Swallowing Stones Read online

  It was a cool evening, and although it wasn’t quite seven-thirty, the last of the sun’s rays had already disappeared behind the trees as Jenna and Jason rounded the corner at the end of the block. She still felt anxious, but she was working hard to keep it under control.

  “We didn’t get to finish talking last week at Judd’s party,” Jason said finally.

  Jenna’s breath caught in her throat. “I thought you didn’t want to talk anymore. You walked off, remember?”

  They had wandered into the playground of the elementary school two blocks from Jenna’s house. Jenna sat down on one of the swings. Jason took the swing next to her.

  “Have I done something?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “You haven’t done anything,” Jenna said, trying to reassure him. “This has nothing to do with you.” Although of course it did, because of the way she felt whenever she was around him. But how was she supposed to explain something she didn’t understand herself? “It’s just me,” she said.

  “Can you be a little more specific, Jen?” Jason was hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped together. He looked lost.

  Jenna felt so awful that she finally gave in and told him about the anxiety attacks. If he wanted to think she was losing her mind, then fine. At least he wouldn’t go on blaming himself.

  Jason listened quietly. He did not interrupt her even once. And when she finished her story, all he could do was groan.

  Jenna watched him, waiting to see what he would say.

  “How am I supposed to fight something like this? I mean, another guy, yeah. That’s one thing. But this?”

  “There’s nothing to fight.”

  “There is if I want things to work out for us.”

  Poor Jason. He wasn’t going to give up. Jenna felt an overwhelming urge to take his hand. But that would only make matters worse.

  “So why is this happening?”

  Jenna grabbed hold of the chains and began to gently swing back and forth. “I haven’t got a clue.”

  The look on Jason’s face was painful to see as he sat watching her pump the air with her legs, lifting the swing higher and higher.

  Jenna let her head fall back. The wind in her hair felt absolutely delicious. She had forgotten how good it felt to swing. She thrust her legs forward, flying out as far as she could.

  Jason’s voice drifted up to her. “You know, I always thought it was really weird that I didn’t find out about what happened to your dad until weeks after the accident.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jenna said, calling down to him. “You weren’t even there. How could you have known?”

  “No. I mean, don’t you think it’s strange that we were talking on the phone one minute, and the next minute your dad gets shot, and I didn’t even know about it? I was probably outside helping load the last of the camping equipment in the van or something. And there you were, outside …”

  Jenna lurched forward and at the same time felt the seat of the swing slip out from under her. It happened so fast that she scarcely had time to react. One minute she was swinging her way up to the evening star; the next she was struggling to clutch one of the chains as her legs treaded air, then scraped along the pavement below. The seat wobbled back and forth, bumping her knees, but she clung to the chain for dear life.

  Jason had his arms around her, lifting her away from the bruising wood seat. He held her tight, and he wasn’t about to let go.

  “What happened?” he whispered.

  Jenna felt his breath on her ear. “I slipped.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while. Jenna had her face pressed against Jason’s familiar shoulder. And not once did she think about the anxiety attacks.

  Finally Jason asked, “Was it because of what I said?”

  She leaned back and looked at him. “About what?”

  “About the phone call.”

  Her legs began to feel unsteady. She needed to sit down, so she lowered herself to the ground, right there on the pavement. Jason sat down beside her. “I’d forgotten we were talking on the phone that day,” she said.

  “It was around lunchtime,” Jason reminded her. “I remember because my mom shoved a bologna sandwich in my hand while you and I were talking. She was nagging me to get off the phone so we could get on the road.”

  “Lunch,” Jenna whispered. Tears were beginning to sting the corners of her eyes. She was remembering, and she was not at all sure she could handle what was coming.

  “What is it?” Jason said, taking her hand.

  “My mom was nagging me, too. She wanted me to hang up and call Dad to lunch.” She had begun to cry openly now, as once more she saw her mother standing at the kitchen counter making tuna fish sandwiches. And then she was looming over Jenna, telling her to get off the phone and get her dad. Her mother had asked her at least three times, but Jenna was used to that. Three times was nothing. She usually held out until her mother threatened to grab the phone out of her hand.

  This was what she hadn’t been able to remember the morning Chief Zelenski came to take their statements. “Oh, Jason,” she moaned between tearful hiccups. “If I’d gotten off the phone when Mom asked, my dad would still be alive.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t do this, okay?” He pulled her onto his lap and stroked her hair while her tears soaked the front of his T-shirt. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  She kept her face buried against his chest. “But it is my fault,” she insisted. “If I’d done what I was told, he would have been sitting at the kitchen table, eating his sandwich, when that bullet landed.” Suddenly Amy’s voice echoed in Jenna’s ears: “I think the hardest part for me was the guilt.”

  “Okay, so then it’s my fault, too,” Jason was saying. “Because I wouldn’t let you get off the phone. I didn’t want you to go.”

  Jenna sat up and looked at him. “Oh, Jason,” she whispered, wiping the tears from her cheeks, “it isn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe that’s why you didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “But I’d forgotten all about that phone call,” she reminded him.

