“As a rule, religious fundamentalism sort of terrifies me,” Ben said.
“Still, it gives a fascinating sense of the zeitgeist. Think how dangerous this country was back then. A poor harvest, a hard winter, angry natives, the frontier, war. Any one thing could have spelled disaster for them. Rich soil for the hellfire-and-damnation religious movements that thrived up here. It’s no wonder their faith was so strong. It might well have been the only thing they could depend upon.”
“Faith,” Ben said. “Bad times are worse up here.” Someone had told him that once. He looked through the window, searching for something more than the charred tree and the interminable blanket of white.
“Bub is all right, Ben,” Cal said.
“Isn’t that risky for you to say? Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways’? Or ‘Hard things happen to people with hard lives because the Lord knows they can take it’? Isn’t that the line? It’s what everyone else up here says.”
Cal took off his glasses and rubbed the sides of his nose.
“Dark thoughts lead to dark paths,” he said. “Don’t let that happen, Ben.”
“Keep up the light,” Ben said.
“Yes.” Cal nodded.
Ben closed his eyes and then willed them open again. He pulled his coat from its hook.
“Aren’t you eating anything?” Cal asked.
“I have to do something first.”
—
Outside, Ben looked for the gravel drive but could not find it. The Drop was an uninterrupted field of white.
He made for the south woods.
Trekking across the open was difficult. The storm had left the snow in drifts. In some places it reached his waist; in others it barely covered his knees. But it wasn’t as cold as it had been. The wind had dropped off. When he reached the forest, the woods were quiet. Only the very tops of the trees rattled.
The snow had taken him off course, and he looked back to the Crofts to find his bearings. Against the snow, the house was a dark hulk.
A nice home for a young family. A place where good work is both undertaken and rewarded. His sons, happy and thriving. Can you see it? It seemed harder with every step. Ben had wanted a house with a story, but this one had too many of them. The place was too big and too old. Ben didn’t know what they’d been thinking, moving here. Everything about it had been wrong from the start.
He walked south through the woods until he thought he was well beyond the old chapel. The fresh snow should have covered the bouquet of flowers that Lisbeth had left at the stone angel yesterday, but if it hadn’t, he knew the sight of snow stained red would be more than he could bear. He turned east, into a steep slope. Soon he was on the very edge of the Drop, nearly on the side of the mountain. He had to brace himself against roots and rocks to keep from slipping. When he looked up, he saw the spiderweb silhouettes of naked trees against the sky.
Finally, the land leveled out and Ben saw the cemetery. He hadn’t been here since the summer. Its stones weren’t buried as deeply as he thought they’d be.
Thinking of poor Philip Swann and the other dead boys on Lisbeth’s wall made Ben realize that this was a village where children died long before their time. Even Ben’s great-uncle Owen had died here. He tried not to imagine an image of Bub hanging alongside theirs in Lisbeth’s cellar.
The gravestones were organized chronologically, with the newest ones on the west side of the clearing. Miranda and Eleanor Swann’s headstones might have been carved yesterday, and Mark and Liam’s did not look much older.
Ben began at the back, where the stones were too worn to read. The first had been rubbed to a thickness of only an inch. He walked the lines until he reached one with an inscription he could make out. The stone was for Ruth Swann, who’d died in 1852. He found Philip Swann’s marker not far from there. There was a prominent death’s head at the top of the stone, and Ben had to clear away the snow to read the inscription.
MEMENTO MORI
In memory of Mr. Philip Jackson Swann, son of Carter Allen Swann, who departed this life on A.D. December 21, 1878 and died with hope of happy immortality.
Ben noticed that the date was the same as today’s. The Great Fire of 1878 had been earlier that year.
He found himself back among the newest of the stones. Mark and Liam Swann were buried next to their father and mother, Carlisle and Sara Swann. According to the parents’ tablet, they’d died in 1974. Their marker had a more modern style than Philip Swann’s, but they had retained the inscription of memento mori. Remember death.
Ben knew that Mark Swann had been fifteen when he died, but he couldn’t remember Liam’s age. He went to check the dates on his gravestone. The boy’s date of birth had been 1971, but it was reading his date of death that made Ben feel as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart.
Mark and Liam Swann had also died on December 21. Today.
He’d read the articles about the fire, but the date of it hadn’t stuck in his head.
“What does it mean?” he whispered into the cold air. He backed away from the grave markers and nearly fell into a drift. “It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. Maybe it meant something and maybe it didn’t. All he knew was that he had to find Bub. When Charlie had gone missing, the FBI told him that the first seventy-two hours were essential. He had to find him today.
He began his trudge back to the Crofts. When he got there, Ben would make sure Charlie was packed. When Ted arrived, Ben would see them off, then he’d walk the forest until the sun closed the day. When he’d fallen in the dark too many times to keep going, he’d pack a bag for Caroline and himself and they’d go to the inn in Exton. The Crofts didn’t feel safe anymore. He’d sit there in the dark of his rented room and think about what the rest of his life would be like.