by Lisa Wingate
“Play something from the CD,” I urged. “It’s really good—the CD, I mean. You should play more often.”
Shrugging off the compliment, he moved his fingers into position on the flute, then raised it and squinted down the plane as if he were checking to see if it was warped. “Well, you know, kids, house, job, yard to mow. Life gets in the way and you give up some of the things you wanted to do when you were twenty.” He made it sound simple, but the hooded look in his eyes said that it wasn’t. “Not all of us have what it takes to go to Juilliard.”
“There’s nothing so great about Juilliard.” Right now, Juilliard seemed a million miles away. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be here, with him.
“Yes, there is.” Glancing sideways at me, he winked, then wet his lips and brought the flute to his mouth. His chest lifted, and a long, plaintive note trembled into the night, then rose slowly to a haunting song that was both beautiful and sad. Closing my eyes, I let the music swirl around me, envelop me, carry me into a warm pool of emotion and light.
As the melody faded into a final note, I opened my eyes. Jace set the flute on the table and reached into the box, sifted through the foam peanuts, and pulled out a smaller flute adorned with doves in flight. “Your turn.”
“I can’t,” I protested, but he was already sliding the instrument into my hands. I lifted it to my lips, blew in, and produced a weak, wavering note, then offered the flute back to him, laughing. “That was awful.”
He pushed it toward me. “Not so bad for a first try, but you’re holding it wrong.” Slipping his arms around me, he moved my fingers into place, slid the flute into position near my chin. “Like this.”
My body was flooded with heat and electricity, so that I barely felt my lungs fill with air, or my lips pushing a clear, smooth note into the mouthpiece. I could only feel his skin next to my skin, his heartbeat steady and low against my shoulders, his breath soft against the back of my neck.
“Better.” His words were little more than a whisper. His fingers closed mine over the polished wood. “Keep that one. It deserves to belong to someone with a musical soul.”
“I can’t take it. It’s—”
“Ssshhh.” The whisper caressed my cheek as I turned in his arms. “You’ll do it justice,” he said against my mouth, then his lips met mine and everything else fell away.
I knew I’d been waiting for this to happen since we met.
Then, as quickly as it began, the kiss was over. He pulled away, squeezing my fingers once before letting go.
“Good night, Dell,” he said, then disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 20
I awoke in the morning thinking of that kiss, remembering the way it felt—natural and wonderful. In the past, anything so intimate would have seemed awkward and uncomfortable. Even after years with James and Karen, even after years of dating Barry, every time he hugged me, I thought of Mama holding me so tight I couldn’t breathe, or Uncle Bobby brushing by, touching me in a way that didn’t feel right, then looking around to see if Granny was watching.
Cold fish, he’d say when I pulled back. You don’t learn to act a little more friendly, ain’t nobody ever gonna like you, with that stringy hair and nigger skin. You better start bein’ a little nicer, girl….
But Jace’s kiss burned all of that away.
As I was reliving the moment, Autumn appeared at my car window with a hairbrush and a story about her hair being too tangled to brush because she’d fallen asleep in braids last night. After I combed it out and rebraided it, she ran back to camp to ask Nana Jo if she could walk with me to the restroom. As the two of us headed up the road, she chattered about her house outside of town and the new baby goat she was bringing home, and the dog who was about to have puppies, but only one litter, because after that they were getting the dog fixed. She wanted to know what fixed meant, and how the dog would be fixed.
She shadowed me through breakfast and made sure we sat with Jace and Willie. By the time Lana emerged from her camper, we were all settled in together, with four lawn chairs and an ice chest for a makeshift table. As Lana passed by, Autumn suggested that we should go fishing this morning—just the four of us—before heading off to the Labor Day festival. Whether the timing was intentional or not, I couldn’t say, but Lana stopped on her way to the camp kitchen, gave me a narrow look, and laid a hand atop Autumn’s head.