  “Consciously, maybe.”

  Jenna sighed and stared up at the sky.

  “Hey, think about it,” he said when she didn’t respond. “I mean, people hide things from themselves all the time, you know? Stuff they can’t deal with.”

  “So you think being around you reminded me of that day?”

  “Why not? It’s possible.”

  Jenna stood up and brushed loose gravel from her shorts and bare legs. She had a few scrapes on her knees, but they were not bleeding much. “I don’t blame you for any of this,” she told him. “I was the one who wouldn’t get off the phone, It’s my fault he’s dead.”

  She knew she would have to find a way to tell her mother, even if it meant her mother ended up hating her, because Jenna couldn’t live in the same house with her, harboring such a dark secret.

  She and Jason began to walk back toward her street. And when Jason took her hand, Jenna waited for her skin to prickle with sweat and her heart to pound so hard it would stop her breath. But when this didn’t happen, when all she felt was the soft night air on her cheeks and Jason’s gentle touch, she inched a little closer to him and never once let go of his hand.

  24

  her mother was already in bed, reading a book, a large bowl of popcorn by her side, when Jenna came into the bedroom later that night. She sat down at the foot of the bed.

  Meredith held up the bowl. “Want some?”

  Jenna helped herself to a handful of popcorn. She had come to tell her mother the truth. To tell her how she was responsible for her father’s death. She wanted to tell her mother how sorry she was for everything that had happened. But she had no idea where or how to begin.

  If there was anything good that had come out of all this tragedy, it was that for a while, anyway, Jenna and he
r mother had begun to grow closer. Over the past two months they had somehow managed to put aside their differences through an unspoken agreement. And Jenna found that she was grateful for this fragile truce. Now she couldn’t help wondering if that was about to change. She had no idea how her mother was going to react. So she tried to brace herself for anything: shock, tears, outrage. She fully expected her mother to hate her.

  Meredith pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed. She patted the space beside her. Jenna kicked off her shoes and wiggled down beneath the blankets. She felt five years old again. She took another handful of popcorn, glad to have something to keep her mouth occupied.

  “Is something wrong?” her mother asked.

  It was eerie the way her mother could sense things like that. Jenna looked at her and nodded. “I have to tell you something. When I was with Jason tonight …” She stopped. How could she tell anyone, especially her mother, what she’d found out?

  “Are you and Jason having problems?”

  Jenna shook her head. “No. Well, at first, but …” She tried to explain about the panic attacks, how she had felt whenever she was around Jason lately. But it wasn’t coming out right.

  Her mother inched closer to Jenna and put her arm around her. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said gently. “I just wish you had let me know about these attacks earlier. Why don’t I call Dr. Campbell tomorrow and make an appointment for you? Maybe he can help.”

  “Mom, you don’t understand. I think the attacks are gone now. Because I know what caused them.” Jenna began kneading the blanket with her fingers.

  “What?” Meredith stroked Jenna’s hair.

  “It’s my fault Daddy’s dead,” Jenna said, forcing back the tears because she did not want sympathy. She didn’t deserve it. “And I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry.”

  Her mother looked confused. She shook her head. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  So Jenna told her what had happened earlier that evening, what she had finally remembered about the day her father died. All those details that she hadn’t been able to remember when Chief Zelenski questioned her. Then she waited, not knowing what to expect. But her mother only folded Jenna into her arms and continued to stroke her hair.

  “We’re a fine pair,” she whispered. “Taking on all this blame.”

  Jenna pulled away and looked at her mother. “We?”

  Meredith Ward took the bowl of popcorn and set it on the floor next to the bed. “For weeks I’ve been thinking that if I’d gone outside and called Charlie myself, instead of waiting for you to do it, I could have saved him. I keep thinking maybe none of this would have happened.”

  “But Mom, I’m the one who wouldn’t get off the phone,” Jenna said.

  Her mother held up her hand, as if to stop her from saying anything more. “I know what you’re like when you get on the phone with your friends. It’s almost impossible to get you off. I should have thought of that. I should have gone outside and called him myself. And there was that list. What if I’d never asked him to fix the roof? What if I’d hired someone to do it? What if—”

  “Oh, Mom.” Jenna sighed. “You didn’t have any way of knowing what would happen.”

  “And neither did you.” Her mother gave Jenna’s hand a squeeze and smiled. “Let’s not do this, okay? Your dad loved you. I don’t think he’d want either of us blaming ourselves like this.”

  “I can’t help it. I can’t help feeling he’d be alive if it weren’t for me.”

  “If it weren’t for someone carelessly shooting off a gun,” Meredith reminded her. “You didn’t pull that trigger, Jen. You need to keep things in perspective. Don’t punish yourself for something you had no control over.”

  Jenna thought about the person who had pulled the trigger. The boy who had killed her father. Maybe her mother had been right the other day. That boy would have to live with what he’d done for the rest of his life. Just as Jenna knew she would have to live with what she hadn’t done.

