BOOK ONE
She was quite tall for her age, and long of limb in a way that some might call elegant, with a curious, freckled, rawboned face, and curly, shoulder-length auburn hair worn in a ponytail. Barefoot, the girl descended a dog-leg staircase and paused for a moment on its landing, where Gerda Allard waited.
1.
"So, Avery Boyce has had enough of her bedroom and has decided to grace us with her royal presence. Typical. The way that you sulk and carry on, someone would think that it was you who had died and not your poor mother. What a tragedy!" Gerda said.
"Oh, hey there, aunt Gerda. It's been a while. How old are you now, exactly? In your eighties? Nineties?" Avery said. "Ah. Right. I thought so. And as fit as a fiddle, which is more than can be said for some of us. Have you seen my dad, by the way? Because I really need to talk to him right now, so if you could just point me in his direction? I'll be more than happy to be on my way. Thanks."
"Insolent little beast!" Gerda said. "In case you've forgotten, this town isn't anything like that fancy liberal boarding school of yours. The people of Redgate Parish expect a proper degree of manners and respect from a young lady, sixteen years old or not!"
Gerda nodded toward the parlor's fireplace with an aggrieved little hmph! It was there, amongst the motley assemblage of pallbearers and condolers that Avery finally espied the parish's sheriff, John Mallory, and her father, Lane Boyce, who stood with one hand braced on the mantelpiece and the other wedged in a hip pocket.
Avery planted a kiss on her aunt's cheek and crossed the parlor to its hearth, where she said, "Dad. John? Oof. Look at all of the in-laws. The body isn't even cold yet and they're ready with their knives drawn. So, anyway, John? I want to thank you for your beautiful eulogy at the service this morning. For all of the things that you said about my mom. Her art and her photography and her charity work, what she did for people. And your musical selection, Fauré's En Priere for Flute and Orchestra, was perfect. It was one of her favorites and I know that she would have loved it."
"You're more than welcome, pet," John said with his burly Waydale brogue. "You know, I've had to deliver a fair share of eulogies in my time, but Sorcha's was definitely the hardest. That said, it's still good to see you back home again, although I dearly wish that it was for some other reason than this. Tell me, how long are you here for?"
"I'm out of school until the fall, so for the next few months, I suppose. Or until someone around this place finally gets wise to my schemes and kicks me out for good," Avery said. "Yeah, you mean you didn't know? The house and my dad are my sole raison d'être, now. And my mother's family too, if they'll permit it. And speaking of, where are they? It's been over twenty-four hours and I haven't seen a single Hart or MacReady anywhere. Out of all the days, today is the day that they should have been here."
"Sorcha's people are a stubborn lot, pet. Aye, and you know their peculiar, hardheaded ways as well as I. But they gathered at the Wooden Whistle and drank a pint to your mother's memory back home in Breton Cove, of that you can be sure," John said. "Lane, my old friend? The hour is late and it's time for me to be on my way. So, we'll finish our prior conversation about the you-know-what when we meet again tomorrow afternoon, yes? And as for you, Avery. My wife and I love you very much, that we surely do. Like you were our own flesh and blood, from the moment that you were born. From the moment that you were born, I think, seeing as how Margaret and I were never able to have a daughter. So for her sake as well as mine, I want you to stay strong for us, lamb. It's going to get better. -- I promise."
John emptied a highball glass of what appeared to be straight Four Roses Bourbon with a single swallow, then meandered tipsily toward the foyer and his deputy, Nick Fabian. When both were safely out of earshot, Lane turned to his daughter and said, "John has been a cop for twice as long as you've been alive and so help me, I've never seen him cry once. But two days ago, I watched him weep like a baby in Norval Adams' funeral parlor. So, let him take a little solace in the bottle if he feels the need tonight, and don't be so quick to judge him, Avery."
"I want to talk about mom, not John," Avery said. "And not just that. You and I haven't had a moment to ourselves since I got home, so when I say that I want to talk, I mean really talk, about you, and about me, and what part I'm supposed to play in, well, in all of this, now. Everything."
Including the beers and the wine coolers that she regularly swiped from the cellar refrigerator, or the secret treasure trove of her mother's unused prescription painkillers and sedatives, or the rapidly dwindling stockpile of pilfered cigarettes, carefully hidden away in her bedroom closet, upstairs.
"Good Lord, Avery. I'm trying to maintain some level of decorum here. I understand that you're in mourning, but couldn't you have put on some slippers or a pair of socks at least?" Lane said. His demeanor softened a bit then, then he tsked and added, "You want to talk about everything? Well, we can talk tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. You and I will have more time to talk than you can possibly imagine, now. So how long has it been since you ate? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? You aren't going to do me or anyone else any good by starving yourself to death, kiddo. Go get something to eat before you waste away. Do as I say, Avery. Right now."
