This was family.

Joshua wiped at his eyebrow then cleaned his hand on his trousers. “Your husband got a mean streak in him,” he said, in an exaggerated drawl. “I don’t know where in the world he got it from.”

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but we’re calling the police.”

“That’d be just fine with me, ma’am. Then I can tell them all about what Jacob done.”

“He hasn’t done anything.”

Joshua limped forward. “He done plenty.”

Now the light caught his face, and his eyes were moss brown and somber like Jacob’s, his chin and cheeks in the same geometric proportions, his build of the same angular strength. Except for the cruelty in his eyes, he was as handsome as her husband.

“Stay away from me, or I’ll yell for Jacob.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. ‘Cause you might need me to save you from him.”

“You’re crazy. Jacob told me about you.”

“Not nearly enough, I’ll bet. Did he tell you about when we were kids? About how he managed to blame everything on me, how he’d steal all my toys? How he turned Dad against me until they drove me out of the family?”

Renee maneuvered so the desk was between her and Joshua. She didn’t like the crease of his smile, the mad sparks in his pupils. Jacob must still be sitting in the truck, waiting for her.

“What about the eight million dollars?” she said.

“Fair’s fair,” he said. “That’s what Jake stole from me, and that’s what he’s going to give me back.”

“He didn’t steal anything. I saw your father’s will. Jake got the money and you got the house and land.”

“It shoulda been mine. Jacob got it all turned around.”

“We can’t give you any more money.”

“That ain’t the way this works. Two million more or I tell all of it.”

“You’re the one who started the fires. They’re talking a murder charge now.”

 He moved forward, winced, and supported himself by leaning against the desk. His breath reeked of stale beer and smoke, and the odor of perspiration rose from his clothes. He was feral, desperate, beyond law and order.

Boom-boom-boom. The hollow echo of fists pounding on the back door. Jacob’s unintelligible, muffled voice came from outside.

“Two million,” Joshua said to her. “Ain’t you got any more people to kill? Ask him about his mother.”

He turned and limped out of the study, pausing once, stained teeth gritted. The wound over his eye had broken open again and a large red tear rolled down his cheek. “And ask him about my kid.”

Then Joshua was gone, leaving Renee looking from the paper in her hand to the Wells family portrait on the wall. After a moment, she slipped the paper in the pocket of her pants suit and ran through the house, her heels clattering on the hardwood floor. The front door slammed, and the deadbolt was locked by the time she reached it. Through a glass pane in the door she could see Jacob’s truck and her car, both with their hoods up.

She ran through the living room and kitchen and fumbled with the old-fashioned lock on the back door, throwing the door open. Jacob stood on the back step, his arms apart. From each of his hands, a nest of wires dangled like dead snakes.

“He cut our ignition wires,” Jacob said. “This is just like him.”

“I saw him, Jake.”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed and shifted back and forth in their sockets. “Where?”

“Inside. He wants more money. I thought we were done with him.”

“I told you he was crazy. Gets it from his daddy.”

“He said to ask you about your mother. And his kid.”

Jacob flung the wires to the ground and pushed past her into the house. His feet rumbled up the stairs, then he shouted Joshua’s name. She followed him, afraid that Joshua would jump out of the shadows and hold a knife to her throat. She should have known they couldn’t buy their way back to a perfect world, especially after what had happened to Mattie and Christine.

Renee had entered the Wells world, had been seduced by the promise of power. But she thought she could change him, salvage him. Even after the accidents.

Love could work miracles. Love could heal all wounds. Love could patch the broken places inside Jacob. But, first, she had to get him far away from Joshua, at whatever price.

She had reached the foot of the stairs when Jacob appeared on the top landing, his face nearly unrecognizable in the darkness. His hands twitched at his sides. “He’s not here,” he said.

“I told you, he ran out the front. He was bleeding, Jake. Did you beat him up?”

“How could I ever hurt my dear brother?” Jacob descended, taking one slow step after another. “My own flesh and blood. I’d just as soon kill myself.”

“Jake?”

He continued his descent, steady, sure, retracing the path down which his mother had fallen to her death. Fallen, or pushed? What if Joshua were telling the truth? How much could she trust Jacob?

A test. Love passed all its tests in a perfect world.

“I know about Carlita.”

Jacob stopped and hovered above her, close enough that she could see the corners of his lips curl upward. “You wouldn’t understand. They never do.”

“Jake?”

He continued down the stairs, a funeral march, eyes vacant. “He’s at the camp. With her.”

Renee grabbed his sleeve as he passed. “Let’s just go. We can walk if we have to. It’s only a mile to the highway.”

His words shifted into an accent she’d never heard him use before. “What’s owed got to be paid. It’s the Wells way.”

“He told me to ask you about his kid. But Carlita told me she couldn’t have kids.”

“She don’t know nothing. A dumbfuck beaner who spreads her legs for any gringo with a grin and a dollar.”

“Do you love her?” She tugged at his arm, but his gaze was fixed out the door, beyond the world outside, staring into a land that no one else was allowed to visit.

“Joshua don’t,” Jacob said. “He loves himself. That’s just the way he is.”

“I don’t give a damn about Joshua. All I care about is us.”

“There ain’t no ‘us,’ honey. There’s only you and me and him and her.”

He shoved away from her grasp and headed out of the dank house into the sunshine.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The cemetery on the ridge was thick with weeds and briars, the graves untended, the markers askew. It was fenced with locust posts, and guinea hens had scratched in the dirt around the stones. A few sprigs of honey locust rose along the fence line, old field succession that would one day reclaim this neglected ground. Jacob’s grandmother and grandfather had been buried there, along with his father’s only brother. The Wells family hadn’t owned this land long enough to lay out a decent array of corpses. The ones under this soil were linked only by DNA, with dust and decay their common denominator.

Jacob stopped by the fence to catch his breath. He read the names of the two largest stones, which stood side by side in the center of the plot. Warren Harding Wells and Nancy Elizabeth Wells. He had rarely thought of his mother as someone with a name. Having a name might have made her more human and real to him. Maybe Joshua wouldn’t have killed her if she had been “Nancy Wells” instead of “Mother.”

He was glad that Christine and Mattie weren’t buried here. Bad enough to be polluted by Wells blood without having to spend eternity among them. The cemetery had enough room for a dozen more, and no doubt Warren Wells had harbored dreams of his sons one day resting together at his feet. The deviant division of Nancy’s egg would have come full circle and made its final reunion.

Jacob looked back at the house. Renee was trying to start her car, the engine turning over with dry disinterest. She’d probably look for the cell phone, too. They never understood, and they never took your word for it, either.

He looked at the barn, where Joshua might be laying in ambush. The barn door hung askew, one of the rollers broken, and the hayloft opening was as black as winter sin. Joshua might be able to secure a weapon, a hatchet or scythe, some rusted remnant of the Christmas tree enterprise. Joshua might get weak and kill him, just when Jacob was about to give him back his birthright.