Atop a hill in the midst of a forest was a small, wood frame house. Pine needles covered the rooftop. The porch, once home to a set of rocking chairs, was splintered and gapped from neglect. Windowless frames bordered a front door left standing wide open. A maple tree stretched skyward from the living room, its branches lifting the roof's frame from the structure's walls. To the rear of the house, beside the rusted water pump, two steel doors in the ground were secured with an old switch lock. Nature had reclaimed the long, dirt drive that led from the main highway.
- A church stood at the foot of the hill. Sunday service was in full swing as the preacher pounded the podium and waved the Bible in the air, preaching to his flock.
- “Grace: When will it come? Blessings: Do they exist? Love: Shall it ever be captured? Will I feel it die in the palm of my hand, or shall my hand open and allow it to drift away?”
- The congregation gave him their rapt attention as he continued.
- “Thousands of faces have passed me by, each unique each the same, blurring as the grass in a field until they become as one. My brothers and sisters, in this world we are the same except through the grace, love and power of the Lord who blesses us each day!”
- The church filled with the voices of his flock shouting “Amen!” and “Praise the Lord.” They did not notice the preacher staring at the main entrance to the church, nor did they see the man who had entered the sanctuary. He slowly approached the rear pew, his clothes hanging on his thin frame, hair slicked back from his ruddy and pocked-marked face. He sat emotionless in the pew for the remainder of the service, waiting for the congregation to exit. He stood as the preacher approached him. They shook hands and he whispered to the pastor. As quickly as he had appeared, he departed the church.
She filled the small carry bag with her costumes for the afternoon. Five changes should do it, she thought. Sliding a half top over her head, a skirt up her long legs and over her hips, she was ready to go. As she drove the compact car to the club, she considered her brother, how different they were.
- She had been pushed from foster home to foster home. He was raised by the local preacher. It had been so long ago when they were separated-after the incident, as they called it.
- She rarely saw him now. He must be embarrassed by her and the work she did. He would be preaching today while she was grinding into strangers laps at twenty bucks a shot. How ironic that they both served the needs of the deprived.
- She hustled up the back steps of the club, quickly changing into costume. The disc jockey announced her, “Gentlemen, please, a warm welcome for one of your favorites. Sabrina is coming down the center staircase.”
- She slowly teased her way down, across the stage to the pole. Swinging first, then straddling it before she saw him sitting at the bar. His hair greasy, face ruddy and pocked marked, and he was bone thin.
- He watched her make her way around the bar and turned as she approached him. He grasped her hand, speaking low, in her ear. He stood and left the club.
II
Her afternoon shift went quickly after he departed. Three-hundred dollars wasn't bad for an afternoon's work, she thought as she drove out to the small church outside of town. On the rare occasions she did visit her brother's church, she smiled at the ladies who looked down their noses at her, knowing she shared the laps of half the male membership of the church just hours before the evening service. Once the last person passed her brother on the church steps, she climbed out of the car and waved to her brother.
- Enjoying his embarrassment, she strutted across the parking lot on six-inch heels wearing only a pair of short-shorts and a halter-top.
- “Sally, you're thirty-five years old now. When do you think you might start acting like it?”
- “Greg, honey, you know I look damn good for my age and I like to show it!”
- The two hugged on the steps of the church.
- “I figured you would be coming out this way.”
- “He came to the club.”
- “He was here also, Sally. I don't know what we are going to do.”
- “You could start praying to that god of yours. I think we'll need some divine help this time.”
- “We had divine help the last time. We weren't the ones to do twenty years in jail!”
- “Have you ever been back up there?”
- “I never went back. It is part of the past.”
- “Me either, but I think about it everyday.”
- “Jesus loves you, Sally, Accept him and you can put this all behind you.”
- “Fuck off, Greg. This isn't over yet.”
- “So, you will be here tomorrow at eleven o'clock?”
- “I'll be here, but you'd better have a plan, like last time.”
- Greg watched as his twin sister walked away, dreading the arrival of tomorrow.
