Burning Paradise

He looked at the book in his hand, then offered it to Cassie. She shook her head. “Finish reading if it you want.”

“You ever meet your uncle?”

“A few times. Before ’07. But I don’t remember much about him. Uncle Ethan and Aunt Ris visited sometimes, back when I lived with my parents. He was just a quiet guy who smiled a lot and didn’t say much.” And since Leo had raised the subject, Cassie allowed herself to broach a delicate subject: “My uncle was pretty close to your father. According to Aunt Ris, Werner Beck was pretty much the head of the whole Correspondence Society.”

“I bet she said more than that.”

“Well—”

“It’s okay, Cassie. I know my father has enemies.”

“I’m not sure enemy is the word. She said he was brilliant.” Which was true, though her other words had included arrogant and narcissistic.

“He’s not shy about telling people things they need to hear, whether they want to hear them or not.”

“He wrote to you, right?”

“Once a month. Long letters. He called it my real education.”

“How come you didn’t live with him?”

“After ’07, he figured I wouldn’t be safe anywhere near him. He sent me to live with a cousin of his in Cinci

“But we weren’t what you hoped we’d be?”

“Well. You know what my father used to say about the Society? He said it was social club when it should have been an army.”

Possibly true. “That changed in ’07,” Cassie said.

“No, not for the better. The murders were obviously meant to drive the Society into hiding, and that’s what happened. We cringed like dogs. Quoting my father. Which is what I found in Buffalo, a bunch of whipped dogs…” He gave Cassie a look that seemed both sheepish and defiant. “Anyway, that’s how it seemed. Don’t do anything rash. Whisper. Mourn, but don’t get angry.”

“Some of us did get angry, Leo. Even if it didn’t show. Some of us were angry all along.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” He shifted his legs, making the ancient lawn chair creak. The only other sound was the wind furiously tangling the wind chimes. “Anyway, what could I say? My father survived ’07. I wasn’t an orphan. I could hardly complain to someone like—”

“Like me?”

“Someone who’d seen what you’d seen.”

Well, yes, Cassie thought. She had caught one indelible glimpse of her parents’ slack and bloodied bodies before Aunt Ris covered her eyes and pulled her away. You can’t unsee something like that. But what did that buy you? Only bad dreams and guilt. A clinging sadness she could never quite escape.

But anger, too. We never lacked for anger. “Well,” she said, “we’re in the same boat now.”

“Orphans?” Leo asked sharply. “Is that what you mean?”

“No. I mean—”

“I don’t know for sure he’s dead. But whether is or whether he isn’t, he wouldn’t have sent me here unless he wanted me to finish his work.”

“You really think Eugene Dowd can help us do that?”

“Dowd seems to think we’re here to help him. But my father trusted him.”

“To do what?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Leo said, “when he finishes his story.”

16

SOMEWHERE ON THE TURNPIKE WEST OF Columbus, Ohio, the events of the last few days settled on Nerissa like an unbearable weight. Suddenly breathless, she asked Ethan to pull over. She was out of the car before he finished braking, falling to her knees next to a weed-clogged drainage ditch. A barrel stave had tightened around her chest. Her head felt heavy. The sun was viciously bright, the noise of passing trucks cruelly loud. She put her hands into the yellow grass, leaned forward and vomited up the remains of this morning’s breakfast.

When the spasm passed she shut her eyes and took small sips of the chilly December air. The darkness that formed behind her eyelids was cavernous and oddly comforting. She didn’t move until she felt the pressure of Ethan’s hand on her shoulder.

“Ris? Are you all right?”

Obviously not. But in the sense he meant… well, she was recovering. “Help me up, please, Ethan.”

She leaned into him until her dizziness passed. Back to the car, then, where she rinsed her mouth with bottled water, spitting it onto the verge.

Fu

Not that it was exactly a new thought, but she had kept it at a safe distance in the frenzied activity of the past few days. But time, or the drowsy, sun-warmed comfort of the moving car, had lowered her guard.

She allowed herself another sip of water as Ethan steered back into traffic. A pair of eighteen-wheel trucks barreled past, lords of the turnpike on this chilly weekday afternoon. She found herself thinking of the custody hearings back in ’07, held in the aftermath of the massacre. A panel of Family Health and Social Welfare workers had reviewed Nerissa’s suitability as a caregiver for her orphaned niece and nephew. Nerissa had testified to her willingness to make a new home for them, had promised they would receive any counseling or therapy they might need. And those vows had been authentic; she had made them without reservation, though she was less than certain of what FHSW called her “parenting potential.” In the end, the tribunal had expressed more confidence in her ability to raise two kids than she actually felt.

She had always admired her sister’s devotion to her children, even occasionally envied it; but children had never been on Nerissa’s agenda, except in a vague maybe-someday sense. Her career and her troubles with Ethan had rendered the question moot. Then, suddenly, she found herself responsible for two traumatized children. She had taken a leave of absence from the University after the murders and she knew that going back would make her a sitting target, should the killers return. A new city, responsibility for Cassie and Thomas, the unfathomable threat hanging over them all, not to mention her own burden of traumatic memories… some nights she had come awake in the sweaty certainty that she couldn’t handle any of it: the kids would despise her; she would be reduced to poverty; they would all be butchered in their sleep.

But it hadn’t happened that way. The kids had slowly adapted. For months Cassie had covered her ears at the slightest mention of her parents; she had been clingy, reluctant even to walk to school by herself. Slowly, however, her confidence had crept back. And so, in equal measure, had Nerissa’s. It was as if they had learned a silent magic: how to draw strength from each other in a way that left each of them stronger. Thomas, though he was younger than Cassie, had recovered even more quickly. There were difficult moments, of course, sudden and unprovoked outbursts of tears or anger, demands to be taken back to his real home, his real mother… but Thomas had been willing to accept Cassie’s consoling hugs and, later, Nerissa’s. She remembered the first time he had come crying into her arms. The surprising warmth and weight of him, the damp patch his tears left on her shoulder.