Stone Angel

CHAPTER 14

Charles Butler had lost his tie and gone native. The soft denim shirt was a bit tight at the shoulders, but otherwise wonderfully comfortable, as were the blue jeans and the hiking boots. The owner of Dayborn’s dry goods store had been thrilled to unload all the giant-size clothing, for there was a dearth of giants in St. Jude Parish. The storekeeper had despaired of ever selling this stock until yesterday, when Charles had walked into the shop, the top of his head just grazing the eighteenth-century doorframe.

Today, Charles sat on a wooden bench and stared up at the skylight in the chapel studio, watching all the stars that were left in the early morning sky and sipping fresh coffee.

“It’s an obscene hour” said Henry Roth. “But this kind of work is best done in the dark. I appreciate the help.”

“My pleasure.”

Charles followed the sculptor and his rolling pallet to the ramp at the back of the studio. A single bare light bulb hung over a group of white-shrouded figures, all in a circle on the platform which had once been an altar. Charles counted eleven draped pieces in staggered sizes. “Is there some reason why they’re covered?”

“It’s my private collection.”

Henry began to pull the sheets away. A procession of tall statuary emerged from half the circle, their backs turned on Charles. The tallest angel must be at least nine feet high. And then the coverings were pulled from the smaller statues facing him.

Winged children.

Stunned, Charles stepped into the ring of stone figures to see the faces of the larger angels. And now he revolved slowly, watching Mallory grow from a cherub to a full-blown avenger with a sword in her hand.

The sheriff was kneeling in the wet grass, looking down at the blood. The trail petered out three yards from Trebec House. In sidelong vision, he saw Augusta at the kitchen windows flanking this side of the brick foundation. After he heard the door slam in the basement wall, he gave her a few seconds more to come up behind him and commence a tirade on the damage he had done bringing his car across the grass, stinking up her air with his exhaust and frightening her birds. It was always the same exchange between them. She had gone to a lot of trouble to block the old road with trees. And why, she would ask, did he take it as a challenge to scratch the paint on his car working around all her obstacles? How many kinds of a fool was he? And then he would have a few choice words of his own. But today this old game would be a bit different.

He looked up to see her calm face, which never gave away a damn thing.

“Why’re you creeping around my yard, Tom? You can’t knock at the door like a normal person?”

The game had already been altered. So Augusta must have bigger things to worry about today.

“Fred Laurie’s wife came in this morning. Said he never came home last night.”

“Well, good for her,” said Augusta, in a rare good mood that didn’t quite ring true. “That must be the first peaceful night she’s had in twenty years.”

He stood up and smacked the loose grass off his pants. “I guess you heard the gunfire late last night.” Of course she had. Augusta was a chronic insomniac, and everyone knew it. “I sent Lilith into the woods to arrest him for trespassing ‘cause I didn’t want you to find him first. Lilith said the man just disappeared. Couldn’t find a trace of him, and she was looking for a long, long time. But now I gotta wonder if Fred left the woods feet first, maybe with a hole in him.”

“He’s probably in the next parish, sleeping it off in a strange bed.” She might as well have been talking about the morning rain.

“Using what for cash? You know Malcolm never gives those idiots any money, and I don’t think a church voucher would buy him anything outside of Owltown.”

“So you’re thinking foul play?” Augusta was grinning.

He had several categories for her grins. Some were downright evil, and some were dangerous. But this one was only malicious.

“If his wife shot him,” said Augusta, “then I owe that woman an apology. I’ve sorely underestimated her, taking her for a mouse all this time.” She shook her head. “The way that bastard beat on her. You sure he was here last night?”

“Oh, yeah. Two people saw him go into the woods with his rifle. I found bullet holes in a few trees, but I’m pretty sure the trees didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“I see where you’re going with this. Well, if he shot himself, this is the last place he’d come for help.”

“Damn right.” He pointed to the trail she had been tactfully ignoring, as if she might be accustomed to seeing her grass splattered with bloodstains. “Maybe that’s not Fred’s blood. Maybe that fool actually hit something this time, and whatever it was, it came here. Is that Kathy’s blood, Augusta?” He was careful in his wording. If it was Fred’s, he didn’t really want to know.

She never looked down. “I do hate to spoil your fun. That’s nothing but blood from one of Henry Roth’s chickens. You knew my cat was a thief. Now I’m gonna pay Henry for that chicken, so you have no business here.”

The sheriff walked around the side of the house. The door between the staircases stood open a crack.

