The Splendour Falls (6 page)

He certainly gave no clue, so I determined to do the same and distracted myself with a look around the site. The shadows of the trees were lengthening, falling like bars across the clearing. The breeze stirred the branches, so they seemed to move sinuously towards us as we sat on the eerie relic of raised earth.

‘What was this place?' I asked, my curiosity genuine. ‘Do you know?'

Rhys squinted towards the top of the mound, then around the clearing. ‘A mound like this usually means a buried structure of some sort. Unexcavated ruins.'

The authority in his answer surprised me, and it must have shown, because his mouth twisted sheepishly. ‘My father is a professor of anthropology at the University of Cardiff. On sabbatical at the moment.'

‘Oh really.' In my world, ‘on sabbatical' meant that someone was in rehab or on a diet. ‘And he picked rural Alabama out of all the places in the world?'

His grudging smile widened a fraction, acknowledging my point, my persistence. ‘He's researching a book.'

That reluctant curve of his lip was devastating. My heart tripped all over itself, and I told myself it was merely triumph at having elicited a smile that wasn't at my expense. ‘So, you're just here for grins,' I prompted.

He shrugged. ‘I'm sort of on a break too. So I'm helping Dad with his research.'

I wondered what ‘sort of' on a break meant, and whether that was another way of saying ‘out of university but haven't found a job yet'. Not that I was one to throw stones at people who had their lives on hold.

‘Are you in the same field?' I asked.

‘Not exactly.' He rose to his feet and climbed a few steps higher so he could survey the clearing. ‘But I'm getting a grounding in the local history. I can tell you that these mounds baffled early Spanish and French explorers. They considered the natives here too uncivilized to construct anything like this.'

‘Of course they did.' Gigi had curled up in my lap, and I ran my fingers through the grass, letting the history draw my imagination down, wondering what lay beneath the surface.

‘Is it something like the prehistoric barrows in Britain?' I had the strangest sense, not just of being connected to the earth here, but connected to the past. ‘That's what it feels like.'

‘
Feels
like?'

His voice sharpened on the question, and, when I
glanced up, the keenness of his look snapped me back to my senses.

‘I mean—' What
did
I mean? The words had come out of my subconscious. The one that imagined historical reenactments when I got loaded. ‘You know. A
vibe.
' That wasn't too weird, right? ‘Some places you just get a sense of them being really old.'

‘You mean like Stonehenge.' The curiosity vanished – provided I hadn't imagined it – and he spoke with dismissive condescension. ‘Every American says that.'

Good. That meant I wasn't losing it. But also bad, because I didn't appreciate his tone.

‘I couldn't see much of Stonehenge through the tourists,' I said coolly. ‘I mean all the other stones and heaps of earth we saw on that trip. Dad must have dragged me over half of Britain looking for Iron Age relics. It's like any time your ancestors had a rest stop, they stood a rock up in the ground.'

He tilted his head, either ignoring my snippy tone or simply not thinking he owed me an apology. ‘Your dad was interested in standing stones?'

‘My dad was interested in everything that anyone ever did to decorate a landscape.' The words were brusque, but I couldn't keep the warmth of memory from my voice, for those weeks spent visiting famous gardens and ancient sites, Dad explaining them with the fervour of a pilgrim.

Rhys gave a considering nod, then went on in a tour-guide sort of voice that amused me. ‘Then you know the barrows in Britain are smaller than this. And
older. They're burial chambers, from as far back as four or five thousand years.' He glanced up, towards the apex of the structure. ‘The people who built these lived here as recently as five hundred years ago.'

‘I love how you British think that's recent.'

He turned back to me with a raised brow. ‘We
Welsh
think it's recent, and it is – to everyone but Americans.'

My lips curved at that offhand nationalist disdain, even though it should have annoyed me. I mean,
everything
annoyed me lately, yet there I was, sparring with this stranger, feeling a slowly uncurling warmth that I couldn't even name. When I met his gaze, the moment seemed to hang in time, as it had in the door at the airport. Except instead of coming or going, in or out, I was weighing amusement against my usual misery, inexplicable attraction against confusion and cynicism and common sense.