  “It doesn’t look good for him,” Jenna told her mother. “Joe Sadowski, I mean.”

  Meredith sighed. “I know. I’ve heard rumors that the police were at the Sadowski house last night with a search warrant. Apparently everybody in town knows about it.”

  “Annie Rico?”

  “Of course.”

  They both laughed.

  “Mom?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Someone I know … a friend … told me he didn’t do it.”

  Her mother frowned. “Does this person know something she should be telling the police?”

  “I don’t know. But the thing is, I think I believe her.”

  “Well, from what I’ve heard, most of what the police have is barely even circumstantial. So your friend may be right.”

  Jenna listened to her mother as she went on to speculate about the boy who might have fired the gun. But Jenna could not seem to let go of her own part in the tragedy, even though her mother had tried to assure her that none of what had happened was her fault.

  And there was something else. Something disturbing. For whenever her mother mentioned the boy, the face that flashed into Jenna’s mind was no longer some imagined face. It wasn’t the face of some monstrous criminal. Nothing like that. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t Joe Sadowski’s face, either. Because the face she kept seeing, over and over, no matter how hard she tried to block it from her mind, was the familiar face of Michael MacKenzie.

  the healing

  25

  in the early-morning hours on the day before Labor Day, Jenna dreams of the Ghost Tree and of her father. Her father never speaks in the dream. But he does take her by the hand. In that moment everything around them disappears except for the night sky, so thick with stars that Jenna feels she is inhaling them with every breath she takes. And it must be true, because her skin has become transparent with light. She is not seeing with her eyes. She knows this because she is able to take in everything above and below. All without moving an inch.

  She sees that the billions of stars surrounding her aren’t floating all alone in dark space, as she has always imagined. Not at all. Now she sees how fine shimmering threads, like the filaments of a delicate spiderweb glistening with dew, weave the stars together in one splendid design. And when she looks at her father, she sees that the silvery threads also connect the two of them, and she knows these are threads that can never be broken.

  When she awakens, Jenna rises, and, although it is still a few hours before dawn, she dresses, tiptoes downstairs, and leaves by the back door. She goes to the garage to find her bike. It has been a while since she last rode it, and it wobbles beneath her for the first few blocks. Her house is on a hill. She has forgotten how difficult it is to pedal up the steep incline and now grunts and groans her way upward. She is pedaling for dear life; she is pedaling her way to the Great Swamp.

  Overhead, the stars look as they always have. But Jenna isn’t fooled. Because even though her eyes tell her otherwise, she knows now that some things can be seen only with the heart.

  michael is also awake. He has been awake most of the night. He knows what he must do, but it terrifies him. Still, he cannot go on as he has these past two months. The deception must end. And only he can end it.

  He understands now that he has been carrying the stone in his throat all this time. He hasn’t swallowed it at all, and he is drowning.

  At the pool, earlier in the day, he thought about what he would say to the police. He thought about going to the station right from work, but he went home instead. He is a coward, and he hates himself for it.

  He lies awake for hours, his sheets growing damp with his fear. When he finally falls asleep, he dreams of Charlie Ward.

  He does not remember much of the dream, only the face of Charlie Ward. He knows it’s Charlie Ward because he recognizes him from his picture in the newspapers. In the dream, Charlie Ward slaps him on the back as if they’re old friends, then
puts his arm around Michael’s shoulder. Michael isn’t the least bit afraid, though he thinks he ought to be. He doesn’t remember the rest of the dream, but when he wakes up, he realizes that for the first time in weeks he can breathe without feeling a great weight pressing on his chest.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, watching the full moon outside his window, and in those moments he knows what he must do. While it is still dark, while the cicadas buzz-saw their background music, Michael dresses and heads straight for the garage to find the shovel.

  He digs nonstop for almost an hour. The logs from the woodpile lie in a random heap beside the large hole. And even though he is wearing only a thin T-shirt, sweat coats his face and runs along his sides, soaking the soft cotton. The cool night air ripples in chilling waves across his skin whenever he stops to take a breath. But although his arms ache, he keeps at it until the clunk of the shovel tells him he has finally hit the PVC pipe that hides the Winchester.

  He does not bother to fill in the hole or restack the wood. It’s not important. He will tell them where he hid the gun during those long weeks, and they will come to this spot and see for themselves. He doesn’t even bother to wipe the dirt from his hands or from the PVC pipe. But he does unseal the end caps and remove the rifle. And when he holds the gun in his hands for the first time since the night he buried it, he expects to feel the same wave of nausea he felt the last time he held it. But it doesn’t come. Instead he feels a strong sense of purpose. He knows this isn’t just about keeping Joe out of more trouble. This is about him. About Michael MacKenzie. And about who he is.

  Then, without turning on the ignition, he pushes his father’s Honda to the end of the driveway and onto the street. Carefully he sets the rifle beside him on the passenger seat and starts the car. He and the Winchester are partners in crime. They will make this journey together.