“Helloha,” Andy says.

  “Ah-lo-ha,” Donny says. “There’s no hello in it.”

  “Hello-ahh,” Andy says again. And then, “Hello-ha!”

  “Andy, please,” Donny says. “Don’t talk.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You can practice later,” Bobby tells him. “We’ll work on it together, okay?”

  The doors to the plane open and the balmy night air drifts down the crowded aisles to the back of the plane. The children look up when the air reaches them and they seem suddenly younger to Stafford, their tired faces curious and still. Andy turns to Stafford.

  “It’s soft.”

  “What’s soft, Andy?”

  “The air. It’s soft.”

  “That’s humidity,” Donny says.

  “Hu-what?”

  They will be the last people off the plane, Stafford tells them, which makes Andy happy because it gives him time to search through the seat pockets for souvenirs.

  “Okay, our turn,” Stafford says when the aisles are finally clear. “Don’t leave anything behind. Andy, you follow Donny. Bobby, can you get my keys off the floor? I dropped them under the seat there.”

  “Should we bring these old diapers?” Andy asks.

  “Let’s not,” Stafford says, and Donny smiles a second time.

  There is a woman inside the airport hoping to sell a few more flowers to this last cargo of passengers. “Aloha,” she says, holding the bright, fragrant garlands in her hands. She smiles and Lucy reaches for her, squirming until Donny has to put her down and let her walk for herself.

  “Watch her,” Stafford says. “I’ll get the luggage. Andy, do you want to help me?”

  “I don’t know where it is,” Andy says.

  “I know where it is,” Stafford says, but Andy turns to Bobby.

  “I don’t remember what our suitcases look like, Bobby,” he says.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” Bobby says. “You can help Donny watch Lucy.”

  Bobby follows Stafford to the luggage carousel, where they stand waiting for their bags to slide through the chute.

  “It may take a while,” Stafford says.

  “It’s okay,” Bobby says. “There’s a lot to look at. We don’t have to talk.”

  And they don’t. They don’t talk then, and they don’t talk when their luggage finally arrives and they find Stafford’s car in the parking lot, and they don’t talk on the long drive to Stafford’s house.

  “Where are we going now, Bobby?” Andy asks, but there is no answer.

  CHAPTER 23

  Fate

  The best tragedies are conflicts between a hero and his destiny.

  —Aristotle, Poetics

  Friday, March 14, 2003

  Maui

  IT WAS A THIRD-QUARTER moon, a waning moon, and it rose from the east shortly after midnight. It would reach its midpoint in the sky at sunrise and set six hours later at noon, when human eyes could no longer see it. Until then, it would rise steadily from the east, a moon without the strength of a full moon or the energy of a new one.

  It had taken Stafford longer than he expected to get out of the airport, but he had managed to fit all of the Shepherds’ luggage, a mishmash of old suitcases and duffel bags, into the car by securing the half-open trunk with his Louis Vuitton belt. He did not want to make his arrival home any more complicated than necessary. There was nowhere to store the luggage at the airport, and dealing with a taxi driver at the front door would be disruptive. It would wake Agnes, and he did not, under any circumstances, want to wake his wife up in the middle of the night with four children in tow. She was a light sleeper, but if they were quiet and came in through the garden gate on the far side of the property, she would not hear them. There was a guest suite on that side of the house with two queen beds, a separate sitting room, and a bathroom. Bobby and Donny could help him get Lucy and Andy into one of the beds. The older boys could take the other. Stafford would sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. They would get the luggage from the car in the morning. It was not complicated. Maybe they would order breakfast from the Ritz-Carlton. Agnes might not have much on hand.

  It was a lonely drive through the sugarcane fields to Maalaea Bay, but when they reached the turnoff to Kapalua, the moon rose over the West Maui Mountains, illuminating their first glimpse of the water.

  “We follow the coast now,” Stafford said, and Bobby nodded.

