Echoes (23 page)
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Sofie turned a slow circle in the middle of the cellar as movers from the shipping company carried the old racks out through the side exit Lance had discovered and excavated. The rumble of dollies on the wooden ramp recalled the rolling barrels of the bustling vineyard that had once spread over the DiGratia property.
Nonna had described the rows of vines, the smell of the earth, the grapes hanging redolent with promise. All that remained was the house, carriage house, and cellar Quillan Shepard had built on the section given him by his father-in-law, Angelo DiGratia.
"Lend me a hand here, Sof?"
She gripped the other end of the rack, but they'd only moved it a couple feet when Lance set down his end. "Whoa."
"What?" Then she saw the hole in the floor that had caught his attention. "Is that where Vittorio's money was?"
"Nope. Haven't seen this one." The narrow rectangular gap in the stones had been completely hidden by the rack that had stood atop it. "And I don't think that money was Vito's. He worked in a bank. He wouldn't put cash in a hole."
"Nonno Quillan's?"
"He built the cellar. He hated bankers. Makes sense to me."
She retrieved one of the lights from the near corner and shined it into the hole. Its narrow shape left the bottom in darkness, but Lance reached in.
"Anything?"
With a keen expression, he pulled out a number of notebooks. She moved closer to see. Five gray notebooks tied with string. "Lance," she breathed.
He carefully untied one. The notebook fell open to a handwritten page arranged in stanzas. His hand shook as he flipped to the front, turned page after page, and closed his eyes. "It's his poetry."
"Who?"
"Quillan Shepard. Great-great-grandfather Quillan. He had at least one book of it published, but this . . . these must be his originals."
She picked up another and untied the string. "This one looks like a journal. It's prose. Are you sure they're his?"
"Who else?"
She shook her head. "Why does this feel better than a pot of gold?"
"Because it's our past. Our heritage." Lance looked up, his eyes rife with emotion. "He's here, Sofie. In his words."
"Can we read them?"
"If not us, who?"
She nodded. "I'll carry these up while you finish here."
"Tonight," he said. "With Nonna."
She carried the books up and set them on the table. Her great-great-grandfather's life. Maybe in there were the answers she wished she had, something that could make the hurt of not reaching Carly again make sense. Because Matt's words had sunk in. It did seem that God chose when to act and when to hold back His hand. And where did that leave her?
" 'If travail has a purpose, let me find it now. If honor needs a taker, O Lord, me endow. If wisdom is a garment, let me wear it well; if goodness needs a champion, help me dark dispel.' "
Lance looked up from the tablet he read from. Seated across from him in the parlor, Nonna fixed him with a keen countenance. She had come alive when she'd seen Quillan Shepard's notebooks, and she leaned forward now.
"That became his m . . . otto, and he kept it to the letter. I have . . . n . . . ever known such a strong-m . . . inded man as my grandfather." She sat back, looking bemused. "You remind me of him."
Lance raised his brows. "That's a fine compliment, Nonna. I hope to live up to it."
"You'd better."
Sofie said, "Here's his version of the train robbery." She read aloud how Quillan Shepard had confronted the outlaws and recognized one from his past. His description had brought about the man's capture—the man who had left him holding the bag in a bank robbery he'd known nothing about until it was too late. "What adventures he had." Sofie's eyes shone.
Star drew a long breath. " 'Take heed before you give your heart, for given once, 'tis ere more lost. And though it beats within your breast, each steadfast beat now bears a cost.' " She looked up. "I've found a new bard worth quoting." And her eyes shone.
Lance looked at the three of them, then at Rese, who also seemed caught up. Quillan Shepard had been larger than life while he lived, and now four generations later he was still lighting up the room. That was a legacy.
R
ese went down the stairs with a surprising lack of spine-crawling. The part of the wine cellar accessed by the mechanical door in the kitchen pantry had been preserved exactly as it had the time she'd beat her fists against the door, desperate for escape. But Lance had wired and installed two light fixtures that made her previous panic seem overblown.