III
John Gilpin had a new suit and $350 in cash. No credit card, no car. He arrived in town on the Greyhound and found himself a room in town above a small bar for $75 a week. A truck driver by trade, Gilpin took a job in the bar washing dishes four days a week for minimum wage.
- He'd met with the twins; now he looked forward to seeing them together. Gilpin had hid his anger well over the past 20 years he'd served in the state pen. Not once did the little bastards come to see him. Gilpin had given a great deal of thought to how those two would one day join their mother. John Gilpin may have been a model prisoner but, beneath it all, he had been waiting for this time to come.
Dawn finally broke his restless sleep.
- Twenty slow years had given him time to figure where they'd put her. Gilpin was sure they had killed her, though he didn't know why. It took nine years for him to remember the abandoned house on the hill.
- It was one of the secret places his wife went when life became too hard for her. She once took him there when they were first married. Often, after the twins became toddlers, he would hear them speak of the secret place in the woods. Had he paid more attention, he might have been cleared of the murder.
- In the back of his rig, the police found a shovel with her blood on it. He never could figure out how the twin teens had stashed it in his truck. From the moment he arrived home, they had been with him until the police arrived.
- The police had waited a day to report his wife as missing, then searched his home and rig for evidence. He consented to the searches with no idea that he had been set up. Two weeks had passed when the police arrived at his home. It was the last day he would be free for almost twenty-one years.
- He began to feel a sense of redemption as he started out for the house on the hill.
IV
Gilpin picked his way through the growth that had claimed the driveway up the hill to the house. It looked much as he remembered, with the exception of a few more trees growing from the foundation.
- Walking to the rear of the house, he was surprised that the steel doors of the old underground shelter were still visible. Unlike his visit decades before, a rusty switch lock secured the doors. He searched the rear yard until he located a piece of rebar rising from the weeds. Yanking it from the soil, he struck the lock over and over until it snapped. The moldy odor of the abandoned shelter filled his nostrils as he pulled the doors wide. Waterlogged wooden steps led him down into the shelter until several broke under his weight, plunging him into darkness. His head struck bottom, his lungs quickly filled with the thick water. John Gilpin was dead.
The twins met at 11 a.m. Heading to the house on the hill, they talked of their mother and the times they had spent there with peaceful picnic lunches. It was their mother's special place, a place to escape the collapse of her marriage.
- They picked their way up the drive to the house. Their father was not there.
- “Greg, It is rather odd he would pick this place.”
- “He may not show up. It wasn't the same at home after she found out about him.”
- “At least he told her he wanted a divorce.”
- “So, why did he kill her?”
- They reached the rear of the house. The old shelter was open, doors standing upright.
- “I came up a few years back and put a lock on the doors.”
- “Why did you do that?”
- “Figured a kid would get in there, I guess they opened it anyway.”
- Closing the doors, Greg saw a piece of rebar lying next to the shelter. He shoved the rebar between the hasp and keeper.
- “That should hold it.”
- “What kind of plan did you have, Greg? The last one only benefited you.”
- “How did it benefit me?”
- “You went with the preacher's family. I bounced around a bit.”
- “Like you would have made a good preacher?”
- “I would have! You however, with that saggy ass, would have failed as a stripper!”
- Laughing, the twins headed down the driveway from the house on the hill, relieved their father hadn't shown up.
Three thousand miles away, a woman rolled her cart along the cement walkway of the motel by the airport. She knocked repeatedly, calling out “Housekeeping, housekeeping…” as she let herself in the room.
- She thought of her twins often, knowing in her heart that they were well cared for. Sometimes her thoughts drifted to him. Rotten, cheating bastard. There was no way he was getting a divorce. She still loved him.
- The idea had been spontaneous. Working in the garden, she had cut her hand, the blood dripping on the spade. She had pulled out some of her hair and placed with the blood. She'd hid in the small wooded area beside their home until the rig rumbled up in the darkness of night. As he climbed down and strode to the house, she had opened the door and placed the shovel behind the seats.
- The interstate was less than quarter mile from their house. She had begun walking and had never looked backed.
