Ripples Read online

  Ripples

  a novel

  DL Fowler

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  Copyright © DL Fowler 2015. All rights reserved.

  Cover by C.A. Feeney

  For additional information visit http://dlfowler.com

  Paperback ISBN 97 8-0-9963805-0-8

  Published in the United States by Harbor Hill Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To humanity:

  How we treat each other matters—the effects will ripple across generations that follow.

  No man is an island,

  Entire of itself,

  Every man is a piece of the continent,

  A part of the main.

  If a clod be washed away by the sea,

  Europe is the less.

  As well as if a promontory were.

  As well as if a manor of thy friend's

  Or of thine own were:

  Any man's death diminishes me,

  Because I am involved in mankind,

  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

  It tolls for thee.

  John Donne (1624)

  Chapter One

  Amy

  Bryce’s old chain … he locked it on my ankle when I was little ... kept me from wandering. The chaparral around us … full of snakes and coyotes … other things that kill. Long time ago people got stuck in the snow on a big mountain. Ate each other. Mountains and chaparral aren’t all that’s creepy. Two summers ago, Bryce said I was fourteen. No one ever told me my age before. That’s the first time he touched me under my clothes. Now he makes me take them off.

  When I was little, I cried all the time. Had nightmares. Wanted somebody to come take me home. There was another girl, then, but she ran off. Wish she’d taken me. Still have nightmares and cry … mostly when Bryce touches me.

  At least I’m not chained up anymore.

  I stub my toe … drop a stick of firewood. Got it off a dried out Manzanita bush by the side of the gravel road—goes along the edge of the woods … past the lake … out to a highway. They don’t know I wander so far from the shack.

  Kneel to pick up the stick. Next to my foot … the flattest, smoothest stone ever. Set down the whole bundle—twigs snapped off low-hanging pine branches … pieces of sun-bleached scrub and whatnot. Scoop up the rock … tuck it in the palm of my hand.

  Rounded edges’ll make for a good bounce. Roll it between my thumb and forefinger … eye the lake’s smooth surface. Stand … push loose hair behind my ear. Whip a side-arm toss. Four… no five skips. Keep hoping for more.

  Rings spread out across the lake … a man's fishing from his shiny dock. He’s gotta be bigger than Bryce. He’s the only one who lives up here … not counting Bryce and Tess and me. Squint. He’s a long way off. Bryce says it’s two-hundred yards. Wonder if he’s spying on me like I am on him.

  How far do ripples go?

  Igor and The Witch are names I call Bryce and Tess behind their backs. Don’t know how I got those names … always been rattling around in my head. Lots of voices up there. Don’t know whose they are. Some sound like ghosts. Others yell … make it so I can’t think. Sometimes a small voice screams, “No … no. Don’t make me ….”

  Once, a bunch of screechy voices went off in my head … must have been a hundred of them all at once … I hunched up in the corner by the iron stove. Kept banging my head on the wall … trying to make them stop. Tess saw me… told Bryce. He said, “You’re lucky to have a home at all. We tried to give you back to your family. No one wanted you. We could’ve just put you out to fend for yourself. Who knows what would’ve happened? You’d probably be dead.”

  That other girl … she taught me skipping stones … reading … other stuff. She went to school … not me. Bryce said school was a waste … Tess said her girl wasn’t going to grow up stupid. The other girl got cake on her birthday. Tess always let me have a piece … even though I am the cause of all her troubles. Bryce would yell at her … say I didn’t need no cake. We got candy, too. Bryce didn’t know about that. Tess still buys me candy when she takes me to town … we always hurry back so Bryce doesn’t get mad.

  I like bright red, crinkly candy wrappers—you can look through them. Changes things. I save the wrappers … hide them.

  Bryce takes me to town some nights. When I was small I crawled through people’s ‘doggie doors’ and let him in. If no doggie door, the other girl could unlock doors. Now that she’s gone, I sneak through windows if they’re not locked … hand things out to him. Have to be real quiet.

  Bryce says coyotes ate her … or mountain lions. Says there’s lots of ways girls can die out there. A prison’s not far away where they keep murderers. Sometimes murderers get loose and hole up in the hills. One murderer drove a big truck and snatched girls out on the highway. It’s the truth. It was in one of Tess’s books. Tess says a truck driver might’ve got the other girl. Don’t like to think about her … get a lump in my throat.

  Before the man built his huge cabin, nobody ever came here. Bryce says to stay away from strangers … especially that one. If he ever catches me down at the lake spying … he’ll put me back on that rusty old chain. Some nights when Bryce passes out dead drunk … Tess dozes off … can’t help myself. I sneak down to the lake and kneel in brush. The man’s got lots of lanterns … must have. All those windows … bunch of rooms. You could get lost in a place that big … like in the chaparral. Bryce says the man’s cabin is too big … too close … if you’re gonna have a palace a couple hundred yards from your front door, might as well move to a city. Tess laughs … tells him it’s not like the neighbor can see our shack, with all the trees between us and the lake.

