The storm swept along the coast during the night, and woke Parker by rattling the slates on his roof and testing the security of his windows and doors, like a formless entity seeking passage to new territories. When he rose the next morning, his yard was littered with broken branches, and an old bird’s nest lay strangely intact on his lawn, but the day was the warmest yet, and only occasional pockets of dirty white remained in the lee of trees. Parker wiped down one of the chairs on his porch, and breakfasted on cereal and coffee with his feet on the rail, the call of birdsong for his listening pleasure.
He felt the urge to speak with Sam, his daughter, but he knew she would be preparing for school, and he did not wish to interrupt her routine. He and Rachel, Sam’s mother, were now in a state of uneasy truce. Rachel had suspended legal proceedings intended to leave Parker with only supervised access to his child, a consequence of his vocation and the violent proclivities of those with whom he came in contact. The disorder of his own life had bled into his daughter’s existence, to the legitimate concern of her mother, and Rachel had believed herself to be left with no choice but to seek protection for Sam from the courts.
Then, almost as suddenly as the issue had arisen, it subsided again, with Rachel unwilling to offer any excuse for her change of heart. Parker was content to let sleeping dogs lie. It was enough to enjoy time with Sam without another adult intruding, to be there for her without precondition or regulation when she needed him, even if the depths of his daughter’s nature remained as mysterious to him as the remotest of ocean chasms.
He sometimes woke to Sam’s voice speaking to him in the night, as clearly as though she were standing beside him in the room. On those occasions he would wonder if, in missing her daily physical presence in his life, he might be creating imaginary discourses in his sleep as recompense for her absence. But sometimes when he was awake he heard her in conversation with another child, their words carried to him as an echo from Vermont, and Parker had no doubts about the identity of the second figure, because he had heard Sam speak her name in the past.
“Jennifer.”
Sam and Jennifer: the living daughter speaking to the dead.
The world could grow no more curious, Parker felt, even as he found solace in the knowledge that in time he would close his eyes in this world and open them in another, and there Jennifer would be waiting for him, and she would lead him to her god.
It was 7:30 a.m. Parker washed his cup and bowl, got in his car, and drove to St. Maximilian Kolbe, where he arrived just in time for the start of morning mass. He took a seat at the back of the church, where he always felt most comfortable. He was not a regular attendee, but his childhood Catholicism had never left him and he still derived comfort from a place of worship. On this spring morning he allowed the liturgy to wash over him, the familiarity of its calls and responses itself a form of meditation, and he prayed for his children, the living and the dead; for his wife, now gone from him; for Rachel, whom he still loved; and for the anonymous woman in the woods, and the child to whom she had given birth at the end of her life, that, alive or dead, they might both be at peace.
DANIEL WEAVER HEARD THE toy phone ringing just as he was leaving the house. On an ordinary day he would already have been at preschool, but he had a dental appointment on this particular morning and so had been permitted to sleep a little later than usual. His grandfather was waiting for him by the front door, as his mother couldn’t afford to take time off work.
Daniel had sensed a certain new tension between his mother and grandfather since the latter’s recent return, although he was unable to ascribe any particular cause to it. This fractiousness did not trouble him greatly because his mother and grandfather often needled each other, mostly in an unserious way but occasionally in a more grievous manner that might cause them to be at odds for days on end.
“Your grandfather is a stubborn man,” his mother would offer by way of explanation, which Daniel found funny because, with only two words changed, it was exactly what his grandfather said about Daniel’s mother. Daniel loved them both, though a dad would have been nice. “He went away, and then he died,” was all his mother would ever tell Daniel about his father.
“Did he know about me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he left before anyone was even aware that you were growing inside me.”
“What was he like?”
“He was like you.”
“Is that why you and I look so different?”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
Now here was Daniel’s grandfather instead, big and strong, with his long, prematurely white hair, tattoos on his arms—pictures and words, Daniel’s name among them—and a piercing in his left ear. He wore faded denim jeans, big steel-toed boots, and a black coat that hung to the middle of his thighs. Nobody else’s grandfather looked like Grandpa Owen. Daniel liked that about him. Grandpa Owen was cooler than any other grandpa, cooler even than most kids’ fathers.
“You ready to go, scout?” said Grandpa Owen.
“Yes.”
“That tooth hurt much?”
“A bit.”
“Want me to take it out for you, save you a trip to the sawbones?”
“No.”
“You sure? Only requires a piece of string. I tie one end to the tooth, the other to my rig, and—bang!—it’ll all be over before you know it, and without an injection either.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Your choice. I’d do it for ten bucks.”
“Nope.”
“How about we split it? Five for you, five for me.”
“Nope.”
“You’re no fun. Say, is that a telephone I hear?”
“It’s a toy one.”
“Why is it ringing?”
Daniel shrugged.
“Dunno.”
“Want to answer it before we leave?”
Grandpa Owen was joking, but Daniel didn’t take it that way. No, he most certainly did not want to answer it. He wanted the telephone to stop ringing. The lady named Karis was growing more insistent with every call. She kept asking Daniel to come find her. She wished for him to join her in the woods, but he didn’t want to go. Karis frightened him. Daniel didn’t have the vocabulary to explain why exactly, but he thought the closest word he could come up with was “hungry.” Karis was hungry: not for food, but for something else. Company, maybe.
Him.
“If it’s broken, you ought to get rid of it,” said Grandpa Owen. “You don’t want it waking you in the night.”
I want to get rid of it, Daniel thought. I’d really like that, but I’m scared. I’m afraid that if I throw it away, Karis will come to find out why I’m not answering.
She’ll come, and I’ll see her face.
She’ll take me into the forest.
And no one will ever be able to find me.