Well, not inexplicable. I liked his strong features and confident bearing. Maybe I was just intrigued by the mystery, because he was so miserly with personal details, and there were so many enigmatic contradictions. He had the body language of an alpha dog, as Gigi's trainer would say, but he was spending a slacker summer working for his dad. He talked like a college guy, but he had the hands of a labourer. There was probably a very boring explanation, and if I knew it, this unsettling … whatever it was … would go away.

Gigi stretched and yawned in my lap, making me wonder how long we'd been sitting there. ‘We should start back,' I said.

Rhys winced. ‘I'm surprised Paula hasn't used the
horn.' He descended the ridge, then held out a hand to help me. ‘Don't forget your shoes.'

I sighed and put them on. The right one was tight on my still swollen foot, but I'd live until I got back in the SUV. Instead of taking Rhys's waiting hand, I dropped the end of Gigi's leash into it and made my way off the slope by scooting on my rear end. Might as well make the back match the front.

Gigi scampered happily down, and I reclaimed her leash from Rhys. He gestured for me to go ahead of him on the path. It wasn't far, but the vegetation was thick, with dense, broad-leafed vines encroaching on even the cleared areas, creating a wall between this eerie world and the prosaic one where Paula waited in the car.

‘So, who's Clara?' I asked, mentally, as well as physically, returning to the road ahead.

Rhys held back a branch, looking amused but answering helpfully. ‘Paula's business partner. She handles the cooking. She and her daughter live on the property.'

‘And this Teen Town Council?' I ducked under his arm. ‘What kind of fifties throwback is that? Are Wally and Beaver members? Do they put on shows in the barn?'

He paused on the path, just before the last bend that would put us in sight of the car. I stopped too, and turned to find him studying me again. ‘You truly don't know any of this?'

It was more of a voiced realization than a question, but I pointed out testily, ‘I wouldn't be cramming like the five minutes before a pop quiz if I did.'

Gigi waited impatiently at the end of her leash. It was nothing compared to how impatient I expected Paula to be. Still he held me back with a question. ‘But … it
is
your ancestral home. You have no interest in that?'

I felt a hard jab of anger, because the question forced me to admit with feigned carelessness, ‘Dad didn't talk much about his family.'

His brows drew together, and I wondered why this was so incredible. ‘Yes, but to come here knowing nothing about Paula, or where you'd be staying—'

‘Honestly?' I cut to the chase. ‘By the time I realized I wasn't going to be able to get out of coming here, it was too late to ask questions.'

‘How is that?' he asked, starting again towards the car.

Falling in beside him, I let my mouth twist just a little, in a rueful smile aimed at myself. ‘Because by then they'd closed the door of the plane.'

I
made a liar out of myself by dozing off once we were back on the road. One moment I was watching the Appalachian foothills roll into lush timberland. The next, I found myself slumped over at a very uncomfortable angle, the deceleration of the vehicle sliding me into consciousness.

I'd hoped my nap had gone unnoticed, but I heard Paula say, in a drawl that just barely carried over the noise of the engine, ‘Should I wake her up, do you think?'

If I read Paula correctly, this was a rhetorical question. But Rhys answered anyway, his voice almost inaudible. ‘Maybe when we turn off the highway.'

The top of Paula's big hair nodded. That was all I could see from my semirecumbent position. Gigi was curled up, not in her bag, but beside me, and my legs were splayed in a very unladylike way.

‘Y'all took for ever coming back from the Indian Mound.' My cousin's tone was soft, and not quite idle. At least, it didn't seem that way to me. ‘What did y'all talk about?'

I searched my memory, trying to think if I'd said anything weird to Rhys, the way I'd slipped up with John in the Park. Hoping I hadn't said ‘déjà vu' out loud.

Rhys paused as if considering his answer, and I braced myself. ‘Archaeology, mostly. The site is an odd thing to find in the middle of Alabama.'

‘Well, I guess it is.' Her next question came out almost regretfully, as if she was sorry to have to ask. ‘But she didn't seem … upset to you? It was hard to tell when she bolted out of the car without even her shoes.'

