A minute later, he hears something. It sounds a little like someone crying, but it is too continuous for that, and he recognizes it as the quiet rush of water. They have arrived at the stream. He reaches out to the branches before him, and then holds them to one side to allow the girl to follow him into the small clearing.
The stream is a three-feet-wide string of shallow water rushing past, whispering against the sharp rocks at its edges. The clearing, such as it is, is surrounded by trees that press in on all sides. The trunks are thin and black, with countless white branches hanging down like ribbons.
Edward turns. The little girl has stepped to one side, her back to the trees. She is hugging herself and looking around in confusion.
“Where is he?” the little girl says.
For a moment, everything is still. The only sound is the rush of the stream.
Then the tree directly behind the little girl moves.
“Here.”
And Edward’s father steps forward, dressed in his black suit, his long white fingers splayed wide.
* * *
Six decades had passed since that day, but Leland still remembered it clearly.
Along with the night that followed.
How special he had felt, sitting out behind the house in the darkness with his father. A lamp rested on the ground, illuminating his father’s bright, spidery hands as they worked over the earth, patting down the soil. They were the only visible part of him, the rest of him lost in the blackness of the night, but the murmur of his voice filled the air: a constant stream of language that was close to prayer, and which Leland could not quite decipher but found himself hypnotized by.
His father had reached back in the darkness. To one of the older graves.
When his hand returned to the light, it was holding a flower.
Standing in the greenhouse now, Leland looked down at the tray of roses. The lesson his father had taught him that night remained with him. It is not for us to question God’s will; however hard it is, we must simply do what our Father dictates. We must trust that he knows best and that beauty will stem from the actions that have been set for us.
And so the roses before him now were exquisite not solely because of his care and attention but because of the soil in which they had grown. The soil that had been drawn from his own garden and nourished in turn by the angels that lay beneath.
A tap at the glass.
Leland looked up. A moment later, Banyard opened the door and stepped in out of the rain.
“The lawyer is here,” he said.
“He has the money?”
“He does.”
“Thank you. Tell him I’ll be in shortly.”
Once Banyard had left, Leland picked up the shears again. He looked between the roses, trying to decide which was the most beautiful—which was the most appropriate for the meeting he had arranged with Christopher Shaw to acquire his father’s book. Because he had waited so long for this moment. To receive his wisdom again after all these years.
And to put right what his brother had done.
Finally, he clipped one rose off halfway up the stem.
And feeling that tingle on his skin, he pushed it carefully into the lapel of his black suit.
Twenty-five
Chris and James spent most of the day in the tent. Much of it resting—or at least trying to. The rain had been torrential during the night, battering the canvas so incessantly that it had felt like being under attack. Even in the sleeping bag, with the warmth of James beside him, Chris had found himself shivering from the force of it, never quite able to fall properly asleep. He had spent a lot of time staring at the raindrops on the outside of the tent, some of them clinging stubbornly to the taut material, others trickling down it like tears.
It reminded him of Alan’s house—the room with the broken-down wall and roof. Whenever it rained, the water spattered down in there.
Why don’t you have it repaired? he’d asked once.
Alan had smiled sadly. Because some things can’t just be fixed like that.
Dawn had brought a gloomy gray light only barely distinguishable from the night just gone. The side of his thin pillow was soaked through and cold, but Chris had hugged it anyway. There was nothing worth getting up for right then. Better to remain in a state of suspended animation as much as possible. To attempt to ignore the bursts of wind that still shook the tent, and the endless rattle of rain against it.
By the middle of the afternoon, the weather had cleared a little.
But God, he was still so tired.
He unzipped the front of the tent, crawled out into the dismal daylight, and then blinked as he looked around.
Along with so many others, they were camped on a vast square of driveway, enclosed on all sides by abandoned office blocks from which black, broken windows stared sightlessly down. This had been a parking lot once, he remembered, and the buildings surrounding it had been bright and full of life. But now the offices were empty—the workers having long ago moved on to new, brighter premises—and what had once been a parking area for cars had been colonized as one for human beings instead.
A sea of tents stretched out around him, with webs of guy ropes crisscrossing the narrow pathways leading between them. The colors of the tarps were drab and all but uniform in the weak light. He registered a few figures. Some were standing and stretching out their backs at the side of their improvised homes. Others were sitting half outside their drenched tents. A few were moving about, wrapped up in waterproof coats like fishermen. Here and there, steam rose from boiling kettles. Everyone was frozen and bedraggled. But they were carrying on.
That was what people did, after all.
Chris stood up and stretched out his own back. Then he heard a rustle behind him and twisted at the waist. James, equally groggy, was emerging from the tent.
“Throw me my coat?” Chris said.
“What for?”
“Because it’s cold.” He looked ahead again. “And I’m going to the shop.”
There was a café a couple of streets away. Coffee available from the counter; rows of cheap sandwiches wrapped in cellophane in a lonely fridge humming against one wall. The bell rang as Chris walked in. It was nobody’s idea of a fancy place, and yet he immediately felt the guy behind the counter’s gaze following him, the expression on his face a familiar one.
Because even just one night on the streets was enough.
This is all you’ll ever be.
Chris did his best to shut the voice down. It wasn’t true. After finding the note from Katie in the art studio, he had decided it wasn’t safe for him and James to stay there anymore. If she could find them there, then someone else might. The tent was only a temporary refuge though. This was not his life again. If everything went to plan tonight, he and James would have enough money to stay wherever they liked from now on.
Why was Katie looking for him?
That made no sense, and the question nagged at him. Whenever he thought of his sister, there was a sense of shame so deep it was almost fathomless—a terrible and hollow emptiness that he could fall into forever. When they’d seen the message she’d left, James had suggested calling her, but that was impossible for Chris to contemplate. Even the thought of doing it had caused a visceral reaction inside him. All his life, he had been a failure. He had let people down at every turn. If there was ever a hope of reconnecting with Katie—and there isn’t, he reminded himself; there absolutely isn’t—then it could never begin like this, with him begging her for help the way he had always needed to.