  Andy and Lucy were asleep in the back seat, sitting on either side of Donny, who looked away when Stafford caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. It would be better not to talk, Stafford decided. The boy was on the edge, and if he lost control now and in front of Stafford, the damage would be permanent. If we can just get through this, he wanted to say, but what came after that eluded him, and in truth, it terrified him, the man once called the toughest son of a bitch in network television. The philosopher king, said the few. A royal Canadian asshole, said the many.

  Stafford’s television career was legendary for three reasons: He was successful, he was an outsider, and he was fired. He didn’t write, act, or direct and he never participated in the physical production of a TV show. He was not an agent or a business manager. He was not a production accountant or an investment banker, and he was not a lawyer. He was instead an educated generalist who understood the audience and their need, collectively and individually, for catharsis.

  “Television is a safe place for loneliness,” he said in an interview following his then-contentious appointment as network CEO. “The telling of stories may have evolved technically from the work of Euripides, Sophocles, or, in the case of comedy, Aristophanes, but our response is the same. When the truth closes in, the tension builds.”

  People smirked, of course, when he talked like that, so he learned to rephrase the pronouncements of a philosopher with the thumbs up, thumbs down certainty of an emperor, which is what he became.

  But he had no anticipation of that when he applied for a job in Los Angeles as a research adviser on a feature film about Aristotle. He merely wanted to escape following the death of his son, and Agnes was an American citizen. She could take him from the graveyards of Kingston to a place where fiction was more important than truth, no matter what he pretended to believe later.

  The movie about Aristotle was an ambitious project starring a young Swedish actor in the title role. It was 1973, and the spare, claustrophobic realism of Scandinavian films seemed somehow right for a story about a philosopher who, for the most part, talked, walked, and wrote. This was a miscalculation.

  Stafford took Agnes to see the Swedish film that had launched the young actor shortly after they arrived in Los Angeles.

  “This guy’s our Aristotle,” he told her. “They’re calling him the new Brando.”

  But 140 minutes into the film, Agnes walked out midway through the second of two long scenes in which the new Brando was washing dishes.

  “Stafford,” she said as she stood up, “this is bullshit. We could be at home washing our own dishes.”

  “Shhh,” he said, “people can hear you.”

  “All right, Swedish bullshit. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”

  The movie about Aristotle was, as Agnes anticipated, a failure, but while it scuttled a few careers, including the new Brando’s, it launched Stafford’s. People liked him then, and because they liked him, they talked about him. He was a brilliant, good-looking Canadian guy who learned fast. He kept his mouth shut in meetings and survived a laughable association with the worst movie of the year. So when word got out that he was worth a second look, introductions were made, and a few months later, Stafford was offered a job as a reader by a junior development executive at one of the lesser studios, an executive in need of a brain faster than his own.

  “I’ll need full coverage by noon, Staff,” he would say, handing Stafford a stack of scripts. “Sorry about the short notice, pal, but they’ve moved the meeting up.”

  “No problem,” Stafford would say, because there wasn’t one.

  He had plowed through manuscripts in ancient Greek as a doctoral student. A few hundred pages of American dialogue was easy. It was dialogue with purpose, though, and Stafford was fascinated by the skill of one writer over another.

  It took Stafford three years to make the jump from reader to project analyst to development executive, and it was there he did what the majority of other development executives couldn’t do. He picked the winners. Not once, or even twice, but with a consistency that made him envied and disliked and valuable. It was not simply a matter of one script being better than another. It was an intricate web of factors, a great ball of string to some, a perfect package to others. Untangling the threads came easily to Stafford once he grasped their individual purpose. Philosophy had expanded his ability to think, Aristotle had clarified its purpose, and television provided him with a lucrative arena in which to prove it. People said his rise to the top was meteoric, but it was far more methodical than that. He had to learn the parts of this new world before he could fit them together. He would jump, in time, from the lesser studio to a better one and from there, to the network.

