“You’re living in the old Megan place?” Paul said after he returned from the bathroom and Odd told him. He whistled. “Brave.”
“I didn’t know I was being brave. I didn’t know anything had happened.”
Odd looked disgusted. “Who sold you that house?” he asked. “No, let me guess. Call. Call Cartright.”
Gregory nodded.
“It’s against Arizona law to sell a place without informing the buyer that there’s been a murder there, but Call’d sell his own sister to cannibals if there was a penny to be had, so it don’t surprise me none.” He squinted up at Gregory. “You could sue his ass, you know. Get out of the contract. You don’t want that house, you can—”
“No, we want it, all right.”
Paul frowned. “Why, in God’s name?”
“Well, for one thing, we’re all moved in, we just got settled. I don’t want to have to look around for another house, move again, and go through all that stress. Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts—”
“Who does?” Paul said. “But it’s just the thought that all that shit happened where your kids are sleeping, where your wife takes a bath, where you eat breakfast. Hell, I’d be thinking about it all the time. I’m not superstitious or anything, but that doesn’t mean I want to buy Jeffrey Dahmer’s refrigerator and store my milk in it. It’s sick.”
Odd nodded. “Besides, that’s why the last people moved out. They heard things.”
“Things?”>
“I don’t know if it was their imagination or what, but the people said there were knocking sounds in the middle of the night. And voices. I don’t know whether it was real ghosts or just their own minds playing tricks on them, but whatever the cause, they couldn’t stay there.” He paused. “Sometimes the demons in your head are worse than anything outside.”
“We haven’t heard anything,” Gregory said.
“Yet.”
He smiled. “Yet.”
“Just the same…”
“I’ll admit it’s not something I really wanted to hear. And I would’ve been much happier if no one had told me. But I’m not going to panic and pull up stakes and disrupt my entire life because of it. Hell, someone’s probably died in almost every old house.”
“Just the same…” Paul said.
“Well, keep it to yourself,” Odd suggested. “Don’t tell your family. That’s my advice. What they don’t know can’t hurt ’em.”
Gregory nodded and thought of his mother blessing the house before they could go in, cleansing it of evil spirits. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
2
The Molokan church hosted a welcoming get-together, an end-of-the-summer barbecue with steak and shashlik. Gregory was mingling and talking with people he hadn’t seen in years—mostly the parents of childhood church friends, who seemed to be the only Russians who had not moved away. His mother was in heaven, the center of attention, laughing happily and talking loudly, more animated than Julia had ever seen her.
Julia herself felt slightly out of it. She smiled and chatted and pretended to be enjoying herself, but the truth was that she had never liked these sorts of functions, and the unwritten Molokan mandate that every shower, wedding, funeral, or party put on by or for a church member must be attended by everyone in the congregation had been one of the many things she had rebelled against. Even as a child, even in L.A., she had not enjoyed Molokan mixers, had always done her best to avoid them, and here in the boonies of Arizona, with people she didn’t know and with whom she had no intention of socializing, the chore as even less pleasant.
The kids were not having a great time, either. There were no other children or teenagers, and Sasha, Adam and Teo stuck together, hovering on the edge of the small churchyard, eating from paper plates, talking among themselves and gazing longingly out toward the freedom of the street. In addition to being old, everyone here was speaking in Russian, and Julia knew her son and daughters were bored and desperate to leave. Especially Sasha.
She understood how they felt—she felt it herself—but this afternoon was not for them, it was for Gregory’s mother, and the least they could do was be polite and put up with it. It would all be over in a few hours.
A huge copper samovar stood on the lonely picnic table in the middle of the yard, and she walked over to get herself some chai. She remembered as a child using sugar cubes to build a bridge across her cup, placing them in a row and wedging them in, pouring the tea over the bridge to dissolve it. It was an almost universal rite for Russian children, and she had taught her own children how to do it, though none of them had ever been big tea drinkers and the novelty had worn off fairly quickly.
Gregory sidled up next to her, nudged her with his shoulder. He poured himself some chai. “Having a good time?”
“Oh, wonderful,” she said.
He laughed. “We’ll bail as soon as other people start leaving.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. Let your mother have her fun.”
“You sure?”
“I’m willing to stay to the bitter end. Anything for the sake of family unity.”
“Thanks.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I owe you one.”
She smiled. “You can pay me back tonight.”
He grinned, gave her a quick squeeze. “Happy to.”
Gregory downed his tea, poured himself another cup, then asked her to come and meet Semyon Konyov, the man who had been his father’s best friend. She accompanied him across the yard to a spot under the cottonwood tree where a group of old men stood around eating shashlik. Introductions were made, polite questions were asked, then the conversation turned to church matters, and she excused herself and walked back to the samovar. She didn’t really want anything more to drink, but the picnic table was in a centralized location and offered her a perfect vantage point from which to observe almost everything that was going on. She saw three old women huddled together near the back fence, holding their hands over their mouths as they talked, gossiping. She saw one old man with a gray beard down to his waist, obviously drunk, loudly denouncing both the Russian and the American governments for perceived slights to himself and his family. She saw a group of men gathered around the barbecue, arguing vigorously over something she could not make out.
In the doorway of the church, Gregory’s mother was emerging from the building, followed closely by Jim Petrovin. The two of them walked down the steps, over to the barbecue, and Julia watched the minister hover around her mother-in-law. Although she’d told Gregory that he was just being paranoid and overprotective, she found herself revising that analysis. He was right, she thought. The minister was after his mother and was making a concerted effort to rekindle the relationship that had ended all those years ago.
Julia understood how Gregory felt, but she had to admit that it was kind of cute, these two old people taking another stab at romance this late in the game. It was also kind of sad. It was clear that there had been no one else in Jim Petrovin’s life all this time and that her mother-in-law’s return was the fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy.
Gregory’s mother happened to glance over just at that moment, their eyes met, and they both looked instantly away, embarrassed.
Finally the party began to wind down. Couples started leaving, drunks were ushered into vehicles and driven home, leftover food was taken into the church.
Julia and Gregory stood with their kids, saying good-bye, thanking everyone for welcoming them to McGuane. They were polite and everyone was polite to them, but there was a reserved formality to the way in which they were addressed, a definite distance between themselves and everyone else. She’d noticed it earlier, and at first she’d put it down to her own aversion to such events as this, but the truth was that the McGuane Molokans were acting somewhat… secretive.