“In the truck. If Jeff goes with us, he can haul it back for you.”
“Vince might like Jeff’s company on the walk,” Trey said. Vince weakly cawed.
Andy stood carefully, one arm cradling Vince and the other one holding the broken wing. “Not going to be fun, little dude,” Andy said cheerfully. “But we’ll get you to the Doc’s quick.”
As was his style, Andy left without saying good-bye. Jeff hurried after them, sketching a wave at Trey and Miri.
Trey took Miri’s hand, his thumb stroking her fingers. Touching her had a rightness after the wrongness of her being gone.
“First time I’ve seen Jeff gladly go with a McVey anywhere. Thanks for that, Miri. You started a sea change in him.”
“Hopefully it won’t mean more broken wings,” she retorted. “Maybe you should be telling him Romero stories to balance out the reckless McVey ones.”
Carefully but firmly, he said, “You’ll tell him.”
By the haunted look on her face, he saw her withdraw. He tugged her closer till he could wrap his arms around her. Her body would choose him even when her mind fled. He’d known that fifteen years ago and he knew it now.
She relaxed, her cheek against his shoulder. “A real teller will speak your family stories to Jeffrey. I’ll tell Aunt Shelly to find Ravenscar a storyteller among the villages she roves.”
“No need.” He rested his chin on her head, smelling the tangerine scent of her shampoo, her hair soft at his throat. “We already have a storyteller.”
“I’m not …”
“You are. Even in your denials, I heard it in the barn this afternoon. Belle and I heard it in the cottage, sentences and even paragraphs full of the tempo and cadence of a storyteller. The boys and I heard you tonight. Trust me, those two will be pestering you to tell the one about the McVeys for weeks.”
“Are you sure?” Why did she sound so uncertain?
“You must have felt it. You were good before you left Ravenscar, but what we heard tonight was even better. The cave actually vibrated with its power.”
She turned so he could see her face. She smiled shakily. “I did feel it. I thought it was just me.” Her smile faded. “I’d give anything to be Ravenscar’s storyteller again.”
“You don’t have to give anything, Miri. Ravenscar wants, needs you here.”
“But what about us? Won’t it be hard seeing me here?”
“It was hard not seeing you here. This …” He tightened his arm around her. “This is easy.”
Her trembling jittered against his skin. “How can you forgive me, Trey? You’re right. I must have rationalized that you and Elise betrayed me so I could be a roving collector. How can you ever trust me again?”
“Tell me this first—did Elise kill herself?”
She stared at him for a long moment. He knew she wondered what that had to do with them. Finally she shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t suicide.”
“Why did she fly into the squall then?”
Miri settled back against his shoulder. “If Elise had been a human, she would have danced. It was all she wanted to do. When I practiced storytelling, she would do pirouettes in the background, perfectly synchronized with my voice. I never saw her fly in a straight line. She soared, she spun, she floated like a cloud of dandelions in summer.”
She sighed. and he could feel her breath warm against his sleeve. “Ravenscar doesn’t cotton much to those different and no one had ever seen a dancer in our village in hundreds of years. Not once. Every school teacher told Elise to walk in a straight line, one foot after the other. Although she was too graceful to break anything, Jean moved all the china to the buffet because “that girl is a dervish in the drawing room.” Dad once punished her for walking through church on her tiptoes. The old crones on Beddoes Lane told her that she would come to no good if she tap danced down their street instead of walking like a lady.
“So bit by bit and waltz by waltz, Ravenscar wore her down. The sad thing is that there are dancers among others of our kind. In the Canadian plains, I met troupes of raven men who danced during leaf burning holidays. Aunt Shelly told me about a village in the bayou where an engaged couple are expected to dance in public together for an hour each night till they are married. In Colorado, I saw dozens of our people soaring in flight, dancing in contrails as a Chinook wind came roaring over the Rocky mountains.”
She squeezed Trey’s arm tightly, and he felt her tears through the sweatshirt. “She’d gone to the beach that night to dance in the squall. But how can I tell Dad that? He won’t understand. No one in Ravenscar will understand.”
