Phoenix Read online

  “Yes. Because what if I fail?”

  Don’t think that way. Believe in yourself.

  “Eleven days.” I don’t know if I even whispered this out loud. Eleven days then his time is done.

  “I go to Foxton, and he’s not there. I look everywhere—he’s never there.”

  Look again, said Arizona-in-my-head.

  “I can’t—I’m too afraid!”

  I turned the car down a side street, away from the interstate and the Foxton junction. Across the street, standing in front of a picket fence, under a white blossom tree, I see Phoenix. He’s watching me, waiting for me to come.

  • • •

  “You don’t go out. You don’t see anyone anymore.” Laura was on my case again.

  Silence from me. I’d fixed my hair so it didn’t look like I’d just walked out of the salon. Jim wasn’t home from work yet, so Laura had free range. She sat beside me at the kitchen table. “I see you have some down time. Why not call Jordan, find out if she wants to watch a movie?”

  “Jordan is welded to Lucas twenty-four/seven.” It hadn’t taken her long to move on from Logan to her new man, but like I said, Lucas has recently become a hunk, so I didn’t really blame her.

  “Call Hannah.”

  No reply. Maybe Laura would hit her head against my wall of silence and admit defeat.

  But no—she came at me from the side. “You’ll definitely go and see Kim on Wednesday?”

  I shrugged. There wasn’t a therapist alive who could drag me out of the pit I was in.

  “Promise me?”

  “OK.” I threw a little scrap of cooperation into the mix to make her back off. I even tried to smile as I got up and went upstairs in time to avoid Jim as his car drew up outside.

  • • •

  The low sun shone directly into my room, reminding me it was early summer. Long, light evenings loomed—and more memories. The season had been ours, Phoenix’s and mine, the heat prickling our skin as we sat by Deer Creek, the delicious coldness of the water when we dipped our feet. We would take off our clothes and swim. I closed the curtains, lay on the bed.

  Downstairs, Laura told Jim that I’d agreed to see the shrink.

  where u hidin? A text came through from Zoey.

  how u doin? I texted back.

  don’t change subject. do u need to talk?

  thnx but no thnx. see u in school 2moro.

  The sun had sunk behind the mountains, and my room was cooling. I lay without moving until it got dark.

  Being in love with a dead person is similar to what happens when a fox is caught in a trap. The fox steps into the snare in the dead of night. Click—the trap closes on its foot, the saw-edge blade tears the flesh to the bone. The fox howls in pain, sees the blood, whimpers, and endures.

  Daylight drives it crazy. It begins to bite and gnaw at the trapped leg. Sometimes it bites off its own foot just to be free.

  The Beautiful Dead don’t exist. I lay on the bed and made my last desperate bid for freedom. I’ll see Kim Reiss, tell her everything—how crazy I’ve been for almost a year, how I invented a whole story to keep me close to Phoenix, a fantasy world, and I’ve been wearing it like a bandage over the still-gaping wound.

  Darkness surrounded me. Outside the window, a breeze started to blow.

  I’ll do it Wednesday—unpick this crazy secret and let Kim heal me.

  There would be a diagnosis and a cure. She would talk about post-traumatic stress and talking therapy, cognitive behavior methods, the value of good diet and exercise. I’d googled the topic so I already had the answers.

  In the future, when I fell into negative thought patterns, I would catch myself doing it, put on my sweats, and go for a healthy run.

  It’s gonna take more than pulling on a pair of jogging pants, I would tell Kim. She would smile that friendly smile and say we had to start somewhere.

  “Night, honey,” Laura called through my door as she and Jim went to bed.

  I switched off my light and let the darkness lap over me. The wind strengthened. There was going to be a storm.

  I’ll tell Kim about my visions, and I’ll be free, I told myself. Run, run, run.

  It was past midnight. My curtains billowed in the wind. I got up from my bed to close the window.

  “We need to talk,” Hunter said.

