Jilly’s quick eye noted the same signs. “The old men didn’t do that,” she said softly.
I didn’t want to think of whose hand might have held the spade, but I knew I would have to tell Julian—and perhaps Stephen as well.
“Your turquoise did turn green,” Jilly reminded me solemnly.
I wanted no more hocus-pocus. This was real, and whether the hand on the spade had wanted my death, or Jilly’s—or both—was something others must handle. Perhaps the police.
Before I could move away, Jilly stopped me. “Look, Lynn! Look out there!”
She pointed toward the sky and I saw the magical sphere of rainbow colors floating against the blue. Bands of red and yellow, blue and green seemed to hang not far off from our ridge, moving in some gentle, higher current of air. The wicker basket suspended beneath the balloon seemed tiny compared with that great, swelling mound of color. Someone in the basket waved, and Jilly waved back.
“That’s Air Dancer!” she cried. “Isn’t she beautiful? I’ve never been up in a balloon, though my mother and father have. Dad was going to take me up for a special treat—before everything went wrong.”
She turned away as though she couldn’t bear the reminder of all that might have been if there’d been no trip to White Moon.
“Perhaps he can take you now, Jilly. Perhaps we can ask him together.”
For a moment she looked hopeful. Then she stared, not at the sky, but back at those spade marks in the earth. “It will be too late,” she said quietly.
I hated the hopelessness in her voice. She had understood all too well the significance of that boulder falling, and at the moment there was no way for me to reassure her—or to reassure myself. Death had come too close to both of us.
As I followed her toward the path that wound down the back of the cliff, I could once more hear the Stones singing behind me—softly, almost sweetly now—and an unwelcome picture formed in my mind of those wicked black rocks laughing among themselves.
This was a longer way down, and we reached the house a half hour later from the direction of the road. As we walked up the drive, we found Carla waiting as usual for us on the deck above, and Jilly pulled me to a halt.
“Don’t tell her what happened,” she whispered. “Please, Lynn, don’t tell anyone what happened.”
“We have to tell your Uncle Julian,” I warned. “But we won’t say anything to Carla. Okay?”
At least if the Stones were still singing, their voices were so soft that they couldn’t reach us. I never wanted to hear that sound again.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Jilly!” Carla cried as we came up the stairs. “Your mother is going to hear about this when she gets home.”
Jilly retreated into herself. She possessed a facility for doing this—like that turtle retreating into its shell. She left nothing outside to be prodded or hurt, and I suspected that Carla would be unable to reach her. I felt unhappy all over again that this should be, and after what had just happened to us, all the more helpless.
Carla turned her attention to me. “Did you have a fall? Your face is bleeding. And you’re a mess—both of you. What happened?”
“It’s my fault,” I told Carla quickly. “I wanted to go for a walk, and Jilly showed me the way along the ridge.” I didn’t need to explain our “fall” or how we reached the ridge, and Carla didn’t seem to care.
“Come along and I’ll help you clean up,” she told Jilly. The little girl obeyed, with only a backward, conspiratorial look for me.
Julian had been wrong about Jilly. She was no “dying” child. She was fighting inwardly to live. Perhaps literally, as well as emotionally.
Once inside, I went straight to Julian’s study. He was alone, packing books into a big carton on his desk. His gaze rested on me briefly, and he must have seen whatever Carla had seen, though he made no comment.
As I walked into the room, I spoke bluntly. “I think someone has just tried to kill Jilly and me.”
He continued to pull books from a shelf and place them in the carton. “Then it’s just as well that you’re going home, Lynn, and that Jilly will be in Charlottesville.”
“Is that all you can say?” I felt more irritated with him than ever before. “Did you really hear me? Or are you off on your mountaintop again? This is reality too—what has just happened.”
He smiled at me sadly. “I heard you, Lynn. Will you tell me about it, please?”
I dropped into a chair and brushed more red dirt from my jeans. I needed to keep my hands busy, so they wouldn’t shake as I told him most of what had happened.
He didn’t stop what he was doing while I talked, though he listened intently. I finished my account with a description of those spade cuts I’d seen in the earth.
“Jilly claims that no one knows about what she calls her secret place. But someone must have known we were going there. Julian, who could have pushed that rock down on us? It didn’t fall by itself—I’m sure of that.”
He shook his head. “Someone who can’t wait for karma and wanted to help destiny along?”
I stared, and he went on wryly.
“You can’t be sure that rock was pushed down on you, Lynn. When we believe in evil, we descend to its level—and that can harm us. This may only be something you’re building up in your own mind. The rock was probably ready to fall of its own weight, since the ground up there had been loosened by rain. What you thought were spade cuts could just as easily have been made by the rock itself.”
“I don’t believe that, Julian. Perhaps the police ought to take a look—while the marks are still there.”
He considered this and shook his head. “Not when you have only a wild supposition to go on. It would stir up more questions for Jilly and Stephen, and they’ve both had enough of that.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said doubtfully.
Julian’s eyes had lost the compelling intensity that I’d seen when I first came. Since Everett’s edict he appeared to have aged, and the magnetism that had been so much a part of his nature had vanished.
