"And you just let him take it."
"Of course I did. He's honest and reliable; he won't cheat you."
"I'm not worried about being cheated," Amber shot back. "When I first noticed it was gone, I assumed you just moved it somewhere else. I can't believe you'd hand it over to some gallery owner without my even knowing about it."
"I meant to tell you; honestly I did." Meg furrowed her brow. "Amber, am I missing something? Isn't this what you wanted—to have your work shown, to become known as the wonderful artist you are, not just some hippie woman who throws pots in a barn?"
"But why not that one?" Amber pointed to the dark statue of the man with the little girl in his lap. "The Two Sisters was special."
"I know it's special. Jorgensen knew it, too—that's why he wanted it. And he wants others—he said so. Besides, it's not like it's lost forever. You've got the cast; you can make copies, in bronze, if you want. People are going to love it, Amber. It captures something wonderful and magical about being a child."
"Right," muttered Amber dully. "The magic of childhood."
"I can call him and get it back before he sells it," Meg offered. "But Amber, before I do, there's something you have to know."
Amber looked up. "What?"
"I had a talk with Twojoe this morning. We're in financial trouble, and it will be a couple of months yet before the tourist trade picks up. That money might make the difference between keeping the farm and losing it."
Amber looked into Meg's eyes. She told herself that Meg was doing what was right, what was best for all of them. Meg was her closest friend; she would never deliberately do anything to hurt Amber. Without Meg and Twojoe, Amber would never have had the chance to start over, to make a place for herself. And Meg was right; this might be the break she had worked for, longed for. The opportunity to be known as not just a potter, but also an artist.
It was just a statue, after all. One sculpture.
One sculpture probably wouldn't save the farm, but it was a beginning. It was a long shot, but if Jorgensen could sell it, it might mean the launching of a whole new career for her.
After all, one small course correction could change a life forever.
Jackson Underwood finished his conversation, hung up the phone, and immediately picked up the call that was waiting on his private line. "Underwood."
"It's me, Mr. Underwood. Shiv. I found them."
"Diedre and that friend of hers—Carlene what's her name?"
"No, sir, not them." He paused. "Well, yeah, come to think of it, I got them, too. The friend's name is Donovan. They're headed out 1-90 on their way toward Seattle. They've been using the Donovan girl's credit cards."
"Go on," Jack said.
"Well, once we got the Donovan woman's last name, the credit card trace was a piece of cake. Led me to some small burg in Minnesota. Woman at the motel there said they were headed for Seattle and told me if I was joining them, to make sure to stop at some place called the Corn Palace along the way." He laughed. "They're taking it pretty easy, looks like. I'll keep tabs on them once they get to Seattle."
"Good man, Shiv. Now, what else?"
"This is the interesting part. I found the other one, too. She's living on a llama farm, can you believe that? Doing some kind of artwork in the barn. Looks like a real low-budget operation."
"Sounds like something you can handle, then?"
"Well, yes and no. The place is owned by an Indian by the name of Elkhorn. I went out there and met the guy. He's got a pretty little blonde wife and a kid who looks just like her. He's in deep financially. Debts up the wazoo."
"Great. Buy him out. Get him off that land. More important, get the woman out of sight. I want her lost again, so lost she'll never be found."
"I tried, Mr. Underwood, but he's not budging. Says he'll never sell."
Jack snorted. "Everybody's got a price. Find out what his is. Money is no object."
"That's the problem. The guy doesn't seem to care about money. He just wants to keep his family farm under him. He won't listen."
"Make him listen."
"You want me to—"
"I want you to do whatever is necessary. But listen to me. I want her lost, not dead. You hurt her, you'll have to answer to me. Got it?"
Jack heard a low chuckle on the other end of the line. "Yes sir, I got it. No tough stuff. Just intimidation."
"That's right." He paused. "One more thing, Shiv. You're not using your real name out there, are you?"
