The Summer Bones (3 page)

“No, sir.”

His cigarette was finished, the stump going to its death in the ashtray on the desk. Regretfully, he exhaled the last of the smoke.

“Take the time you need,” he offered.

The road brought back feelings of almost painful nostalgia.

It was narrow, rutted after a rough winter of drifts and destructive ice, hedged by serious growths of tumbled camphorweed, panicled asters, and dry waving stands of wild grasses. Shimmering in the sultry heat, it wound through the spreading fields in sinewy journey, finding a way between rows of rustling corn and stubby thick soybeans.

It was the way home.

Victoria drove absently, her mind wandering. Indiana in late summer was defined by dusty fields overlaying the countryside. Green and gold splattered the gently rolling hills, while insects hummed in exhausted chorus and dust sifted gently on the roadsides. It was a time of waiting, when the realization comes of the decaying breadth of summer and the lurking desolation of winter. July was already surrendering to the strangling grip of August.

She let off the accelerator as she drove into the small town of Mayville, passing slowly into the ranks of houses and shops. There was only one stoplight, and she eased through the intersection, going past the grocery, the bank, the coppersmith shop. Little had changed since her childhood, barring a few modern improvements such as a new gas station and larger elementary school. Mayville remained a bastion of rural America—the persona of a small farming town. Frame houses lined tree-shaded streets where children rode bicycles and gardens sprouted proudly in nearly every backyard.

There was comfort in the familiar sun-ripened landscape. She fiddled with the radio, patiently waiting as a tractor made a lumbering turn to the left in front of her.

Michael was fond of making jokes about the farmer's daughter. She was not the daughter of a farmer; she was the daughter of a professor of economics at Indiana University. But she was the granddaughter of generations of Paulsen farmers and had spent every summer of her life, until she entered college, living on the family farm.

Six generations of her father's family had worked 290 acres of some of the best land in Indiana, and her grandfather still rose before dawn to trudge off into the darkness and begin the daily ritual of living off the land.

She was proud of being a Paulsen.

The end of town was no more than a farewell to the last neat house and porch swing, and a return of the cornfields. Two miles along, Victoria came to the familiar battered black mailbox that signaled the lane leading up to the farm. The gravel had been freshly graded and the sound of her tires crunched deliciously into the still afternoon air. A small cloud of dust mushroomed behind the wheels, announcing her arrival.

The house was tall, white, and spare. Two porches, one in back and one in front, were painted gray and had ornate railings running their length. Five shiny bedroom windows reflected sunshine on the second floor, and the big picture window in the formal parlor downstairs showed a froth of white lace curtains.

The lawn was trim and intensely green, and a huge red barn hulked at the end of the drive, watching over the place like a decaying wooden guardian. Beyond were the fields and an endless vista of waving corn, punctuated here and there by small groves of distant trees.

A battered pickup truck was parked in front of the barn. The hood was up and Victoria could see a pair of denim-clad legs braced against the fender. The rest of the man appeared to be eaten alive by the engine cavity. There was no one else in sight.

Berthing her car carefully in the bank of shadow offered by the barn, Victoria got out and slammed her door.

“Hello,” she said loudly. Taking a breath was nearly painful; the heat of the afternoon rushed into her lungs like an invasion. “Whew, it's hot.”

“Uh-huh. Hand me that wrench, will you, Tori?” A smeared hand emerged from the stomach of the truck, open-palmed, blindly reaching for the desired tool.

Gingerly selecting one from an ancient toolbox lying on the ground, she handed it over. Whatever part of the engine required repair was a guess, as her view was solidly blocked by a muscular back that was streaked liberally with oil, dust, and sweat.

“Time for a new truck, isn't it?” Victoria commented critically. “This wreck never works, Damon. Seems to me the last time I was home you were out here, in the same position, working on the damned thing.”

“It's a classic.” Her cousin's muffled voice sounded affronted. “Besides, it should work now. I'll hold this piece in place while you start it.”

