This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 13

NOW

"Suicide?” Kane asks me. “You think your parents might’ve had a pact?”

“Maybe that was their Plan B if the Rush didn’t happen.”

Mara’s face turns almost as pale as the whiteboard. “They wouldn’t—” Then she tilts her head like she’s remembering something troubling. “I overheard them talking on March nineteenth.”

The date is like a sledgehammer. I set my breakfast plate aside, my appetite fleeing.

“What was March nineteenth?” Kane asks cautiously, fork poised above his omelet.

“The four-year anniversary of John’s death,” I tell him.

“Oh. Sorry, man, I forgot the date.”

“What did they say?” I ask Mara, dreading the answer.

“Dad said he hated living in this house, with all the memories. Mom said she still expects to come downstairs and see John at the table reading the back of the cereal boxes, lining them up the way he used to do.” Mara twists the cap of the whiteboard marker, making it squeak. “Then Dad got real quiet, and finally he said that he didn’t want to live in this world anymore.”

The sentiment doesn’t surprise me, only its declaration. “Dad said all that in English?” I ask her. “Not in Bibleish?”

“I wish. He quoted some verses, but I don’t remember what he said, just what he meant.”

“Not wanting to live in this world anymore?” Kane shakes his head and spears a piece of green pepper. “I hate to say it, but that does sound suicidal.”

I can’t exactly blame Mara for not mentioning this before, since I never told her about my own extremely concrete grounds for suspicion. “There’s a difference between thinking the world is a cruel place and actually planning suicide.”

Mara shows her dark bangs back from her forehead and starts to pace. “If Dad wanted to leave this world, he probably thought the Rush was the solution. Let Jesus come and make it all better.”

“That is Jesus’s job,” I remark only half-ironically. “They don’t call him Savior because he passes out coupons.”

“But when the Rush didn’t happen,” she continues in a rising voice, “they went to Plan B.”

“Obviously.” Kane gestures to the ceiling. “I mean, they’re gone. But what if reality is actually a combination of options three and four? They ran away voluntarily with Sophia, who’ll make them all kill themselves.”

“No way.” My stomach adds a lurch to my protest. “That’s insane.”

“It happens in cults, especially with these End Times people. If Sophia pretends the Rush really happened, and then her followers turn up alive, it’ll prove she’s a fraud. But if they all conveniently disappear, then it’ll seem like they were Rushed.”

“That’s sick,” Mara says.

“It’s happened before, sort of. There was that guy in the seventies—what was his name?” Kane snaps his fingers. “Reverend Jones. He had his cult join him at this place he named after himself in South America. When the authorities started closing in on him, he passed out poisoned Kool-Aid to his followers. They all drank it and died.”

“Kane, shut up. You’re freaking my sister out.” And me, too.

“Did they know they were killing themselves?” Mara shrills at him.

“Yeah, they’d even rehearsed it once. Though I’m sure the babies didn’t know.”

“Babies?” She sways a little, like she’s going to pass out.

I’ve got to rein her in and stop Kane’s history lesson. “Mara, you met Sophia. She was a little wifty, but she didn’t seem like a homicidal maniac.”

“Do any homicidal maniacs seem like homicidal maniacs?”

“We can’t panic.” I get up to join her at the board. “The whole point of making this list was to be logical. That’s why we didn’t argue about whether the Rush actually happened. I say we stick with number three, they ran away, until we have a good reason to believe that they committed—” I can’t force out the word. “They wouldn’t—” Yes, he would. “Mom wouldn’t do that to us.”

“The question is,” Kane says slowly, “would she let your dad end his life without her? They’ve been married how long now?”

“Thirty years this August. They renewed their wedding vows on their twenty-fifth, right after I turned thirteen.” Mara strides over to the mantel and lifts the eight-by-ten framed photo, the one I was staring at last night. “John was here at the time. He hadn’t gone to Afghanistan yet.”

Her voice chokes with tears again, but before I can figure out how to comfort her, she gasps. “Wedding bands! the bed!”

She drops the photo on the sofa and races up the stairs, stumbling halfway up. I look at Kane, who shrugs and reluctantly sets down his half-finished breakfast so we can follow.

We find her in my parents’ room, peeling back the maroon-andgold bedspread, with the careful precision of a medical examiner uncovering a corpse.

No rings.

“Wait a second.” Mara lifts the gold-cross necklace from Mom’s pillow. “David, this isn’t hers.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s not twenty-two karat. It’s a cheap knockoff.”

“So someone else laid out their clothes, probably after your parents left.” Kane runs his finger along the edge of Dad’s tall mahogany dresser. “But why? Just to mess with you two? Or did they think you’d believe in the Rush and call the media?”

“No idea,” Mara says. “I wonder if any other Rushers got the pajama treatment.”

My phone buzzes in the pocket of my sweatpants.

A text from Bailey: Are you awake? Matinee?

I answer without consulting Mara. We need help, and I need Bailey.

Don’t buy tickets—just come over.