The voice on the other end of the line hesitated. "Of course not. Do you think I'm stupid?"
Jack hung up the phone. Yes, he thought the man was stupid. But he was good at his craft. He would do the job, ask no questions, leave no trail. Being stupid was just a bonus.
He punched a number on his speed dial and waited while the phone rang. When the line picked up, he didn't even bother identifying himself.
"We've nailed them," he said. "It won't be long now."
Part 3
Secrets and Lies
Because our hearts are unprepared for truth,
we cling to the deception
as a shipwreck victim on a storm-tossed sea
will grab at anything that floats.
But the splintered rubble of our broken trust—
those temporary buoys of our shattered dreams—
betray us,
gouging rough gashes into our souls,
drawing our blood and leaving us to sink.
Only the truth can hear our weight
and bring us safely home .
21
Holding On
Amber was having trouble keeping her mind on her work. Her eyes kept wandering to the gaping space on the shelf where her Two Sisters sculpture had sat.
She tried to identify the emotions that were churning inside her: loss and emptiness, confusion and disbelief. Like the time she found out, quite by accident, that her best friend from junior high had died. She was seventeen at the time, living in Charlotte with Aunt Edith—she hadn't yet gone to the hospital in Raleigh. Mama had sent her a copy of the Heartspring Gazette that contained a front-page spread about her father's new summer parks program for underprivileged youth. Amber had seethed over the article, which canonized in glowing terms a man who could give attention to other people's children when he had betrayed and discarded his own. She was just about to toss the paper in the trash when she caught a glimpse of a small article on the back page:
LOCAL TEEN'S MEMORY HONORED
AT HEARTSPRING HIGH
Melinda Suzanne Tucker, who died in a single-car accident in May of last year at the age of seventeen, was commemorated in a brief ceremony on Tuesday as a plaque in her honor was placed in the main hallway of the high school. Tucker, who would have been a senior this year, had been an honor student and a member of the student council. . .
Melinda—Lindy—had been Amber's closest friend since elementary school. The two of them had been inseparable, at least until Amber had been sent away. But even though time and distance had come between them, Amber had thought of her often. She imagined Lindy leading the cheering squad at football games, playing softball on the girls' league in the summer, maybe attending the prom with some handsome quarterback in tow.
Not trapped in a totaled car on a mountain road in the middle of the night. Not gone forever.
The stark words of the news article had hit her like a body blow: Lindy was dead. Dead and buried. Everybody else had mourned her loss and moved on. But she had continued to live and laugh and grow in Amber's mind long after her last breath had been crushed out of her. And Amber couldn't even cry, because it didn't seem real. How do you mourn someone whose passing is already ancient history?
And that was the way she felt about the loss of the Two Sisters. As if something had been ripped out of her without warning. As if two people she loved had been killed and buried, and no one had told her to stop thinking about them as alive.
She was overreacting, and she knew it.
It was just a sculpture, for heaven's sake. A slab of clay. A product of her imagination, not a living, breathing person. And maybe—if Meg's account of Jorgensen's reaction was accurate—a catalyst for new directions in the future. Some real money coming in. The chance to leap the chasm between artisan and artist.
A clattering behind her jerked Amber back to reality, her heart pumping and every nerve in her body standing on end. When had she become so jumpy? She whirled around and saw little Sam Houston facing the far wall of the barn, reaching over his head with a pitchfork.
"What are you doing?" The words came out louder and more harshly than she had intended. Sam dropped the pitchfork and whirled in her direction.
"I'm sorry, Amber. I was just—" He pointed toward the hook, well over his head, where the pitchfork was supposed to hang. "Twojoe made me promise to put the tools back where they belong, and—"
He tried again, but he had to hold it by the tines to get the handle high enough to reach the hook, and the weight was too much for him. It dropped into the wheelbarrow with a bone-jarring clang. The boy turned again to Amber, a sheepish expression on his face. "It was easier to get down."