Jesus, dad looks old. Avery thought as she walked away. Twice his forty-nine years at least. And certainly, not the literary wunderkind that he was during his salad days as a tenured professor of English at Redgate Parish's regional University, back when he was still a successful, first-time science fiction author and her mother was at the height of her physical and artistic prowess.
And it was at that moment that she suddenly recalled the name of the 101 literature class that her father used to teach, unbidden; The Superhero In Popular Culture. Yes. Superheroes in flowing scarlet capes, superheroes in yellow spandex tights. Puerile trash for maladjusted misfits and shut-ins, the savants wrote at length, but Avery ignored them all and soldiered on, because Lane was her father, and in her eyes, her father was a genius.
And Superheroes? Well, sorry, Charlie. That was another lifetime ago.
A buffet table was decked out with platters of bread, casseroles, poultry. Avery dipped a biscuit in gravy, and as she crammed the entire affair into her mouth, her attention was inevitably drawn to one of her many uncles, the Reverend Hemming Allard. At the moment the old evangelist was perched ramrod straight before her mother's 1910 Beckwith pump organ, plowing his way through yet another round of Ah, Sweet Appearance Of Death, to the great discomfiture of all those still gathered within the parlor.
Nothing out of the ordinary here. But what transformed this domestic scene from mummer's play to which one of these things is not like the others Not puzzle was the dramatis personae seated betwixt the harmonium and a Jansport book bag, a girl, an uncommon girl, an odd girl.
An odd girl. But only in that she was so completely and desperately out of place here within Avery's ultramontane, white-bread environs, not odd ha-ha.
She was a diminutive 4'11" at the most, with large, wide-set grey eyes, a pugged nose, and glossy, blue-black hair worn in a pageboy bob. Her beggarly aspect was made all the more manifest by her ragamuffin clothing; laced coal miner's boots, faded jeans, and a scarlet hooded sweatshirt that was tattered at the elbows and cuffs.
Did anyone else see her? Avery thought as she surveyed the room. Was she a distant relation, a cousin, perhaps? If so, the girl was certainly no one that Avery had ever met before.
Avery looked at the harmonium again, just to make sure that she wasn't in the precursory throes of hunger-induced delirium, and found that both the girl and her book bag were gone.
The remainder of the Boyce tribe finally departed well after midnight. Avery escaped the compulsory goodbyes and retreated to the solitude of her bedroom instead, where she closed and locked every window and levered a spare mattress upright against the door. She dreaded the sublime terrors that sleep would surely bring.
Nightmares. Visions of the grave, with its brackish fetor of turned clay and ineluctable putrefaction, yawning wide before her. Or her mother's corpse, as cold as a dead cod.
Instead, Avery fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, this time without the myoclonic kick that often sent her bedclothes hurtling across the room, and awoke just after daybreak, summoned by the noisome clatter of pots and pans somewhere downstairs.
2.
Avery dressed, arranged her hair, and made her way to the kitchen. It was there that she found her ginger tabby cat, Ranger, reposed within a pool of morning light, and her father. Lane, who was presently occupied with preparing a skillet of scrambled eggs, said nothing and barely raised his eyes as Avery entered the room.
Two slices of grilled country ham lay on a plate where she would sit. As a rule, Avery would have rejected this type of fare outright, but she was in too foul a mood today to quarrel with anyone, least of all her father. Instead, she took a seat at the room's table, a restored campground relic, with a long-faced and sullen thump.
Lane spooned a blob of eggs onto Avery's plate, and then his own. He sat opposite her then and the pair ate in a respectful but awkward silence. Just when the tedious clink-scrape of Lane's silverware began to grate on Avery's nerves, he asked, "So, what are your plans for the day, kiddo?"
"I'm going to get the mop and a slop bucket and clean this place up," Avery said. "And I need the keys to the truck, too. No arguments, okay? I'll pay for the gas. I want to drive up to North Cape this afternoon to look for a full-time job. In a pet shop or a book store or a coffee bar, right now I don't care. Anything will do. Because you might want to rattle around the halls of your own house like some kind of a zombie forever, but I don't."