“Planning to arrest the cat?” Augusta was right behind him.

He walked toward the house. Augusta moved faster. She was there before him and barring the way.

“Tom Jessop, don’t you set foot in my house without an invitation. Your father was a lawyer. I know he taught you better than to do a thing like that without a warrant.”

He ignored her and pushed his way through the door. She caught it on the slam bounce, and followed him inside. “You let six million gnats into my house.” There was nothing in the timbre of her voice to tell him she was anything but angry.

He left the long hallway and entered the kitchen. He looked up to the top of the refrigerator and engaged the yellow cat in a staring contest. Augusta was standing beside him now. He looked down at her and saw her eyes round out a bit as she stared at the gun in his hand.

He looked back to the cat. “You’re fond of that animal, aren’t you, Augusta?” He took aim. “Is that Kathy’s blood in the yard? I’m waitin‘ on a straight answer.”

The old woman put up her hands defensively, as if she were the one he meant to kill and not the cat. Then she waved her arms and shrieked. The cat’s eyes narrowed and the ears flattened back as the animal sprang from the refrigerator and sank claws into the flesh of his chest and teeth into his shoulder. He could hear the horse screaming through the kitchen screens, and birds took flight from the shrubs lining the bank of windows, all screeching and flapping, blotting out the sky and the grass. Teeth sank deep into his hand. He dropped his gun and batted at the cat. He pulled at the pelt and felt his flesh rip. “Augusta, call it off or I’ll break its damn neck!”

Augusta picked up the gun, threw open a window screen and tossed the weapon far into the grass. And now the cat released him after she had enough blood to suit her. The animal leapt to the slate counter and then back to the top of the refrigerator. She crouched there, bunching up her muscles, ready for another round.

He looked at the wound to his hand. These were not the pointy marks of a cat’s teeth. The bite mark was Augusta’s – almost human.

She pointed at the drops of his own blood on the floor. “Now don’t forget where that came from, Tom. I don’t want you getting confused again.”

He was out of the kitchen and heading back down the hall when Augusta said, “Where you going so fast, Tom? I think you can take that cat two falls out of three.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said, ever so politely. “I can’t shoot that animal without my gun, can I?” The door slammed behind him.

He found his weapon shining through the tall grass twenty feet from the house where he had parked the car. He was wondering if the stains on the grass might not be chicken blood after all – or maybe it was Fred Laurie’s blood.

What the hell?

He watched the horse race around the paddock. Now the animal reared up on his hind legs and knocked the crossbar off the fence. Hooves crashed down on the fallen bar and splintered the wood. The birds had picked up a contagion of panic and the volume of birdsong was building.

When he turned around, he was staring at a single-shot derringer, and Augusta was right behind it with her finger on the trigger. He stood up slowly and holstered his gun. His eyes never strayed to the derringer as he said, almost casually, “You wouldn’t shoot me.”

“Oh, Tom. You know better than that,” she said sweetly. “Of course I would.” She grinned wide and evil. “Do you really want to spend all damn day at the hospital while they pick this slug out of you?”

The dark idea crossed his mind that she would shoot anyone who threatened an animal on her land. Might she have found Fred in the woods? If that was what she was covering up, he wasn’t sure he wanted to catch her before she had time to dispose of the evidence. As Augusta had pointed out, Fred’s wife probably needed a rest from the beatings. “I guess I don’t need to kill a cat today. But I do need to find Kathy, and real fast. If you get in my way, I’ll forget how long I’ve known you, old woman. I’m too close to let – ”

“It always comes back to Cass Shelley’s murder, doesn’t it?” She lowered the gun; the game was done, and she was not smiling anymore. “Revenge is a real sickness with you, Tom. This isn’t what your father had in mind for you. Sheriff of St. Jude Parish should have been your first political office, not your life.”

“Well just look at you, Augusta – the damn queen of revenge. It’s your whole reason for living.”

“Oh, but I do it so well – with gusto and style. I make it a fine art. With you, it’s just an ugly occupation. Now move off my land or I’ll let fly with a bullet.” She lowered the short barrel of the derringer to his kneecaps. “Think you can catch that little girl with one lame leg?”

He backed up and eased himself into the car. When the wheels were spinning in a wide grassy lake, she fired the gun into the trunk.

God damn it!

In his rearview mirror, he could see her reloading just as the wheels found traction on more solid ground. Instead of driving forward, like any man who truly wanted to live, he backed up the car until he was abreast of her, and then he leaned out the window.

