“It’s not a dream. There is blood everywhere.” This sounded like a flashback, like the one Annie experienced after the evaluation on Yesler.

  “Marion Warfield’s blood,” I stated simply. “What happened that night?” I pointed to two wooden rocking chairs in the dining room corner. “Let’s sit down.”

  She accepted my invitation and sat and rocked. I matched the speed of my movement to hers. The motion calmed her. The chair made the same creaking noise on the floor as her pacing. It was the rhythm that brings on an alpha state, calming babies and troubled souls. Laurel would either talk or withdraw. Talking was harder. “I saw the dried blood in front of your apartment building. You were there.”

  She looked at me with so much intensity, I remembered that Theo had described her mother’s eyes that way. “It was supposed to be a family session, but my father didn’t show. Mom was the one I needed to talk to anyway. She killed a man.”

  “You’d just found out.” I spoke.

  “My grandfather told me. He said she met a boy in a bar and lost control of the situation. She slit his throat.” Tears slid down her face.

  “She was fourteen years old. Did he tell you about why she was in the bar?”

  “Getting drunk. What else do kids do in bars?” She studied the healing red welts on her fingers. I imagined Laurel’s blood mixing with Marion Warfield’s.

  I wanted to tell her Theo’s version of the events, but this was the opening to ask about her therapist’s murder. I needed the details, so I’d know how to proceed.

  “Being a murderer. Can you inherit that?” Laurel’s rocking stopped and she put her head in her hands.

  I said softly. “What happened that night?”

  “I am just like her.” She seemed stuck on the thought, but eventually went on. “Mom was mad that I found out and talked about it in the family meeting. Her face got red. She said everything she did was to protect me from that.”

  “Then what happened?” I was afraid I’d lose her as she got closer to the memory. I wanted to hear that Mo had killed the therapist. It made sense. The method was the same.

  “It was the end of the session. Marion tried to extend it, but Mom said no, she had to think. I told Mom to go—I knew she’d want to be alone. I’d be fine walking home.” She put her hands over her ears. “My voices were screaming at me. I went to the bathroom on the way out. I don’t know how long I was there. The lights were dimmed in the building when I finally left.”

  “Do you hear the voices now?”

  “Yes.” Her forehead creased in a frown.

  Too much, too soon, I thought, and gently touched her arm to ground her.

  Laurel’s response was a high pitched sound from the back of her throat. Being Laurel wasn’t safe right now.

  “Who killed Marion Warfield?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t too late.

  Laurel ran her hands over the front of the shirt as if she could wipe them clean.

  She took a breath and rocked. The chair still creaked, I hoped it was taking her back to a calmer space after she’d come too close to her memories. She said she was just like her mother. She’d probably already answered my question, but I needed to hear her say it.

  “Did you kill Marion Warfield?”

  Laurel didn’t answer. I couldn’t get her back to bed until after Annie tiptoed into the night for prayer with the nuns.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next morning, I missed Mass in favor of a few hours’ sleep in the narrow bed. When I finally got up, Nell was in the kitchen making oatmeal. She chatted about finding almonds and coconut in the cupboard, fresh milk in a quart jar in the fridge. I looked out the window over the kitchen sink. The skies were heavy. Annie came in from Mass and we set the table, shy with each other.

  “Should I call Laurel?” I asked. “She’s finally asleep.”

  “The work will do her good,” Annie said. “Then she’ll sleep better tonight.”

  I nodded.

  I could tell from her face that she saw my worry about Laurel, even as she was leaving those concerns behind.

  We sat at one end of the long table and Annie gave us our assignments for labora. Nell and Laurel would feed the animals with her. I fought the urge to tell Annie she could have been feeding the chickens at my house if she needed that kind of labora. She assigned me to one of the nuns, a Mother Perpetua. In this order, Annie explained all the nuns were called mother instead of sister. I didn’t think I needed any more mothers now, but that’s what I was getting. I would meet Mother Perpetua by the herb garden. Working outside would be good for us all. I wished my grandmother had lived long enough to help at the dairy farm at Northern State Hospital.

