The Devil Crept In Page 11

  Suddenly, Stevie could no longer feel the cold of his ice cream biting at his palms, making the missing tips of his fingers ache like ghosts. He gripped the mug tight as Aunt Amanda jumped in with a pensive smile.

  “We just thank God that he’s home,” she said, saying we as though Jude’s dad was celebrating in his casket, tossing confetti and whooping in victory while lying six feet beneath the ground. “We prayed, and our prayers were answered. We’re just so happy Jude is home.”

  And Jude? He just kept staring into the camera with that dark, bottomless look.

  Stevie couldn’t watch anymore.

  He shoved himself off the couch, all but dropping his cup of Rocky Road onto the coffee table as he ran for the hall.

  “Stevie?” His mom, alarmed, but there was no time to respond.

  He flew into the bathroom and crashed to his knees not a second before his dinner splashed orange and chunky against the toilet bowl. The bleach scent of bowl cleaner made him heave again. Bits of chewed-up lasagna bobbed up to the surface like tiny rafts in an ocean of puke. He sensed his mom appear behind him, hovering just inside the bathroom door.

  “Oh, honey . . .” She crouched next to him, pushed his hair away from his forehead. “I’m sorry.”

  Another cramp seized his insides. He heaved again. The foamy contents of his stomach burned as it came up and out of his throat, but he was too distracted to care.

  That wasn’t Jude on the TV. It looked like him, but it wasn’t his cousin at all. That blank stare—he’d seen it in the past. Blank, like just before Jude had threatened to push Stevie out of the fort, when he had held that piece of rusty metal to Stevie’s throat. And there was Stevie’s mom, apologizing, like she knew it was over. Stevie and Jude. Their friendship. The way things used to be, as though she knew Jude was different, too. Mr. G. had said the same thing. As though both of them were certain that it would never be the same; that the only good thing in Stevie’s life had come to a cruel and sudden end.

  Sorry about your friend.

  PART TWO

  12

  * * *

  ROSAMUND ALEKSANDER HAD always wanted a child, and yet it seemed that her wish was constantly denied. She had tried everything, from old wives’ tales to homeopathic remedies. She prayed, confident that as long as she had faith, a little miracle would eventually make her whole. But it was hard to stay hopeful year after barren year; difficult to be optimistic when, after so many failures, even her husband, Ansel, seemed to have lost interest in the idea.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “we aren’t meant to have children. What if it’s supposed to be just you and me?”

  Rosie wasn’t willing to accept that. After all, Ansel spent most of his time at his office in Deer Valley. As the town physician, he was well liked, had plenty of opportunities to have a drink at the local bar, and turned down many an invitation to join families for dinner after helping a child beat strep throat or the flu. Ansel Aleksander was a face everyone knew, and a man like that had no lack of attention. He wasn’t as desperate as Rosie was, and she doubted he could ever truly understand her need.

  Unlike her husband, Rosie wasn’t comfortable around strangers. She’d grown up shy and hated looking people in the eye. She refused to smile with her teeth, her father having recklessly teased her while growing up. Gully mouth had been a frequent insult. Gap tooth had made it in there once or twice as well. Rosie’s mother would occasionally dress her up, sometimes in pretty store-bought skirts and blouses, other times in crafty homemade clothes. Meanwhile, Rosie’s father would make his offhanded comments; had it not been for the asymmetry of his daughter’s face, the girl wouldn’t have looked half bad. All that’s missing is the paper bag.

  Rosie’s mother assured her that her dad didn’t mean it. He loves you, she’d say. He means well. But his thoughtless cruelty had crawled beneath Rosie’s skin.

  Ansel was nothing like Rosamund’s father. He was kind, as humorous as he was peculiar with his shock of white-blond hair and a nose far too big for his face, and his broken English only added to his charm. Rosie had met him in the produce section of an Everett, Washington, grocery store. When a pyramid of oranges had collapsed around her feet, she’d been mortified, nearly having run out of the place without purchasing a single item on her mother’s shopping list. It was Ansel who saved the day, grabbing three oranges off the ground and throwing them above his head, juggling as expertly as a runaway circus clown, diverting attention so that Rosie could compose herself, and so that he could catch her eye.

