Chapter 13
By the time Allison had slipped on her shoes and made her way out to the deck, her mysterious man in black had seated himself on one of the lounge chairs with sunblock on his nose, one leg crossed over his knee and a book in his hands. All in all, he was doing a fine impression of a California beach babe baking in the sun. He ignored her as she came to stand in front of his chair. He merely turned a page in his paperback without giving her a second glance.
“Hello, Deacon,” Allison said.
He pushed his sunglasses down his nose to look at her before pushing them up again to resume his reading.
“Hi, sis,” he said.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Book I picked up at the library this morning,” he said. “Little ditty called Flowers in the Attic. Ever read it?” He looked up at her and grinned as manically as the Joker. Allison glared at him.
“Ohh...” he said, shuddering. “You give a good death stare. Almost better than Thora’s.”
“Roland is not my brother. I am not his sister. We are not flowers nor are we in the attic,” Allison said.
“True, but No Flowers in the Beach House doesn’t have quite the same ring to it,” he said, and tossed the book back over his shoulder, where it landed on the deck in a flurry of bent pages. The book lover in her died a little inside. “Walking funny today?”
“That’s a very crude question.”
“He hasn’t gotten laid in years. Plus he’s six feet tall and weighs two hundred twenty pounds. I’d hate the big behemoth if he weren’t my brother. I can’t break one-eighty wet with boots on. Maybe I need bigger boots.” He held out his leg to show off his motorcycle boots.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”
“Did you have fun last night?” he asked as he pulled his legs in to make room for her to sit down on the lounge chair. “He definitely did. Grinning like an idiot all morning. Which is kind of weird in a hospital, but hey, Nero diddled while Rome burned, right?”
“Deacon?”
“Yes?”
“I hate you.”
“Aww... I love you, too.” Deacon reached out, grabbed her and pulled her down into his lap. To make it even worse, he started to rock her back and forth. “Our little girl’s all grown up.”
“So much hatred. Burning, burning hatred.”
“Be happy, poopsie,” Deacon said. “You got the good monk to stay up after his bedtime for something much more fun than praying. You must be a miracle worker.”
“Roland warned me about this,” Allison said with sigh. “You, I mean. He warned me about you. He should have warned me way more.”
“You have to let me enjoy this. If men had hymens his would have grown back by now.”
“Can you take the sunblock off your nose?” she asked. “It’s getting on my shirt.”
“You’re no fun.” He pushed her off his lap, and wiped the sunblock off with the corner of his beach towel. All at once it struck her how handsome a man Deacon had grown into. Not handsome, she reconsidered, but beautiful. Like many people on the West Coast, he had some Asian ancestry, which had blessed him with high cheekbones, elegant dark eyes and thick eyelashes sooty as cinders. A striking man. If someone put him in a Tom Ford suit and sent him down a runaway, he’d be America’s next top male model.
“You’re pretty, too,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How did you know I was thinking you were pretty?”
“I assume that’s what everyone’s thinking.” He winked at her.
“You’re a menace,” she said, rubbing her forehead. Deacon was so easy to love and yet she also wanted to strangle him. But with love. But also strangling. In a loving way.
“Allison, baby,” he said, suddenly serious. “It’s okay. This isn’t a big deal. People have sex. It’s normal.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean, it’s not normal to have sex with your big brother who also happens to be a monk, but who wants to be normal? I don’t.”
“You were almost helpful. Almost. So close and yet so far...”
Deacon laughed and it was a lovely laugh.
“I know he’s not your big brother,” Deacon said. “I tease because I love. Glad you’re back. Are you?”
“I was until the wildly inappropriate questions about last night.”
“You can ask me some wildly inappropriate questions if it’ll make you feel better,” he said. “Hit me. I have no secrets.”
“Why is the attic locked?”
“Except that.”
She glared at him again.
“What do you want in the attic?” he asked.
“Roland said he found one of my old books in the attic. I thought more of my stuff might be up there,” she said, and hoped he bought it.
“Dad keeps some medical equipment and files up there now. If you want to see it, I’ll show you. You’ll regret it, though.”
“I’ll regret it?”
“Damn skippy, you’ll regret it. Not even joking, sis. You still want to go?”
