Silk and Stone (20 page)

He cut his eyes at Charlotte. “Private, you’ll make a damned fine cook if you can just stop experimenting.” Charlotte giggled. Daddy looked stern. To Sam he said, “Check off the daily assignments for me, Corporal.”

“Beds made, clothes laid out, shoes polished, homework ready, Sergeant. Sarge, Charlotte needs a note for her teacher. The first grade is going on a field trip next week.”

“File that requisition with your mother, Corporal. She’ll be here as soon as she finishes her pretzels.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”
Pretzels
was what Daddy called Mom’s yoga exercises.

“Carry on, then. Good work, soldiers. Dismissed.” They saluted. He saluted. Then he squatted down, held out his arms, and they ran to him for a hug. “What you doing today, Daddy?” Charlotte asked.

“I’m flying to Los Angeles to pick up an AWOL. I’ll be home tonight.” Daddy found runaway soldiers and brought them back; the lowest thing a person could be, as far as Sam was concerned, was AWOL. “I’ll keep the troops in line for you, Daddy.”

“I know you will, Sam.” He chuckled, then kissed her forehead. Sam put both arms around his neck and leaned against him happily.

After he left, Mom scurried into the kitchen, unfolded her astrology charts on the table, and huddled over them with her hands jammed into her hair. “What’s the matter?” Sam asked, sidling up to her and peering over her shoulder.

“It’s not a good day for your daddy to travel.” Mom spread her hands on the star charts as if reading a roadmap. “Not a good day,” she repeated with a tremor in her voice.

Sam patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Aw, Mom, let’s have some oatmeal. Come on, you’ll be late for work.”

“Oatmeal,” Charlotte added, grinning like a gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern and holding out the pot. “With garlic in it.”

Sam groaned and went to fix a new pot.

That afternoon, as Daddy and another M.P. were boarding a helicopter with their prisoner, the man got loose somehow, and grabbed the other M.P.’s gun. Daddy, being the bravest man in the world, jumped in between. And got killed.

Alexandra was in her element. She had a shattered little group to care for, and even Samantha—by far the
strongest and most resilient of the three—was coming under her wing. Alexandra looked into the swollen, exhausted blue eyes of her ten-year-old niece and saw herself as a child, already aware that the world was made up of cruel and unfair rules, and that only the toughest survived.

They sat at opposite sides of the modest beige couch of Frannie’s living room, with the California sunshine streaming through a curtained window. Frannie was sleeping fitfully in the bedroom, an emotional invalid, with the confused and teary Charlotte dozing in her arms.

But Samantha sat dry-eyed and alert on the couch, her blue jumper smoothed neatly, her hair lying over one shoulder in a regimented braid. Alexandra leaned back, tucking a notepad into a small leather purse, flicking lint off the legs of her tailored slacks. “Am I such a stranger, Samantha? Do you still think of me as a witch?”

“You helped us take my dad to North Carolina,” Sam said slowly, staring straight ahead. “You made sure he had a nice funeral and all. You took care of things I couldn’t do. My mom is glad to have you around. I guess you’re not a witch.”

Alexandra sighed with relief and slid across the couch to her. Slipping an arm around the girl’s slender, taut shoulders, she said gently, “Your mother and I are very different from each other. We’ve always wanted different things, and sometimes I sound very, hmmm, set in my ways, I know. But I’m your
aunt
, honey, and I love you—I love you and Charlotte, and your mother, very much. And I want to make you all feel better. I want you to be happy.”

“My mom needs your help,” Samantha answered, flinching away from Alexandra’s arm. “And Charlotte really likes you.”

“You could like me, too, if you’d stop thinking of me as the enemy. Because I’m not. You can’t let your opinions be colored by what other people say about me. Especially when those people don’t know me very well—when they’re jealous and mean-spirited without reason.”

“You mean Mrs. Raincrow. You mean Jake.”

“Yes, honey. Jake’s mother never wanted me to marry her brother. I know it’s hard for a little girl to understand, but people are naturally suspicious when new people come into their lives, people who have new ideas. They look for things to dislike about the new people and the new ideas. They try to make others dislike them too. They don’t want their way of life to change. They’re afraid.”

“If you explained to them, though, and they saw that you were their friend, they’d—”

“I’ve tried, honey, I’ve tried since long before you were born. It hurt me so much for them to say mean things about me. It hurt your uncle William too. My only fear is that they’ve upset you so much that you won’t be able to make up your mind for yourself. You’re a smart girl; you don’t want other people telling you what to think, do you?”

“No, not anybody.”

Alexandra took her hands. “You are so smart, and so talented. Just look at these beautiful little hands of yours. I’ve never seen hands so perfect. I’m your
family
, honey. That means that I’ll always want what’s best for you. I want to see you and Charlotte become just as important as you deserve to be. You can trust me in a way you’ll never be able to trust outsiders.”

“I trust Jake.”

“Samantha, I think you have a marvelous capacity to daydream. Every little girl should. But there comes a time when you begin to grow up, and you see people and situations the way they really are, not the way you wish they were.”

“My daddy’s dead,” she said, her voice hollow.

