Roan

by Jennifer Blake

  “I could maybe bring you some magazines,” he offered, flinging a glance at the door at the same time in a clear indication that he saw the errand as a means of escape.

  “That would be wonderful. What kind do you have?”

  “Huh, that might be a problem…”

  Tory hid a smile as she watched the dull-red color creep up his neck. “Not girlie magazines?”

  “Lord, no! Dad would ground me for life. Just stuff that wouldn’t interest you.” He lowered his voice to a near mumble. “Livestock magazines, fishing, bow hunting. Like that.”

  “Guy-type things.”

  Jake agreed, then his expression brightened. “But some of my grandmother’s old magazines are still up in the attic. She used to read about gardening, sewing, decorating, stuff like that.”

  “Much more my type of…stuff,” Tory assured him.

  “Be right back,” he said, and whisked himself out the door.

  She watched the opening where Roan’s son had disappeared for long seconds. Then she shook her head with a wry smile and turned her attention to the tray he’d brought her.

  The food was surprisingly good, slices of a wonderful smoked ham served with fluffy scrambled eggs, wheat toast and blackberry jam that tasted of homegrown fruit. She’d have preferred a half a grapefruit and an English muffin, but was in no mood to be picky. It was possible that she needed the protein to rebuild her strength, anyway, though she might have to hit the gym when she was well again.

  Roan was right about his son; Jake was dependable. He brought the magazines he’d promised and piled them on the bedside table after wiping the dust that coated them with his shirt. They were practically collector’s items with a fair amount of entertainment value in their dated pages. When he had gone, taking her empty tray with him, she flipped through one or two. Nothing seemed to hold her interest long, however, maybe because she was keeping one ear open for the sound of a car on the drive. After a while, she let the magazine fall open on her chest and closed her eyes.

  By the time she woke, a variety of cabin fever had set in. She lay staring at the smirking cupid above her for a few minutes, then sat up and reached for her robe. Roan had not said, directly, that she couldn’t leave her room. House arrest implied that she had the run of the premises as long as she didn’t try to leave, now didn’t it?

  The house was quiet. The floor shifted occasionally with an arthritic creak of aged wood as she moved over it. There were few signs of life: no voices, no radio, no TV. The clutter of modern living, the headphones and remotes, newspapers and full wastebaskets, boxes of tissues and glossy photographs, were conspicuously absent. In spite of the cool air that streamed through the floor vents, she felt almost as if she were in another century. The antique pieces that lined the walls and Oriental rugs that made islands of color along the polished river of the hallway floor would have been just as perfect a hundred years ago as they were now. The mellow light that came through the French doors at either end of the hall must have fallen just so for generations. It was a strange sensation yet comforting in its aura of permanence. She wished, for just a moment, that she could hold on to it. And she wondered if this was what Roan and Jake felt when they thought of how long Benedicts had lived and loved within the walls of this place they called home.

  She looked into the formal parlor to the right of the front entrance. With her bare toes sinking into the rug, she stared up in appreciation at the ornate cornice moldings and carved center medallion that supported the crystal chandelier. Years of relentless summer sun had faded the heavy drapes at the windows but had not dimmed the luster of their silk. One of the chairs had threadbare corners on its brocade seat as if it were a favorite; still the room felt unused, as static as a museum. The little things that might have made it more inviting were missing, the potted plants, table scarves, interesting bibelots or memorabilia. Apparently, this household of men thought they were just fine without them, but Tory fairly itched to bring the place to life. That was one thing she was good at, decorating strange surroundings to make them more welcoming. She’d had plenty of practice, after all.

  As she moved back out into the hall, she glanced through the glass of the entrance doors. A patrol car was parked on the drive in the shade of the huge oak. Her heart thumped in her chest before she realized that it must be Cal’s unit, as Roan called the police vehicles. For a single second, she’d thought the sheriff was back.

  She saw no sign of Cal, however. He must be patrolling the grounds, or else had taken up a post in the cool breezeway provided by the carriageway under the house. Given the heat that flowed through the old, wavy glass, she could hardly blame him. Of course, it was also possible that he’d stepped inside downstairs to cool off.

  She turned sharply at the thought, raking the corners of the hall with her gaze. Nothing moved. No uniformed man emerged from the shadows, no ghosts of former residents floated down it length. Only tiny particles of dust danced and gleamed in the air she had stirred with her movement. Her small laugh ended abruptly. This creeping about in a strange house was making her jumpy.

  A dining room lay on the opposite side of the hall. She glanced in, but saw little of interest. Beside the door, however, was a speckled mirror from the Directoire period. It wasn’t the beauty of the gilt frame that caught her attention, however, but her own reflection. In the clear light, she could see how wild she looked, with unkempt hair, shadows under her eyes, scraped cheek and a yellowish bruise on the edge of her jaw. It was a wonder she hadn’t scared off the occupants of Dog Trot, she thought. Still, concern for one’s appearance was supposed to be a sign of returning health, wasn’t it? In that case, she must be getting better by leaps and bounds.

