~15~

Now

Haley visited with Kallie for hours, and then returned to her hotel. It didn't take long to dye her hair to what she believed was her original soft brown. All her earrings came off, her nose ring, her tongue stud. She stood in her bra and her jeans and blow dried her hair, recycling parts of the conversation in her head, glad she had captured every word on her digital recorder.

So much more was clear. It all sounded impossible, which meant that she was on the right path. She was almost quivering with anticipation, and had to force herself not to call home immediately. It would not do to get everyone's hopes up. After her conversation with Rick Hall, Brin's father, Haley would know more; enough to phone home.

Kallie said Rick managed one of the local independent grocery stores; times were hard with the Safeway and other, larger, stores in town. He would be home after 6 pm. She had looked Haley over and asked if Haley was willing to change her appearance. Mr. Hall, she had said, was a bit of a conservative.

Haley knew about the joint hidden in Brin's music box, and she would have bet that Kallie knew of it as well. The two of them had been best friends forever.

After her hair was softly waved, pulled with clips away from her face, Haley put on her good girl makeup, all of soft browns and earth tones, completing the look with a natural red lipstick and a smidgen of mascara. She pulled on brown slacks (Anna's), and a blue blouse (Renee's), and a stylish leather coat (again Renee's). She put a simple crucifix about her throat. When she looked in the mirror, she was disgusted with the person staring back at her.

A clone of Patricia.

She stuck her tongue out at herself and it made her feel better. Patricia would never do something so vulgar. Trish had probably long forgotten the burping games they had once enjoyed to torment their parents.

Before they had parted, Kallie had given her a card from the tarot; the sight of it scorched Haley, so she hid it quickly in her borrowed purse. Now she slid her other tools in that same purse; wallet, phone, camera, digital recorder, lucky rabbits foot, tiny notebook, and a Tide pen. No wonder these large and ornate purses were so stylish and popular; if she packed it any tighter, she would need her own personal Sherpa to carry it.

She left her laptop at the motel and cleared her cache before she powered it down. She had Googled directions to Mr. Hall's house and committed them to memory.

Then a final moment, closing her eyes in the somewhat drab space, breathing in and out of her nose, claiming sanctuary. It was a silent prayer for assistance, the same silent prayer she uttered in every situation like this.

She could hear laughter from down the hall. The autumn sunshine was brilliant, slanting with vigour into the motel room. From here she couldn't smell the feedlot anymore; just the smell of industrial laundry detergent and the tiniest hint of perfume she had dabbed on her wrists.

When she opened her eyes, she knew she was ready. Her disguise was complete, and she hated it. She reminded herself that she was doing it for Anna and Elsa and it was enough.

Barely.

She drove down Box Butte Road, sliding past Central Park Fountain, the sounds of autumn chirping of birds in her ears. She deftly navigated the side streets and pulled up in front of a house that was beginning to show subtle signs of neglect. The grass was yellowing, yet puffy heads of dandelions sprung from the lawn in small clumps of maniacal intent. The shingles were slightly lifted at the edges, and some paint had been peeling from the porch railings. There was a swinging bench on the porch, and Haley wondered if Brin and her mother, Kathryn, had ever swung there, with glasses of lemonade sweating in the sunlight, giggling and joyous.

Haley rang the doorbell, smoothing down her pant legs, dressed in those damning sober browns and blues. Even though Kallie had told her what Mr. Hall looked like, the man who opened the door took her by surprise.

Brin's father looked ineffably young, rumpled, and heartbroken. There was a television on in the background, some sports game, and Haley wondered if it was only there to break up the ominous silence of the now-empty house. "May I help you?" he asked.

"Actually, I may be able to help you," Haley said, prompted by the girl and by her own instincts. "I may have something to share with you about Brin's murder." Haley carefully, deliberately, left out Kallie's name. Making a pinkie-promise with Kallie was the only way that Kallie had eventually told her everything.

His eyes went wide and then narrow. "Have you spoken with the police?"

"I'd rather talk to you first," she replied. "May I come in?"

He looked her over, as if evaluating the probability of her being an axe-murderer instead of a made-up and fakely pretty girl. Then he shrugged, deciding to take the chance, might as well, nothing else to do tonight but to get liquored up and hope to forget how happy the house had once been.

He closed the door behind her and walked into the house, gesturing for her to follow him into the family room. It was obvious that Brin had come from a loving, if somewhat masculine, home, as if the walls missed the divine touch of the feminine. The prints hanging on the walls were of ships and landscapes, the frames cheap, reflecting the slightly shabby atmosphere of the house. The lamps were serviceable but unpretty, and there was a rug over the hardwood floor that had a stain in the corner. An aging piano hovered near the wall, dusty and forgotten.

Did it lament the emptiness of its existence now, without Brin's fingers to bring it to life?

