From the duffel bag—the one that has been returned, that belongs to his brother—he takes these things, three burners, nine sticks of incense, seven candles. He sets three sticks of incense in each of the three burners, sandalwood because he likes the scent of it. He makes a circle with the candles and lays the incense burners in the circle to make the points of a triangle, in the center of the room where she died.
     The bag is olive drab. An honest label for a color. Honest, utilitarian, the bag, the color. It is stained with use and travel. The father told him to burn it, but he had asked to keep it, and he couldn’t believe when his father allowed him. The bag was never far from him the rest of his life, right up to this minute. His most treasured things are in the bag. A single photograph of his mother, Emmy’s sweater, the one she’d left in his SUV the day they hiked up to the arboretum from the rose test garden. It had been spring and hot and cold and hot again. The roses were budding leaves along their thorny spines. What was it Emmy had said? Something about the innocence of young, green things. What was the image in her mind? What was she thinking? She refused to elaborate. It was cold then and shadowless. A wind from somewhere, stirred the grass, troubled the new leaves and Emmy buttoned her cardigan sweater, this sweater, as she turned away from the rows of obedient roses toward the hillside with its tumult of unrestrained growth.
     But when they retraced their steps the sun was out, the wind gone, and the vehicle was hot, stuffy inside. Emmy pulled the sweater over her head and tossed it in the back seat. She unrolled the window. Please no, AC, chloroflourocarbons, you know, ozone holes.
     He sniffs at the sweater. It doesn’t smell like her, it smells of sandalwood. He folds the sweater up carefully and lays it on the windowseat next to his mother’s picture. That picture always made his father angry. It was the pose. She straddles a chair, her arms over the back, a violin dangling from one hand, a bow from the other. She sits straight, a dancer’s posture, fully possessed of herself, smiling. It was the smile. The old bastard couldn’t stand that she was ever happy. “Are you happy now, Mom?” he whispers.
     Out of the bag another item, the flag neatly folded. It has remained folded for almost forty years–since it was lifted from Wesley’s coffin. He remembers watching the white-gloved hands folding–over, up, over, up, a red and white triangle marching up consuming itself until it was a tidy bundle, smaller than a baby. The soldiers presented it to the father. The old man, in his fifties, as immobile as a rock, allowed the flag to lay on his lap, but he avoided touching any more than its edges, handed it to the boy when they stood up. He didn’t actually say, burn it, but he didn’t have to, did he?
     It was the boy who cradled the flag, choking back tears, on the long silent ride home in the back of the limousine. The limo made one detour, turning down Third Avenue and stopping in front of the Bartlett office building. The old man got out, shut the door behind him, and slapped the trunk of the limo, the way black-clad cowboys in Westerns do when they are hanging cattle rustlers or sheepherders. Sending the horse off with a slap on the rump, riderless. Only the boy was still sitting on the leather and he wasn’t choking any longer.
     He places the flag next to the picture.
     He lights the incense and the candles, works his legs into lotus position, and presses his palms together. When he closes his eyes, he feels the world fall away from him.

     As Will pulled into his apartment building’s disintegrating parking lot, the feeble mercury-vapor lamp which had always half-heartedly illuminated it, gave one last flicker and died, leaving the lot dark. Like a blind man in a familiar room, Will negotiated around potholes and the broken remnants of curbs. He realized, for the first time, how well he had learned the terrain in the short time that he had lived here.
     Will noticed a vehicle parked by the 2nd Avenue entrance to the lot, its motor running. Something about it looked familiar. Doug Barlett’s SUV? What would Doug be doing here in the middle of the night? Correction, in the middle of the early morning hours.
     The figure that came at him, out of the shadows, wasn’t Doug Bartlett. It was Connie Crage wildly waving his arms. “Adelhardt. Adelhardt.”
     Will stopped and let Crage approach. He hadn’t made his mind up yet about Connie. He wanted to keep his options open. When Connie was still at least ten feet away, Will spoke, “Kind of late for a social visit, isn’t it, Crage?”
     Connie stopped. “It’s Doug,” he said. “I think he’s in trouble. I don’t know what it is between you two, but he says he needs to talk to you.”
     “At three a.m.?” Will was incredulous. “What do you mean, in trouble?”
     “Doug’s a disturbed man, Adelhardt.”
     “So I understand.” Will’s tone was icy. “Look Crage, I’m sick and tired of all this and I really have to go up to my apartment and call my daughter. I was nearly killed by a couple of goons hired by your pal Milcheford.”
     “Teddy Milcheford?” Crage seemed genuinely surprised. “I don’t understand.”