  “I’ve become an alchemist,” he told Agnes on the night of his first major step up the studio ladder. “Show me the lead and I’ll show you the gold.”

  “Yeah, well, they’ll be showing you the door, Stafford, if you talk like that at work.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean? Oh my God. Stafford, you didn’t!”

  “VP Creative.”

  “You got it! Holy shit!”

  “Agnes.”

  “I’m sorry but this is fu-rociously amazing! We have to celebrate. I’m calling Dana and Brucie. Get out the champagne!”

  “Not the Browns, Agnes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll be firing Brucie first thing in the morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t know the difference between gold and lead.”

  “But they’re our friends.”

  “Agnes, we don’t have any friends. We have people we like, respect, tolerate, and fear, and we are on very friendly terms with all of them. But they are not our friends, Agnes.”

  Andy stirred when the big gates opened. Stafford had lowered his window and was saying something to a man in a uniform. There was another man, Andy thought, with a dog that barked, but it was too dark to see. He would ask Bobby about the dog later, he thought. Bobby would remember.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Hopkins,” the man said, and the car drove through the gates and into the darkness.

  “We live at the top of the hill,” Stafford said. “It has a view of the water.”

  “I can’t see anything,” Andy said.

  “Tomorrow,” Bobby whispered.

  “We have a swimming pool,” Stafford said.

  “Okay,” Andy said.

  Up the hill Stafford drove to the high sloping ridge where he had built his house. It was a lonely lot, the realtor had said, but Stafford purchased it along with the lots on either side to protect his privacy. He had not come to Maui to make friends with the neighbors, he said. There were no houses above his, and at night it was generally quiet. But sometimes you could hear the sound of cats howling in the wild bushland above the outer walls of the property. There was a plague of feral cats on Maui, thousands upon thousands of them, the wild descendants of domesticated cats, lost or abandoned. They preyed on the native birds, and Stafford hated the sound of their wailing cries, knowing they were busy with their killing.

  “Banshees,” he once said to Agnes.

  “What’s a banshee?”

  “A female spirit. The cry of a banshee signals the death of a family member.”

  “Who says?”

  “It’s Gaelic mythology, Agnes. A banshee is a woman of the barrows.”

  “Barrows.”

  “A burial ground. A mound of stones over an ancient grave. Multiple graves. A cairn.”

  “They’re cats, Stafford. Horrible wild cats and they need to be killed, neutered, or spayed, preferably in some kind of large-scale factory operation.”

  “Banshees, Agnes.”

  “Fine.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Evil

  Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.

  —Genesis 3:1

  THE NIGHTMARES RETURNED WITH the sound of a coin falling onto the floor. The sleeping pill should have blocked this, Agnes thought, and then the familiar coldness and the sound of more coins falling like stones around her. A gate swinging shut and a treeless plain where grass burns without heat. Where are you now, little Agnes Gardener? You who steals from a dead mother’s hand.

  There is no answer. Evelyn lies on the floor, wrapped in a blanket shimmering with countless acts of shame. Agnes is not supposed to be here. She lives with other people now. She doesn’t have a mother, they tell her. Everybody has a mother, Agnes says. Agnes is a defiant little girl. She talks back and sometimes she screams. Be quiet, Agnes. Control yourself. Wash your hands. Your hands are dirty. Your mother tried to kill you, Agnes. Why do you think you are here?

  Agnes is seven. She is not safe at home anymore. She is in the System. Agnes knows this. She is not allowed to see her mother, but she remembers the way to the apartment and she knows where the key is hidden. There is a long walk up a hill and then the swimming pool where Arlene taught her to swim and then the park and the bus stop on the other side of the park. She will need money for the bus when she gets across the park. There is a dog barking in the distance. Agnes is afraid of dogs, but she misses her mother. She’ll have to hurry. She mustn’t get caught.