“More now than ever.”
“You’re my kind of girl,” Deacon said. He stood up and she found he’d grown nearly as tall as Roland. She experienced a moment’s vertigo when she realized the last time she’d seen him they’d been the same height.
She followed him into the house and up the first and second flights of stairs.
“So,” he said, “I have to tell you the truth.”
“About what?” Allison asked. They went into Dr. Capello’s office where Deacon dug around the desk drawers until he found a key on a plastic tag.
“The reason I came to see you.”
“Which is...?” She already regretted asking.
“Roland. You. You and Roland.”
“There really is no me and Roland. We spent one night together. We’re not planning the wedding yet.”
“Thora and I don’t want to see him get hurt. I love the man,” Deacon said. “I can’t help but be protective of him. He’s...a little out of practice with women.”
“I didn’t plan last night.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he said as he unlocked the attic door. “I mean, if you were going to plan on sleeping with one of your former siblings, it would have been me, wouldn’t it?”
“Not Thora?”
“Oh...” he said. “I like the way you think.”
He opened the door and reached way up to pull the cord on the light. Deacon immediately headed up but Allison stayed at the foot of the steps.
“Are you coming up or are you going to stand there checking out my ass all day?” Deacon asked, looking over his shoulder and down at her. He stood at the top of the steps, holding on to the railing on either side. Twelve hardwood steps between them. She’d counted. Enough of a push and anyone could break their neck on these steep narrow stairs.
“I was trying to remember something,” she said. “And check out your ass.”
She’d made the joke to cover her nervousness, but Deacon noticed.
Deacon turned around, faced her. “It wasn’t me,” he said.
“What?”
“Whoever pushed you down the stairs, it wasn’t me. And you didn’t fall down the attic steps, anyway,” Deacon said. “It was the third-floor stairs you fell down. I know because Thora and I ran into the house and saw you on the second-floor landing with Dad kneeling over you. You don’t forget a day like that. You don’t forget the day you saw your father scared shitless for the first time.”
Allison couldn’t speak. Deacon spoke for her.
“Roland told us you thought someone might have pushed you on purpose and that’s why your aunt came and took you from us,” Deacon said. “If you think that’s what happened, I believe you. But it wasn’t me or Thora.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “I mean, if you did do it.” Roland was the only Capello she felt completely comfortable around. He wasn’t home the day of her fall. No way he had anything to do with it.
“Good point,” Deacon said.
“That doesn’t comfort me,” she said.
“Sorry. I’m too honest, I guess.”
“Can I trust you?” Allison asked.
“I hope so. But in case you don’t...”
Deacon stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled something out. He tossed it down to her. She caught it, poorly, but still caught it.
“Mace? You carry mace with you?” Allison asked.
He shrugged. “Pepper spray. It’s for you. Lot of psychos out there, you know. Now are you coming up?”
She did go up the stairs.
But she kept the pepper spray in her hand.
The attic smelled of years and dust and must, but it was a pleasant sort of smell, comforting, like old books. Everywhere she saw boxes, many of them with RC written on them. Roland must have stored all his things up here when he went to the monastery. There were also old wooden filing cabinets, steamer trunks and unmarked boxes sealed with layers of tape.
“See?” he said. “You’re safe with me. Come on. I’ll show you the freak show.”
“The freak show?” Allison asked as she tucked the pepper spray into her pocket.
Deacon pointed at something. All Allison saw was a large white sheet draped over what she assumed was a huge stack of boxes.
“We cleaned out Dad’s office after he retired and put everything up here. Including his ‘collection.’” Deacon pushed the curtain aside and Allison stared, wide-eyed, at three dark wood glass-front cabinets. She looked at Deacon, who said nothing but waved his hand as if to say “you asked for it, here it is.” She leaned in and peered through the glass. Inside on beds of midnight blue velvet lay various metal objects in strange, fascinating and grotesque shapes. They were not shiny, not polished, not gleaming. These were old things, tarnished things, some with rust on them that on second look revealed it was not rust at all.
“What the hell is all this stuff?” Allison asked, intrigued and horrified by the macabre display in front of her.