  On their first date, which fell on Rosie’s twenty-second birthday, he called her älskling, and tried to teach her a few phrases in Swedish. Rosie never did pick up the language—she found it horrendously difficult, regardless of how much Ansel spoke to her in his native tongue—but Ansel was nearly fluent in both English and romance. Rosie’s parents considered the eleven-year age difference scandalous, but for once, Rosie couldn’t have cared less. She was in love, and the two were married less than six months after they met. A week before their second anniversary, Ansel was hired on as a physician in Deer Valley, Oregon, and Rosie couldn’t wait to get away. It was a promise of a fresh start, of life away from the hurtfulness she had come to know.

  And yet, despite Ansel’s love, Rosamund couldn’t quite shake her lack of self-assurance. Her excitement over Deer Valley dwindled fast. She found herself uncomfortable in town, sure that people were staring at her when she walked down the street or gardened in the front yard, because her father had been right. She was ugly. An eyesore. A strange girl in a new town without a friend in the world.

  Ansel’s work hours grew longer, and so did Rosie’s aversion to social interaction. She found herself contemplating which of the two was worse, the cruelty of her father or the loneliness she now felt. Ansel tried to make it right. He’d drag her into town for dinner each weekend and introduce her to the folks he knew. But it only made Rosie pull further into herself. That was when he made an executive decision: he and his wife would move three miles north, into the woods, where Rosie would feel more at ease; where she could push aside the haunting torment of her father’s callousness and get some relief.

  The land was cheap. The plot was situated alongside a busy logging road, but at least access to and from town was an easy drive. It took nearly a year for Hus Aleksander to be built, but when they finally moved in, Rosie was smitten by their new lifestyle. It was a little noisy by day, but after the trucks stopped running, the evening was a fairy tale. She adored how green it was outside each window, and loved sitting on her covered porch to watch the sunset, or to read and sew out there when it rained. She spent most of her time cooking and baking and gardening, and by their first summer, Rosie had a vegetable patch large enough to keep her out of the produce section for good. Which was convenient, because Ansel was busy with work and she refused to shop alone.

  Less than a year later, the loneliness started to creep back into her bones, the isolation growing heavy. There was Sasha, a gorgeous gray and black California spangled cat that Ansel had given her as a birthday gift, but the cat did little in the way of company. While Sasha wandered the woods, Rosie floated from room to room, unsure of what to do with herself. She read book after book, but they left her feeling empty rather than inspired. She tried to write one herself—a love story about an ugly duckling and a charming prince—but decided that she didn’t have the patience, let alone the talent. The idea of a baby bloomed within her as naturally as wildflowers along the base of a white picket fence. And then the desire spread, as invasive as a weed.

  She couldn’t wait to have a little Ansel to dote over while the baby’s daddy was busy healing the sick, and Ansel wanted nothing more than for her to be happy. And so, after lots of trying, a few visits to a fertility specialist on Ansel’s request—Everything’s in working order, as far as I can tell—and lots of prayer, Rosie became pregnant. It took three years.

  Rosie was over the moon. She danced through the rooms of the hou
se while Ansel was away, sang herself through the days until he came back, took all-day walks in the forest and collected massive wildflower bouquets that she’d place in drinking glasses and mason jars. Every room burst with color, especially the one she had decided to turn into the baby’s nursery. She painted the walls blue, small robins stenciled here and there in frothy white. Little Ansel would grow up a lover of nature like his momma, and just as intelligent as his dad.

  And then, without rhyme or reason, everything changed.

  While taking a walk along her usual route, and a trimester into her pregnancy, she doubled over in pain and screamed as white-hot agony speared her through the middle, her beloved solitude suddenly her worst enemy. She found herself on her hands and knees in the dirt and scrub, a freshly plucked bouquet spilled before her. She wept, screamed for Ansel despite his being miles away, eventually managed to stumble back home despite the pain. But by the time she arrived, the insides of her legs were smeared with blood. The baby, which Rosie gave birth to alone and in an empty tub, was stillborn. Hours later, Ansel discovered it against once-white porcelain. He found his wife in the closet, naked and weeping in the dark.