“What will happen, will happen,” he said, and the fatalistic words made me angry all over again.
“No! I won’t accept this! We can affect events.”
“Of course. I believe in free will. But sometimes—”
“Julian! You are what holds everything together in this house. Vivian counts on you, and I know Jilly does too. So you can’t give up!”
He turned away from me. “It’s out of my hands. But Lynn, everybody knows about that place of Jilly’s in the woods. She only pretends that it’s a secret. Carla knows that Jilly goes there sometimes, and so do the rest of us, including Paul and Emory. We’ve decided that Jilly needs a retreat and shouldn’t be interfered with too much. It never seemed that anything could harm her there. Now I feel responsible for not making sure that rock was safe. But we still don’t know that it didn’t come down of its own accord.”
“What about the cave and that dangerous climb to the top? She has free access to those.”
“She isn’t supposed to enter the cave or climb to the top from that direction unless some adult is with her. I don’t think she’d have done it today if you hadn’t been forced to take that way out.”
“Jilly told me that her grandfather died up there.”
Julian spoke sadly. “Yes, that was a bad time. Larry was a good friend, and I felt shattered by his death. Did you know that Luther Kersten found him up there?”
This startled me. “How did that happen?”
“We’re not sure. We think Luther must have followed him up. Luther told the police that he was worried about Larry making the climb up the hill, but he never talked much about it later. Not even to Vivian. I hadn’t yet reconciled myself to the possibility of whatever comes after this life, so it was hard to accept his death. Now I can believe that we all go on, and perhaps those who knew and loved Larry will meet him again—though relationships may be changed.”
I
wanted to hold Julian to the facts of this life. “Jilly said Larry was frightened by something. Do you know what frightened him? And how could Jilly know, if he was unconscious when Luther found him?”
“Luther talked to him for a few moments before he lapsed into a coma. He never returned to consciousness, so there was no way to learn the truth.”
I told Julian what Jilly had said about the “wickedness” of the Singing Stones, and how she had placed a pebble from her collection at the base of each of the nine old men.
Julian sighed. “There’s a certain terrible beauty about the Stones when they sing, but I don’t believe they are evil. In fact, I have reason to be grateful to them because of a time in the past when they saved my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“That was in another life—long ago.”
I gave up. Julian saw everyone and everything as basically good, and I wondered—unexpectedly—if that made him a dangerous person. Someone blind to evil might never see what lay around him. He even believed that Everett was basically good, and only misled. Had he believed that of Luther too?
“May I come in?” Vivian stood at the open door.
I got up to leave, not wanting to tell my story all over again, but she blocked my way, looking from me to Julian. “You were talking about Larry, weren’t you?”
“Lynn has just learned where he died,” Julian said. “She was up there with Jilly.”
Vivian looked shocked. “Up at the Singing Stones? But why—?”
“Julian will tell you,” I said.
She noted my scratches and dishevelment. “Lynn, whatever has happened to you?”
“Julian will tell you,” I repeated. “Now I’d like to clean up and put something on my scratches.”
“Would you like me to come with you? You look shaken up.”
“Thanks, I’m fine.”
As I started for the door, she held out a large brown envelope. “I’ve brought you something you might like to have, Lynn. These were in the box of Stephen’s things that Jilly brought back from the office. Stephen must have separated these pictures from the later ones of Oriana and Jilly. I took them to him and he told me to throw them away. But I felt they should come to you.”
I took the envelope and got away as quickly as I could. I had no wish to look at old pictures, any more than Stephen had. Nevertheless, when I reached my small sitting room I sat down, unable to help myself, and went through them deliberately, one by one.
Stephen must have collected the reminders of our brief married life that had been caught on film and placed them in the box at his office. Strange that he hadn’t thrown them away immediately. That might have been better for me—so they couldn’t appear now as souvenirs of another time, when I’d been so innocently happy.
Mostly the pictures were snapshots we’d taken of each other in Charlottesville. Though there was one of us together on an outing we’d made to nearby Monticello. I still remembered that bright, windy day. We’d stood in line with Sunday tourists and filed through the beautiful domed building that had been Thomas Jefferson’s home. Monticello had been built to be lived in, with all sorts of imaginative details that Jefferson had worked into it. Stephen, as an architect, had been there many times, and he was still fascinated with every innovative touch. I’d hung on his words that day—as I always did. There had been so little I could ever contribute, except as a listener.
He’d asked a man to snap a picture of us together on Monticello’s front steps, with white columns rising behind us. Stephen’s expression in the picture was serious—but strong and whole and almost arrogant. He’d been so sure of himself in those days, sure of his future—of all he meant to do with his life. Beside him, I seemed terribly young. I wasn’t looking at the camera but at my husband. I’d thought then—believed with all my heart—that it would always be like this.
Too young, too young, I thought bitterly. I’d had so little to bring to Stephen—and he hadn’t waited for me to grow up, or tried to help me learn what I might become.