  • • •

  The first time I saw Hunter he was a man of stone. You would have thought his features had been chiseled—there was no flicker of expression on his stern face.

  The second time I saw him I thought he was made of iron. Then steel. Think of any material that is unbending and cold. He has gray eyes that see everything, gray hair swept back from his face, a fading angel-wing tattoo on his forehead. “We need to talk,” he told me now.

  And the wind blew into the room and filled it like a million beating wings.

  I stood by the window struggling for breath, only half seeing Hunter in the shadows, behind the Beautiful Dead shield of wings.

  “Sit down, Darina,” he said quietly. “Don’t say anything until you get your thoughts together.

  Don’t do this to me! I pleaded. Don’t start the whole thing up again!

  “I’ve been waiting, watching,” he told me.

  And I’ve come to Foxton looking for you, I really have!

  “I know it,” he said, without me having to speak.

  I stood up, but he forced me to sit again with just a look. My legs folded under me, and I was sitting on the bed. “Were you there—at Foxton—all along?” I whispered.

  “There was always someone—Dean, Iceman, me…OK, I know—so why didn’t we let you know?” Hunter was at least two steps ahead. I underestimated that mind-reading power of his. “Let’s say it was a trial period.”

  “What is this—an exam? After all that I’ve done, I still have to pass a test!”

  “Dean and Iceman—they were under orders from me not to show themselves, only to observe.”

  There, in my dark room, I recalled my recent visits to the ranch house—the stillness except for the barn door banging, destroying my hopes. “Do you have any idea how cruel that is?”

  “To observe you and test your courage.” If Hunter heard my question he deflected it—ping, like an arrow off a shield. “I had to know if you have the strength to help Phoenix.”

  I raised my head and held his gaze. OK, is that why you’re here—to tell me I failed the test? To zap my memory clear of the Beautiful Dead? So that’s a heap of Laura’s money saved on seeing a therapist.

  “I’m not here to condemn you, Darina. I’m here to talk.” Hunter stepped toward me, his eyes searching my face. “And you must know that the Beautiful Dead don’t show themselves to you unless it’s absolutely necessary and only after we’ve exhausted every other avenue.”

  It was true—getting in touch with me was never their first choice, and I knew why. Making contact with people from the far side was always a big risk to their existence.

  “What else did you try?” I whispered.

  “Dean—you remember Dean—he went to Henry Jardine’s office and learned all he could from the police records of the investigation.”

  Dean was an ex-cop. I hardly knew him—only that he was Beautiful Dead and had been given the chance to return to the far side because of the way he died in a hit-and-run car crash. That and the fact that he was due to become an overlord once Hunter’s job was done.

  “Did he find anything new?” I asked.

  “Not much. They never even identified the knife that killed Phoenix, let alone his attacker. They interviewed the gas station cashier, plus a dozen other witnesses. The case is still open, but there are no fresh leads.”

  “No weapon,” I murmured. And I pictured the chaos of the fight on the forecourt—Brandon and his gang versus a group of out-
of-town bikers, Phoenix stepping in possibly to help his brother, getting stabbed in the back.

  “Most of the witnesses refused to cooperate with the cops. They closed ranks.”

  “What about Brandon?” I asked.

  Hunter watched my every move. He noticed the struggle I was going through to keep my voice level, to stop my hands from shaking. “Brandon was the exception. In his interview with Deputy Sheriff Jardine he provided names, gave a description of the build up to the fight, the duration, the types of weapons used.”

  “But nothing that led the cops to the identity of the killer?”

  “The file is still open, case unsolved,” he reminded me. I let a long silence develop.

  “I know, Darina—this is hard.” Hunter joined me at the window. He drew back the curtains and stared out.

  I closed my eyes. “Sure, you read minds. You know I’m terrified. But how deep do you see? Can you work out exactly why I’ve stayed away?”

  “You’re scared you’ll fail, that you won’t solve Phoenix’s killing.”