“Augusta,” he said, touching the brim of his hat in salute. “Don’t ever change.”

Her laughter followed after him as the car rolled away.

Before he was close enough to read the chiseled legend, Charles recognized the face on the new tombstone in the cemetery. Babe’s photograph was encased in a cheap wooden frame fixed to the stone. This would be the smallest of graves, only a hole in the ground for the urn. No tomb for Babe Laurie, nothing so grand.

“So when will they inter the ashes?”

“He won’t be cremated till after the big party at the end of the week” said Henry, looking down on the rough work of a cut-rate craftsman. “It’s a poor thing, isn’t it? Malcolm spent a fortune renting a fancy glass show casket for the wake, and almost nothing on the marker. Babe would have hated this. When he was alive, he thought he was king of the world.”

Charles nodded. He had encountered such a man when he was the freak child at Harvard, eleven years old in his sophomore year. In the course of research for his behavioral science project, he had observed a patient in a local hospital. The old man was ravaged by syphilis and given to shouting, ‘King of the world am I!’ But he had walked in an unkingly way, graceless, ungainly, and sometimes stumbling.

The old man had demanded that young Charles bow and use the proper title whenever the boy addressed him. A doctor had been present and explained to Charles that it was a hospital rule never to yield to the whims of dementia. The boy had dutifully complied with the policy and refused the king his due. Toward the end of this study period, the child had even had the temerity to explain to the old man that this was for his own good.

The old man had disagreed, and a fit of temper had been followed by convulsions. Then the doctor had gently pushed Charles from the room and turned back to his patient, who was screaming and being tied down with restraints.

The following day, the boy had returned to the old man’s room, bearing flowers as a peace offering – bright blooms of every color, a veritable palette of apologies. But Charles found the room empty, the bed stripped of its sheets. The king of the world had died the previous evening.

The doctor and his nurse spent the next hour calming the hysterical little boy, trying to convince Charles that he had not killed the old man. Then, speaking to the brilliant child as equals, they had carefully explained the hell of the disease, the damage they could not reverse because treatment had come too late, and finally, the mercy of the old man’s death as a release from suffering. The tantrum and the convulsions, they said, were merely behaviors common to dementia paralytica.

Eleven-year-old Charles had responded with behaviors common to childhood. He had cried, thrown down his guilty flowers and run away.

Now Charles, the grown man, hunkered down by the tombstone to look at Babe’s portrait, and a young king of the world looked back at him. The symptoms the old man had endured might have been in this younger man’s future had he lived another fifteen or twenty years.

“Henry? Who do you think killed Babe Laurie?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Charles was about to speak when Henry signaled for silence. He could hear voices from the bridge over Upland Bayou, and Betty Hale’s was the loudest.

“Now stay together,” said Betty, shepherding her flock of ten guests across the bridge. One damn fool was veering off on the side road. “You don’t want to go in that direction, Mr. Porter. Three feet off the path and you’re into Finger Bayou.”

Mr. Porter was entranced by the worn wooden arrow pointing the way to the old Shelley place. Perhaps he took it for a traffic sign, for she could see he was longing to obey it despite the No Trespassing sign posted on a near tree.

“Is the bayou very deep, Mrs. Hale?”

“Well, no. But you could break your backside trying to get yourself out of there.” Yes, he would definitely crack his ass if he fell on his face.

“Now if you’ll all gather round, please.” Betty pointed up through a break in the trees. “That house is where the bats come from.” Cameras began to click photographs of the roof and its round window as souvenirs of last evening’s bat races.

“It’s more than a hundred and fifty years old,” said Betty. “It was built by the Trebec family. Miss Augusta is the last of the line. When she dies, the house passes over to the state of Louisiana.”

“So she’s leaving it to the state as a historical site?” asked the woman from Arizona.

“No, her father arranged that in his will,” said Betty. “He put all his money in a trust fund. Augusta only got a caretaker’s salary.”

“Some caretaker,” said an elderly woman, eyes focussed through field glasses. “There are holes in that roof.”

“Oh, the whole place is a wreck,” said Betty. “The roof is the least of it. It’s a damn shame to see one of those beauties go to ruin that way. Augusta Trebec is the Antichrist of the St. Jude Parish Historical Society. They invoke her name every time they cuss.”

The line got a smattering of laughter, and Betty decided to leave it in the tour speech.

“The house has quite a history, and I – ”

“Could Cass Shelley be alive?” Mr. Porter was asking.

