Chapter 39

SPOILER ALERT: THS IS THE LAST CHAPTER.

For Effen, it’s good to be home. Good … but disquieting. He never did learn what happened to Tom. Must have gone bawling to Brut. Hard to imagine the authorities or the Guard not spotting him. Not with that torn face.

He goes from room to room. The door to the bath is open. The white throw rug, which he labored to keep so clean, has been replaced by one that’s delicate peach.

Farrell, behind him, wraps her arms around him in a light, loving shawl. “Who else was here that day?”

Uh-oh. “Why do you ask?”

“It wasn’t your blood. You had only one cut that would leave that sort of mess. We saw you do it. Outside. On the lawn of an empty house.”

“Was there anything else here?”

“Broken glass. On the floor.”

Effen looks in the proper direction.

“And something really bizarre. Downstairs. In the wash machine.”

The soiled sheets. Damn.

Effen holds his breath.

“Jeans mixed in with cream-colored flannel sheets. You’ve been doing laundry long enough to know you can’t throw jeans in with whites or light colors.”

Effen relaxes. The color returns to his cheeks.

Farrell gives him a little squeeze. Her eyes dance. Nothing’s sacred, anyway. “You thought I was going to say something about the state of everything in the machine after I found them two days later, didn’t you.”

Heat bursts beneath Effen’s collar. “That bad?”

“You almost had a new washer.”

Why is she pursuing this now? Why not two months ago, when the police and the doctors thought he was overdosing on something illicit?

“I figured you’d talk when you were ready,” she says, as if sensing his questions. “Besides, it wasn’t the kind of thing to be hashed out in a place where everybody wants to know your business. There was too much to sort out: my trip to the airport, the marks on your arm, the mess on the floor, the fact that you’ve been a client of Bruton’s for years, yet he never came near you all the while you were in the hospital. And what about the phone hanging off the hook? The county traced a 911 call to this address. Who made that call, France? And why”

When he was in the hospital, he thought his refusal to talk was reasonable. Now, however, he recognizes his reticence for what it truly was: madness.

He opens his arms to Farrell. They latch on to each other, pressing into each other so tightly they can feel each other’s heart beat.

“That night everyone fled Mount Can’t,” Effen says into her hair. “You asked me about notifying the medical examiner. You were right. We should have called the prosecutor, too. We didn’t. For this reason: nobody died.”

Farrell says nothing. Effen feels her bunching his blazer in her fist.

He tells her everything, from Bruton’s inception of the plan to what happened at The House after she left for the funeral. He never meant to hide anything from her. He wanted so very badly to tell her, so many times.

“I thought the sight of all those people making a brainless rush to safety was the most horrifying thing I’d seen in my life. It tore my heart to see you get sick over it. I wanted to tell you that night. I wanted to tell you the morning they told me Gustie and the girls were dead. I couldn’t. I couldn’t expect you to believe it. It was beyond reason. It was beyond imagination. It was beyond anything I could expect a rational person to understand. God knows, it’s beyond anything I deserve to survive.”

“Then why did you go along with it?”

“Tom and Brut thought we couldn’t be prosecuted. The state had created the notion of a volcano in the park in the first place. How could we be prosecuted for showing the powers that be a mirror image of themselves? If only we knew how deeply the mirror was cracked!”

There’s only one thing Effen can do now: go to the county prosecutor. When the dust settles, the charges against Tom and Bruton read like a table of contents for a criminal law refresher: abduction, assault (and battery), attempted murder, conspiracy, fraud, reckless endangerment, and terrorism. Johnson and Birdsall are cited for conspiracy, fraud and terrorism. Elizabeth is charged as an accessory to Farrell’s abduction.

The interstate search for Tom and Johnson and Birdsall proves fruitless until the first week in July, when they’re traced to a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s clear the place has been abandoned for quite some time. The animals, all sheep, are close to death from neglect.

Effen himself is charged with conspiracy and aiding and abetting, plus other crimes associated with the abuse of his profession. His part in the ruse may have been small, but it was rife with motive: revenge for the seizing of his livestock and his eviction from the farm. He has no stomach for either the ordeal of a criminal trial or the publicity that’s an inherent part of sensational proceedings. He pleads no contest in exchange for probation, community service a suspended jail sentence. His license to practice mortuary science and to operate a funeral home in the state of New Jersey is revoked. The revocation is worse than the conviction. He has no idea how he’ll make a living. The images of going homeless and hungry pile high. So this was the humiliation Gustie foretold for herself and the girls.