Lane stopped eating, mid-chew. Every atom of color drained from his normally sanguine face then, and he stared past Avery with glassy, unfocused eyes that welled with tears. As a rule Lane avoided physical violence and had never laid a hand on his wife and daughter, but he did have a caustic, deprecating tongue and an almost inherent talent for dissembling and insult, and thus for a moment Avery wondered, as her father sat, fork wavering between his plate and mouth, if he was about to unleash a fusillade of imprecations at her or vault across the table and strike her for the first time in her life. Instead, Lane sprang to his feet as if he had sat on a tack, and as he did so, his bench tipped and hit the parquet floor with an angry thwack! that made Avery flinch.
"Forgive me if your lack of employment isn't the foremost thing in my mind right now," Lane snapped. "I've been too busy watching your mother die by to give a tinker's damn about you or this wreck of a house. But then again you might have known all of that if you had bothered to call either one of us every once in a while." He then collected his cup and plate and strode wrathfully from the room.
"Yaay, pity claps for dad!" Avery shouted over her shoulder. "And by the way, it was you and mom's bright idea to pack me off to boarding school, not mine, in case you've forgotten? And you only talked to me a handful of times when I called home over the past two years, so don't even think about trying to lay that shitty victim blaming guilt trip on me, mister man!"
Slam! went Lane's study door. A brief moment of death-like quietude was then followed by music; Spring, movement one, Allegro, from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, English Chamber Orchestra, Henryk Szeryng conducts. It was the very same 1969 vinyl LP that Lane always played at maximum volume after he and Sorcha had exhausted one of their innumerable arguments, merciless verbal and physical trials by combat that always left her seeking cover in her bedroom, seized with racking bowel spasms. Avery gnashed her teeth and knew that, un bel di, she would discover Lane in his study sometime later, posed like the poet in the Henry Wallis painting, The Death of Chatterton, asleep with one forearm draped over his eyes. If she cared to look, that is.
Lane left without a word soon after. He carried with him a leather messenger bag, an anniversary gift that Avery hadn't seen in years, clenched under one arm like a Wilson football. Lane then tossed the bag into his SUV and sped away in a cloud of dust.
If every morning is going to be as contentious as this one was, I'll have to strike a truce with dad, negotiate a temporary ceasefire or establish some friendly level of détente, or life inside the house will be virtually untenable, Avery thought as the SUV finally disappeared from view. So it would be a stand-down, then, until the fall at least. It was either that or concede defeat, then pack her bags and return to boarding school, while she still had the means and the opportunity to do so.
Avery opened long-closed curtains, wiped down dusty tabletops and vacuumed floors, but shunned her parent's bedroom and her mother's art studio, which was embowered in a gloomy, hornet-infested tangle of purple wisteria and blush roses behind the house, like a fairy tale's Bloody Chamber. Both filled her with horror.
When her work was finally done almost four exhausting hours later, Avery again sat at the kitchen table, where she ate the remaining slices of a leftover pizza and drank a beer. She then checked her iPhone for texts, voice messages, and email. Nothing.
3.
North Cape's streets were already swamped with early afternoon lunch hour traffic overflow when Avery finally entered the city's limits. She cruised the business district again and again until she spotted a help wanted placard taped to a bistro's front window, then circled her truck around to park, three blocks away.
Avery walked the distance back to The Green Man. The bistro was bustling at midday, packed with college students and working-class townies. Avery found a vacant stool near the espresso machine and asked a barista if they needed a part-time employee. The bistro's senior barista emerged from the kitchen a moment later and passed Avery a generic questionnaire. Avery ordered a café mazagran and filled out the application on the spot.
When she was done Avery signed the application, then set her pen aside and studied the bistro's hipster clientele. Maybe this place won't be so bad for a few months, after all, she thought, and then her gaze alighted upon a girl seated alone in a corner booth. A girl clad in a scarlet hooded sweatshirt.
The girl sipped iced coffee and read a manga entitled Battle Angel: Last Order for five minutes or so, then stood and stowed the book inside the same ratty Jansport book bag that Avery had seen the day before. She then chucked her empty cup into the trash, hitched her book bag over one shoulder and exited the bistro.
Avery slid her application to the barista with a polite thank you very much! and hustled outside. By then the girl had already crossed the street and was trudging steadily westward with quick, soldierly strides. Avery pursued the girl for eight more city blocks until she finally ceased her wandering and entered a bodega.
Inside, the AC was on full blast. Avery stood below the exit sign at the back of the bodega, well away from any working CCTV cameras and the three or four women who were gathered at the cash register and watched the girl cruise up and down the aisles.
She was shoplifting. Avery knew this with certainty because she had employed the same sleight of hand technique herself on more than one occasion while in boarding school. The girl then bought a chocolate bar and a pack of gum for effect and left the bodega. Avery followed after her.
