Everlasting (6 page)

An hour later she stretched, and all the thoughts she had blocked out came rushing in. She gazed at the large
stained glass window above the altar: Dark blues and greens showed a boat tossing in a storm, with Jesus extending his hand toward Peter, inviting him to cross the roiling waters.
A test of faith
, Ivy thought.

She heard voices outside the church. Father John entered, followed by a man with a huge arrangement of summer flowers.

“We have a wedding in an hour and a half,” the priest told Ivy. “But keep playing. It makes my work light.”

As more flowers were brought in and Father John set the altar and side tables for the celebration, Ivy played music she knew well, steering clear of any piece she associated with Tristan. The florist left, and a minute later, when Ivy paused to select another piece, she heard Father John exclaim with surprise.

He stood at the back of the church, his hands resting on the edge of a large marble bowl on a pedestal. A baptismal font, Ivy realized, and she watched the priest reach in and retrieve something small enough to be held in the palm of his hand.

He walked down the aisle toward her, looking both delighted and puzzled, his wet hand outstretched. “It’s a penny. A very shiny penny.”

Ivy studied it. “I guess a child dropped it in. My brother Philip was always asking for pennies to toss in the mall fountain.”

“Perhaps,” the priest replied, sounding unconvinced.

That’s when Ivy noticed his glasses: Water had splashed on one lens. She quickly rose from the piano bench and walked back to the baptismal font. Reaching into the water, she retrieved a second copper penny. “Were there two in here?”

“Two?” Father John repeated, puzzled.

A penny under water—
a sign from Tristan?
Had he gotten inside the church and left it for her? But the splashed water—this had just happened. . . . Ivy’s throat tightened. Tristan couldn’t come himself, she realized, so he had sent Lacey with his good-bye.

She glanced around the church. Its small side windows shone with stained-glass angels, white dresses and wings against jewel-colored backgrounds. One of the dresses shimmered purple.
Lacey?
Ivy called silently.

The violet hue disappeared, then shimmered in a window behind Father John. Knowing that a believer would see Lacey’s glow, Ivy guessed that the angel wanted to stay hidden from the priest. Ivy joined him at the front of the church. When he held out his hand, she gave him the second penny, smiled, and shrugged. Believer or not, she couldn’t imagine him buying her explanation.

“I’ll put them in the poor box,” he said.

Ivy wanted to stop him. She’d trade a billion pennies for these two. Tristan was thinking of her; he loved her. That made these two pennies priceless. But all she could say was “Good idea.”

“The doors are unlocked for early wedding guests,” he told her. “Leave when you like—and come back soon,” he added.

After the heavy wood door closed behind the priest, Ivy glanced around. “Lacey, you still here?” There was no response. She couldn’t see the angel’s glow, but knew it would be easy for her to hide.

“If you’re here, please talk to me. I need to know where Tristan’s gone. Is he all right? Please tell me he’s safe. Please talk, just for a minute.”

Still there was no answer.

“Bad-tempered angel,” Ivy muttered, gathering her books together and sliding the piano cover over the keys. Thirty feet away, a heavy book slammed to the ground. Ivy whirled around.

“Okay, okay, I get it. You left the pennies because Tristan begged you to. You’re not here for me.”

Ivy crossed the altar and crouched down to pick up the large Bible. Her eyes fell upon words printed in black and red, initial letters laced with gold:

BUT RUTH REPLIED, DO NOT URGE ME TO LEAVE YOU OR TO TURN BACK FROM YOU.

WHERE YOU GO I WILL GO, AND WHERE YOU STAY I WILL STAY.

Ivy began to cry. The fear and pain that had been building inside her for nine days spilled over. She would have gone where he’d gone, stayed wherever he stayed,
if only Tristan had let her, if only he had asked her to go with him.

At last she stood up. Setting the Bible back on the side table, she saw that its gold-edged pages weren’t lying flat. Afraid that a page was curled up and damaged, she quickly opened the book. Wedged into the beginning of the Book of Ruth was a coin. Although it was stamped with the shape of an angel, like the one Philip had given to “Guy” weeks ago, this coin appeared to be real gold.

Ivy dropped it in the poor box as she left.

“You’re a piece of work, Lacey,” she said, laughing through her tears.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

Tristan ignored Lacey’s question and wearily dropped to the ground behind a barricade of broken pine branches. The need to be constantly vigilant had been more exhausting than the actual trek, and he had walked for miles.

“Around,” he finally replied, lying back on the soft bed of needles and closing his eyes.

“This is no time to rest,” the angel said.

“It’s dark—seems like a real good time to me.”

“Okay, grumpy, just thought you’d want to be on the lookout for your hot date.”

Tristan sat up. “Ivy? You saw her?”

“Sure. I dropped off some change, just like you asked. Now we’ll see how smart she is.”

“What do you mean?”

The purple mist twirled in front of him. “I left Ivy a clue. We’ll see if she figures it out.”

“Lacey, this isn’t a game—”

“It is to me,” the angel shot back. “It has to be,” she added with a touch of wistfulness. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going—I have other clients, ones who appreciate me. You know, I used up an awful lot of energy, changing a chunk of a candlestick into a gold coin.”

“What candlestick?”

“The big fat one near the baptismal font at St. Peter’s.”

“You took a piece of their candlestick?” Tristan asked, struggling to make sense of what Lacey was saying.

“Just a little doodad on it.” She moved closer for a moment. “You don’t think I can create a gold coin out of nothing, do you?
Creating
is the job of Number One Director. Unlike you, I don’t go around trying to take over His productions.”

Tristan, still puzzled but understanding at least
that
message, shook his head and let his breath out slowly.

“Stay awake, Tristan. And keep an eye on the pond,” Lacey advised him. “The chick might be smarter than she looks.”

