Silk and Stone (21 page)

The shop was in one corner of an old brick building with the fading ghost of a Coca-Cola advertisement painted on one side. The sidewalk in front was cracked, and traffic crawled by with an unending stream of exhaust fumes. The building sat on a slope, with an apron of
dingy parking lot that curled down the hill along a basement foundation with dirty gray plaster crumbling off the concrete blocks.

It shared the street with salvage shops, gas stations, and a Chinese restaurant with a sagging metal awning. But the windows sparkled cleanly in the autumn sun, and petunias boiled over a clay pot by the neatly painted blue door, and a crisp blue and white wooden sign over the entrance welcomed people to the New Times Grocery and Healthy Living Shop.

Jake scowled over the contrasts as Ed Black guided his truck into one of the slanted parking spots on the slope. A thin cigar jutted from Black’s lined mouth, threatening to set the tip of his thick hooked nose on fire, and the smoke curling around his head was as white as his mane of long hair. He punched a button on the radio, cutting Loretta Lynn off in mid-song. The pickup truck’s cab was roomy and plush, with leather seat upholstery. Black bought a new customized truck every spring. He owned a restaurant on the main reservation.

“I don’t mind giving you a ride to the city,” Black told Jake, the cigar bouncing as he spoke. “But I ain’t got all day to wait while you do your visitin’. Get a move on.”

“I won’t be long.”

Black squinted at the antique store. “Can’t imagine it. You sure your folks want some old thing for an anniversary gift?”

Jake hesitated, sorry to have lied, but certain word would have gotten back to Mother and Father if he’d told Ed Black the true reason for his visit to Asheville. “Mother likes old things. Father likes whatever makes Mother happy.”

“Huh. Go on, then. Get a move on.”

Jake got out of the truck and climbed lopsided concrete steps to the street, kicking an empty beer can out of his way. “This is Alexandra’s idea of a good place,” he muttered under his breath.

No surprise. Alexandra probably wanted her sister to fail. Then Mrs. Ryder would have to come running
to her for more help. Alexandra would get Mrs. Ryder right where she wanted her, eventually—right under her thumb. Alexandra would get her claws into Samantha and try to brainwash her. Turn her into a miniature Alexandra.

Not Samantha. Not if I can help it
, Jake decided grimly.

A tiny wind chime jingled as he opened the shop door and stepped inside. The place was small, with pock-marked linoleum on the floor and a water stain on the whitewashed ceiling. Bins of fruits and vegetables lined one wall; there were shelves of breads and rolls in homemade wrappings, and other shelves crammed with bottles of vitamins. The smell was ripe and sweet and faintly dusty; a fringe of crystals twisted at the end of strings hung from the fixture of a ceiling fan that stirred the heavy air.

Mrs. Ryder rose from a chair behind a wooden counter with a cash register and a rack of incense sticks. Jake stared at her with pity and vague recognition. She was thinner, and a blue vein showed in the white hollow beneath one cheekbone. Her golden hair hung in a limp clump down her back, tied with a blue ribbon. Her shoulders made narrow bumps under a white T-shirt embroidered with a yellow peace symbol at the center. She wiped her palms on baggy blue jeans and watched him with a slightly worried frown. Then her eyes widened. “I know you, don’t I?”

“I’m Jake.”

She gasped. “Jake Raincrow? Good Lord, you’ve grown up.”

“Fourteen,” he answered, feeling ill at ease. “Ma’am.”

“How’d you get here? Are you by yourself?”

“Caught a ride with someone. I, uh, heard about Mr. Ryder. Sorry. Sorry, ma’am.”
Where’s Samantha
? he wanted to ask.

Swallowing hard, Mrs. Ryder looked at Jake. He didn’t need his extra intuition to feel her apprehension. After all, the last time she’d seen him, he’d caused trouble and gotten her daughter in the middle of it.

“Jake, you’re nearly grown,” she said again.

“Yes, ma’am.” His hand itched to touch the knitted square in a back pocket of his brown trousers. Samantha’s bug blanket. He had stored it in a dresser drawer and hadn’t touched it in years. He felt a little embarrassed about their bond, about a little girl who shared a legacy with him that he accepted but could not yet understand. A legacy no one wanted them to share.

Mrs. Ryder looked as uncomfortable as he felt. “How is your mother?”

“Fine.”