     “Well, that’s what my week has been like, trying to understand. Trying to understand why men molest their daughters, why people get together and chain each other up, why disturbed boys set fires. Why somebody killed Emmy. I don’t understand it anymore than you do, Crage. All I understand is it’s been a long time since I told my little girl, I love you. And you and Doug Bartlett and your perverted friends can go to hell.”
     Connie Crage stood, unmoving and unperplexed. Will walked past him toward the crosswalk and the shadowy hulk of his apartment building. Nearly to the crosswalk, Will stopped and turned. He saw Crage, facing him, waiting, patient and confident. God damn it, he was going to follow like one of Crage’s masochistic lovers, knowing that the place he was going would be filled with more pain. Something in the back of his mind said, opportunity. Shouldn’t it be saying danger? He was too exhausted to fight it, to second-guess himself.
     He climbed silently into the landcruiser, buckled up, and stared out at the city with a weary and inimical eye as Connie navigated through Northwest Portland, moving hurriedly down side streets toward the hills. Toward Bartlett House.
     “He’s suicidal, Adelhardt,” Crage broke the silence. “It’s been like that since he was a teenager. We’ve kept him going, Frank and I. But this time I think he means it.
     “When I told Wesley I would take care of him, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The kid was really fucked up by the old man. He felt responsible for his mother’s death, because he couldn’t protect her from the asshole. Now he thinks he has to atone for generations of Bartletts.
     “The irony is, Doug is a good man. His brother Wesley was a good man. Those two really looked out for one another. In a way, I guess I’ve become Wesley. The big brother. I’d do anything for Doug.”
     They were climbing the hills now. Will continued to stare out the window at the city rushing by as he tried to take in Connie’s words. Would he really do anything for Doug? Would he kill for him?
     “He thinks the world would be better without any Bartletts, Adelhardt. He’s convinced they’re an evil.”
     The Landcruiser pulled up behind its twin at the back gate of the burned out mansion and Crage turned off the engine. “There’s a flashlight in the glove box,” He directed Will.
     Will stepped out onto the curb, crumbled by persistent bunches of grass and blackberry canes intent on reclaiming the street as their own. In the beam of the flashlight, he could barely make out the path to the gate. The gate itself, slightly askew on rusting hinges, was half-hidden by foliage. Morning glory vines had reached out their strangling tendrils and made their spiral climb up each of the gates iron bars to meet at the top in a knotted embrace.
     On the other side, it seemed to Will, lay the answer to his puzzle. At the end of this overgrown path, the place where Emmy died held the secret of her death and it pulled at him.
     Will held back, letting Connie walk in front of him, breaking the trail. The night air had awakened him and his heart was beating a little faster. Was it just the night, or was it his weariness that cast every object here into an unfamiliar shape as if he had not been here a few days past? It didn’t feel like a trap, but the idea occurred to him. The evening had been too full of surprises and he was uncertain of his judgement. Even if Crage hadn’t killed Emmy, could he be protecting Milcheford? Or Doug?
     The peripheral beam of Will’s flashlight revealed the gazebo, an insubstantial shape at first, it became solid and heavy as they approached. Its moss-laden roof sagged on its rotted timbers. A multitude of vines covered its railing and climbed its support post; so that it looked as though it were part of the wildness that surrounded it. Emmy had described it as being under a kind of enchantment. Enchantments, in the fairy tales with which Will was familiar, were something to be avoided.
     “Did you bring me here to kill me, Connie?” Will asked.
     “Why the hell would I want to kill you? Because you kissed my wife?” Connie laughed. “Doug wanted me to bring you. Like I said, he’s in a bad way and he likes you. I’ve never heard him sound so desperate.”
      “Why here?” But he knew the answer. It had to do with history. Doug’s past, the history of the Bartlett family. The history of humanity. Crimes. Greed. Unchecked passion. Obsession. The weight of history on the darkened soul. Or was it just a man lost in the labyrinth of his guilt, unable to reconcile with the boy who saw his mother run out into the wild storm and did not stop her. A man who was caught now in the beam of Will’s flashlight, sitting in the decaying gazebo, arms resting on the ledge, head on his arms, waiting for Will.

     He had heard Connie’s Landcruiser turn the corner, heard Will and Connie come through the back gate, heard the grass whispering against the sides of their shoes and the moss on the flagstones sink. The beam of the flashlight touched him and the light warmed his hands and the top of his head.
     He stood up as Connie and Will reached the bottom step of the gazebo. Will shone the light up in his face and for a moment the two men disappeared. He gestured toward the gazebo bench. “Please.”
     Will switched off the flashlight as he sat down and their features fell into shadow until their eyes adjusted. In front of them, the gazebo table held a bottle, three glasses and a cloth covered lump of–something.
     “What’s this about, Doug?” Connie asked.
