The Charm Stone

by Donna Kauffman

  “Well, pooh,” she said, thinking that with the end of the rain, her classes would resume. Would Connal stay? Would he finally consent to appear before others? And how in the hell would she explain his presence on an island where everyone knew everyone else?

  She decided she didn't want to think about that at the moment. It was late afternoon, judging by the light, so she had the rest of today and all of tonight before she had to worry about what came next.

  She sat up and pushed her hair back, then smiled as she got out of bed. Knowing Connal, he was downstairs trying his hand at cooking again. She didn't smell anything burning, so that was a good start, she thought, pulling on his white shirt. It dropped just past her hips, so she pulled on a pair of panties, then went downstairs.

  The kitchen was empty. As was the rest of the croft.

  She frowned, but refused to get worried. After what they'd shared, she knew, knew, he would not leave her. Maybe he'd simply gone back to the tower for something. Her lips curved. If he had, he'd done so naked, as the rest of his clothes were still on the floor upstairs. “Must be nice to be able to pop in and out of places.”

  So, with her confidence firmly in check, she fixed them both an early dinner. She was famished and figured he would be, too.

  But the shadows grew longer, and longer still, and he didn't return. Anger finally crept in as she ate her dinner and a good portion of his, then rinsed the dishes and put the leftover food away. Did he expect her to come to the tower then? And what if he did? Would she go? She really didn't think he would play this sort of game with her, not now. But maybe what happened between them hadn't invoked the same powerful feelings for him as it had her. Yet, even as she thought that, she knew it wasn't true.

  He hadn't said he loved her, and maybe he didn't, not fully, not yet. But his feelings for her were most definitely powerful. The most powerful she'd ever felt.

  “So, dammit, where did you go?”

  She pulled on sweats and shoes and went outside. The air was warm and humid, the sky dusky, and the ground a vast sea of muck. Still, she made it across the road and looked through the gloom to the beach. The tide was roaring and it was in. There would be no going to the tower. Despite her exit with Bagan, she had no idea where the exact location of the opening was in the rocks. There was no light in the tower portals either.

  She turned back to the croft, fear finally begin- ning to crawl past the anger. “Where did you go?” she whispered, but the only response she got was the howl of the wind.

  By four in the morning, she was calling for Bagan to appear. No luck there either. By morning she was torn between self-pity and wanting to commit homicide. She'd known, hadn't she, that this was going to have a bad end? But she'd never imagined he would simply abandon her this way.

  She climbed the tower the instant the tide was low enough, searched his rooms, all vacant. No Connal. No Bagan. She even looked for the damn stone, but all she found was the trunk. Open and empty.

  She was hiking back up the beach to the croft, feeling hollow and emotionally ravaged, when Roddy pulled up in his tiny little car, packed with Dougal and her father. He got out and waved, grinning broadly before shouting, “I hope we're still on for this morning. The lassies will be along a bit later.”

  Josie wanted to yell at them to get the hell away from her, that she was too busy feeling bewildered, lost, hurt, abandoned… and scared. She was never going to see him again. She felt it. Knew it. She thought she might throw up, her stomach was twisted in so many knots.

  Then her dad climbed out of the car and looked down at her and she wanted more than anything to race to him, fling herself into his arms, and sob her heart out.

  In the end, she neither screamed nor sobbed. No point in bewildering her father and Dougal as well. Besides, she had no idea where to begin… much less explain how it had ended. It took every last ounce of energy she had to paste a smile on her face and wave back. “We're still on,” she called out above the roar of the surf. It was probably for the best, she thought. It would keep her busy, so she wouldn't feel compelled to fling herself out of the tower window. Which, the way she felt at the moment, she'd have only done after flinging every last thing he owned out the window first.

  Classes lasted well into the afternoon. The men had finished with learning about currents and wave formation several lessons ago, so she'd showed them the pop-up stance and they practiced it in the “soup,” the shallow waves that broke near shore. It was obvious they'd been practicing their stances at home as well. If she hadn't been so miserable, she'd have smiled for real.