  She was inconsolable.

  As soon as Rosie was back on her feet, she raged through the rooms she had danced in just months before. Plucking up every bouquet she had so carefully arranged, she threw them against the walls—vases and all. Water-filled vessels exploded like bombs. Floors were left riddled with wilting stems and broken glass. Bloody footprints dotted the hardwood like mangled hopes. Ansel tried to comfort her, but when nothing worked, he threatened her with hospitalization, because she was hysterical, unable to calm down. He was worried that her pain was beyond grief, sure that it was closer to madness than anything resembling sorrow. Frightened and betrayed by Ansel’s threat, Rosie’s all-consuming mourning pushed her out of the house and away from her husband, away from Deer Valley and the forest she had come to love.

  She snatched his keys off the foyer table, climbed into his car, and drove away.

  Highway 101 unspooled southward before her. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she was leaving behind the life that had forsaken her—a life that she had never truly deserved. She slept in the car and ate whatever sad sandwiches or stale pastries she could find at gas station convenience stores while listening to the Elton John CD she found in the glove compartment. She spent most of her time staring out toward the horizon of an endless ocean, hating herself when she couldn’t muster the courage to do what she wanted to do. End the pain. End it all.

  She got as far as Big Sur before the guilt of abandoning Ansel turned her inside out. They had only one car. Undoubtedly, Ansel was walking to work, sick with worry as to where Rosie could have gone. She had to go back.

  She spotted a ramshackle sign reading HAPPY HOPE RETREAT and pulled off the winding highway to make a U-turn. Her maneuver sent her bouncing down a narrow, rutted road. There was a fruit stand along the path that led to the place, but it was empty and unmanned. A quarter of a mile later, she found herself rolling up to a stunning farmhouse. A rusty red pickup was parked along the side of the place. Its round headlights watched her as she pulled up to the sunny house, fully intending to do a three-point turn and go back from where she’d come. But she found herself stopping instead, drawn toward the house by some inexplicable pull. There was something about this place that felt right, as though her impromptu trip was for the sole reason for ending up in the very spot she found herself now. She pulled the emergency brake and slid out of her seat—just a few minutes for a break, and then she’d get back on the road.

  She looked up at the windows of the well-kept farmhouse revival, its stark-white exterior blazing in the sun like a beacon, like its namesake: Happy Hope. It was beautiful, but it also reminded her of her own home, of Ansel. Before she had time to climb back into her vehicle, the farmhouse’s front door swung open and an older gentleman stepped onto the low-pitched porch. He was stout, bearded, and held up a hand in greeting. Rosie mimicked his motion, using the other to shield her eyes from the sun.

  “Come on up,” he said. “Have a sit.” No question of what she was doing there or how he could help her, just an invitation to join him in the cool afternoon shade. Rosie hesitated, but eventually left Ansel’s Maxima behind. The man was plump, his skin having taken on a brown patina from spending too many days on a Harley—at least Rosie assumed that was his past, judging from the Grateful Dead T-shirt he’d paired with some threadbare jeans. Those baggy pants were rolled up above his ankles, leaving his bare feet to bask in the breeze coming off the Pacific. His bushy eyebrows matched the hair atop his head and hanging from his chin, which was so gray it looked silver in the shade.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rosie said. “I just . . . I pulled off the highway so I could turn around.” She gave him a smile, then immediately looked away. She could sense him studying the contours of her face, more than likely thinking how peculiar she looked with those too-big eyes and that trench between her teeth.

  “A change of heart?” he asked. “Those are the only type that come up here, I suppose. It’s the sign that reels ’em in.”

  She nodded lightly, then glanced over her shoulder at Ansel’s sedan. It wasn’t the fanciest car. Most certainly not representative of what her husband could have afforded. But Ansel had always been both modest and thrifty. His only extravagant expense beyond Hus Aleksander had been a beautiful orange-colored Persian rug he’d bought her as a housewarming gift; and what had Rosie done to thank him for his devotion? Stolen his car and left him. Another punch of guilt.

