The judge began to cry.
Hannah appeared in her purple bathrobe. "This is my fault. I forgot to drug his whiskey."
"Get the key," said Oren. "Unlock the door."
The housekeeper shuffled off in fuzzy purple slippers to return minutes later, wearing sensible shoes and holding the key, two jackets, Oren's cowboy boots and a whiskey bottle. "First aid," she said, by way of explaining the bottle. She wrapped one jacket around the judge's shoulders.
After pulling on his boots, Oren unlocked the door and placed his father's hand on the knob so the old man could open it by himself.
Once outside, Hannah pulled two small flashlights from the deep pockets of her robe. Guided by these beams, she and Oren followed the sleepwalker down the porch steps. They woke the yellow stray in passing, and now they were four. The dog made no sound as he trotted along at the judge's side, only lifting his snout, sniffing for a scent of change in the air, something odd and maybe dangerous.
Inside the garage, his father became anxious again. The Mercedes was locked.
The housekeeper folded her arms. "I'm not giving up that key."
The judge let go of the door handle. Two by two, Oren and Hannah followed the old man and the dog. They left the garage and walked down the driveway to the road. After a hike of ten minutes, the small parade turned onto a dead-end street with only one address. The graveyard gate was open, no locks to thwart Henry Hobbs on his mission, but there were many obstacles, small marble stones to trip over and large monuments to collide with.
"Don't worry," said Hannah, reading Oren's mind again, annoying habit. "This part of the cemetery hasn't changed at all. Whatever year the judge is walking through, he'll do just fine. It's probably daylight in his dreams."
The judge neatly skirted every headstone along his path and came to rest before the Hobbs family plot, which held a hundred years of generations. He unlatched the small iron gate and stepped inside to sit down by the grave of Oren's mother. The yellow stray sprawled on the grass beside him.
"Compared to Horatio, that dog is a freaking genius," said Hannah. "He knows when to be still."
Oren entered the gated plot and sat down tailor fashion. By the light of the moon, he watched his father's face. The judge woke from the dream to see that it was not day but night, and he wore the same shy expression Oren had seen at the close of the last episode. The judge stared at his wife's headstone and then discovered his son seated beside him. This time, there could be no retreat into sleep and forgetfulness.
Finally, wits gathered, the old man said, "When will they give Josh back to us so we can have a proper funeral?"
"It won't be long," said Oren.
"I guess you believe me now." Hannah stood behind the judge, arms folded in a pose of I told you so. "You were walking in your sleep."
"I suppose that would explain a lot." The judge fished through the pockets of his jacket.
Hannah ended this search by producing two cigars and a pack of matches from thin air. After handing over the whiskey bottle, she further amazed them by opening her hands to reveal a tiny glass standing on each palm. All of the housekeeper's clothes had deep pockets, the props of her best magic act: producing what was needed at the moment, be it bandages for a boy's skinned knee or shot glasses.
Oren took a proffered cigar from his father and unwrapped the cellophane. "I've never smoked one before."
"Nothing to it." The judge bit off one end of his own cigar, and his son did the same. He struck a match and lit both stogies, warning, "Don't inhale, boy. Just let it run around your taste buds, and then let it out." He opened his mouth to blow a perfect smoke ring in the still air. And then he blew a ring within a ring, a thing that had once delighted his son.
And it still did.
"Hannah can do three," said the judge. "But she never upstaged me in front of you and Josh."
"You talk in your sleep, sir." Oren filled his mouth with smoke and exhaled it with his next words. "You asked for another miracle."
"Well, that can't be right. I'm opposed to all things mystical. I most particularly do not hold with miracles." The judge looked around to see that Hannah had wandered away to visit the gravestones of old friends. He poured whiskey into the shot glasses and handed one to his son.
"Sir, you asked for another miracle."
"But there never was a first-" The judge, lost in thought, stared at his wife's gravestone. "No, I'm wrong. There was a miracle-more like a joke. The miracle of the rain-it happened right here. I know you remember the Reverend Pursey."
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Anointing you as a teenage archangel-that wasn't the craziest thing he ever did. But I had a few words with him over that." The judge smiled at this memory. "That loony old bugger. Oh, but what a showman. He packed his church every Sunday. One time, he accused Ad Winston of being the devil himself. Addison was so pleased. A lawyer can't buy advertising like that."
"Sir? You went to church?"
"No, I never do. But I'm not your typical atheist, either." Henry Hobbs absently stroked the dog's fur, and the animal loved him back, nuzzling his hand. "The way I see it-it doesn't matter if God invented man or man invented God. It's a done deal, and you might as well try to uninvent the isosceles triangle. But a bona fide miracle defies logic in both camps. A man-made god precludes miraculous acts. And a true god wouldn't allow them. Why shake man's faith in sweet reason? Take the Reverend Pursey. He was shaken witless by the miracle of the rain."
Oren exhaled a blue cloud and sipped from his shot glass. In faraway places, this was something he had imagined time and again, sharing smoke and whiskey with his father and listening to the old man's oral history of family and town.
The judge slapped the ground with one hand. "Pursey's miracle happened right here on this very spot. It was the day of your mother's funeral. Well, the sky's clouding up. The rain's coming any minute, and everybody knows it-umbrellas at the ready everywhere you look. And the Reverend Pursey's building up to the high point in his eulogy. Then the first raindrops fell. Oh, how that pissed him off. He looks up at the sky, a real nasty look like a warning. Then it begins to pour-a solid wall of rain. Well, Pursey's drenched, and people are surprised he doesn't drown when he opens his mouth. His eyes roll up toward heaven. He shakes one fist and yells, 'Knock it off!'
"And the rain-just-stopped.
"Damndest thing, a rare thing, but not unheard-of. You see, the rain didn't taper off. It was more like a giant faucet in the sky got turned off." The judge snapped his fingers. "That quick. So the miracle of the rain figured into a lot of church sermons after that. And then it became the punch line to a joke on a crazy old fool. Every time it rained, you'd see people stop on the street to shake their fists and yell at the sky and laugh- how they laughed. Now, if that's a miracle in your book, I'd have to say your standards are really low."
Father and son smoked cigars by the light of the moon and shared the whiskey for as long as it lasted.
Addison Winston aimed his flashlight beam at a patch of ground behind the stable. He held out the shovel to Isabelle. "Shall we dig it up?"
"You put it there."
"Ask your mother who buried it. Oh, that's right. You can't, can you? It might send her poor fragile mind right over the screaming edge. Belle, you have a first-rate brain, and this is simple logic. If I had evidence to hide, why would I bury it on my own land? I would've thrown it into the sea. But your mother's clearly an amateur in all things criminal. Or maybe her mind wasn't working right the night she buried it."