“That paper I was holding? Someone left it at my door.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “It was a drawing your son made for my class. Did you see anyone else around here?”
The look he gave her must have showed his confusion. She shut her eyes briefly and drew in a heavy breath. “I’m Clara Warren. Seth’s English teacher.” Tentatively, she held out her hand, and he took it. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Fallon.” Her hand felt smooth and hot within his own. She held on a moment too long, maybe feeling the wounds in his palm and reading some story from the touch. He jerked his hand away and then felt embarrassed of his foolishness. Her eyes were bright and amber colored. She had sharp features, her small nose twitching as if scenting something troubling in the air. A petite woman, despite her pregnancy. Grizz loomed over her.
“What was on the drawing?” He thought of the ones on the boy’s desk. The monster in the woods. The woman’s severed head.
“A wolf,” she said. “He’d written something in runes on the bottom about no one being spared.” She rushed on, nervous. “We were studying Beowulf in class, just finishing up a unit. It might not have meant anything.”
Grizz fanned the air with his cap. “He liked your class.” It was the only class Seth had spoken about once school started.
She smiled faintly, and her eyes filled. “I know.”
They were alone, the cemetery behind them, hidden from any traffic on the street by the big two-story parsonage. “Why didn’t you go to the door, then?”
“I didn’t know it was him. I didn’t know who was there.”
“Had he threatened you before this?”
“It was only a feeling,” she said.
“The same feeling you have now?” He was tired of it, the way people looked at him, shrank from his size. Tired of being feared. A weariness Seth must have felt as well.
She raised her chin and studied Grizz. “No. I know you’re not going to hurt me, Mr. Fallon.” Then she wiped her hands along her skirt and peered into his eyes.
Grizz stepped back. It was the expression on her face, open, expectant. He was afraid she was going to hug him, and he didn’t want her to do any such thing. He needed to hold on to his anger, see this to the end. “There’s something else,” he said. “He carved a word in his desk. It doesn’t look like English. ‘Wergild,’ or something. You know what it means?”
After a moment, she nodded. “It’s Old English. A blood debt, that’s what it means. It’s a price a family paid to keep others from taking revenge. Gold for blood spilled.”
“Why would he write that, then do what he did?”
She was quiet while she thought about it. He saw this and knew he would trust her. Her hands were around her stomach, as though to soothe the baby inside her. “Maybe he wanted someone to stop him.”
He set his cap on his head, not wanting her to see his eyes. It was clear to him what she had to offer. This woman had liked his son. She had not hated him the way the rest of the town had. Even now she was not judging him. “Do you think he really meant to kill a whole bunch of people like they’re saying?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Only Seth knows.”
He turned and walked to his truck.
“Mr. Fallon,” she called after him.
“It’s Grizz,” he said, facing her once more. “What everyone calls me.”
“Grizz, would you like to come inside the parsonage and wait for my husband there? I’ll make tea. Maple tea. It’s a secret recipe my father taught me.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll come another time.”
THE CORNFIELD
After his truck passed on the road, Clara was alone in the fading day. She thought of Seth with his desk all the way in the back of the room, a circle of space around him. A kid with a face so gaunt he almost looked cadaverous. Steorfan. The word flashed inside her the first time she looked into his eyes, an Old English word for “starving,” a word that once simply meant “death.” She didn’t know why it popped into her brain. Seth’s eyes were slanted and golden brown, and the way his dark clothing draped on him made him appear tall and lean and dangerous.
He had been tracked along with the kids not in precalculus and college chemistry, the ones who didn’t