Stardust Valley (Firefly Hollow Book 9)

by T. L. Haddix

  Remembering those words, how tortured Noah’s voice had been as he’d forced them from his throat, still gave Owen chills. So did the potential repercussions of what had happened.

  Owen was a shape-shifter, able to turn into a wolf or a deer at will. The ability had come from his mother’s family, and he’d passed it down to two of his children, Rachel and Amelia, though the girls could only turn into one animal each. His sons, John and Ben, had abilities of their own. John was good with numbers and patterns in a way that was most definitely paranormal, and Ben had an astonishing “flower power,” as Sarah put it—the ability to read plants and their properties, even to enhance their growth to some degree. Emma and Amelia had married shifters, brothers Archer and Logan Gibson. And then there were the grandchildren… most of them had abilities. Some were shifters; some had other gifts.

  And Noah. Dear, sweet, turbulent Noah. Introspective, blunt, socially awkward—any of those personality traits would have been hurdles by themselves. Add in the fact that he was a medium who could see, hear, and talk to the dead? Well, his oldest grandson hadn’t had the easiest time of things growing up, and that was before the fight with his brother.

  Though Owen had taken his shape-shifting and turned his stories into fictionalized, best-selling children’s books he both illustrated and wrote, books also based on the folklore of the Appalachian region, all of the family’s abilities were closely guarded secrets, talents not spoken of outside the family. Shoot, even some of Sarah’s great-nieces and nephews weren’t aware of the full truth about the Campbells and what they could do.

  So when he’d discovered Eli had told Erica about Noah, he’d been livid. From the time the kids and grandchildren were old enough to understand, they’d been made to recognize the importance of keeping the family secrets just that—secret.

  If John hadn’t been there to calm Owen down, and if Noah hadn’t been so distressed, so utterly devastated, Owen might have done something careless himself. He might have driven to John and Zanny’s house and confronted Eli, and that would have been a very, very bad decision. As angry as he was, he would have said things there’d have been no forgiveness for.

  But John was there, and Noah was broken. There was no other way to explain it. The boy had been absolutely broken by the betrayal. As contentious as his relationship with Eli had become over the last few years, he’d never seen the risk of that kind of exposure coming. And that Sophie had apparently been part of the whole thing… well.

  Aside from telling them what Eli had done and that Sophie and Erica had been a part of it, Noah’d shut down. He turned away from everyone, including Owen. At least until the night a few days after the fight when Owen had found him hacking away at the old oak tree stump behind the barn, the remnants of a massive old tree that had come down years and years earlier. Several feet wide, the stump had stubbornly refused to yield to the various Campbells who had chipped away at it through the decades. Owen could have removed it, but he’d decided to leave it in place so it could serve as an outlet for frustration and anger.

  But that night, when he’d awakened with the feeling that something was wrong and gone to the barn after finding Noah’s bed empty, that old stump had been busted apart like a fragile pressed flower. By the time Owen reached him, there hadn’t been much left of the stump.

  “Noah! You have to stop,” Owen said, approaching him carefully. The look on his grandson’s face, a face so very like his own, wasn’t human. It was pure emotion—anger and hurt and rage.

  Noah stood there, chest heaving, drenched in sweat, blood dripping from little cuts on his face, his arms, and his chest, cuts caused by flying shards of the hard oak. He’d been at the chopping for so long his hands were raw, Owen saw as Noah let go of the axe. He stared at Owen as though he’d never seen him before, then he crumpled.

  Over the years, Owen had helped several of his children get through crushing heartaches. He’d held them while they cried, then he wiped away their tears, assuring them everything would be better the next day, the next week. And if it wasn’t okay, they’d get through it.

  The depth of Noah’s distress, the harshness of his tears, had scared Owen. His sobs had been so wrenching Owen’s heart had broken from hearing him. And when they finally died down after what felt like hours, Noah was empty. He closed himself off from everyone even more after that. Oh, he went through the motions of living, but the quiet warmth and teasing that had been there were gone.

  He didn’t trust anyone not to hurt him again. Not a single person. The truth of that was terrible to witness and endure.

  When Noah graduated high school, he had an apprenticeship lined up in Italy with a master woodworker, something he’d arranged with his old shop teacher’s help after everything fell apart. He left the day after graduation, never even looking back.

  Owen feared they might lose him for good, that he might never return. Noah blamed them all—Owen and Sarah, John and Zanny—for giving him the abilities that had turned him into, as he called himself, “a fucking freak.” He needed distance to come to terms with himself, with the truth of himself.

  Owen didn’t know if the width of the entire globe would be enough.

  Fortunately for everyone though, Noah had been able to find the peace he needed. And when he returned three years later, he’d been much, much closer to the old Noah. The one who had an easy smile for the people he loved, whose quiet teasing could sneak up on a person, whose sharp humor made them laugh before they even knew he’d been joking.

  But he’d not been the same. Owen hadn’t expected him to be. Even if everything did get resolved between Noah and Eli, and even Noah and Sophie, all the pain and grief his grandson had endured when he was a teenager had changed him forever. Owen knew some of that change had been necessary, even as painful as it had been.