She went through the door to the next section. In a few weeks, he had framed in a huge studio. She inspected the carpentry—not perfect, but not bad. She might have taken more care with the cuts and joints, but construction didn't require the exacting skill she gave her finish carpentry. This was Lance's and Sofie's project, and the best thing he'd accomplished was tossing the monster that had dogged her in the dark of the cellar, and in fact most of her life, even before Mom disabled the furnace. The Presence that had saved her that night, Jesus, was protecting her still. His name enough to ban Walter—or whatever it really was—into the abyss.
She shouldn't confuse Mom's delusions, her own childish confusion, and whatever it was Lance had taken authority over. They were not necessarily one and the same, any more than Star's fairies could be confused with fairy tales. She was learning to differentiate—to discern, Lance called it. But it would never have occurred to her to command the thing in prayer and have it obey. She wondered even now. Would she have to fast and be completely commanded by God before her prayer had the power Lance's carried? He said no, but she wasn't sure.
He'd shown her place after place in the Bible where spirits were driven away, and even the disciples had seemed a little giddy and unprepared for the effect they'd had. One story had scared her, the one where an evil spirit left and seven came back in its place. But they didn't seem to be multiplying in the cellar—thank God.
In the far end of the studio, she found Lance on his knees laying the floor, except he wasn't working. His eyes were closed, his hands suspended at his waist. He didn't hear her approach, and she wavered between interrupting or going away. But then he opened his eyes.
She smiled uncertainly. "Hey."
"Hey." His voice rasped.
"You okay?"
He cleared his throat. "Sure."
"That doesn't sound very sure."
He sat back on his heels and brushed sawdust from his jeans, then sighed. "I'm worried about Sofie."
"The thing with Matt?"
"No. I saw something."
She looked around with a shiver. "Down here?"
"Yes." He shook his head. "No. I was down here, but it wasn't."
Fear rippled through her. "What did you see?"
"Sofie. Falling."
She searched his face. "You mean you imagined it?"
"I was working there on the floor. I thought about Sofie and started to pray. Then I saw her falling."
"From where?"
"I don't know. It wasn't like a movie. Just an image. A flash."
"Maybe you dozed off."
He slanted her a crooked glance.
"What, then? A premonition?"
"It wasn't some psychic thing. More like a message."
"From God."
"Why pray and not expect an answer?" He ran his hand through his hair. "Rese, I'm worried about my sister. I lifted her up to God, and He responded."
It shouldn't be so hard to get her mind around it. But she was far more comfortable reading about and praying to God than hearing—or in this case—seeing an answer.
Lance swallowed. "The day Mrs. Espinoza came? And Cassinia got so bent about the baptism?"
"I wasn't there."
He went on as though she hadn't spoken. "The next time she came back I saw why she'd been so upset. I knew, when I had no way of knowing." His eyes held an intensity, startling even for Lance.
"You knew something about Cassinia?"
He nodded. "God showed me."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing. I couldn't do anything."
"That's why you took off on the Harley."
He paced. "God showed me how it feels when someone so hurt closes off any hope of healing."
"You realize how that sounds, right?"
"I'm not trying to do this. I am a guy laying a floor, cooking meals, playing songs."
She bit her lip. "Have you said no?"
He turned back to her. "You remember Ground Zero? I told God then that whatever He wanted to do with my life, it was His." He swallowed. "How can I say no now?"
She sighed. "You can't. It's not in you."
He forked both hands into his hair. "You don't know how badly I want to run." The ache caught her hard. Would he leave again? Had she fooled herself? He gripped her arms. "You'd have to come. You and Baxter on the Harley. What do you say?"
She looked into his face. "Where do you think you could go? Do you really think even a Road King can outrun God?"
He tipped his head back, eyes closed, then pulled her close with a smoldering gaze. "Sometimes I can't believe this thing I have with you."
Sometimes she couldn't, either, but she kissed him softly. "Believe it."
