Jake looked at her over the dog’s head, his eyes sad and intense, searing her. Did he realize how he was looking at her—how openly greedy it was? She clung to the sight, hypnotized by the vivid hunger, the intimacy, unable to do anything but absorb him as he was absorbing her.
Her hand was inches from his, reaching toward his fingers as if he were a magnet. Don’t touch him. Don’t give him an excuse to leave. She jerked her hand back and looked away, trembling, miserable.
Jake did the same.
Smoke curled upward from the campfire and mingled with the blue-gray cloud around Clara’s head. Seated on a wide, low stump with her skirt spread around her in queenly style, she puffed on a long-stemmed pipe, cradling its smooth soapstone bowl in her knotty fingers. With her other hand she guided the fragrant tobacco smoke over her head.
Jake sat cross-legged next to her, staring into the fire. She handed the pipe to him and he copied her. With this ancient sacred ceremony he was calmed and strengthened, welcomed home by dreams the smoke carried into the invisible stream of past, present, and future. He breathed his promises into those currents.
Clara took the pipe again, emptied the bowl into the fire, and watched the flames. “Tell me what you’ve kept secret all these years,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”
“Alexandra killed my family. She sent that man here. He hated me, and she knew it. I was the one who found him and sent him to prison. I knew he’d stolen from Samantha’s mother. Alexandra sent him to do that too.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed. She absorbed the startling information in troubled silence, as if nothing surprised her. “I see,” she said finally. “And you learned these things the way you always have.”
He nodded grimly. “Without any way to prove them. And wishing they weren’t true.”
Clara sighed. “They would break Samantha’s heart.”
“Yes.”
“But they are breaking yours already. Hatred and revenge are ravenmockers too. They’ll eat you up.”
“If revenge were all I cared about, it would be easy. A gun. My bare hands.” He looked at her with deadly calm. “I’ve lived with murderers. Killing is easy when you don’t love anything or anyone, including yourself.”
“Hmmm. But you do love.”
“I love Samantha. I want our life back. Without shadows over it.”
“Then tell her what you know. And how you know it.”
“Ask her to believe in something that would shame her the rest of her life, something I can only feel?”
“You’re not so afraid she wouldn’t believe you. You’re afraid she will. Because she couldn’t rest until she punished her aunt. But ain’t that her right? You can’t take away the shadow over her. Only she can do that.”
“You told me, more than once, not to draw a ravenmocker’s attention,” he said, his voice low and strained. “I learned that lesson finally. I’ve learned how to use my … gift. It cuts both ways. I can use it to hurt people, and this time I will.”
Clara drew back, looking angry and alarmed. “You learned nothing. Why do you think the stone stopped talking to you when you was just a boy? You do what’s right—you open your heart to your wife, and she’ll do right by you too. She’s wise to keep the stone away from you. When your mind is clear, she’ll give it back. Then you can listen to it. It will speak to you. Then you’ll know what to do.”
“I already know what to do. I’ve had years to work on it. Other things speak to me.”
Clara shook her head furiously and gestured toward Bo, who was stretched out, asleep, on Jake’s sleeping bag beside the fire. “You’re as bad as old Bo. Only seeing with one eye. Only seein’ what’s straight in front of you. That’s not enough.”
“The fucking hell it isn’t.” Jake took a deep breath and shut his eyes. Shame twisted his stomach. This was how much he’d changed. Talking this way to an elder, a medicine woman. He bent his head to Clara’s knees with silent apology.
She sighed heavily and patted his head. “That was prison talkin’. My brother give me a VCR a few years ago. I rent movies. I’ve heard worse.”
“Not from me before. Not ever.”
She took him by the chin and raised his head as if he were a young boy. He opened his eyes and found grim sorrow in her watchful scrutiny. “I told Granny Raincrow I’d look out for you and Ellie,” she said. “I ain’t done a very good job of it. If you’re set on doing something crazy, I ain’t goin’ to turn my back on you.”
“I need your help.” He reached behind him and pulled a thick brown envelope from a backpack. “I want you to mail this for me.”