"I saw what you did in there," Avery said as she exited the bodega. The girl, who was now about twenty feet away, froze dead in her tracks. "You were stealing," Avery went on. "I don't know what or how much or where you hid it. But I still saw you."
The girl turned and stomped to within spitting distance of Avery, then dropped her book bag to the pavement and said, with the flinty, heavily intonated accent particular to the northern rust belt émigrés who lived and worked in North Cape, “Oh, well, you saw me now, did you? You know, it takes a lot of guts to creep up on someone and talk smack like that. Guts or a serious lack of mother wit. The question is, what the fuck are you going to do about it, skinny bitch?"
"I don't know," Avery said. "I could tell the bodega's cashier about your little five-finger discount, which would either get you arrested or trespassed from that store for the rest of your life, or both, or I could scream bloody murder in front of all of these nice, workaday people and those very eager looking cops across the street and we can see what happens. Or maybe I could do nothing at all. That is if you were to, say, give me a pack of those cigarettes that you lifted. Sound fair?"
The girl hesitated for a moment, then knelt and opened her book bag, and said, after surrendering a single pack of Kool 100's to Avery, "I know who you are. You're the girl who lives in that creepy old house in Redgate. The Painted Lady, on Molliver Street."
"True, true, and true. And I know who you are, too," Avery said, then wedged the cigarette pack into a hip pocket and offered Corlie her hand. "So how about you and I deescalate this before we both do something really stupid and end up in city jail. I'll start. Hi. I'm Avery. Avery Boyce."
The girl shook Avery's hand and said, "Corlie Weeks."
"Corlie Weeks. Pretty name," Avery said. "You see, now? There was no need to punch my lights out after all. And don't worry, I'm not going to rat you out. I need the free smokes too much. Are you hungry, by the way? You pick the place. Lunch is on me."
Corlie chose a greasy spoon called The Seaside Room. Avery instructed Corlie to find a secluded place to sit, then went into a women's restroom stall and smoke an entire cigarette. When she finally reemerged roughly five minutes later, Avery found Corlie comfortably ensconced in a banquette booth at the back of the restaurant.
For the better part of two hours, they discussed the weather and North Cape and being sixteen years old over twin quad-stacker cheeseburgers and ice-cold cokes, with fries on the side. As the afternoon progressed, Avery found herself almost itching to question Corlie then and there about the day before, but dared not. Not yet.
"I'm through with high school, with the cliques and the bullies and the racist assholes, I've had enough of it," Corlie said at last. "So I'm going to enroll in a special education program next month and then take my GED exam. Then I was thinking about going to Beauty College out in Cumberland. Hey, I know that it isn't rocket science or anything, but there are plenty of high paying jobs out there for cosmetologists and hairdressers, and it will get my mother and I as far away from North Cape as possible."
Avery paid the tab and wrote her name and phone number on a menu then passed the menu and the pen to Corlie. Corlie did the same in return. It was settled, then. They vowed to call each other and meet again, at an eatery of Avery's choice next time.
"So, I have at least an hour's drive back home and I don't want to be on those farm country roads after dark," Avery said. Corlie's expression seemed to take on an even more querulous aspect then, so Avery quickly added, "Please feel free to drop by the house anytime you want from now on, okay? We can listen to some music, watch a movie and then study for your GED's. Now, do you need a ride or anything? As long as I'm here in the city, I can drive you home, it's not a problem."
"Nah. Thank you, but I can hoof it from here," Corlie said, and clapped a handful of crumbs to her mouth.
4.
Corlie and her mother, Lettie, ate bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches for supper and watched M*A*S*H and The Andy Griffith Show reruns on TV. Then Lettie opened a pack of Kools and smoked one cigarette after another until she began to fall asleep.
"Are you tired now?" Corlie asked. Lettie, who was not able to speak, nodded in reply and patted the back of Corlie's hand, one time for yes.
Corlie draped a U-Haul furniture blanket around Lettie's shoulders and went into the kitchen, where she drank a glass of milk and ate a wedge of butter cake from the refrigerator.
Feel free to drop by the house anytime from now on, Avery had said. Just like that, as if she had expected to get a fucking gold star or something. Come and sit for a spell and I'll help you study for your stupid little GED's.
What a joke. No one had ever given Corlie a break and no one ever would. For years she had looked on as her parents had worked themselves into the ground without so much as a single ort of gratitude from anyone, and so, as loathe as she was to acknowledge the specter of a divine hand at work in anything, she more often than not had to concede that life seemed to be almost willfully contrived to benefit the sanctified few who resided at the top of the universal food chain, with the Weeks' definitely at the bottom. And so enmity ate at her like a cancer.
