And that’s when it hit me: Charley Moon, my mother’s supposed best friend, truly did hate us. Aida’s death, my family’s exile, the entire tribe turning its back on Shyla . . . all of it happened because Charley Moon chose not to come forward and tell the truth about who Caleb’s father really was. Instead of taking the heat herself, she let others do it for her.
And then a thought began to take shape in the dark recesses of my mind, something so horrifying that I cowered against Adrian, terrified to think it might actually be true.
TWENTY
“What if Victor didn’t start the fire?” I said when we got home from Imogene’s house that night.
Meg stiffened at my words, the cup of laundry soap she was just about to empty hovering in her hand over the open washing machine. She tipped it slowly and the soap ran out in a thin, clear stream.
“A little warning next time, Sarah. Why would you even say that? We know he did. He admitted as much, even if that’s not what the report says.” She slammed the washer lid with a clang, picked up the laundry basket, and shoved past me.
“It’s almost midnight. Why are you doing laundry?”
“Because I’m too keyed up to sleep!” she said, visibly agitated.
I trailed after her as she made her way around the house collecting dirty towels and errant laundry into the basket. “But what if Victor’s lying?” I said.
Meg balanced the plastic hamper on her hip and turned to me. “What reason would Victor have for lying about something like starting a fire?”
I followed after her again, nearly bumping into her backside as she stooped to pick up a magazine that had fallen off the coffee table.
“I’m not saying that Victor didn’t have anything to do with the fire,” I said. “But I think someone else might have been involved.”
“Someone else. Like who?”
“Like Charley.”
Meg stopped short and turned to stare at me. “Charley? That’s a pretty wild accusation.”
“I know. But Sebastian said my father never stopped loving my mom and me. And Caleb said the one time he saw our father, he and Charley were arguing about something.”
“So? And anyway,” she said with a wave of her hand. “That was a long time ago. Caleb was young. He might have been confused about what he saw.”
“He wasn’t that young. And Sebastian said it was only a short time later that the fire happened.”
Meg shook her head. “And you’re thinking what? That Charley set the fire in a fit of jealous rage?” She sat down heavily, clinging to the basket as though for support.
“I don’t trust her, Meg. I’m almost positive she had something to do with that fire. What if she set it to get back at my father?”
Meg gave me a long, hard look. “We’re talking murder here. That seems pretty extreme, even for Charley.”
Maybe, but maybe not.
“Okay, so what if she convinced Victor to set it for her? I always thought it was weird that he waited to get his so-called revenge for his wife’s death, but what if he had someone putting ideas in his head all along, stoking his hate, so to speak? Imogene said he used to be a good man.”
Meg chewed her bottom lip. “That does sound more like the Charley I know. Not one to get her own hands dirty. Still,” she shook her head. “How would you prove that? One of them would have to confess. And that’s not likely to happen.”
I collapsed onto the sofa as Meg continued with her work. She was right. Getting one of them to admit to setting the fire, and why, was not likely to happen. But then again . . .
I pulled my cell from my pocket and dialed Adrian’s number, crossing my fingers that he was awake. “Is your dad still trying to contact you?”
“All the time. Why?”
“Call him. Tell him I need to talk to him.”
“Sarah, I don’t—”
“Please do it.” And then I ended the call.
I thought for a moment, gathering my courage to make one more call.
“Cover for me today?” I said over the phone to Priscilla as I hurried down the sidewalk in the direction of school.
“You’re ditching during the first week of school? Omigod, someone alert the authorities and hold a press conference. This is major!”
“Will you cover for me or not?” I so didn’t have time for this.
“Hang on a minute. Exactly why am I covering for you?”
“I’ll tell you later. I promise.”
“You’re my best friend. You’ll tell me now.”
“As my best friend, it’s your duty to cover for me when I need it. No questions asked.”
“Nuh-uh. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Fine. If you must know, I’m going to meet my father today.” I looked up at the throttling growl of a motorcycle as it slowed and came to a stop next to me. “Gotta go.”
“But—”
I hung up before Priscilla could get another word in edgewise, but I knew for a fact she wouldn’t let me down.
I quickly stowed my backpack in the storage compartment and put on the spare helmet dangling in Sebastian’s outstretched hand. Then I hopped on behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, holding on for dear life as he shot off.
For the sake of time, I wasn’t going to meet my father on his own reservation, wherever that was. I had to be back home by my normal time in order not to get caught in my little web of lies. Sebastian had set up a neutral meeting place a few hours north of town.
By the time Sebastian pulled into the parking lot of the little highway cafe, I was only too relieved. We had made several stops along the way, more for my sake than his, but I was numb with cold, and my legs and arms were cramped and refused to bend. Plus, I’d had plenty of time to think about actually meeting my father for the first time and was now completely freaking out.
I trailed after Sebastian as he led the way to the diner, the sound of my thumping heart obnoxiously loud in my ears. I ran a hand through my hair, for the first time worried that I might not measure up to my father’s expectations. All the times I’d wondered about him, I’d never really considered that he might be equally curious about me, his own flesh and blood.