Clara bent over and eyed the address in the firelight. “What business you got with the big newspaper in Raleigh?” Her mouth worked silently, mental wheels turning as she glanced from the envelope to him. “Your granny used to get feelings off of pictures in the paper. Like who was lying, and who was scared, and who had something to hide. She always went over pictures before she’d go to vote.”
“It works,” Jake answered carefully. “Real well.”
Clara stared at him, then at the envelope again. “Ain’t got a return address on it.”
“Or anything else that will tell where it came from. Or who.”
She took the envelope by her tobacco-stained fingertips that had coaxed babies into the world, healed the spiritually wounded, and waved witches away from helpless souls. “If you’re messin’ with Alexandra and her folks, she’ll find out.”
“There’s no way she’ll find out.” Jake leaned back and looked into the fire with bitter satisfaction. Hidden and treacherous. Not a proud revenge. Not one that would clear his name or tell the world what Alexandra Vanderveer Lomax had done to him and everyone he loved. But one that would quietly strangle her with her own ambitions. When he finished with her, she wouldn’t be a threat to him or Samantha anymore. Samantha would never find out he’d been involved, or why.
And then they would have a future.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
“This is such an honor. I was so thrilled when you agreed to drop by and discuss your work. I mean, having a member of the governor’s family sell her creations through my gallery—well! It would be quite a coup.” The brightly dressed woman fussed around Sam as if the mere sight of her would swell the gallery’s reputation.
Sam smiled vaguely, twisting her hands around a thick portfolio until her knuckles ached. So the word was out. Whether she liked it or not, the well-heeled social set in Pandora valued her for her connection to Alexandra and Orrin. Alexandra was influencing her life again, though Sam still hadn’t seen her.
“You never explained how you heard about me,” she told the woman carefully.
“Oh? Didn’t I mention that your aunt has been raving about you? She’s so proud of you.” The woman smiled at Charlotte. “And you also, of course.” Charlotte stood beside Sam, wearing a shapeless pink jumper, her attitude hidden behind black sunglasses. Charlotte carried a second photo album. “I bet,” Charlotte answered dryly.
The gallery owner looked at her askance. Sam shot Charlotte a warning look, and Charlotte clamped her mouth shut. Aunt Alex, raving about them? That made no sense, and worried her. Sam turned her attention to the woman again. “I assure you, my tapestries will sell on their own merits.”
The large shop on Pandora’s main street was filled with paintings and sculptures. Sam glanced around at the polished wood floor, demure, creamy walls, and delicate track lights overhead. The place was filled with paintings and sculptures. No cracker-barrel work by local artists, no farm scenes painted on logging saws, no ceramic cookie jars in the shape of Santa Claus. No, this was fine art, which meant plenty of indecipherable watercolors and porcelain blobs masquerading as nude studies. A cool, spotless, whispering sort of place that made her skin itch under her jeans and silk blouse. I should have worn overalls and a tractor cap, she thought grimly. Just to cause more gossip.
But she needed an outlet for her work, needed to s
ettle into a semblance of a new life here. It was another way of showing Jake that their lives could return to normal.
“Well, dear,” the owner said, “what kind of little weavings do you do?”
Charlotte leaned in front of Sam. “Little weavings?” she repeated darkly. “Lady, her little weavings are one-of-a-kind collector’s items. The list of people who own her little weavings includes more than a few names you’ve seen in movie credits.”
Sam jostled Charlotte out of the way. “I had a loyal following in California.”
The woman looked flustered. “Why, I … I knew only that you were some sort of model.” Her eyes skittered over Sam’s face and body with a furtive assessment Sam had encountered often over the years. The kind of scrutiny that said They must perform miracles with lighting and makeup.
“I’m a hand model,” Sam explained wearily. She raised one hand, which was covered in a white cotton glove. “Commercials and print ads. A few films. When an actress has stubby fingers with chewed nails, I’m called in to substitute for her hands in closeups.”
“That’s amazing! The only thing they photograph are your hands?”
