55

“What now?” Harriet asked, wheeling her chair away from the table to open a window. Mercifully, the day was cooling off with the incoming dusk, and a breeze filtered through the window. I was suddenly aware I’d spent an afternoon sitting here, just listening to her talk. If nothing else worked out for the good, I was at least glad to have met Harriet Duncan. Her story helped me put my own story in perspective.

“Well, I was hoping you might be able to help me find Rufus.”

“Whoever took him must have done it because they were afraid he knew something, most likely about me,” she said.

“Do you think he really did know you were alive?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. As far as I know, he didn’t. Zachariah brought me the newspaper articles after it was over. I didn’t like Rufus saying I’d killed myself, but I understood that was the best thing for him to say.”

“Where do you think Savanna is now?”

“Not sure, but she’s back in the area.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“The Wolf Brothers.”

I remembered the thread we’d started to pull earlier, out in the yard. Suddenly I had a thought. Was it possible …?

“They’re her heavies. When they get active, it means she’s around.”

“Does she manipulate them in some way?”

“Yeah, something like that.” She glanced at Zachariah, who chuckled and said something under his breath.

“What?”

“He said she’s been manipulating them since birth,” Harriet said. She wasn’t laughing.

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re her boys. Her sons.”

“Oh …” I said, suddenly remembering the way they’d dealt with the overdressed kid at the little bar Eleanor Walsh and I had visited. The cold, almost nonchalant way they’d been moved to violence. It wasn’t like most people I knew. Most people, you could see the transition from calm to violent; there was an interval in between. Maybe it was God’s way of letting folks know somebody was about to go off. That didn’t seem to exist for the Wolf, er, Hill Brothers.

Or maybe I should just think of them as the Duncan Brothers now.

“I only know about them from Lyda. Yes, we’ve been in touch, but she’ll never talk to anyone about me. That’s one good thing about her fear of getting involved. Anyway, according to Lyda, after I made my grand disappearance, Savanna started to show. She never told anyone who the father was, and honestly, there are any number of candidates. By the time I started my ‘therapy’ at the Harden School, she was having sex with relatives, friends, and random strangers. Her pregnancy, according to Lyda, was an embarrassment to my parents, so they began to talk of sending her way. She beat them to the punch and left. She came back several months later with no child and a story about losing it in childbirth. Later she’d admit to Lyda that she’d had them, twins, that she kept them in an old shack in the mountains, visiting them once a day to feed them and not even that as they stopped needing breast milk. By the time they were four or five years old, they basically lived alone in the mountains, foraging for food wherever they could get it, looking forward to her rare visits when she’d drop off something to eat or the occasional toy.” Harriet closed her eyes again, and I couldn’t help but think it was a prayerful gesture.

“It’s odd to think I’m their aunt,” Harriet said, “but it’s true. They’d just as soon kill me as acknowledge me, from what I can gather. I don’t blame them, though. They’re hers. I doubt they are as evil as she is, though. But can you imagine having a mother like that? They have a lot to process.”

“Any idea who the father is?”

She laughed. “Lots of possibilities there.”

“Why does Savanna want to find you so badly?”

“Because she’s decided I’m a loose end that needs to be tied up. Good thing she can’t find me.”

“But can you find her?” I asked.

She looked down at her useless legs, the spoked wheels that rose up from the floor surrounding her like shields. “No, but I can tell you where to start.”

*   *   *

“Savanna eats men alive,” she said. “But there’s one that always seemed special to her. I’ll bet he could lead you to her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where can I find him?”

She jabbed her thumb toward the rear of the cabin. “Up that way. At the school.”

“The school?”

She just looked at me, waiting for me to catch on.

“Oh shit. Harden?”

“That’s right. I have no real evidence, but I think the man abusing her from a young age was good old Uncle Randy, the same uncle who told me if I didn’t figure out how to stop liking girls, he’d introduce me to something long and hard that would change my mind.” She laughed bitterly. “And I was the pervert.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was one of the first families I’d encountered that seemed worse than mine. Hell, they were worse than Ronnie’s family. I’d always thought such a thing might be possible, but now I had the hard evidence.

Zachariah sighed. “Maybe we should wrap this up.”

“It’s okay, Zac. I want to help Mr. Marcus.”

Zachariah bristled. “You don’t need this stress.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused either of you pain.”

I looked at Harriet. Her eyes were tired, the kind of dog-tiredness I used to see in my mother’s eyes after she’d come home from working two jobs and then cleaning my father’s office and the sanctuary at the church. The difference being I still saw light in Harriet’s eyes, while Mother’s had been dimmed long before, crushed beneath the force of my father’s cult of personality.

“One more thing. How can I get in touch with you again?”

“Zachariah can give you his number. You can call him.”

I glanced at the older man. He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” I turned back to Harriet. “Is there anything you want me to tell your sister if I find her?”

She thought about it for a long time, so long I wondered if she’d heard me. Then she nodded, her face as serious and sure as any face I’d ever seen, and said, “Tell her I made it. I’m free and she isn’t.”