Lorna had a valuable book which was unknown and inaccessible to anyone else. She consulted this book frequently and, like a good friend, it offered words of wisdom which exactly matched her own opinions. Many people were puzzled by her references to the book, thinking she meant the Bible. And in a sense she did. It was her bible, anyway.
He was certain that Lorna’s book would have murderers listed in the index:
MURDERER: Avoid contact with, referring to, trying to find—
By now he must have broken every rule in Lorna’s book but he no longer cared. He paused between sentences, his voice trembled with emotion and he established eye contact with Annamay’s father, Howard Hyatt. They were the same age, thirty-seven, and had attended the same college. Even then they moved in different social circles. Howard was president of the students’ council and a business major who after graduating had joined an investment firm owned by his father and took over the management of the firm when his father retired. Howard was, in brief, a success.
Success was a big item in Lorna’s book.
SUCCESS: breeds crime;
chances of successful man entering kingdom of heaven nil;
love of is root of all evil;
muck and money are twin companions;
et cetera.
The references would stretch as far as Lorna’s memory and imagination. Meanwhile, success notwithstanding, he and Howard remained friends. Howard came to church a dozen or so times a year, sent his daughter, Annamay, to Sunday School and contributed generously to the building fund. And it was to Michael that Howard came after Annamay disappeared, not seeking comfort, which was impossible, but seeking an explanation of how God could let such a thing happen. Michael didn’t know. He pulled out a few old saws like God writing straight with crooked lines, but he was unconvincing and unconvinced. There was no explanation.
Four months later Annamay’s bones were found a mile or so up the creek under a pile of forest litter covered by a tangle of poison oak. The poison oak was red with autumn by that time and very pretty.
“I’ve failed you, Howard,” Michael said. “I’m sorry. If I had enough faith I could give you—”
“No, you couldn’t give, I’m not taking. The time for praying and pleading and groveling, all that’s over. What I want now is action. And let’s leave God out of it, for Christ’s sake.”
“The police have done their best.”
“Their best isn’t necessarily my best.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Start over.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Maybe you can.”
The eyes of the two men met and agreed: It was time to begin. Except for a few small bones missing from the left hand and probably carried away by some animal or bird, the bones were intact and offered no evidence of how the child had died. Various theories were advanced, some reasonable, some bizarre, all of them shot down:
She had tripped, hit her head on a boulder, become unconscious and unable to call for help. This was negated by the absence of fractures or indentations on the skull.
She had stumbled headfirst into the creek and drowned. But the creek was running very low by that time and at least twenty feet from where she was found, a distance not easily covered by a drowning victim.
She had been struck by a bolt of lightning. Electrical storms, however, were rare in the area at any time of the year, especially summer. None had been reported within a thousand miles on the day she disappeared.
She had wandered into a patch of poison oak and because she was highly susceptible to it she had died there on the spot. Chizzy shot down this last theory: “Why, she’d never go near the stuff. She knew how dangerous it was, and I’d taught her and her cousin Dru how to tell it from the wild blackberry vines. I composed a poem for the girls to memorize and made them say it over and over: Of shiny leaves in three, you must careful be.”
She hadn’t drowned, broken a leg, been overcome by poison oak or struck by lightning. She had, in the words of the coroner’s jury, died at the hands of another, a person or persons unknown.
Person or persons unknown. Michael’s eyes searched up and down the aisles, back and forth along the pews like feeble twin lights trying to probe too dark a forest.
Person or persons, you are unknown but you are here. I feel your presence. I’m going to find you.
He saw his wife, Lorna, waving a handkerchief in front of her face. Observers might think she was merely fanning herself because she was too warm but Michael recognized it as one of her more meaningful signals indicating that he was, according to the book, making a fool of himself.
He thought that she might be right and how little difference it would make one way or another. There had been a time for Lorna. Now there would be a time for Annamay.
Behind Annamay’s parents and grandfather and Chizzy, her cousin Dru sat with her mother, Vicki, and her current father, John Campbell. Dru was almost as big as her mother and a good deal more sensible.
Dru wanted to go home. She didn’t bother asking her mother who could never make a decision on the first try. She put it straight to John. He was a large informal man several years younger than his wife, and Dru treated him more like a brother.
She pulled at his sleeve. “I want to go home, John.”
“Me too.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Because your mother’s a little squirrelly. She thinks the experience will help you mature.”
“I wish she wasn’t into Experience,” Dru said wistfully. “It was more fun when she was into Pollution and we marched in protests and carried signs and things.”
“I missed that period, fortunately. I’m no good at carrying signs.”
“I could pretend to have a fainting spell,” Dru said, “and you could help me get outside.”
“Wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Face it, kid. She knows all the tricks. She probably invented most of them.”
“Vicki says we’re supposed to feel Annamay’s soul. I don’t. Do you?”
“Not keenly.”
“How are people supposed to feel a soul?”
“Beats me,” John said and chewed the moustache he’d grown to make him look older. The upper part of his moustache was blond and the bottom, where it was wet, was brown. It made him look, in Dru’s opinion, uneven.
“If I chewed myself like that,” Dru said, “I’d get holy hell.”
“What makes you think I don’t?”
“I scratch my head a lot, though.”
“Why?”
“It itches.”
“Good reason.”
“Do you think I could feel Annamay’s soul?” Dru said anxiously. “I don’t know where to start. It would help if I knew what souls did. Do you suppose they just sort of flutter around like birds, only invisible? Maybe if I listened real hard I could feel her soul fluttering its little wings.”
“Maybe. Why don’t you try?”
“I’m scared. I guess I don’t really want to hear it fluttering.”
“Neither do I particularly,” John said. “But let’s give it a chance. You listen hard, I’ll listen hard.”
Dru closed her eyes tightly and listened very hard. But all she could hear was the minister talking and Vicki sniffling into a piece of tissue and Annamay’s grandfather, sitting directly in front of her, whispering. Whispering and whispering, as if he were telling himself secrets.
Howard Hyatt reached out and touched his father’s clenched hands. “Are you all right, Dad?”
The old man didn’t answer. His eyes remained fixed on the small coffin, as fixed as the glass eye of Annamay’s doll Luella Lu which he had glued in for her himself.