There was a fireplace, and upon the mantle were more pictures, still in those cheap frames. They showed the natural progression of the life of a white American man, with college graduation photos of he and Kathryn, followed by their wedding photo. Then pictures of family vacations, a little Brin on top of a shaggy pony, her eyes beaming. She had braces on her teeth that refracted the sun. A staged family photo in one of those Wal-Mart studios, a standard blue backdrop with Brin flanked by mother and father.

Kathryn was older in this picture; there was a puzzling familiarity to her. Haley touched the photo, looking at Brin now, this girl that should have lived to graduate as well, who should have had the chance to jump horses at the Masters and get lightheaded with oxygen deprivation on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Haley deeply understood the air of neglect in this home, and the sorrow of the thinning man in front of her, fathoms deep, anchoring him in a world bereft of family and hope.

And as much as she hated to do it, Haley knew very well how to start a conversation like this, to softly unbalance her subject, relying on the activated recorder to catch all the words as she focused on the nonverbal communication. "How did your wife die?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

She looked at the picture while she asked, but in the reflection of the glass she could see Rick's face narrow in surprise, just as swiftly mastered. He pierced her with a glare that might have punctured a lesser person, or someone who had less to lose. Haley just stood there, easing her shoulders, keeping her face relaxed and intuitive, hoping he would recognize that she wasn't really a stranger to him, nor to the vagaries of fortune or fate.

"Car accident. Four years ago." He waved at the couch and Haley took a seat, her mind whirling, but she kept her face clear. Anna had always warned her to trust her instincts, and right now she was learning how to approach this discussion, how to find the answers without being kicked out the door. She had changed her look so he would trust her more readily, as people invariably trusted those who were stylish and self-assured.

Stupid, blind people who stared at the surfaces of things.

She could hardly wait to dye her hair again, to put her nose stud back on.

It was past seven o'clock here. It would be past nine at home, and Anna would already be dead. Would she wake from a red night again, as she had been doing?

"Thanks for letting me talk to you, Mr. Hall," she said, carefully looking just past the man, to the space on his right. He sat opposite her on an easy chair, keeping his ankles ramrod straight, not allowing himself to rest against the back of his chair. He was stiff yet vulnerable, and Haley could almost see the narrow and rickety bridge that kept him from creeping insanity at all his losses.

Step one in building a relationship of trust. Share a personal detail that connects you with the subject, whether truth or lie mixed with truth and served as truth to an unsuspecting audience who viewed you as stylish and self-assured. She had to remind herself why she was doing what she was doing.

For Anna. For Elsa.

Would she ever do anything for herself?

"I had to seek you out, Mr. Hall, because I have also lost someone I loved dearly, in circumstances that were so similar to those of your daughter."

The lie burned, almost as much as the tarot card in her purse that Kallie had given her. There were two types of writing on the back of it that Haley had already memorized.

"Was there..." and his voice cracked, "much pain?"

Haley could almost see it, that night the seawater was triumphant, the night of cracked glass and blood drops. The deep abyss of pain and the suffocating weight of all that water, the burning lungs that just couldn't pretend any longer. Pain? Certainly. And blood.

"She drowned," Haley said, surprised to find that her voice was thick with memories. Nine long years since that night, kept in her memory by the knifings of guilt.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, after letting a moment pass.

Haley blinked. She couldn't help it. This man could commiserate with her, so soon after the horrifying and violent murder of his only daughter? She looked at him with a deepening feeling of wonder and respect.

"You said you have some information?" he asked after another short pause.

It was too soon, and Haley was still flustered. "Brin liked to ride horses?" she asked, desperate to fill up the void of space before he could ask her to leave.

He narrowed his eyes at her again before answering, quite slowly, as if addressing an invalid, "Yes, very much," he replied. "She was actually taking English jumping lessons; not an easy feat here in cowboy and country land."

"I did notice an unusual amount of country radio," Haley said.

"So you're not from around here?" he asked.

Haley had to force herself not to blink again, nor to swallow, nor employ any of her tells that led her to lose hands of poker and subsequent mounds of pennies with her family at the inn. "No," she answered, "I'm from out of town." She nearly said she was from Maine, but determined that it would only raise more curiosity.

He saw right through her, and she wondered if she could possibly regain control of this conversation. "From out of town?" he said slowly. "Not much reason to come to Alliance, Nebraska, not a nice-looking girl like you, and certainly not for the reason you just gave me."

Haley blinked. Why didn't Kallie tell her how intuitive this man was?

Answer. Because Kallie was a teenager, and they just didn't notice the lives and talents of adults, not as self-involved as many teenagers were. It wasn't their fault; Haley had been exactly the same way. Adults were the obtuse and blind ones when she was a teenager.

Some of them stayed obtuse and blind, forgetting the tender agonies of youth, gaining no wisdom through time.