“Not likely. Now Augusta became the mistress of Trebec House under very sinister – ”

“Are there any alligators in that bayou?” asked the intrepid Mr. Porter “You think maybe an alligator could’ve eaten her body?”

Though she wanted to stuff a sock in Porter’s mouth, Betty smiled on him with benevolence. “A gator could eat you whole. When he clamps down on you, he goes into a death roll and drags you under.” She liked that image of Porter. “But if the gator isn’t hungry just then, he’ll stuff your body in some underwater hole or a cranny in the bayou wall ” Either way the gator went with that, Porter would be just as dead. “And then he’ll bide his time till your body rots up real tender.”

Now she had everyone’s attention. Bloodthirsty bastards, bless their little hearts and credit cards. “But an alligator didn’t eat Cass Shelley. Fred and Ray Laurie killed every single gator in these bayous a long time ago. Finger Bayou runs up near Trebec House. Before Cass died, I used to take my tour groups up there. Augusta won’t allow strangers on the place anymore, though. I guess the stoning spooked her. She stopped the herbicide on the bayou, and now it’s choked off with water hyacinth, impassable by boat. You see those plants floating on the water? And most of the land surrounding the house is swamp, infested with poisonous snakes. So I repeat, you don’t want to stray off on your own. Now what was I saying before we got off on gators?”

“The house,” said the man from Maine.

“Right. Now the house and a few acres was all that was left of the original plantation. The town sprung up, lot by lot, as the Trebecs sold off the land.”

“You said the house was ruined,” said the man from Maine. “So Miss Trebec is too poor to maintain it?”

“Poor? Augusta? Oh, no.” Betty laughed. “She’s a master of shady land deals. She owns all those cane fields out by the highway. Bought her first forty acres with seed money inherited from her mother. Then she sued a chemical factory for fouling the water on her land. That gave her cash for more land near another factory. Over the years, she’s filed lawsuits against most of the chemical plants along the River Road. They always settle out of court. Today, Augusta owns most all of St. Jude Parish, except for Dayborn and Owltown.”

“Could you lose a body in that bayou?” asked Mr. Porter, impatient to get back to the subject of murder. “Maybe sink it down with weights?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Betty. “The sheriff was all through Finger Bayou dragging for that body. He would have turned it up.”

“I can understand her not wanting to spend her own money on a house that isn’t hers,” said the man from Maine, still trying to make sense of the ruined mansion. “But if the woman is rich, there’s nothing to keep her here. So why doesn’t she just leave?”

“Oh, Augusta won’t go till the house falls down. She could set a match to it, but that would offend her sporting nature.”

The man from Maine gaped. “You mean she wants it to – ”

“What about quicksand?”

“No, Mr. Porter,” said Betty. “There might be a bog or two back there in the swamp, but even a bog will yield up a carcass eventually. Of course, only a Cajun could walk that swamp – or Augusta. She’s what you might call a Cajun without portfolio.”

The rest of the group had their binoculars trained on the top window of Trebec House. One scrawny woman from California was shaking her head sadly. “Surely the historical society will restore the house when this crazy woman dies.”

“Can’t,” said Betty. “It would take too much money. They waived their rights in favor of Augusta’s proposal for a bird habitat. Those ornithologists won’t waste a dime on Trebec House. They’ll just watch it rot. That’s the deal they made with Augusta.”

“So what do you think happened to the body?”

“It is a mystery, isn’t it, Mr. Porter?” And if it were ever solved it would cut into her business, now evenly divided between bird-watchers, amateur detectives and the visiting New Church seminar suckers.

“Is it possible to lose a body in that swamp, say if you sunk it in a bog, and – ”

“What goes into this ground will come up again, Mr. Porter. I’ll show you what I mean.”

She led them through the skirt of trees and into the cemetery. “We generally bury bodies aboveground. If we sink ‘em in the earth, they just rise again, and it doesn’t matter how many stones you put in the coffin to weight it down. Now some of these bodies here were buried in a traditional manner, but you see that big slab of concrete? That’s to keep the coffin belowground.”

“Couldn’t there have been one alligator hiding in the bayou?” asked the hopeful Mr. Porter.

“No! Sorry. No, the closest thing we got to a gator around here is Augusta. When she smiles, you can see the resemblance, and if you get on her bad side, her eyes will go dead on you – just like a gator. Oh, and just because a gator’s dead, that doesn’t mean it’s safe to approach one. An alligator can bite you two hours after it’s been killed. I plan to be several hours late to Augusta’s funeral when she goes.”