————
The driving rhythm and throbbing tones of one of his harder songs reverberated from the CD player throughout the studio as Lance attached the mirrors to the framing on the stone walls. He'd been so in tune with Rico that the music had emerged from them as one tight harmony. Chaz hadn't joined the band yet, and though he'd added versatility and depth when he came, the early songs with Rico had possessed a gripping energy.
Lance tightened the fastener and checked the glass panel's stability, then moved on to the next. He didn't often listen to the CDs they'd cut, but Rico had been heavy on his mind since the package came for Star a few weeks before. He glanced over his shoulder to where she stood on the ladder, transforming Sofie's ceiling into sky.
"So, Star." He spoke over the resounding fade of the final chord. "You going to play me Rico's song?"
She swept the brush across the ceiling over her head. "Why?"
"I'd like to hear it. He's never done lyrics before." Curiosity over what Rico had produced was driving him crazy, but if it was too personal, he'd understand Star keeping it to herself.
"They aren't lyrics like yours." She drew the CD out of her shirt like a class ring hanging from a string around her neck, then tipped the disc, catching the rainbow hues on its surface and sending them around the room. She looked at him. "It's us. Rico and me, singing."
"Yeah?"
"When we played the coffeehouses? And in the tunnels?" She threw back her head. " 'I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true "The empty vessel makes the greatest sound." ' "
"You're not empty, Star."
"I was." She took the CD off the string and inserted it into the player.
Lance held his breath as the first tones of their music emerged. Then came Rico's voice with a single word and then another. He recognized immediately the overlay he'd given it the first time Rico had let him listen. Rico had taken that idea and inserted words of his own, words that spoke to Star, to their loss. She bit her lip as the words filled the room like a benediction.
He looked into her tearful turquoise eyes, then hugged her softly as she sank into his chest.
She murmured, " 'True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.' "
"You never know." He cupped her head, recognizing her childlike hopefulness. Whether or not his best friend and Rese's got back together, using a language only they spoke, they'd begun to reverse the damage. He squeezed her and let go. "Thanks for letting me hear."
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Matt tossed another handful of small tight mushrooms into the bag and twisted a tie around the end. Those, along with the steaks, covered his portion of the meal. Now he just needed a wine. He moved toward the rows and rows of choices in the Sonoma Market—local, semi-local, regional, imported.
Everyone would bring a bottle of something, and some of them took it much too seriously. Jen, for instance, was a wine snob of the most random sort. She liked only what she liked, but wines fell in and out of her favor faster than her mood swings.
With the basket draped on one arm, he neared the wine section and stopped. These last weeks he had managed to muffle the disappointment and regret, but seeing her there caused a raging return of both. "Sofie."
She looked up from the two champagnes she was comparing. He could tell her not to waste her money on the one, but seeing her full-on constricted his throat.
"Hello, Matt. How are you?"
"I'm . . . good. And you. You look good." Wonderful, sensuous, desirable. And so achingly strong and fragile. "Are you?"
"Yes. Thanks."
He nodded to the champagnes. "Celebrating?"
"The completion of my studio. We converted the cellar."
"The bat cave?"
"Hardly a cave anymore. You wouldn't like it."
Yes he would. He'd like any space that contained her.
Oh man
.
"Getting dinner?"
He looked into his basket. "Yeah. Having some friends over. I should"—he cocked his head over his shoulder—"be there when they arrive."
"Always a good plan." She smiled.
He might breathe again in a few years.
"It's nice seeing you, Matt." She returned her attention to the bottles she'd removed from the refrigerated case.
"Don't get the Santa Lucia."
"No?"
"Too young a vineyard. Nothing interesting yet in the grapes."
"Thanks."
"Sure."
Turn and walk away. One foot, then the other
. "It's a . . . kind of an . . . open gathering tonight. You'd be welcome."
Her smile took too long and didn't reach her eyes. "We're having a gathering as well."
"Right. Your studio. Congratulations."
"It's only the construction completed. I haven't opened for classes or anything."
"I'm glad things are working out for you."