  Three bedrooms other than her own took up space on the second-floor level. She identified one as Jake’s from the rock music poster and photos of hounds at field trials. The other looked as if it might have belonged to his granddad. The master bedroom was easy to identify as well, due to its back location with lake view, expansive size, massive antique bed and armoire, and the ancestral portrait that topped the marble fireplace. The police scanner that sat on the desk in the corner was also a dead giveaway. It was a handsome room in a traditional, utilitarian manner, as modern as it needed to be, but not an iota more. Tory didn’t bother stepping inside. What the man who occupied it was like was all there in plain sight.

  At the end of the hall was a stairwell. Since most of the activity she’d heard while in bed had come from that direction, she expected to find the kitchen at the bottom, and she wasn’t disappointed. Next to it was a family room. Here, at last, was all the sprawling masculine comfort that she’d half expected to see upstairs; the leather armchairs and sofa, braided rug, and big screen TV.

  Jake looked up from where he lay in an overstuffed lounge chair playing a handheld video game and watching a music video on TV at the same time. Surprise widened his eyes. He scrambled to his feet, even as the big bloodhound lying on the rug made a growling sound deep in his throat that warned her not to come any closer.

  “You need something?” the boy asked.

  “I—Lunch, maybe?” She tried the effect of a smile to go with the spur of the moment request. It didn’t seem politic to admit she was snooping.

  “Sure.” He set aside his game and reached to give the big dog a reassuring pat. “What do you want?”

  “What do you have?” she countered.

  “Don’t know, but we can look. I’m hungry, too.”

  She was grateful, at that moment, for the insatiable appetite of youth; it certainly made things much easier for her.

  The dog followed them into the kitchen and flopped down near the door. As Jake stuck his head in the refrigerator in quest of inspiration, Tory sank down onto one of the ladder-back chairs pulled up to the scarred butcher-block table that centered the kitchen. It felt good to rest; she’d used more of her small store of strength than she’d realized.

  The floors in this part of the house were of red bric
k, handmade, she would guess, and glazed in recent years with some type of protective finish. The old bricks were cool and slick under her feet, though the surfaces were uneven. She rubbed her toes back and forth in the grooves where they were grouted together as she watched Jake take out cheese, peaches and what appeared to be a whole ham.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” she said. “You must be used to taking care of yourself while your father works.” She tried to keep her tone light, hoping the boy would think she was just being polite, not trying to pry information out of him.

  “I guess they think I’m old enough now.”

  “They?”

  “Dad and my grandfather. I think I mentioned that Pop lived with us until a couple of years ago.”

  “Yes, of course, the traveling man.” Tory said with a whimsical smile.

  “Yeah, well, sort of.” Jake shook back his hair as he took out a knife and began to carve generous slices of ham. “Pop was pretty broke up when Grandma died six years ago. It was a long time before he was interested in anything except taking care of me. Then he bought an RV. Now he’s seeing the world—or at least the United States.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  He glanced at her with a grin. “He especially likes it out West, like Nevada, Utah. He promised to come back and get me before school starts again. We’ll head for the Grand Canyon, stop where we want along the way, see what there is to see. You want a pickle?”

  Tory shook her head in answer to the tacked-on question. At the same time, she felt the slightest twinge of envy. The highways in South Florida were packed with RVs, especially in the winter as visitors made their escape from the cold up north. Funny, but she’d always thought more about the cramped living space than the freedom. It was one more thing on which to adjust her thinking.

  Jake slathered bread with mayonnaise, piled ham on it, stacked fresh tomato and cheese slices on top of the ham, then added a second piece of bread. He slid the plate in front of Tory with a flip of his wrist, then brought a huge glass of milk to go with it.

  “Anyway, we’re not just going to look at the canyon when we get there,” he went on as he turned to make his own sandwich. “We’re going to hike from rim to rim. You start real early in the morning, spend the night in the canyon.”

  The touch of male bravado in his voice made Tory smile, as did his valiant attempt not to let his excitement show. “That will be a change from Turn-Coupe, won’t it? I suspect nothing much happens here in the summer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jake said grandly. “A houseboat blew up at the River Pirate Days Festival last year. That was cool.”

  Cool. Right. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not too bad,” he answered as he sat down and pulled his own snack in front of him. “Dad and Cousin Luke jumped in the river and pulled out a bunch of people, so no one was killed. Oh, and a bunch of yo-yos kidnapped a woman out on the lake last summer, too. Luke’s wife, she is now. Sometimes we have to run treasure hunters off our land, too, especially around festival time when people start thinking about pirate gold.”

  “I can see I was wrong,” she said gravely. “You have a lot of thrilling things going on. But what was that about pirates?”

  “River pirates, not the ocean kind. They’re supposed to have buried the stuff they took from travelers back in the old days, gold, silver, jewelry and so on. We don’t allow anybody to come around digging for it, though. It leaves holes all over the place, and lord knows the dogs scratch out enough already.”

  Tory was almost as fascinated by the boy’s willingness to chat now as by his tale of buried gold and other adventures. He’d apparently decided that she was acceptable company, or else he was bored with being alone. Had she perhaps found an ally? If so, forging a bond was a major priority.

  She asked, “Have you looked for this treasure? Is it really there?”

  “We used to dig all the time, me and my buddies, when we were kids.”