“But suppose there was just one alligator.”

Betty’s smile was broad, but her teeth were grinding. “Cass Shelley died this same time of year. Even if there was a gator in there, he would have been hibernating. Cass did not end up as gator food. Now, Mr. Porter, if we are done with the alligators?”

She pointed to the monument which towered over all the others. “That’s the back of the angel. She’s the image of Cass Shelley, God rest her soul. And the little girl in her arms? That’s Kathy. She’s come home again and murdered Babe Laurie.”

The first of the tour group stood in front of the angel while Betty brought up the rear. “Now you just gather around. As I was saying, the little girl in the angel’s arms – ”

“What little girl?” The California woman was looking up at the angel.

“The little girl in her arms.” What kind of blind fools did they make up north? They shouldn’t allow idiots to travel; there ought to be a law. “Later, I’ll take you into the alley alongside the sheriff’s office and show you where her jail cell is.” No point in telling them the fugitive was on the loose. That might result in some empty rooms. “She might even come to the window, so take a good look at the little girl.”

“What little girl?” asked the very sensible man from Maine.

Now Betty came around to the front of the statue to point out the little girl you couldn’t fail to notice even if you were just this side of legal blindness.

But the stone child was gone.

The angel was alone on her pedestal, eyes cast down and holding out her empty arms.

“Oh, my God. It’s a miracle.” Betty walked up to the angel and stared into her eyes. “Oh, my God.”

“She’s crying,” said the man from Maine. “The statue is crying.”

Ten cameras shot the angel simultaneously.

Augusta wondered if sleep had been induced by the herbal concoction to stave off infection. Or had the girl passed out from the pain of irrigating the bullet wounds? Well, better that she slept.

All around the room were soggy towels and windings of gauze. Augusta picked up the bloody debris and put it into a plastic garbage bag. When she had washed her hands, she sat down in a chair by the bed and removed the bandages. She pulled the packing from the back wound and replaced the poultice. The girl slumbered on as Augusta taped the poultice in place and then turned the body over to clean the front wound in the shoulder.

With no warning, one white hand snaked out and held Augusta’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip. The cat leapt onto the foot of the bed and made a low growl. Augusta hushed the cat and looked back at her patient and deep into a pair of very angry young eyes.

“What did you give me to make me sleep?”

“Nothing I didn’t grow in my herb garden,” said Augusta. “Now do you mind if I get on with this? It’s a big hole.” She bent low over the wound, ignoring the tight squeeze of her arm, and finally the hand fell away. “Must have been a hollow-point bullet. This exit wound was real good for drainage.”

Augusta’s patient looked down at the new packing in her flesh. “Is that what I think it is?”

The old woman nodded. “Spider silk resists bacteria. I wrap herbs inside it so the medicine releases slowly. Takes a lot of silk to make a good packing, but my house is a damn factory of spiders spinning webs ”

Augusta unraveled a long strand of cotton gauze and clipped it with a pair of shears. “You were lucky. It’s a soft-tissue wound. Missed the joint and the bone. No permanent damage.” She wrapped the gauze over the naked shoulder to cover both wounds. “This is a pressure bandage. I know it hurts, but the greater the pressure the less you bleed.”

“How long will I be laid up?”

“Not long at all, now that the bleeding is under control. In fact, the sooner you begin moving this shoulder the better. It won’t be so stiff later on if you use it now. But go easy – you don’t want to do anything to start the bleeding again.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Augusta looked up to the greenest eyes she’d ever seen, and they were drilling holes in her. Strange child.

“Real estate,” Augusta said, bending to the work at hand, winding another layer of gauze over the holes. “I never lose an opportunity to do a real estate deal. If you die intestate, it could take more years than I got left to tear your mother’s house loose from the state.” And now she risked another glance at her patient.

Not good enough, said the girl’s bright eyes, narrow with suspicion. “Why didn’t you let the place go for back taxes?”

“And pay top dollar in a bidding war at auction?” She put one hand to her breast to say, What kind of fool do you take me for? “I tried to buy this place from your grandfather in a fair deal, but he wouldn’t sell. Then after he died, and your mother moved back to Dayborn, she wouldn’t sell either. But now I got you, don’t I? I think you’ll like my offer, Kathy.”

“Call me Mallory.” This was not a suggestion, but clearly an order.

“All right then. You know, your mother never did say who your father was. That name you took – Mallory. Might that be his name?”

The younger woman only stared at her, impassive.

