Inside the house, he finds Eleanor is drunk. She often is. It was as though she too recognized that the life they have found themselves living was not what should have been. Nathaniel is unattended and crying. Leland lifts the baby from his crib and attempts to soothe it, the same way Alan did back in the church.
His actions are sincere. And yet Nathaniel continues to cry.
Leland suppresses the anger he feels. The truth is that he loves his son deeply. Even if Charlotte had been his—as she should have been—surely there would have been room in the world for Nathaniel too. And as he holds his son’s small body against his own, Leland imagines all the secret things he will teach him as he grows.
The ways he will shape him.
A few minutes later, Eleanor appears in the doorway, disheveled and unsteady on her feet. Nathaniel has been soothed into silence now, and Leland is rocking him gently against his chest, staring down at a small face that not only resembles his own but which reminds him of his father as well.
“Was he crying?” Eleanor sounds confused. “I thought I heard him crying.”
She leans against the doorway. Leland says nothing. There was a time when he thought a marriage might be helpful as a facade—a veneer of normality and acceptability—but he wonders how long it will be before he is compelled to add her to the burgeoning collection of angels in his secret garden at the back of the house.
But for now, he ignores her.
Nathaniel matters though. And as Leland continues rocking the infant in his arms, he knows the situation can’t continue as it is. There are times when he needs to be away for work, and if Eleanor’s attention cannot be relied upon, he will have to find another way to make sure his son is properly cared for.
That should be simple enough, he thinks.
They can find a babysitter.
* * *
Leland stopped outside the door.
There was an endless moment in which he could feel nothing but the blood pounding in his temples. When he could think of nothing but what the babysitter he hired, Peter Leighton, had ended up doing to Nathaniel.
Thirty years might have been expected to dull some of the hatred and loss, but they had not. Time held little meaning once you understood its true nature. Past, present, and future existed as one. The Edward Leland who had once walked down a long corridor to see what had been done to Nathaniel existed just as surely as the one standing here now.
But also the one who would put things right.
The one who will carry out God’s will.
He used the thought to anchor himself. A few short hours from now, there existed an Edward Leland who would right the wrongs that had been done and correct the blasphemous course the world had been set upon.
He unlocked the door before him and opened it.
Christopher Shaw was where Banyard had deposited him upon their arrival: slumped against the bare wall, bound and gagged. His face was scarred down one side, and now badly bruised on the other. As Leland walked slowly across to him, Shaw tried to flinch backward, but he was already pressed hard against the stone wall behind him and there was nowhere for him to go.
“Look at me,” Leland said.
The boy didn’t move.
“I said look at me.”
The boy did as he was told, raising his face and looking up at Leland. His eyes were wide and scared. There was pleasure to be taken in his fear, but Leland forced himself to remain impassive, leaning down and peering carefully at the boy’s features.
Searching for another glimpse of what he had seen at the café.
He leaned back. Sure now.
“I spent such a long time looking for you,” he said. “I always knew I’d find you eventually. I knew Alan wouldn’t be able to stay away from you forever—that he would want to look after you. That he would need to. Because you are abhorrent. You should never have been born. And deep down, I think you know that, don’t you?”
He reached down and brushed a strand of Shaw’s hair away from his face. The boy was so terrified that he didn’t even flinch. But there was something in his eyes that suggested Leland’s words had resonated with him. That on some level, Leland was only confirming a truth the boy had known his whole life.
He looked at Shaw’s scar. At some point, the boy had been badly injured. Someone else must have laid eyes on him and recognized that he was an abomination. Someone else had been driven to remove him from existence.
“I can see God has made his own attempts to erase you over the years,” Leland said. “Now he has brought you to me. And I’m going to enjoy finishing that job for him.”
Leland crouched down in front of Shaw. And once again, he thought that while the boy might not understand exactly what he was being told, he recognized the truth of it.
He knew what he was even if he didn’t know who.
Thirty-seven
It is April 13, 1986.
Alan Hobbes parks his car on Grace Street and then walks slowly up the dark driveway toward Saint William’s Church. It is a warm night, with just a faint whisper of a breeze, and he has no desire to hurry. The world around him is still and silent, and the black sky above so clear it is easy to imagine God looking down at him from beyond the prickle of stars there. A weighty gaze, perhaps, but Joshua—cradled in his arms right now and still half asleep from the journey—is heavier.
Over the years, Hobbes has done his best to spend his money decently, distributing it without fanfare to the people and organizations who will use it to do the most good: laundering the gift of his fortune through the lives of others. But two of the more insidious things money can buy are privacy and access, and he has paid handsomely for both tonight. If God is watching, then he is the only observer present right now. And when Hobbes arrives at the door to the church and reaches out for the handle, he finds that the door is unlocked as agreed, and the porch inside empty.
You can’t do this, he thinks.
It’s not allowed.
But he does.
He carries his dozing son across and then pushes open the door that leads into the main body of the church. He walks down the narrow aisle between the pews, the tap of his footsteps echoing in a space that feels vast. The light from the candles burning in the racks along the walls is unable to reach the vaulted ceiling high above. He glances up into the darkness there. God feels closer in here. It is as though he has leaned forward in his seat and is watching carefully, like a scientist peering into a microscope.
So let him watch.
Hobbes has come to hate him a little.
Hobbes still remembers the question he asked his students at the lecture. If you were a father, which would you prefer? A child who always did as they were told, or a child who disobeyed you and forged their own path, trying to do the best they could? It had been a rhetorical question, its answer obvious—or at least that was what he’d thought. And yet he has spent much of the time since doubting himself. Because with every bit of good he has attempted—every bit of evil he has worked to prevent—he has felt the world leaning harder against him, like a car ever more determined to drift sideways into a different lane.
You have committed blasphemy.
When Hobbes reaches the front of the church, he looks down at his son. In his arms, Joshua is sleeping again now, the side of his face resting against Hobbes’s chest.
Can you hear my heart? he wonders.