Silk and Stone (19 page)

Jake didn’t want to encounter the toasted Mack Lee, most of all.

But he felt nothing. Nothing. His eyes jerked open. He looked at Ellie. Her eyes were round green dots in her face. Her mouth was open, and she was staring into empty air.

“Our ruby’s not down there,” she said like a sleepwalker. She blinked, pulled her hand away, and fell back on the mowed grass, pushing herself away from the grave fanny-first. Jake jammed his hand deeper into the soft dirt. “I can’t tell anything,” he said frantically. “Why can’t I know what you know? What’s wrong with me?”

He hunched on his knees and pressed both hands into the grave. The blankness inside him was more frightening than any roaming Vanderveer ghosts might have been.

“Maybe you’re thinking too hard,” Ellie said. “When I think too hard, I only get a headache.”

“You’re sure it’s not down there?” He looked over his shoulder at her as he clawed at the dirt. She nodded firmly. Her eyes glittered. “She lied to Mother. She’s still got our ruby.
My
ruby.” The angry way Ellie said that made Jake twist toward her, frowning, his dirt-stained hands thrust out. “Your ruby?”

“It’s supposed to be Mother’s, and then mine. I know the rules.” Her voice rose into a wail. “But I’ll die after I get it.” With that amazing statement she turned over and flung herself down with her face burrowed in the crook of one arm. “I’m going to die. I just know it.”

Jake’s mouth had the bad taste that came from not quite throwing up. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said finally. But his heart was thudding in his ears, and he felt dizzy. “Where’d you get that feeling?”

“I don’t know.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I thought it. I don’t know why.”

“Well, don’t
think
it. It’s not true.”

“Aunt Alexandra’s got the ruby.
That’s
true. Can’t you tell?”

Jake pawed the grass with his hands, scrubbing the grave dirt off as fast as he could. “No.” He shook his head urgently. “No, I can’t. It’s not right. Something’s not right, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Dirt daubers,” a low female voice thundered behind them. Jake whirled around as Ellie shoved herself upright. Mrs. Big Stick stood a few feet away, a straw hat drooping around her brown face, garden gloves and a trowel hanging from one blunt brown hand. Dressed in a long print skirt with a man-size blue shirt hanging out over it, and her mud-stained tennis shoes bulging with toe humps at the tips, she made a comfortable but commanding sight. “What are you doing here?” she asked in Cherokee.

“Visiting Uncle William,” Jake said quickly. He remembered that Mrs. Big Stick came to the cemetery regularly to tend the holly shrubs near her relatives’ graves. There was a section of Big Sticks. Father said they’d been lured away from the Cherokee churches at Cawatie by a visiting evangelist in a Model T. They’d come to Pandora to see the Model T, but got caught up in the excitement of a church membership drive.

Mrs. Big Stick dropped her gloves and trowel, then hunkered down with her skirt wadded between her broad knees, and studied them through squinted eyes. “Some things are best left alone,” she said, nodding. “Some fights are best buried and forgotten.”

Jake bit his tongue and feigned a neutral look. Everyone had heard about Aunt Alexandra burying the ruby with Uncle William. A thread of dismay curled through him. But Mrs. Big Stick understood more about him and Ellie than other people did. “If,” he said carefully, “
if a
person came here to look around, and if that person didn’t
find
anything, that’d be pretty interesting, wouldn’t it?”

She shook her head. “That’d be a blessing. Because a person ought to stay out a ravenmocker’s business. Only a foolish person goes stirring up a ravenmocker.”

Ellie crossed her arms. “What if the ravenmocker is a
thief
?”

“All ravenmockers are thieves,” Mrs. Big Stick answered. “That’s what they do—they steal the innards right out of people. And once they do, nobody can change it.” She wagged a finger at them. “The trick is to keep the ravenmocker from stealing your soul in the first place.”

Jake tilted his head. “You mean a person can’t get back what a ravenmocker has stolen?”

“No. And who’d want it back anyhow? Once a ravenmocker gets its claws on something, the thing will always be nasty. Soiled. It will only bring unhappiness to people.”

Ellie sighed. “Then we … a person should just keep quiet and steer clear of the ravenmocker?”

“
Yes.
”

Jake frowned. “What if one person figured out that the ravenmocker had stolen something but another one couldn’t be sure about it. And they’d always been alike before.”

Mrs. Big Stick’s dark, hooded eyes settled on his with alarming wisdom. “Now, that is a mystery. But your granny used to tell me that her … 
music
would shut off sometimes. Sometimes when she wanted to hear it the most.”

“Did she know why?” Jake asked breathlessly.

“She reckoned her music was protecting her from secrets she didn’t really want to hear. Some mysteries are better left alone.” Mrs. Big Stick thought for a moment. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

That awful glimpse of Aunt Alexandra and Mr. Lomax came back to Jake’s mind, and he could almost feel the ruby burning his hand when he held it, and the horror of causing Uncle William’s death returned with strangling swiftness. He nodded at Mrs. Big Stick. “A person would have to be careful of who he cares about.”

“That’s right. And not expect the music to come when it’s called. It’s got a mind of its own.”

Ellie got to her feet. She looked shaky. “Well, I’m staying away from ravenmockers, and
my
music will do exactly what I ask it to do.”

Mrs. Big Stick pursed her lips. “You’ll be fine if you don’t forget that. Now, scat.”

