Chapter 9

Elle

When Elle got home, Kelly was waiting for her in the little stairway that led up to the apartment.

“What is it?” Elle said, worried that something had happened.

“I realized I hadn’t taken you out for a celebratory drink,” Kelly said.

“A drink?”

“Come on. Just a quick one. The bar’s right around the corner. After a shift like the one you just pulled, you deserve a nice cold beer.”

Elle smiled. It was true. If anyone deserved a drink, they did.

“Isn’t it kind of late?” Elle said.

Kelly scoffed. “We can handle it, can’t we? Besides, Gracie’s babysitting for me tonight.”

“You have a kid?” Elle said, surprised that she hadn’t guessed it. She was usually able to detect when a woman was a mother, even if she didn’t mention it.

“Almost,” Kelly said. “I’m a big sister. I look after my kid brother, Lucas. He’s eleven. Our parents died a few years back, and well, I’ve been looking out for him ever since.”

“By yourself?” Elle said, reappraising her new friend.

“Almost,” Kelly said. “If it hadn’t been for Gracie helping us out, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Elle reached out and patted Kelly on the back. She meant it as a sign of respect. For some reason, she’d assumed Kelly was just another happy-go-lucky girl, she certainly seemed that way. But hearing that she’d lost her parents at a young age and was raising her little brother gave her a heightened level of respect for her new friend.

A few minutes later they were sitting on large, leather upholstered stools by a beautiful oak bar. They were in the town’s most popular bar. It was a quiet night but the place still had a nice atmosphere, Elle thought. A big fire roared in the fireplace, warming up the place. A few customers were scattered around, drinking beers and talking among themselves.

“What can I get you, Kelly?” the bartender said.

“Elle, this is Harry, the best bartender in the Rocky Mountains. Harry, this is Elle, the second best waitress in the Rocky Mountains.”

Elle laughed. “Pleased to meet you, Harry.”

“You too, Elle. What brings you to our little patch of the world?”

Elle thought about what to say, but Kelly answered for her. “She’s working with me and Gracie.”

“I see,” Harry said.

Kelly ordered a couple of beers and Harry brought them over.

“So,” Elle said as she took a sip of her drink, “did you and Grace see the pickup in the parking lot when you left?”

“I didn’t notice one,” Kelly said. “Maybe Grace saw it, why?”

“It was the guy?”

“What guy?”

“The guy I spilled coffee on.”

“He was waiting for you in the parking lot?”

“No, he wasn’t waiting for me.”

“Then what?”

“He’d fallen asleep in his truck.”

“What? In this cold? I knew he was crazy.”

“He’s not crazy.”

“He’s pretty weird, Elle.”

“He’s got to go to a funeral. He’s grieving.”

“He told you that?”

“He asked me if I knew where the funeral home was.”

The bartender was cleaning some glasses and had overheard the girls’ conversation. He spoke up.

“Someone asked you for the funeral home?”

“Yeah,” Kelly answered. “A weird guy came into the diner today and made a scene.”

“The funeral home here in Stone Peak?” Harry said, looking at Elle.

“Yes,” Elle said.

“Did he happen to tell you his name?”

“No,” Elle said, looking at the bartender curiously. “Why?”

“What did he look like?” Harry continued.

“Tall,” Elle said.

“Muscular, tattoos,” Kelly added.

“What age was he?”

“I’d say about thirty,” Elle said.

Harry did a little quick arithmetic, then shook his head. “Holy hell,” he said.

“What is it, Harry?” Kelly said.

“He came back for him.”

“What?” Elle said. “Who came back? And for who?”

“It’s a long story,” Harry said, “but the son of a bitch came back. I’ll be damned.”

“What’s a long story?” Elle said.

“You don’t want me to go over it.”

“Of course we do,” Kelly said.

“You sure? It’s not a nice story.”

“Tell us,” both girls insisted.

“All right,” Harry said, “but you’re going to need something stronger than beer.” He poured them each a shot of Jameson’s whiskey, and a shot for himself, and the three of them knocked them back.

“All right, listen closely, I’m only going to say this once,” Harry said. “The man at the funeral home right now was the meanest son of a bitch that ever lived in this town. I mean, I don’t like to talk ill of the dead, but this guy, Abraham Snow was his name, he was a real piece of work. He was always a son of a bitch, but it really began to show itself after he got married. He married a sweet, local girl. I knew her well. He was lucky to have her but the son of a bitch never knew it. He never appreciated her. In fact, he wasn’t opposed to roughing her up every now and then. Back then it wasn’t the same as now. He could get away with it back then, especially because his wife was too afraid to go to the police about it. Anyway, one thing led to another and she got pregnant. The pregnancy didn’t go too great. He didn’t let up on the violence. He didn’t get her the medicine she needed. He even refused to get her the right food and nutrition and everything. Basically, he was just too mean to look after her.”

“So what happened?” Elle said.

“Well, it came time for her to give birth. It wasn’t going to be an easy birth, the complications during the pregnancy made sure of that, but to make matters worse, Abraham refused to bring her to the hospital when she went into labor. He was afraid of the hospital bill, and he was too cheap to do what was required.”

