Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (3 page)

The corner of his mouth tilted shyly.  I love his shy smile.  He flipped his hand beneath mine; our fingers tangled.

"Rafael?" I asked.

"I like it when you say my name," he muttered.

I smiled to myself.  "Thank you."

"Stop thanking me."

"Okay."

I shifted on my side.  He turned to face me.  He squinted.  He can't see very well without his glasses.  He ruined his vision years ago when he used to read novels in the dead of the night, ignoring his uncle's orders to rest his eyes and go to sleep.

"Is it weird for you?" I asked.

Rafael's brows knitted together.  "Is what weird for me?"

"Picking up my father tomorrow."

It's not like Dad had gone to prison for a parking violation.  Dad's crime was blood law.  Sanctified in the eyes of Plains People; illegal in the eyes of the USA. 

Dad had gone to prison for murder.  Years and years ago, my father had killed Rafael's.

"I told you," Rafael said.  "I was never mad at him.  He did the right thing.  If somebody hurts your family, they're yours to deal with."  He paused.  "My dad...he hurt a lot of people."

I touched my throat.  I wasn't aware of it until I felt the scars beneath my fingertips, rigid and raised.

Rafael must have been aware of it before I was.  He took my hand in his and held it between us.  He leaned over and kissed my neck.  He's always doing that.  I think he thinks he can kiss the scars away.

"I'd better start wearing turtlenecks again," I murmured absently.

"What?  Why?"

I caught Rafael's gaze and smiled.  Even in the darkness, he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

"I don't want to scare our foster daughter," I said.

He looked like he was ready to protest.  It's a true testament to how much he wanted a kid that he relented.

I felt another smile rising to my lips, a roguish smile.  "And you'll have to stop listening to power metal."

He reacted as quick as a whip.  "What?"

"Come on.  That music's kind of scary for a kid."

"No it's not," he insisted.

" 'I am going to take your firstborn child and drown him'--you think that's appropriate for a kid to listen to?"

"That's Nightwish, dumbass.  They haven't been power metal since 2002."

"Whatever you call it, it's got to go.  Same for Tristania.  And Moonsorrow.  And that band with the scary growly vocals."

"Which one?" he said brashly.

"All of them.  And the one with the pigs--whatsit--Pig Crusher--"

Rafael sat up in bed, his head hovering above mine; his long hair falling around my face, mingling with my curls, tickling my cheeks.  "You just hate my music."

I raised my eyebrows.  I smiled.

"Fine," he said irritably.  "Then no more Cem Adrian."

"What's wrong with Cem Adrian?" I retaliated, and tried to sound hurt.

"I don't like him.  You've been carrying out some secret emotional affair with the guy--"

"That was a joke, Rafael, a joke I made fifteen years ago--"

"Anyway, if I can't listen to metal, you can't listen to jazz--"

"If you're trying to tell me jazz is anywhere near as offensive as metal--"

Rafael straddled me.  He tried to pin me by my shoulders.  I was faster.  I swiped the pillow out from under my head and smacked him with it.

"You son of a bitch," he said, a beautiful grin enveloping his face.

I tossed the pillow aside.  I dragged my fingers up and down his waist.  He burst into laughter and buried his face against the crook of my neck.

I love him.  I love the warmth of him.  I love the feel of his breath gliding across my skin; I love the way his body fits against mine when he wants it to.  I love the way he stretches when he wakes up and his arm invariably smacks me in the face.  I sound like a sappy teenage girl and I couldn't care less.  There's not a single thing about that man that I would change.  Not even his crappy taste in music.

He stilled against me.  I trailed my hand across the contours of his back.  I felt his bare skin shivering beneath my fingers.

He's got a tattoo on his back--the sun and the moon, simultaneous in a dual sky.  I don't know how he put it there--long ago he used to complain that he couldn't reach--but I'd recognize his craftsmanship anywhere.  It's auspicious, too.  A marriage of the sun and moon means harmony.  Long ago, when the sun and moon ruled together in the sky, there wasn't such a thing as death.  Everyone lived together at once; and the planet didn't know what war looked like.

