The cross suddenly felt hot, and Kim jerked her hand away. "If they never found it, how does anyone know she killed it? How does anyone know there even was a baby?"
For the first time, a look of uncertainty clouded Luke's face, but he answered: "If there wasn't a baby, how come you can hear it cry at night? And how come it cries if its ma didn't kill it? I'm telling you, everybody knows what happened. My uncle says-"
Kim felt a surge of anger. How could this boy know what had happened here? He hadn't been here! And how come he kept saying "everybody knows"? "I bet none of it happened," she cut in before Luke could repeat whatever his uncle had said. "What have you ever seen yourself? What have you actually heard? And if you were close enough to see or hear anything, what were you doing? Just because nobody was living here doesn't mean it wasn't private property!" Luke Roberts's face flushed scarlet, and Kim could see his right hand clench into a fist. "What are you going to do, hit me?" she asked, her eyes locking onto his as if daring him to raise his fist.
Luke, shocked into silence by Kim's outburst, lurched back against the balustrade, lost his balance, and tumbled over. As he screamed with terror, the fingers of his right hand grabbed on to the railing. For a second he hung suspended from one arm, his left hand groping wildly before closing on one of the posts that supported the banister, but he quickly began to lose his grip, and for an instant that seemed to stretch into an eternity, his eyes-glazed with fear-fastened on Kim.
She knew that if he fell, the image of his eyes, terrified and accusing, would be burned into her memory forever. The horror of the moment paralyzed her, but in her mind she screamed out to Jared to help Luke.
As if he'd heard her, Jared darted to the railing, his own strong hands closing on Luke's wrists before the other boy's grip gave way. Then he hauled Luke back over the balustrade.
"I-I'm sorry," Kim stammered. "I didn't mean-"
But now that he was safe, Luke's terror was transmuting into anger. "What the hell did I do? I was just telling you what I heard! Christ-I coulda broken my neck!" As he started down the stairs, he glowered back at Kim. "Maybe your aunt wasn't the only crazy one around here."
Before Kim could reply, he had slammed the front door behind him.
CHAPTER 8
The silence that fell over the old house that night was far deeper than any of its occupants had ever experienced before, and except for Molly-who fell asleep almost the moment Janet laid her in her crib-each of them lay awake for a long time. They listened to the silence.
No insects chirped.
No animals rustled in the darkness outside.
Even the ancient frame of the house itself uttered no sound to disturb the quiet.
Yet each of them heard echoes of voices in the silence; each of them found eyes watching them from the darkness.
For Janet, it was the eyes of Jake Cumberland, reaching out to her from the deep shadows of the magnolia tree outside the cemetery. They held her in thrall. And the voice was Alma Morgan's, telling her that Cora Conway had been perfectly sane. But Corinne Beckwith's voice, too, echoed softly in the night, whispering of a baby who would have been her husband's cousin-if it had lived.
If it had ever existed at all.
Her eyes open, Janet scanned the darkness, as if somehow the truth of what might have happened in this house forty years ago might be hidden in the black folds of the night.
But the darkness, like the silence, kept its secrets.
As the night crept on, and sleep continued to elude her, Janet felt an urge to reach out to Ted, to slip her hand into his if for no other reason that to feel the comfort of knowing she wasn't alone in the silence and the darkness. But it had been so long since she'd welcomed his touch that she could no longer bring herself to reach out to him. When sleep finally embraced her, she lay with her back to her husband.
For Ted, it was the darkly penetrating eyes of Father MacNeill that glowered at him out of the darkness, the priest's voice that echoed in the silence. "A hotel?… I hope you're prepared for a fight on that one!" But far more than the threatening words, it was the look he'd seen in the cleric's eyes that kept Ted awake in the silence and darkness of the night. The look flared up the moment Ted told him he wouldn't be coming to his church, wouldn't be listening to him preach every Sunday morning, and though the priest only let him see it for a few seconds, it was a look Ted had seen before.
It was the same look he'd seen in Frank Gilman's eyes the day he'd lost his job.
The same look he'd seen in Tony's eyes just before he'd walked out of the bar to go to Gilman's office.
The same look he'd seen in the eyes of so many people.
All the men who'd ever fired him.
All the others who'd refused to hire him.
All the bartenders who'd poured him drinks.
All the men who once had been his friends.
He'd seen it in the eyes of his father.
He'd even seen it in the eyes of his son.
It was a look he'd learned to recognize long ago, when he was still a boy. A look that told him he did not belong, that there was something everyone else knew, something everyone else shared, that they would never share with him.
For a while, in the first years of his marriage, he hadn't noticed it in Janet's eyes. She'd hidden it well at first, but as the years went on he'd started catching glimpses of it. She tried to hide it, but he'd seen it clearly enough.
A look of superiority.
No understanding, nor pity, nor even sympathy.
Only superiority. And something else.
It rose up out of the darkness, and though he'd never let himself recognize it before, in the silence of the night he finally knew exactly what it was he'd seen so clearly in the priest's eyes that afternoon.
And not just the priest's eyes, but everyone else's as well.
Contempt.
Their eyes had always said it alclass="underline"
You don't belong here.
You're not part of us.
We don't want you here.
It had been that way all his life, for as long as he could remember. From the time his mother left him when he was only a baby, until his father died while he was still in school.
Through all the places he'd never fit in, all the jobs where they'd found reasons to fire him.
Never, ever, had he felt like he belonged.
But here-in this house-he did belong. This house had been his uncle's house, and his grandfather's house, and his great-grandfather's house. And now it was his house.
And he belonged!
A burning fury at the injustices he'd suffered began to glow inside Ted Conway. As he lay in the quiet of the house-his house-he swore he would never let it happen again.
This time, he would show them all.
He would restore this old wreck-make it more beautiful than it was when it was built. And he would have his hotel.
He would have it, no matter who tried to stop him, and it would succeed. It would succeed so well that no one-not the priest, not his wife, not his son, not anyone-would ever dare hold him in contempt again.
Reaching out in the darkness, he slid open the drawer of the nightstand. His fingers closed on the pint of bourbon he'd hidden away that afternoon.
Now, in the silence and darkness of the night, he opened it and held the bottle to his lips.
I'll show them, he swore to himself once more as the warmth of the fiery liquid fueled the rage inside him. I'll show them all!
It was Luke Roberts's eyes that kept Kim awake that night, for every time she closed her eyes, she saw them again. Saw the terror, and the accusation.
And heard his words in the silence that the darkness had brought: "If there wasn't a baby, how come you can hear it cry at night? And how come it cries if its ma didn't kill it?"