“What do you do when you have too much money, too much free time and not enough good sense?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s a bone wrench,” Deacon said, pointing at an F-shaped steel object about ten inches long. “Don’t ask me why you’d need to wrench a bone, but that’s what it is. And that thing next to it that looks like a wine bottle corkscrew is, in fact, a trephine.”
“A what?”
“A trephine? It’s, um, for drilling holes in the skull.”
“Oh, gross,” she said, wincing.
“I know, right? This is the best one, though,” Deacon said as he pointed out an object that looked something like a wooden rolling pin with a rounded tip and split down the center.
“What is that thing?”
“You can’t guess?” he asked.
“Please tell me that’s not a wooden dildo.”
“Close. It’s a speculum,” he said, grinning.
“Made of wood?”
“It’s been sanded and shellacked.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Deacon grinned maniacally. “It’s got a leech applicator, too.”
“Oh, my God.” Allison covered her mouth with her hands and laughed in disgust and horror.
“I wasn’t kidding about the freak show,” Deacon said.
“Dr. Capello collects this stuff? By choice? On purpose? No one is making him?”
“This is medical history right here.” Deacon waved his hand, indicating the cabinets. “Insanely gross and fucked-up medical history. We’ve got a tonsil guillotine here. A set of forceps as big as your arms here. And, oh, this little guy is a gold-plated eyelid retractor. Are you ready to puke yet?”
“A tonsil guillotine?”
“Chop, chop,” Deacon said.
“Yes, I’m ready to puke.”
“I told you you’d regret it,” Deacon said.
“I need to sit down,” Allison said, mostly kidding. Deacon had warned her, after all. As gross as the stuff was, she found it pretty fascinating. Fascinating and gross.
Deacon threw open a large steamer trunk and pulled an old quilt out of it, tossed it on the floor and sat down cross-legged. Allison sunk down next to him.
“Dad is weird,” Deacon said.
“I had no idea.”
Deacon laughed. “Blame his grandparents,” he said.
“Vicious Victor and Crazy Daisy?”
“Yeah. Dad found a bunch of his grandparents’ stuff up here in the attic when he came back the first time. Including some of the stuff they used on her. Including...” Deacon crawled to one of the cabinets and pointed at the object inside. “That ice pick.”
“Ice pick?”
“Up the nose and into the prefrontal lobe,” Deacon said. “Didn’t work very well. Supposed to make her less moody. Instead she was pretty much catatonic after that.”
Allison shuddered at the sight of the thin metal rod and its tapered tip. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it had once been shoved into a suffering woman’s brain.
“That wasn’t in the article I read,” Allison said.
“The one on Dad’s wall? Trust me, there’s a lot that’s not in that article,” Deacon said, rolling his eyes. “But you know what they say—don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. A catatonic woman being choked to death by her own husband as a sort of mercy killing is a bit much for the Lifestyle section of your friendly neighborhood newspaper.”
“He choked her to death?” Allison said.
“Choked her with his bare hands,” Deacon said. “Then he blew his brains out with his pistol. Fun story, right?”
“And Dr. Capello wanted to keep all that old medical stuff of hers?” Allison asked. “I think I would have thrown it all away.”
“It’s part of his family’s history,” Deacon said. “Plus, collecting antiques is like getting tattooed. You tell yourself you’re going to keep it small and simple and then a year later...” Deacon held out his bare arms to show off his tattoos, stylized Chinese black dragons that twined from his back over his shoulders and all the way down his arms.
“Your tattoos are much nicer to look at than a giant wooden speculum with a leech applicator.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Deacon said.
“I’m going to be thinking about the giant wooden speculum on my deathbed.”
“Um...how are you planning to die, sis?”
“Up here,” she said, “puking to death.”
“Poor Allison,” he said. “I warned you.”
“I’m fine. Horrified but fine.”
“There’s more he’s got locked away.”
“I don’t need to see it.”
“Not even his collection of Civil War–era amputation saws?” Deacon asked. “Some of them still have dried Confederate blood on them. He’s even got Daisy’s old ECT machine. It’s pretty cool-looking...”
“I’m good, but thanks, anyway.”
Deacon laughed and she smiled at him.
“Good to see you again, Deac,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes at her and nodded.
