Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels)

by Graham, Janice

  "Thanks for coming," Katie Anne said, but Patti was already gone, out the door.

  Katie Anne let a few days go by, and then she sent Patti a message explaining that the treatments were leaving her very tired, and she was going to have to forgo the pleasure of friends' visits for a while. She didn't tell Ethan about her change of heart, and during the long weeks in the hospital she continued to keep her feelings to herself. She wanted to protect a part of her that was as delicate as new skin, and create, out of this quietude, a new person. She was seeing the world differently, and she had to form opinions and attitudes, and question everything all over again. She wore her ideas tentatively, and she had to look closely at herself to decide if this was really her, if it felt right, if it fit. She found she was abandoning old attitudes and notions, and with this realization came a troubling awareness of her own fragility.

  Her parents had given her a religious education, but she'd turned away from it years ago; now she missed a higher power that she could turn to, in rage or in thanks, for despite the turmoil in her heart, she was keenly aware of having been given a twelfth-hour gift of life.

  The thoughts that hovered in her mind more persistently than any other were thoughts about Eliana. Ethan didn't seem to want to talk about the child, and when she asked questions, he clammed up.

  "Tell me about her room. What does it look like now? Did you take down Kobe?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where did you take her shopping?"

  "Target, like you suggested."

  "I hope you weren't stingy. You can be terribly stingy about those things."

  "She didn't want a whole lot."

  "Did you get her a bedspread like I said?"

  "Tried to, but all the girls' stuff was pink, and she doesn't like pink."

  "What did she say she wanted?"

  "Couldn't get much out of her."

  "I bet she'd like Lion King or 101 Dalmatians."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Because Jer said she likes animals. Ask her. Look at the Disney Store online. Sit down with her and do it together."

  He smiled at her. A real, warm smile. "Where's all this expertise coming from?"

  "Doesn't take an expert. I didn't like pink, either."

  "You do now."

  "Yeah. The girly-girl in me finally won out."

  She returned his smile the best she could.

  "Are you getting her to school on time?"

  "Yep."

  "Where does she go for lunch?"

  "She walks over to Nell's."

  "Why don't you take her out sometime? Go pick her up and take her to lunch. She'd like that."

  "I don't think she feels very comfortable around me anymore."

  "Well, you broke her mother's heart."

  Ethan noticed there wasn't a trace of malice in her voice.

  Chapter 28

  Nevertheless, Ethan's mistrust ran deep; Katie Anne's deception festered in the back of his mind, and he suspected her of cunning and deviousness at every turn. He and Jer spent many evenings arguing the matter, but nothing could be said to change his mind. Jer continued to hold out that Katie Anne's tragic experience had brought about a radical change of attitude; his belief was also shared by Katie Anne's parents, who sensed that a vague distance had settled between them and their child. She had always confided openly to them, particularly her father, but now she kept to herself. They knew very little of the workings of her mind and heart, and it troubled them.

  In late June, after two months of rehabilitation, she was released from the hospital. Her parents wanted her to stay with them, knowing that Ethan would be working during the days, and she would be alone, with Eliana to care for. But Katie Anne wanted to go home, and home was Ethan. She would manage fine.

  * * *

  She was quiet in the truck that day as they drove the long straight stretch of interstate. Ethan had thrown up his intellectual smokescreen and was carrying on about an editorial he'd read that morning in the New York Times; this was how he responded to awkward moments, using words like bludgeons to silence the emotions, and after a while Katie Anne simply said, "Ethan, let's just have a bit of quiet, can we?" Then she turned to the window and gazed silently at the prairie.

  Everything looked very fresh and new to her; all the outdoors struck her with a marvelous clarity and luminosity. And even Ethan was forced to acknowledge that her silence was rooted in serenity rather than awkwardness—the way her hands lay quietly in her lap, how she turned her head slowly in response to his questions. Before today he had thought it was the pain that made her move like this, but now he thought otherwise.

  "I'll just sit on the steps for a while," she said as he helped her out of the truck. She walked with a cane, and she lowered herself gently onto the top step. Traveler came around the house and raced up to greet her. He wagged and wiggled and licked her hands, and she smiled and scratched him behind the ears and under his chin.

  "Hey, you recognize me, don't you? Smart dog. Smarter than all these bozos around here."

  Ethan remembered the only other moment he had ever seen her pet the dog: the night when he had left her.

  "Where's Eliana?" she asked, looking up at him.

  Her face had healed well; there was still a discoloration of the skin on one side, and her hair was growing back unevenly. She wore a black scarf around her head to cover her missing ear. Ethan noticed with a sudden pang of pity that she was wearing just a touch of color on her lips and cheeks, and he remembered how she always used to labor so attentively over her makeup, agonizing over the color of her lipstick or eye shadow.

  She turned away, suddenly self-conscious under his gaze. She had been able to cope well in the hospital, surrounded by nurses and doctors who had only known her like this, but her heart sank whenever Ethan looked at her.

  "I'm not too easy on the eyes, am I?"

  "It's not that," he lied. "It's Traveler. You never took to him before."

