Silk and Stone (60 page)

The clatter of the loom hypnotized Sam, and she needed the easy, productive rhythm. It should have felt so
good
to be home again, to have the dust and cobwebs cleared out, the electricity on, the curtains and linens and rugs washed clean of mothball scents. It should have felt wonderful to work at the loom Jake had made for her and know she was picking up the threads of their lives.

But the month since Jake’s homecoming had only proved how frayed those threads were. Now she and Jake were hermits living in separate caves. Apparently he didn’t want to venture out of the Cove or into her sight. It had hurt more than she could put into words when he’d given Ben a list of supplies he wanted, including a
tent. Chills ran through Sam every time she thought of him sleeping where his family had died. He wanted to be close to ghosts, not to her.

And if she touched him, he’d leave. She didn’t doubt it.

When she heard the rumble of a car, she jumped up with nervous expectation. Charlotte and Ben visited every day, but Charlotte morosely kept to the kitchen, as if cooking were the only support she could bring herself to offer. Ben, carrying fishing tackle and a reel, wandered over to see Jake, but reported nothing more helpful than the size of the trout that eluded him in the Saukee. He fished, and Jake let him. No revelations there.

But today was different. She knew who was coming to visit, and it wasn’t Charlotte and Ben.

Sam removed the thin cotton gloves she wore when she worked at the loom—calluses had to be avoided—wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, and ran to the porch. Goose bumps rose on her arms beneath her plain white shirt, not from the cool spring afternoon.

Joe Gunther’s big luxury sedan purred into the yard. The sight of his jowly, friendly old face brought tears to Sam’s eyes. And Clara peered out the passenger window stoically, her long hair gone completely white now, her brown face an accordion landscape of wrinkles, her dark eyes peeking out among the folds like polished brown marbles.

Sam ran to Joe as he lumbered around the front of the car, his beefy arms spread. He still dressed like Roy Rogers with a jewelry fetish, a silver and turquoise bolero at his collar, every finger flashing a ring. Sam returned his hug, struggling not to cry. She had never known any of her grandparents. Joe and Clara filled that place in her life.

“Well, Miss Sammie,” Joe said gruffly, stepping back from her and studying her with misty eyes. “You got him home, just like I knew you would.”

Sam cleared her throat roughly. “He’s not really home,” she admitted in a small voice. “But at least he’s nearby.”

“I’d have traipsed down here sooner if you’d given the go-ahead. Me and Clara.”

“I know. I was trying to give him some … some settling time. But it looks like he’s as settled as he’s going to get.” She nodded toward the forest. “He’s over there. He stays over there.”

“Aw, Sammie, it won’t be for long. He’s just got to get his lungs full of fresh air. Remember how to breathe.”

“I hope you and Clara can help.” Sam opened the passenger door, stepped closer, and dropped to her bare heels. Clara was as solid and round as the mountains, a loose denim shirt flowing over her long, flower-print skirt. Somber affection glowed in her eyes. She raised a hand from her broad lap and stroked Sam’s hair. “You’re a grown woman inside and out now,” Clara said gently. “It suits you.”

“Oh, Clara, I don’t feel grown. I just feel older.” Clara touched the purple streak along her right cheekbone with her skilled, soothing old fingers. “He didn’t do it,” Sam said evenly. She glanced over her shoulder at Joe, who was also studying her face worriedly. “Prison hasn’t turned him into that kind of man.”

Joe sighed and looked relieved. Clara spoke softly. “It ain’t you he’s at odds with. It never was.”

“I wish I believed that. If it’s not me, then what is he afraid of?”

“Ravenmockers,” Clara whispered.

Sam bit her tongue. There was no point in arguing with Clara. Rising to her feet, she offered Clara an arm. “Let me help you out of the car.”

“I’m not that old.” Clara peered at her shrewdly and hoisted herself from the seat. “You seen your aunt yet?”

“No. I suppose we’ll cross paths eventually.”

“Oh, you will.”

“Look who’s here,” Joe said in a hushed tone.

Sam turned quickly, her heart in her throat. Jake walked out of the woods. She had seen him so little since his first day at home; all the hours of waiting, of thinking about him, welled up inside her like a painfully hungry dream. If she wanted him too much, she’d wake up. He
wouldn’t come to see
her
, but somehow he’d known they had visitors.

“He’s a sight for sore eyes,” Clara whispered to her. “Even if he moves like there’s still bars around him. Look at him, Sammie. Don’t never let him forget you’re on the other side of them bars. He’ll find his way out.”

Joe moved forward and met him, extending one hand. Sam’s heart broke at the strained expression on Jake’s rugged face; it was as if he feared he’d wake up too. Slowly he grasped Joe’s hand. Joe had tears in his eyes. He pumped Jake’s hand, then abruptly slung his other arm around Jake’s shoulders and hugged him.

Sam’s breath caught. Jake stiffened inside the older man’s awkward embrace, his jaw worked, and he turned his face away. Joe cleared his throat and stepped back. When he did, Jake looked at him with a flash of affection that was gone as quickly as it came.

“Let me at him,” Clara snarled under her breath. She shuffled over with ponderous speed, her gnarled hands rising. Jake glanced at Sam, and for one second, as their eyes met, she was certain she saw some of the old tenderness. Then it was gone, and he was gazing down at Clara, who took his face between her hands.

Jake was glad for any distraction that eased the overwhelming pull Samantha had over him. And desperately glad for an excuse to walk into this yard and be with her.
Do you still love your wife
? Clara whispered to him in Cherokee.

Jake nodded slowly. Clara, of all people, should understand.
With all my heart. I stay away so she won’t get hurt by what I have to do
.