Her voice caught on a sob. Trey pulled her onto his lap to cradle her close. “So maybe you tell them a story at her funeral and they will see a splice of truth,” he said. “But you tell Jeff just what you told me. He didn’t find Elise in photo albums or home movies. He came to a squall looking for his mother. He will understand.”
Her fingers played nervously with his sleeve. “So what does Elise have to do with you trusting me again?”
“Only this.” He kissed the top of her head. “You never lost my trust, Miri. I understand too.”
“What is it with you two?”
A disgusted look on his face, Jeff stood at the cave entrance, his hair windswept, his clothes damp, and his arms hugging two water bottles.
Miri giggled and slid off Trey’s lap. She wiped her eyes with her sweater and held out her hand. “Water, please.”
“You might as well sit down, son,” Trey said. “This will affect you too.”
He sat warily. “What do you mean?”
“Not here, but later when your aunt and I are alone, somewhere much more romantic, I’ll ask her to marry me. I’m not taking her “yes” for granted, but you should start preparing yourself for a wedding and Miri sharing our home.”
Jeff studied Miri for a good minute and Trey risked a glance too. She didn’t seem angry that he’d jumped the gun. In fact, her eyes glowed and her lips quirked upwards as she inched closer to him.
“I guess that’d be okay,” Jeff said grudgingly. “She tells good stories, and she can help with Darby.”
“Thanks, Jeffrey.” Miri’s words had a dry note.
“Yeah, thanks, kid,” Trey said. “You should be glad that she may distract me from increasing your punishment for tonight’s stunt to a new high.”
Brightening, Jeff raised his fist in the air. “Yeah!”
CHAPTER NINE
Miri fidgeted with the eggplant-colored dress she’d borrowed from Skye. Mourners filled the chapel—she couldn’t see a single empty spot in the pews and overflow folding chairs. From her vantage point peeking through the lobby door at the back of the church, she couldn’t see Elise’s small casket. She did see masses of flowers and photo boards. And the microphone where she’d be speaking.
Her mouth was dry and her heart hammered. She still hadn’t decided how to begin.
She felt a breath at her ear and a warm hand at her neck. She leaned back and his arms went around her.
“You doing okay?” Trey whispered.
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to start.”
“You will.”
Just like that, some of his confidence seeped into her. She relaxed. She turned her grief and stage-fright into analyzing what this group needed to hear. She looked from Sheriff Jonas Stevens and Hyacinth to Oren Towe and Vince, the boy’s arm in a neon orange cast. To her dad who sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Jeffrey. And there she stalled.
The pastor was walking to the podium, where he would introduce her.
Feeling her panic return, she turned in Trey’s arms. “Where will you sit?”
“I’ll stand here. In case, you need an encouraging nod. But you won’t.”
In the background, she heard the pastor speak but it sounded like background noise. She buried her face in Trey’s neck.
His arms hugged her close, and he laughed softly. “Are you going to be this nervous at our wedding too?”<
br />
Remembering how he’d asked her to marry him as they watched the moon rise from Long Pine Ridge, she smiled into his dark hair that feathered thick on his neck.
“Not a bit,” she said.
He released her with a kiss as the pastor motioned her to come forward. And though it seemed a long walk to the podium while the entire village watched her, she felt bathed in love. And not just from Trey.
In the audience, she saw cousins and schoolmates, teachers and uncles, Rafe still wearing his diner’s baseball shirt and Pablo who owned the antique store. She saw Doc who had set Vince’s broken bone, cared for her during childhood sicknesses, and written Elise’s death certificate. She saw Jean cradle Elise’s daughter, Darby, the baby she and Trey would raise. She felt currents of love coming from her dad who in a space of days had lost one daughter and welcomed home another.
And Jeffrey, eager to know more about Elise, leaned forward as if to hear her better. She had all the time in the world to tell him about his mother. Now she could begin.