I must have tensed, because Gigi lifted her head. I brushed her with my fingers to keep her quiet as Rhys answered. ‘I think she was out of sorts from travelling.Why?'

Paula gave a laugh that almost sounded natural.

‘Just don't want to start off on the wrong foot, is all.'

I felt a simmer of anger in my chest. The obvious translation was: ‘Just watching for signs my cousin is as messed up as her stepshrink said on the phone.'
Because I didn't put that past Dr Steve. After all, patient confidentiality didn't apply, since I'd never been his patient.

Not that it kept him from interfering in my life.

Gigi looked up with sleepy disdain, and I realized my hands had fisted and the leg she was lying on was tense and ard. Her nap interrupted, she stretched and gave herself a tag-jingling shake.

I seized on this as an excuse to wake up. Cracking an eyelid, I pushed myself upright, rubbing the kink in my neck.

‘Where are we?' I didn't have to fake disorientation. Dusk had fallen early, accelerated by the trees that lined the two-lane road.

Rhys answered with a brief glance over his shoulder. ‘You slept through Selma. We've just turned off the state highway.'

Paula self-consciously fluffed the back of her hair, which had been squished only slightly by the headrest. ‘Did you have a nice nap?'

‘Yes, thank you,' I answered, extra polite, hoping she felt guilty for talking about me behind my back.

The road wound through the trees. The only signs of civilization – though I use the word generously – were a trailer up on blocks and, further on, a clapboard house with a sagging roof.

‘I thought you said Bluestone Hill was near a town,' I asked as we came to a fork in the road.

‘It is.' Rhys gave a nod to the right before turning left. ‘Go down this road, and you'll come to Maddox Landing.'

No sign of the town through the forest. An uneasy sense of isolation fluttered behind my breastbone, as if the thread that connected me to my own life, to the rest of the world, was spinning out, growing thinner and more fragile as we drove. The next mile, the next turn, might break it completely.

The trees closed in, their canopies thick with spring growth. Spanish moss hung from the branches, hurrying the dusk. Rhys turned on the headlights, the beams casting a comforting glow. Gigi had adjusted herself into a ball of fur in my lap and I stroked her slowly, soothing myself more than her.

I must have shivered or made a sound, because Rhys reached for the thermostat. ‘Are you cold?'

The action was solicitous, automatic. My answer was the same. ‘I'm fine.'

‘We'll be home in a minute, honey,' said Paula. She kept calling it ‘home', which was just bizarre, when my dad had left so long ago and I'd never thought I'd visit.

‘Did you grow up here?' I asked Paula as the road curved through the tunnel of trees.

She laughed. ‘Practically. Your daddy must have told you about the summers we spent here, playing in the woods, hiking up to swim in the Cahaba River. I wouldn't advise it close to the house, though.'

‘Why not?' I asked, in rote curiosity.

‘Current's too strong,' answered Paula. ‘Though there's an inlet where you can wade. Just watch for snakes.'

I stifled a shudder. ‘I might give that a pass.'

The house came into view then, and I forgot about legless vermin as I got my first glimpse of my temporary exile. Rhys drove slowly down a wide gravel drive, which must have once been an impressive sight.

While the picture on the SUV's sign looked like a generic
Gone with the Wind
clone, the actual house had much more personality. It stood in shabby splendour between two hedged gardens. Columns supported a covered porch or possibly a first-floor balcony, and gabled windows hinted at a second-floor attic. The whitewashed sides glowed with the rosy light of the setting sun.

‘It's enormous.' I breathed the words, more in horror than reverence. Falling back in the seat, I closed my gaping mouth. ‘Dad mentioned spending the summers with family in a country house. I didn't know he meant an
estate.
'

I'd just thought he meant his folks had a trailer home outside the city limits. Fortunately I caught myself before I said that aloud. I'd never met my paternal grandparents, since they'd died before I was born. Dad spoke of his mother fondly and his father rarely, if at all. But an old family mansion? That was a big thing to leave out.

‘Home, sweet home,' said Paula, as the car stopped in front of the wide porch steps. I craned my neck to look out the window, taking it all in.