No matter. She knew with irrefutable certainty that any and all things were subject to change if given a sufficient amount of sheer, brute force. Avery was either a simpleton or a mental case and Corlie could use the affectation of friendship to inveigle her way back into the house again.
Corlie rose from her place at the table, then stood upon a footstool and opened a pair of cupboard doors. There, perched on a topmost shelf, she found her father's gun, hidden in the Quaker oats box where Ellis Weeks had stowed it before his death.
5.
Where is dad? Avery thought. It was now well past 9:00 PM and Lane still wasn't home. He had left no telephone voice messages or iPhone texts, not even a perfunctory post-it note.
Avery fed Ranger and ate a bowl of vegetable soup while she watched an episode of Bob's Burgers on TBS. She then turned the television off and went upstairs, where she swooned onto her bed and sobbed until her throat ached.
Lane returned home after 11 PM. Avery heard her father lock the front door, then toss his car keys onto an end table and climb the stairs, after which he paused in her doorway and said, "Hey there, kiddo. I wanted to see if you were okay. It was so quiet up here, I thought you were asleep."
"Hey, dad," Avery replied. "How was your day with John? Eventful?"
Lane sat at the foot of Avery's bed and said, "No one could ever put anything past you, could they, Avery? Well, sorry, but for now the answer to that question is grown-up business, and I'm the grown-up around here and you're still the kid. Got it? So, what's new with you? Did you have any luck up in North Cape today?"
"I applied for a job at a bistro called The Green Man," Avery said. "The manager will probably call me back in a few days with a yes or no. It's a really cool place, very bohemian and very working class, you'd love it. And I made a friend too, in spite of myself. A city girl named Corlie Weeks. She has grey eyes, and she's so tiny that she looks like a little person, even though she's sixteen years old."
"Good. Good. You should have your own money and friends your own age so you don't have to hang around with an old egghead like me," Lane said with a weary nod and looked at Avery over his shoulder. There was something decidedly bleak and unbalanced in his tired, bleary-eyed stare that told Avery that her father was, first, probably slightly drunk, and second, more than dead serious. He drew in a slow, deep breath and composed himself then, as if he were a penitent about to unburden himself of some terrible secret, and continued, "You know that they blame me for your mother's death, Avery. Her family. You asked John where they were, why none of them were at the funeral. I'll tell you why they weren't there. Spite. Yes. You heard me. Spite. And perhaps a bit of revenge, too. Because, you see, to this day her people still say that I stole her away from her home in Breton Cove, that I deliberately sabotaged her career as an artist, and that I - that I - killed her. That's why your mother and I sent you away to boarding school, kiddo. We weren't trying to hurt you, we were trying to protect you, to save you, from this."
Avery's heart was in her throat. This was new, in that Lane's everyday pettifogging now sounded less like yet another tiresome litigation of the past and more like some kind of confession. She prayed for her sake that it wasn't.
"That's not true, dad," Avery replied. "Mom was practically a rock star in the art world up until the very end. The backstabbing from mom's family is just sour grapes and you know it."
Lane stood, then pulled a saddle blanket over Avery's legs and said, "I'm sorry that I left you here on your own all day. It was wrong and selfish, and I won't ever do it again, I promise. Apology accepted? Yes? Good, then. Well, I do have to tell you something that you will definitely want to hear, but we'll talk about it in the morning. Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise, as Victor Hugo said."
"Dad? Stop. Stop. Wait a minute," Avery said and clutched Lane's hand. "I want to apologize to you about this morning too, about what I said, that you had just given up on everything, on the house, and yourself, and me? It's just that I miss mom so much, and I freaking hate seeing you, like -- I don't know, like this. It makes me angry and I say and do stupid things."
Lane summoned a wan smile, even though he looked as if he were about to burst into tears, and said, "Hey, my shoulders are plenty broad kiddo. I can take whatever comes my way and then some. Now get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow."
6.
Avery entered the kitchen at 9:00 AM. Her face was puffy and creased and she had slept in her clothes. With a loud groan, she sat at the kitchen table and held her head in her hands.
Ranger lay atop the table, lazily swishing his tail and purring with a thrum-thrum-thrum, not unlike that of an old four-stroke outboard motor. Lane fussed over the stove for several more minutes and finally ladled three eggs, fried sunny side up, followed by two slices of dry toast onto a plate, which he then scooted toward Avery.