“I’m a spare part. It’s a living.” Sam tapped the portfolio. “This is my real work. What I hope to concentrate on now.”
She started to launch into a list of interior decorators who’d represented her tapestries in Los Angeles, but the shop door opened.
Alexandra walked in. Sam froze. Dimly she heard Charlotte’s sharp inhalation, an anxious hiss of surprise.
Their aunt had weathered the years well. Her Barbie-doll face had softened except for the cool, shrewd blue eyes. She was thicker around the waist and hips, but still trim. There was the look of well-preserved youth about her, an athletic elegance under her pale green jacket and straight-legged trousers. The honey-gold scarf tucked smoothly under the jacket’s plain neckline matched the color of her shoulder-length hair. Everything about her breathed money and style, pride, self-assurance.
And she’d ambushed them.
“Surprise!” she said happily, smiling. “I thought I’d come by and talk both of you into having lunch with me.”
Ten years, a history of ruthless manipulation, no love lost between them, and she acted as if nothing had happened. Stunned, then instantly wary, Sam studied her speechlessly. Alexandra waltzed over to her, slid a slim arm around her shoulders, then smiled at the gallery owner. “I’m hijacking them, Darla. Forgive me.”
“Oh, certainly, Mrs. Lomax. Samantha, just leave your albums. We can talk later. I don’t have the slightest doubt that we can do business.”
Sam handed her the portfolio, took the other one from Charlotte’s stony clutches, and set it on a table. “Thank you.” She turned to Alexandra, meeting her inscrutable blue gaze with one just as unswerving. “Yes, let’s do lunch.”
Alexandra smiled wider. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Marvelous. Come along. I have a driver waiting.” She glanced toward Charlotte. “There’s a first-class little restaurant on the lake. You’ll love it.”
“Sammie,” Charlotte said, her voice vibrating with anger.
“We’ll follow you in my car,” Sam said.
“Oh, no, that would be pointless. Please—”
“I’m short on time. I told Jake I’d be back soon.” A wistful, unremorseful lie. Jake disappeared into the mountains beyond the Cove every day. He didn’t know or care where she went, or if she ever returned.
Alexandra’s smile hardened at the edges. “All right,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t want to upset Jake.”
She had left the front door unlocked. The instant he touched it he’d sensed that she always left the door that way for him.
Jake moved through their house, the house he’d built for Samantha, for the children they should have had by now, the unknown children who whispered to him when he slept. He hoped they were more than dreams. He couldn’t see the future.
This was the first time he’d set foot in their house since he’d come home. Like Samantha, it brought him too close to surrender. He’d waited until she’d gone up to town. Just this once, alone, he would indulge the raw, desperate hunger to share her life.
He went slowly through each room, running his hands over the familiar furniture, remembering the sight of her sitting at her loom, of her stretched out on the couch wearing nothing but one of his thin T-shirts, of her standing by the windows in the big front room, delicately silhouetted by sunlight. Of shy mornings at the kitchen table, when they had glanced at each other and then away, smiling.
He walked into their bedroom but couldn’t bear to touch the bed. The quilt she’d made for him long before they’d married was neatly arranged on it. The dreamcatcher he’d made for her still hung on one rounded, knobby bedpost. His hunger was painful, a frenzy that broke cold sweat on his face. He lay awake at night and thought about her here, in their bed, dragging her hands over her body in the same bereft, frantic way he touched his own.
He glimpsed himself in a full-length mirror beside the dresser and stared. He saw a stranger with haunted eyes under unkempt black hair, high cheekbones sunken and shadowed by beard stubble, a hard face. He saw big shoulders hunched in an attitude of perpetual intimidation, a sweat-soaked gray football jersey with the sleeves torn out at the shoulders, thick arms that ended in big-knuckled hands, the crude blue tattoo. He saw dirt-stained jeans stretched tight over a blatant, rigid outline.
This was how Samantha saw him too. But she still left the door unlocked.
