent over an hour lecturing her after that, peppering her with more questions, but Loreena insisted it was just a bar fight, and somehow Saul had gotten caught in the middle of it. Probably to protect her from getting hurt, she said. Uncle Don didn’t believe her, but he seemed more interested in blaming Saul for getting himself into such a situation while his sister was along than imagining she had any part in the man’s death. She wondered if it had even occurred to him, what really happened. Killing someone to protect her brother wouldn’t fit into what he imagined God’s plan to be. So she slipped away, claiming she was tired after the interrogation, and escaped to the church to practice her cello. When she finished, he was still in his study, his tinny radio playing something by Bach, and she didn’t see him the rest of the night.

  As the sermon went on, Loreena found herself more impatient than usual, wishing he would hurry up with it and let them all go for the day. Sitting here in church every Sunday and Wednesday had become more difficult since that night when she’d ridden the motorcycle behind Dirk, the fiends chasing them, the long, dark road an unending journey into madness. Had she been wrong to take his hand? The question had hounded her thoughts nonstop, her mind replaying the events over and over. Dirk was going to kill her brother. She’d heard him cock the gun. Like a skipped record, that click played in her memory, usually just when she was trying to drift off to sleep. Options came to her one after the other, and she replayed the scenarios with new choices, one where she tried biting him, another where she clawed at his face with her nails, another where she kicked in the back of his knee, and another where she ran to the bar and called her uncle. Each scenario ended the same way—with Dirk shooting her brother dead.

  She was supposed to feel guilty. Thou shalt not kill. She’d even looked up the passage again in the Bible, part of her hoping maybe she’d learned it wrong, and there was some word she’d missed, or some contingency in the paragraphs nearby, like, Thou shalt not kill unless one of thine family members’ lives is threatened. In a book about the Bible her uncle had gotten for her years before, she found pages debating the true meaning of the word “kill,” theorizing perhaps it meant “murder,” with others suggesting in truth the passage meant thou shalt not murder out of hate or spite; even these theories didn’t relieve her of responsibility in the eyes of the Lord,
and after a few hours she gave up.

  Later, while walking along Angel Street, she mulled over her uncle’s words, looking for something to ease her conscience. He had told her, after Ben’s death, when they planned the first ritual, that what they were doing was not killing, but rather granting mercy, offering guidance from this world to the next. The people they offered it to already had a death sentence over their heads, so there would be no question what God had decided for them. This way, Loreena and her uncle would be breaking no commandments, just doing God’s work, administering grace to his people. Perhaps their actions would not only ease suffering in the world, but help to make up for their sins—Loreena’s, for taking Ben too soon, and Uncle Don’s, for failing to see what had been developing right under his nose.

  How her uncle could have known what was going to happen when she turned eighteen, Loreena didn’t ask. She had noticed early signs, a strange smell emanating from her palms when she entered puberty, but no indications of the deadly power to come. She did question him, though, about his plans for these merciful deaths, frightened of repeating the experience she had gone through with Ben, all the while acutely aware of how she looked forward to being able to see once again. But even the agreement they had come to offered no escape for her now. She had murdered someone who was perfectly healthy—at least physically—and she had done so with intent. God and her uncle would expect her to feel guilty, but she didn’t. And that, more than anything, made sitting in church intolerable.

  Uncle Don continued with his sermon, beseeching his audience to forgive those who had wronged them and to let go of their anger and resentment. Loreena thought back to the thick leather seat between her thighs, the vibration of the motorcycle engine rumbling up her spine, the hard wind on her face, her body propelled through that dark space into the unknown, always staying just out of the demons’ reach. Sparks shot through her as she relived the experience, closing her eyes and recalling the dim white light and the dark road and the horrid faces with their hanging jaws and lolling tongues. When the images faded, she dreaded opening her eyes again, knowing she would see only shadows. That fact seemed more painful than ever before.