Thief River Falls

39

Almost two dozen police cars staked out the two roads that made an L at the lonely corner outside the church. A handful of cops with guns drawn roamed the barren cornfields behind the trees. Intersecting lights from two sides erased the shadows and turned the black night to day. The evergreens bent as the wind blew, and waves of snow continued to pour through the light.

Denis Farrell was at the scene. So was the sheriff, who was on the front line with his officers. The media had heard the overlapping calls on the police radios, and they were on the other side of a perimeter a hundred yards away. Gawkers had begun to show up in the fields as rumors of the standoff went viral around town.

The mayor of Thief River Falls was there, too.

“Have we tried calling the church phone?” he asked Denis in a reedy voice. The mayor was a genial man in his sixties, with two little flaps of gray hair on his balding head. His black glasses were coated in snow. He kept taking them off and wiping them and shaking his head in disbelief at what was going on around him. “I mean, has anyone been able to reach her?”

“We called the church phone and Lisa’s cell phone,” Denis replied. “She’s not answering either one.”

“Well, there has to be someone who knows her, isn’t there? The woman grew up in this town, for God’s sake. We have to have someone who can talk a little sense into her.”

Denis shrugged. “I talked to Laurel March at the hospital, and I explained the situation. She’s on her way over here.”

“Is this woman a doctor?” the mayor asked. “Or is she a friend of Lisa’s? I mean, either way, I hope she can help.”

“Dr. March is a psychiatrist,” Denis replied.

“A shrink? Really?”

“Lisa’s been seeing her for the past couple of years.”

“Well, I’d like to say it’s helping, but it sure doesn’t look that way. Did Dr. March have any suggestions?”

“She said to do nothing until she got here,” Denis replied. “We don’t want to push Lisa and make her feel threatened. It’s impossible to predict how she’ll react if we do that. On the other hand, I’m worried that she may take matters into her own hands. She’s got a lot of guns and ammunition in there.”

The mayor wiped his glasses again. “You really think she’s dangerous?”

Denis scowled and lost his temper. “Dangerous? Of course, she’s dangerous! She broke into my house and took a shot at me tonight. She took a shot at the cops when she went off the road. Yesterday, she pulled a gun on two deputies at her house. She’s holed up inside the church with assault weapons, and she knows how to use them. She’s putting people at risk, and I don’t care if she’s mentally ill. You could say that about any mass shooter.”

The mayor waited for him to calm down.

“I hear you on all of that, Denis, and you’re right. The only thing I’m saying is this is Lisa Power we’re talking about. Everyone around here knows her. And this isn’t going to stay local. We’re going to have national press on this, too. This is news, Denis. I’m already getting calls. We need to take every possible step to make sure this situation doesn’t get out of hand.”

“It’s already out of hand,” Denis snapped. “Look, I know exactly who Lisa is. Believe me. No one wants to see anyone get hurt here, least of all Lisa herself. But that’s up to her. The safety of the town and our police officers comes first. If we had some nobody hunkering down in that church with a rifle, you think we’d hesitate to take a shot when we had it? Of course not. The sheriff and I aren’t giving Lisa Power any free passes. If she threatens our people, if she fires at us, she becomes a target, and we have to take her out. You know that’s the only way to go.”

The mayor exhaled long and slow. “Son of a bitch. I know what you’re saying, Denis, but you need to think about what Lisa has been through. Not only is she not some nobody, she’s also a woman who’s just gone through the worst kind of loss that a human being can experience. We need to keep that in mind.”

Denis held himself in check this time. He wanted to yell, but yelling accomplished nothing. And the fact was, he did know what Lisa had been through. He didn’t like her, but he didn’t wish her any harm. They’d been estranged for years, but she was still a part of his life. And a part of his family.

“I’m not casting blame on Lisa,” Denis told the mayor. “I know how difficult this situation is for her and how impossible it is to accept. Remember, my wife and I are going through this, too. We’re grieving, just like she is.”

The mayor reached out and put a hand on Denis’s shoulder. “Of course, you are. I wasn’t trying to imply otherwise, Denis. You and Gillian have been through hell these past few days. This whole year, really, ever since the diagnosis. I can’t imagine what this time has been like for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there any news of Harlan, by the way?” the mayor asked. “Did you find out where Lisa took the body?”

Denis nodded. He felt as if one weight had been lifted from his shoulders, only to be replaced by an even heavier burden. “Yes, I got a phone call a few minutes ago. They found him and took him back to the hospital. The funeral home will collect him shortly. So at least that mystery is solved.”

“Well, good. One small blessing. Where was he?”

Denis stared at the church and thought of Lisa inside, making a fortress out of her guns and her grief. “She took Harlan from his hospital room to the cemetery. A groundskeeper dug up the grave tonight and found the boy’s body there, wrapped in a sheet. Really, I don’t know why I didn’t think to send someone over there before now. I should have guessed that’s what she would do. After Harlan died, she took him away from the hospital to be with his father. She buried him with Danny.”

