but confusion, too.
Tears tried to swell but she held them at bay. Nonetheless, she needed to retreat. For one of the few times in her life Nina Forest ran away, this time for the sanctuary of the ladies’ room at the end of a short corridor adjacent to the dance hall.
She entered the empty, tight confines of the two-stall/two-sink lavatory. Dirty tile lined the floor and the walls wore a grungy white plaster. Volunteers culled from a pool of Denise and Jake’s friends had thoroughly cleaned the reception hall but no amount of elbow grease could completely scrape away a decade of neglect.
She placed her hands on one of the two ancient porcelain sinks and pointed her eyes at the drain; she did not want to see herself in the mirror.
The wooden door swung open and in strode Denise in her bridal gown with that glass of red wine-apparently re-filled-dangling in her hand.
“Heyya, hi-ya, ho-ya, Mom.”
The newlywed did not notice her mother’s state of mind. Instead, the young girl wiggled her way into one of the two vacant stalls and-after struggling to fit her dress in with her one free hand-closed the door behind. Nina heard the sound of undergarments shuffling off.
The interruption served to break Nina’s downward spiral and she dared a look into the mirror. She could still hear the sound of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” but could not be sure if the song played in the dance hall outside or in her memories.
Regardless, that warm feeling faded. Yet another of the little memory land mines laced through her subconscious ever since that entity resembling an old man had built that bridge between her and Trevor, an act of incredible intimacy she had submitted to in order to pull Trevor from a state of mental chaos.
“No,” she mumbled aloud, chastising herself for not being honest.
“Huh? You say somethin’, Mom?”
Nina replied to the closed stall door, “I didn’t say anything.”
The truth, she knew, was that she had agreed to open her heart and mind to Trevor for far more personal reasons. She respected him, true. She would execute whatever order he commanded, also true. Yet, she felt more. Exactly what, she did not know. But something more.
There, in the wilderness, Trevor had needed her. The Order’s machines of torture had destabilized his mind by playing over and over again all his feelings of regret and loss and guilt.
From what Nina had come to understand, Voggoth had delivered to Trevor a life time of torments in a manner of weeks. Time, it seemed, was all in the mind and Voggoth had stretched minutes into days, hours into years.
The door to the ladies’ room opened again. Nina diverted her eyes from the mirror and to the sink as if caught in the act of something embarrassing.
A middle-aged woman strolled in with a big purse slung around her shoulder. Nina caught a glimpse of the woman in the mirror before looking away. Her hair hung in spaghetti strings, her eyes appeared sleepless and red. Nina figured the woman to be intoxicated: she would not be the only one in the reception hall in such condition.
“Oh, hello there,” the woman greeted but stayed a pace behind Nina and pulled a tube of lipstick from her oversized purse while staring at the neighboring mirror.
“Um, hello,” Nina stumbled.
The woman wore a simple dress that appeared two or three sizes too big for her thin frame, as if she had been the victim of sudden weight loss.
“Wonderful party.”
“Yes,” Nina pulled a tissue from a box on the sink top and ran it under a stream of water in an effort to find something for her hands to do. If she stalled long enough, perhaps the new arrival would leave.
“There’s nothing quite like a marriage, isn’t that right?”
“I suppose so,” Nina answered and then admitted, “I never married, myself.”
“That’s too bad, honey,” the woman consoled. “As for myself, well, I married twice. I can tell you that the wedding is a lot better than the marriage,” she added a quick chuckle. Nina hoped Denise-who remained quiet in the stall-had not heard that remark.
Nina stole another glance at the newcomer via the mirror. She did not recognize the woman and did not recall seeing her at the church ceremony. The woman, however, spoke in a tone of familiarity with an occasional nervous chuckle placed between words.
Nina finished soaking the tissue, looked at it, then dabbed at the corner of her eyes where those tears had tried to escape.
The woman shared, “My first husband, he died during the invasion.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, he was a jerk. My second husband-well, he was murdered last year. Isn’t that something? To survive the whole Armageddon thing only to be murdered by his own kind.”
The woman finished replenishing her lipstick and returned the tube into her purse.
“That’s a shame,” Nina gave the woman another glance in the mirror and saw the stranger’s eyes staring back.
“But of all the people I’ve lost in this whole damned war, it was the death of my father that bothers me the most. I mean, a girl can always find another husband, right?”
“I–I suppose so.”
“My father was a great man. A real, honest-to-God leader. He had it all figured out.”
Nina felt the hair on the back of her neck stand firm. A tingle. A warning.
“But you know what happened to him? He was murdered, too,” the woman spoke faster. Her eyes grew taut. Nina thought she saw a shake in the stranger’s shoulders.
“Maybe you know his name? Maybe you’ve heard of him?” the woman’s voice grew acidic. Her last words came laced in bitterness. “His name was Robert Parsons- of New Winnabow.”
The newcomer’s hand had remained in her purse after replacing the lipstick tube. Now she pulled that hand out again-with a gun.
Nina whirled around as Sharon Parsons leveled a. 38 caliber revolver from her purse. Her left hand slammed into Sharon’s right wrist, pushing the gun away as it discharged while Nina’s right hand drove forward in deadly palm-heel strike that impacted with lethal force into the bridge of Sharon’s nose.
The woman who had once been Evan Godfrey’s wife-the woman who had sworn revenge against whoever had assassinated her father at New Winnabow nearly six years before-fell limp and dead to the grungy tile floor of the dance hall bathroom.
Nina stared at the dead body for a moment with her breath heaving in and out.
Then she noticed a thin stream of red oozing across the tile, coming from beneath the closed stall door; the door with a bullet hole from the errant shot.
Nina’s heart exploded. She ripped open the stall door pulling the rusty lock free of its screws. Denise sat there, on the toilet, with a large red stain across her chest and shock on her face.
She also held in her hand the stem of a glass, all that remained of her red wine. The bullet had missed the girl but hit her beverage, sending the rare vintage splashing across the tile.
Mother and daughter gazed at one another with wide eyes for several long seconds. Behind them the door burst open and Shep-his side arm drawn-led a group to the sound of the gunshot.
Denise began to laugh, and then cry, and then she fell into her mother’s arms.
3. The Horror at Red Rock
Omar Nehru stood at his bedroom window holding a simmering cigarette and watching the first rays of dawn glitter off Harveys Lake. A pair of tree swallows darted out from shore, zigzagged over the lazy water, and returned inland toward the forested slopes surrounding the basin. Omar admired their blue-black coat and wondered what spring game they played.
He watched the day begin from the A-frame home situated a few yards north of the main estate, the place