  Annie shooed me out the door so I wouldn’t be late to meet with Mother Perpetua. I wandered out and saw an elderly woman with a chain saw, ready for an afternoon of work. She wasn’t so bad. A beige fleece jacket complimented her coif and full-length habit, all white— none of the secular dress I saw nuns in the city wearing. Up close, she had a hawk-like nose and bright blue eyes behind wire-framed glasses. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head at the gardens at the forest edge as if they were bad children. “Look at all the blow-downs. We’ll get this cleared.”

  Tipped alders had taken down a corner of the fence that protected the plants from browsing deer. By now all the herbs had been culled and only a few brown twigs were reminders of the bounty of basil, mint, and aromatics that must have been abuzz with bees just six weeks ago.

  I offered to wield the chainsaw, but that was Mother Perpetua’s territory. She handed me a pair of long-handled loppers and a pruning saw and sent me to remove all the smaller branches so she could cut the bigger pieces into firewood. I worked fast and carted the debris to a brush pile at the edge of the woods. The nun’s stooped back had fooled me. She took a wide stance, and the chainsaw sliced the wood cleanly.

  The whine of the chainsaw made conversation impossible, but our work was companionable. After an hour, we’d both worked up a sweat despite the crisp air and the nun shed her jacket and draped it on the garden fence.

  “Mother Perpetua,” I asked, “Are you named after a saint?”

  She smiled. Her face was cross hatched with wrinkles and her cheeks pink from exercise. “Yes. You can call me Mother P for short. The Mother Superior chooses our names for us when we’re postulants. Perpetua was an early Christian martyr. She is the patron saint of butchers too—I’ve always thought their need for a butcher out here had something to do with the choice.”

  I thought of Mo and her nose-to-tail restaurant. “You’re a butcher too? You have a lot of skills.”

  She nodded. “I’m slowing down these days, but yes. We need old fashioned skills on the island. Most people have lost the ability to feed and care for themselves.”

  I nodded and admitted, “I’ve never really known a nun,”

  “All orders are different, and I wasn’t always a nun. I raised two sons before I took my vocation.” She probably saw the surprise on my face. “I came after they were grown. They visit.”

  I liked her and decided to confide in her. “I’m worried about Annie. We worked together for years.” I noticed how hard it was to put that into the past tense.

  “Last week, she had a panic attack when we were evaluating a patient. She disappeared and came here.” I told her about Annie’s history of loss: seeing her aunt killed, witnessing Nate’s shooting and how Marion Warfield’s blood on the sidewalk had triggered a return of those traumas.

  Mother Perpetua cocked her head as I spoke and never interrupted.

  “Annie told me she wanted to become a nun and—I don’t know, it’s like she’s running away.” I heard my voice getting louder but couldn’t contain it. “I don’t understand much about what you do here, but I don’t think you want someone running away from the outside world?”

  Mother P took off her glasses and polished them. Her eyes were sunken with age, but sharp, making her seem like a bird of prey, though a friendly one.

  “I understand your worry,” she said. “But don’t think religious life is an escape. It’s harder in many ways. Grace, when a woman discerns her calling, there’s no avoiding personal issues. With the Benedictines, she’ll be examining all of it, much more deeply than if she stayed in the world. It’s not running away. She’s moving toward something, a new relationship with God, living in community.” Then she replaced her glasses and focused on me. “You can see that she has been moving toward that for quite some time.”

  My eyes filled with the sadness I usually held at bay. “I’m afraid I haven’t been open enough to hearing about her beliefs.” I didn’t say I was afraid of losing the partnership Annie and I’d had for years. It sounded too selfish. I liked Mother Perpetua, so I kept talking. “What about Annie’s career, her education. How can she give it up?”

  Mother Perpetua got a little grin on her face, that I suspected was just a step away from a laugh. “She’ll find plenty of ways to use her gifts.” While she waited for me to catch up with her thinking, she made an adjustment to the chain saw, preparing to get back to work.