“You’ve been gone too long,” he said.
“I had my reasons.”
“Roland gave me the rundown. I’m not going to lie—I have no idea what happened the day you fell or who did it. But I do know this—I had nothing to do with it and neither did Roland or Thora.”
“You’re sure?”
“You don’t forget the day your sister almost dies,” Deacon said. “I remember that day the way people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. Roland was at work. And Thora and I were outside together when we heard Dad screaming for help. If she knew anything she would have told me. She tells me everything.”
“Everything?”
He nodded again. “We work together, you know.”
“What do you do?”
“We have a shop in Clark Beach. I’m a glass artist and Thor runs the business.”
“A glass artist? Are you serious?”
“Totally. The studio’s called The Glass Dragon, our home away from home. You can come see it, watch me work, if you want.”
“I’d love that. Wait...” Allison remembered something. “There’s a glass dragon hanging from the ceiling of my room. Did you make that?”
“I did.”
“It’s beautiful. I thought it was an antique.”
“All me.”
“Where’d you learn how to do that?”
“I have a great-aunt and -uncle in Shanghai—they’re my mother’s relatives,” Deacon said. “They both work at the big glass museum there. After I graduated high school, I needed to get away but college wasn’t for me. I went there for a few years and they taught me glass-sculpting. Came home a couple years ago, and Dad helped me set up the shop.”
“Very cool,” Allison said, impressed. “Your dad must be really proud of you.”
“He is,” Deacon said. “He’s proud of all of us.”
“Even Roland? He said your dad hates that he joined the monastery.”
“He does hate it, although he knows Roland was happy there. He’s proud Roland turned out so well despite the monastery. I swear, when Dad first got sick, it crossed my mind that he was faking how serious it was to make Roland come home. He wasn’t. Wish he was, but...” He shrugged again.
“Why did your dad hate Roland being in the monastery so much?”
“He’s a humanist. All religions are cults to him. And Catholic monks? Oh, my God, you would have thought Ro joined the Taliban. Science is Dad’s religion. He thinks religion is bad for humanity. It makes people think some big guy in the sky is going to solve all their problems. Dad took us to the monastery because they had good summer concerts. That’s it. None of us ever dreamed Roland would join.”
“Do you have any idea why he did it? Seems so drastic,” Allison said.
Deacon puffed up his cheeks with air and then blew it out hard.
“He’ll probably tell you he was called, whatever that means,” Deacon said. “Thor and I think it’s because of Rachel. Dad, too, although he wouldn’t say that out loud.”
“Rachel?”
“She was Ro’s sister,” Deacon said. “Biological sister.”
Allison was stunned. “What? I had no idea he had a biological sister.”
“Not surprised. He never talks about her. Nobody talks about her.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody,” Deacon said, nodding. “Seriously, I only found out about her by accident. When I returned from China and moved back in, I came up here and started digging in boxes, looking for my stuff. Ended up in one of Roland’s boxes. Found a photo of a little girl. I thought she was you at first till I got a better look.”
“Me?”
“Straight brown hair, brown eyes, gap teeth.”
“Sounds like me.”
“I turned the picture over and it said, Roland, age eight, Rachel, age five. Freaked me out. I took it to Dad. He said Rachel and Roland were the first two kids he ever fostered.”
“That wasn’t in the article, either,” Allison said.
“That article’s a puff piece,” Deacon said. “They were trying to recruit more people into being foster parents. Talking about a dead kid doesn’t really sell people on the program.”
“A dead kid? What happened to her?”
“It’s pretty horrible,” Deacon said, wincing. “She and Roland were playing on the beach and Roland buried her in sand. The sand sort of caved in, and she was smothered to death.”
Allison was speechless.
“Unfortunately, it happens,” Deacon went on. “About once a summer we hear a story about some kid dying or nearly dying on the beach,” Deacon continued. “Sand shifts and gaps open up and you sink down. Dad says Roland’s always blamed himself. He told me to put the picture back where I found it and pretend I hadn’t seen it, for Roland’s sake. So I did.”
A little girl, dying under Roland’s care. It all sounded so terrifyingly familiar. She could still feel the wild pounding of Roland’s heart against her chest as he held her and carried her out of the water.