He turned and left the room, feeling his way blindly. When his head cleared, he was standing before the closed door of a spare bedroom. Closed doors made him feel restless, angry, even when he was outside them. He shoved the door open.
The small room was crammed, floor to ceiling, with cardboard boxes. She’d left narrow aisles between the stacks; he had to angle his shoulders to slide between them. She’d labeled the contents of each box on one side, with methodical care, in thick black marking pen. On one side of the aisle he counted a dozen marked Sweaters, and five marked Shirts—Casual.
He felt troubled, bewildered. This clothes hoarding was something new, something she’d never done before. Of course she’d had a comfortable life in California, one he’d spent the years trying to picture with endless dedication. What had he wanted—for her to live like a nun in his honor? No, he’d wanted her to survive, to be happy.
But he hadn’t pictured her going on shopping sprees.
Angry at her, angry at himself for condemning whatever had given her pleasure, he pulled a box from the top of one stack, dropped it unceremoniously, and squatted on the heels of his dusty hiking boots before it. Nice boxes, with removable lids. Frowning, he pushed the lid aside. Sweaters. He spoke the word under his breath as if it were nasty, then sank both hands into the careful folds of a luxurious black pullover with a wide band of gold around the shoulders.
The instant he touched it, he knew. It was for him, not her. A vivid scene flashed in his mind. One of those expensive shops for men’s clothing, her standing at a darkly paneled counter with this sweater in her hands. Christmas garland on the counter’s edge. Her eyes sad and tired. Buying a Christmas present she couldn’t give to him, pretending he was with her.
And he had been, even if she didn’t know it. His throat ached. He closed the box and put it back in place, then moved among the rest, pulling them down, opening them with shaking hands. Trousers. Jeans. Ties. A leather jacket. A camel-hair coat. Boxes filled with colognes. Boxes filled with belts, suspenders, handkerchiefs. Even socks and underwear.
Ten years of clothing for an invisible man.
“She set us up,” Charlotte said again as Sam parked the car in the graveled lot before a delicate whitewashed house huddled in a grove of tall firs by the lake. Their aunt’s sedan already sat by the entrance. A driver in suit and tie held the car door for her. Alexandra rose gracefully from the backseat, then looked over at them.
Sam gritted her teeth. “I know she did. She wan
ted that woman to think we’re one happy trio. As if this isn’t the first time we’ve seen her since we came home.”
“This isn’t home.” Charlotte slung a large leather purse over one shoulder, jerked her sunglasses off, and stared at Sam hard. “It stopped being home the day the Raincrows died. We never should have come back. She won’t let us alone. You’ll always be caught between her and Jake.”
Sam gripped her hands. “I don’t want any more trouble. The past is finished, you hear? We’re not kids now. She has no control over either of us—no control over how I lead my life, or over Jake. I’m going to put an end to any doubts about that. I’ll do as I please and be perfectly civil to her whenever our paths cross.” Sam tugged at Charlotte’s steely fingers. “I’m not going to worry about Tim either. He’s got too much at stake in his political career to risk stirring up an old feud. I know you’re afraid of him. He won’t bother us. I promise you.”
Charlotte sagged a little. “Sammie, I came back here because of you. You’re the only family I care about.”
“Then help me move forward. I can’t fight everyone—you, and Alexandra, and Tim, and Jake too. The past can’t hurt us. Jake has to believe that, or we’ll never—” Her throat ached, and she had to stop.
“Okay, Sammie, okay.” Charlotte squeezed her hands worriedly, but looked over at their aunt with narrowed eyes. “I hope you’re right.”
“Well, ladies.” Alexandra leaned back in a wicker chair and studied them. Her voice had a measured tone, as insidious as acid etching its way into glass. The time for a reckoning had come. They were alone in a room that overlooked the lake, at a table set with linen and crystal and a bouquet of jonquils in a bud vase. “The last time I saw you, we’d made a rather nice truce. I thought we had some peaceful times ahead of us. But then you left without a word to me. Was it that hard, Samantha? Was the idea of accepting my help so repugnant to you, really?”
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