"Fuck this shit," Avery said. She drew a lighter and a pack of Corlie's filched Kools from her pants pocket, then lit a cigarette and dragged, deep and slow, so that she would get the stratospheric head rush that inevitably followed her first puff of the day.
Lane poured two glasses of orange juice, then handed one to Avery and, after fanning away the cloud of smoke that lay coiled above the table, said, "Well, since that's out in the open, I suppose that I can go ahead and tell you what I wanted to say last night. We, and more specifically you, have an appointment with Buzz Jasper this afternoon. At the Emerald Motel. He has a lot to say to you and he's probably going to ask you some very important questions, so you need to get your act together tout suite, kiddo."
"Buzz Jasper? Your lawyer? Jeez, I'm not in trouble, am I?" Avery asked.
"No, it's nothing like that at all. You'll know everything when we get there. In the meantime, let's eat and get this party started." Lane replied. He sat opposite her then, and, after halving an egg with the same fastidious exactitude that always managed to set Avery's teeth on edge, added, "By the way, I'm your father, not some total stranger, all right? And I'm not as oblivious or as senile as you think I am. I know very well that you smoke. So you don't need to hide your cigarette stash from me anymore. Okay?
They left just after breakfast and arrived in the town of Redgate twenty minutes later. The little parish itself wasn't very much to speak of; a decrepit school building on its outskirts, followed by eight intersected double-lane streets, a post office, a courthouse, a dollar movie theater, a police, fire and gas station, an antique shop for tourists, and The Emerald Motel. Lane parked in the Emerald's lot and he and Avery made their way inside.
Legal offices were located on the motel's renovated upper floors. Lane and Avery rode a rickety cage elevator to a second-floor waiting room, where a secretary, Abigail Prendergast, said, after looking up from her work on an 80's-era PC and tapping an intercom, "Eddie? They're here. All right, then. You can go on in now, Mister Boyce. You too, Avery. Buzz is waiting for you. Just follow the hallway to the archtop door. You know the way."
They then entered the office's Holy-Of-Holies, a kind of bedimmed sacrarium piled from floor to ceiling with statute books and legal arcana. It was there that Edward 'Buzz' Jasper, a wizened little man in a green plaid suit and wire-rim glasses instantly sprang from his desk chair with a start and approached Lane.
"Lane, so nice to see you again! And Avery, is that you? Goodness, it's been what, almost two years, now? Oh my. Please, sit down, sit down," Buzz said. He then guided Avery and Lane to a well-worn sofa and returned to his station at his desk, where John Mallory loomed like an attack dog or sentry in the ensorcelled shadows just behind him.
Buzz opened a manila folder and spent several minutes silently poring over the documents compiled within. He then removed his glasses, and said, after tapping them idly on his desk, "I can't express how deeply saddened I am by Sorcha's passing, Lane. Truly. Among other things, I was best man at your wedding and practically in the delivery room when Avery was born. Frankly, I always thought that I would be the one who would go first. That said, are you holding up okay, Avery?"
Avery nodded in reply. Buzz put his glasses on, then placed a Xeroxed document atop the folder and went on, "Excellent. Well, let's go on then, yes? You probably know all of this already but I'm going to say it again anyway. Sorcha willed the house, her possessions, and her artwork entirely to you, Lane, and then, I assume, to Avery. On its own, the house itself is worth a small fortune, so don't let that gang of chiselers on the city council hoodwink you with their tales about repairs in arrears and devalued properties. Add to that the market value of the acreage that it's sitting on, plus Sorcha's paintings and photographs and the royalties from your early novels, Lane, and the entire estate is worth more money than most people would ever see in a lifetime. Ad pedem litterae. Are we clear on that, now? Lane? Avery? Any questions before I go on? So, on to what they call the big reveal. Avery, do you happen to remember a fellow by the name of Albert Heaney?"
Avery looked at Buzz, then her father, then Buzz again, and shrugged. "Heaney? No, I don't. Why, should I?"
"Wait. Albert Heaney," Lane said. "He owned that comic book shop that we used to go to all the time when you were little. Remember, Avery? Yes, It was that little hole-in-the-wall place, up in North Cape. Fantastic Planet. You always called Albert 'mister H'."
"That would be him," Buzz said. "And it would seem, Avery, that you are now a young woman of means. According to this death notice, Albert Heaney has passed on as well, and only a few months before your mother, may her memory be for blessing. And, as his wife Felicity has been dead for over a decade and he had no living heirs to speak of, Albert has, out of necessity or sheer goodness, willed Fantastic Planet exclusively to you."