“She won’t come to visit me, will she?”

“No, ma’am.”

Mrs. Ryder’s shoulders sagged. “Your uncle’s death was the last straw. I’m sorry.”

Jake struggled for diplomacy, but gave up. “Your sister stole from her, ma’am.”

Mrs. Ryder looked away. “The ruby. I’m sure my sister meant well.” Jake said nothing. Her tired gaze returned to him with a hint of hard consideration. “You came here to see Samantha.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why?” Her voice had an edge to it.

“Just seemed like a good idea.”

“Most boys your age have nothing to say to a ten-year-old girl.”

He felt heat flooding his face. “It’s nothing weird, ma’am.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m not a pervert or anything.”

Mrs. Ryder leaned against the counter, never taking her eyes off him. “We have a little kitchen in back, and my younger daughter, Charlotte, cooks. She’s only six, but she makes the most incredible bread you’ve ever tasted. I’ll give you a loaf of her pumpkin and sesame seed.”

Jake didn’t know why she was suddenly so chatty. Mrs. Ryder nodded toward a table. “See those things folded on the table? Shawls. Sam made them. We sell at
least one a week. She checks in the produce and makes the vendors leave only the best. She haggles with the people who stock the vitamins, and last week she chased a wino off the front step. In short, she keeps us going. I wander around in a daze, and Sam is my rock. She’s grown up too fast, but I can’t seem to manage without her.”

Jake couldn’t help himself. “They around—your girls?”

Mrs. Ryder tucked her chin and studied him. “Charlotte’s at a birthday party for a girl in her class. Sam is … she’s downstairs. Dusting. The owner of the building has an antiques shop. He stores some of his pieces in the cellar.”

“Mind if I go down and say hello to her, ma’am?”

She rubbed her forehead. She seemed dazed.
She doesn’t have Samantha’s tight little hold on the world
, Jake thought. “He’s just a boy,” she said, speaking to herself in an eerie, lost-in-space way. “What harm could it do?” She looked at Jake. “My sister has been very kind to us. I can’t have bad feelings between her and myself. I don’t understand your … 
interest
in my daughter.”

Jake winced. “I’m not
interested
in her, ma’am. Not the way you mean it! She’s just a kid!”

“I don’t believe she’s ever been ‘just a kid.’ Any more than I believed you were an ordinary little boy the day you miraculously got her to start talking.”

He started to protest, but her sharp glance cut him off. Jake gritted his teeth and glanced around the store, spotting the top of wooden stairs that disappeared down a narrow stairwell in one corner.

“My sister despises your family,” Mrs. Ryder continued. “I wish it weren’t like that, but it is, and I respect my sister, and, oh”—she thrust out her hands in supplication—“it’s the most terrible thing to remember every second I had with my husband and know that there’ll never be any more.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. A ratty-looking hippie couple came into the shop, and he was enormously relieved for the distraction. Mrs. Ryder turned her bedraggled
attention to them, and they asked questions about vitamins. He eased over to the table with the brightly colored shawls. Putting one hand on them, he shut his eyes.

Suffocating. She couldn’t breathe. He saw a trunk, a dimly lit room with brick walls, and he felt the weighted struggle of her heart.

Jake swung around, his eyes jerking open. “I gotta see Samantha,” he called over his shoulder as he strode to the stairs.

“Wait … no, oh,
hell,
” he heard Mrs. Ryder say. “All right. All right.”

Jake was already at the base of the stairwell, hunching his wide shoulders in the confining space. He shoved open a narrow wooden door and stepped into the cellar. The place was crammed with furniture and junk.

Hands out, he wound his way among the clutter, shoving things out of his way. There was barely room to move. He groaned under his breath. He found one old trunk, the leather bindings gray with dry rot, and planted his hands on the faded wood. Empty. He found another, and another. Empty. He touched them, and knew that.

His heart threatened to explode. Behind a hulking armoire he spotted a fourth trunk. The instant he touched it, he knew she was inside. He jerked at the lid, but the clasp had locked. A rusty iron gate with sharp ornamental spikes leaned against the back of the armoire. He hoisted the gate, jammed one of the spikes under the lid, and jerked upward.

The lid popped. Jake flung it open.

Samantha was crumpled inside, her eyelids fluttering, her face blue. She wore overalls and a thin print shirt. A dust rag and a bottle of spray cleanser were crammed beside her folded legs.