Laurel rushed to get ready. She had to get to the church.

She already had Lisa’s clinical file open on the desk in her hospital office, and she’d been rereading every sentence of her notes from the past two years, looking for clues, looking for new ideas. She went over everything. Everything Lisa had told her about losing Madeleine and the rest of her family. Everything Lisa had told her about Harlan as her son’s cancer got worse month by month. As the treatments produced no results, only misery.

Until two nights ago in the hospital.

Until the end.

Laurel felt helpless. She hadn’t felt that way often in her career. She told herself that she’d guided a lot of patients through terrible loss, but she’d failed Lisa. She had never imagined the possibility of a crisis like the one Lisa was experiencing. She’d tried to contain it; she’d hoped she could reach Lisa before grief carried her across a line from which she’d never return. But Laurel was worried now that it was too late.

Lisa was ready to die for the child she called Purdue.

She turned off the lamp on her desk and grabbed her coat from a hook near the window. She needed to hurry. The office was dark, and the snow was like silver through the window. She pulled on her coat, but before she could leave, a shadow filled the doorway.

A man was there.

“Noah,” Laurel said.

She crossed the short space between them and put her arms around Lisa’s brother. She felt a desperate sense of relief seeing him, as if maybe there was still hope. Maybe with him here, Lisa could still be saved.

“I’m so glad you came,” Laurel said. “Did Lisa call you? Do you know what’s going on?”

Noah shook his head. He looked at a loss, not sure what to say. It had been more than a year since Laurel had seen him, more than a year since Noah had run away from Thief River Falls. Of course, Laurel knew what Lisa didn’t, that Noah had been on the verge of suicide before he moved away. That he’d sat in Lisa’s basement with a loaded gun in his mouth. The only thing Lisa knew was that a month after her brother had bolted from her life, her only son had been diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer, and she’d been left to deal with it alone.

“I don’t know anything,” Noah said, “but I can feel that Lisa’s in trouble. Do you know what it is?”

“It’s Harlan,” Laurel told him softly.

Noah stared at her, his eyes widening with horror. He didn’t want to hear it, and he didn’t want to believe it. “Oh my God. You can’t be serious. Not him, too. How bad is it?”

“He passed away two nights ago, Noah. Cancer. I’m so sorry.”

Noah turned away from her and slammed one of his fists into the office wall. A keening, desperate wail squeezed from his throat. When he turned back, his entire face had dissolved into fury and tears. He could barely speak. The skin on his hand was a mess of blood.

“I thought the Dark Star was me,” he murmured in a strangled voice. “I really did. I thought I was the curse, that I was the reason they all died.”

“There’s no such thing as a curse,” Laurel told him.

“Well, I didn’t believe that. I thought if I left, the tragedies would go away. And instead this happens. I leave Lisa and Harlan alone, and this happens. My God.”

Laurel saw something different in Noah’s face. Maturity. He’d aged more than just a year in the time he’d been gone. For a man who was nearly forty, he’d been mostly a child his whole adult life. With each loss in their family, Noah had grown more vulnerable, forcing his sister to shoulder the burdens by herself. Lisa had always been the strong one. But that was then. Laurel was staring at a new man. He was torn apart by guilt, but he wasn’t running anymore.

She took Noah’s elbow and led him down the gloomy hospital corridor. The overnight lights were turned low. They reached the empty room where she’d confronted Lisa earlier in the evening, and she stopped, because Noah needed to see it.

“He died here,” she murmured. “This was Harlan’s room.”

Noah stepped inside. His gaze was drawn to the bed, and he inhaled sharply. “That poor, sweet kid.”

“I know.”

“What did my family do, Laurel? How did we piss off God like this? I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the Dark Star took Harlan, too.”

“Lisa put him on a DNR order about two weeks ago,” Laurel told him. “She wanted him to go peacefully. And he did. He passed away two nights ago in her arms. We’d known it was likely for some time, and I’d tried to get her ready for it, but some things you can never really be ready for. After the boy died, Lisa was alone with the body, and she had — well, she had a breakdown. She wrapped up Harlan in a sheet and took him away from the hospital. She took him to the cemetery. She dug up the ground above Danny’s grave, and she put Harlan there with his father.”

“Of course she did,” Noah murmured. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. God, I can’t imagine this. Lisa must be going through hell. I need to go to her. Where is she? Is she at home?”

Laurel hunted for a way to tell him. To explain. She felt choked for words, and Noah realized in her silence that something was very wrong.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice darkening with worry. “What’s going on? Tell me.”

“It’s not over,” Laurel murmured.

Noah took her by the shoulders. She could see panic rising in his face. “What are you saying?”

“She needs you, Noah,” Laurel told him. “She needs you right now. The Dark Star isn’t finished. It’s trying to take Lisa, too.”