IVY TOSSED AND TURNED. AFTER THE PREVIOUS
night’s party, Kelsey and Dhanya had gone to bed early. Beth had followed, and Ivy had hoped to catch up on sleep but couldn’t stop wondering where Tristan was. Without Lacey’s help, she’d never find him.

A soft mew at the living room window was followed by a fierce shaking of the screen. Ivy rose from the sofa to let in Dusty. Since realizing that Gregory’s power was growing stronger, Ivy hadn’t been able to sleep in her bed, just two feet away from Beth, without waking up at every stirring in the night. After everyone upstairs was asleep, she crept down to the living room sofa. The huge Maine coon had discovered this and was dropping by every night now, looking for some attention.

Ivy sat down, petting Dusty and thinking. Something wasn’t right in what she’d heard today from Donovan. If Tristan still had a phone, why hadn’t he called her to say he was okay? If he was being cautious, worrying that his call might be tracked by the police, he probably wouldn’t have been careless and dropped it at a rest stop. And how would they know it was his? The phone had been purchased in Kip’s name.

So maybe the phone in police custody had belonged to the real Luke. The real Luke had died four weeks ago, but Ivy supposed it was possible that the phone had been kicked
under something at the rest stop accidentally. In any case, its discovery appeared to convince the police that their fugitive was off the Cape.

What if he wasn’t? Ivy wondered. Why had Lacey visited her? A flame of hope flickered in Ivy’s heart. She rose and quietly slid open a drawer in the living room desk, where tourist information was kept. Turning on a small lamp, she studied a brochure with a map of Nickerson State Park. If Tristan had returned there, what part of the large, wooded area would he choose as his safe haven?

Her breath caught. She had heard of Flax and Cliff Ponds, where the beaches and boats were, but had never noticed the small dab of blue that lay west of Cliff: Ruth Pond.
“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.”

Ivy reached for her car keys. A few minutes later she left the inn, just as she had the night she drove back to Race Point Beach after Tristan’s memorial, feeling drawn to a place; only this time, she had reason to hope Tristan would be waiting for her.

In the middle of the night, the state park was closed except to campers. Ivy checked the map, looking for a place to leave her car outside the park. She was beginning to regret her distinctive white Beetle. She did not want to leave it too close to a gate by Ruth Pond, like a flag for anyone wanting to find Luke, but the crescent moon didn’t shed much light and she didn’t want to use the small flashlight
she had brought unless absolutely necessary. She ended up on a road off of 6A, about a mile from where a paved road crossed over a hiking trail that led to Ruth Pond. She felt almost giddy walking down the empty road outside the park at two thirty in the morning. She felt like spreading her arms and singing. Then a car passed, slowing when it was behind her, as if the driver were taking a second look. She sobered quickly.

She glanced over her shoulder, but the car had disappeared around a corner. A second car went by, slowing like the first. There was no time for her to duck out of sight.
No big deal
, Ivy told herself; she would do the same thing if she came upon a girl walking alone in the middle of the night. Still, she was relieved when she reached the wooded footpath.

Fifty feet down the path, despite the fact that her eyes were well adjusted to the darkness, Ivy couldn’t see where she was going. The nearest campsite was a little over a quarter mile away. She reluctantly turned on her flashlight, hoping the woods were dense enough to prevent someone from seeing the moving beam. She focused it on the ground, just in front of her feet, wrapping her fingers around its head, trying to filter and soften the light.

Behind her a branch cracked. Ivy flicked off her light, turned, and looked toward the clearing where the trail crossed the paved road. The darkness enveloping her was lighter toward the clearing, like black velvet brushed the
wrong way, but she could see nothing distinctly. Chiding herself for being skittish, she continued on.

She had planned to count her steps as a way of keeping track of how far she’d gone, but they were stumbling strides at odd lengths, so there was no point. She knew there was a place where the trail divided into three paths. The two paths to the right traveled close to the pond’s edge. The one to the left eventually looped around the pond but veered away from its shore. If Tristan had sent the message via Lacey, wouldn’t he stay close to the pond? Even so, he’d be hidden, Ivy reasoned, so she would have to be seen—she would have to make herself obvious, if they were to connect.

A crisp splintering of wood followed by a trampling of brush made her whirl around. She raised the flashlight’s beam to a point fifty feet behind her, striping the trees, making a kind of optical illusion in which it was hard to distinguish solid tree trunk from space between. She lowered the beam a notch, which succeeded only in tangling the light in fallen branches and brush.

Ivy reminded herself that animals made noise—they weren’t all as stealthy as cats. She continued on. The walk to the fork seemed endless, and she wondered if she had missed it. She went twenty feet farther, then raised her flashlight. There it was: the trail marker! Breathing a sigh of relief, she chose the middle route, which tracked closest to the water.

Under the crescent moon, the pond lay perfectly still, a surface of polished ebony. If Tristan were here, how could she get his attention? Hiding and calling to him would be safer for her, but silently letting herself be seen would be safer for him. Ivy ducked under branches, walked through waist-high reeds, and waded into the pond.

AFTER LACEY LEFT, TRISTAN HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO
keep his eyes open. The route between the hospital and Nickerson was about twenty miles each way, a long hike to make in one day. With the park’s campsites clustered around three ponds, Cliff, Little Cliff, and Flax, he had settled at Ruth’s Pond several days ago. The woods here were his refuge, wrapping him in gentle night. He fell asleep and dreamed.

In his dream he was lying on the porch of an old house, watching Ivy wade into a pond. She swam for a long time, unaware of him, sending ripples of gold over the sapphire surface. He watched her with wonder, the way she had come to love the water. After a while she turned on her back and floated.

He longed to go to her, gaze down at her face, and touch the tips of her floating hair. He knew how it would look, spreading out from her face like rays of the sun.