Dead Man’s Fancy (28 page)

Seeing her wounds made Stranahan think of the letters signed in blood.

“We found something in your father's journals. . . .”

She dragged the toe of her shoe on the bank while he told her about the men who'd been shot. Stranahan watched a tear run down her windburned cheek. She blinked, but did not wipe it away.

“I gave him that list.”

“Why didn't you tell someone?”

“Because I couldn't prove it was him who shot those people. Because I was protecting myself. Because I thought I was in love. Because it wouldn't have mattered.” She blinked again and turned to him. “Because because. I know you must think I'm a heartless monster.”

“You can't be blamed for what he made you do.”

“Yes I can. Poor Grady Cole, I let him fall in love with me and look what happened to him. It's like I'm cursed.”

“That wasn't your fault. I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have come. I seem to bring back nothing but bad memories.”

“No, I'm glad you did. It's a relief to get it out. Who else can I ever tell?” She looked off across the river.

“Is that Nadina Mountain?”

“No, it's Nanika. Nadina's farther to the west. About where the sun is. We should be getting back. Most of the time now I really am okay. You don't have to worry about me. You'll stay for dinner, won't you? You could stay over tonight, I'd like you to. I . . . want you to.”

Even in sadness, the woman standing beside him exerted a force field of energy that made the colors around her brighter, the scents more intense—the world vibrated by the simple fact of her presence. Stranahan wouldn't have been a man if he wasn't tempted.

“Thanks, but I should be going.”

“Is it because I almost killed you?”

“The first time or the second? No, I seem to be attracted to dangerous women.” He raised his eyebrows. “Some day that's going to get me into trouble.”

“Is it the sheriff? You're more than friends, aren't you?”

“Yes, but I'm not sure what that makes us. We seem to keep circling each other.”

“Then maybe when you get tired of circling, you'll come back here.”

“Never say never to a steelhead river with a good run of fish.”

He reached over and tilted up her chin. “Made you smile, didn't I? Come on. There's something I want you to have.”

The trail was wider as they neared the cabin. He came up alongside her and she laced the fingers of her right hand through his. Sean recalled how cold her hands had felt that night at Cliff Lake, and wondered if the journey that had led her to this place in this time, from the girl who'd watched the blue coat disappear to the woman who perhaps at last had come to terms with her survival, was only a matter of the gradual rewarming of her blood.

At the Land Cruiser, he opened the portfolio and withdrew a framed watercolor.

She held it out. For a long time she said nothing.

“You said you missed her,” Stranahan said.

“I do. Every evening I set a place for her at dinner. I need the light she brings into the world. Any day now, I think. All I have to do is walk around the table and sit down. After all, she's just another part of me.”

“Maybe it was presumptuous. It's a nude study. But it's discreet. It's the hair flowing in the water I wanted to capture.”

“It's beautiful.”

Stranahan started unhitching the boat trailer.

“I thought you were going to float the Kispiox.”

“No, I'm a wade fisherman at heart. The drift boat's yours. You still need one, don't you?”

“I can't accept this from you.”

“You aren't. It's from Sam.”

“You said you didn't tell him you were going to see me.”

“I lied.” Stranahan set the tongue of the boat trailer on a block of wood. It was Sam's backup ClackaCraft, the one with flowing hair painted on the side.

“See,” he said, “made for you.”

He clasped his hands on her shoulders and kissed her once on the mouth. “That's from Sam. He said to tell you, ‘Somebody has to be the Fly Fishing Venus.' Remember that timing belt now,” he said, and climbed into the Land Cruiser. He didn't look back.

T
he groom wore Wrangler jeans, a cream silk shirt with pearl snaps, Larry Mahan ostrich boots and a Bailey 100X beaver felt hat with a four-inch brim, the Legacy model, custom blocked by WesTrends in Norris. The clasp on his string tie was a pewter elk. The bride, with three grown sons in attendance and a husband deep-sixed under a cross up the hill, wore white.

The band set up on three acres of manicured lawn, the leaves still tender and the June sky sapphire. Only a dusting of snow on the shoulders of the Gravelly Range across the ribbon of the Madison River recalled the spring. Stranahan got to one knee and placed his own hat, a sweat-stained Justin with a crown crack, on the other knee. He took Martha Ettinger's hand, farm rough, the nails bitten to the quick.

