Silk and Stone (17 page)

His heart pounded like an engine. It was a long way from the loft to the front pew. If he hit the wrong head, or
Samantha squealed on him for hitting
her
, he’d find out exactly what hell was like, right here, today.

He gave it his best shot. The spitball hit home squarely in the middle of Samantha’s hair. She slapped a small hand at the back of her head, pulled the gummy wad out, stared at it, then twisted around and searched the crowd with glaring eyes.

Up, up, up. She saw him. Her mouth popped open. He leaned on the railing as casually as he could, holding the blowgun in the air like a peace offering. He couldn’t think what else to do.

She whipped around and leaned close to her mother. He could see that Samantha was saying something to her.

Telling what the awful Raincrow boy had done to her, in
church
, at their uncle’s
funeral
, no less? Jake sighed heavily, and waited.

“I need to go the bathroom,” Sam whispered.

Mom, who sat between her and Aunt Alexandra, and was holding Aunt Alex’s hand, leaned down and whispered back, “Can’t you wait?”

“I know where it is. I can go by myself.
Please
?”

“Well,
hurry
. And don’t talk to any strangers.”

Sam looked at her solemnly.
It’s him. It’s Jake
. “Oh, I won’t,” she promised.

Chapter
            Eight
 

B
ack through the cool hallways inside the church. Through a door into the hot, bright sunshine. Around the hedges and along the edge of the lawn. She ran, breathless and uncertain, but determined. She darted among the grown-ups on the front steps, into the little room at the back of the sanctuary, and halted.

He was waiting on the stairs. Gosh, he was so tall, and his hair was black as night, with little bits of red in it. And he was a
boy
, one of those creatures she disdained. But not like the boys in her first-grade class at the school for kids of servicemen, a big boy, at least a fifth-grader, she guessed.

It was heady stuff. It was the same feeling she got when she hugged her favorite stuffed animal, only a thousand times larger.

She approached him slowly. His eyes stayed right on
her, as if she might be from outer space. Then he held out one hand. A distant memory returned, of being much smaller, of looking up at him the way she was doing now, and of taking his hand. It had been all right then; it would be all right now.

She grabbed his hand and followed him up the stairs.

“Go find your brother,” Father whispered to Ellie. Father had one arm around Mother, who was staring straight at Uncle William’s coffin, her hands clenched in the lap of her black suit. “And tell him to get his fanny back in here right now. The service is about to start.”

Ellie’s skin itched with the feeling that Jake wasn’t too far away, in fact, that he was at the back of the sanctuary. She eased around furtively, looked up, and inhaled with a long, low sound of alarm when she saw him sitting with Aunt Alex’s niece in the tiny loft. She whipped around and gazed steadfastly into space. She didn’t want to get her brother in trouble. He was going to be in enough of that. “Go on now,” Father said. “Go get Jake.”

“I—I—hmmm, he, well—”

The minister came out of a side door, and the organist started playing. Mother jumped as if she’d been asleep, and glanced at them. Her eyes were red and tired. “Where’s Jake?”

Ellie gazed at her parents, mouth open in silent torture. Father squinted at her. “
Ellie,
” he said, drawing her name out.

She motioned numbly toward the back of the church. They looked. “My God,” Mother said under her breath. “They did manage to find each other. I won’t have it. I won’t have him sitting with Alexandra’s niece. I’m sorry. I just won’t.”

“Let’s allow William one day of peace,” Father said grimly. “Let it be for right now.”

Mother faced forward, looking ashamed, Ellie thought, and said nothing else.

“I know about the rock,” Sam said carefully. They sat in the middle of a pew in the empty little hiding place
upstairs. His long legs reached the floor. Hers didn’t. “The rock that makes you hate my aunt Alexandra.”

“It’s not just a rock, it’s a star ruby. It belonged to my family way back when there was nobody else except Indians around here. Aunt—your aunt, she won’t give it back to us.”

“Do you hate me too?”

“No.”

“Then why do you look mad?”

“Because you’re a Duke, and it’s not right for me to like a Duke.”

“My name’s
Ryder
. My daddy’s an M.P. for the army, and he’s
Sergeant Ryder
, okay? I’m not a Duke.”

“Yes, you are.” He looked at her sadly. “Because your mother is one.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mom!”

“I didn’t say there was. Just that she’s your aunt’s sister. And your aunt is a Duke.”

“Aunt Alexandra is your aunt too.”

“Not anymore. Not since Uncle William …” His voice trailed off, and he stared away, frowning. “Not anymore,” he repeated, and sighed. “Listen to me. Your aunt wants you to belong to her. She’d be real happy if you could live with her like you’re her daughter, because you’re special, and she knows it.”

“I’m not gonna live with Aunt Alexandra. Why would I do that? Mother and Daddy wouldn’t let me, and I wouldn’t go anyhow.” She peered at him to see if he was joking. What a crazy idea.

“I’m just saying—don’t ever think she’s your friend. She’s a mean person. She’s … she’s like a spider, and if you get stuck in her web, she’ll run over and wrap you up before you can bat an eyelash.”

“Oh, no, she won’t. I’m a spider too. I know how to make webs.” She pulled something from a deep pocket in her odd black skirt. Her eyes became even more serious. “Here,” she said softly, pressing something into one of his hands. “I made this for you.”

He studied the odd little knitted blue square, no wider than his palm, with a perfect gold
R
stitched in
one corner. He couldn’t remember him or Ellie being able to make anything so delicate when they were her age. “You made this all by yourself?”

“Sure.” Her mouth flattened and she scrutinized him as if insulted.