And because Haley blinked, and paused, he leaned forward and said, "Do you want to tell me your name and why you're really here?"

Okay, the man was not blind or stupid at all. Haley felt out of her depth, so she answered with the truth. The moment she got back to her motel, she would phone home.

"My name is Haley Grant, and I'm looking for the person who is behind Brin's death, because I believe that same person was behind the death of my friend."

Then

To have a tongue so gently insistent, not demanding entry into her mouth but asking, pleading. To feel warm puffs of air as they breathed, not even a breath but a sigh or a gasp or a tentative moan. To feel passion and desire rising within, not a wildfire of reckless abandon, but a slowly advancing tide to deliciously conquer sand and turf. To feel a womanly body, not hard planes but luscious curves, her fingers inept and fascinated in their study.

Anna had never felt anything like it. For so long she had dreamed of this moment, had fantasized of it day and night, and now that it had come it was more amazing than she could have imagined. The reality of it, the still shocking abyss of fingers on Elsa's left hand that was on her waist, the slightly chapped lips, heaven in the taste of cocoa and cream; she felt herself inflate until she thought she would just float away in the wind.

And the most beautiful thing of all?

Elsa began a slow and sensual exploration of Anna's face, leaving her lips to kiss the corner of her mouth, then tilting Anna's head slightly upwards with her warm hand, kissing Anna's jaw line, and the moment that Elsa kissed the hollow of Anna's throat, pressing her tongue into the soft skin there, an explosion rocketed throughout Anna's entire body.

Wildfire now, spurred by lightning, and she would be consumed by it.

The tiniest taste of fear.

Elsa seemed to sense it, and she lifted her head, drew back far enough to look in Anna's eyes. Her pupils were dilated; Anna could barely see any of the sunshine blue iris. "I've wanted to do that for a very long time," Elsa said, her voice slightly husky, and the timbre of it rumbled against Anna's gut and made her knees even weaker than they already were.

And all Anna could whisper, drawing Elsa back into an embrace even fiercer and tighter, was, "Thank you, Elsa. Oh god, thank you for coming back to me."

As much as she would wish the embrace could last forever, they finally pulled apart again, gently resistant like gooey cinnamon buns fresh from the oven. Holding hands, Anna managed to sit back down at the table, looking at those clasped hands like the miracle they were, sadly aware she was holding Elsa's right hand and not her left. At her pointed gaze, Elsa put her other hand on the table, and Anna's chest tightened again at seeing it, the red anger of the stumps.

Had they looked black when the surgeons removed them, like they had fallen into a campfire, victim of fire and not ice?

Feeling helpless, buoyant with love, prickling with heat and desire, Anna again felt tears pricking at her eyes. Elsa lightly squeezed her hand and Anna looked at her.

The sun had set, but the artificial kitchen light was fair and generous on her skin. It was the first time Elsa had been in her apartment, and she looked natural there, part of a place where she had always belonged. "I'm so sorry for what happened to you, Elsa," Anna repeated. "I wish I had tried to find you, that I could have been there for you. Sometimes I really don't understand why terrible things have to happen to such good people. I'd punch God in the face if he existed at all."

"There is no reason for you to be ashamed," Elsa replied, and the smile on her face was a very small one yet filled with the promise of kisses and loyalty and future. "Did you send the crow? Did you compel me to take off my gloves? None of what happened was your fault, nor was it mine, nor was it God's. I think I'm finally learning that everything happens for a reason."

"Even this, Elsa?" Anna asked, pointedly looking at Elsa's hand, softly touching Elsa's violated throat.

Elsa took Anna's hand with her sundered one, and held it softly and carefully. "Even this," she said quietly. "If not for this, I would never have gotten the courage to find out if you felt about me the same way I felt about you. Before the accident, I would have waited, maybe forever. And without my response, you would have eventually drifted away, just as you did."

Elsa rubbed the empty space on Anna's hand, where once she had worn the Claddagh ring, until the day she let Elsa go.

There was bitterness on Anna's tongue, and an awful pit of self-revulsion for the truth of Elsa's words, and Anna wondered if she should have waited forever.

"I was shattered in every way possible," Elsa repeated, her voice small and timid and courageous beyond comprehension. "I lost my fingers. I developed pneumonia. I stayed in the hospital for weeks and weeks. I found that the only way I could go on, facing those impossible days of silence and pain and loss, remembering every pointless and unimportant thing I had ever focused on, the only thing that kept me sane was believing that I would see you again."

Those eyes, tenderized by pain and sorrow, were locked on Anna's.

"But by then I had concocted such daydreams, such fantasies, and needed them so badly, needed them more than the drugs and the life-support and even food in my mouth, that I couldn't bear the thought of seeing you in person. If you rejected me, I would have been destroyed. You became more than human to me, you were this great idea, this great dream, and one that I never thought I deserved. Parting with the fantasy, risking it for truth, was beyond me.