You need her. You can’t fight a ravenmocker alone
.

I have to. There are reasons
.

Then I’ll sit by your fire later, and you tell me
.

I will
.

Clara patted his face, then moved her hands down his arms, squeezing, studying him shrewdly. “Strong,” she announced in English, nodding over her shoulder to Samantha and Joe. “They fed him well.”

“Looks like you been lifting weights,” Joe said gruffly.
He nodded to Samantha too. Jake thought with fragile amusement that they seemed eager to confirm, for her, that his spirit must have survived safely inside such a hard cocoon.

But Samantha made a soft, distressed sound that nearly tore him apart. “They used him like a trained animal. They hauled him out every time a sheriff needed a tracker.” Jake flinched. Her anguished gaze settled on his with apology. “I know. Ben told me.”

Jake struggled with emotions he had subdued for years. He didn’t want to share those empty years with her—he wanted to forget them. Instead, he wanted Samantha to fill him up with every detail of her time alone. “I find people,” he said brusquely. “It’s what I do.”

Joe interjected quickly, “Don’t see how you accomplished much without old Bo.”

Sam remembered the other reason Joe had come today. She whirled around, staring at the car. “Bo.” She jerked the rear door open and stared inside. “Bo.”

“He’s not dead. He’s asleep,” Joe called. “He’s an old dog. He sleeps most of the time. And snores too.”

Sam knelt by the open door. Bo was stretched out on the plush leather seat. When she called his name again brokenly, he raised his head. His jowly face was brindled with gray. He had a cataract on one eye, and he tilted his head, studying her with groggy disinterest with his good eye. She couldn’t find a shred of recognition in it.
He won’t recognize Jake either
, she thought. Her heart sank.

Suddenly she was aware of Jake’s footsteps behind her. The knowledge that he was standing there, his denimed leg almost brushing her shoulder, made her want to wrap her arms around his knees and beg him not to expect too much from an old dog who’d never been very alert anyway.

“Hello, old friend,” he said. The hoarse sound of his voice ripped into her. She would give anything to have him speak to her with that much welcome.

Bo lurched upright. His long, thick tail wagged madly, swaying his lanky, arthritic body. He bounded past
her, whining, and landed in an undignified heap on the ground in front of them, knocking into Sam. She sat down hard. Jake dropped down beside her. Bo scrambled into Jake’s arms and began licking his face.

Tears slid down Sam’s face as she watched Jake pet him. She couldn’t be jealous of an old dog, not when he’d brought the first glimmer of a smile to Jake’s mouth. But, oh, how she wanted to take Bo’s place then. “You can trust Bo,” she said. She scratched Bo behind one floppy red ear. “Bo didn’t forget you either.”

Jake looked at her over the dog’s head, his eyes sad and intense, searing her. Did he realize how he was looking at her—how openly greedy it was? She clung to the sight, hypnotized by the vivid hunger, the intimacy, unable to do anything but absorb him as he was absorbing her.

Her hand was inches from his, reaching toward his fingers as if he were a magnet.
Don’t touch him. Don’t give him an excuse to leave
. She jerked her hand back and looked away, trembling, miserable.

Jake did the same.

Smoke curled upward from the campfire and mingled with the blue-gray cloud around Clara’s head. Seated on a wide, low stump with her skirt spread around her in queenly style, she puffed on a long-stemmed pipe, cradling its smooth soapstone bowl in her knotty fingers. With her other hand she guided the fragrant tobacco smoke over her head.

Jake sat cross-legged next to her, staring into the fire. She handed the pipe to him and he copied her. With this ancient sacred ceremony he was calmed and strengthened, welcomed home by dreams the smoke carried into the invisible stream of past, present, and future. He breathed his promises into those currents.

Clara took the pipe again, emptied the bowl into the fire, and watched the flames. “Tell me what you’ve kept secret all these years,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

“Alexandra killed my family. She sent that man here. He hated me, and she knew it. I was the one who found him and sent him to prison. I knew he’d stolen from Samantha’s mother. Alexandra sent him to do that too.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed. She absorbed the startling information in troubled silence, as if nothing surprised her. “I see,” she said finally. “And you learned these things the way you always have.”

He nodded grimly. “Without any way to prove them. And wishing they weren’t true.”

Clara sighed. “They would break Samantha’s heart.”

“Yes.”

“But they are breaking yours already. Hatred and revenge are ravenmockers too. They’ll eat you up.”

“If revenge were all I cared about, it would be easy. A gun. My bare hands.” He looked at her with deadly calm. “I’ve lived with murderers. Killing is easy when you don’t love anything or anyone, including yourself.”

“Hmmm. But you do love.”

“I love Samantha. I want our life back. Without shadows over it.”

“Then tell her what you know. And how you know it.”

“Ask her to believe in something that would shame her the rest of her life, something I can only
feel
?”

“You’re not so afraid she wouldn’t believe you. You’re afraid she
will
. Because she couldn’t rest until she punished her aunt. But ain’t that her right? You can’t take away the shadow over her. Only she can do that.”

“You told me, more than once, not to draw a ravenmocker’s attention,” he said, his voice low and strained. “I learned that lesson finally. I’ve learned how to use my … 
gift
. It cuts both ways. I can use it to hurt people, and this time I will.”

Clara drew back, looking angry and alarmed. “You learned nothing. Why do you think the stone stopped talking to you when you was just a boy? You do what’s right—you open your heart to your wife, and she’ll do right by you too. She’s wise to keep the stone away from you. When your mind is clear, she’ll give it back. Then
you can listen to it. It will speak to you. Then you’ll know what to do.”