Page 8 of The Chain House

I don’t really know anymore, she’d said. It’s just that … I’m not sure why no one has ever thought to ask him before.

I don’t have an answer to that. He showed her a kind smile and said, Now if you’ll excuse me, and sidestepped her on the way to the next student in line, one whose name he did not know but who had a genuine question about the final exam. Meanwhile, Jennifer Daley walked out of the lecture hall with a clearly prideful bounce in her step.

For nearly two months now, Trevor had managed to push the lecture hall encounter to the back of his mind, not forgetting her entirely—that, for reasons Jennifer Daley would never know about, would have been an impossibility—but at least enough so he didn’t think about it daily anymore.

Until the box had arrived on his porch hours ago.

The quick knocking on the door had drawn his attention from the model airplane he’d been working on in the dining room—a replica of the RAF’s Spitfire. But by the time he’d opened the front door, secretly hoping it would be Lizzie from next door asking to borrow an egg or some sugar, whoever had knocked had already run off, or driven off—there had been a small red car turning the corner down the street—and at his feet was a cardboard box with his name on it. He’d carried it inside and opened it immediately, knowing even more immediately who it was from, and here he was now, swallowing the rest of the merlot in his glass in a pathetic attempt to conjure the strength to open that first book.

Or Book Eight, rather, he thought, as he opened the cover and turned the page and read the first line—Oliver Crown was a man of faith but believed in no God—him thinking all over again, how stupid this all was.

A heavy stack of commercially written crap.

A series in reverse order.

The final book coming soon from an author whose identity was still unknown.

It was a gimmick, and nothing more. Mallard Malone was out there somewhere, laughing on a pile of money.

But why had Jennifer delivered these books now, weeks after their conversation?

Trevor Harper read the first page with the utmost skepticism, but was soon turning page after page, his narrow blue eyes tracking words and lines and paragraphs as rapidly as if following the flight of a dazed gnat, his mind as glued to the story now as so many millions of others across the globe had been for nearly a decade.

But, he thought, as a stab of recognition coursed through him as powerfully as a lightning strike, for a very different reason.

CHAPTER4

SAM FOUGHT NAUSEA as he drove home.

He nearly pulled over twice in fear of throwing up inside his car. He held the steering wheel as tight as vise grips to quell the shaking in his arms.

At least I’m not all talk, Dad.

He couldn’t believe he’d said it. He and his father had said things to each other they probably shouldn’t have over the years, but they’d never gotten cruel.

And that had been cruel.

But it was true, right? If his father had said it once—if that son of a bitch hits her one more time, I’m going over—he’d said it a hundred times, about Lizzie Hall and her abusive firefighting husband, Jake, who Sam knew could pummel Trevor Harper with one punch. But still? Either shit or get off the pot.

Be a man, Dad. Sam laughed as he drove, but with tears in his eyes because that was like the pot calling the kettle black. What did that even mean, be a man? Did it mean tough? Did it mean restraint? It was extra ironic now, as he recalled the drunken conversation he’d had with his roommate Carl and a group of their friends last week, over which of them was the most and least manly of their crew—and they’d all hands-down voted Sam Harper as the least.

As he drove, Sam recalled the one time, several years ago, his father had at least tried to stand up to Jake Hall. The morning after a time when the cops had been called, when Trevor had gone out to get the morning paper and on his way in saw Jake on their front porch drinking coffee. Sam had eavesdropped, listening to their brief conversation through the screen window, and his antenna had immediately gone up because neither he nor his dad had ever said more than a few words to the uber alpha male, Jake Hall. Jake, unprompted as far as Sam knew, saying, I see you watching our house, Travis. And Sam’s father at least having the balls to say, It’s Trevor. And then going another notch by adding Dr. Trevor Harper, actually, like he was trying to intimidate the big goon with his brains.

And then his father must have somehow conjured the nerve to ask, Everything okay over there, Jake? Sam thinking, at the time, No, everything’s not okay, Dad. He beat the shit out of her again and the cops came and the question you should be asking is why Jake Hall is still there drinking coffee and not behind bars by now. That was also the instant Sam realized his father cared more than just for Lizzie Hall’s well-being, because it then really dawned on Sam how often his father did glance at their house, how often he’d look out the window whenever Lizzie Hall was out in the yard, or watch the front of the house every time he got out of his car after returning home from work or the grocery or wherever, like he was secretly hoping she’d come out right then and there and say, Hello, Trevor. Or hey, Trev. Or howdy do, Professor Trevor Harper, you studly little man.

Sam pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex and recalled how that conversation between his father and Jake Hall had gone that day—with Jake warning the professor to mind his own fucking business and to not play hero, and then adding, Although I doubt heroes even come in pint-size.

Guilt came at Sam with enough force to make him nauseous again.

He parked his blue Honda Civic beside the apartment pool and hurried across the lawn toward the outdoor stairwell that led to the second-floor apartment he shared with Carl, now going on two years. His father that day, completely unaware Sam had heard it all through the window, had stormed back inside to mind his own fucking business, just as Jake Hall had warned him, taking his anger out on the drawers and cabinets as he opened and closed them preparing for dinner, mumbling under his breath, I’ll show you heroes come in pint-size, you ignorant fucking ape. Roger Daltry is five foot seven. Paul Simon five three. Prince was five two. Bono, five six, Michael Stipe, fine nine …

And he just kept going on naming short rockers.

Thinking of his dad mumbling the names that day made Sam feel sorry for him.

But Trevor Harper’s reaction back at the house today had been bizarre, nothing he’d ever expect from his father.

He’d expected a reaction, probably negative, because what parent would want their kid, no matter their age, within striking distance of Sal Batise? But kicking him out had been over-the-top. Sam understood it, a little—his father’s generation, especially the locals, had lived through it all, the proximity of the cult and the madness that climaxed the night of the Hawthorne murders. The men and women and children of that generation had lived it through the news, through stories and gossip and rumors to firsthand accounts of what had gone on for nearly two years inside the cult ranch now infamously known as Freedom. Most from his father’s generation knew someone who’d lived there, or someone who knew someone who’d lived there, or had known one of the eight who’d died there trying to defend it on the day the authorities had moved in with full riot gear, what Sal Batise, in an interview with NBC years later, had called foreign military invading his sovereign territory.