  Gavin was doing very well, and even Clud had surprised her by being more agile than she'd given him credit for. Dougal, on the other hand, was getting extremely frustrated, so her father had stepped in and taught him an alternative way that seemed to be working. Roddy was struggling, too, but was bull-headed enough to wave her and Griff off as he tried again and again to pull his feet under him and remain crouched on the board without falling over sideways.

  Maeve and the girls had arrived while the men were still practicing and Bidda had complained bitterly about not being allowed to learn this part herself. Josie explained they had to learn more about how the ocean was going to move beneath them, how to read the water, the waves and the currents, before actually learning the mechanics. Privately, she had no idea how a woman of Bidda's age and bulk was going to perfect the pop-up technique. She could only pray her father had an answer for that one when the time came.

  She was emotionally and physically wrung out when they finally piled back into Bidda's car, Griff along with them as he'd stayed behind to help her out. He'd looked at her questioningly a few times, as if he realized something was off. The one time he'd managed to get a priyate word with her, she shrugged off his concern and muttered something about the storm keeping her from sleeping well. She wasn't sure he bought it, since she'd never had that trouble before, but he'd accepted it and left her alone. Probably relieved to be off the hook, she thought, but without any rancor. At the moment she just wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep for a very long time. Three hundred years ought to do it.

  But once everyone was gone and she was faced with the prospect of going back into the empty croft, she thought about chasing after them and begging to go along. Instead she forced herself inside, though she carefully didn't look at the bed, or his clothes that still lay scattered about. She wasn't up to dealing with that yet. As it was she'd spent the previous night on the couch. “Well, that's going to have to end at some point, just like this pity party,” she told herself firmly, and marched to the bathroom. “And it might as well be now.”

  She yanked on the shower knob, stripped out of her wet suit, and climbed in, determined to just wash and get out. No lingering under the spray, no thinking about how it had been when they'd showered together.

  She did fine until she reached for the bar of soap. She swore she could feel his hands on her, even though she was quite well aware she was alone. So alone. One tear sprang from her eye, then another.

  Then she was sobbing, openly, wrenchingly. Standing beneath the pounding spray, naked in body and spirit, pouring her heart and soul down the drain.

  By the time she got out, she was totally spent. But after kicking Connal's clothes beneath the bed, she tossed and turned trying to sleep, until she thought she'd go mad. So she dragged on sweats and a T-shirt, grabbed her new, extrawide sketch pad and forced herself down to the beach. Maybe she could lose herself in her work.

  The sunset was gorgeous and she forced herself to accept its beauty, if not its promise of a brighter tomorrow, as she traipsed along the water's edge. But it was too windy to draw and frankly, her heart wasn't in it anyway.

  Her heart. It was deeply dented, if not completely broken. She finally stopped and forced herself to sit down and take stock. After a deep breath, she stared out to sea. “Okay, enough. You've got to think this through. Figure it out.” So she did. Or at least tried to.

  Why would he
have gone? Where would he have gone?

  He was here because of a bargain he'd made with the gods to allow him to create an heir. But he hadn't done that, as evidenced by her period. They'd been careful after that. Except for that one last time, but even then…

  She clamped a hand over her mouth, whispering “No!” through her fingers. Her other hand crept along her flat belly, even as she fought against the truth she suspected.

  She looked down at her hand. At her belly. It hadn't happened. Couldn't have. It had only been once. And he'd stopped in time. Besides, it had barely been twenty-four hours since they'd been together.

  And every argument she'd just made was what every pregnant woman told herself, right?

  Pregnant. It couldn't be. She dropped her head to her knees. She couldn't be. She didn't feel any different. She laughed then, though there was no humor in the sound. “Yeah, just what they all say.”

  She lifted her head and, stunned as the possibility began to sink in, looked back toward the tower amidst the tumble of castle ruins. “Is that what we did, Connal? Did we make a life between us?”