“You two were going to come do the bounce house on the capitol lawn this morning—remember, we talked about that the other night?” Lana’s words came in a forced singsong, as if she were trying to redirect an errant toddler. She smiled down at Autumn. “I’ll be working there all day, and this morning, before everyone else gets there, you two can have it all to yourselves. That’ll be a blast, won’t it? Maybe we can even get Dad in there to have a little fun, what do you think?” She flashed a flirtatious smile at Jace.
Willie clapped his hands together in anticipation, swiveling back and forth between Lana and Jace. Autumn tipped her head toward her father, seeming momentarily tempted by the prospect of his joining them in wild bouncing abandon.
Jace gave Autumn a parental look, and Lana took advantage of the opportunity to shoot a visual death ray in my direction. No doubt she was hoping to vaporize me where I sat, sweep away the dust, and plant herself in my chair.
“Good morning, Lana. You look really tired,” I said, and smiled pleasantly, just to annoy her. It wasn’t like me to be that way with people. Back in high school, when the snotty girls picked on me, I usually just took it and went on about my business. Barry constantly told me not to be such a wimp, said I didn’t have to put up with that kind of stuff. All of a sudden, Lana was bringing out the mean girl in me. It felt strange, but in some way liberating.
Lana flexed her hands at her sides. “No, I’m fine. How’d you do last night, sweetie? Sorry, I can’t remember your name.”
“Dell.” Funny, I would think you’d remember that from my expired driver’s license at the courthouse.
“Oh, that’s right.” She crinkled her nose in a patronizing smile, then turned her attention back to the kids. “So, you guys ready for some fun this morning? I know you didn’t get to do much at the festival yesterday because your dad got there so late.” Her lips pursed in a reproachful pout, and she batted her lashes at Jace.
Clearing his throat, he stood up and tossed his juice can toward the trash, breaking the invisible undercurrent of female territoriality. “You two are going to Neenee’s for a little while this morning,” he informed Autumn and Willie. “Aunt Shasta said she’d drop you off on her way through town. “We’ll have to do the bounce house this afternoon. Sounds like Aunt Lana will be there a while. Autumn, you’ve got a baby goat to take care of at Neenee’s, remember, and I need to help Dell with a little errand this morning.”
Eyes widening, Lana stiffened, her bottom lip hanging slack a moment before she reeled it up. She stood blinking at Jace as he gathered the paper plates and proceeded to the trash can. I took advantage of the opportunity to slip out of my seat and head to my car for my things. Jace, I had a feeling, had just put the ruby slippers on my feet and now the wicked witch would be after me. If he was aware of that fact, it didn’t show. He was whistling as he pulled the full bag out of the trash can and tied it shut.
From nearby, Nana Jo took it all in with a concerned frown, then leaned over and whispered something to Gwendolyn, who shrugged with both hands in the air. They were still whispering back and forth when I returned with my purse. Jace seemed oblivious to the undercurrents as he packed his kids into Shasta’s vehicle, then waited for me by his truck. Lana was standing near Uncle Rube, trying to slay me with her eyes, and even Uncle Rube seemed unhappy about Jace and me leaving together.
“Is she legal?” I heard him whisper to Dillon as I passed by. I knew he meant of legal age.
“Hardly,” Lana muttered.
“She’s in college,” Dillon defended, and Uncle Rube shrugged skeptically.
Only Shasta seemed to be supportive of Jace and me spending more time together. She waved cheerfully as I climbed into Jace’s truck.
“We could take my car,” I said, feeling guilty for having caused such a commotion. Jace would undoubtedly hear about it later from Lana, and probably from his mother and grandmother as well.
“Cars are for city folks.” Jace playfully patted the dashboard of the truck. “Some of those roads up in the hills are four-wheel-drive only.”
By the time we’d reached Cataway Creek Road and traveled a few miles off the highway, I could see what he meant. The road was little more than two tire tracks, scattered with gravel and pitted with potholes and deep channels carved by streams of water running down the mountains. Silence settled in as we drove, and I felt the matter of last night’s kiss hanging between us like a sheet of lead.
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said finally.
“Didn’t want you to get into any trouble.” His lips twisted wryly.
