Silk and Stone (48 page)

Jake looked around the table as everyone settled in their chairs for Thanksgiving dinner. This was contentment—the family gathered peacefully under the soft glow of an old chandelier, the table decorated in Mother’s best lace cloth and china, platters and bowls and casseroles crowding one another for space, wonderful aromas rising from them. Ellie had come home from medical school for the holiday. Father wore his traditional Thanksgiving sweater—a moth-eaten relic Mother had given to him on the first Thanksgiving after they were married. Mother wore a necklace of garnets Jake and Ellie had made for her when they were children.

Charlotte sat beside Samantha, perusing the food with an authoritative air, as if daring any of her creations to disappoint her.

Samantha took Jake’s hand under the table, and her warm, loving grip made his contentment complete. Father pulled the turkey platter to him and lifted a serving fork. “Thank God for antacids,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

“
Hugh.
” Mother eyed him with amusement and mild reproach. She gazed from him to everyone else, her eyes shining. “Thank God for this family.”

“Yes,” Ellie said, her voice soft, her eyes pensive. “Please, God, let there be a lot more times like this.”

Everyone looked at Jake, waiting. He frowned. They continued to wait. “God knows what I’m thinking,” he said finally.

Samantha squeezed his hand and rescued him quickly. Her head bent slightly, she closed her eyes and said, “Take care of my mom and dad. Let them know they aren’t forgotten. Tell them their daughters will always love them. Tell them we have wonderful people around us. Thank you.”

Leave it to Samantha to give God directions. But Jake met her misty eyes and nodded gently. Charlotte cleared her throat. They turned toward her. Tears slid down her flushed cheeks. “
Ditto
, God,” she said.

Sam put an arm around her. The two of them gazed at Mother, Father, and Ellie. “We love all of you,” Sam said hoarsely.

Mother was crying too. Ellie wiped her eyes and smiled. Father answered gruffly, “Well,
ditto.
”

Everyone laughed. Sam looked at Jake again. The serenity in her expression completed his thanks.

“ ’Night, El.” Jake stuck his head inside her bedroom door. “We’re heading home. See you tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving.”

She sat in a small wicker chair by the window, hooded by the dim light of a lamp on her night table. He had caught her with a look of distant sorrow in her eyes; she looked away quickly and smoothed a hand over her face. The simple chain necklace hung from her other hand, and the narrow leather pouch swung like a dark pendulum. Jake stepped into the room. “It’s making you unhappy. I’m glad you took it off. Put it away.”

“I am.” She dropped the necklace on the windowsill. “It’s old. So old. I read somewhere that there are people like us who feel ancient history in the things they touch.”

“I’ve read that too. They say strong emotions are left behind, like pictures that never quite fade. But I don’t feel that too much.”

“You look at the here-and-now.”

“Not always. I just try to concentrate on what’s important to
me
. Tracking people. Finding stones. Trying to understand how people think. What’s dead and gone, well, I don’t need to know.”

She opened the pouch and pulled the ruby from it. “Everyone who’s owned this is dead—except me. And Alexandra.”

“She never owned it. She took it for a while. She was never meant to keep it.” He looked at her solemnly,
teasing a little, trying to change her mood. “And, El, maybe you haven’t covered this in medical school, but … everyone dies eventually. It’s a fact, ruby or no ruby.”

Ellie lifted the ruby, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. It caught the light, a bloodred drop of memory. “You remember the stories Granny told us about the Uktena?”

“Hmmm. Kept me checking under my bed at night for years.”

“The terrible dragon-snake, with the crystal in its forehead. And after a man killed the Uktena and took the crystal, he had to protect it, and honor it, and hide it in a special place. If he didn’t care for it well enough, it would fly away and search for the Uktena, and kill people in revenge.” She laid the stone back on the sill and wiped her hand on her jeans. Jake said lightly, “I haven’t seen any flying crystals or Uktenas around.”

“Maybe we just don’t recognize them.”

“Put it away, El,” he said again. “You’ll have a daughter someday. Save it for her.”

“I won’t have any children.”

He was surprised and a little angry at her for talking that way. He started to tell her so, but the phone rang in the hall, and he heard Father walking out of the living room to answer it. “We’ll talk about this more tomorrow,” Jake told her. “You’ve let that damned stone confuse you.”

“Son,” Father called. “It’s for you. The sheriff’s office over in Cloudland Falls.”

Frowning, Jake went to the phone. Samantha came out of the kitchen as he was talking, a box of neatly wrapped leftovers in her hands. He waved her over and peered into the box distractedly, the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear. She watched him with a worried frown, her head tilted to one side. Mother, Charlotte, and Father joined her. “All right,” he said to the caller finally. “I’ll meet you there in about an hour.”

When he put the phone down, Samantha scrutinized him hard. “They can’t expect you to come out at night, on Thanksgiving.”

“I gotta go. An old man wandered away from his granddaughter’s place this afternoon. He’s not quite right.” Jake pointed to his head. “They think he took a walk and forgot the way home.”

“I’ll go with you,” Samantha said immediately.

He shook his head. “Your being there would confuse Bo. He’ll think we’re on a picnic.”