  When the cabin was getting built, I’d take extra time gathering firewood, so I could watch. Huge machines dug up dirt … loaded it onto trucks … carried it off somewhere. More trucks with giant barrels came … dumped grey mud where the dirt used to be. The mud got hard … like the granite slab here at the cove where I throw rocks. The man’s slab has straight edges … corners. Bryce called it concrete … a foundation. Other trucks came … piled up with boards.

  I scrounge for another rock to skip on the lake … the perfect one. If it’s flat and smooth, I could get six … maybe seven skips … eight would be the best ever. Bend down to pick up a real good one. An ant crawls up on it. I stomp the thing.

  Stupid ant. Damn. Was the perfect rock … now it won’t do … stained.

  Pick up the firewood—stare at the crushed ant. Sorry, little ant. Didn’t mean to hurt you. Don’t know why ….

 
; Want to search for another rock. No, already gone too long. Better head back or there’ll be hell to pay.

  When I get back to the shack, I stop … stare. It’s tiny … just one window … one door. Tess bitches about its sagging roof. Keeps out the rain … wind … but not the biting cold in winter. Cold isn’t all that bites … and there’s worse people than Bryce and Tess … family who don’t want you … truck drivers who murder. I get the shakes … go inside … arms full of kindling.

  Tess gives me the evil eye.

  Bryce is sitting at the table. “Took you long enough.”

  Keep my head down. “Sorry, sir—”

  I scoot to a stack of firewood next to the iron stove under the window. Peek back at Bryce. He’s watching me. My skin crawls.

  “Burnt my hand on that damn stove. Been waiting for you. Need you to rub some honey on it.”

  “Yes, sir.” I drop the load of wood on top of the stack … hurry over to the cupboard for the honey jar and kneel beside him.

  I lather his burn with honey.

  He says, “This girl’s got a touch like an angel.”

  Tess grunts.

  Bryce strokes my head. “Tonight will be a bath night. You hear? After you finish your chores.”

  “Yes, sir.” I go back to the pile … straighten it … grab a broom I made from branches. Start to sweep.

  Baths don’t make you clean. Sweeping won’t be good enough, either. Tess’ll finger the seams in the wood floor. Find a spot of dust to bitch about. Bryce’ll yell, “No dinner for her.” He’ll take it back, though. He likes a spunky girl … a full belly … fresh, young skin.

  Later, Bryce climbs the ladder to my mattress … breathing heavy when he leans over me. Shut my eyes think of fairy tales. Where do those stories come from? They’re stuck up in my head.

  He mutters something like, “A good little pet never leaves her master.”

  I think about ripples spreading across the lake. Does the man on his shiny dock see them, too?

  When Bryce leaves … I don’t sleep. His pukey breath stays behind. Take out the candy wrappers … keep them in a knothole in the wall. You think they’re brown … lantern from the kitchen down below makes them that way. Keep staring at them … they get red … brighter and brighter … redder and redder. Hold up one up to my eye. Makes everything seem … far away … like nothing’s real. Tuck the wrappers back in the knothole. Hunch up on the mattress … cry into the stinky pillow so they don’t hear me. Want the aching to stop. Never does.

  Jacob

  Today’s fishing was a waste. Not even a nibble. That girl throwing rocks probably scared off the fish—except a couple hundred yards away, the fish wouldn’t notice. Besides, she’s done it ever since the footings on this place were poured a couple years ago. Some days I limit out, other times just catch a couple, once in a while I get skunked. Same as Wall Street.

  Now, the question—Bourbon or beer? Jamesons is another possibility—on the second shelf next to the Bookers and Knob Creek. The top shelf stuff—Macallan 1926, Dalmore 62 Single Hiland Malt, and Glenfiddich 1937—stays untouched except when I want to make the point I can afford anything. Craft brews are more to my liking, anyway. Bourbon County’s my favorite. But tonight I can’t decide, so it’s Irish Death, a foot in each world—dark ale aged with Jameson oak chips. My financial manager, Carl, says I’m a carnivore who lost his appetite for raw meat.

  I snatch a bottle of Irish Death, grab my platinum church key, and pop off the top. Tilt the glass, pour, take a sip, and get comfortable on the loveseat facing a floor-to-ceiling, single pane window. Soon I focus on the image reflecting in the window—a sixty-something, bored former-CEO loitering, as an elegant woman watches, or more correctly, a silver-framed photo of an elegant woman—my wife, Ellen. I’m supposed to be enjoying this place with her. She was still alive when we bought the property at a bargain price from a client—a trust out of San Francisco that was land rich and cash poor. It was the first time in our marriage I asked what she thought. She said I was ‘profiteering’ off a client’s ‘misfortune.’ I called her a bleeding heart. Told her that’s how you get ahead.