“My father went to Cambria to buy a music box for his bride. It had a tiny ballerina on the top that would twirl when you turned the key. And it played a song, something from Swan Lake if I remember right. And when Elise was two…only two years old…Momma turned the key of the music box. And that baby girl hugged herself. Her eyes glowed like a fire lit inside her, and she went on her tippy-toes. She spread her arms like she was making out to fly. And right before our momma and me, my little sister danced. My, how she could dance.”
AVAILABLE NOW
Lillian in the Doorway
Book One in the Orange Ranch Bride Series
Michelle Dutton
An Excerpt fromLillian in the Doorway
Gilda Atxabal’s Boardinghouse
Fullerton, California
June 1924
“Getting husbands is easy,” Lillian said. “I could find men for you in a snap.”
Across the breakfast table eyebrows arched on the faces of her three friends. Mouths opened in unspoken questions: Could you, Lillian? How? When? Chuckling at the interest palpitating in her friends, she left their table for the breakfast buffet across the room. She adored the girls but she had tired of the chatter about the upcoming wedding of Faustino Herrera and Maria Lopez. Obviously, the three girls yearned to be married themselves.
Not so Lillian; she was on the run. Hiding in the orange-scented haven of this farming community. Trying to save her life.
Photos of the Atxabal family covered the blue hand-printed wallpaper, and a paned window over the buffet table lit the bread and sliced oranges with an early summer morning gloom. Her fellow teachers, who knew California better than she did, explained that the gray would burn off by noon.
Shadows crossed the window, and Lillian shivered. Did she see men creeping through Gilda’s garden? Searching for her, finding her—despite all her precautions?
No, it was only a gust through the arbor. Relax. In five months, not a sign of danger. She forced herself to concentrate on the twig basket of crisp toast and soft rolls. Since she had arrived to teach Americanization classes to Mexican ranch hands, Lillian had grown accustomed to oddly fragrant suppers at their Basque boardinghouse: barbecued mutton, fish stews, and even ewes' milk cheese with walnuts and quince paste—the latter only for dinner after church. All very different from the meals of hamburger, roasts, potatoes and pie she’d known in Chicago.
Most of the male boarders were shepherds between seasons; their landlady Gilda served them a hearty meal before sunrise. Thank goodness, Gilda only served light American breakfasts to her four female boarders.
Lillian put a pat of butter next to a roll on her plate and returned to the table where Sadie, Ruth, and Violet waited. They also taught in the government’s Americanization program. As she spread butter on the roll, her thoughts drifted to mornings in Chicago and the rich smell of her boss’s hair pomade which he’d used with a heavy hand.
Laziness and world weary eyes didn’t stop her roommate from pounding the table. “Lil!”
She choked. “Lands, Sadie, you startled me!”
The youngest, Violet, fiddled with the ribbon that had already lost the battle of restraining her red curls. “Perhaps we should give Lillian coffee. The tea isn’t waking her.”
“I am awake.” Lillian blinked alertly at her companions over the rim of her teacup.
“How would you get us husbands?” Sadie prodded her. “You said you could.”
Lillian drained her cup. She hadn’t considered marriage for herself since her boss’s murder in Chicago. Before that, she’d been a career gal and worked too many late nights to even think of dating. Now that it would be impossible to marry, she felt a twinge of regret.
Still, even without the threat of death hanging over her, she considered marriage a dicey business.
“You certain you want a husband?” Oh dear, she hadn’t meant to sound skeptical and even a smidge disdainful.
Ruth hid a smile, and Violet exchanged a shocked look with Sadie.
“Of course, we want husbands, Lil.” Sadie smoothed her slightly risqué, flapper-short, light brown hair. “You can’t do much without one.”
Lillian’s thoughts turned cynical. She was twenty-eight-years-old, the eldest of the four women. In years, not much older than twenty-five-year old Sadie, twenty-four-year old Ruth and twenty-one-year old Violet. In life experience, she felt ancient.
In Chicago, she’d worked as a secretary to a private detective. After someone shot her boss, she fled to California. To ensure her safety (and those around her), she changed her name and her history. Most days, she believed she was Lillian Pratt from Topeka, Kansas rather than that other girl who picked her name off a train station map. No one in California knew her true past.