  But not all. And those changes, the responsibility of which was laid firmly at Erica’s feet, were something Owen would never forgive, even though the woman was dead and gone from their lives forever.

  As Owen studied Sophie, he reflected on how Noah wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Sophie was so much quieter than she’d been before, and she’d never been particularly loud or noisy like most teenagers and young people. Her new quietness was more a demonstration of a stifled, battle-scarred spirit than her outward actions suggested, as Owen had heard the girl laugh quite cheerily on several occasions since she’d returned to Perry County.

  He’d have loved to ask her what exactly had happened to cause such a shift in her personality, to make her expect to be hurt. And he had no doubt that was what she expected. The fear was in her eyes any time she was startled or anytime someone said something sharp, regardless of whether it was directed at her or not.

  Owen didn’t like that. He was very protective of his family, and he did think of Sophie as family. Speaking of…

  “You’re coming to Thanksgiving dinner, right?” he asked, taking his seat at the large worktable where they’d spread out genealogy files.

  Sophie looked at him, her eyes taking a moment to focus as she shifted mental gears from what she’d been working on. “Thanksgiving?”

  “It’s this Thursday. Everyone’s going to be here, literally. All the kids, and finally all the grandkids. You can’t miss that,” he teased gently with a smile. “Eli’s first real holiday home.”

  Sophie smiled back. “I don’t want to intrude. I told you that when I accepted the job. You don’t have to include me.”

  Owen scowled. “And I told you, you’re as much a part of this family as anyone. Sarah’s feelings will be hurt if you don’t show up, to say nothing of what Eli will think.”

  The way she shook her head told him she knew she was being manipulated, but her small smile assured him she didn’t mind. “What can I bring?”

  “I have no idea. I just show up to eat all the good food. With a
s many good cooks as are in this family? Well, there’s a lot of good food to eat.”

  She grinned widely. “Except Emma, right?”

  He chuckled. “God bless my oldest daughter. She’s many things, but a cook? Not even on her best day. But she’s nice enough, so we keep her around. Even though she’s a girl.”

  Sophie laughed. She propped her chin on her hand, looking at him with her head tilted. “You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard you say you only wanted sons even though I’ve not been around in a long time. But you wouldn’t trade your daughters and granddaughters for anything in this world, would you?”

  There was a seriousness to the question that gave him pause. Instead of the teasing response he usually gave, as the statement was one the whole family loved to kid him about, he answered her solemnly. “Not a single one of them. Even the ones who aren’t ‘officially’ granddaughters. And I hope they all know that.”

  “I’m sure they do.” She glanced at the papers she was working on. “Where’d that come from, that joke?”

  Owen sighed and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms as he remembered. “My uncle Eli, namesake of the younger, he and his first wife, Amy, had seven children—four boys, three girls. Incidentally, they also had a Noah, who was killed in a car accident a few years after Sarah and I married. In any event, not long after Sarah and I met and started dating, Eli and Amy’s house burned down. He was hurt pretty badly, and I went down to Laurel County to stay with the kids while he recovered.”

  He shook his head. “Trent, the oldest son? He’s about my age. But the others were young, still at home, and the girls were teenagers. God help me, those girls ran me ragged. I came home after some time, Sarah and I got engaged, and I made her swear to me then and there we’d only have boys. Well, I tried to get her to swear to it. For some reason, she wouldn’t. Kept saying we didn’t get a choice. I told her we just needed to try harder.” He grinned at her and winked. “Five children later…”

  Sophie’s laughter rang out, and she sat back. “Oh, my goodness. You decided to stop while you were ahead?” Her glance shifted to the door behind him as it opened.

  Owen looked over his shoulder to see Noah and Sarah step inside. “Something like that. Amelia was born here at home, you see, not safely in the hospital like the others. We had a snowstorm, and my stubborn wife decided she wasn’t anywhere near going into labor. ‘I have three more weeks,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ve had four children. I know when I’m getting ready to give birth.’”

  “And I barely had half a day after the snow hit,” Sarah said, coming over to stand beside him. “That’s when he put his foot down.”

  “You scared me to death, woman. I could have lost you.” Owen took her hand and placed a kiss to the back of it. “Five was a good number to stop at.”

  “Yes, it was. Sophie, I’m getting ready to get the chicken on for supper. Will you stay and eat with us?”

  Owen didn’t miss the brief flicker as Sophie’s eyes shifted from Sarah to Noah and back.

  “Not tonight, I don’t think, but thank you for the offer,” she said.

  “She was asking me what she can bring for Thanksgiving dinner,” Owen told Sarah. He rubbed her back as she leaned into his shoulder.

  “Well, since Rachel’s out with the sprained ankle, we’re going to be short on hands. I could use a kitchen helper. It’d give us a chance to catch up. We’ve not had a lot of time to talk since you’ve been back. I don’t want to put any pressure on you though, if you aren’t up for that.”

  Sophie smiled. “I’d love to help out. What time do you want me here?”

  As she and Sarah set the plans in stone, Owen watched Noah. He was quietly straightening the firewood stacked near the small woodstove that heated the studio. Owen was sure he thought he was being discreet about shooting Sophie looks, but the only person who didn’t seem to notice was Sophie herself.