In spite of the smile, his parental tone made me defensive. “I can take care of myself, you know.”
He nodded, as if he could read what I was thinking. “It just doesn’t seem like something a person ought to do alone—possibly meeting your birth family for the first time.” He followed the words with a meaningful look in my direction. “It’s a pretty big deal.”
I instantly felt guilty and turned my attention out the window as we wound into a valley where the path ran along one side of a wide stream with a rocky bottom. I recognized it from Nita’s map. We’d reached Cataway Creek. It wouldn’t be long now. In a few more miles the road would separate from the waterway again and we would come to the remnants of a stacked-stone fence. Beyond the fence, there’d be an entrance with rock pillars, a driveway leading back toward the river, and along the driveway several houses where the school bus had dropped the Clay boys after school.
I tried to picture my father, or anyone who’d been so seriously involved with my mother, happily trotting off the school bus, giving the driver baskets of homemade bread and jam at the end of the year. The men who spent time with my mother were rowdy and loud. They arrived in beat-up pickup trucks, riding old motorcycles, or driving junky cars that stunk of cigarettes and weed. They had long hair, and emaciated bodies, and greasy ball caps with beer logos. They were like the man with the long, dark hair who took her away and never brought her back.
The only decent man she ever dated was Angelo’s daddy. He wanted Mama to stay clean, straighten up, take care of her kids, keep a job. When she wouldn’t, he took Angelo away. I hoped my father was someone like that, and that there was a good reason he hadn’t come for me.
In a few more minutes, I might find the answers.
Was I ready?
If not for Jace, solid and steady and calm in the driver’s seat, I would have panicked and turned around. “I’m glad you came,” I said, and then focused out the window. “I didn’t tell my folks I was coming. I couldn’t.”
“You don’t think they’d understand?”
The question put a lump in my throat. Ahead, the road was diverging from the creek. We would be there soon. “I was afraid to find out. I was afraid that if they knew, they’d be disappointed and hurt, that they’d stop loving me.”
His hand slipped over mine, warm and strong, his fingers tightening. “I can’t imagine anybody not loving you.”
I looked at him, and his eyes were curved upward in a smile that pushed away all the fear in me. “Thanks.” My throat tightened with emotion and for just an instant we were frozen that way, looking at each other. The vehicle seemed to stand still.
Then he turned back to the road, pointed ahead. “There’s the stone fence.”
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Pressing a hand to my chest, I rubbed hard, trying to take in air that had turned solid.
Jace slowed down, turned the truck into the driveway next to a bank of mailboxes. The closest one was decorated with a painting of an eagle in flight. C. Clay, the nameplate said. I stared into the bird’s eye, trying to imagine the person who’d painted it.
My heart pounded against my ribs. “I can’t breathe,” I whispered, rubbing my chest harder.
Jace asked as the truck passed the culvert, “Do you want to go back? Maybe look up a phone number and call?”
“I tried…at the library.” Closing my eyes, I attempted to calm myself, to take deep breaths the way my vocal music teacher had taught me to do when I got the jitters before a performance. “There were lots of Clays, but no listing for Thomas Clay, or Audie and Nora.”
“Hmmm…,” Jace murmured, and I heard him picking up Nita’s map. “There’s no telling whose name might be on the phone listing. Folks around here are kind of clannish. They tend to figure that if they want you to call, they’ll tell you the number.”
I nodded, a lump pulsing in my throat as we came to a small brick house with a weathered split-rail fence. The driveway was empty and the windows dark.
“Doesn’t look like anybody’s there,” Jace observed, and my spirits flagged. It was nine thirty on a Saturday morning. Not the best time to catch people at home.
Jace motioned to the road ahead, as if he’d sensed my thoughts. “Judging from the mailboxes by the entrance, there are several houses down here. Let’s go on and see what we find.”
I nodded again, my stomach constricting as if someone had tied a slipknot around my waist and was pulling the rope. What if we did find someone? What would I say? How would they react? What if this was another dead end?
What if my family was here? Would they know who I was? Would they be glad I’d finally come home?