“With you stuck in the engine that way?” Victoria laughed incredulously and shook her head. “Nope. No way. I know next to nothing about cars, but that doesn't sound even remotely like a good idea. Count me out.”

Damon Paulsen unfolded his body from the belly of the truck and leveled a glare in her direction. The sunlight slanted brightly across his sweat-soaked skin and made an elongated shadow across the gravel. “Coward.”

Dark, wavy hair stuck damply to his head. There was a thin line of dirt down one cheek and grime on his forehead. His bare chest was almost black from the stint in the engine, and filthy jeans hung off of lean hips.

Despite all those disadvantages, Victoria noted dispassionately that his physical beauty was still striking
—
thick-lashed dark eyes, a sensual mouth, firm chin, and high, classic cheekbones. He was also tall, slim, and well built, his body honed by working one of the most physical jobs anyone could imagine.

She had known him all her life. He was more than just her first cousin, only son of her father's only brother; he was also her childhood companion, ex-playmate, the male sibling she had never had. Two years her senior, Damon was as much a part of the concept of home as the old farm and the rippling fields. He was also the Paulsen farmer of her generation.

“Don't blame me for my caution.” She grinned, narrowing her eyes in the sunlight. “I'm just protecting my own interests. If something happened to you, the rest of us might have to feed the pigs and mend the fences.”

“Well, that certainly explains it. I feel treasured.” Dropping the wrench into the toolbox, he lifted the hood of the truck and then let it fall. The sound echoed outward in the dust and quiet of the afternoon.

“You
are
treasured.” She laughed. It was true. Her grandfather's sons were a professor and a doctor, neither having any interest in becoming a farmer. Damon had saved the day, quietly stepping in and having the decency to let his eighty-three-year-old grandfather believe he was still in charge. It was Elmer Paulsen's farm, but it was Damon who did the planting and harvest. It was Damon who patched and mended and fed; and it was Damon who had undoubtedly put new gravel on the lane.

Ironic really, when he looked so much more like a dark, brooding romantic poet than a farmer.

“You aren't so bad yourself,” Damon commented without much inflection, and went around to climb into the cab of the truck. Sure enough, the engine came sweetly to life as he turned the key, and he pulled the vehicle forward. While he parked, Victoria retrieved her suitcase from the trunk of her little blue import. Damon clambered out and came over to take it out of her hand, turning toward the house.

“Damon?” She stood still, not moving along with him.

He stopped, turning back and lifting a dark eyebrow in question. Droplets of sweat trickled down his jaw. It had been Easter since she had been home, but there was no particular awkwardness in the passage of four months without words. Her relationship with Damon had never seemed to require more than the casual picking up of conversation and the resumption of an old and comfortable connection that was more than blood and family ties.

“I was wondering if there has been any word?” she asked, swallowing and looking past his shoulder toward the house. “I didn't check my machine this morning, I just left. Has Emily called?”

“No.” He didn't change the expression on his face. “I'm sorry, no word. But I understand that Ronald finally contacted the police. It's been a full week.”

Seven days,
she thought.
It has been seven days.

“Where do you think she is?” Her gaze shifted back to her cousin's face.
Seven days is too long. Seven days and even thoughtless Emily would have called.

“I haven't the slightest. You know Em. She could be anywhere.”

The sunlight made Damon's hair look blue-black and his tanned skin like burnished copper. How Adonis must have looked, she thought abstractly, with those beautiful muscles and lovely masculine features. A god fallen to the earth, and how. What could be earthier than a midwestern farmer?

“This whole furor is typical of her,” Victoria muttered darkly, making a helpless furious gesture with her hand. Being angry was easy; being angry made sense. Emily being Emily, this disturbing situation could be nothing but thoughtlessness or theatrics.

“That's perfectly true,” Damon agreed calmly. “We both know it's possible that she's trying to pull Ron's chain by disappearing for a few days. So don't get too worked up.”

“If she is, it's cruel and insensitive.” Her words held the real heat of the affronted and worried. “If there's trouble between her and Ronald, you would think she wouldn't worry the rest of us.”