He begs Farrell to leave him and save herself from his disgrace. She reminds him that she herself hasn’t been able to work in the field she had known so well. If she could survive, so could he. Instead of leaving him, she takes him in her arms, willing her warmth and touch to shield him like the pinions of God in a psalm she’d read so long ago.

They wed in a quiet little civil ceremony with Matt and Ben as the only guests and witnesses. With the business closed, they’ll go to live with Effen’s parents in Virginia. Before they move, however, they ready The House for sale by making small repairs and giving it a fresh coat of paint

Effen is an old hand at painting interiors. Nothing to it, especially if you start early on a sunny morning and it’s not too warm outside.

Shortly before lunch, he realizes he hasn’t bought enough ceiling white. Since he’s liberally christened with paint from hair to docksiders, Farrell volunteers to make the required appearance at the local hardware store. It’s only a few blocks away on Main Street. No need for the car. She scampers down the stairs, house keys jingling.

Effen is at the bathroom sink, trying to flay the paint off his hands when he hears footsteps across the floor.

“That was fast! Forget something?”

“To say goodbye.”

Effen catches sight of the intruder in the mirror over the sink. The color vanishes from his own, plate-eyed face.

The visitor is a scruffy specimen in torn jeans, sweatshirt and baseball cap. He has long, matted auburn hair, and an auburn beard trimmed in the Elizabethan style. A scar runs from his forehead over his left eye down to the center of his crusty, sunburned cheek. He comes no closer than where he stands in the kitchen.

The cap is removed. The smile is twisted. “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.’”

The summer heat doesn’t stop Effen’s hands from icing.

Weary, Tom settles into a chair and slaps the cap on the table. He says nothing. He does nothing, except sit and look at Effen, who keeps his distance, sickened by the sight and scent of a person who hasn’t bathed in weeks.

At last Tom asks for a glass of water. Effen obliges. Tom downs the drink without stopping for breath, then asks Effen to call the local police.

The officer in charge huddles over the speaker-phone with Markham and Wilton and three other patrolmen. All are immobilized by Effen’s unflustered advice that Tom Von Aldo is sitting at his kitchen table.

“Only Von Aldo? Nobody else?”

“Only me.”

“Put him on.”

The blast that rocks the phone’s sensitive components is unmistakable. The officers are out the door before they’re told to go.

A figure sits on the front steps of The House, clasped hands to chin, denim shirt opened over a paint-spattered tee. He’s staring at the street. A small bottle of cola waits nearby, full and unopened.

He doesn’t seem particularly interested in the cruiser that hums to a halt in the driveway, lights on but siren off.

The officer, a youngster, seems edgy. “Where’s the trouble?”

The figure on the step holds his pose. Ick. A rookie. “Top of the stairs.” The voice is nearly inaudible.

Markham and Wilton leave their cruisers running in the street. Wilson stops traffic. Markham and two other officers head for the steps, assailing The Owner with questions.

In the same quietly bewildered tones, Effen suggests, “Better see to your rookie. It’s not too pretty up there.”

Markham winces. “In the head?”

“Yeah.”

A little crowd has gathered on the walk. Markham urges Effen to come inside and tell him what happened.

Effen shakes his head. He’s waiting for Farrell. He doesn’t want her to see the commotion without seeing him.

Never mind the mess upstairs. The Owner doesn’t look too good himself. Markham asks him if he’s got anything to take for his nerves.

“I’m concerned for my wife,” he says, then deliberately walks through the crowd.

Farrell looks up from the book of wallcoverings, surprised by the closeness of the person next to her and the arm around her shoulders.

It grieves Effen to tell her about Tom. But the news can wait a moment. He takes in the scent of her hair, her enthusiasm for the wallpaper, the friendly activity of locals going about the innocuous business of house care.

It’s good to be alive …



A visit with Effen’s parents in Richmond becomes a major relocation when the state returns the horselets and his parents urge him to start a new farm nearby.

The House goes up for sale. Effen helps Matt and Ben find work with colleagues.

The Concordes return in late September, nearly six months after locals thought they’d been banished by lawmakers fearing more civil unrest.

Once again the earth shakes and windows rattle.

The House’s terracotta gargoyle takes another tumble to the lawn.

Matt and Ben stop cleaning the near-empty building and rush outside.

Neighbors run out, too.

Fat, grayish flakes lazily settle on everything in sight.

Snow? In September?

Matt detects the sulfurous scent of a struck match.

The Owner, lighting a cigarette?

No. The Owner is in Virginia.

Neighbors smell it, too.

Their noses turn toward the source.

The sky.