What if my father wasn’t dead, as CPS had assumed? What if he was here? Would he be like the father I’d dreamed about—a sad man who’d missed me all along, who thought of me every year on my birthday?
Hope crept upward inside me, welling from the little-girl center until it enveloped my senses.
Jace slowed the car at another house, a white clapboard structure older than the first one. A car was in the carport, but the windows were dark. “Want me to stop?” he asked.
I squinted at the small wooden sign hanging on one of the porch posts. CALVIN AND NAOMI, it read.
“Let’s go on,” I whispered, my throat raspy. I tried to keep calm as we drifted past another house on the right, then one on the left, where two teenaged girls were sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. Jace stopped next to them, and I rolled down the window as, curious, they watched us.
“I’m looking for Thomas Clay,” I said. They frowned, shrugging at each other, so I added, “Or Audie and Nora Clay?”
They exchanged perplexed glances again, as if deciding whether to talk to us or not; then the nearer girl swiveled and pointed down the driveway. “Everyone’s down by the river. Just go on this road until it ends.”
I thanked the girls and we continued on, the driveway slowly disintegrating into a pair of muddy ruts with a grassy hump between. I was glad we’d brought Jace’s truck instead of my car, but at the same time I felt guilty for dragging him into what seemed to be nothing but pine forest so thick that even underbrush couldn’t penetrate it. As we drove, the truck lurched over loose rocks and exposed roots, the tires spinning through patches of deep pea gravel and sinking almost hopelessly into mud puddles. It was hard to believe anyone could live back here.
An overhanging branch scratched along the side of the truck, and I winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the road would be…like this.” The fact was, I didn’t know anything about where I was headed. I was trekking off into the middle of nowhere based on sketchy information. James and Karen would have a fit. They’d say that even if these people did turn out to be my birth family, I shouldn’t just show up on their doorstep. I had no way of knowing what kind of people they were—what I was getting into. My mother had been an addict. She hung around with people who used, and dealt, and manufactured drugs. The people who lived down this road could be as messed up as she was, or even worse.
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What if I got Jace into some kind of trouble? What if something terrible happened? People who wanted visitors didn’t have driveways like this one.
“Maybe we should go back.” A gnawing apprehension nibbled in my gut.
“This is nothing.” Jace assumed I was talking about the road. Leaning closer to the front window, he squinted upward as a canopy of leaves brushed the cab, then he winked and smiled in a way that said he’d drive me all the way to the state line, if necessary.
“It’s hard to believe anyone lives down here,” I muttered, scanning the roadside barrier of blackberry brambles and trumpet vines.
“Someone does.” Tapping me on the arm, he pointed toward an old log house, nearly hidden in the trees about fifty yards off the road. “Or did. Who knows if that’s in use anymore.”
I studied the squatty structure with its sloping porch roof. Wavy, four-paned windows watched like curious eyes as the truck rattled past. Gazing out the back glass, I wondered if my father’s ancestors had hewn those logs from the forest, perhaps during the first bitter winters after so many died along the trail westward. I tried to imagine what kind of fortitude it had taken to go on, to forge new lives in the wilderness.
“Looks like we’re coming to something.” Jace’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I turned around. Ahead, the dense forest thinned, and the road passed through another gateway similar to the one on the main road. Tall native stone pillars supported a heavy, rough-hewn pine beam that was gray with age. A carving of an eagle adorned the center, and beside it the words Ant chukoa Achukma hoke had been chiseled into the wood.
“It’s a greeting,” Jace explained as we drove underneath. “It means Come in. It is good.”
On the fence, a rusted metal sign slapped strands of barbed wire as we rattled over the cattle guard. The paint had long since washed away, so that the letters were only visible as bleached shadows in the rust, like images in a photo negative. CLAY RANCH, REGISTERED ANGUS CATTLE. But the cattle grazing in the pasture beyond the gate were scrappy crossbreds, feeder steers like the ones the lease man sometimes kept at Grandma Rose’s old farm—just there long enough to eat the grass, fatten up, and go to market.