  She tells the man her name is Poppy. Well, he says, that’s a nice name for a little girl walking all by herself. Where are you going, Poppy? I’m going to see my mother, she says. Agnes gets into the car with the man who calls her Poppy. He will take her to see her mother. She likes this new name. Agnes is an ugly name. Everyone tells her this. Why am I called Agnes? she asks her mother. I don’t know, her mother says. The nuns called you that.

  Agnes will lie about the events that follow for the rest of her life. In time, she will perfect the story, changing only the tone of her voice in keeping with Stafford’s request that she try to sound a little less frantic. He will know more than most people, though, more even than he tells Agnes. Stafford is a researcher by nature, and he will dig deep into the circumstances of his wife’s birth and childhood without her knowledge or consent.

  He will know that her mother was an unwed teenager named Evelyn Delores Gardener who moved from Big Falls, Wisconsin, to Madison when Agnes was six weeks old. He will know that the father was a high school teacher and a married man. He will know that Evelyn was sent to a Catholic maternity home for unwed mothers, where she was treated badly. He will know that the nuns tried to take Agnes when she was born, but Evelyn, in a show of guts unusual for a teenager of that era, refused to sign the adoption papers. He will know that Evelyn pretended to be a war widow when she got to Madison, worked menial jobs, and was treated for anxiety by a doctor who prescribed a drug called Miltown, a precursor to Valium. That she most likely turned to street drugs when she could no longer afford the pills known for decades to come as Mother’s Little Helpers. That she was arrested for prostitution in 1953. That Agnes was sent to foster care when her mother set the bedroom curtains on fire. Stafford will know that Agnes found her mother’s body on an unauthorized visit and was released from foster care only when her grandmother agreed to take her back to Big Falls, Wisconsin. But he will never know about a little girl named Poppy who got into a man’s car that day.

  Agnes will tell the story her own way. Her mother was a young war widow with a baby, struggling to make ends meet. She could stretch a penny, though, and isn’t that a lost art! Always fixing up their tiny apartment with finds from the local flea market. She worked multiple jobs day and night, which meant Agnes was often alone, but children were so much more independent in those days, weren’t they? Agnes was outside with the other neighborhood children, waiting for the ice-cream man to come, the day her mother died. It was a weekly treat. Madison was an oven in the summer! Her mother was unwell that day. I’ll just lie down for a few minutes, she said to Agnes. Wake me up if you need me, sweet pea. Those were her last words. When Agnes went back inside, her mother was dead. It was terrible. A heart problem, the doctor said. A missing valve in the heart. A birth defect.

  Her shoes have come off. She mustn’t lose her shoes. Agnes is in the park, but this is the wrong side of the park. She is not supposed to be on this side of the park. The man has brought her here.

  “Never go over on that side of the park, Agnes,” her mother told her. “Stay on the sidewalk near the swings.”

  Agnes is six and she is walking with her mother from the bus stop to the pool for her first swimming lesson. She is proud and excited. Her mother tells her about a movie star named Esther Williams who is a champion swimmer. She lives in Hollywood now, her mother says. She has her own swimming pool. Agnes nods. She has wrapped her bathing suit in a towel the way her mother showed her.

  “What’s on that side of the park?” she asks.

  “Wild dogs,” her mother says. “Now hurry, Agnes. We’ll be late for your swimming lesson.”

  The sun is in her eyes. She can’t see. How will she find her shoes? Agnes shuts her eyes and crawls through the grass, feeling for her shoes. There is one, finally, but when she picks it up, it catches fire in her hand. The man has a knife. Cut off your hand, Poppy, he says. Your hand is melting. Agnes begins to scream. There are people everywhere on this side of the park, but they walk through her, and when he makes her lie down in the burning grass, they walk over her, leaving their footprints on her body. Agnes is here, she cries, but nobody answers. Cut off your hand, he says again, but the knife is in his eye and he shrinks into the grass until he is no longer there.