  “So, young lady, are you looking for some happiness, or have you come here seeking hope?”

  Rosie looked back to the man, blinking at the rainbow-colored bears that danced across his shirt. The Deadhead had taken a seat in a high-back rocking chair, and the juxtaposition of that T-shirt with the quaint country charm of the house struck her as both funny and odd. He looked like a cross-country drifter, a guy who rode a motorcycle thousands of miles just to feel the wind blow through his now-snowy hair; a man who would be just as comfortable playing Santa Claus in the town Christmas parade as he would be knocking in someone’s teeth at a local bar. An angel with a devil on his shoulder . . . or perhaps the other way around.

  The man didn’t seem to be bothered by her long stare. The corners of his eyes crinkled like parchment as he stared right back, slowly rocking in his chair like the pendulum of a metronome, waiting for a reply.

  “I don’t think hope is in season,” Rosie finally answered. “The stand along the road looked fresh out.”

  The Deadhead gave her a chuckle. “Clever,” he said. “I like you. What’s your name?”

  “Rosie.”

  “Are you a Roseanne or a Rosemary?” he asked.

  “A Rosamund.”

  The guy quirked an eyebrow skyward. “Rosamund,” he said. “You don’t hear that one everyday. Nice and classic.”

  Rosie gave him a little nod, then self-consciously diverted her gaze.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Rosie. The name’s Nick. I run this old joint.” He motioned with his hand to the house behind him. “But everyone calls me Ras.”

  “Ras?” She looked in his direction.

  “As in Rasputin, on account of the beard.” He gave his bristles a stroke and offered Rosie a wink. His eyes were bluer than any she’d ever seen.

  “Well, your home is beautiful.” She gave him a faint smile. “The sign said it’s a retreat?”

  “Just a place between a start and end point,” Ras said. “I like to make it sound fancy, but it’s just me, myself, and I out here. Sometimes a guest or two, unless it’s June.”

  “What happens in June?”

  “Closed,” he said.

  “All month?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Most of it, at least.” Ras flashed his teeth. They were surprisingly white. Straight as soldiers during morning count. “I summer in Redding, partake of the debauchery that they cal
l the Redwood Run. Heard of it?”

  She hadn’t.

  “Bike rally,” Ras said. “Best in the country, if you ask me. Just me and a couple thousand of my closest pals.”

  Rosie gave herself a mental pat on the back. She was right—he was a biker, maybe an outlaw. Perhaps this place wasn’t a retreat as much as it was a hideout. She cast another glance at the house, giving a couple of the windows a longer look.

  “So, this place is like a bed-and-breakfast?” she asked, somehow doubtful that a guy like Ras could run a hotel on his own, no matter how small.

  “Yeah, without the breakfast.” Ras barked out a laugh, as though it was the best joke he’d told in a while. “I’ve had folks stay here for a night, and folks stay here for a month. Some people are on their way after a good night’s rest, others choose to stay until they find what they’re looking for.”

  “And what are they looking for?” Rosie canted her head, curious.

  “Happiness and hope, mostly,” Ras said matter-of-factly. “Just what it says I’m selling on the sign out front. I don’t do false advertising, little miss. I’m not much for lawyering up.” He winked.

  “If it only were that easy,” Rosie murmured to herself. If she could follow a couple of signs and end up with what she wanted, she would have led a gilded life.

  “And how do you know it isn’t?” Ras asked. Rosie looked back at him. He was no longer smiling. Rather, he wore a deadly serious expression—a man asking a question about God’s honest truth.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but she found herself stammering, debating whether telling a stranger about her problems was in her best interest. Despite his profession, Ansel was a fiercely private man. They had always kept to themselves—only she and him out in the forest, their secrets safely tucked away between them both. But there was something about Ras that was urging her to spill it, to confess why she’d driven so far west for so long just to turn around and head back home. She pursed her lips, looked back at Ansel’s car. Ras continued to wait with unnerving patience for her reply.