Well, there was silence, and there was silence. Maybe she did know who her father was, and perhaps she also knew how to keep a secret.

Augusta pointed to the corner. “There’s your bags over there.” She had recovered them from the woods and made it back to the house not ten minutes before Tom Jessop had pulled into her yard with the patrol car.

“What about my dog?”

“I slipped him into the bog at the top of Finger Bayou. Fred Laurie too. Those bodies won’t stay down forever, but I guess we can worry about that later. I hope you don’t mind the dog keeping company with Fred. That animal deserved better, but it was as good a burial as I could manage on short notice. Poor demented dog, his dying was a mercy,” she said in lament for the dog and passing over the incidental death of a man.

Augusta continued to wind the bandage tight. And all the while, Mallory and the cat exchanged looks of suspicion, two distrustful beings taking one another’s measure, resolving into a standoff. And then the cat curled up in a ball, perhaps intentionally insulting her adversary by closing her eyes while the larger animal, Mallory, was still within harming distance.

“What was my dog’s name?”

“You named him with your first words,” said Augusta, tying off the bandage and binding it with adhesive. “You wouldn’t talk till you were three years old. It drove your mother nuts, but not me. I always figured you could talk – you were just taking your own sweet time.”

Augusta picked up the old bandages and dropped them into the garbage bag. “So, one day, I’m out in the yard with your mother, making her a very good offer on the house, when Tom Jessop comes by with a birthday present for you. He put that little black pup in your arms and asked what name you would give him. Well, you and your dog locked eyes and fell in love.

“Then your mother ripped into Tom for giving you a pet without first discussing it with her. Cass was mad, and Tom was real confused. Men always know when they’ve done something wrong, but they’re never sure just what it is. So all he can think of to say is, ‘But Cass, it’s a real good dog, papers and everything.’ Your mother was backing him up to the wall, explaining the error of his ways in simple words a man could understand. And then, clear as a bell, you said, ‘Good dog,’ and Cass’s mouth dropped open. She’d never heard the sound of your voice until that second. Tom laughed and said, ‘Good Dog it is.’ And Good Dog was his name from then on. And you never did shut up for the rest of that day ”

Augusta stood up and turned her back on Mallory as she sorted through the bottles and jars of herbs on the bedside table. “I know why you came back. You want to kill them all, don’t you? Everyone in that mob.” She turned back to Mallory. “Ever kill a man before? Not counting Fred. I mean a complete man, an actual person.”

Mallory said nothing and turned her face to the wall.

Augusta surmised that this was not a guilty reaction; it was just too humiliating for the girl to admit she’d never killed anyone but Fred Laurie. The old woman wondered if this child might not be the most damaged creature she had ever dragged home.

“I’m talking to you the way your mother would if she were here. She would say, ‘Now, Kathy, you know mass murder is wrong.’ However, speaking for myself, a little revenge is a necessary thing.”

She leaned over Mallory and tenderly pushed back the damp tendrils of golden curls. “You can still do evil things to them, child. If that’s what you want, I will show you how to have a real good time. I’ll tell you who’s afraid of the dark, and who’s afraid of the light. When you know where all their soft spots are, you can drag it out until you’re bloated with revenge, until you’ve sickened on it. Now won’t that be fun?”

Mallory nodded. There was a terrible purpose in those cold green eyes, but no detectable soul.

“Did your mother ever mention that I was the one who delivered you?”

Silence.

“No? Well, your mother overdid it the day she moved back into the house. Too much heavy lifting brought on an early labor. The phone wasn’t hooked up, and there was no time to run for help. You were just demanding to be born. Your little head was crowning before your mother had time to say, ‘Oh, shit!’ She said that a lot during the delivery.”

Only silence.

“Well, you’re a quiet one, aren’t you, Kathy?”

“Mallory,” she said, correcting Augusta.

“You know, you were born quiet. Oh, you were breathing normal enough. Your little fists were balled up, all pissed off at the cold air and the bright light outside of your mother’s body. But you were stubborn – you wouldn’t cry. Now that terrorized your mother. Cass was lying on the bed in a bath of sweat and blood, screaming, ‘Why doesn’t she cry?’ But despite that, I didn’t slap your newborn bottom. Though, privately, I thought you had it coming to you.”

Finally, Augusta had pried a smile out of her, but then it ghosted away so fast. Well, at least it showed that Cass’s child was still human – that was promising. So the damage had not gone bone-deep. And now there was time to wonder about the soul, and whether it might be hovering somewhere close by, searching for a way back into Kathy.