LITMIR.BIZ

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“It’s a real long shot, so don’t go spreading it around.”

      “Who me?” He waved a dismissive hand. “I won’t breathe a word,” he said. But it wasn’t a day later that someone approached her at the Piggly Wiggly to ask if Irene Montgomery was a serial killer.

      Reverend Portenski’s hand shook as he removed the floorboard in the far corner of the old church and reached into the dark hole beneath. He had stumbled upon this small recess quite by accident a decade ago, when he was moving furniture and doing some repairs to the building—and had rued the day ever since.

      If only God would let him know what he should do with what he’d found. While trying to decide, he’d replaced the heavy table that had hidden the loose floorboard and tried to forget its existence, to forget what was beneath. But during the dark quiet hours of the night, when the pressures of the day began to dissipate, he remembered the contents of this hiding place, which conjured up images he wished he’d never seen.

      After ten years, he was tired of the guilt, the nagging worry, the indecision. It was time to put the matter to rest. He pulled the paper sack from the hole and walked as quickly as his arthritic joints would allow to the small study at the back of the church.

      A fire burned in the sparsely furnished room. He wasn’t as poverty-stricken as such a study might indicate. He could’ve afforded more elegant appointments. But he had no wife or children to make comfortable and eschewed all but the most necessary physical possessions. He craved knowledge and enlightenment, and believed that intelligence was the true glory of God. So he spent every dime he possessed, above what he devoted to the church and his flock, on books. They lined the room on three sides, residing on makeshift shelves he’d built himself, using unfinished wooden planks and cinder blocks.

      It was a sacrilege to bring what he carried into this room. The words of some of the greatest men who’d ever lived—renowned philosophers and theologians—resided here. But the devouring heat and glimmering flames of the fire beckoned.

      Portenski pressed closer. He felt as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels as he drew his hand back to toss the sack into the fire.

      Do it! Throw it! his mind screamed. And never think of it again.

      But he couldn’t. As much as he wanted to protect the church and the faith of his parishioners, he couldn’t in all conscience destroy what he’d found. Neither could he take it to the police. He’d waited too long. Besides, doing that wouldn’t change anything; it was too late.

      Which brought him right back where he’d been for the past ten years: he was the guardian of a secret he could neither tell nor keep.

      Slumping into his seat, he slowly opened the sack and spread several Polaroid pictures on the desk.

      As penance, he forced himself to focus on each one—and then he threw up.

      His mother was calling him.

      Clay shaded his face with his arm and gazed toward the driveway that circled around to the chicken coop, barn and outbuildings. Sure enough, there she was, hurrying toward him in a red dress, a flamboyant hat and high heels.

      “Stay there, I’m coming,” he called and dropped his shovel before she could break an ankle in the loose gravel. He’d been cleaning out irrigation ditches all morning. The exertion made his long-sleeved T-shirt stick to him, but it was actually a mild, overcast day.

      “Have you heard?” his mother cried before he could reach her.

      He didn’t know what she was talking about. If the shrillness of her voice was any indication, he didn’t want to know. But she wouldn’t have left the boutique where she worked unless it was important.

      He braced himself for the worst. “What’s wrong?”

      “Allie McCormick is searching for Lucas.”

      He’d expected to hear Barker’s name. “Lucas?”

      “Your father, Clay! Don’t you remember the name of your own father?”

      With one sleeve, he wiped the perspiration rolling from his temple. Of course he remembered his father’s name. It was just that he didn’t think about Lucas anymore. He had more pressing concerns. But there’d been a time when he’d longed for his father on a daily basis—to the point of nearly making himself ill.

      “Why is she looking for him?” he asked.

      “Folks are saying I killed him! Can you believe it? He’s probably as alive as you and me, and a darn sight richer.”

      He raised a hand. “Whoa, slow down. Why would Allie be interested in Lucas? He’s got nothing to do with Reverend Barker or Stillwater or anything else. He’s never even been here.”

      “She thinks I’m some sort of black widow. Mrs. Little just told me.”

      Mrs. Little owned the dress store where Irene worked five days a week. Although the Littles had been grudging with their friendship at first, and still kept the relationship mostly on a professional level, they were kinder to Irene than anyone else in town.

      “So she’s searching for him,” Clay said with a shrug. “Let her. The more time she spends on Lucas, the less she can spend on Barker.”

      “But what if she finds him?”

      “Maybe she can collect the back child support he owes you.”

      She made a face. “Stop being facetious. I’ll never see a dime from him, and you know it. Not at this late date. I don’t even want his money.”

      Clay didn’t understand why she was so worked up. “What exactly are you worried about?”

      “If she contacts him, it might bring him here. I don’t want that.”

      “He won’t bother us, not after so many years.”

      “He could see it as an opportunity to make amends,” she said. “Especially with you. You were the oldest. He knew you best.”

      Clay brushed some of the dirt from his pants. His father had never come back. Not even for him. It was a wound that would likely never heal. But he refused to indulge in self-pity.

      Anyway, something else was going on. He could feel it. “You think I’d welcome him back?”

      “You used to worship the ground he walked on,” she said.

      She was right. Lucas Montgomery had once been Clay’s hero. He was the man who showed up on payday and took them to town for an ice-cream cone. The man who waltzed Irene around the kitchen, or pretended her spatula was a microphone, making them all laugh. The man who held Molly on his lap until she fell asleep, then tucked her safely in bed. Clay’s life—and he assumed it was the same for the rest of his family—had been better, more complete whenever Lucas was around. He couldn’t lie about that.

      But even when Clay was only five or six, Lucas had stopped coming home on a regular basis. And when he began staying away two and three days at a time, the fighting started. Clay could still hear his mother pleading with his father. “Lucas, you’ve gotta stop drinkin’ and carousin’, do ya hear? The water bill’s due. What we gonna do if we can’t pay the water?” and “You’ve got children to take care of now, Lucas. How’s Clay gonna learn to be a man if you don’t stick around and teach him?” His father always said, “It has nothin’ to do with drinkin’, Irene. I’m still a young man. I’ve got a lot of life to live, a lot of places to see.And I can’t do that strapped down to a wife and three kids.”

      Clay had initially sympathized with his father. It was his mother who was wrong, who tried to tell his daddy that he couldn’t have any fun. She was the reason he didn’t stick around like he used to. Then Lucas abandoned them altogether, and Clay was forced to grow up almost overnight. As he worked for the local feed store, making less than half of what he would’ve been paid as an adult, Clay had realized which parent really loved him.

      Occasionally,

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