Sebastian held the door for me and we entered into the incessant noise of utensils scraping against plates, and the warm and homey smell of eggs and sizzling bacon. Fry cooks called out orders as harried waitresses buzzed by balancing loaded trays on their outstretched arms. Sebastian rounded a corner, seeming to know exactly where he was going.
Up ahead I saw the back of a man’s head, dark and gleaming, even under the fluorescent lights of the cafe. I faltered, suddenly unsure I could truly go through with this.
As though sensing my unvoiced doubts, Sebastian reached for my hand. He drew it into the crook of his elbow, securing it in place with the firm grip of his other hand. Whether it was to stop my shaking, or simply to keep me from turning and running away in the other direction, I didn’t know.
“Lucas,” Sebastian called out in his deep baritone. The other man’s shoulders tensed briefly before he rose from the booth, liquid and lovely as water, and turned slowly to face me.
My first thought was that I couldn’t believe this moment was happening. All my life my father had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination. My mother never talked about him—whether to preserve him in her own mind, or because she didn’t know what to say to me. And while tragedy had taken my mother from me, circumstance, or maybe fate, had given me back my father. I wiped my hands on my jeans, realizing how nervous I was and scared that this meeting might very well end in disaster.
The man standing before me was tall and muscular—that much I could see—with a straight nose and prominent cheekbones. His jet black hair was swept back off his forehead and brushed the collar of his leather coat, and he stared at me through a pair of almost translucent brown eyes that were the same warm copper color as his skin. His lips parted as if to say something, but then closed again. The Adam’s apple in
his throat bobbed as he swallowed and then, very carefully, he reached out and cupped my cheek.
“You look so much like her,” he said in a breathless whisper, almost too quiet for me to hear. His tenor voice was lighter, more hesitant, than his brother’s.
He cleared his throat then, seeming to regain himself once more, and invited me to sit down. I slid into the booth, Sebastian taking the spot next to me. My father sat opposite. He didn’t blink; just continued to look at me as though afraid I might evaporate like a dream. I averted my eyes to give him the chance to stare uninterrupted.
“It’s like seeing a ghost from my past. And yet you are so very real. Here,” he said, suddenly excited. “Look at this.”
He rummaged inside his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. He placed it on the table and pushed it in front of me. “Look inside.”
With trembling fingers I opened the envelope and removed a stack of photographs of . . . me, I realized with a start. I flipped through them slowly, seeing the passage of years frozen for an instant in time.
There were school pictures taken throughout the years, and pictures of me in various Halloween costumes. There was a picture of me just after I’d lost my first tooth, one of me the summer I took swimming lessons, and another of me posing with my third-grade science fair project.
There were pictures of my mom and me together, too. A strip from the photo booth at the mall, us hugging and making silly faces at the camera. The two of us feeding the goats at the zoo, hands outstretched and me with my mouth wide open in silent laughter. Pictures of us swimming at the lake. Eating ice cream. Planting flowers.
I looked up at my father, tears in my eyes. “I don’t understand. How did you get these?”
“Your mother gave them to me. These are just a few,” he said. “I have many more at home. I’ve also got letters from your mother documenting every one of your milestones, and art projects that you made in school.”
“So you saw her then, even after she left the reservation?”
He nodded. “Of course. When we could, which wasn’t often enough.”
“Why not me?” A tear fell from my eye and my father quickly handed me a paper napkin from the dispenser. “We could have been a family,” I said, my voice shaking.
“I saw you a few times, when you were a baby. But it was hard on your mother the older you got. Her parents didn’t approve, and she didn’t want to disappoint them. It was better to keep things at a distance.”
I looked down and flipped through the pictures again, one thing becoming clear after a moment. “You didn’t get any more of these after the fire, did you?”
He shook his head slowly. “No. And you’ve changed a lot since then. You’ve grown up.”
The waitress stopped at our table and I requested a teapot of hot water. When she brought it back, I poured my cup full, put in a tea bag to steep, and cupped my hands around the steaming mug. I waited for either my uncle or my father to speak, not trusting myself to know what to say next.
“I imagine you have questions,” my father said at last.
I snorted and swiped at another tear that had managed to escape. “Yeah.”
“Your mother used to make that sound,” he said, the side of his mouth turning up. I began to notice certain things about him, too, like how his chin was slightly cleft and he had a tiny mole at the corner of his left eye.
I looked down and watched the steam rising from my mug as I attempted to collect my thoughts. I honestly didn’t know where to begin. Where did one start when faced with seventeen years worth of questions for a father she’d known less than fifteen minutes?
“I suppose I’d like to know how you and my mother met,” I said, settling on an easy one to get the conversational ball rolling.
My father sat back in his seat and drew in a deep breath. “I first met your mother through Charlene Moon.” He studied me for a moment, perhaps daring me to mention Caleb’s name. But I thought that part would keep until later.
