Bone by Bone

28

He stood at the door to the attic darkroom, unable to cross the threshold. The tools of his brother's art were arranged in the same old way. The chemicals in the bottles must have degraded by now, but no dust had been allowed to settle here. Josh might have walked away only an hour ago to have his breakfast downstairs in the kitchen.

Oren was afraid to go inside that small room. He might get lost in there, and a search party of a thousand townspeople would not be able to bring him back this time.

He heard wooden clogs on the attic stairs and turned to see Hannah pause on the top step.

Her eyes were on the darkroom's open door. "I told you, that's the last place I would've put those old pictures."

He nodded absently. Inside the room, only inches away, was a drawer that he might search, but it was too far to travel just now. Maybe tomorrow.

"I had your black suit dry-cleaned," said the housekeeper. "I'm not going to the birthday ball." Hannah's clogs were coming up behind him, and he could hear determination in every step.

"The judge wants you to come with us. Come-just to make your father happy for one night."

"He thinks I killed Josh."

The wooden clogs came to a halt. "You can't believe that."

"That's why he sent me out of town. He was right to blame me. Josh and I had a fight in the woods that day. He wasn't just stalking strangers. Sometimes it was people we both knew, and I called him on it. The last time I saw my brother, I was chasing him down, and I was angry."

Josh had shown him a photograph of two lovers on the porch of Evelyn's cabin-one captured instant of a slow kiss. Oren had torn this picture to shreds. And then he had reached for his brother.

"I know he was afraid of me. He ran off. I followed him. I hunted him all day long. And I would've found him if he was only lost… but he was hiding from me. He was scared."

Each detail of that day into night was so clear. The judge and Hannah had waited dinner, though the hour was late. They were sitting at the kitchen table when he came banging through the back door, out of breath and sweating-and bleeding, his face badly scratched by low-hanging branches after sundown.

The judge had been surprised to see him this way-and alarmed-and slow to ask him where his brother was.

That was the first time Oren had felt fear. He felt it now, standing in the open doorway of the darkroom-a time machine. Josh might still be wandering the woods, only missing his supper. The judge must be worried. It was so dark outside.

Hannah was shaking him back into the solid world, where it was morning.

A truck larger than a moving van caught Sarah Winston's attention. What now? All the flowers and the rented furniture had already been delivered, and the caterer's vehicles had arrived an hour ago.

She drank her breakfast slowly, for this single glass was the only alcohol she would be allowed all day. "Happy birthday to me."

The rear door of the giant truck was rolled up, and two large men climbed inside to stand among tall blocks of ice. They slowly moved one of the blocks toward the edge of the truck bed and onto a waiting forklift. This small yellow machine and its massive cargo turned and rolled across the grass, then up a wide plank and through the open doorway of the lodge.

As she followed the forklift inside, she felt the cold chill of air conditioning cranked to Arctic temperatures. Awaiting the ice block was a standing army of men and women with chain saws and more traditional carving tools. Addison was in their midst, talking to a man with a clipboard.

Delighted, Sarah called out, "Ice sculptures!"

Her husband whirled around and smiled, as if he had not seen her for years and years. He walked toward her. "Not to worry, Sarah. These artists work very fast. They'll be done hours before the first guest arrives." He put one arm around his wife's shoulders and guided her through the doors to the foyer. "It's too cold in here, I know. Can't have the ice melting before the ball. But there'll be at least a thousand candles lighting this room tonight. That should take the chill off." He closed the doors behind them. "Promise me you won't go in there again. I want the sculptures to be a surprise."

She kissed his cheek and climbed the stairs, glass in hand, sipping her way toward the tower room, where she had found a new hiding place for contraband. If she were to turn around right now, Sarah knew she would see the maid close behind her. Hilda must find it miraculous that her employer's wife could nurse one drink all morning. And the legend of the bottomless glass would grow into evening.

"It never fails," said Hannah. "Guilt always comes with a death in the family." The housekeeper pointed Oren toward an old trunk in a silent invitation to sit down.

She stood over him, hands on hips and great concern in her eyes. "This is how I remember the day. Josh asked me to make him a sandwich for his knapsack. But not you. So I know it was a last-minute idea-you going into the woods with your brother. You were keeping close tabs on him in those days. I bet Josh was the one who started the fight."

