By the Light of His Lantern Read online

  “What if they look in here?” she worried again.

  “They won’t,” Beth promised.

  In two hours’ time, she would find out.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Not wanting to leave Catherine alone when they came, Beth insisted she park her car around the block and return on foot, planning to hide once they arrived.

  “I don’t think you should be here,” Catherine said, skeptical. “If anything happens—if her boyfriend gets rowdy—I don’t want you involved.”

  “That’s exactly why I need to be here.”

  “I don’t want you in any more danger than you already might be, with everything else.” Catherine had yet to comprehend the absurdity of it all. Not only had she involved herself in dealings with a psychic/witch/or whatever you might call her, and kidnapped a full-grown man into her home, she’d also somehow managed to be robbed and blackmailed by her own daughter because of it. It was too much. Without Beth, she thought she might be in a corner rocking herself away from sanity like a boat from the shore.

  “I have my phone. I’ll be here to call the police should you find yourself in a position where you can’t.”

  “I’m already in that position.”

  “If it comes to life or death, I think your daughter’s accusations are a risk we’ll have to take.”

  Catherine didn’t agree or disagree. “I wish I hadn’t done any of this.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m serious when I say I don’t want you here.”

  “If they—”

  “Nothing will happen to me. They’re not going to kill me. And even if there was the slimmest chance they would, I’m not going to do anything to make that a possibility. I’ll give them what I can if it comes to it, if they go that route.”

  “I feel like I wouldn’t have your best interest in mind to leave you alone.”

  “You’ve done so much already, just being here at all. Trust me.”

  Disappointed, arms folded, Beth took one last look around the house. Catherine got the sense that Beth might be a little disappointed in not being more involved in the excitement. Perhaps she found Catherine’s predicament thrilling. Not to detract from her generosity and empathy, of course…

  “You should go now,” Catherine said. “I’ll have my phone on me the whole time and I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”

  “Better yet, have my number open so that if anything happens you can call me ASAP and I can help in any way that I can. I can call the police for you, in case you can’t speak or something like that.”

  “And if I can call them myself, I will.”

  Beth smiled. They hugged. Catherine watched as she gathered her belongings and left.

  She had no intention of calling anyone for help.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  She waited long enough that afternoon was close to being late afternoon, nearly evening. She received multiple texts from Beth inquiring about her wellbeing, to which she responded that they hadn’t shown yet. She fantasized that they’d changed their minds, or that Lara had changed hers and convinced Rob it wasn’t worth it. She looked out the windows dozens of times. Obsessively, even, from upstairs and downstairs. She wanted to see them coming, to be able to compose herself and be waiting near the door when they arrived.

  It was a surprise to her when they got the jump on her anyway—she was in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. On her way through the living room she saw a car parked at the curb. It was Lara’s.

  She opened the door and felt an odd relief. Lara waited alone on the porch. Catherine’s eyes darted to the car, around the yard, across the street.

  “It’s just me,” Lara said.

  “Where’s Rob?”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “Well…” Catherine lost her words. Suddenly she’d forgotten the plan of attack—or defense, more like. “I don’t have the money. Any money, I mean.”

  “I’m not here for the money,” Lara said. “Can I come in, please?”

  “You’re not?”

  “Can I come inside?”

  Catherine took a second to think without really thinking at all. Her mind was blank. She nodded and stood aside, closed the door after her daughter.

  “I want to see him,” Lara said.

  “Why?”

  “I need to see him.”

  “Well, he’s not here,” Catherine said, choosing to stick to that part of their plan, at least. “I finished what I started. He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone. It’s done”

  Lara appeared angry. “You mean—how? He’s dead? You killed him?”

  The allegation sent Catherine’s stomach tilting. “I—I…”

  Before she could think of anything, Lara fell apart.

  “Was it really him?” she asked. “You’re sure?”

  “Well, yes. I mean—”

  “That was the guy? The guy I saw downstairs in the basement… he was the one…”

  Catherine only nodded.

  “He looked so… young…”

  Lara was crying harder now, and everything that had happened in the last few days blew out the window like ripped up letters in the wind. Catherine wanted terribly to take her in her arms. Somehow it shocked her, her daughter’s grief. She’d seen it before, of course. She’d been the one to tell Lara, and then there was the funeral. But over the past year, the handful of times they’d spent any time together, Lara had always seemed in a much better state than herself. She realized now how shallow her perception must have been.

  “Lara,” she said. “Lara, listen.”

  Lara turned and walked blindly into the living room, sobbing. She found her way to the piano, to the pictures there on top, and she reached a trembling hand to one but refrained from touching it.

  “Lara, I lied. He isn’t gone.”

