His mother put a hand to her head. Rings glittered there. The gold poison ring Stephen had told her about came away with a smear of blood. She stared at her pale hand in confusion. A dark red gash lay across the white of her flesh, as if she’d been cut, but it was the blood spilling from her head. She teetered forward, attempted to push out her other hand to catch herself, but her arm nearly splayed to the side as she landed face-down on the wood floor.
Liv wrenched away.
Stephen’s bloodless face gazed down. His mother lay unmoving.
Liv pushed open the bedroom door and pounded down the stairs. Her shoes fell off, and she left them, running barefoot into the chilly night.
Chapter 41
Liv
Liv and Jesse did not sleep that night. Mack drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes alert and feverish, laughing and telling stories only to quickly slip into oblivion.
When Liv finished the story of Halloween night, Jesse frowned.
“Adele is in the trunk? Stephen’s mother?”
Liv nodded.
He sighed and rested his head heavily against his chair.
“Then what happened to Veronica?”
“I killed Veronica,” Liv confessed.
Jesse sat up and scooted to the edge of his chair, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
“You didn’t kill her,” he said. “You couldn’t have, wouldn’t have.”
Liv’s face was pale and gaunt, her brown eyes haunted.
“You don’t know me, Jesse. How can you say that?”
He looked at her earnestly.
“Because I know people, Liv. You’re not a killer.”
“After I left Stephen’s house, I was…” Liv put her face in her hands, “gone, like a draugar.”
“A draugar?” Jesse asked.
“An undead thing. A person who has died, but their body has not. I walked in a trance, and then…” Liv shut her eyes against the memory, but there etched in the darkness was Veronica, in her bloodstained dress. “She screamed at me. ‘You’re a murderer.’ Her scream was so loud, it shook me to my core.” Liv wrapped her arms around herself. “She told me she would tell her father. That I would rot in prison for the rest of my life. I lost it.”
She paused and lifted a black feather from the rug, smoothing it across her closed eyes.
“George used to say emotion is a spirit — let it in, and it will possess you. You will do unimaginable things to appease it. That spirit took hold of me, and I flew at her with this rage and grief and fear. She ran away, but I was fast and I knew the woods. And then suddenly she was falling. I realized we’d come upon the Dead Stream. I called out for her, but she’d plunged right over a ledge on the bank of the river and into that icy water.”
Liv let the feather go, and it slowly spiraled back to the rug.
“I tried to climb down, but the water was high and it was so dark. I left her, Jesse. I didn’t go for help. I should have gotten help.” She choked on the words.
“You’re right,” he murmured. “You should have, but that’s then and this is now. You’re not a murderer, Liv. You made a mistake.”
Liv wiped away her tears.
“I ran home, snuck into my house and packed a bag. I never went back. I fled like a coward.”
Jesse moved from his seat and knelt on the floor near Liv’s chair.
“My wife and son died. They drowned in a lake. After they were in the ground, I gave up. I didn’t want to live. Something in us, something that protects us, I think, tells us to run away. If we stayed, the past would haunt us. We would live there forever, locked in our despair.”
“What happens now?” Mack asked.
They’d driven Jesse’s car to a hospital in Grayling.
“You go inside and ask them to put a fresh bandage on that wound, and get some painkillers,” Jesse told him.
“And we’re going to go see my sister,” Liv added.
“So, what? I’m chopped liver? What if George shows up at my bedside tonight because I left you on your own?” Mack demanded, trying to hide a smile.
“You didn’t leave me on my own,” Liv assured him, nodding her head at Jesse. “And we’ll see you soon. Call Diane.”
“Huh?” He gave her a questioning look.
“Diane,” Jesse repeated. “You were mumbling her name all night. When you weren’t snoring, that is.”
Mack laughed and hung his head.
“I think I’ll do that.”
When they parked in front of Arlene’s house, Liv saw her sister in an upstairs window. She was brushing her daughter’s long blonde hair. The girl tilted her head back, smiling.
“I can take a walk,” Jesse told her. “Give you a minute to gather yourself?”
She smiled at the man beside her and shook her head.
“I’ve had twenty years to gather myself.”
She stepped from the car and made it halfway up the driveway when Arlene’s face was suddenly pressed close to the second-floor window. Moments later, she burst through her front door.
“Livvy,” Arlene shouted, not bothering with formalities. She rushed into Liv’s arms as if she were still a scrawny seven-year-old greeting her big sister at the schoolhouse.
“Peanut,” Liv murmured, dissolving into her sister’s arms. They hugged until Arlene’s daughters walked onto the lawn, their curios eyes studying Liv.
Arlene pulled away, her cheeks red and wet.
“Girls, come here,” she called. “I want you to meet your aunt, Liv.”
After three hours, crying and talking with Arlene, Liv and Jesse drove to the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane.
They emerged from the long drive that wound through the trees. The asylum loomed over the sloping lawns.
“I’ve heard of this place, but…” Jesse released a low whistle.
“Yeah, it’s something,” Liv whispered under her breath.
“What if he sees you?” Jesse coasted the car to a halt and glanced at Liv.
“He won’t. I’m out of his reach now.” If Jesse had insisted she explain, she would have been unable. But he didn’t.
They watched people clad in white shuffling between the buildings.
Beneath a maple tree, the leaves beginning to spot gold, Liv watched a group of children play Ring Around the Rosie. They danced in a circle and then fell into a heap on the ground.
Jesse watched them as well, grief-stricken.
He glanced at her and their eyes met, and she understood. Not all of what had propelled Jesse Kaminski to walk away from his life, but enough.
When she turned back to the asylum, she saw Stephen.
He stood outside the largest building, the one topped with sharp points, staring up at it as if he couldn’t figure out how to get inside.
“That’s him,” Liv said, pointing.
Jesse leaned forward in his seat, squinting.
“He looks fine,” Jesse murmured.
“He’s not,” Liv told him.
She handed Jesse a hag stone from George’s little bag.
Jesse lifted it and recoiled, dropping the stones.
“He’s black! He looked dead, like a charred skeleton.”
Liv nodded.
“He may have years left to live, but the darkness has taken him.”
Liv
“Norway? Are you two sure about this?” Mack asked.
Liv, Jesse and Mack stood on the deck at the train station in Traverse City. She’d bought a trunk, and she and Jesse had put their combined meager belongings inside.