When Oren hesitated, she leaned down to peer into his eyes and smiled, liking what she saw. "I'm right. That boy meant to ditch you from the moment you set out for the woods. He had plans of his own that day- plans you wouldn't like."

She paced in front of him, hands behind her back and talking in the listen-up mode. "Your life started going off the track long before that day. I lay the blame on your mother for dying young. If she'd lived, she would've taught you how to dance and talk to little girls. You would've had an actual conversation with Isabelle Winston. The two of you should've had four kids by now. Incidentally, it's not too late for that. I realize that Belle seems a bit harsh, maybe even homicidal-"

"There are no pictures of my mother." As a child and a teenager, he had never questioned the loss of her. Other boys had mothers, but he and Josh had Hannah. "No photographs. I can't remember what she looked like."

"Of course there were pictures," she said, "dozens of them. The first time I walked into this house-uninvited-well, you know that old story-I saw your mother looking back at me from every wall. The judge cried all the time in those days. He couldn't walk into a room without seeing reminders of her. So, a week or so after her funeral, real late at night, I collected them all and brought them up here."

Hannah pulled a trunk away from the wall to get at the boxes behind it. "The next morning, the judge woke up, looked at the walls, then took a deep breath and got on with his life. We never talked about it." She opened a box and pulled out framed photographs, handing them to Oren, one by one. "You can see how pretty she was, but that's not what people remember best. You ask and they'll say she loved to dance."

The housekeeper picked up a small wooden chest. "This is why I came up here." She lifted the tiny latch, opened the lid and pulled out a frayed teething ring. "This was your stuff. Nothing of Josh's. You two weren't so much alike when you were small. He was on the frail side, but you always looked like a little man in training." She plucked a picture from the box and held it up to him.

He stared at the snapshot of a baby no older than two. Hannah placed the small chest in his hands and backed away a few steps as he pored through the contents. There were a few small toys, a lock of hair tied by a ribbon, and photographs of husband and wife taking turns with the camera to picture themselves with their first baby.

"That's the judge's invisible box," said Hannah, "the one he carries around when he walks in his sleep. It's the only box in the house that opens with a latch. You saw the way he opened it in the kitchen the other night. I told you I'd seen it before. Last night, he carried it to the cemetery to ask for a miracle. Do you get it now?"

He shook his head.

She threw up her arms. "That first time in the kitchen, he said to your dead mother, 'Our child is lost. I need another miracle.' You're the lost child, Oren."

"No, that was Josh. The judge blamed me for-"

"He never did."

"He sent me away. He couldn't stand the sight of me."

She silenced him with one finger pressed to his lips. "After a time, the judge came to terms with the idea that Josh was dead. But not you. You just would not give him up-always tearing around those woods-days at a time. There was a danger that you might die out there, half starved, no water. Maybe there'd come a day when we couldn't find you and bring you safe home. Your father sent you away to finish school in a place with no trees-so you couldn't get lost again. It was your idea to stay away-to join the Army. That mystified him, and it hurt him, too. That old man loves you beyond reason, and he missed you every single day that you were gone. The reason he kept the house like a damn museum-that wasn't on account of Josh. He wanted everything to be the same on the day when you found your way home."

Isabelle had spent half the morning in bed, using a pillow to muffle the sounds of workmen inside the house and out in the yard. She had spent most of the night reading the more recent birder logs written years after the disappearance of Joshua Hobbs-her mother's obsession. The town had become smaller and more claustrophobic on each succeeding page. Some birds had eyes that glowed in the darkness as they traveled single file up the mountainside, and these were the witchboard people.

Showered and dressed, she unlocked her bedroom door. Last night was the first time she had ever thought to lock it. But she had gone to bed with no fears for her mother. She had believed Addison when he professed to love his wife-madly.

Isabelle's fear had come later, page after page of it.

When she smoothed out the bedding, she found a journal in the folds of the sheet. This was the one that had given her nightmares. She held the small book in one hand, weighing the consequences of its destruction. This one might be more dangerous than the journals she had left in the care of the judge. One day soon, she and Oren Hobbs must talk, but not of this. She planned to fling it into the sea.

This journal began with a séance in the woods. Wings spread, a young lark hovered over a table ringed with monsters, and it sang for them, "Oren, help me. Find me. Take me home."