“I told you you’re special.” He carefully tucked the gift in his jacket pocket. His skin tingled.
California
. The name came to him out of nowhere. His heart sank. Her family was moving to California. “I like it. What is it?”

“I don’t know. But I worked on it a long time. My daddy says it could be a blanket for a bug’s bed.”

Jake fished in another jacket pocket, sorting through odds and ends he carried with him all the time. Bits of quartz and other rocks. His touchstones. He could feel the mountains in them. He produced his favorite, a lumpy, purple-brown rock with a silvery glimmer. Holding it on his palm, he told her, “This is a kind of ruby.”

She bent over it. “It’s not red. Looks like a rock to me.”

“A lot of them aren’t red. I didn’t say it was a very good ruby, but it’s my favorite.” He popped the stone in his mouth, plucked it out, and polished the uneven surface on his jacket sleeve. “Look.” He tilted his hand, and light shimmered across the surface. “It’s got silk.”

“Silk’s a kind of cloth, silly. My mom has a silk shirt, and my baby sister threw up on it.”

“Well, when a ruby has light inside it, the light’s called silk too. And sometimes the silk makes a little star.”

“I don’t see any star.”

“You have to cut and polish the stone first. Besides, maybe this one has caught the middle of a star. A star so big you can’t see the ends of it. That’s what I think. And the light won’t ever go away.”
That’s how I feel about us
, he thought, but the feeling was too hard to say. He turned one of her hands palm-up and placed the stone in it. “So I’ll give it to you, so you’ll always have, hmmm, part of a star.”

She uttered a low sigh of pleasure and closed her
fingers around the stone. Sam suddenly thought about Mom’s diamond rock, the one Daddy gave her when they got married, and what Mom had said about Uncle William giving Aunt Alexandra the bad ruby when they got married. “You sure I’m supposed to get it?” she asked plaintively. “It’s not like Aunt Alexandra’s ruby, is it? You aren’t supposed to give it to somebody else?”

“No.” He ducked his head and looked away, red spots climbing up his cheeks. “Just to you. It’ll always belong to you. Even if you live so far away it’s like another planet. Even in California.”

She could barely breathe. “How’d you know the army’s sending us to live in California?”

“I … heard about it somewhere.” He added gruffly, “California is in America at least.”

“But it’s on the other side!”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll always know where you are.”

She opened her hand and touched a fingertip to the ruby. “Does this mean we’re
married
?”

His attention shot back to her. For a minute he didn’t say a word. Then he nodded. “Yes, I reckon that’s what we are.”

“Why hasn’t Samantha come back?” Alexandra asked Frannie the question in a hushed, strained tone, as if Frannie had failed at motherhood. “You shouldn’t have let her go alone.”

“She’s very mature for her age.” But Frannie twisted in her seat and scanned the packed church anxiously. She reminded herself that her sister was distraught. She didn’t want to argue with Alex at William’s funeral.

“You treat her like a friend, not a child,” Alexandra continued. “You’ve let her become too independent.”

“Alex, she only went to the bathroom, not to hitchhike around the world.”

Frannie caught a glimpse of movement in the tiny balcony. Sam, feet dangling from the seat of a pew behind the white balustrade, peered down at her stoically. Sitting beside her with his feet planted firmly on the loft’s floor was a somber-faced boy whose vaguely exotic hair and features Frannie instantly recalled.

Sammie, already, at the tender age of six, as strong-willed as a brick wall, had found and claimed her long-awaited prize. Frannie studied her daughter with pride, awe, and dread.

“
Mom.
” Tim’s petulant, anguished whisper made Frannie look around quickly. Tim was watching the balcony too, and tugging on Alexandra’s sleeve. “Mom,” he repeated while the organist’s morbid rendition of “Amazing Grace” throbbed louder in the hot, still air. “Samantha’s upstairs with
Jake.
”

Alexandra’s chalky face became a mask of fury. She swiveled gracefully in the pew, flashing Frannie a scalding stare, then riveting her gaze on the rebellious pair in the balcony. Inspired by the widow’s bizarre behavior, other people followed suit, until Frannie noted with rising alarm that most of the eyes in the church were fixed on Samantha and Jake. She glanced furtively across the aisle and met Sarah’s bleak gaze.

The objects of the disruption seemed frozen in place, like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming tractor-trailer. Frannie grabbed Alexandra’s clenched fist. It was cold and clammy. Frannie stared at her sister, who shivered violently. The minister had stepped to the altar behind William’s casket. He began speaking, but his words were a blank jumble to Frannie’s distracted senses, frightened by the electric rage and strange, unfathomable fear she saw in Alexandra’s face. “They’re not hurting anything,” Frannie whispered, pulling at her sister as delicately as she could. “
Leave them alone. The service has started. Alex, calm down.
”

But Alexandra bolted to her feet and jerked her hand away from Frannie’s fervent grip. Her voice rang out. “
Samantha
, come down here, where you belong.”

The astounding spectacle of Judge Vanderveer’s grieving widow shouting in the midst of his funeral service had the power to stop the minister’s voice, “Amazing Grace,” and every heartbeat in the sanctuary. Frannie felt cold sweat trickling down her back.

Slowly, Samantha shook her head. Jake stared down at his aunt in black defiance. It was as if the two of them
had merged into one force, an unspoken vow of alliance so poignant that a surge of maternal command faded in Frannie’s thoughts, and she wanted to cheer for them.

But the spell snapped when Alexandra left the pew and strode up the central aisle. Frannie bolted after her. Sarah and Hugh were on their feet too, hurriedly following.