  Owen wondered if Sarah’d had a chance to talk to him about Sophie as well as other things that needed discussing. He’d ask her as soon as they had a private moment.

  Seeing the studious way Noah and Sophie avoided interacting directly with each other, feeling the tension build in the room, Owen knew they’d all come full circle. He’d never held out a lot of hope that Noah and Eli would be able to so nicely mend the rift between them. But they had fixed things, very well in fact, and that gave Owen hope that, just maybe, Sophie and Noah would be able to fix things between them too.

  Chapter Six

  There was no use pretending she wasn’t nervous. Thanksgiving with the Campbells would be the first real family get-together she’d been to in over two years. She’d had Sunday dinner at the farm on a couple of occasions in recent weeks, but those hadn’t been full-on holidays. Given how her last family experience had turned out, she could be excused for not having high hopes for this one.

  At least when she’d attended her mother’s Fourth of July party years ago, she’d been part of the family having the to-do. Or so she’d thought.

  “It’s perfectly normal for you to be apprehensive,” she told herself Thursday morning as she drove from Hazard up to Owen and Sarah’s home in Firefly Hollow. “I mean, you have such a great track record, right?”

  The clock showed just shy of nine o’clock when she parked in the spot she’d come to think of as hers. Regardless of her nerves, she was looking forward to spending time with Sarah. But when she got out, she was met by Noah, who was coming down the steps on the side of the house by the front porch.

  “You’re here early,” she said. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Back at you. And I’m here to cook. Do you have anything to carry in?”

  She opened the trunk, revealing several bags of groceries, and tried to ignore the fluttering butterflies in the pit of her stomach as she took in the way his faded jeans molded to his thighs and how his soft-looking green sweater made his shoulders appear a mile wide. “A few things. Who else is here?”

  He grabbed the two covered dishes she’d brought as well as most of the bags. “Just us, Eli, and Haley. Everyone else will be trailing in later. Syd was supposed to be here, but she’s got a bit of morning sickness, so she gets a pass.”

  “She’s pregnant? I thought so, but I didn’t want to ask in case I was misreading things.”

  “Yeah. She’s not announced it yet really. She probably will today.” Noah’s smile was soft as he led her up onto the porch. “They’re pretty excited. It wasn’t really supposed to able to happen.”

  “Oh, wow. That makes things that much more special then.” She darted ahead of him to grab the door. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  Noah paused in the hallway to shoot her an unreadable glance. “I imagine there’s a lot you don’t know about me and vice versa. Come on back. Everyone’s in the kitchen. I’ll get your coat and put it in Grandma’s reading room.”

  Sophie frowned as she followed him. There’d not been any antagonism in his tone, which was surprising because in the past, he would have delivered that same line with more than a little bite. She shook off her confusion though as Eli greeted her from his spot at the wide island where he was chopping celery.

  She sniffed the air, barely holding back a groan. The aromas of sweet and savory foods were already permeating the kitchen, and she realized suddenly how hungry she was. “Something smells beyond good.”

  Eli looked at her imploringly as he wiped his hands. “Please tell me you brought the fixings for the sweet potato thing.”

  She grinned and put the bags she carried on the table next to the ones Noah had set down, then she shrugged out of her coat and handed it to Noah with a nod of thanks. “What makes you think I’d do that?”

  Eli snagged her in a loose chokehold that he turned into a hug, but only after he’d ruffled her hair, a very brotherly move that n
ever failed to make Sophie feel special. “Because you love me. And you know I love sweet potatoes.”

  Everyone laughed, and Sophie winked at Haley, who was grinning as she watched them. “You’re okay, I guess. And I might have purchased most of the sweet potatoes in the store. They’re in a couple of these bags.”

  “Yes!” He rubbed his hands together. “Want me to peel them when I’m done with this?”

  “Absolutely. Sarah, where do you need me?” she asked as she redid the twist in her hair, which he’d knocked loose. She had to let the heavy blond tresses down and start over, and she stuck her tongue out at Eli as he chuckled.

  “I have the menu here on the fridge,” Sarah said. “I’ll show you what we have in hand and what still needs doing. We’ll get this meal pulled together in no time and have fun with it. Owen will be in shortly too. He had something he needed to check on.”

  For the next few hours, time moved fast as they cooked. The kitchen was a hive of activity, and as Sarah had predicted, the house was full of laughter and warm teasing. Sophie didn’t know when she’d enjoyed a day more.

  Even though dinner wasn’t scheduled to start until one, most everyone was there by noon. The kitchen grew crowded, and several times, Sophie found herself brushing up against Noah by accident. The first few times it happened, she nearly came out of her skin. After that, it settled down to merely electrifying.

  She’d just taken a platter of food to the long serving tables in the hall when a pretty woman with improbably red hair came up onto the porch.

  Noah, who’d been in the dining room, hurried to meet her. “Summer! You made it. Hey, come on in.” He opened the storm door. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving to you,” she said, handing him the bowl she carried and accepting his one-armed hug. “It’s only some cut-up fruit, nothing fancy.”