  "Yeah, well, that was my loss, wasn't it, fella," she said to the dog. Stroking him, she found a burr on his stomach, and she rolled him over on his back and began working it out of his fur. The dog laid there patiently, trusting.

  "Where's Eliana?" she asked again as she tossed the burr into the yard.

  "I don't know where she is. Jer's truck's here. Maybe they're in the stables."

  She pulled herself up with the help of the porch railing and steadied herself with the cane. "I'll go take a look."

  She met Jer coming out of the stables. A big grin broke out on his face when he saw her and he spread his arms wide.

  "Hey, girl," he said.

  "Hi, friend."

  "Can I hug you?"

  "Have you ever known me to refuse a hug?"

  He folded his arms gently around her and she laid her head on his chest.

  "Oh, Jer, you feel so good," she whispered as she slipped her arms around him. Ethan hadn't shown her this much affection in months, and with a sudden chill she knew it would be a long time before he would touch her again.

  "You look great," Jer said. "Real smart with that scarf on your head."

  "Where is she?"

  "Eliana?"

  "Yeah."

  "She's out there brushin' down Big Mike. We just came in from a ride."

  "Did she know I was coming home today?"

  "Yeah."

  "What'd she say?"

  "Nothin'. The kid's not much of a talker. At least not anymore."

  * * *

  At the entrance to the stables, Katie Anne closed her eyes and breathed in the sharp odor of animal, straw and leather. She walked through the stables talking to her horses, one by one, stroking their heads and velvety muzzles. Big Mike was tied up at the end of the corridor, and she found Eliana spreading fresh hay in his stall. She had never spoken to the child before this moment.

  "Ethan says you've been helping him muck out the stalls."

  Eliana didn't look up. "Yeah," she said.

  "Not much fun, is
it?"

  "I like it," Eliana replied. She kept her eyes down.

  "Then you're a good horsewoman."

  When the child didn't reply, she said, "I'm Katie Anne. But you can call me Annie."

  There was something about the way she said it that made Eliana pause and turn. She was leaning on a cane, and although her voice was gentle and young, she seemed somehow very old.

  "I know," Eliana replied.

  "I'm glad you're all right. I was worried about you," she said. Eliana found it a little odd that this strange woman should be worried about her, but she said nothing. She picked up a bucket of manure and lugged it to the big wheelbarrow outdoors, then finished spreading the fresh straw very evenly. When the stall was neat and clean she brought in the horse and stood on a stool to remove his halter.

  "You really love that little guy, don't you?" Katie Anne said.

  "More than anyone in the world. Him and Traveler."

  "Two very worthy creatures."

  Eliana closed the stall door and carried the halter to the front of the barn and stood on her tiptoes to hang it up with the rest of the tack, and she called back to Katie Anne from the door.

  "I'm going to the house now."

  "You go on. I think I'll stay out here for a while," Katie Anne replied.

  "Okay."

  "Ethan's grilling steaks tonight."

  "Is Jer still here?"

  "Yeah. He's staying the night. He said he's the only one who knows how to make breakfast the way you like it."

  Eliana didn't know what else to say, so she turned and walked back to the house. To her surprise, she'd felt at ease in the woman's presence, and her face wasn't all that bad. Not what she'd expected. What Eliana particularly liked was that the woman hadn't tried to be overly friendly or ask her a lot of boring questions. She just seemed to want to be there with the horses. Eliana thought that was okay, and she skipped all the way back to the house.

  * * *

  Ethan and Katie Anne slept together in the same bed that first night, and Katie Anne lay awake for a long while, hoping he would move closer to her, reach out for her, touch her. The memories of their lovemaking surged into her thoughts; she saw their bodies together, naked and beautiful, she saw the way he had looked, the way he had felt, the way she had stroked him, their ferociousness, their exquisite tenderness, their deep moans and whimpers and cries, and finally their laughter. For the first time since the accident, she became aroused, and in the night, thinking he was asleep, she nestled behind him. He had come to bed very late and had crawled into bed and turned his back to her. Only now did she dare move close to him. She slid her arm around him, and as soon as she touched him she felt him grow tense. His shoulder was hard like a wall. She slid her hand over his stomach, and as she moved it lower, he stopped her.

  "No, don't."

  "Are you ever going to touch me again?" she whispered.

  He firmly took her hand and moved it away.

  "We have to talk about it, Ethan."

  "I don't know what good talking will do. What's done is done."

  "I'm sorry for what I did."

  He lay still for a long while, and then he rolled over to face her and said, "It's broken between us. We'll never be able to put it back together again."

  "Don't say that."

  "You know it's true."

  "I can't bear the thought. It sends me into a panic."

  "We don't need to talk about it now."

  "Are you saying you want a divorce?"

  "I'm saying we don't have a future."

  "I know what I did was wrong. It was awful."

  "Tell me, that pregnancy test, was it really positive?"

  She hesitated, and then she said, "I faked it."

  "But you left it out for me to see."

  "Because I knew you'd trust me."

  "Well, I don't trust you anymore. I never will again."

  She lay there with her heart beating wildly. In the darkness, everything whirled around her. It was like a nightmare she had frequently experienced as a little girl, and it sometimes came back to haunt her while she was awake. Sensations, something deep and voluminous pressing down onto her, making it so she couldn't breathe, and still everything spun around her.