“Charlene herself was very young when we met for the first time, no more than sixteen years old. We were friends, before . . .” He let the end of his sentence hang.
“My aunt Meg says she was a troublemaker.”
My father laughed out loud, strong and clear. “Charlene liked to have fun, that is true. Maybe a little too much fun.” His eyes grew sad then, and I realized there was something he wasn’t telling me. I let it go. For now.
“What about the stories,” I said, “the old legends about animosity among the tribes?”
My father leveled his gaze at me. “Times and sentiments change. The Katori people have long held on to this notion of good versus evil. Charlene thankfully saw past that. And so did your mother. My tribe, the Manaquay, are a peace-loving people. We have been for a very long time. And yet we are still being punished for the things our ancestors did many ages ago.”
What he said about Charley seeing past the prejudices of our tribe certainly didn’t mesh with the Charley I knew now, which only deepened my suspicion that something had happened to change her opinion of the man sitting before me.
“Your mother was meant for Sebastian,” my father said, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Charlene introduced them.”
Sebastian laughed beside me. “It’s true,” he said. “But Lucas won her fair and square in a coin toss.”
“A coin toss?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified. “Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, barbaric?”
“We were just a couple of punk teenagers,” Sebastian said. “And it’s not like I didn’t fight for her. Lucas has a powerful right hook, though. He’s tougher than he looks.” He traced the bridge of his nose, which was slightly crooked from apparently having been broken at one time.
“I told him the only way we were going to get out of it alive,” my father said, “was if we settled the matter with a coin toss. I was being facetious, but it worked.”
I looked at Sebastian, who could have easily ended up my father had luck been with him that day. But then again, I wouldn’t have ended up who I was now.
“He was always the better man,” Sebastian said with a shrug of his shoulders.
A dark cloud passed over my father’s face again. “And yet I’ve done things I am not proud of.” He raised his eyes to mine then. “The woman I killed on your reservation—”
I nodded. “Aida. Her name was Aida.” I left out the part about her being my boyfriend’s mother.
“It was an accident,” he said. “Melody and I had had an argument that day, a bad one. I wanted her to come away with me, to get married. She refused to leave her family. I went to see her that night, and . . . I had been drinking.”
I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “You showed up as a wolf.”
“Like I said, I’d been drinking. It’s not an excuse for what happened, but it’s the only explanation I have. I hardly remember that night. I woke up in the woods the next day, bloody and confused.”
I looked at my father then; really looked at him. He was no monster. He was simply a man who had made a mistake. A very bad one.
“I vowed to keep away then, to not have anything to do with Melody and you. And it wasn’t because I didn’t love you or your mother. I wanted to protect you from me, from the things that I had done. But your mother, she was persistent,” he said with a smile. “She said I had a responsibility to be a father . . . as much as I could.”
The waitress came by then and refilled Sebastian’s coffee mug. I pressed my lips together and poured out a fresh helping of hot water, idly dunking the tea bag.
“My aunt Meg knew who Sebastian was,” I said when the woman left. “She said he’s always around.”
“I wouldn’t say that I am always around,” Sebastian said, smirking into his mug. “But someone has to keep an eye on you.”
“I’ve been doing fine on my own, thank you very much,” I said.
“When he says you,” my father said with a grin, “who he’s really t
alking about is your aunt.”
“Meg?” Was he serious? And then, more incredulously, “You have a crush on Meg?”
Sebastian held up his hands in surrender, but his answering smile gave him away. “Guilty.”
“So you come around to spy on Meg,” I said, just to be clear. Their faces turned serious once more and I knew that Meg wasn’t really the reason. Or at least not the only one.
“When I got word that your mother had died,” my father said, “I nearly died, too. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that you had escaped, that you were still alive.”
“I was there that night,” Sebastian said suddenly. “I watched you escape.”
I could feel the flames of the fire now as though I was burning. I could hear the wolf’s cry in the distance, echoing in my mind, and I looked up at Sebastian, his eyes answering my unspoken question.
He had been there that night.
And then I realized my hands were burning. The contents of my mug had boiled over the rim, splashing onto my fingers. I jerked in surprise, shaking droplets of hot water from my hands.
“So it’s true,” my father whispered, with an odd gleam in his eyes I couldn’t quite understand.
“I told you it was,” Sebastian said, excited. “They’re the ones. The ones who can save us.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, their bizarre exchange making no sense to me.
“There is a prophecy,” my father said, almost hesitantly, “that speaks of an end to the curse we bear.”
I looked around to make sure no one was watching us or listening to our conversation. “The curse of becoming a wolf, you mean?”
My father nodded. “It says the Sun and Moon born to man will marry and produce a new lineage.”
I blinked. “In plain English, please?”
Sebastian grinned. “Isn’t it obvious? You and Caleb represent the Sun and Moon.”
I had just taken a sip of my tea and choked as it went down the wrong way. I coughed and sputtered, eventually getting myself under control with a few not-very-helpful pats on the back from Sebastian.
The Prophecy Page 16