“And there she goes again.” Sadie waved her hand under Lillian’s nose. “What are you thinking when your eyes go dreamy?”
Lillian forced herself to concentrate. Once she’d been a paragon of single-mindedness. Now she felt adrift, belonging neither to the present nor the past, to a land of orange orchards or to ....
She gritted her teeth. Too dangerous to think about Chicago, instead she forced herself to focus on breakfast. “I’m planning what to teach in class today,” she said.
Violet grinned. “More likely she’s mooning over the beau she left behind in Kansas.”
“There’s no beau …” Lillian said, trying to remember if there had been a boyfriend. Her boss told her to keep her story simple when working undercover.
Or running for her life.
“So you say.” Sadie raised an eyebrow. “I think any woman who has so much against men is hiding a broken heart.”
“I have nothing against …” Lillian began.
Gentle, peace-maker Ruth touched Lillian’s hand sympathetically and for the first time spoke. “Dear, if you don’t want to talk about it, we can change the subject.”
With exasperation, she said, “There is nothing to talk about!”
Always the diplomat, Ruth smiled serenely making her gray eyes sparkle and her plain face almost pretty. “Of course. Perhaps then you can explain how you plan to get us husbands?”
Lillian took a deep breath while the other three watched expectantly. It hadn’t been that many years since the Great War when women fended for themselves while the men fought in France or Prussia. Some women even went to war themselves, working in military offices or hospitals. Yet even now, in an age where automobiles clogged the streets and most people had a telephone in their homes, females still wanted a husband. Women had only recently been given the right to vote in national elections. Why would they pass off all their other rights to a man?
But if her friends wanted shackles, so be it.
Who to marry off first? She studied her friends thoughtfully.
Best to start with Sadie as she was the next oldest. By her own admission, jaded Sadie enjoyed men, flirted outrageously with the male boarders and the old gents who sat outside t
he mercantile. She was more reserved with men her age. In upstate New York, she’d been engaged to a soldier named Bill who died on Flanders Field six years ago. At the sight of his picture, her sassy smile vanished for minutes. Letters from his family caused her to withdraw for days.
Lillian thought it odd that Sadie would consider marriage again, but she supposed one needn’t love a man to marry him. Mister Thompson would be a good match. A staid solicitor who needed a lively woman to make him appear less dull.
Ruth was the shortest of the four, gentle as a lamb and tongue-tied with the opposite sex. She didn’t seem to mind the male boarders teasing her, but she never failed to blush when they did. As a teacher, she was quiet but confident. When they attended fiestas and barbecues, she seemed more comfortable helping with the food.
Every Sunday, Ruth played the old pump organ at the Lutheran church. Lillian suspected Ruth was smitten with the young, out-going minister as were most of his female congregation. She also suspected Reverend Hoffman felt nothing for the nearly-invisible Ruth. After service, a bevy of dazzling women surrounded him. Some of the single ones came with good dowries.
Lillian considered Ralph Sawyer, at the Western Union office, to be a better candidate than the handsome preacher. She’d seen the dour clerk brighten when Ruth stepped to the counter.
She wouldn’t have to work hard to find Violet a husband. The pretty, effervescent girl already had a half-dozen men dangling after her. She was the only daughter of a well-to-do Long Beach businessman. So why was she as starry-eyed for a husband as the other two? Perhaps an older man who could both check Vi’s impulsive nature and deal comfortably with her intimidating family? Ronald Lamarr would do nicely.
Lillian checked her timepiece. Twenty-three minutes before she needed to leave for class. More than enough time to put a betrothal plan in place.
Lillian clapped her hands briskly. “Pay attention, girls. If we stick to a strategy, we’ll have you all engaged by the end of the week. Sadie, ask Gilda if we can use the parlor for guests. We’ll need a friendlier place than church or the dry goods store to talk to candidates.”
The Last Storyteller (Ravenscar Shifters Book 1) Page 5