She wanted to argue, he could tell, but she bit her lip and studied him with resignation. “Sometime I’m going with you when you track people. I want to see how you do it.”

Can’t tell you that
, he thought.
You’d think I was crazy
. “Be cool, Sammie,” Charlotte interjected. “I’ll spend the night with you. I’ve got a brownie recipe I want to try. We’ll eat brownies and watch TV.”

“The girl cooks nonstop,” Father said. “Incredible.”

Samantha sighed. Jake cupped a hand beneath her hair and rubbed small, reassuring circles on the nape of her neck. She was thinking about a different kind of dessert, a recipe she and he kept testing enthusiastically. “I’ll probably be home by morning,” he said slyly. “Save something sweet for me.”

She cast a furtive look at the others, who bit their lips and tried not to smile. Then she lifted her chin and gave Jake a slit-eyed look. “I’ll make it a Thanksgiving tradition.”

They gathered their coats. He kissed Mother’s cheek and gave Father a quick hug, then looked in on El again. She had returned to the chair by the window, the ruby lying on the sill near her outstretched hand. “Put it away,” he called in a low voice.

She looked at him wearily, and nodded.

Sam woke and sat up in bed. The darkness was deep and chilly; she pulled the quilts up to the soft collar of Jake’s huge flannel shirt that she slept in. She rubbed her eyes and squinted at the digital clock on the dresser across the room. Three
A.M
.

This was the first night they’d spent apart since their marriage, and she was lonely. She kept thinking of him and Bo out in the frosty November night, working their way through inky woods with only a high white moon for company. She thought of the elderly man who was lost, hoping—knowing—that Jake and Bo would find him and glad that sheriffs in distant places were calling Jake to help them. Maybe soon the sheriff in Pandora would stop fearing Aunt Alex’s opinion and ask Jake to work for him again.

Sam slipped into a heavy terry-cloth robe she’d made for Jake and tiptoed into the front room. They’d purchased a squat-legged old couch and two matching armchairs at a
salvage
store; Jake had refinished the ponderous wood frames, and they’d had the pieces upholstered in a warm shade of blue. With an assortment of other lovingly refinished old furniture, the rugs Sam had woven, and a few funky lamps they’d collected from junk shops, the room had taken on a friendly, comfortable feel.

Charlotte was asleep on the couch under a jumble of blankets, with a half-empty pan of brownies on the floor near one dangling hand. The last embers of the banked fire glowed weakly in the fireplace. Sam adjusted her sister’s blankets, then wandered around the room, trailing her fingertips over the furnishings, feeling proud and protective of her and Jake’s home.

She headed down the hall to her workroom, thinking that weaving for a while would settle her. She loved the methodical and precise rhythm of the loom.

But the steady wooden clacking would probably wake Charlotte. There might be a new round of brownie eating, and Sam already felt stuffed.

Grumbling under her breath, she returned to the front room, slipped her feet into the scuffed loafers she kept there, then carefully unlatched the door and stepped onto the porch. Frost sparkled on the leaf-strewn yard and the small hollies they’d planted at the porch’s edge. The forest slept peacefully, with moonlight dappling the ground beneath the bare limbs of the trees. At the base
of the knoll, Granny Raincrow’s spring reflected the pale light like a mirror.

Sam exhaled peacefully, then took a deep, invigorating breath. And smelled smoke.

Chapter
            Twenty-One
 

S
he ran into the yard and turned urgently, studying the fat stone chimneys. But the cooling ashes in the front room’s fireplace couldn’t produce such a vivid scent, and she hadn’t built a fire in the bedroom at all. The roof seemed fine.

Sam swung around, scrutinizing the forest in all directions but seeing nothing unusual. Still, she smelled smoke, and the scent was growing stronger. She told herself the fire could be miles away. The wind easily channeled smoke and fog through the narrow mountain coves.

She faced the wall of forest that separated their homesite from Hugh and Sarah’s. They might tease her about her city-bred nervousness if she woke them up, but she’d take that chance. Better to make a quick phone call and get razzed for it than to stand out there, worrying.

She started inside, but glanced in their direction one more time.

A boiling cloud of smoke rose above the treetops, the moonlight filtering through it. Sam raced into the house and yelled Charlotte’s name. Charlotte bolted upright. Sam grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her awake. “There’s a fire at Hugh and Sarah’s! Call them, then call the fire department! I’m going over to the house!”

Charlotte lurched off the couch, hands splayed. Sam pushed her toward the phone on a lamp table, then ran out the front door. To her horror, a tongue of orange flame curled above the trees. She raced down the path into the woods, stumbling on roots, clawing the whip-thin branches that sliced at her, leaving one of her shoes behind and kicking the other off so she could run faster.

Smoke met her, billowing through the forest, acrid, flecked with glowing bits of debris, a hot cloud that choked her and stung her face. Sam covered her nose and staggered, panting, into the yard. The roar of the fire filled her ears; there were sharp popping sounds as the aged logs surrendered. The sight of the house—engulfed in a sheet of flames, smoke belching from the upstairs windows—wrung a guttural scream of horror from her.