Amber got to her feet, walked over and took the pitchfork, and lifted it into its place. "Better?"
"Yeah, thanks."
She went back to her sculpting table, and much to her dismay, Sam followed like a devoted puppy. He stood there for a minute, his eyes following her every move as she wet down a lump of clay and began kneading it.
"You want something, Sam?"
"No ma'am."
Amber went on working, but the unrelenting gaze of this pint-sized supervisor rattled her. Finally she turned to him again. "What is it, Sam?"
"Oh, nothin'. I was just wondering—"
Her nerves were on edge, and her patience—if she'd had any to begin with—was totally depleted. She tried hard to keep her voice even. "Wondering what?"
"What happened to the statue of the little girls playing?"
Amber narrowed her eyes at him. "How do you know about that?"
Sam shrugged. "Twojoe showed me. He told me I could come in here to get tools and stuff, but never to touch your things. He let me look at the statue of the two girls, and told me that you're a—" He groped for the words. "A talented artist."
"Twojoe said that?"
"Yep. And I think so, too. I loved that statue. It was wonderful, the little girls smiling and laughing like that." His pale blue eyes shone with admiration. "I tried to make a horse out of Play-Doh one time, but it looked more like an elephant. Could you show me how?"
Amber gazed at him, suddenly overcome with a desire to sweep him into her arms, to hug him, to stroke his tousled haystack of hair. She pushed the impulse aside as quickly as it came and turned away from him. "I'm busy, Sam. This is grown-up work, and it's got to get done."
"OK." He took a step away from her. "I'm sorry you're so sad, Amber."
All the breath went out of Amber's lungs. "What makes you think I'm sad?"
"Just a feeling," he answered quietly. "The girl in that statue—was she your little sister?"
Amber hesitated. "Yes."
"And she went away?"
She could barely get the words out. "Actually, I went away."
"But she's not dead."
Amber peered at him. What could a child like this know of death? "No, she's not dead."
He drew close again and patted her on the arm. "That's good. I bet she misses you. I bet she loves you a lot."
"I don't know, Sam. People change. They forget."
"I'll never forget my sister if I live to be a hundred," he declared solemnly.
Amber peered into his face. "What about your sister?"
"Her name was Beth. She was older'n me, but she always treated me like a real person, not like a baby. Then she got sick and stayed sick for a long time. She died in the hospital. That's why I'm staying with my grandparents. My mom is real sad, too."
"I thought you told Twojoe that your teachers were on strike."
"I did. They were. But that's not the real reason I'm here. I'm here because Beth died."
"I'm sure Beth was a wonderful person."
"Yeah."
Amber went back to the clay. It had begun to dry, and she applied more water and pummeled it mercilessly. Still Sam didn't move. At last he said, "Amber, can I ask you a question?"
"You just did."
He stared at her without comprehension.
"Sure," she sighed. "Go ahead."
"Is it because of your sister that you don't like kids? Or is it just me?"
Amber closed her eyes as a stab of pain knifed through her heart. "I never said I don't like you, Sam."
"You don't have to say it. You're always busy, and you never look at me or talk to me the way Meg and Twojoe do. But it's okay, Amber." He smiled at her. "I think it's just because you miss your own little sister, and other kids remind you of her." Amber sat like a stone as Sam put his arms around her and gave her a clumsy, self-conscious hug. "I'm going to go now."
"Where are you going?"
Sam pointed toward the wooden ladder that led up to the hayloft. "Twojoe said I could go up and see the new kittens. I'll be real quiet, I promise."
"Are you sure you should? It's a long way up there." Amber followed Sam to the ladder and looked up. The loft in the big old barn was as high as the top of a two-story house, a dizzying distance, and the ladder seemed rickety and unstable. She felt vertigo setting in just from looking up there. "I'm afraid of heights," she admitted.