“I just... I had no idea,” Allison finally said.
“Anyway, Dad doesn’t think Roland should blame himself for what happened to Rachel. And he doesn’t think Roland should punish himself, either.”
“And that’s what your dad thinks the monastery is?”
“He might be right,” Deacon said. “You know what they call the little rooms monks sleep in? Cells.”
“God, poor Roland,” Allison said.
“He buys his Catholic guilt in bulk at Costco,” Deacon said.
“You know, this actually makes sense,” Allison said, pointing at him. The pieces were slowly clicking into place. “When your dad came and got me out of the group home they’d put me in, the lady who ran the place, Miss Whitney, she said something about me looking like someone. And the first time I met Roland, Dr. Capello watched us really close like he was... I don’t know. Like he was watching to make sure Roland was going to be okay with me.”
“Dad loves fixing broken kids,” Deacon said. “When I came here, I was really upset because—” Deacon paused “—because of my cat back home.”
“What about your cat?”
“He was dead,” Deacon said, his voice flat. “So Dad got me Brien. Dad would do anything for us. Replace a dead cat...”
“Replace a dead baby sister?” Allison said, shivering despite the stuffy heat of the attic.
“A very Dad thing to do,” Deacon said. “Fixing broken kids is what he does. Or tries to do. Anyway, Dad’s going to be thrilled when he finds out you and Roland hit it off.”
“Don’t get him excited,” Allison said. “I’m leaving soon.”
“Sure you are,” Deacon said. “Dad’s gonna pull out all the stops to get you to stay. If it means getting Roland out of his prison cell, he’ll try anything.”
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked. If he had lied to her, if he knew something about her fall or the phone call, then surely he wouldn’t want her to stick around. She searched his face, looking for guilt, but didn’t see any.
“Stay?” Deacon said. “I wish you’d never left.” He seemed sincere, truly sincere, for the first time since he showed up on the deck.
“I should have come back sooner,” she said. “Now it feels too late, you know?”
“Never too late. Shit,” Deacon said, jumping to his feet.
“What?” Allison looked around in confusion. Gravel crunched. A car door slammed in the distance.
“We’re not supposed to be up here,” Deacon said, grinning like a little boy with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Dad moved his medical files up here so technically it’s off-limits. At least, we pretend it’s off-limits until the three of us want to smoke up here.”
“Smoke?”
“Not cigarettes,” he said, and winked at her.
Allison followed Deacon down the stairs and she watched him put the keys back into his father’s desk drawer, the second from the bottom. When she saw the photographs on the desk again, she remembered something.
“Hey, who was Antonio?”
“Who?” Deacon asked.
“I saw his picture,” she explained. “When I was looking at all the pics of us. Antonio Russo? Does that name ring a bell? He was nine, lived here before me.”
“Oh, yeah,” Deacon said, his brow furrowed. “Antonio. Tony, I think he went by. I think he stayed a week. Had lots of behavior problems so he had to get a new placement. Come on. I can’t wait to see Dad’s face when he sees you.”
Deacon’s enthusiasm seemed genuine but so had his confusion when she’d mentioned Antonio Russo’s name. Had he really forgotten one of his foster brothers? Probably. She had friends in elementary school whose names she didn’t remember anymore. And that had been a long time ago. Maybe Roland remembered more about Antonio.
Allison and Deacon walked out to the landing. Allison stopped at the top, looked down and felt her heart lift like a balloon.
“‘The sun was shining on the sea, / Shining with all his might,’” sung a warm gentle voice from below. “‘And that was odd because it was...’”
“‘The middle of the night,’” Allison said.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at her and waiting. In his eyes she saw that same old kind and shining light she remembered from the first day she ever saw him.
She started down the stairs, slowly at first and then faster, until she was practically skipping down to the bottom. When she reached the final step, Dr. Capello opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace. Once she was there, wrapped in his warmth, she forgot it had been thirteen years since she’d been taken from this house, thirteen years since she’d seen this man, thirteen years since she called this place home. She’d even forgot he wasn’t her father anymore, so when she found her voice to speak again, she said what she’d said a thousand times before.
“Hi, Dad.”