  Finally he said, "An annulment might be the best way to handle it. Given the situation. No one else needs to know. You can tell people what you want."

  She was crying when she said, "But I love you. I love you more than I ever did before, if that's possible. I'll never get over you."

  He wanted to say, Yes you will or You'll find someone else, or any such meaningless platitude, but the words wouldn't come. He lay there blocking his feelings with a stern and bitter mind.

  Then he took his pillow and started for the living room.

  "Ethan?" she said. "You won't do anything right away, will you?"

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "Because if you do, people will think you're leaving me because of the way I look now."

  He paused before saying, "There was another occasion when I worried too much about what people here in Chase County would think of me because of a decision I was ready to make. Well, I made the wrong decision. And I'll pay for it for the rest of my life."

  "But I don't want people to think that. It's unfair to you."

  "Maybe. But I've been an asshole, and I didn't get killed or maimed in a fire. So I suppose I can tolerate a bit of folks thinking poorly of me."

  "What will we do with Eliana?"

  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Get some rest now."

  The bed felt terribly empty without him. The tears flowed, drowning her eyes, emptying her heart. She wrapped herself in a blanket of thoughts, trying to imagine she was not abandoned, flung out on this terrifying open prairie in the darkness, alone. She saw herself in a place of warmth and confinement, with high close walls, buttressed by centuries. She saw in her mind places she had never seen with her eyes, and these places soothed her and calmed her terrified heart.

  * * *

  The remainder of Ethan's night was plagued by dreams, as it often was. Sad dreams. Catastrophic dreams. Dreams of heavy structures caving in all around him, lumber alive with flames, ceilings crashing down, raining fire. Bodies underneath his feet. He kept turning them over, looking for someone he knew, but they were all strangers. Sometimes he was looking for his father, sometimes Annette, sometimes Katie Anne. They were all there in that wreckage but he couldn't find them, and it seemed as if he was forever searching.

  The next morning, Ethan found Katie Anne in the kitchen frying bacon. She turned to him and said brightly, "I told you Jer didn't need to stay over. I can manage fine." A little later when Eliana appeared on the steps in her nightgown, Katie Anne ushered her off to the bathroom, and while the little girl was in the tub she went through her room, picking up the trail of underwear and socks that had been scattered there over the past week. While Ethan was dressing he could hear laughter coming from the bathroom, and he wondered what on earth they could be laughing about.

  As he was leaving for the office, he found Jer sitting on the front porch, drinking his coffee and smoking a cigarette.

  "You're not having breakfast with us?" Jer asked.

  "Got an early morning appointment."

  "Well, all I can say is, I told you so."

  "What? Because she's making pancakes and picking up socks?"

  Jer looked at his friend. He saw how much Ethan had changed over the past months. The boyish bonhomie that had so endeared him to men and women alike seemed to have faded. There was a cynical turn to his mouth now.

  "I think you need to give the girl some credit," Jer said. "I'll be the first one to admit, I never thought Katie Anne had it in her to pull out of something like this the way she's done. She used to whine about a chipped nail, and now she's hobblin' up and down the stairs with a face that any kid would die for on Halloween without a word of complaint. And she sure seems to take a liking to Eliana."

  "Th
at's all put on," Ethan said.

  "I don't think so."

  "Sure it is. Katie Anne's a first-class performer. Underneath that good heart is a very cunning lady who'd fight tooth and nail to get what she wants."

  "You used to love her."

  "I thought I did."

  "Give her a chance."

  "You know, pal, I'm getting tired of people sticking their nose in my business. Especially when that business is private."

  "You always cared so much about doing the right thing by folks," Jer said. "I respected you for it. Respected you more than just about anybody I know. I guess I'm looking for that man to make his way back home."

  "Then let me tell you what I think is right. Annette has cousins out in western Kansas. They didn't have much in common, but she said they were good folks. A good family. I'm going to find them and see if they'll take Eliana. And once I'm sure that little girl is safe and happy, I'm going to get my marriage annulled."

  "On what grounds?"

  "I have good reason."

  "You want to share it with me?"

  "Nope."

  "Okay, and then you're gonna live out here all alone with your horses and your cattle and your land."

  "That's right," Ethan said, and he got into his truck and drove away.

  * * *

  After breakfast, Katie Anne offered to braid Eliana's hair.

  "I used to practice on my Barbie dolls," Katie Anne confessed. "I had dolls with all kinds of hair. Long, short, frizzy, everything. Once I cut the hair on one of them and I cried for days afterward because I couldn't braid it."

  When the braid was finished, Eliana looked at it in the mirror and smiled. "This is the way my mama used to do it."

  "You look very much like your mother right now," said Katie Anne softly. The little girl turned around; she wore a very solemn face.

  "I thought you'd hate me," Eliana said quietly.

  "Why would...?" she began, and then she caught herself. She took a deep breath. "I don't hate you at all. On the contrary, I..." She paused and sat down on the bed. "Eliana, you should know this. Ethan loved your mommy. That's who he wanted to marry."