  “It’s me who can’t let Annie go,” I finally said.

  “Every woman here has had a professional life,” Mother Perpetua remarked. “I practiced Clinical Psychology.”

  “Oh God,” I said, then covered my mouth for having thoughtlessly taken the Lord’s name in vain. Mother Perpetua didn’t just have the wisdom of years. She had training. I’d underestimated her in every way.

  “You’re like family to Annie,” she said. “When I first had my calling, my family and friends didn’t understand but most of them tried. Not everyone stood by me though.” She paused to let the words hang. Her face showed the sadness. “I still get a card every year on my birthday telling me what a terrible mistake I made. This from a woman who calls herself my friend.”

  My sweat had cooled during our break. I turned to raking and stacking the wood while Mother Perpetua cut the white, dappled alders to uniform lengths. Behind her the Douglas Fir began to sway and toss their boughs in a new wind. The sky was foreboding, and I pictured a new round of blowdowns.

  “Oh no,” I said. “All our work is about to be undone.”

  Mother Perpetua paused in gathering up the tools and gave a smile that made me feel understood. Her eyes showed the universal cycle of doing and undoing that I struggled against. I knew there was a lot I could learn here, but that was Annie’s path, not mine.

  “That’s enough for today,” my labora companion said. “You really should come to prayers before you leave.”

  The next prayer was at three, pushing our trip back to Seattle a bit later. On my way back to the guest house, the tang of saltwater from the straits mixed with the freshly cut wood carried on the wind. It was invigorating and not strong enough to make me worry. The closeness of nature reminded me of home. Maybe that was part of the appeal for Annie. Maybe planting a climbing vine in the window where she lost the view wasn’t enough. Talking to Mother Perpetua had helped me. Annie had known what she was doing when she assigned us to work together. She had sent me to the therapist.

  Inside, the house was warm. Annie and Nell sat in the rocking chairs talking with the dog at their feet. “We took Caesar for a run in the woods, away from all the farm animals,” Annie said. She knew he didn’t have a good history with our chickens.

  I pulled a dining room chair to join them. “Thanks. You know Annie, I really liked working with Mother Perpetua.”

  She smiled.

  “Where’s Laurel?”

  “In the tub,” Nell said.

  We ate leftover stew and set a bowl aside so Laurel could take her time. When she finally emerged, she and Nell decided they’d miss None, the 3:00 prayer, in favor of making sandwiches for the trip home. I gave Nell the bread knife from my secret stash, figuring that it would be safe with supervision. Laurel had taken her medication and was calmer after a morning caring for the animals.

  Annie stood up. “Let’s leave early for None. We can talk.”

  We headed up the gravel road with the dark forest on our left.

  I took a deep breath and struggled to find the words. “I don’t think I ever accepted how deep your religious beliefs were. I still don’t think I understand, but I’ll try.”

  “Do you want to talk about it now?” Annie asked.

  “I’ve softened, but I don’t think this is the moment.”

  “Lord make me pure, but not yet.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a quote from St. Augustine when he wasn’t quite ready to become chaste—not to compare you to a saint, Grace.”

  “Saint jokes,” I said. “Who knew.”

  Annie gave a deep, relaxed laugh like I hadn’t heard from her in quite a while.

  The chapel’s setting was carved out of the forest. It had an Asian design fronted by Japanese maples and chunks of granite. The effect was spare and calm.

  “The nuns live there,” Annie waved to the left. If the chapel was public, their space was truly enclosed, fronted by a stacked wall of wood rounds that had turned mossy and become one with the woodland. Skinny saplings grew on top with slender roots searching the face for purchase. We passed that enclosure and stood outside the church, a few minutes early for the service.

  “I need to fill you in on Laurel.” It was my last chance to tell Annie about my concerns: that the blood on Laurel’s clothing belonged to the therapist, that Mo had killed a man when she was young, and that the knives were hidden under my bed in the guesthouse.