  “Yeah, that’s one reason.” I wasn’t sure where I was going with this, whether Hunter was even interested, but I stumbled on. “You know when love and loss overwhelm you? You ache from it, it fogs your brain, you’re caught in its trap.”

  Hunter stood very close, very pale and cold. “I do understand. I lost my wife to Peter Mentone,” he reminded me.

  A hundred years ago, in the room with the stove and the rocking chair, with the blood stain on the floor. I knew the whole story.

  Hunter did something surprising—he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a faded picture. He showed it to me but didn’t let go.

  “This is Marie?” I couldn’t help it—I was trembling, wanting to cry as I looked at the brown and white, curling-at-the-edges photo. I saw straightaway what Arizona and Summer meant when they said I reminded Hunter of his dead wife. Her hair was dark, her mouth was wide, you noticed her eyes.

  “Mentone was our neighbor, out beyond Angel Rock. He lived alone, ran a few cattle, drank in the bar at Foxton. He was a guy you didn’t want to spend time with.”

  “You don’t need to explain.” It seemed wrong—Hunter the overlord opening up to me, sharing his tragedy.

  In the half-light of the moon appearing from behind a bank of clouds I stared at the faded angel-wing tattoo on his forehead.

  He gazed at the sky as he slid the picture back in his pocket. “Marie thought different—she was too softhearted. She felt sorry for the guy, said she didn’t like to think of him all alone in the shack he called home. Once in a while she invited him to supper. He misinterpreted that, I guess.”

  “You don’t need to…” I breathed.

  “We talked about it. I said I didn’t like the way Mentone looked at her. Marie said not to worry, it was nothing she couldn’t handle. I let it go.”

  Startled, I looked straight at Hunter. “You’re not blaming yourself?” The way I’d heard it, Mentone had broken in on Marie while Hunter was out. He’d gone right in there and raped her. Hunter had come back unexpectedly, torn Mentone off his wife. Mentone had pulled a gun and shot Hunter through the head. “They had a trial. They hanged him.”

  “I shouldn’t have let it go. I should’ve been there for her.”

  Now, unlike the Beautiful Dead, I’m no mind reader, but when Hunter came to a sudden halt, I knew there was more he wanted to say.

  “It was not your fault,” I insisted. Then my mind did a backflip, and I focused on the phrase he’d used—I lost my wife to Peter Mentone.

  The moon disappeared behind the clouds: Hunter and I were in the dark.

  “Overwhelmed by loss.” He sighed.

  They tried Mentone, and they hanged him. Where was the mystery in that? Why had Hunter been chosen to come back as leader of the Beautiful Dead?

  “The feelings don’t stop when you die,” he explained. “You carry them with you. Limbo is a place of tortured souls, all looking for answers—for decades, for centuries, until the end of time. The lucky ones get to come back to the far side to solve their mysteries.”

  “You said you lost Marie to Mentone? What did you mean?”

  “She had a child—a girl.”

  “I know—Marie named her Hester. I read about her in the newspaper archive.”

  Hunter was set on telling me every detail, and he continued along that road. “There were rumors. They said she was Mentone’s daughter, not mine. They wanted Marie to give her up for adoption.” He spoke the painful words in a noncomprehending, almost detached voice.

  “But she didn’t. She kept Hester and brought her up, sent her to school, got her an education.” I read that, too.

  “They blamed her for doing that, said she wasn’t fit to be around decent folks.”

  We’d reached the heart of Hunter’s mystery, and I asked the core question. “And all this time you haven’t known—was Hester yours or Mentone’s?”

  It was Hunter’s turn to let the long silence develop between us. “Worse,” he admitted at last. “Was that really rape I walked in on, or did my wife consent?”

  If I knew one thing, it was that Phoenix loved me. Without question, he loved me with all his heart. I hung on to that knowledge through the dark days after he died, through the funeral, and all the crazy weeks when I drove into the mountains looking for comfort and found it in that dark barn at Foxton whenever the Beautiful Dead appeared.

