Finally, Seth faced the large central monolith towering above the others, the burial place of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett. He placed the chisel in the center of the dead man’s name.
“I win,” he whispered, and then he swung the hammer.
Chapter Fifty-One
The hilly woods behind the Morton house in Fallen Oak were soaked in cool, green sunlight falling from the lush summer canopy overhead. Jenny walked the overgrown path with the baby cradled in her arms. Tiny Miriam gazed around at trees and boulders with huge, fascinated eyes.
Rocky loped along the trail beside Jenny, swishing his big blue-mottled tail. In her absence, Rocky had overcome his skittish ways to become the sort of dog who lay snoring under the kitchen table most of the day. He’d been excited to see her, jumping up to lick her hands and face. He certainly didn’t live in fear of people anymore.
The baby started crying, for the thousandth time that day, as Jenny pushed through thick, mossy growth and into a tiny meadow. She gazed at the cairn of stones that marked her mother’s grave. Small, bright wildflowers sprouted through the rocks.
“Hi, momma,” Jenny said. The baby cried louder. Jenny sat on a low, heavy oak limb and touched the baby’s face, whispering to her, and the baby settled. It was strange to Jenny, touching someone in a way that comforted instead of killed.
“I thought you’d want to see her,” Jenny said. “I named her after you. She’s so pretty, isn’t she? I think she looks like you.” Jenny bit her lip, listening to a red-winged blackbird singing in the tree above her. It was a sound that always made her think of long, blissfully slow summer afternoons.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Jenny said to her mother, “But I think maybe you can. If things as wicked as me live on and on, life after life, after all the evil things I’ve done...I think people must live on, too, somewhere. I don’t know if you come back here or not, getting born again. Maybe you do. If I keep going after death, then you must, too.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry for ending your life like I did. You could have had a good, long life if it wasn’t for me. I’m sorry.” Jenny didn’t bother hiding her tears. There was no one to see her. “I also want you to know that you’re the last. I know how to keep it inside now. I don’t have to hurt anybody else.”
Above her, another blackbird sang, joining the first.
“Your record collection’s gone,” Jenny said. “All my stuff’s gone, too, my pictures of you. Ward took them all, and that whole base collapsed from the fire, so it’s all burned and buried. Mariella really wrecked the place.” Jenny shook her head. “It was good to have a friend for a while, a real friend who understood me. I wish you could have met her. I wish I could have met you.”
Jenny sat for a while, listening to the birds sing and feeling the baby doze in her arms.
“I don’t know what we’ll do now,” Jenny said. “I’d be happy to just stay here awhile. The town’s gotten spooky with everybody gone, but I always liked ghost towns. I want to get a good camera and take pictures of everything falling apart, flowers growing up through the cracks in the streets. I think it’s pretty. Sad, but pretty, too.”
Jenny stood up, startling the blackbirds into flight. Hundreds of them launched from the trees around her, as if they’d all been hiding, listening quietly.
“Bye, Momma,” Jenny whispered. The flapping birds startled the baby awake, and she began crying.
“It’s okay,” Jenny told her, holding her close as she walked back up the trail. “Everything’s gonna be okay now.”
* * *
“Oh, let me see that baby!” June squealed. She set her Miller Lite, snug in its vintage Jimmy Buffett beer cozy, on the picnic table and reached out her arms. Jenny handed little Miriam over to her. “Ain’t you just the most precious thing?” June asked the baby.
Jenny joined her dad, who was turning the ears of corn roasting on the grill, next to the ribs he’d been smoking all day.
“Yard looks good,” Jenny said. Since June had moved in, she and Jenny’s father had tamed part of the back yard, moving her father’s junked old appliances and pinball machines closer to the shed and concealing them behind white lattice screens. The cleared area had the picnic table, lawn chairs, and grill, plus shrubbery and flower beds by the house, wind chimes by the back door, a chipped stone birdbath under the shade of an old maple.
“Probably shoulda had it this way when you were little,” her dad said.
“I liked the dangerous rusty object theme, too.”