     “Wine?” Doug held up the bottle of Opus 1 that had been breathing for the last hour, since he had called Connie and sent him in search of Will. He didn’t wait for an answer, poured the three stem glasses half-full. Then he lifted the linen napkin to reveal a plate containing a paring knife, and a small brick of cheese surrounded by crackers. Doug began to slice the cheese. “Will, I want you to understand, Connie’s not involved in this.”
     “Christ, Doug,” Connie said, “I’ve been involved since the moment Wesley asked me to look out for you. Do you think I don’t know what I’ve been protecting all these years?”
     Will watched Doug place a slice of dark cheese on a cracker. He didn’t want to be here listening to Doug and Connie play out some script they had obviously gone through before, but he accepted the cheese offering from Doug. As it settled on his tongue, the oddly sweet flavor woke up his tastebuds. His mind was about to name it.
     “Gjetoast,” Doug said. “Emmy’s favorite.”
     I didn’t know she had a favorite cheese, Will thought. Another thing about Emmy I didn’t know. Will took up the glass of wine and drank, felt it run down his throat and warm his belly. I’d better leave the wine alone, Will thought, or I’ll be falling asleep. But it must be four in the fucking morning, I should be sleeping.
     “I didn’t trust her at first. When I first met her. I thought she was after money. I was sure she wasn’t really a Bartlett, but she was. If she hadn’t been a Bartlett, she’d still be alive. Maybe I would have liked her better sooner if she had just been some kid taking advantage of my loneliness to pry a pile of money out of me. It’s never been much comfort anyway. I believed she was genuine and innocent, not anything like Bartlett women. I even thought that maybe the evil in our family had run its course, that this one was different.” Doug took a small drink from his glass.
     “The women are weak and the men are monsters. She might have been different. She was different until she came back to the family. Once she came back, she was tainted. My touch awakened the evil Bartlett blood. From the moment she met me she was doomed.” Doug placed his hands palms down on the table. “Feel it,” he commanded. When neither Connie nor Will moved to imitate his gesture, Doug closed his eyes and said again, softly, “Feel it. It comes up through the ground, through the wood floor, under our feet. It comes up through the air. It fills us with its black breath. It’s a demon. A family demon. It’s the evil in this ground. Bartletts put it in the ground here.”
     “How the Hell do you expect me to build an apartment complex here now, Doug?” Connie asked. “Or does this ground only work it’s evil magic on Bartletts? Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?”
     Doug gave a short laugh. “Good old Connie. Couldn’t live without your insight. Wesley didn’t tell you about us, did he? It wasn’t fair of him to ask you to be my keeper. What does it feel like to be guardian angel to a devil?”
      Will wanted to say, we all have demons, but the words seemed shallow and died before they reached his lips.
     What am I doing here, listening to Doug rattling on about his family and Emmy, drinking wine, and eating Gjetoast and crackers? What is this, Doug’s last supper? Maybe it’s just a rude dream. If I close my eyes Will thought, the dream will go away.
     “Connie,” Doug was saying, turning to his old friend, “I know why Wesley trusted you so much, but he shouldn’t have made you promise. How much of your life have you spent living up to that promise, protecting Wesley’s little brother? I wasn’t worth one year of your life.”
     Connie didn’t move. To Will, he appeared as motionless as one of the stone dogs on the Crage woodland estate.
     “It’s time, Connie. It’s time to let go. Wash your hands of me. Wash your hands of the whole Bartlett family. I’m the last one. The last one. After me, we will no longer plague the world with our sickness and greed.”
     “Why did you ask Connie to bring me here, Doug?” Will asked.
     “You’re the witness. Someone has to witness. The witness can’t have blood on his hands. Your hands are clean and there’s something else. I have to tell you something else.” Doug turned back to Connie.
     Without thinking, Will took another drink of wine.
     “I’ve done terrible things when you weren’t looking.” Doug was talking to Connie again. “I stole things from you. I thought I could survive the family. I was a coward. I took those things from you to make you look guilty. That’s how I repay you. I didn’t think that boy would get blamed. You see how I’ve used you. Let me go, Connie. Let me die.”
     Something was sinking into Will’s brain. Something in Doug’s entreaty to Connie was trying to establish a thought. Stolen things, guilt, the boy, blame. What was Doug saying?
     Doug pointed toward the dark hulk of his childhood home. “It’s all waiting for me up there. It’s all prepared.”
     The wine was pulling Will down, he wanted to sleep. He could just push the cheese to one side and the wine…when it came to food, everything became Emmy’s favorite the first time she tasted it, and that lasted until something else came along. He still couldn’t remember when it was that Gjetost had been her favorite. He resented Doug knowing something about Emmy that he didn’t know.