“May I have this dance?” he said.

“Get up,” she said. “There could be somebody watching.”

“Who?”

“My constituency. Come on, I'm not kidding.”

On the drive down he'd asked her, as she was afraid he would, why she was so insistent on attending her cousin's wedding. After all, she still held Bucky Anderson responsible for Grady Cole's death, even though there was little chance he'd ever be prosecuted. The previous answers she'd given him, ever since receiving the invitation in March—“Because I want him to think he's clear so he'll trip up,” “Because I don't want to give the bastard the satisfaction”—had never seemed entirely convincing, even to her. This time, she'd looked over at Sean from the driver's seat and said simply, “Because it's the only way I'll ever get to wear my blue dress.”

It wasn't the whole truth, she didn't have the nerve to tell him the whole truth, but for a long time that afternoon, it was enough. She hadn't had occasion to wear a dress or a white rose in her hair or, for that matter, anything that revealed so much of her chromosomal makeup in, well, forever. For three hours she danced. She danced with Stranahan, she danced with other men she knew, she even danced once with Bucky Anderson when he asked her, the smiling bastard had a nerve, and managed to keep her tongue in her mouth. But for the last hour, she only danced with Stranahan.

True, she covered up the woman she'd set free those hours with her Carhartt jacket for the drive back to Bridger—the evening had grown chill if an excuse was needed—had even buckled on her utility belt out of old habit, which made Stranahan laugh. And then, sitting alone with him, she was suddenly embarrassed because she'd let him know the rest of the truth without a word being said. The memory of her body gradually relaxed as the sun cast the lawn in golden light and the ground underneath them began to whirl, until she had stood on her toes with her breasts spread against his chest and their lips so close that the kiss was as inevitable as the dying notes of “Save the Last Dance for Me,” the band's swan song, suddenly made her self-conscious in a way she hadn't been for years. And then after that dance, when he had held her at arm's length and said, “But what about your constituency?” she had answered by tightening her hands around the back of his neck and kissing him again. A kiss that had gone on and on and left no doubt, the truth out at last.

Oh God, Martha,
she said to herself, and felt the walls begin to build and the color come into her cheeks. Thank God it was dark inside the Cherokee.

One last chance for reprieve. “Do you want me to drop you at the tipi? I imagine Choti will be dying to see you.” They were turning onto Cottonwood Road, the moon full in the window as the Jeep climbed.

“Choti's at Sam's.”

“Do you want to come in for a drink? I think I've got some brandy.” Martha felt the artery in her throat throbbing.
Just let him say no
, she said to herself.
Please let him say no
.

In the kitchen, still wearing the utility belt over her jacket, she washed out two glasses and found the brandy, which had been collecting dust in the cupboard ever since her second divorce, more than a decade ago. The amber liquid was thick as syrup. She switched on the track lights over the stump that served as her desk and looked down at the puzzle.

“You've almost got it finished, Martha.”

“Late nights worrying about work. I'm still having trouble with the flies. Too much red.”

She picked up a piece and tried to fit it, Stranahan looking over her shoulder. He'd had the puzzle made for her from a photograph he'd taken in British Columbia, his fly box opened over stones on the bank of the Kispiox River, half the flies black, the others Dead Man's Fancy. His breath was warm on the nape of her neck.

“You really want to work a puzzle wearing your Carhartts and your magnum?”

He heard her exhale as she set the piece of puzzle down on the stump. She didn't turn around to face him.

“I can't live up to your standards, I can't even come close.” The words came in a rush. “I'm not from the world of Martiniques. The bits and pieces aren't where they used to be. I'm okay with who I am. I love my work, I love this farmhouse. I have Goldie. I have my cats. I've been down the road with men. It never works out. I don't want to lose you as a friend. I couldn't stand that.”

He kissed the skin under her ear.

“I'm too old for you.”

“You're not even forty.” He kissed her again.

“It will change everything. I don't do anything casually. Tonight, what happened at the reception, we can put that behind us. If we stop right now . . .”

“I don't want to stop.”

“But . . .”

He kissed her again. “Stop circling,” he said. “Take off your gun.”