“That’s evil.”

“Yeah, I agree. I mean, apparently she’d been begging him to take her to the hospital but he wouldn’t do it. According to the report that came out afterwards, she’d been lying in a pool of her own blood for twelve hours before he made the compromise of calling his wife’s sister. When the sister got there she knew she was too late. The mother was already dead.”

“That’s awful,” Kelly said.

“And what about the baby?” Elle said.

She looked at Kelly. Kelly was as wrapt in the story as she was, although she’d heard some of the details before. She still wasn’t sure though why Harry was telling it now.

“The baby lived,” Harry said. “He’d be about thirty now, as you said.”

“What do you mean, as I said?”

“If the man you saw today was looking for the funeral home, then I’d bet dollars to donuts he’s Abraham Snow’s son, the baby who killed his mother on his way into the world.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Elle said.

“He could be someone else,” Kelly offered. “He might not be the son.”

Harry nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “But I know this town, and I know Abraham Snow’s story better than anyone, and call it a hunch, but if there’s a young man here looking for the funeral home, it’s Abraham’s son.”

Elle was surprised to find that her eyes had filled with tears. The story had had a greater impact on her than it ordinarily would have. Something about the way the man had been in the diner, and the way he’d been in his truck when she found him there asleep, seemed to make sense. The way he’d asked for the funeral home, the things he’d said about family, she knew it was him.

“What happened to the baby?” she said.

“That, you don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do,” she insisted.

“You sure? Because if you think the story’s been hard so far, it only gets worse.”

“You can’t tell us this much and not finish the story,” Kelly said.

“All right,” Harry said, “but first we need another shot.” He poured another round of the whiskey and they knocked back their drinks. He gave the girls fresh beers. Then he continued.

“The baby had about as hard a life as you could imagine. If you thought Abraham was cruel before, you can only imagine how he was after he lost his wife. He blamed the baby for it.”

“What did he do to it?” Kelly said.

“I don’t know all the details. The child services people were constantly fighting with him but when they threatened to take the boy out of Abraham’s custody, he just moved up into the mountains where they couldn’t watch him. There are a lot of creeps that live in the mountains around these parts. Abraham fit right in with them. That poor kid grew up in the hands of a monster, all alone in a cabin in the woods. When he finally got a state medical exam, when he was twelve, they found his body covered in cigarette burns. It seemed the old man liked to use him as an ashtray.”

Elle put her hand in front of her mouth. She couldn’t believe that such things had happened to the man she’d been with in the diner.

“The police finally went in when no one had seen the kid for a month. The school board had sent countless letters, and eventually the authorities took action.”

“They took their sweet time,” Elle said.

“Well, around here, things don’t move quite as fast as they might in a more modern part of the country. Around here, they give a man a little too much liberty to treat his own family as he sees fit, if you want my opinion.”

“How was the child?” Elle said. “When they found him?”

“It wasn’t pretty. The old man had stripped the boy naked and locked him up in a windowless cabin, or a basement or something, with four fighting pit bulls.”

“What?”

Harry just nodded.

“Dogs like that,” Elle said, unable to finish the thought.

Kelly did it for her. “Dogs like that would kill a child, especially if they were hungry.”

“They were hungry,” Harry said. “They were starving to death. So was the boy. But the strange thing was, even though they were the meanest dogs anyone could have ever locked up with a child, and even though Abraham had bought the dogs from the meanest breeding kennels in the entire region, the dogs didn’t harm the boy. Not a single hair on his head.”

“What?” Kelly said.

“By the time the boy was rescued, the dogs were completely tame. The police broke into the cabin, or basement, I don’t remember that detail, and they found the boy cuddled up with the dogs. Somehow, despite all of them starving to death in that little room, the twelve-year-old boy had managed to tame those dogs. In fact, they loved him so much that they cried and howled when the police took him away.”

“That’s incredible,” Elle said.

“Where did they take him?” Kelly said.

Harry shrugged. “They took him into care. I’m not sure exactly what happened. I heard he went into a group home in the city or somewhere. A few years later, someone told me he got adopted by a mysterious rich guy and his daughter in California.”

Elle didn’t know what to make of it. “That story is incredible,” she said.

“Every word of it’s the truth,” Harry said. “Ask anyone who was here back then.”

“I can’t believe that the man I saw in the diner today might have been that boy.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this much,” Harry said. “Abraham Snow didn’t have any other children. I know that much. And he sure as hell didn’t have any friends. He was alone in the world, as he deserved to be. If there’s a boy here for the funeral, it’s that very same boy. What was his name? Let me think.”

Elle watched Harry like a hawk as she took a sip of her beer. She’d been completely sucked into the story of the boy. She felt personally connected to him after what he’d done in the diner. When he’d reached out to touch her, there’d been something in the gesture more than she’d ever felt before. It had gotten under her skin.

“Forrester,” Harry said. “That was the boy’s name. Forrester Snow.”