  “Oh yes—you really should have called the police.” Annie put her hands on her hips. “But I still say if you keep digging, you’ll prove that Laurel didn’t do it.”

  “I’ll do that when she is in a safe place.” I felt powerless to do anything better. “There’s something else. There’s going to be a deposition for Calvin Cole’s trial. I’m afraid you’ve got a letter from the attorneys in your mail too.”

  There was the trigger. Annie’s calm mood faltered. “When is it?”

  “I’ve been called for the day after tomorrow. I’m dreading it.”

  Her healthy glow dimmed. “I’ve done these before, but still. This case is different.” Our breathing and the wind were the only sounds in the clearing, but I saw the nuns, now dressed in black, quietly processing in the back door of the chapel. “I’ll give you my keys when you leave today so you check my mail.”

  “Okay.”

  “If I’ve been called, will you stay with me when I give my statement?”

  I reached for her hand. “If they’ll let me—of course,” I said. This was the sort of thing I was good at.

  Inside, the chapel continued the calmness of Asian design, but when we took a place in the pews, I was taken aback to see the nuns file in behind the altar, separated from the other worshippers by a wooden half-wall topped by balusters. I couldn’t help but see the gulf coming between me and Annie when it was expressed so physically—she would be walled off. Mother Perpetua had said that all orders were different, and in this holy place, I silently cursed Annie for choosing one that seemed so isolated.

  The nuns were all elderly like Mother Perpetua and sang the Latin chants in high wavering voices. Annie’s voice was younger and clearer, she held the prayer book so I could join, but I whispered that I would rather listen.

  After the service, we mingled in the courtyard brightened by the colors of October leaves. I thanked Mother Perpetua and, even with my misgivings, told her I was beginning to accept that Annie would be leaving Seattle for the island.

  Her eyes took on a concerned look. “Not for long, though dear. Annie will be going to our mother house on the east coast.”

  I looked at Annie wondering why she hadn’t told me that herself. She just nodded. We walked back to the guesthouse without saying much. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Inside, Nell and Laurel leaned forward in the rocking chairs locked in a conversation that stopped when we appeared.

  “Tell her,” Nell said.

  Laurel didn’t say a word. She let the chair rock back, so she was straight. She didn’t look scared or preoccupied. She seemed the most focused I’d seen her.

  Annie and I dragged straight-backed chairs from the table and made a circle.

  “What?” I asked.

  After a moment, Laurel rocked forward again. “I am not going back to Seattle.”

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked. “Not back to your Grandfather’s.”

  “No. I’m staying here.”

  Annie took over then, explaining that the nuns would soon be shutting down the guesthouse for the season. “I’ll be leaving too.”

  Laurel crossed her arms in front of her. She looked like a stubborn kid. “I’m staying. I’m safe here.”

  I thought about what awaited her back in the city. Did she sense that she’d be returned to the hospital, or sent to Western State or jail? I could see why she wanted to stay. Annie continued to talk to Laurel in a calm, reassuring voice, but didn’t make any progress in convincing her. Then I saw Annie lean away from the power struggle. “Grace and I are going to walk the dog and talk for a few minutes.”

  Outside, the color had drained from the day. The low clouds, the pasture, the forest, everything looked gray.

  “I can’t pick Laurel up and carry her,” I said.

  Annie and I walked along the wire fence and the long-horned cattle joined us, exciting Caesar. He trembled at the end of his leash.

  “I guess I’ll call the police then,” Annie said.

  “They’ll come over on the ferry?”

  Annie looked to the heavens in response. “This is Island County. I’m pretty sure the police have a boat.” She walked up the hill where she could get cell service to make the calls.

  CHAPTER 22

  On the ferry back to Anacortes, I watched Shaw Island, and Annie, recede in the darkening waters. The sun broke through the clouds leaving a halo of light, a kind of holy isolation. I was glad to leave the problem of Laurel with Annie, just as glad as I was to leave my grandmother at Northern State Hospital. I needed a break but driving south on I-5 while Nell napped gave me too much time to think.

 

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