“Well, good. One small blessing. Where was he?”
Denis stared at the church and thought of Lisa inside, making a fortress out of her guns and her grief. “She took Harlan from his hospital room to the cemetery. A groundskeeper dug up the grave tonight and found the boy’s body there, wrapped in a sheet. Really, I don’t know why I didn’t think to send someone over there before now. I should have guessed that’s what she would do. After Harlan died, she took him away from the hospital to be with his father. She buried him with Danny.”
Laurel rushed to get ready. She had to get to the church.
She already had Lisa’s clinical file open on the desk in her hospital office, and she’d been rereading every sentence of her notes from the past two years, looking for clues, looking for new ideas. She went over everything. Everything Lisa had told her about losing Madeleine and the rest of her family. Everything Lisa had told her about Harlan as her son’s cancer got worse month by month. As the treatments produced no results, only misery.
Until two nights ago in the hospital.
Until the end.
Laurel felt helpless. She hadn’t felt that way often in her career. She told herself that she’d guided a lot of patients through terrible loss, but she’d failed Lisa. She had never imagined the possibility of a crisis like the one Lisa was experiencing. She’d tried to contain it; she’d hoped she could reach Lisa before grief carried her across a line from which she’d never return. But Laurel was worried now that it was too late.
Lisa was ready to die for the child she called Purdue.
She turned off the lamp on her desk and grabbed her coat from a hook near the window. She needed to hurry. The office was dark, and the snow was like silver through the window. She pulled on her coat, but before she could leave, a shadow filled the doorway.
A man was there.
“Noah,” Laurel said.
She crossed the short space between them and put her arms around Lisa’s brother. She felt a desperate sense of relief seeing him, as if maybe there was still hope. Maybe with him here, Lisa could still be saved.
“I’m so glad you came,” Laurel said. “Did Lisa call you? Do you know what’s going on?”
Noah shook his head. He looked at a loss, not sure what to say. It had been more than a year since Laurel had seen him, more than a year since Noah had run away from Thief River Falls. Of course, Laurel knew what Lisa didn’t, that Noah had been on the verge of suicide before he moved away. That he’d sat in Lisa’s basement with a loaded gun in his mouth. The only thing Lisa knew was that a month after her brother had bolted from her life, her only son had been diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer, and she’d been left to deal with it alone.
“I don’t know anything,” Noah said, “but I can feel that Lisa’s in trouble. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s Harlan,” Laurel told him softly.
Noah stared at her, his eyes widening with horror. He didn’t want to hear it, and he didn’t want to believe it. “Oh my God. You can’t be serious. Not him, too. How bad is it?”
“He passed away two nights ago, Noah. Cancer. I’m so sorry.”
Noah turned away from her and slammed one of his fists into the office wall. A keening, desperate wail squeezed from his throat. When he turned back, his entire face had dissolved into fury and tears. He could barely speak. The skin on his hand was a mess of blood.
“I thought the Dark Star was me,” he murmured in a strangled voice. “I really did. I thought I was the curse, that I was the reason they all died.”
“There’s no such thing as a curse,” Laurel told him.
“Well, I didn’t believe that. I thought if I left, the tragedies would go away. And instead this happens. I leave Lisa and Harlan alone, and this happens. My God.”
Laurel saw something different in Noah’s face. Maturity. He’d aged more than just a year in the time he’d been gone. For a man who was nearly forty, he’d been mostly a child his whole adult life. With each loss in their family, Noah had grown more vulnerable, forcing his sister to shoulder the burdens by herself. Lisa had always been the strong one. But that was then. Laurel was staring at a new man. He was torn apart by guilt, but he wasn’t running anymore.
She took Noah’s elbow and led him down the gloomy hospital corridor. The overnight lights were turned low. They reached the empty room where she’d confronted Lisa earlier in the evening, and she stopped, because Noah needed to see it.
“He died here,” she murmured. “This was Harlan’s room.”
Noah stepped inside. His gaze was drawn to the bed, and he inhaled sharply. “That poor, sweet kid.”
“I know.”
“What did my family do, Laurel? How did we piss off God like this? I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the Dark Star took Harlan, too.”
“Lisa put him on a DNR order about two weeks ago,” Laurel told him. “She wanted him to go peacefully. And he did. He passed away two nights ago in her arms. We’d known it was likely for some time, and I’d tried to get her ready for it, but some things you can never really be ready for. After the boy died, Lisa was alone with the body, and she had — well, she had a breakdown. She wrapped up Harlan in a sheet and took him away from the hospital. She took him to the cemetery. She dug up the ground above Danny’s grave, and she put Harlan there with his father.”
“Of course she did,” Noah murmured. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. God, I can’t imagine this. Lisa must be going through hell. I need to go to her. Where is she? Is she at home?”
Laurel hunted for a way to tell him. To explain. She felt choked for words, and Noah realized in her silence that something was very wrong.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice darkening with worry. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
“It’s not over,” Laurel murmured.
Noah took her by the shoulders. She could see panic rising in his face. “What are you saying?”
“She needs you, Noah,” Laurel told him. “She needs you right now. The Dark Star isn’t finished. It’s trying to take Lisa, too.”
40
The lights of the police cars flashed through the church windows above Lisa’s head and lit up her face. She sat on the cold floor, her back against the wall, with a loaded AR-15 rifle draped across her knees. She wouldn’t let it out of her hands. Her finger hovered near the trigger. The police could storm the church at any moment, and she needed to be ready to fire.
Purdue sat beside her, cross-legged, his hands neatly folded in his lap. He looked calm and unafraid, and she wished she could be like that herself. Her nerves were raw. Her muscles twitched uncontrollably. She could feel something black and ugly lurking in the shadows. It reminded her of the old Japanese fairy tale about the boy who took refuge in a church and drew cats on the walls to keep away a monster. Except there were no cats with them now. Just the monster, ready to come for her. That was okay. That was fine. The monster could have her, but she wouldn’t let him have Purdue.
She knew they were in their final moments together. She hadn’t had the courage yet to tell him that he would have to go and leave her behind. It was the only way to save him. And yet the boy was wise, and she suspected that he already knew the truth.
“There are a lot of people outside,” Purdue said.
“You’re right.”
“Do they have guns?”
“Yes, I’m sure they do.”
“Are they going to come inside?”
“Maybe. At some point. But before that happens, I’ll probably have to go outside myself.”