Impatient with my own feelings, I put the pictures back in the envelope and almost threw them into the wastebasket. But I couldn’t quite do that, and I set them aside on a table. I was no longer the young girl who had married Stephen Asche, any more than he was that arrogant, self-confident young man he had once been. These pictures had a story to tell—a story I’d never wanted to face. It dealt with the failings of a young man and woman who had never been tested—who hadn’t even begun to grow up. They belonged to a lifetime ago, and for me, those two were strangers I hardly knew.
There was no value now in decrying my own youth or Stephen’s untried state. He wasn’t my problem anymore, but his daughter was, and it made no difference that she was Oriana’s child. If events had gone differently, Jilly might never have existed, and another child—who would never be born—would be in her place.
What will happen, will happen, Julian had said. But I couldn’t sit back and accept that philosophy as he was apparently willing to do. Tomorrow Meryl would come to take Jilly for her visit to Charlottesville, whisking her out from under Oriana’s nose. I wasn’t sure this was the right thing to have happen, but I couldn’t change Meryl’s plans. What I did know was that I must stay a little while longer. However, I didn’t want to see Oriana when she came, and there was a possible way to avoid that.
I looked up the number in a phone book and called Meryl at the farm, where she would be until she came here tomorrow. When she answered, I explained quickly, “Oriana is coming home, and I don’t want to be here, so I’m going to Charlottesville. I can stay in a hotel until she’s gone. I’ll let you know where I’ll be.”
“Don’t be silly,” Meryl said. “Of course you’ll stay with us. A good idea. When I pick Jilly up tomorrow early, you can follow in your car and come right to our house. Then I won’t have to babysit with Jilly every minute. But Lynn, why are you staying on? What can you possibly accomplish here?”
Now that I knew about her trysts with Paul, she might very well want me gone, but I’d have to disappoint her.
“Perhaps I can help to keep Jilly alive,” I said directly.
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Good-bye, Meryl.”
She stopped me before I could hang up. “Wait! Are you all right, Lynn? You sound a little strange.”
“I feel pretty strange,” I told her, and put down the phone before she could ask anything more.
When I went into my bathroom to stare at myself in the mirror, I saw crusted blood along the scratch on my cheek, but that was superficial. My hair was a mess, and my coat was smeared with red dust. All of which could be easily repaired. I wasn’t so sure about the look in my eyes—a look of uncried tears. Not because I’d nearly lost my life, but because I’d been looking at a batch of old pictures that belonged to two people who had lived in another time. These were tears I didn’t dare to shed.
13
“Anybody home?” That was Paul—from the other room.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I called back. I took off my coat and washed my face quickly. When my hair was reasonably smooth I went out to see what he wanted.
Today he’d dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a yellow scarf at the neck. He was occupied with the envelope of pictures I’d left on the table, and he turned with that slight smile that always irritated me.
“Interesting,” he said, holding out the shot of Stephen and me at Monticello.
It was difficult not to behave exactly like the young woman in those pictures and rush to snatch them out of his hands. It would do me no good to be angry with Paul. He didn’t matter. Especially since he would be leaving shortly.
I took the pictures from him and slipped them into the envelope. “You wanted something?”
He stood balancing on the balls of his feet, his arms folded. “Look, Miss McLeod, I know you don’t like me or approve of me, but Stephen�
�s my friend, and you’ve done nothing but upset his life since you came here.”
As Stephen was upsetting mine. “Has something new happened?”
“That trip you took to White Moon wasn’t good for him. Now he’s almost sick over Jilly nearly getting killed by that rock. You should have kept her away from that place.”
“Who told you about that?”
Paul’s derisive smile never wavered. “Jilly did. It’s a wonder that big rock didn’t squash you both flat.”
“I agree,” I said. “It was upsetting for us, too. The question is how it came to roll down at all.”
“Somebody could have pushed it.” He enjoyed baiting me.
“Do you know anyone who would want Jilly injured or killed?”
“Maybe you were the target. Maybe it would be better for everyone if you’d just go back where you came from.”
“Is this what you came to tell me?”
He shrugged elaborately. “Not exactly. Stephen wants to see you. But you don’t have to go, do you? You can just take off and not ever see him again. Before his wife comes home. That might be better for him—and for you as well.”
“Tell him I’ll be there soon,” I said, and turned my back on Paul. He laughed as though something struck him as funny, and went off without further comment. I returned to the bathroom mirror and put on lipstick with a determined hand, then brushed my hair again and pinned it. I couldn’t do anything about the scratch on my cheek, and I didn’t know why I was fixing myself up anyway. Stephen wouldn’t care how I looked, any more than I really cared.
When I returned to the sitting room the envelope of pictures still lay on a table, and I picked them up and took them with me when I went downstairs, though I wasn’t sure why.
Stephen was inside, but his chair had been wheeled near the glass doors, where he could look out at the changing light on the mountains. When I came in, Paul went quickly to turn his chair around. Having been summoned, I stood before Stephen, waiting. I felt none of the ease that had grown between us for a little while earlier that day.
The Singing Stones Page 17