  It was such a huge thing to contemplate, she couldn't manage it. So she sat there, staring at the setting sun, and tried to simply allow it to filter into her brain. And her body. And her heart.

  But even when she finally got up to walk back to the croft, she simply couldn't wrap her mind around it.

  “Well, you're going to have to eventually,” she murmured as she let herself back into the croft. She forced herself to eat something, then dragged herself back to bed.

  After an hour of staring at the ceiling she got up, fished Connal's shirt out from under the bed, put it on, then crawled back under the covers. There she hugged the soft linen to her body and discovered she still had tears to shed. Wracking torrents of them. And when she was completely empty, sleep finally claimed her.

  A week passed. Josie spent as much time as she could with her students. The rest was spent working or down at Roddy's pub. Anything to keep from being alone with her thoughts.

  Gavin had been the first one to tackle the real surf. She'd purposely waited until the poststorm surge had died down, but it was still a challenge. For the boys and for her. It was hard, being so close to the castle and not feeling the weight of Connal's gaze staring down at her. She'd caught herself glancing up there too often, but the disappointment at finding the tower empty every time was too keen and, after three days, she forced herself to stop looking at all.

  Gavin had handled himself fairly well in the smaller swells. Enough that Clud was encouraged to try it out as well. Roddy was next, but it wasn't until the second day that he actually got to his feet. Dougal came last, but surprised them all by having the best run of that day.

  Josie was just thankful that they didn't break their necks.

  The ferry came several days later and she accompanied her father down to the docks. She'd grown used to having him around in the short time he'd been there, but she knew he had to get back to the business. She drove them there in her rental, which he was going to take back for her and turn in. Dougal had talked Bidda into letting her borrow the old Renault she'd had stored in her barn since she'd given up driving years before.

  “I'm going to miss you,” she told her dad, never meaning it as much as she did right then. She never had told him. It seemed best to just let it go, seeing as it was over and done with. But no matter how she tried, she suspected there was an undeniable melancholy air about her that her father hadn't missed, despite her ability to fool the boys and Maeve.

  “Are you sure you want to stay?” he asked.

  She found a smile then and laughed. “Bidda would kill me if I left now. And no way am I letting the boys be the ones to take her out for her first ride.”

  Griff laughed, too. “True, true.” Then his smile faded and he brushed a strand of her hair from her cheek. “Are you okay, Josiecat?”

  She paused, her lips trembling the tiniest bit at the gesture. She found a breath and a smile to go with it and said, “I'm fine. You've got my sketches, right? I put them on the backseat—”

  “I'm not worried about your work. I'm worried about you. You seem… different.”

  “I guess I am,” she said, knowing he couldn't know just how much different she was. She turned and looked over her shoulder at the town of Ruirisay, at the small huddle of buildings that bravely fronted the sea. “This place has changed me.” She looked back to her father. “I like it here.” And she realized as she said it, that she meant it. In a way that had nothing to do with Connal or her original reasons for being here.

  Her father nodded in agreement. “I know what you mean. A week or two ago I might have questioned it. No young people here, surf not all that challenging.”

  “South Carolina isn't exactly the pipeline either, you know,” she teased.

  “I know,” he said, quite seriously. “I worried that I stuck you in that place.”

  She pressed her hand to his arm. “I love it there, too. You know that.” Though, honestly, at the moment she couldn't imagine going back to her tiny bungalow and living alone among strangers and tourists. It unsettled her enough that she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “And I love you.”

  He blushed a little, then chuckled and bussed her back. “I love you best, Josiecat.” Then he looked down the road to town as well. “You're right though. There is something about this place that pulls you in.”