"Wasn't I going to thank you earlier?" I asked.

He lifted his head and looked at me.  I traced his tattoos with my eyes.  "Family" on the side of his neck.  "Sky" across his collarbone.

"I told you to stop thanking me," he said.  But I could see, in the pensive expression on his face, he was debating his options all the same.

"Are you sure?" I said.  "Because once our kid gets here, we probably won't get to thank each other as often as we're used to."

That did the trick.  "Damn," he said.  He made no attempts to cover an opportunistic grin.  "Yeah, you can thank me tonight."

2

Heavensend

You know what I really hate?  Laundry.

I mean, when I was a kid, I was pretty confident that magical little worker sprites took care of the housework.  The worst part about growing up is learning that the laundry doesn't do itself.

I knelt by the brook with my grandmother's old washboard and a heap of dirty clothing.  Rafael's hospital scrubs in particular bore some suspiciously goopy stains.  I wasn't sure I wanted to know where they had come from.

Ah, well.  Into the water they went.

"Mr. St. Clair?"

I was midway through the washing when I heard my name.  Fingers sore and cold, I set the washboard aside.  I looked up just in time to greet a mousy, timid young woman in a gray pants suit.

"You could just call me Skylar," I said.

"Oh, um, yes," she said.  She kept gazing about the site with ill-concealed fright, like she was expecting the black bears to jump out of hiding.

Poor Carole.  Carole Svensen's a legal secretary--my legal secretary, I guess I should say, although it's kind of creepy to distribute personal pronouns like that.  I think the state pays her salary; I have no idea.  One day she showed up on my doorstep like a mail-order bride.  She's been here ever since.

"Mr. St. Clair," she said, "I've come to pick up your proposals and revisions..."

"You came all the way out here for that?" I asked.  I left the wet clothes on the ground--lazy, I know--and stood.  "I could've just e-mailed them to you."

"Yes, but--"  She winced.  "But you never do."

"Do you want to stay for breakfast?" I asked.

"Um..."

I took Carole by the hand.  I walked her around the side of the house, the weathervane creaking in the early morning wind.

Rafael was already in the kitchen, seated at the scrubbed pine table.  The window above the icebox was thrown open, rosy dawn scattering pale pastel sunlight across the sunny yellow wallpaper.

His blood-encrusted hunting spear lay in the middle of the floor.  Gross.

"Hi," he said to Carole.  Or I think he did.  His mouth was full.  No manners, that Rafael.

"Do you want sagebread?" I asked Carole.

I doubt she even heard me.  Her face drained of all color when she caught sight of Rafael's spear.  She spun around and high-tailed it.  To this day, I still don't know where she went.

Rafael swallowed whatever the heck he was chewing.  "Weird," he said.

"If you're eating elk, I hope it's not raw," I said.

"What's wrong with eating it raw?  My grandmother used to eat it raw all the time."

"The one with the claws?"

"No, the other one.  The one who lives in Fort Hall."

"Oh, that grandmother."

"Yeah.  She says the blood gives it flavor."

I gave him a blandly horrified look.  I rested his spear across the brim of the wash basin and opened the icebox.

"Get me juniper tea?" he said.

"Is there a reason you didn't get it yourself?" I wondered.

"How am I supposed to know which one's juniper and which one's spicewood?"

"The labels?"

"Shut up, Sky."

I shot him an innocent smile.  I handed him his tea.

After breakfast we locked up the house and followed the dirt path through the woods.  Rafael tucked his hair behind his ear and rambled, for a while, about the foster kid.  He was building her up so much, I was kind of worried he'd be disappointed if she didn't meet his expectations.

