Page 72 of The Forest of Lost Souls

As they move upland in pursuit of the tagged woman, Frank realizes that the brothers have separated without drawing attention to the maneuver; one now leads the procession and the other is at the back of it. Although Frank and Vector are armed, having Monger behind them with an AR-15 does not inspire an intuitive conviction that the shit they’re wading through is growing shallower.

How odd it is that Frank keeps thinking of Enola, his mother, in these circumstances, when he should be concentrating intently on the threats of the moment. She cheated on her husband. She abandoned her son when he was thirteen. She came back only to cheat her son out of his inheritance. She was deceitful and greedy. Nonetheless, as never before, Frank is troubled by how she looked when he stuffed her into the barrel, before he welded the lid on it, how she gazed up at him as if her death-blinded eyes could still see. He doesn’t believe he needs to make amends for what he did to her; he doesn’t believeanythingdone to make his life easier or more pleasant ever needs to be justified. Yet he feels something unfamiliar and kind of creepy that might be regret or remorse, one of those words that mean almost the same thing but not quite, words that he would look up in a dictionary to get a clearer sense of their meaning if he was the kind of person who had the time and inclination to look things up. To suppress this strange feeling, he summons memories of his ex-wife, Cora, who has remarried, and step by step a more useful emotion, anger, burns the regret or remorse out of his mind.

60

THREE FOR BREAKFAST

After checking the contents of Vida’s refrigerator and pantry, Wendy whips up a breakfast of multiple treats that can feed six if unexpected guests arrive. In addition to being an enthusiastic housecleaner, seamstress, beautician, entrepreneur, and determined redeemer of the souls of men drowning in their iniquity, Wendy is also a fantastic cook. She moves about the kitchen with balletic grace, making every culinary task appear effortless. The air is intoxicating, redolent of bacon, of eggs cooking in butter. Onions. Melting cheese. Cinnamon rolls. More herbs and spices than Regis can name.

They are seated at the table when, in spite of her slender form, she proves to have the appetite of a logger at the end of a day of felling trees.

Although Regis eats more than usual, he can’t match the gusto with which Wendy addresses her meal, because he’s talking more than she is, in fact talking too much. As if he’s in a confessional and Wendy is wearing a purple stole, he reveals in some detail all the criminal acts he has committed in his service to Terrence Boschvark.

She reacts less with words than with nods and little shakes of the head and a widening of the eyes, as well as gestures with fork and knife, but Regis feels that she understands the remorse andeven anguish that have taken him so by surprise. She doesn’t have the power to absolve him of his sins, but she clearly has sympathy for him and approves of the way he is unburdening himself.

Finished providing her with enough revelations to send him to prison for decades, he now launches into a recitation of his many ethical failures that, while not crimes, nevertheless weigh on him. When he looks at her, he can’t hold his tongue. Several times, he tries to keep his head down, but hehasto look at her because looking at her brings peace to his heart.

They have finished eating and are having yet another cup of coffee when he says, “What am I doing here? What’s wrong with me? I should head up the mountain, do something to stop them from going after her. But I don’t know what. I’m not a man of action. I ought to be. Every man ought to be. I want to become one. A man of action. Iwillbecome one, but right this moment I’m at a loss.”

“Relax, sweetie,” Wendy says. “She can take care of herself.”

“There’s one of her and four of them. Five if you count Sam Crockett with his dogs, though he’s a good man.”

“She’ll do what she has to do. My deceitful brothers, Galen Vector, the disgusting Frank Trott, all of them so in love with wickedness—they will discover they haven’t pursued a defenseless woman. They have pursued the fate they’ve earned, and they’ll get it. I tried my best, and now they’ll get what they deserve, what they have seemed for so long todesire.”

Regis is unconvinced. “How can you be so sure she won’t be harmed?”

“Look around you, sweetie. Look at her library, her workshop, the condition of her pantry. A well-ordered house reveals awell-ordered mind. Her enemies have disordered minds. It’s no contest.”

“I think it’s a contest.”

“It’s no contest,” Wendy insists. “She’s taken the words of the fortuneteller seriously, and that will serve her well.”

“The fortuneteller? You said that was eighteen years ago.”

“Life passes like a shadow. Eighteen years is the same as an hour ago.”

Anyone else who said such a thing would strike Regis as screwy. Coming from Wendy, however, the statement seems true and wise, though mystifying.

He says, “How do you know Vida went to the fortuneteller?”

“The seer set up shop across the county road from this place.”

“That doesn’t prove Vida visited her.”

“I know in my bones. Didn’t you say that Belden Bead and Nash Deacon came here to use and break her?”

“That’s what everyone believes.”

“And where are they now—Bead and Deacon?”

Regis looks toward the window that faces the broad meadow of interments.

“She was ready for them,” Wendy says, “because of the seer.”

“Fortunetellers are con artists.”

“The night before last, the seer told me something that’s already come true.”

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