Iron House

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Cool mist hung in the gorge as Michael turned the Rover onto the steep, muddy track that led to the creek where his brother had been drowned. The sun was below the ridge but rising, the morning still and gray as he rolled in, quiet. There were no license plates on the car, nothing to identify him. A few dogs lifted their heads, but they seemed as worn and uncaring as everything else.

Michael touched the gun beside him. He’d killed a lot of people over the years, but had never done so in anger or hate.

That was about to change.

He’d tried to move on after meeting with Falls, tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw a dead brother and Julian broken; saw Abigail as a child in that cold and filthy house of horrors. He saw them as they could have been, then as they were, and it was like a wall of spinning mist, like he could stretch out a hand and touch a storm of ruined lives. Even now, the scope of her depravity confounded him. In a lifetime defined by violence and the code of violent men, Michael had never seen a soul as poisoned as his mother’s. There was no restraint to her selfishness, no boundary. She’d made one child kill another, laughed about it.

And now the bitch was going to pay.

He moved deeper into the gorge, found Arabella Jax in bed and put the muzzle against her forehead. She woke clear-eyed and nasty. No confusion. No doubt about the gun in her face. “I told you no lies,” she said.

“Do you know who I am?”

Her eyes rolled left, but Michael had already moved the shotgun. The room smelled of mildew, festering leg. Michael felt cold, quiet rage as he looked down on the woman who’d brought him into the world, then left him in the woods to die.

“Give me a cigarette,” she said.

Michael pushed the barrel hard against her forehead, and the fear came out in her. Her mouth opened wide, fingers hooked in the sheets. “You drowned a baby in that creek,” Michael said. “I want to know where he’s buried.”

A sly look spread on her face, wheels turning. “What’s it to you?”

Two seconds passed. “He was my brother.”

She processed that fast, eyes moving up him and then down. “Am I supposed to get all weepy, now?”

“You should probably get ready to die.” Michael thumbed the hammer, but she shrugged off the threat.

“I heard somebody found you boys. They wrote about it in the paper.”

“You could have just drowned us.”

She laughed a bitter laugh. “There may not be a hell, but I don’t plan on taking chances. That’s Abigail’s job.” She pushed up in bed, as if daring him to pull the trigger. “I guess you know her after all, or you wouldn’t be here.”

Michael stepped back. “Get out of bed.”

“Get me a cigarette.”

Michael dragged her out of bed. She hit the ground with a thump, then stood, shaking and angry. There may have been fear left somewhere, but Michael couldn’t see it. He snatched a robe off a chair, flung it at her. “Put it on.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot your own momma.”

“Put it on.”

“Outside of that cocksucker Jessup Falls, I ain’t met a man yet with the strength to squeeze a grapefruit, let alone a trigger. If you were that kind of man, I’d be bleeding already. I’d be-”

Michael made her bleed. He whipped the gun and hit her hard enough to knock her down on the bed. A red line oozed on her cheek; after that, she cooperated. The robe went on, fuzzy slippers that used to be pink. She took a cane off the back of a chair and limped outside, slow and stunned and wary. Light was beginning to filter down, and the hollow yellowed out as they followed a narrow footpath around the shack and then into the woods. She looked back twice, then said, “You going to kill me?”

“Maybe I’ll break your legs and leave you out here to die.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Thinking about it.”

They walked for five minutes, forest pushing in. She stumbled once, and caught herself. “Where’s the other one?”

“Other what?”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Just keep walking.”

They came to a place where a beech tree rose up, ancient and gray-skinned and proud. On its bark, someone had long ago carved a cross above the initials RJ. The carvings had stretched as the tree grew; now they were wide and rough, barely legible above a patch of smooth ground. “Well, there you go.” She waved a spotty hand. “Satisfied?”

The markings had been carved deep, and when Michael touched them he knew that Abigail had been the one to put them there. He tried to see her as she must have been, ten years old and bone thin, straining hard to make the lines of the cross so straight and true. “What was his name?”

“Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me or I put a bullet in your head.”

Her lips pursed, and she said, “Robert.”

“Robert.” He touched the markings again and looked at his mother. “What did he look like?”

“Trouble with a big damn T.” She waved a hand. “All you boys did.”

Michael felt new rage. “You should have gone away for this. You should have fried.”

“And if there was justice in the world, I’d be living rich or holding that gun. But that ain’t the world God made. Now…” She thumped the tree with her cane. “You seen it. You said your piece. Now, give an old lady a few dollars or go on and get the hell out.”

“Did you say justice?”

“You heard me.”

Michael felt the gun in his hand and it felt like the hand of God, like the universe rolled back to show the meaning of poetry and purpose. This woman had made him a killer so that he might one day kill this woman. It was a circle so perfect it smelled of providence. The gun came up and it was light in his hand. Mountain air tasted fresh in his throat. He could kill her now and bring closure to what remained of his family. Abigail would be free, Robert’s death avenged. Justice for the boys he and Julian had been.

“Do it,” she said.

He stared into her eyes, and saw nothing.

“Fucking do it!”

But even as the trigger creaked under his finger, Michael pictured Otto Kaitlin, who’d raised him to be better than the things he did. He thought of Elena, and the man she wished him to be, then of his own child and the father it deserved. He thought of the future he wanted.

The gun came down.

“I knew it, you pussy.” She spit on the dirt. “You limp-dick, red-assed cocksucker.”

Michael looked at the ravaged leg and unrepentant eyes, the cracked lips and bitterness. “I hope you live a very long time,” he said, and walked away.

He made it fifteen feet before she called after him. “Did Abigail tell you your real name?”

Michael looked back, momentarily undone as spite spread on his mother’s face. It was an orphan’s ultimate question. Who are my parents? What is my name?

“She didn’t tell you Robert’s name, so I’m guessing she didn’t tell you yours, either. She didn’t, did she? Selfish little brat.”

“We’re done here.” Michael started walking. She raised her voice.

“Whatever they named you at that orphanage ain’t the name God will know you by! That name comes from me!”

Leaves slapped at his face. The ground was smooth and damp.

“A momma leaves a mark when she names a child!”

Michael turned. “I want nothing from you.”

“What about your father’s name? You want that?” Michael raised the gun, pointed it at the soft place beneath her chin. “We already know you don’t have the guts.”

Michael put a shot past both sides of her head, the bullets so close and fast they lifted hair.

She froze, mouth open and dead silent. Michael said, “Next one goes in your right eye.” She risked a step back, and Michael matched her movement, the forest very green around them. “No one would miss you. No one out here would even care.”

Arabella held perfectly still, a cigarette smoldering between two fingers. Behind her, the gulley dropped off forty feet, water creaming white at the bottom. “You want your real name or not?”

“Not.”

“Then you’re nothing.”

“I disagree.”

“You have nothing.”

“I have eighty million dollars,” Michael said. “I have a brother and a sister, a family of my own.” He dropped the hammer on the gun, slipped it under his belt. “What do you have?”