  This was going to be the place where we could escape the past, cling to the last thing that really mattered—us. But she said it was too late. She withered up and died on me. Everyone else was already gone. My son, Jesse—who was supposed to inherit everything I built—and his wife ended their grief in a murder-suicide. I insisted they'd given up hope of ever finding their little girl Celine, our only grandchild. Ellen and my shrink disagreed. They wanted me to take the blame. Ellen went so far as to say I drove him to it. Jesse’s death was the nail in her coffin. About the last thing she said to me was she could live with being married to ‘a shell of a husband’ who had a tight grip on everything except—his appetite for money, power, beautiful women. But losing her only son and granddaughter was more loneliness than she could bear.

  I refuse to believe Celine is gone for good—she was four when she was kidnapped. That’s been a dozen years, now. I don’t care what experts say, she’s got to be alive.

  Before I know it, I’ve finished the full bottle of Irish Death, all the time gazing at the lake. Hoping to see … I don’t know what. My eyelids grow heavy ….

  A crack of thunder wakes me. The zing of ozone is unmistakable, and I taste smoke. The last thing anyone wants on a hot summer night in a bone-dry wilderness is to smell traces of fire. We had a wet spring and lots of new undergrowth. Now everything has dried out, leaving it a tinderbox waiting for the next lightning strike.

  I stumble out to the redwood deck, scan the horizon and sniff. The scent of something burning is faint enough it could be coming from some distance away. With no glow visible from the deck, I head down to the dock. From that vantage, I can pan a full 360 degrees. Across the narrowest part of the lake, a wisp of smoke catches the pale moonlight. Behind the stand of trees along that shore is the only other residence within miles. It’s just a shack, hardly habitable from what the surveyors told me.

  A larger column of smoke would be something to worry about. No one would have a roaring fire this time of year. Likely, the girl and her family are doing some late night cooking or boiling water for a bath. I can afford propane, but apparently to them it’s a luxury they can’t. I’ve never seen the propane truck venture to their side of the lake.

  I brush one hand through my hair, little of it as there is, and head to bed, yawning. As I step across the threshold, there’s that sound again. Moaning. Plaintive crying. Almost human. Probably just sounds of the night from deep in the woods. I close the door. This would be a good night to get a reprieve from the nightmare that won’t let go of me.

  Tess

  Bryce yanks off the blanket and collapses next to me on the bed. Beer-breath and the smell of semen mixed with sweat send a clear message—he’s in that frame of mind. Of course, I already know that from all the banging around he’s been doing up there in the loft. When he’s done with her I’m always next.

  He rolls over and murmurs, “I’m all warmed up … ready for the kind of lovin’ only a real woman can give me.”

  Don’t care if it’s a lie. At least he still has an appetite for me. When he started paying attention to the girls a couple years ago, I figured my days were numbered. It’s not like it was in the beginning. I had a tight body, perky tits, and flat belly. Not to mention, skin smooth as a baby’s ass and no crows feet. Now I have to do whatever it takes to hang onto him. Bryce isn’t the most man I’ve ever had, and he might leave a few marks on me now and then—but they’re on the outside. The others hurt me on the inside.

  I was shunned by the only family I knew existed, blackballed by a vindictive former boss, scratching for my baby’s next meal. I was determined to keep the creep who got me pregnant—then dumped me—from ever being a part of my little girl’s life. Mostly though, I was bitter about having no one or no place I belonged to. Still am.

  I pull him on
top of me, wrap my bare legs around him, brush his scratchy cheek with my lips, lick his ear. When he starts to get hard, I roll him onto his back, sit bare-assed on his stomach, and wriggle out of my shirt.

  He smiles. “I like it when you do all the work. Shows me you want it.”

  I purr back, “I like what you like.”

  It has nothing to do with liking—it’s about survival. You’d think he’s all about control—has to know what I’m doing all the time, when I’ll be back if I step out. Always has to be right, even when he’s wrong. The real problem is his fragile ego. Bruise it a little and he goes ballistic. I stay away from that crap. But when I do screw up, I stroke it the best I know how.

  I throw back my head and give the performance of my life—blocking out the truth that Teresa Armato has crashed all the way from a University of Chicago degree in economics, six-figure income, and Nob Hill apartment to living off the grid in a rickety shack in the middle of nowhere. A place even its owners couldn’t care less about.

  Guess I got what I deserved. A dozen years ago I picked a forty-something survivalist/conspiracy nut as my knight in shining armor. He’d never finished high school and was probably at the top of his career ladder—head grounds keeper for an estate that had all but depleted itself, doling out cash to a third generation of drug-addicted trust babies. Okay, I’ll admit it … he was pretty damn hot and so was the sex.

  When he’s satisfied, he pushes me off and stares at the ceiling. “Now that’s why I keep you around.”

  I pull the blanket over me. “That, and you don’t want me turning you in to the law.”

  His coal black eyes are even darker. “You haven’t got the guts to turn me in. I’d hunt you down and kill you. ’Sides, they’d lock you up, too.”

  I climb back on top and plant a juicy kiss on his mouth, mostly to shut him up. He’s right on the last count—being locked up doing twenty-five to life is one of my worst fears, but one day I’ll get the chance to prove him wrong about having guts—when he least expects it.