     Doug had stopped talking. He was staring at Will. The heaviness of Will’s legs, his arms, in his whole body a weariness so intense that if not for Doug’s eyes holding him, he would have fallen through the floor of the gazebo.
     “Will, you should know, she was asleep when it happened and I didn’t look at her. She drank the absinthe because I told her it would be okay. Just a little. No harm to the baby. I put the drug in it. She didn’t know.”
     Doug’s words were penetrating his exhaustion. Weaving their way into his consciousness. What was Doug telling him—that he’d given Emmy the absinthe? The drug? Finally Will understood. He had believed that he would tear out the heart of the son of a bitch who killed Emmy. But in the presence of the murderer, he could only begin to sob.
     “Will, I need you to understand,” Doug started to reach out a hand and drew it back before Will could shrink away, as if he knew that his touch was anathema.
     “You need. You need. You and your goddamned needs, and your goddamned family. Emmy wasn’t part of your family. Family isn’t blood, Doug, it’s heart. You,” Will leaned across the table, gripping the edge of it with his hands, and said, separating each word, laying emphasis on each syllable, as if the pronouncement could change the irrevocable, “You. Had. No. Right.”
     Will took a trembling breath, “If you think I’m going to forgive you, I’m not that good. Nowhere near that good. And as soon as I leave here, I’m going to call the cops. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to kill me.”
     “Will, listen, listen. Don’t you see? I saved her. I saved the baby.”
     Will stood and started to walk toward the steps of the gazebo.
     “If she hadn’t been pregnant. If only there weren’t a new Bartlett to cast his shadow over this place. I wouldn’t have had to do it. I had to stop it. And now I’m going to end the whole family. After tonight, no more Bartletts.”
     Will stood still, his back to Connie and Doug. “Why did she drink the Absinthe?” It was a question that had lain under the surface of his awareness, not one he had wanted to confront, but it was there now and he needed to know.
     “She wanted to please me, Will. It was just one drink, after all.” Doug stood. The play was over. Doug passed by Will on the steps of the gazebo, so close that he brushed Will’s arm. Will shrank away from him as if burned. Doug didn’t stop, but moved deliberately toward Bartlett House. Behind him, Connie Crage followed.
     “What about the clothes?” Will cried out. He stepped down onto the path, trailing them. “That leather corset. How did you get her to put it on, Doug?”
     “It was in the sugar. I put the sedative in the sugar in the spoon. You pour the Absinthe over the sugar, you see. It’s supposed to be a cube, isn’t it, Connie, but I used granulated sugar for Emmy’s. I told her that she would find the drink too bitter without it. So, she fell asleep. Right about here.” Doug stopped suddenly in the path, allowed Will to catch up.
     “She just folded up and went down,” Doug continued. “I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.”
     “You changed her clothes, put those things on her,” Will said.
     “I didn’t look at her, Will, if that bothers you. You do understand, Will? It was for her. I did it for her. It’s better this way.”
     He walks up the steps to the porch and opens the door. Then he closes the door behind him and slides the bolt. He does not need them now.
     He hears them breaking through the window, puts it out of his mind. No time for the world now. No time for anything but the ritual. The cleansing. The candles are in place, the altar prepared, draped with Emmy’s scarf, and the picture of mother. Mother and her violin, the flag from Wesley’s coffin and the bronze Buddha, smiling.
     The air is still. The tongues of the half-burnt candles reach softly ceilingward. Behind them, behind the altar, dawn creeps over the horizon and in another half-hour the towers of downtown Portland will be ablaze in her light.
     He has no desire. No wish but to be done, to be at peace, before the light comes again to reveal the ugliness of the world.
     He sits before the altar, pulling himself again into the familiar lotus position. Beside him a red, dome-shaped can with a pour spout. From the vessel, he pours the liquid around himself in a circle, a circle of life and of death. Funny, he thinks how we always leave out that second part—death. The most important part of the circle. He picks up the red-domed can with its skull and crossbones warning, and he pours the holy water over his head, feels it trickle down his face, and neck, into his clothing, his skin, his blood.
     He becomes aware, vaguely, of the gasoline smell, a taste on his tongue from his permeated pores. A lightheadedness lifts him.
     Now his eyes are fixed on the seven flickering flames. He can hear the footsteps. They have found him.
     He picks up a candle. In his mind is an image. The evening news, a Buddhist monk sitting on a Saigon street, flames consuming his earthly body.
     He sees them, the hosts of angels. He brought her into this room and now she is here with the angels, with his mother. Mother is smiling. She is lifting the violin. She is tucking it under her chin. All is forgiven. Her bow strikes the strings.
      He drops the candle in his lap. Emmy does not cross his mind. He has no thoughts of Mother. No thoughts of Father. No time for bitterness. Now is the time to dance.