for you to be here,” he said. “I want you out of my house.”
They didn’t leave right away, despite his words, but dark had fallen, and as news about Seth spread among the searchers one by one the cruisers pulled away.
Steve was still worked up. His son-in-law was dead and he wanted justice, but what justice could be wrung from such a situation?
Grizz wanted Steve here now. His oldest nemesis. He wanted Steve here because he was terrified of the quiet, and he felt his son’s death like a sharp stone he had swallowed that was only now wedging into his chest.
“I want to know if you put him up to this,” Steve said, his bitter coffee breath washing over Grizz.
“That’s enough,” said the other man. “He’s just lost his son.”
“Stay out of this. You don’t know these people like I do.”
“C’mon,” the deputy insisted, laying a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “It’s late. Let’s go.”
Steve shrugged away the hand but didn’t say anything more. Grizz thought they might ask him to come identify the body and dreaded the moment, but they didn’t. There wasn’t any need. There was no mystery to be solved, or so it seemed. Seth himself was a mystery, but not to them.
He didn’t speak or look up as the men left. Few people know you so well as those who hate you. He was imagining his boy out in the corn. A child where no child should have been. Did that barrel taste of hot powder when he put it in his mouth? Did it clack against his teeth, sear his tongue? Tell me why, Seth. Tell me if I am to blame. Tell me what I am to do now. Speak, boy.
GAST
Clara Warren went into the kitchen when she heard him fumbling with his keys at the back door. A moment later her husband stepped into the entryway and slipped out of his loafers. She drew in a deep breath and folded her hands over her stomach, smelling from the staleness on his skin how awful his day had been. She knew the stray cat busy lapping up milk from a saucer on the floor was about to add to his unhappiness. Clara had been hoping to get rid of it before he returned.
“Clara?” Logan said after he climbed the stairs to the kitchen. “Is that the same tomcat I asked you not to let in the house?”
“It might be,” she said. “It bears a certain resemblance.”
He put his hands around his face and then he sneezed. Logan was twenty-seven years old, two years older than Clara, but still the age of many of his parishioner’s grandchildren. He had ash-blond hair and a thin, mousy beard he’d grown to try and look older and wiser for their benefit. After expelling the sneeze, he rubbed his sinuses and peered at her with his glacial blue eyes. “Is that my mother’s good china?” he asked, noticing the saucer. “That’s been passed down in my family since the Warrens came over from Lancashire?”
“Next time I’ll use the Tupperware.” Clara went to him, touching his arm. “Logan, I know you don’t need any more stress, but the cat was crying up a storm outside. It must have belonged to someone who lived here before. I’m sorry.”
Logan wore a black clerical shirt called a Friar Tuck he special ordered from Augsburg Fortress. He had a closet full of them in varying shades, from lilac to midnight, which he always wore with khaki trousers. “I’m going to go upstairs and change,” he said, tugging at his collar. “And when I come back downstairs that cat is going to be gone. Vamoose. Adios. No pets allowed in the parsonage, understand? Especially not a tomcat. It’s not how things are done out here.”
Clara bit her tongue. She didn’t like his authoritarian tone, but it was understandable after the day he must have had. While he spoke, the cat swirled around her ankles, purring. She had already named it Soren, hoping that calling the cat after Logan’s favorite philosopher might endear him to it in some way. “Yes,” Clara said, trying a hesitant smile, “I understand.”
He paused. Logan had an aquiline nose and an imperious way of staring a person down, even though Clara was the same height. “You are going to be okay, aren’t you?” She heard the weariness in his voice and knew he wasn’t trying to be mean.
Clara tried to read what else might be in his eyes. Disappointment, surely. This