From the Corner of His Eye

Chapter 38

BASEBALL CAP IN HAND, he stood on Agnes's front porch this Sunday evening, a big man with the demeanor of a shy boy.

“Mrs. Lampion?"

“That's me."

His leonine head and bold features, framed by golden hair, should have conveyed strength, but the impression he might have made was compromised by a fringe of bangs that curled across his forehead, a style unfortunately reminiscent of effete emperors of ancient Rome.

“I've come here to. . . “ His voice trailed away.

Considering his formidable size, his clothes ought to have served an image of virile masculinity: boots, jeans, red flannel shirt. His ducked head, slumped posture, and shuffling feet were reminders, however, that many young boys, too, dressed this way.

“Is something wrong?” Agnes encouraged.

He met her eyes, but at once shifted his gaze to the porch floor again. “I've come to say ... how sorry I am, how miserably sorry."

During the ten days since Joey's passing, a great many people had conveyed their condolences to Agnes, but until this man, she'd known all of them.

“I'd give anything if it hadn't happened,” he said earnestly. And now a tortured note wrung wet emotion from his voice“I only wish it had been me who died."

His sentiment was so excessive that Agnes was speechless.

“I wasn't drinking,” he said. “That's proven. But I admit being reckless, driving too fast in the rain. They cited me for that, for running the light."

Suddenly she understood. “You're him."

He nodded, and his face flushed with guilt.

“Nicholas Deed.” On her tongue, the name was as bitter as a dissolving aspirin.

“Nick,” he suggested, as though any reason existed for her to be on a first-name basis with the man who killed her husband. “I wasn't drinking. “

“You've been drinking now,” she softly accused.

“Had just a few, yeah. For courage. To come here. To ask your forgiveness."

His request felt like an assault. Agnes almost rocked backward as though struck.

“Can you, will you, forgive me, Mrs. Lampion?"

By nature, she was unable to hold fast to resentment, couldn't nurture a grudge, and was incapable of vengeance. She had forgiven even her father, who had put her through hell for so long, who had blighted the lives of her brothers, and who had killed her mother. Forgiving was not the same as condoning. Forgiving did not mean that you had to exonerate or forget.

“I can't sleep half the time,” Deed said, twisting the baseball cap in his hands. “I've lost weight, and I'm so nervous, jumpy."

In spite of her nature, Agnes could not find forgiveness in her heart this time. Words of absolution clotted in her throat. Her bitterness dismayed her, but she could not deny it.

“Your forgiveness won't make any of it right,” he said, “nothing could, but it might start to give me a little peace."

“Why should I care whether you have any peace?” she asked, and she seemed to be listening to a woman other than herself.

Deed flinched. “No reason. But I sure never did mean you or your husband any harm, Mrs. Lampion. And not your baby, either, not little Bartholomew."

At the mention of her son's name, Agnes stiffened. There were numerous ways for Deed to have learned the baby's name, yet it seemed wrong for him to know it, wrong to use it, the name of this child he had nearly orphaned, had almost killed.

His alcohol-soured breath washed over Agnes as he asked, “How's Bartholomew doing, is he okay, is the little guy in good health?"

Jacks of spades, in quartet, rose in her mind.

Remembering the ringleted yellow hair of the fateful figure on the playing cards, Agnes fixated on Deed's blond bangs, which curled across his broad brow.

“There's nothing here for you,” she said, stepping back from the door in order to close it.

“Please. Mrs. Lampion?"

Strong emotion carved Deed's face. Anguish, perhaps. Or anger.

Agnes wasn't able to interpret his expression, not because he was in the least difficult to read, but because her perceptions were skewed by sudden fear and a flood of adrenaline. Her heart seemed to spin like a flywheel in her breast.

“Wait,” said Deed, holding out one hand either beseechingly or to block the door.

She slammed it shut before he could stop her, whether he had intended to stop her or not, and she engaged the deadbolt lock.

Beveled, crackled, distorted, divided into petals and leaves, Deed's face beyond the lead-ad glass, as he leaned closer to try to peer inside, was the countenance of a dream demon swimming up out of a nightmare lake.

Agnes ran to the kitchen, where she had been working when the doorbell rang, packing boxes of groceries to be delivered with the honey-raisin pear pies that she and Jacob had baked this morning.

Barty's bassinet was beside the table.

She expected him to be gone, snatched by an accomplice who had come in the back way while Deed had distracted her at the front door.

The baby was where she had left him, sleeping serenely.

To the windows, then, drawing all the blinds securely down. And still, irrationally, she felt watched.

Trembling, she sat beside the bassinet and gazed at her baby with such love that the force of it ought to have rocked him awake.

She expected Deed to ring the doorbell again. He did not.

“Imagine me thinking you'd be gone,” she said to Barty. “Your old mum is losing it. I never made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, so there's nothing for him to collect."

She couldn't kid herself out of her fear.

Nicholas Deed was not the knave. He had already brought all the ruin into their lives that he was going to bring.

But a knave there was, somewhere, and his day would come.

To avoid making Maria feel responsible for the dire turn of mood when red aces weft followed by disturbing jacks, Agnes had pretended to take her son's card-told fortune lightly, especially the frightful part of it. In fact, a coldness had twisted through her heart.

Never before had she put faith in any form of prognostication. In the whispery falling of those twelve cards, however, she heard the faint voice of truth, not quite a coherent truth, not as clear a message as she might have wished, but a murmur that she couldn't ignore.

Tiny Bartholomew wrinkled his face in his sleep.

His mother said a prayer for him.

She also sought forgiveness for the hardness with which she had treated Nicholas Deed.

And she asked to be spared the visitation of the knave.