First Family (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 4)

Daryl and Gabriel had tears in their eyes. They both brushed them away while steadfastly not looking at each other.

“Momma was the best damn woman that ever lived,” Daryl finally said in a hushed voice while Quarry nodded in agreement.

Quarry touched Tippi’s cheek. “And this one here is right up there with her.”

“Amen to that,” said Gabriel. “Is she ever going to get better, Mr. Sam?”

“No, son. She’s not.”

“You want to say a prayer for her?” Gabriel put his hands together and started to kneel.

“You can if you want, Gabriel. But I don’t go down that road anymore.”

“Momma says you don’t believe in God. Why’s that?”

“Because he stopped believing in me, son.”

He stood and put the small recorder in his jacket pocket. “When you’re done I’ll be outside in the truck smoking.”

Quarry sat in his junk of a truck, the window down, an unlit smoke dangling from between his parched lips. The Alabama heat was in all its glory at nearly nine o’clock at night, and Quarry flicked a bead of sweat off his nose as a mosquito buzzed at his right ear.

The skeeter wasn’t bothering him too much. He was watching a meteor flame across the sky, the Big Dipper serving as a celestial backdrop to the show. After it was over his gaze dropped to the low cinderblock building that was his daughter’s home now. No husband, no kids, no grandkids for Tippi. Just a dead brain, a beaten body, and a feeding tube.

“You messed up there, God. Shouldn’t done that. I know the ‘work in mysterious ways’ crap. I know the ‘everything has a purpose’ BS. But you got it wrong. You’re not infallible. You shoulda let my baby girl alone. I’ll never forgive you for that, and I don’t give a damn if you never forgive me for what I got to do.” He spoke in a lurching, halting voice before he fell silent. He wanted the tears to come, if for no other reason than to relieve the pressure on his brain. On his soul. But they wouldn’t bleed through his eyes. His soul apparently was scorched earth, no water left to give.

When the two came out and climbed in the truck, Quarry tossed his unlit cigarette out the window and they drove back to Atlee in silence.

Quarry went immediately to his library, sat behind his desk, fortified himself with a slug of 86-proof Old Grand Dad, lit the fire, thrust the poker into it, rolled up his sleeve, and held it against his bare arm, making a second mark perpendicular to and at the right end of the long burn already there. Ten seconds later the poker fell to the carpet, burning another hole in it, and Quarry collapsed back in his chair.

Breathing heavily, his eyes staring up at the sooty ceiling that had caught the flameouts and driftbacks of centuries of his ancestors, Quarry started talking. Most of it made little sense except to Quarry; he found it crystal clear. He started out telling folks that he was sorry. He named names and his voice rose and sank at odd intervals. He took another pull of Grand Dad, holding the bottle to his lips for the longest time.

More came from his mouth, his entire heart and soul poured forth. Planted on the ceiling up there were Cameron and Tippi, in each other’s arms. He could see each so vividly he wanted to rise to them, hold them both. Let them soar off together to a better place than the sorry one he was in right now.

He sometimes wondered what the hell he was doing. One little uneducated man against the world. Outrageous, unbelievable, foolish. It was all those things. Sure. But he couldn’t stop now. It wasn’t just that he’d come too far to quit. It was that he had nowhere else to go.

When he closed his eyes and then reopened them his wife and daughter were gone. The fire alrea

dy crackled low; he’d built it up just enough to get the burn on the poker. He looked down at his arm again, at the intersecting lines. Hercules had had his labors. Ishmael the albatross of the whale. Jesus the burden of the cross and the lives of all resting on his weary shoulders.

This was Sam Quarry’s cross to bear. It certainly was. Not just the square miles of Quarry land reduced to almost nothing. Or the ramshackle house that would never again see better days. Not just the dead wife, the ruined daughter. The dim son and the distant other daughter. Neither was it just the history of the Quarry family that was so wrongheaded in many respects as to be a shameful badge for any decent-minded descendant.

It was that Sam Quarry was no longer the man he once was. He was unrecognizable to himself. And not because of the burns on his arm. But because of the hellish scorch marks on his inner self. He’d lied to Gabriel. Maybe he’d lied to himself too. He didn’t not believe in God. He feared him. With all his heart and soul. Because what he’d done on this earth meant that he would not be reunited with his beloved wife or with his beautiful, resurrected daughter, when the time came. His price for justice was eternal separation. It was why he listened to his wife’s last words over and over. It was why he visited Tippi as often as he did. Because when it was over, it was really going to be done.

He looked back at the ceiling and said so softly it could barely be heard above the tired pop of the fire, “Eternity is damn well forever.”

Outside the closed door Gabriel skittered away. He’d come down to get another book to read, and heard far more than he’d wanted to. Far more than the little boy, smart as he was, could possibly understand.

He’d always looked up to Mr. Sam. Never knew a man who treated him any better than the current head of the Quarry clan did. And yet even with that, Gabriel ran all the way back to his room, locked the door, and slipped under the bedcovers.

And he never did fall asleep that night. It seemed the wails of Sam Quarry from down below were able to leach into every square inch of Atlee. There seemed to be nowhere that was safe or free from them.

CHAPTER 41

DONNA ROTHWELL didn’t think Sally Maxwell was having an affair with anyone, she told them. They were sitting in the woman’s vast living room.

“I think it’s a smear on your mother’s memory to even propose such a thing,” she said in a strident voice, hurling a dark look at Michelle.

“But someone did kill her,” Sean pointed out.