"Great, then," he said. "I'll have her back in time for lunch."
"I'll make a casserole," Katy said. "Table for four?"
Jett surreptitiously shook her head. Mark was beginning to see why his daughter was freaked out. The woman who had been his wife for ten years and girlfriend for a couple of years before that had become a completely new woman in the four months she'd been in Solom. Perhaps this was the real Katy, and the one he'd known had been inhibited and repressed. Though that made no sense, because Katy had always been independent and, if anything, a bit too strong-headed. Her head now seemed to be filled with little more than the back pages of Good Housekeeping.
"I don't think I can stay for lunch," Mark said. "I've got some clients to check on this evening. Self-employed people work seven days a week, remember?"
Katy smiled, but it wasn't the sardonic grin she always flashed when she was pissed about his workaholic ways. "That's nice. Gordon is a hard worker, too."
"It's not work when you enjoy it, isn't that right, Mark?" Gordon said. "Religion fascinates me, and faith is even more mystifying. As Mark Twain said 'Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.' "
"Well, may we all be dogs in the next life," Mark said wishing he'd smoked a joint before meeting Jett's new stepdad.
Katy was determined to pull off a nice souffle, figuring Jett would talk Mark into staying for lunch after all. Gordon was attending one of the churches, probably the True Light Tabernacle, and she figured he'd be hungry afterward. Part of her was also hoping to impress Mark, give him yet another reason to regret her loss. Seeing her ex-husband had shocked her in ways she never would have expected, and she wondered if Jett had planned the rendezvous so Katy wouldn't have time to psychologically prepare for his arrival. Katy had done a good job of hiding her feelings. The physical attraction was still there, but for a grown woman, attraction was tied to love or at least like.
She opened a drawer to find an opener for the can of evaporated milk. The key lay in the drawer, among measuring spoons, whisks, peelers, and spatulas. Someone had moved it. She'd left it in the other drawer, the miscellaneous drawer that was rarely opened.
She couldn't resist picking up the key. A floral smell drifted from the hallway, and barely audible footsteps trailed up the stairs. Katy frowned at the eggs she'd cracked into a metal bowl. Well, if she hurried, the eggs wouldn't go bad.
Katy ascended the stairs, following the faint aromatic thread of lilacs. It led to the linen closet. Someone had left the door open, and the attic access was ajar. Katy perched on her tiptoes and pulled the string, and the access door yawned wide, the ladder unfolding as the door dropped. Key clutched in her fist, Katy climbed into the darkness above.
Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the morning sun piercing the ventilation shaft on the east gable and throwing yellow stripes across the attic. Dust floated in the sunlight, and a stray wasp cut a slow arc in the air. Katy stooped under the low rafters and navigated the clutter until she came to the dresser with the dusty mirror. The silver-handled hairbrush was still on the dresser, with an old stool pushed in front of the mirror as if someone had been checking her reflection.
"Rebecca?" Katy's voice was muffled by the insulation, furniture, and boxes of old clothing that lay scattered and stacked like a museum to unwanted things.
A rustle arose from inside one of the boxes.
"I don't want to take your place," Katy said.
"He wants you."
Katy wasn't sure whether she'd actually heard the words or if the breeze had whispered through the ventilation screen.
The access door slammed shut with a rusty scream of springs and hinges, making the attic even darker.
Katy backed away from the sudden noise. She bumped into the long wooden box that contained the strange outfit she'd discovered on her earlier visit. She forced herself not to think of the box as a coffin. The clothes inside had probably been the relics of a previous Smith generation, left to molder as moth bait. Except, why had the clothes moved?
The surface of the mirror grew bright with collected light. Katy glanced from the mirror to the cramped attic. The reflection was somehow different from the reality that pushed itself against the silvered glass. She fell to her knees, looking from the mirror to the dimly lit attic, trying to comprehend the juxtaposition of elements. There lay the golden strips of sunlight, the oblique darkness of the old bureau, the array of boxes, and the slanted brown rafters. What was missing?
She tore her gaze away from the mirror. An image of Jett popped into her head: Jett under the blankets in her bedroom, confused eyes wide in panic. Her daughter had been trying to tell her something.
Scarecrow creature. Man in the black hat. Goats.
Why had Jett called Mark?
Katy should have been able to protect both of them. That was why she'd gotten divorced, why she'd married Gordon. Why she'd given up a banking career. None of it meant anything without Jett.
Sacrifice. It meant the same thing as "motherhood." Fathers never understood. They shot their sperm and went about their business.
But what had Katy been doing these past few weeks?
She looked down at her clothes. This wasn't her. The clothes didn't fit. They itched.
She shook the sleeve of her dress and bits of straw fell out.
The key was warm in her hand, almost electric.
The light shifted with the rising of the sun, and a shaft of yellow fell across the dark slot in the middle of the bureau. A keyhole glared in the brass workings beneath the double handles.
"Open me" Rebecca said, the words hollow and muffled, as if spoken from the depths of a coffin.
"You're dead."
"But you're not" One of the hens cackled in the barnyard outside, a frantic and rattling punctuation to the eerie stillness of the attic. "Not yet, anyway."
Katy approached the bureau, avoiding the gravity of the mirror. The key lifted her hand as if magnetized and she followed it between the dusty cardboard boxes and linen-draped humps of furniture. She pushed the key into the bureau lock, or else the key pulled her hand, she couldn't be sure. Then the lock was turning and the doors groaned open like a death angel spreading its wings.
Chapter Twenty-six
"I'll take Jessica now," Gordon said.
Mark looked up from the table. Jett had plowed her way through a glass of chocolate milk, half a Spanish omelet, two strips of bacon, a piece of white-bread toast slathered with margarine, and still had a cream-cheese cinnamon bun at her elbow. Mark was drinking coffee, the house brand, and wished the woodstove had been stoked recently. He was not used to the mountain chill, and the general store had obvious shortcomings in weatherproofing. The twin aromas of fried liver mush and onions fought for dominance in the air. However, the place was not without charm, if you didn't count the six-foot-four guy standing over him who set off every bullshit alarm in Mark's body.
"I thought I was supposed to take her back to your house," Mark said.
"Plans have changed," Gordon said. His smile was midway between smug and confrontational and he was outfitted in his Sunday best, collar stiff and uncomfortable, the kind of clothes built for sitting upright in church or lying prone in a coffin. Gordon's face was flushed, as if he'd jogged a half mile before walking in the door.
Jett looked at Mark with those wide, pleading eyes. He'd let her down plenty already. He'd fucked up with the drags, he didn't take the steps that could have saved his marriage and his family, he hadn't grabbed on to the things that were most important in his life. And now they were drifting out of his reach, like fairy dust or pot smoke, insubstantial, unreal, pieces of a lost and long-ago dream.