Ellie looked happy to do that, and headed back toward the road. Jake rose slowly, his eyes never leaving Mrs. Big Stick’s. His misery over Uncle William was a dark pain inside his chest. And when he thought with hatred and fear
of Aunt Alexandra, he also thought of Samantha, and a knot of confusion crowded his already-jumbled emotions, until finally, one startlingly clear thought came free. He faced Mrs. Big Stick. “A person can’t fight a ravenmocker without hurting other people,” he offered cautiously, watching to see if she understood. She nodded. Jake sighed. “And if a person loves those people, it’s downright impossible. A person has to listen close. And be patient.”

One corner of Mrs. Big Stick’s mouth curled upward, but she seemed more sad than anything else. “Just listen to your music. It will tell you the right thing to do.”

He loped after Ellie, who was nearly at the road. Her strange talk about death zoomed back into his thoughts, and he walked close to her on purpose. “You’re not going to die,” he announced grimly. “Because we’re going to let the ravenmocker keep her damned secrets. That way, no one else will get hurt because of her.”

Ellie looked at him gratefully under her wispy black eyebrows. “It’s a deal.”

“I’ve missed you,” Alexandra whispered, the words muffled against Orrin’s stomach. They lay in a damask-draped canopy bed before an open window that let in the winter light and the soft, cold roar of the ocean. “It’s been hell these past few months. You don’t know how much I’ve looked forward to this trip. Hmmm, I love the Outer Banks in the wintertime. I put a photo of this island on the mirror of my vanity. I’ve looked at it every morning—thinking about us.”

Orrin stroked her bare back. “Decorum, sweetie. I couldn’t just move into Highview the day after—”

“Don’t talk about him. It’s been horrible. His sister has stirred up such ugly talk about me that I’ve become the town pariah.”

“Small-town gossip. People will forget.” There was the sleek rustle of satin as he pushed the covers down, following the curve of her spine with a fingertip. “I’m going to miss the excitement of hiding with you—a little,” he said. “It made life intriguing, all these years.”

“You need a wife. You’re thirty-seven years old. People are starting to talk about
you
. They wonder if you’re normal.”

He laughed. “Alexandra, are you proposing to me?”

“Of course. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.” She lifted her head and gazed at him. “Orrin, you’re a state senator. People expect men in your position to have wives. Don’t tease me. You know I’m right. You know you want to marry me.”

“Yes. Yes, my randy little go-getter, I do.”

She kissed him. They shoved the plush bed coverings aside and made love, heated and shivering in the damp, cool breeze curling off the tide. “Nothing stops you,” he said later as they lay propped against the pillows. “That’s what’s always fascinated me about you.”

Alexandra gave him a thoughtful look. “I have to show you what I’ve done.” She climbed from the bed, slipped a long silk robe around her body, and went to a luggage bag atop the room’s dresser. She opened it and removed a leather pouch, and from the pouch she took a long necklace of thick gold links.

Humming with contentment, she brought the necklace to Orrin and sat beside him on the bed, her bare legs curled under her girlishly. Orrin examined its odd pendant, running his fingertips over the ornately etched flowers on the surface, weighing it in his palm. “My God, it looks like a pecan dipped in gold. It’s, well,
large,
” he offered carefully. “I’ve never seen you wear anything so flamboyant.”

“It serves its purpose.” She pressed the edge of her fingernail to the pendant, and an invisible seam appeared. Orrin gave a low whistle as the pendant opened on a hidden, minuscule hinge. Tucked in a gauzy cocoon of fabric was the ruby. “I’ll be able to wear it now,” she explained. “By God, I’ll know it’s still mine, even if no one ever sees it again.”

Chapter
            Nine
 

“I
s our mom a hippie?” Charlotte asked. Because she’d lost a front tooth, the question had a whistling sound. And because she thought Sam had the answer to every question in the world, she expected an answer. Charlotte stood on a chair at the stove, stirring a pot of oatmeal.

Sitting at the kitchen table of their apartment, Sam put her knitting down. She looked at their matching tie-dyed nightgowns, which Mom had made for them. She looked at the big glass canister of granola on the kitchen counter, and the pots of alfalfa sprouts on the window over the sink. She looked at the
IMPEACH NIXON
bumper sticker Mom had stuck on the lid of the garbage can, and the astrology books Mom left scattered on the kitchen table every night. “No. Hippies don’t wear underwear or take baths.”

“Good. I want to be just like Mom, but Daddy won’t let us be hippies.”

Since their daddy wouldn’t even let them wear pants to school, Sam doubted there was a chance of them turning into hippies. She wasn’t interested anyway. One odd person in the house was enough, and Mom filled that bill. Every year since they’d moved to California, Mom had gotten flakier. Four years. Flaky times four. Mom was the manager of a health-food store. Daddy said she worked with fruits and nuts in more ways than one.

Mom was okay, and Sam loved her, but
someone
had to keep their feet on the ground, and Sam had gotten the job. She fingered the irregular purplish rock she wore on a chain around her neck. Mom had had a jeweler attach a gold clasp to Jake’s ruby, and Sam wore it all the time. She hadn’t seen Jake in four years, so maybe she was as flaky as Mom, hanging on to strange ideas and hopes.

“Good morning, soldiers.
Atteeen-tion!
” They scrambled to the center of the small kitchen as Daddy strode in. He stopped, hands clasped behind his back, looking so handsome in his crisp trousers and shirt, his polished shoes and gleaming belt buckle. Daddy was an M.P. When she was younger, Sam had insisted that stood for
my pop
. He studied them, frowning. “Private Ryder, what’s for chow?”

“Oatmeal and chocolate milk, Daddy … I mean,
Sergeant,
” Charlotte answered.

“Corporal Ryder, have you kept the private up to specs on kitchen protocol?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Sam answered. “She wanted to put cinnamon in the milk again, Sarge, but I nixed it.”