"What? No. That's not possible," Avery said. "Dad? There's been a mistake, like some kind of clerical error, right? I have AP courses in the fall, an internship at the museum of natural history in Kingsport, SAT's. What am I going to do with a comic book shop?"
"I don't know, Avery," Buzz said. "Ultimately the decision will be yours. And I know that this will probably sound trite, but think of this dilemma as a grand endeavor, one door opening when another closes, making lemonade from lemons, that sort of thing. It's not an easy lift but you can do it if you give it a little time and effort."
Buzz opened a desk drawer and produced a verdigris-encrusted steel ring, a kind of key fob with an outsized gold and silver mortice key upon it, which he handed to John Mallory. John crossed the room to Avery then, and said, after pressing the ring into her hand, "These belonged to Albert and now they belong to you, duck. So, remember, the silver key unlocks the security gate, the gold the front door."
"And now a final word of warning before I conclude," Buzz said at last. "The last recession hit us hard, here. As a matter of fact, North Cape and its surrounding cities are practically hemorrhaging businesses by the day. Do you want my honest opinion, Avery? Sell the property and its inventory off to the highest bidder, then take the money under the table and go live a happy life while there is still time. If any person deserves that, it's you."
7.
Lane stopped at The Step-Down Diner, found a window booth and ordered coffee for himself and Avery. Avery ate a red velvet cupcake in ruminative silence and watched locals as they scurried to and fro like so many insects in the diner's parking lot. The temperature outside was already on its way north of 100° F at midday and a baleful-looking squall line roiled above the western horizon.
"So, this is what you, John, and Buzz were up to all day yesterday?" Avery said at last. "We'll finish our conversation about the you-know-what when we meet again tomorrow, yes? Jesus, dad, you could have told me the truth, you know, I'm not a baby."
Lane sighed. "I reserve the right to invoke the fifth on that one, kiddo. Let's just say that I wanted Buzz to tell you about Albert Heaney, not me. And before you say another word; this is a real opportunity for you to sock away a considerable chunk of change for your future, kiddo, whether you finally decide to sell the shop or not. Now, what's all of this business that I'm suddenly hearing from you about AP classes and SAT's in the fall? I don't understand, I thought that you weren't going back boarding school."
"You're right. I'm not," Avery said. "I thought that I would finish up my senior year at West View High in Red-gate. I'm never going back to boarding school. Never, never, never. Do you know what's the strangest thing, though? I hated, hated, all of those cruel, piggy rich girls in my classes with a passion. But I still miss the Hoof Prints Club and my mare, Baroness. Every day."
They drove on. An hour later they finally came upon Fantastic Planet, wedged between a Dollar Bills thrift store and a closed Blockbuster Video. The plaza's parking lot and the shop's façade were both in ruinous condition.
Lane unlocked the Planet's security gate and front door, then entered the shop and switched on an overhead light. Avery crept in after him. The shop itself was barely 26' x 20' inside and was permeated with the pungent odor of mildew and siphotrol. Stacked standees and comic book storage boxes teetered everywhere.
"Albert must have died suddenly. See how everything has been left in place? I wonder where it happened. It could have been right here. Creepy," Lane said. Avery had to agree. To her, the shop's crypt-like interior looked vaguely like The Well of the Souls scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark or a set piece from a 1980's slasher film. That eeriness, coupled with the approaching thunderstorm's persistent rumbling outside, lent her undertaking a tenor of adventure and mystery.
Lane handed Avery her key ring, fished a Swiss Army knife from his hip pocket, then sliced open a taped comic book box with a startlingly loud r-r-r-rip! Sound, and peered inside.
"Jesus!" Avery exclaimed. "What the hell, dad! Don't mess with that!"
"What, aren't you the least bit curious about what's in these boxes?" Lane asked, eyes keen with interest. "If by chance you find an Incredible Hulk number one eighty-one, the one with the first appearance of Wolverine? You'll be richer than King Croesus. If you're lucky, no, if you're blessed, and you find a mint condition Action Comics number one, you'll never have to work another day in your life. And look out for any original 1970's Star Wars toys and action figures, too. The Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader variants with the double telescoping lightsabers could buy you a new car. And Mircronauts. Biotron. Microtron. Heaven knows what treasures that sly old pack rat has stored away in here."
Avery perused the comic books, which had been fanned out and organized by title on the display counter. It didn't take a connoisseur to know that some of them were almost certainly quite valuable, even if sold for nothing more than their cover price. In its own peculiar way, the strange imbroglio that currently involved her had unexpectedly taken on the aspect of a true adventure, Avery thought, and she hadn't seen her father this engaged, this hopeful, in some time.
