The Neighbors sisters gave each other anxious looks, each of them squeezing the other’s hand. Michael stroked Allie’s back until she shrugged him off. Ben Patchett exhaled—a thin, tense, unhappy breath. Onstage, Carol Storey hugged herself tightly as if to ward off a chill. In the whole room, perhaps the only person immune to the tension was Nick. He was no lip-reader under the best of conditions, and certainly not by candlelight, from fifty feet away. He was doodling gravestones in the back of a songbook. The dearly departed included the famous I. M. DUNFORE, HARRY PITTS, and BARRY D. BODIE. One tombstone read HERE LIES A THIEF, KILLED WITHOUT GREEF . . . so then again, maybe he was following along just fine.
When Father Storey looked up at last, he was still smiling. He showed not the slightest sign of regret.
“Ah,” he said. “It was too much to ask, I suppose. I imagine whoever took the things from the kitchen and the girls’ dorm must feel terribly pressured. I only meant to show you that everyone here wishes you well. You are one of us. Your voice belongs with ours. The things you took must be an awful weight on you and I’m sure you’d like to be out from under it. Simply leave the things you took somewhere they can easily be found and drop a note to tell me where to look. Or have a private word with me. I won’t judge you and have no interest in punishment. When all of us are walking with a death sentence inscribed right on our skin, what need is there of punishment? We have all been found guilty of being human. There are worse crimes.” He looked back at Carol and said, “What are we singing tonight, joy?”
Carol opened her mouth, but before she could reply, someone shouted, “What if she doesn’t come forward?”
Harper glanced around: Allie. She was quivering—with fury, but also, maybe, with nervousness—and at the same time, her jaw was set in a look that was perfectly stubborn, perfectly hostile, and perfectly Allie. Somehow Harper wasn’t surprised. Allie was the only person in camp who wasn’t in awe of the old man.
“What if the thief just keeps taking more stuff?” Allie asked.
Father Storey lifted an eyebrow. “Then I imagine we’ll make do with less.”
“It’s not fair,” whispered Gillian Neighbors. Her voice was low, pitched to just above a whisper, but in the great echoing space of the chapel, everyone could hear.
Carol stepped forward, to the edge of the stage, looking at her feet. When she lifted her chin, her eyes were red, as if she had been crying or was about to start.
“I don’t feel like singing especially,” she said. “I feel like something important slipped away tonight. Something special. Maybe our trust in each other. Allie, my niece, doesn’t want to stay with the other girls anymore, knowing there’s a thief there. She doesn’t have any other pictures of her mother, my sister. No way to remember her. Just what was in the locket. That locket will never mean to anyone what it means to her and her brother. I don’t understand how anyone could hurt her that way and then come in here and sing like she cares about other people. It makes the whole thing feel phony. I’ll play a song you all know, and you can sing if you want, or you can be silent with me. Whatever feels right to you. A part of me feels like if we can’t all be honest with each other, silence might be better. Maybe we should all hold one of Father Storey’s stones in our mouth for a bit, and consider what really matters.”
That sounded a little schoolmarmish in Harper’s opinion, but she saw people nodding. She also saw Allie brushing away an angry tear with one finger, then twisting her head and turning to furiously whisper something to Gail and Gillian Neighbors.
Then Carol began to play, picking at the strings of her ukulele, not strumming. Notes rang out, like little hammers striking silver chimes. It took only a moment for Harper to recognize “Silent Night.” No one sang. There was, instead, a reverential hush, the room utterly silent aside from Carol’s playing.
Harper wasn’t sure who lit up first. At some point, though, she became aware of a faint luminescence in the cavernous dim. Eyes shone the blue-green color of lightning bugs flashing in a summer night. Dragonscale became scribbles of dim fluorescence. Harper thought of those fish that lived in the deepest basins of the ocean, illuminating the depths with their own glow-in-the-dark organs. It was a cold, alien light, different from the usual almost-blinding intensity of the Bright. Harper had not imagined they could create harmony without a sound, that they could join in a silent chorus of disapproval rather than song.
Only about half the room turned on, and Harper was not among them. For the first time in weeks she was unable to join, to connect. Over the last few weeks, she had come to look forward to chapel, and slipped into the Bright as she would’ve slipped into a warm bath. Now, though, the water was cold. She couldn’t understand how any of the others could stand it.
The last note hung in the air like a snowflake that refused to fall. As it died away, this new, ill-hued Bright died away with it, and the darkness around them returned.
Carol blinked at tears. Father Storey put his arms around her from behind and hugged her to his chest. Maybe the thief had stolen that locket from four people, after all: the dead woman had been Carol’s sister and Tom Storey’s daughter, as well as Allie and Nick’s mother.
Father Storey peered over Carol’s shoulder into the chapel and smiled. “Well. That was very beautiful, but I hope we won’t make a habit of it. I like hearing all of you. We will be rearranging the pews for morning reading and—ah! John! I almost forgot you. Thank you for coming tonight. Is there something you wanted to say to us?”
The Fireman grinned from the back of the room.
“I’ve found two men in need of shelter. With permission, I’d like to bring them into the camp. I can’t vouch for them, Father—I haven’t been able to get close enough to talk to them yet. They’ve painted themselves into a bit of a corner. I can get them out and I can make a distraction to cover their escape, but I’ll need some others to lead them back to camp.”
Father Storey frowned. “Of course. Anyone who needs our help. I’m surprised you’d even ask. Is there some special reason for concern?”
“Judging by the orange suits they’re wearing,” the Fireman said, “the ones that say ‘Brentwood County Court’ on the back, they might be even more in need of salvation than the average member of your flock, Father.”
6
When Father Storey asked the Fireman who he’d need, Harper didn’t expect to be on his list, but she was the only person he mentioned by name.
“Two or three men and Nurse Willowes, if you please, Father. I don’t know what kind of state they’ll be in. At the very least they’ve spent twenty-four hours in a cramped hiding place, in temperatures barely above freezing, so they’ll be suffering from exposure. It might make sense to have medical assistance on hand. What say we group up in Monument Park in twenty minutes? I’d like to get under way.”
The service was over. Everyone crowded into the aisles, all of them yammering at once. Harper pushed her way through the close press of bodies and the noise. Ben Patchett was saying something—Harper, you’re pregnant, he’s out of his mind if—but she pretended not to hear. In another moment she was through the enormous red doors and out into a cold so dry and sharp it stung the eyes.
Alone in the infirmary, she flung open cabinets, collecting anything that might be useful and dumping it in a small nylon knapsack. In her haste, her elbow struck the big anatomical model of a human head. It tipped off the counter and smashed on the floor.
She cursed, turned to kick the shards out of sight—was in too much of a hurry to sweep—then hesitated.
The head had busted into several large pieces. One half of the face gaped up at her with an idiotic astonishment. A stenographer’s notebook, rolled into a tube and bound up with thick rubber bands, lay among the shards.
Harper picked it out of the shattered pieces, undid the rubber bands, and looked at the cover.
PRIVATE NOTEBOOK OF HAROLD CROSS
MEDICAL OBSERVATIONS AND PERSONAL INSIGHTS
WITH SOME OCCASIONAL POETRY
She considered what to do with it, thought there might be quite a few people in camp who would want to know what Harold had written about in the weeks before his death. Finally she decided not to decide. There wasn’t time. She tossed it in a drawer and got out of there.