We walked through the reservation and out to the hospital parking lot.  Nettlebush is small--its population never really rises above three hundred--so the hospital's parking lot gets treated like it's a residential parking lot.  Most of us don't own our own cars, either.  We only ever leave the reservation if it's for a pauwau, or something of that nature, so you tend to get two and three families packed into the same SUV.

Racine, DeShawn, and Jessica were standing outside a monstrous black SUV.  It's actually Gabriel's car--Gabriel being Rafael's uncle.

"Good morning, Skylar," DeShawn said.  He served a couple of tours in the military.  He's sounded like a punctilious drill master ever since.  "I think we'll make good time if we leave now."

"I'm driving," Rafael said.

"No way," Jessica said.  "You drive so slow!  And Sky just drives in circles.  Let me drive, Rafael.  Please?"

She's twenty-three, and she still knows how to pull the puppy dog eyes.

"Fine," Rafael grumbled, and handed her the keys.

She unlocked the car and we climbed on board.  It's an eight-seater with a gray leather interior.  Pretty spacious--not that anything's ever spacious enough for Rafael.  I sat between him and Racine and he immediately started fidgeting.  Sometimes I think he's claustrophobic.

I turned my back on Rafael and faced Racine.  "How are you?" I asked.

Racine's my step-mother.  She's really cute, too--short, stout, and she hardly ever ages.  Her hair's crazy, curly, and for a time I used to joke that I'd inherited mine from hers.  You need only to look at us to know how unlikely that is.

Racine gave me a wan smile.  I was willing to bet she felt just as nervous as I did.  "What's this I hear about you adopting a kid?"

Jessica pulled us out of the parking lot while DeShawn blathered in his sister's ear.

I smiled sheepishly.  "It's not set in stone," I said.  "But we do have a foster kid coming our way."

Rafael let out a nervous little moan.  I elbowed him.

"Boy or girl?" Racine asked.

"Girl," I said.  "We don't know anything else just yet.  We're picking up her file later."

The desert breezed past our windows, golden and hazy, bright orange blossoms and brown berries clustered underneath the burnt, bronze hills.  The highways rolled lazily by, route after route, trucks and turnpikes their ever-faithful companions.

"Wilmot Road," Rafael said to Jessica, leaning forward in his seat.

"I know, I know.  Stop backseat driving," Jessica returned.

The penitentiary complex was at the end of Wilmot Road, just past a pair of gravelly train tracks.  From the outside, the double buildings were grand and arching, like something out of a modern palace.  The inside, I knew from experience, was a lot more depressing.

Jessica parked the car beside a towering flagpost.  We climbed out, the five of us, and she locked up.

"Boy," said DeShawn, staring up the length of the main building.  "I'd hate to be trapped in there..."

"DeShawn..." Jessica said.

"Right, sorry," he murmured.

We walked the white walkway to the visitors' doors--tall, spotless glass.  We headed inside the lobby, the floor the color of gray sludge.

It kind of creeped me out that this place hadn't changed at all in the past fifteen years.  The walls were still scratchy and white and adorned with old portraits of former wardens.  The side doors still looked like they belonged to a child's plastic play set.

"Hey," Racine said to the receptionist.  "Paul Looks Over?"

The receptionist typed on her keyboard.  "One second."

She directed us to the benches against either of the stark white walls.  The five of us sat together and waited.

Rafael scowled.  "I think I'm sitting on gum."

"Sweet, save some for me," Jessica quipped.

One of the side doors opened at last.  And out through the door walked my father.

It was surreal to see him wearing jeans and a green sweater.  For the past fifteen years I'd never seen him outside of a bright orange jumpsuit.  Nor had we ever stood face-to-face.  I'd hated that, sitting across the visitors' table from him, knowing he couldn't hug me even if he wanted to.  He wasn't sitting now.  He was standing--slouched--withered.  My heart broke in two.  He used to be paunchy; now he was thinner than me.  His gray eyes were tired, wintry, and closed off.  His sleek black hair was peppered with gray.  How old he looked.  How many years he'd lost to this place.