"So I waited, martyring myself and perversely enjoying every minute of it."

"What brought you back to me, Elsa?" Anna breathed. "What changed?"

Now Elsa swallowed, and her own eyes reddened and grew thick. "My brother, Paddy. He died."

The words sliced into the air and wounded it.

Never in her life had Anna wished so much violence on God, who didn't even exist to take it. Trembling in the throes of such emotion, Anna began to wonder if this was all really happening at all. Feeling distant and shell-shocked, Anna said, "Oh, Elsa. Elsa, how could all this happen to you? First you, and then your brother? How can God be so cruel?"

Elsa began to weep, releasing Anna's hand to wipe at her eyes, and for a moment Anna thought it was for her lost brother, until Elsa said, "Anna, what on earth did God do to you to make you hate him so?"

The great secret, for which Anna had excavated a deep hole. The secret was sealed in adamant and placed in that hole, concrete poured over top of it, and then she had covered it all with dirt.

And then she had salted the earth. Nothing would ever grow there. No archaeologist would ever discover it or dare to excavate it. There the secret remained, a malignant tumour in the depths of her mind, uttered to no one, not parents, not friends, not Hans.

Not Elsa.

Even though Elsa had bared part of her soul to her, Anna could not reciprocate. Could not.

And she burned to realize it.

"I can't," Anna gasped, treacherous tears spilling out of her eyes. "I can't, I'm sorry." She made to pull her hands away, but Elsa held them with soft and fierce strength.

"Don't go, Anna. Please don't go. I'm sorry I asked."

Elsa looked so scared for a moment, as if berating herself for opening up at all, that Anna immediately replied, "Don't apologize, Elsa. I'm sorry myself. I have some things to work through. And I'm really sorry about your brother." She took a deep breath and then asked, "Can you say what happened?"

"Paddy, Patrick, I mean, was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base. He was granted a little extra leave due to my accident, but he didn't take it. He went back to the base as he originally planned. That was totally in character for him; he hated the farm and everything it represented. He sent me a card when I finally left the hospital late in February to return home."

Elsa swallowed and looked away, so Anna did as well, just the tiniest bit, amazed at the courage Elsa was showing, still inwardly roiling from everything that had happened. "We got the call on April first. The man on the end of the phone gave us the news; that Paddy had died, suddenly, in an explosion on the base. We were all in so much shock that we didn't really say anything. Only the next day did we hear what had really happened. It was a fluke, a one in a million accident, just like me and poor Snowbelle.

"And you know what it was, Anna?" Elsa asked rhetorically, her voice bitter and disgusted now. "It was an April Fool's joke that had gone wrong. A prank, and my brother died because of it. So when they covered his casket with the American flag and lowered him into the ground next to my father, I remembered the pact I had made with God the day I nearly died, the pact I had been neglecting in my fear."

Pause.

Next to her father.

Her father, too?

"What pact was that?" Anna dared ask, not daring to ask anything else. She remembered the hesitation in Elsa's voice when she spoke of that day in the marsh and wondered if this was it. She could not allow herself to think of Elsa's brother and Elsa's dad.

"I promised Him that if He would let me live, I wouldn't waste my life. Because of you, I had rediscovered some of the joy and taste of life, those joys and beauties I had lost when my father died. I promised that I wouldn't blow it, that I wouldn't be like my dad."

Such downy agonies in Elsa's voice, and Anna didn't dare ask about her dad. Not yet. Elsa's voice cracked like fine glass when she spoke of her father; Anna was scared of shattering her with her questions.

"I guess I lost my fear of rejection that day at Paddy's funeral," Elsa admitted. "I was bitter, wondering why my family seemed to be picked apart by these fluke accidents. I was angry, wondering why things had to happen the way they did.

"But then I looked to Kristoff, who was standing next to me, and he was holding hands with his new girlfriend. Her name is Renee, and she was my nurse at the hospital. They met each other because of what happened to me, and I have never seen Kristoff so happy. I looked at them instead of looking at the casket, and I wondered if I was given the choice to live that day again, to change the way it happened, would I have had the courage to do it the exact same way?

"When I looked at them, I knew that the answer was yes. For the happiness of my brother, the answer would be yes. Despite the pain, despite the pneumonia, despite the black melancholy that shook me in its jaws, the answer would be yes."

Anna thought back to the plain-faced gunman, and remembered the sting of the bullet grazing her ear. With her free hand, she touched the nick and wondered the same thing. If she was given a chance to relive that day, would she choose any different?

She remembered the taste of cocoa and cream on Elsa's lips, the delirious aching incredible joy she had felt in embracing her, and knew her answer would also be yes.

An idea fluttered at the back of her head, which she denied as soon as she was able.

Maybe all things do happen for a reason. God marks the fall of each sparrow.

But the sparrow still falls.

...

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