history, the same method used by ancient priests to destroy the ghost of a horrible king.
Seth reached his own name, smiling as he chiseled it away. He paused to touch his brother’s name. CARTER MAYFIELD BARRETT. He left that one in place.
He moved back a row and chiseled away his father’s name, and his mother’s for good measure. There was no reason for them to be buried here in Fallen Oak, he thought. They should be buried in Florida, where they’d lived happily with their boat and their sunlight and rum.
He chiseled out his grandfather’s name, feeling satisfied. He knew that his grandfather had suffered from mental problems, from severe paranoia, especially late in life, obsessed with the idea that Barrett’s ghost was hounding him. He’d even built a very modest house on the grounds, far from the main house, and lived there much of his life. It had fallen into disrepair since his death.
Finally, Seth faced the large central monolith towering above the others, the burial place of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett. He placed the chisel in the center of the dead man’s name.
“I win,” he whispered, and then he swung the hammer.
Chapter Fifty-One
The hilly woods behind the Morton house in Fallen Oak were soaked in cool, green sunlight falling from the lush summer canopy overhead. Jenny walked the overgrown path with the baby cradled in her arms. Tiny Miriam gazed around at trees and boulders with huge, fascinated eyes.
Rocky loped along the trail beside Jenny, swishing his big blue-mottled tail. In her absence, Rocky had overcome his skittish ways to become the sort of dog who lay snoring under the kitchen table most of the day. He’d been excited to see her, jumping up to lick her hands and face. He certainly didn’t live in fear of people anymore.
The baby started crying, for the thousandth time that day, as Jenny pushed through thick, mossy growth and into a tiny meadow. She gazed at the cairn of stones that marked her mother’s grave. Small, bright wildflowers sprouted through the rocks.
“Hi, momma,” Jenny said. The baby cried louder. Jenny sat on a low, heavy oak limb and touched the baby’s face, whispering to her, and the baby settled. It was strange to Jenny, touching someone in a way that comforted instead of killed.
“I thought you’d want to see her,” Jenny said. “I named her after you. She’s so pretty, isn’t she? I think she looks like you.” Jenny bit her lip, listening to a red-winged blackbird singing in the tree above her. It was a sound that always made her think of long, blissfully slow summer afternoons.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Jenny said to her mother, “But I think maybe you can. If things as wicked as me live on and on, life after life, after all the evil things I’ve done...I think people must live on, too, somewhere. I don’t know if you come back here or not, getting born again. Maybe you do. If I keep going after death, then you must, too.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry for ending your life like I did. You could have had a good, long life if it wasn’t for me. I’m sorry.” Jenny didn’t bother hiding her tears. There was no one to see her. “I also want you to know that you’re the last. I know how to keep it inside now. I don’t have to hurt anybody else.”
Above her, another blackbird sang, joining the first.
“Your record collection’s gone,” Jenny said. “All my stuff’s gone, too, my pictures of you. Ward took them all, and that whole base collapsed from the fire, so it’s all burned and buried. Mariella really wrecked the place.” Jenny shook her head. “It was good to have a friend for a while, a real friend who understood me. I wish you could have met her. I wish I could have met you.”
Jenny sat for a while, listening to the birds sing and feeling the baby doze in her arms.
“I don’t know what we’ll do now,” Jenny said. “I’d be happy to just stay here awhile. The town’s gotten spooky with everybody gone, but I always liked ghost towns. I want to get a good camera and take pictures of everything falling apart, flowers growing up through the cracks in the streets. I think it’s pretty. Sad, but pretty, too.”
Jenny stood up, startling the blackbirds into flight. Hundreds of them launched from the trees around her, as if they’d all been