Harm's Reach

59

Rain poured down the library windows of Evergreen Abbey. It had started without warning; instant gray skies quickly turned black, the rain fell, aggressive, relentless. Through the blurred glass, Delores Ward had been watching the tracks of the green digger move through the thick mud, Burt Kendall at the wheel. The bucket rose and struck the walls of the cabin, gouging out chunks. He was gone now, driven away by the downpour.

She hurt. For six decades, she hurt. She had prayed and prayed and prayed. She had sought forgiveness, but she hadn’t found it, not in her heart, not where it mattered.

There was a knock on the library door. Conor Gorman walked in, drenched, his boots covered with mud, his jeans spattered. He slumped into one of the chairs at an old mahogany table. Delores sat down opposite him. He slid a battered metal box toward her. ‘I think they’re all there.’

‘Thank you,’ said Delores. ‘God may just be on my side after all.’

‘Whose bones are they?’ said Conor.

‘A bad man,’ said Delores. ‘Sent by an even badder one.’

‘Badder — I like that,’ said Conor. He smiled. ‘Who was the badder one? Seeing that you killed this one.’ He pointed to the box.

Delores frowned. ‘It’s not a joke. The other man, I recently discovered, you have a connection to. Robert Prince is your guardian? Well, it was his... grandfather, Walter, who sent this gangster after me.’

‘Why?’ said Conor.

‘It’s all in the past now. Robert Prince has turned out to be nothing like him.’

Conor snorted.

‘Really?’ said Delores. ‘I’ve found Robert Prince to be nothing other than charming and generous.’

Conor stared at the ground.

‘You don’t seem to like him,’ said Delores.

Conor shrugged.

‘Let me return your things,’ said Delores. She reached behind a line of books at the bottom of one of the bookcases. She took out a military-style bag and handed it to him. It was limp, mainly empty, with just a few objects gathered at the bottom.

‘Thank you for looking after this for me,’ said Conor, setting it on the table in front of him.

‘Well, you kept my little secret for me, all these months,’ said Delores. ‘And you helped with the gravestone.’

Conor shrugged.

‘So, what’s in the bag that’s so important?’ said Delores.

‘Nothing,’ said Conor. ‘Just... it’s hard to keep anything private over there at the ranch.’

Delores let out a breath. ‘So you’re leaving...’

‘Yes,’ said Conor.

‘I’m sorry I got you in trouble because of the cemetery.’

‘It was a pleasure,’ said Conor.

Delores shifted in her seat. ‘Are you running away?’ she said. ‘Or have you been expelled into the care of the Princes?’

‘I’m running,’ said Conor. He looked around. ‘But not so I end up somewhere like here. How can you live here? And for so long?’

‘This place was the only good thing that came out of my time with Walter Prince,’ said Delores. ‘Walter was sent here by his father when he was seventeen. That was a long, long time before I knew him. His uncle Daniel used to be the chaplain here. Fr Dan was still here when I arrived. I confessed my sins to him. And the sins of his own nephew, but they didn’t seem to come as any surprise to him. He was an incredible man. The abbess here was an incredible woman. They took me in, they saved my life. They gave me a new identity. Later, when the abbess was dying, she told me about Walter, that he had been sent there that summer by his father, Patrick, “to be straightened out”. But she said there was something “very wrong” with Walter Prince. She caught him, she said, “interfering” with one of the girls, the daughter of one of the workers at the abbey. And do you know what the abbess did? One night, she took a shotgun, marched down to the barn where Walter was working and she pointed the barrel right between his eyebrows, told him to leave and never come back. The whole debacle caused a family feud. Patrick Prince and Fr Daniel never again laid eyes on each other. Patrick Prince wiped him out of the family history.’

‘Sounds horrible,’ said Conor.

‘That’s one word for it,’ said Delores.

‘Well, I gotta get out of here,’ said Conor. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

‘No,’ said Delores. ‘I’m setting your young soul free.’ She smiled. ‘Just promise me, Conor, that you will fill your life with goodness. Help people. This is your chance.’

They heard footsteps down the hallway, voices getting louder. Instinctively, Conor reached for his bag, sliding his hand into it, pulling out the bloodstained gun inside.

Delores’ eyes went wide. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. A gun? You? But... oh my goodness. You... but that was your aunt. That was your family and you...’ She held a shaking hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my... oh my...’

‘Shhh,’ said Conor. ‘Shhh.’

‘And I had it here all along?’ said Delores. ‘How could you? You told me—’

Conor pointed the gun at her.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Conor!’

‘I said shut up,’ said Conor.

The voices and footsteps became more distant. The only sound was the rain.

‘Laura was taking me away,’ said Conor. ‘I didn’t want to go, OK? I didn’t want to. I have my reasons. She was going to ruin my life. And do you want to know what else? See this gun? I know where she got it. From my father. He’s alive and she never told me. So, do you think that’s someone I can trust? Fuck her, coming to “save my life”. She didn’t know shit about my life. She had no clue what mattered to me.’

‘But surely she mattered to you,’ said Delores. ‘You have to turn yourself in.’

Conor laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going take my inspiration from... you.’

He pulled the trigger. He pulled it a second time.

As the rain poured down the windows, and the blood seeped from her body onto the white tiled floor, Delores Ward felt washed away. In her dying moments, she was Virginia Leinster again, Virginia before Viggi. She had buried Viggi the night she buried the corpse of Angelo Marianelli.

She thought back to the last night that she saw her best friend, Acora Prince. They were both just seventeen years old, standing on the balcony above the foyer of the Princes’ magnificent home. Acora’s mother stood between them. They were all dressed in exquisite ball gowns. Acora’s mother brought the room to silence with a delicate clap of her hands.

‘On my right,’ she said, ‘is my baby girl, Acora, and on my left, her dearest friend, Virginia, such beauties, both. Sisters, really.’ She paused. ‘Though Virginia may be something quite different to my husband, Walter?’ she said. ‘Maybe whore... or harlot...’

Virginia Leinster shivered at the memory of the awful hysteria that was creeping into the woman’s voice, at the gasps and shrieks that had broken out in the crowd. She remembered Walter rushing toward them — to rescue who, she was not sure. But before he made it to the balcony, his wife had taken Virginia by the hair and was pulling her backwards until she was lying, face up, watching the rage, the mental breakdown of her best friend’s mother. She began to drag Virginia by the ankle down the stairs. Virginia remembered the bump of each step against her spine, how her dress began to hike up around her thighs, how she desperately clawed at it to keep it down. She was crying, trying to cover herself and Acora’s mother snapped, ‘I would think you’ve been looking for these,’ and held up a pair of red satin panties. She threw them at Virginia, leaned in, and stuffed them down the front of her dress. And she started to drag Virginia down again, her head now banging off each step.

Virginia felt it as if she was there all over again. Her spine ached, the back of her head, her heart. It was a piercing pain that she rarely allowed in. And it brought with it a shame of extraordinary depth, a shame that had blossomed inside, filled every space it could. She had never wanted to accept who those red panties belonged to. She accepted it only on the day that Walter Prince told her he was leaving New York to go back to his family. But she had always known... Acora had stumbled in church one day; they must have been no more than thirteen years old. Her dress had caught on the pew and Virginia had rushed to protect her friend’s modesty. Though she had spared her blushes, she caught sight of what that man had forced her to wear.

It was the scarlet under the white that he liked.