She gasped for air as he snatched her up by the straps of her overalls. Limp, she dangled in his arms. “Breathe, kid, breathe,” he commanded as he hoisted her over one shoulder. He saw a heavy wooden door at the cellar’s far end and strode to it, pounding her back with his free hand.

Jake slammed the door’s handle down with his fist, then pushed outside. He sat down heavily on a concrete stoop facing the back parking lot and an empty, trash-strewn lot beyond it.

Samantha coughed raggedly. He pulled her, facedown, across his knees and shook her. “Breathe. You’re okay. Breathe.”

“I’m breathing,” she said with a little groan. “I’m
full
of air. Stop. Stop.”

He pulled her upright by the back of her overalls. She slumped beside him, long blond hair falling over her face. Jake pushed her hair back and scrutinized her, clasping her head between his hands.

Her eyes were half shut. The color was already returning to her cheeks. She coughed again, shook her head, and suddenly he was looking into stunned eyes as blue as fine sapphires. “Say something,” he ordered. “What’s your name?”

“
Jake.
”

“No, that’s my name. Say
yours
. Let me know you haven’t blown a brain fuse.”

“Jake,” she repeated. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Shit, yes,” he answered, too relieved to think about his language. He’d spent a lot of time hunting with the men at Cawatie, and picked up bad habits. “Yes,” he corrected himself. “Samantha, what in the hell—what were you doing in that trunk?”

“Cleaning it.” Her gaze flew over his face. “The lid fell shut on me. I yelled, but I guess Mom couldn’t hear me.” Her darting eyes never stopped absorbing him. “You found me. How did you find me? You found me, just like you said you would. But you’re so old-looking.”

Breathless again, she leaned back. He dropped his hands to his knees and watched her carefully. His thoughts whirled around the memory of her lying limp in the trunk, and the shock of what had almost happened to her wouldn’t fade. She, however, seemed to have put it out of her mind. She was totally focused on him.

He finally found his voice and demanded, “Why do you dust trunks?” That question made as much sense as
anything, he supposed. What else could he say?
Hey, kid, what did you expect when you married me? That we wouldn’t change
? Jesus, this was strange.

“We get a commission if anybody buys something from the cellar. People like clean trunks better.”

“Well, don’t crawl inside any of them, okay?” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, trying to forget what would have happened to her if he hadn’t found her. If he hadn’t come to see her, if …

It wasn’t pure luck. It’s part of some plan, the same plan as always. Nothing has changed
.

He looked at her with somber affection. Someday the pieces would all fall into place. For now, he accepted the mystery. “Swear that you won’t get inside one of those trunks again.”

“I swear.” She faced forward and rubbed a shaky hand across her mouth. She was small but sturdy, and her hands moved as fluidly as a ballerina’s. It was no surprise that she was a wizard at making shawls. “I’m not dumb,” she told him, her voice a thready whisper. “I just wanted to see what it feels like to be in a box.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Like my daddy.”

The sadness in her left Jake speechless with sympathy. Finally he said, “He’s not in a box. Not really. If you listen, he’ll talk to you. When you dream about him, and when you remember him so clearly that you can almost see him, you’ll know he’s close by.”

“Mom says things like that. But I think he’s just … gone.”

“Trust me. Everything and everyone has a soul. Their souls, hmmm, stick to the things that are important to them, the things that are part of them. They don’t just leave.” He struggled without the eloquence he dearly wished he had. It was easy to have faith, but hard to explain. He had long ago closed off his secret inside himself.

She eyed him seriously. “Then what would my daddy’s soul stick to?”

“You. Like … music, only you can hear.”

“I don’t hear anything. Mom says I’m
down to earth
.
I don’t float around in the clouds. I grab on to real things, and I hold on. Mom’s a floater.”

Jake pulled the square of knitted yarn from his back pocket and held it out. “So you figured I forgot you.”

She inhaled and looked at it, then him. Her face glowed, and she smiled. Then the smile became uncertain, and he watched her expression wind down like a tired clock. Her back stiffened, and her head rose. She stared straight ahead again. “Please don’t tell my mom about the trunk. She’ll worry about it—she’ll be scared that Charlotte might get shut up in one too. But I’ll watch out for Charlotte. Don’t tell Mom. She’ll get upset and go check her astrology charts. I’m trying to take care of her.”