“Give me a break, Tori.” Damon shifted the suitcase to his other hand. “You should know better, of all people. She specializes in the grand gesture and dragging you into the middle of it. Every single time.”

Truer words were never spoken. And as Damon had been around for most of the grand gestures and her own cringing part in them, he would know. She didn't argue the point.

“This is a little off her norm, though,” she said instead, her eyes focused again on the neat railing of the back porch and the open screen to the back door. “Keeping her first appointment with a client on last Monday and then going off without a word? Taking her car but no clothes, no personal items? That isn't like her, is it?”

“She usually likes a bit more fanfare.”

The agreement was ambiguous and Victoria glanced at him. Nothing in the muscles of his face gave anything away, but something flickered in the dark eyes.

“You think she just ran off for some reason, don't you?” she said evenly. There were reasons, of course. There had been bruises back in April, but she doubted if Damon knew that.

Biting her lip, she narrowed her eyes against the assault of heat and light that shimmered across the farmyard. The lawn to her left stretched out smooth, green, and fragrant, but the tips of the grass were beginning to crisp with heat damage. The cicadas rasped into the dry afternoon, gently filling the air with sound.

“Seems likely.” Damon's voice was just as even. “Think about it. Emily has never needed much excuse to find some sort of way to draw attention to herself.”

“I've hardly thought about anything else since I heard.” Victoria scuffed her shoe in the gravel. “When was she last here?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Did you see her?”

“It was Sunday dinner.”

So, of course. Sunday dinner involved good clothes, a trip to church, and the ritual feast following after. Sunday was the day for family and food. Sunday was the biblical edict of rest, and her grandfather held on to that notion with all of his staunch, Scandinavian stubbornness. All available Paulsens were expected to come to the farm for noon dinner on Sundays. It was tradition.

“Was she upset? Did Grandma say? If Emily would confide in anyone, it would be Gran.”

Damon's face changed then, a perceptible tightening at the mouth and jaw. “No. Gran's a little hazy on the details. I doubt if she remembers a specific conversation. I only remember myself because it was unusual for Em to come to dinner without Ron. That's all.”

Silence.

Victoria listened to the careful avoidance of the words he didn't want to say. The heat was an entity that refused to be ignored, and she felt a small trickle of sweat begin to creep down her neck.

“Gran … wouldn't remember?” she eventually repeated.

“You'll see a change in her, I'm afraid,” he admitted with obvious reluctance.

The change had already been conspicuous at Easter—forgetfulness, a tendency to repeat, a bit of confusion over names and faces. At the time, Victoria had dismissed her own uneasiness, telling herself that her grandmother was just overworked by all the people in the house, the flurry of effort to get the enormous meal, the coming and going of cars and guests. After all, she was more than eighty. She wasn't as young as she once was, even though her smile was just as sunny, and her eyes seemed just as sharp.

“I see.” Her voice was small and faint with question.

The answer lay in her cousin's face. She could see indeed that the feared deterioration was taking place—that the bright and intelligent woman they both loved was slowly fizzing out, her brain shutting off currents like so many defective wires. It was infinitely depressing to consider, but Damon would know. Living at the farm, he saw her every day.

“You will,” Damon informed her quietly. “Unfortunately, you will.”

“Damn.” It was a bleak mutter.

“And this business with Emily doesn't help. Anything out of the ordinary confuses her. She's been getting more forgetful, but nothing too frightening until lately. Gran's not sure what's happening.”

“None of us are.”

“True enough.” He motioned with her case for Victoria to precede him up the walk. “Speaking of confusion, your father is coming for dinner tonight; he wants to see you. Your mother is coming, too. She phoned earlier.”

“Oh, great.”
Bad news to worse.
Her parents, recently divorced after a near thirty-year marriage, were like two enemies in an armed camp. For the past year and a half, Victoria had made pains to avoid being with either of them, much less both at the same time. She felt her stomach knot at the memory of the acrimony that had been slowly festering since her childhood.