“Poor dear, yes, but now I’m here to help you, and Jake isn’t. Understand?”

“Well, yes, I guess, but he
would
help me if he could. He would—”

“He’s four years older than you are. He’s fourteen. That means that he’s interested in girls his own age; he’s not a child anymore, but you still are. And when you’re fourteen, he’ll be eighteen. He’ll be old enough to vote,
and drive a car, and … even to get married. But you won’t be. You’ll still be growing up. It will be years and years before you’ll be anything but a little girl to him, and by the time you’re grown up, he’ll have a lot of girlfriends his own age, and he won’t even remember you.”

Sam considered that possibility in awful silence. She thought of older boys, high school boys she’d seen, and how they ignored kids her age. A terrible loneliness settled on top of the aching grief in her chest. Daddy was gone; Jake was some distant, manly stranger, Mother cried all the time, and Charlotte was Sam’s needy shadow, someone who always looked to Sam for answers.

“I need someone too,” Sam blurted out, looking up at her aunt tearfully. “I’m scared. What’s going to happen to us? Where will we go? If you’ll tell me what to do, I’ll take care of Mother and Charlotte. Just tell me what to do!”

Aunt Alexandra hugged her quickly, then leaned back and studied her wistfully. “I can’t convince your mother to move to my house. She wants a home of her own. She’s got her own way of doing things. She doesn’t want to live with me and your uncle Orrin. I can’t change her mind.”

Sam didn’t want to live with Uncle Orrin either. She didn’t even want to call Aunt Alexandra’s second husband
uncle
. Aunt Alexandra had brought him to visit during their honeymoon, on the way to Hawaii. He talked too sweetly and was too handsome to be real—a heartbreaker—Mother said after they left. He was a state senator, which meant, Daddy had explained, that he was a damned good liar.

Most of all, Sam remembered how he’d stroked her hair as if she were a kitten, but his constant touching had made her feel nervous for reasons she couldn’t explain.

But if we lived in Pandora with Aunt Alexandra, I could see Jake all the time
. On the heels of that thought came a darker one.
But he’d be too old, and he wouldn’t notice me
.

“I don’t expect Mom will change her mind,” Sam agreed wearily.

“That’s why I have another idea,” Aunt Alexandra said. “Your mother is going to work for me. I’m going to give her the money to open a health food store in Asheville. Asheville is a wonderful little city in the mountains, and it’s only about an hour’s drive from Pandora. And I’ll help your mother get a house there too.”

“You
will
?” Sam gazed at her in awe.

“Yes, of course. So you see, Sammie? Everything’s going to be just fine if you’ll let me help and love me as much as I love all of you. Can I count on that, Sammie? Can I count on your loyalty if I give you mine?”

Loyalty
. It was one of the words Daddy had drilled into her all her life. Loyalty, and honor, and duty. It meant sticking up for your family, God, the United States, and everyone else who depended on you. It meant keeping your promises.

Daddy had died for loyalty. She wouldn’t let him down.

Her throat aching, she whispered, “It wouldn’t be loyal to trust Jake too?”

Aunt Alexandra shook her head. “A family has to stick together, Sammie. It would hurt my feelings if I helped you so much and then found out that you still like someone who’s been mean to me. Are we friends? Do I have your promise that we are?”

Sam cried silently. Misery and defeat lost out to honor. She had to do right by Mother and Charlotte. What would Daddy think of her if she ruined Aunt Alexandra’s plans because of Jake?

But we’re married
, she told herself.

Idiot, you aren’t really married. It doesn’t count if you’re not even old enough to vote
.

“I promise,” she told her aunt.

What did he have to say to Samantha now? She was still a kid, Jake realized, part of a time he had outgrown. He shaved the fuzzy bristle on his jaw and upper lip every other morning; his voice dipped into a lower register sometimes, like a badly played clarinet, and his body
reacted with distracting salutes about a hundred times a day.

Ellie was the only female his own age he could talk to without thinking of her as a girl. She was in a different category from those puzzling creatures at school who hung out around his locker and reduced him to warm, wordless appreciation.

Like bees to honey—girls couldn’t resist a man in uniform, even if the uniform was for basketball and the man was six feet two of nothing much more than long legs, arms, and Adam’s apple.

Jake was overwhelmed by his sudden appeal to the opposite sex. He hadn’t come to terms with it yet. He could track anything on four legs or two. Word had gotten around about his skill, and he went out regularly for the sherriff, finding lost hikers and runaway kids. Grown men treated him with respect.

He could pry gemstones from mountain bedrock, sink foul shots without half trying, and read Shakespeare without falling asleep. He’d taught himself to speak and write Cherokee as well as any elder at Cawatie. He was a good carpenter, a good mechanic, and he played the dulcimer.

But he couldn’t talk to girls.

Caught in that unsettled no-man’s land, he struggled with alternating bouts of quiet observation and shyness. And so, when he heard that Samantha and her family had moved to Asheville, he wondered how much good his sympathy would do her.

What could he say to a little girl who’d lost her father? What could he promise her about a future that he could sense but couldn’t predict, about years of waiting to see what would happen next?