"I'm not." He scrambled up the ladder until his boots were on a level with the top of her head. "Besides, it's the only way to see the kitties until they're old enough to come down."
"Be careful, Sam."
"I will." He took a few more steps up and looked down at her. "It'll be okay, Amber. About your sister, I mean. I hope you'll see her again someday. You never really let go of somebody you love, and they never let go of you. My dad told me so."
He climbed until he was out of sight, and Amber went back to her work, wondering how a child that small could be so wise.
She had mud up to her elbows, but she wasn't getting much accomplished. She just kept kneading the clay like an enormous lump of bread dough, pounding it, twisting it as her mind twisted and pounded around the events of her life.
Even though the Two Sisters sculpture was gone, the image still existed as vivid as ever in Amber's mind. She could see the way the little girl's hair blew back in the wind, the way she lifted her face to the sky as she started to take flight. She could recall with startling clarity the expression of exuberant joy her own hand had sculpted into the clay, could remember as well the pain and horror she had felt after that same hand had severed the connection between them.
There was something mystical and mysterious, Amber thought, about the process of creativity. Sometimes it was sheer drudgery, like the way she watered the clay and softened it, working it with her fingers until her forearms and shoulders ached and knotted with the effort. But when it was prepared and pliable, ready to take on the form that lay dormant in her mind—ah! that was magic. Sometimes she almost felt as if she stood outside herself watching the shape emerge, observing as her own fingers molded and carved it into something new, something incredibly beautiful and inspiring and alive.
Susan Quentin called it "the angel touch" and attributed it to the work of the Divine Spirit flowing through Amber. Amber wasn't quite ready to agree that some Power other than herself was moving in her—such an idea made her feel a little like a puppet whose strings were being pulled by an invisible manipulator. But she had to admit that on occasion it seemed truly miraculous, this business of turning mud into life. The joining of herself with the clay produced something greater than either of them.
Every now and then, Amber caught a glimpse—for just a fleeting moment—of what God must have felt when the form of Adam inhaled that first breath, stood upright, and became a living being. She wasn't sure she bough
t the whole package as literally true, God kneeling in the dirt and making people out of mud pies. But the image was compelling; she found herself drawn to the story. It made her feel as if Susan might be right, that there just might be a flicker of that creative fire in all of us.
God breathing holy air into human nostrils. Michelangelo's Creator hanging off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to pass the divine spark into the flesh-and-blood creature. The Good Shepherd stretching over a cliff to rescue a lamb from the thicket. God reaching out. Holding on.
"You never let go of someone you love," Sam had said.
But she had let go. And she could not forgive herself.
Distracted by footsteps overhead—small boots clumping against the wooden floor—Amber cast a smile toward the hayloft. Maybe someday she would do a sculpture of a scruffy little boy in jeans and cowboy boots, sitting on a bale of hay with a lapful of kittens.
She could hear Sam calling—quietly, so as not to disturb her work. "Here, kitty, kitty. That's a good kitty." The footsteps moved faster, and Amber could imagine Sam with hay stuck in his hair, scrambling after a little gray tabby—
Suddenly an earsplitting creak filled the barn. Swallows, startled from their nests, swooped down from the rafters. There was a bang. A slam. A scream.
Amber jumped to her feet and looked up. The air was filled with dust and hay, asphyxiating her and making her eyes water. And then she saw it—high above her, a gaping open space. The trapdoor, which opened from the loft to dump hay down onto the barn floor, had sprung open. A tiny figure hung from the door, flailing its legs, scrabbling for a toehold. But there was none.
Amber ran to the barn door and screamed for Twojoe, but got no response. If he was in the pasture with the llamas, he might hear her, but if he was down on the beach gathering clams or inside the house, he would never get here in time.
"Help!" Sam called—a pitiful, choked cry.
"I'm coming, Sam. Hang on!" She craned her neck to look up. It was so high. She could never catch him. He would drop like a sack of bricks; they could both be killed.
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