  After a long moment of simply standing, Lara finally turned, her sobbing quickly reduced to sniffles, and in her tearful eyes there was already a seed of anger sprouting.

  “He’s still here. I’m sorry. I thought you were here to… to do something else to try and ruin me.”

  Her eyes softened. She nodded, then shook her head.

  “I just want to see him.”

  A weight of shame settled on Catherine’s heart, realizing she was now going to have to show her daughter that she’d stuffed the unconscious man under the sink in the guest bathroom. It was so much to absorb, she decided, Lara probably wouldn’t ask.

  Together they went upstairs, where Catherine directed Lara into the bathroom and opened up the cupboard doors. Lara gasped, low in the back of her throat, when she saw him. They stood there quietly side by side for several minutes, just looking.

  “What’s his name?" Lara asked.

  Catherine tried not to think about it much, though she knew.

  “Lewis.”

  Lara knelt to get a closer look at his face. Pretty soon she was shaking with sobs again. She stood and faced Catherine. Unable to hold back any longer, Catherine did as she wanted and held her daughter tight against herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She wasn’t entirely sure what she felt sorry for, but she was. So she said it again.

  Lara whispered, hot and stuffy into her mother’s shoulder, something Catherine couldn’t understand but she let her imagination run wild. They embraced a while longer until they were interrupted by the doorbell. They parted. Lara wiped her eyes.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know…”

  Catherine left downstairs. She looked through the peephole in the front door. She was both relieved and disappointed. She opened the door with the best smile she could manage.

  “Kellie!” she said. The little girl was at first pleased to see her, but when Catherine stepped out onto the porch and shut the door behind her she was visibly confused. “I’m so sorry,” Catherine said, hurrying past Kellie to the car parked at the curb. The window rolled down, revealing Kellie’s mother at the wheel, who usuall
y only stayed long enough to see Kellie make it safely inside. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Well,” Catherine began, thinking up a story on the fly. “I’m in the middle of a family emergency, unfortunately.” It wasn’t a lie, really.

  “Oh no, I hope everything is okay…”

  “It is! It is. I’m just… very tied up at the moment, I’m afraid.” She smiled and bobbed her head, waiting for the mother to fill the silence with a goodbye. She flinched as Kellie appeared by her side.

  “I don’t have a lesson this week?” she asked.

  “No,” Catherine said. “I’m sor—”

  The little girl exclaimed excitedly and opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

  “Well, I hope everything turns out okay!” Kellie’s mother said. Catherine nodded awkwardly. “Should we just continue next weekend, then?”

  “Yes! Please. Oh, and… um, don’t worry about paying next weekend, of course. To make up for today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  She couldn’t get rid of them quickly enough. Once they were gone, she returned inside, where Lara waited in the living room, having watched them through the window.

  “Who was that?”

  Catherine sighed. “Oh, just… a client of mine.”

  “A client?”

  “I give her daughter piano lessons.”

  Catherine paced around the room, picking up and replacing throw pillows on the couch and rearranging things on the coffee table.

  “I didn’t know you gave piano lessons. How long have you done that?”

  “Oh, not long. A few months.” She paused. “Kellie’s actually my only client as of yet. I met her mother at a parent teacher conference… her son goes to my school. Not in my class, actually, I just… I happened to talk to them for some reason or another, I don’t remember…”

  She was rambling.

  “Her daughter looks a lot like Joy,” Lara said.

  Catherine must have rearranged the books and coasters on the coffee table a half-dozen times. She continued doing so until enough time had passed that it no longer felt strange to change the subject, a behavior which made the entire moment all the more strange. Luckily Lara didn’t pursue the subject. Instead, she changed it for her.

  “So he isn’t dead?” she asked. She glanced toward the upstairs.

  “No.”

  Lara nodded, considering. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “I intended to, but not anymore.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  It took serious consideration before Catherine decided which truth she’d tell her daughter.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about first.”

  “What?” Lara asked, and then she remembered. “Oh…”

  They sat together on the sofa.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, mom.”

  “I know.”

  Deep inhale. Slow exhale. “I’m a shitty person.”

  “You’re not a shitty person.” An inkling of panic as she tried to find better words to elaborate. “I mean… what you tried to do was shitty, but you’re not a shitty person.”

  Lara looked at Catherine, scrutinizing. “How can you not hate me right now?”

  “I can’t hate you. There might be times I don’t like you. I know you haven’t liked me much lately, so you should understand that. I’ll never hate you, though.”

  “You should.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  Lara tried her best to keep composed. She shook her head. No.