  “And now, Darina, you have to make a decision.” Hunter had been patient with me, sharing his own doubts, his mysteries, but he was here for another reason. “Which way does your love for Phoenix take you? Will you work with us again, or do you prefer to walk away?”

  I stood at the dark window. I took in the details of my room—the silver necklace hanging from my mirror, the tubes and pots of cosmetics on my table, the impression of my head on the pillow. My gaze swung past Hunter, no longer a man of stone or steel, toward the sky.

  Wings beat against the windowpane. Eleven days minus one—ten, because we were past midnight.

  “Well?” Hunter asked.

  “I lost him once,” I whispered. “And now I have to lose him again.”

  “Or you could forget.”

  “You would do that?”

  He nodded. “You’ve seen how it works. I can take your memories of Phoenix and the Beautiful Dead, and I can erase them completely. You can get on with your life.”

  “There’d be nothing left? No Foxton, no barn, no rituals? I would drive out there and find no trace?”

  “Nothing,” he promised, fixing me with that deep-down stare. “None of this would ever have happened.”

  “Only memories of Phoenix and me together before he died, the good times?”

  “Yes.”

  I would be like Zoey, learning to live without Jonas, putting one foot in front of another. Like Summer’s parents, Heather and Jon Madison, listening to her music, remembering.

  “Would I be happy?” I wanted to know.

  Hunter’s gaze flickered. “I can’t say.”

  “Sorry—stupid question.”

  “Good question,” he insisted. “Phoenix would want you to be.”

  Phoenix. To me, even his name sounds like a sigh, like wind in the aspens. I held my breath.

  “Walk away and be happy?” Hunter prompted.

  “I could never do that,” I said.

  I told Hunter I would drive out to Foxton early the next morning. He promised me Phoenix would be there.

  As he was about to leave, an idea popped into my head and, without stopping to think it through, I offered it to him. “I could follow up with what happened to Marie and Hester.”

  He recoiled and acted like I’d shot him in the head all over again. “Why would I want you to do that?”

  “To find out if they were—well, happy. Wo
uldn’t you like to know?”

  “Happy?” he echoed. That word again. Without giving me an answer, he turned his focus inward, created the shimmering halo from head to foot, and dissolved into nothing.

  At least he didn’t say no, I thought.

  And I kept myself busy during the long hours before dawn by planning how I would do the research—go back to the website where I’d read the history of Ellerton, type in the early twentieth-century date when Hunter was killed and Peter Mentone was tried and hanged—get all the facts, refresh my memory. After that I would type in Marie Lee’s name and see what came up. Marie was a teacher before she married small-time rancher Hunter Lee, I remembered. Maybe she went back to teaching after he died. Maybe she kept Hester and moved a million miles away from this narrow-minded small town to make a new life in the city. Or maybe she did give her daughter up for adoption in the end.

  I only toyed with the life-story-of-Marie-and-Hester idea because it kept me from obsessing over my Foxton trip.

  Even so, the night crawled by and other unruly thoughts kept breaking in.

  “Tell Darina I’m sorry.” It was Phoenix’s voice saying this, and my mental picture was of him lying in his own blood with Brandon bending over him. “Tell Darina I’m sorry.”

  They were the last words Phoenix spoke.

  Flashback number two: “Who killed him?” This was me asking Brandon the question that never got answered.

  We were in my old car, sitting outside Brandon’s apartment. Brandon wasn’t giving me anything back. He was blocking me. “Were you ever in a fight?” he said. “There were twelve or more guys. Kicking, punching, shoving. Someone pulled a knife. That’s all I know.”

  More flashes, more unwelcome pictures before dawn, of me standing next to Logan Lavelle, staring down at a patch of Phoenix’s blood. An empty gas station with red and green neon signs, no sound except the crime scene plastic tape flapping.

  Me refusing to believe that Phoenix didn’t make it to the hospital, that I would never see him again. My whole life torn apart.

  The minutes crept by. Come first light, I was out of the house. I heard Laura rush to the door in her robe, too late to stop me from driving away.