  Tory drank from her milk glass to hide her smile. Jake wasn’t exactly Methuselah. “But you didn’t find anything?”

  “Few old square nails and horseshoes. Then we decided it just wasn’t enough sugar for a dime.”

  “What?” She looked up him in perplexity.

  He met her gaze, his own surprised. “One of Pop’s favorite sayings. Means not enough return for the work.”

  “Oh. Well, why not make it easier? They have great metal detectors these days.” She’d seen people with them on the beach all the time.

  Jake shrugged with a trace of red in his face. “It’s just not that much fun anymore. They say old Mike Fink buried his treasure in the Indian mounds down by the river. We’ve played on them all our lives, picking up arrowheads, pieces of pottery and bits of bone. A couple of years ago, some guys came out from LSU in Baton Rouge. They told us the hills were burial mounds, and sacred to the Native Americans, sort of like digging up the Benedict family graveyard. Seems best to just let the mounds be.”

  It was an endearing attitude. With more warmth than she’d expected to feel toward Roan’s son, she said, “I once read that pirates buried their gold near dead men so the ghosts would protect it. Guess this Mike Fink must have been pretty smart.”

  “Dad says he was just so lazy he took the easy way out, if he ever buried anything at all. He figures the old coot spent it as fast as he got it.”

  That sounded like Roan. “You mentioned a festival?” she asked.

  The boy’s face brightened. “It’s really neat. Luke is one of the pirate leaders. They come up the river on a boat and invade the town, grab prisoners and hold them for ransom. Just pretend, of course, but Luke said I could be a pirate on his boat next year.”

  Tory tipped her head with a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t be someone you’d like to kidnap, now, would there?”

  “Who me?” he asked, his eyes a little too wide.

  “Do you have a costume? You’ll need something really neat, with a wide sash and a sword.” Something to impress the girl he apparently wanted to kidnap.

  “A bunch of stuff like that’s up in the attic. I used to drag it out for Halloween.” He shot an appraising glance over her. “You could probably wear most of the women’s costumes, long dresses and hats and stuff, though they’re kind of small. Grandma used to dress up every year for the festival ball, and my mom, too, sometimes. I have a picture of her looking like Cinderella or something.”

  “A recent one?” She was frankly curious to know how long Roan had been divorced, though she wasn’t sure why it mattered.

  Jake gave her an odd look. “No way. She left when I was two.”

  “That long ago.” She couldn’t imagine leaving a child that age behind.

  “It wasn’t her fault. She was real depressed. The shrink she went to told her she was stifled, or something, that Dad was part of her problem and she needed out of the marriage. So she took off. Now she’s got a new husband and lives in France.”

  Tory wasn’t sure which was more startling, that Roan’s wife had opted out of marriage so easily or Jake’s casual manner about it. He’d been much younger than she was when her own mother died, of course, so had fewer memories and regrets for what could have been.

  In tentative tones, she said, “Sometimes a divorce can be a good thing.”

  “Yeah,” Jake agreed. “My mom had a rough time growing up. Her mother was sick all the time, and her dad never kept a job more than a month or two—too high-tempered and set on doing things his way. He ran around with other women, too. One night he went out and never came home again. Her mother didn’t have much of a way to make a living, so after a while she went to live with a brother. My mom didn’t like it there, so she asked my dad to marry her. Then when she was pregnant with me, her mom died. That same year, they found her dad in the woods, nothing but a heap of bones—people figured he got too friendly with somebody’s wife and the husband fixed the problem. Anyway, Mom got worse after I was born. They called it post-something.”

  “Post
partum depression,” Tory supplied.

  “Yeah. She just never got over it, not for years.”

  Tory was silent as she digested this bit of family history. Somehow, it seemed odd to think of Roan with a woman who had such mental scars. He was so strong and secure within himself; surely he would have chosen someone similar? Of course, he might not have realized how disturbed Jake’s mother was; clinical depression could take many forms, going unrecognized until it was too late.

  “People don’t get to choose their parents or the kind of life they have as a child,” she said quietly. “It’s what they do afterward that counts. That’s when they get to make life the way they want it to be.” It was a lesson she’d learned the hard way, and was still learning.

  Jake dipped his head in agreement. “That’s what Dad says, too.”

  It was nice to know she and the sheriff agreed on something.

  They finished their snack, and Tory helped Jake put the dishes in the dishwasher. She was replacing the pickle jar, when he said, “So, about the clothes in the attic, you want to look? Might be something up there you could wear around the house here.”

  She lifted a brow, then stuck a model’s pose while holding the pickle jar in one hand. “You don’t like my outfit? It’s hot off the Paris runways.”

  “Yeah, and so becoming, too,” he quipped. “Especially the way it makes you look broad across the back.”

  She twisted her head to glance over her shoulder. “Now that you mention it, I suppose there’s room for improvement.”

  “Also room for a herd of elephants,” he muttered.

  “I heard that. But I don’t know if I’m up to climbing any more stairs than it takes to get back to bed.”

  “Even after resting and refueling?” Concern overlay the hopefulness in his eyes that were so like his dad’s.

  “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve been up very long, you know.”