  “I know I haven’t given you much reason to know it, but you’ve always been a good daughter. Aside from the trouble you’re in now, of course.” Catherine sat next to her. “I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to make you feel like I don’t care about you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not.” Catherine watched her daughter, who was too afraid or too uncomfortable to meet her eyes. “Joy came so much later. She wasn’t planned, you know. And… it’s no excuse, but I’ll admit my attention was divided, and not equally. And given that you were old enough to not need me for as many things as she did—”

  “You let me handle things on my own.”

  “Too much on your own.”

  Lara didn’t agree or disagree. “I still needed you.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m sorry.”

  Lara sat quiet, and Catherine sat quiet only to give her daughter time to think.

  “I’m sorry I broke in and…” She likely had a hard time saying it because it sounded so strange, apologizing so casually for something so substantial. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “I want to ask you this, but I don’t want you to take offense or feel accused. Have you been using something?”

  Lara nodded.

  “I know it’s not my place to suddenly start showing concern or advising you how to live your life…”

  “You don’t need to,” Lara said. “I know what you’re going to say anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I need to stay away from Rob.” She’d taken the words right out. “It would be too easy to blame everything on him. It’s not him, really. He’s not some ‘bad influence’.”

  “Being with someone like him doesn’t help anything.”

  “I know, and I don’t plan on being with him. It just happened. Neither of us are in good places right now.”

  Catherine couldn’t squash the feeling squirming around inside her that she might be on the cusp of repairing something between them but that it was inevitable she’d fall short—that she just didn’t know enough about her daughter to truly be there for her, that the time to know her had come and gone.

  “What can I do to help you be in a good place?”

  Lara shook her head.

  “Just be here, like this. This is enough.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Eventually Catherine got around to telling Lara about the man, but not before placing a phone call to Beth to fill her in on what had happened, which was essentially nothing. Beth was relieved. They agreed to talk later about their plan for Rosaline’s place.

  “Please tell me you’re joking,” Lara said. “A curse? Like witchcraft?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I never would have thought you’d buy into something like that.”

  “Well I did, and it worked.”

  “Okay.”

  “It worked.”

  “I said okay.”

  They were downstairs now in the living room. Lara helped Catherine take the man out of the bathroom and they left him at the top of the stairs for now.

  “Most vigilante parents would have just… killed him. Shot him, or something.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about revenge until I met the psychic. I wanted to know who he was, and I thought I’d found him. I wanted him to know that I knew, and I wanted to know he felt guilty. He had to feel guilty. And then the psychic confirmed his identity, and went a step further…”

  “If you’d been talking to a weapons dealer instead of a psychic this all might be different, then, wouldn’t it…”

  Her daughter’s attitude was biting, but Catherine was understanding.

  “Probably.”

  “Do you really believe he’s in the place she described? Being tortured…”

  “I don’t know. But he’s in some kind of coma. It’s been two weeks. I don’t know what kind of powder she could have given me that might do that, while he seems mostly healthy in every other way.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Well, he’s not looking so great right now, but that’s probably more to do with not being the best caretaker.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t kill him.”

  Catherine felt something like relief and gratitude at that.

  “I don’t think I ever had it in me. I think maybe that’s why I tried the psychic’s curse in t
he first place. Part of me never thought it would work.” She looked toward the upstairs hallway. “And he’s just a kid.”

  “How do you wake him up?”

  “The psychic told me there was a way to reverse it, but she wants all my limbs to pay for it.”

  Lara chewed the inside of her cheek. “Sounds like Rob and I showed up at the worst possible time.”

  “You had me drowning a little, I won’t lie.” Before Lara could open her mouth to apologize any more, she continued. “Beth, whom I called just a bit ago, has agreed to help me get whatever I need to reverse it.”

  “She’s helping you?”

  “I know. I can’t believe it either.”

  Lara’s eyes zig-zagged the air, thinking quickly. “I want to help you, too.”

  “I barely even want Beth helping. I can’t have you getting involved, too. If anything happens…”

  “Please.” Lara’s stare penetrated in the sorriest way. “I have more right to help than she does. You have to let me. I need to.”

  “What about Rob? Where is he, and what does he think is happening with your plans to rob me?”

  “It’s over. He knows. Just let me help.”

  Catherine mulled it over, but her thoughts were pulled into worrisome directions, imagining the kind of trouble they could all find themselves in. She found herself second-guessing her daughter’s intentions as well, which pained her. Could she trust her?

  “That’s why I’m here,” Lara said. She stood from the sofa and retraced her steps to the piano, let her gaze touch each corner of the picture frame like so many times before, a ritual. “There’s more to my sister than her death, but that’s all I can ever think about.” She turned to Catherine, eyes set like hardened stone. “I need this.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Catherine spoke to Beth over the phone in the kitchen downstairs while Lara remained in the bathroom with the man.