Lane appraised the shop again, then nodded meditatively and said, "Well, what do you think, kiddo? It isn't exactly the best-looking property in the world and the location totally sucks, but, hey, what can you say, you know, other than if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Still, I think that you could probably get a good deal on it if you decide to sell it, but just to be on the safe side? do us both a favor and sleep on it, okay?"
They were almost home when a downpour hit them like a tidal wave. Lane drove on for another quarter of a mile, then slowed the SUV to a crawl and parked in the breakdown lane.
"What do we do now? If we just sit here like this we'll eventually run out of gas and die in this heat," Avery said.
"Hold on a minute. I have an idea," Lane said. He cut the SUV's lights, veered onto a packed gravel driveway and inched through the rain until he reached a gambrel-roofed barn that rested some 150 yards from the road.
A moment later Avery and Lane were safe and dry inside the barn. Lane closed its door while Avery cast a flashlight beam over what lay within. A Steiger tractor, field cultivator, and a combine harvester rested beside a bi-wing crop duster in the darkness.
"That's a Boeing Stearman Model 75," Lane said. "Like the one in North by Northwest. Whoever runs this outfit probably dusts their crops with it."
"Can you fly it?" Avery asked, and pulled at a propeller blade. It was as heavy as a length of iron rebar and also seemed to be welded in place.
Lane laid his forehead against the plane's metal skin and said, "Nope. Sorry. I'm an academic and a fantasist who lives his life vicariously through comic books and action movies, kiddo. I can't fly a freaking kite."
Avery turned her attention to the barn's many shelves and work tables. There she found an LED camping lantern amongst an array of heirloom tools, and after switching it on and passing the flashlight to Lane, said, "Come on, you just broke into some guy's barn in the middle of a derecho. That has to count for something."
"Something? Oh, kiddo, the stories that I could tell about the life that your mother and I had before you were born would read like a novel," Lane said, and then went on, after seeing Avery roll her eyes in response, "Hey, stow the attitude for a minute. You said that you wanted to talk? Well, that goes both ways, you know. So how about we start with the girl that you met in North Cape yesterday. Corlie, Corlie Weeks was her name? Yes. Miss grey-eyes. What's she like?"
Avery shrugged. "Corlie? What can I say? She's an old soul. Tough and cynical, street-wise and whip-smart. But mostly she's very isolated and lonely, and really needs a friend."
And thus, endeth the tale, Avery thought. There was no pressing need to recount the previous day's events, the unknown whys and wherefores of Corlie skulking about her parlor like a ghost, just after her mother's funeral. Less was definitely better, for now.
"Ah, you've found yourself a lost cause. Well, I'm not surprised; you've been doing this sort of thing your entire life, you know. All of it, foster pets, save the whales, climate change and health care for all, et cetera, et cetera," Lane said. "Alas, your dear departed mother was the same way, too. Sorcha MacReady, patron saint of the powerless and the downtrodden. Pretty soon you'll be giving this poor girl all of your old shoes and clothes, whether she wants them or not, am I right?"
Avery, during this time, had discovered both a Winchester rifle and a Quik tin filled with .30-.30 bullets concealed below a patchwork quilt. She sat, then, with the quilt mantled around her shoulders and the rifle held across her lap, and remarked, "I see that you still haven't shaved yet, and it's been how many days, now? You know, but with that beard going on, I can't help but notice that you sort of resemble Harry Dean Stanton. As Travis Henderson, in Paris, Texas. We had to watch that movie in a film studies class when I was in boarding school. I thought that it was sad."
"Don't get all goofy on me, now," Lane said. "Rest for a while. This is just a cloud burst, it won't last long."
"If you say so," Avery said. "Just promise that you'll wake me if you happen to hear dueling banjos, okay? Everything about this place gives me the creeps and I don't want to wind up hanging by my ankles in some cannibal maniac's summer kitchen."
Avery laid her head against the wall and closed her eyes. It was almost silent within the barn, save for the unceasing tattoo of rain on the shingled roof and the cooing of pigeons in the crossbeams far above. She drifted off to sleep until Lane's hand clapped down on her shoulder.
"Avery. The rain's finally stopped," Lane said, and gestured toward the deep lavender and seashell pink sky just beyond the barn's open door. "We'd better get a move on before Farmer Brown finally spots our car and shoots us both for trespassing."
They emerged into the cold gloaming then and Lane locked up the barn. While her father's back was turned, Avery stowed the quilt, rifle, and bullets within the SUV's trunk and closed its hatch without making a sound.
END OF PART ONE
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