  Josie followed his gaze, but in her mind's eye, she saw the castle ruin and Black's Tower. “Yeah. Yeah, there is.” She shook off the image and all the emotions that came with it and turned back with a determined smile on her face. “But we're a team.” When he opened his mouth, she talked over him. “Dad, I'm twenty-six years old, a grown woman. It's not like I couldn't have left Parker's Inlet if I'd wanted to. I'll be back on the next ferry. Or the one after,” she said when he just looked at her. “I just have to finish up with the lessons. I don't want to go until I'm sure they're not going to kill themselves out there. I'll fax you whatever work I get done in the meantime. Besides,” she added with a grin, “I have to come back to work on the boards the boys ordered from you.”

  “And the ladies?” he added, a teasing grin of his own curving his lips.

  She rolled her eyes. “We're still discussing ideas. Bidda says if the boys can have their own likenesses on their boards, then she wants Mel Gibson on hers.” She sighed. “I'm working on alternatives.”

  “Good luck,” her father said with a chuckle.

  “Thanks, I'll need it.”

  The truck driver came back from his delivery to Maeve's then and told them it was time to board the car.

  “Be right there,” Griff told him, then surprised Josie by pulling her into his arms for a tight hug. “You take care of yourself, okay?”

  She hugged him back, perhaps a bit more tightly than he was expecting himself. “Yeah,” she whispered. I have to, I'm pregnant. It was there, on the tip of her tongue, but in the end, he broke the hug and tousled her hair the way he'd done a million other times and the moment passed.

  Besides, she'd already figured it would be better to tell him when she got home and the time came where she couldn't hide the obvious. Maybe by then she'd have figured out just what to say. “Take care of yourself, Dad. Now that I'm not there to keep an eye on you and all. Maybe I should send word back, warn the female population.”

  He laughed, his gaze shifting again past her to town. She thought there was something there, something a bit wistful? Then he was waving and climbing into the car and she let it go. “I'll see you soon,” she said.

  And with another smile and a wave, he was gone.

  Josie watched until the ferry was a small dot on the horizon, then rode Gregor's bike back down the road to town, somewhat surprised no one else had come to see Griff off. She said as much to Maeve when she arrived at the store, who smiled gently. “Och, we gave him a proper sending off at Roddy's. We thought ye might like the time. For all he's be
en here, the two of ye haven't had much time together.”

  Because I planned it that way, she thought, but only nodded, and said, “Thanks. I love my father dearly, but he's more in his element surrounded by people.” She grinned. “Preferably with a mug in his hand.”

  Maeve laughed, then said, “Oh! Almost forgot.” She fished a small parcel from the box of goods the deliveryman had brought and handed it to her. “Better late than never,” she said. “I'm sorry for the delay. It's island life and we're used to it, but I know you're no’. I hope it doesn't cause too much trouble for ye.”

  Her pills. Josie didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Cause her trouble? If Maeve only knew. She managed to smile and nod. “No, it will be fine. Thanks.” She took care of the bill, turned down an offer of lunch, saying she had to work before their afternoon lessons, and headed for the door. “Besides, I'm still coming up with alternate art for Bidda's board.”

  Maeve's eyes twinkled. “I believe she has some ideas as well, though she didna give me the details. But forewarned is forearmed. And Josie,” Maeve added, causing her to pause in the doorway, “we're so glad ye stayed on. And no’ simply for the lessons. We've all come to think of ye as our own. I'm no’ sure how we'll handle it when ye leave us.” She sniffled a bit, then laughed and wiped at her eyes. “Go on now before I embarrass us both.”

  Josie could only nod, surprised and touched. She left, smiling, her own eyes a bit teary. “I'm no’ so sure how I'll handle it either,” she told herself.

  Another ten days passed. She stopped going to Roddy's as often, as she'd run out of reasons to explain why she wasn't joining them in an ale. Instead she worked like a demon possessed, taught lessons, surfed alone as often as she felt she safely could, and rode Gregor's bike all over the island. Trying to escape her thoughts, she knew. And it worked, most of the time, but she didn't feel any better for it. In fact, she didn't feel much at all.

  The high point of her days was the time spent on the beach with the gang. After much practice, the day finally came when the ladies felt confident enough to take Josie's board out past the shore breakers.