Hastily Kateri added, “I’ve wondered what might please you. Do you want me to serve you and you alone? I can quit the job of sheriff and become a hermit and be your devoted servant, trying always to do as you wish.”
A wave crashed again, rolled toward her …
Before it could touch her, she said, “But I would like to say I believe that would be a mistake. I’m a damned good sheriff and as a representative of the Native Americans, I impress the citizens, no matter how reluctant they are, and the media.”
The wave retreated.
Telling the frog god that was probably a mistake.
“I can sacrifice other things of importance to me. What would you wish? I can give you chastity, should you demand it. If you wish me to be a chaste vessel dedicated only to you, I will do so. Stag isn’t speaking to me anyway. I don’t believe you give a damn about my body or you would have kept it in the first place. But I have to offer it. It’s traditional.”
Bored ocean. Again.
She said, “I can sacrifice my ambitions. Perhaps my emotions. My loves, my hates.”
More waves, sloshing back and forth, back and forth.
“You can’t have my dog,” she said definitively.
More waves. More sloshing.
“I can sacrifice my … I don’t know. My grudges?”
Far out at the edge of the inlet, a wave rose, silent, menacing, glistening with moonlight.
“My grudges? My grudge against … my baggage? My…” Oh, God. Here on the edge of the continent where she’d been born to a woman broken from her lover’s betrayal, Kateri had to forgive the man who had taken her mother’s heart and ripped it like tissue. “You want me to forgive my father.” The wave climbed higher. She stood up. She shouted, “What difference does it make? He’s dead. Even if he wasn’t, my judgment meant nothing to him. No one meant anything to him. All he cared about was duty, success, being untouched by scandal. Why would you even care whether I forgive him?”
The frog god didn’t answer. Except that wave crashed and retreated.
But she heard the sound of Rainbow’s voice in her head saying what she had said so many times before: Your baggage is weighing you down. Forgive him. Forgive your whole family. You think they care what you feel? You’re carrying around a grudge all the time and they’re out dancing at a party. Let it go.
The grudge against her father had been a part of Kateri for so long. Like a bad habit, she was used to it. It was ingrained in her, with tentacles in every dark crevasse of her soul, and to dig it out would take concentration and effort.
She sighed. She sat down and shut her eyes.
Why not? If she was on a beach created of rubble from the frog god’s imagination, watching for him would do her no good. Probably never had.
She tried to find her hatred to rip it out. She couldn’t quite grasp it. Something about it was slippery, slimy, like a well-told lie. In her mind, she caught a glimpse of the frog god, implacable, impatient, disdainful. “Look,” she said, “I’m doing the best I can, and if this isn’t what you wanted, I don’t know what it is.”
The disdain flared brighter.
She opened her eyes.
A wall of water reared itself off the sand in front of her and, before she could move, slammed down on her.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kateri rolled, over and over, clawing at the sand, unable to tell up from down, salt in her mouth, water in her throat. She choked, cried. The water grew frothy; she reached up a hand into the air—and irrevocably, the wave sucked her toward the ocean, tumbling her like a rock that needed polishing. She fought, maddened with fear, afraid to go to the depths again, to see the frog god gloating over her return.
She had to get out. She had to go up. She needed to breathe, to be human, to be alive and part of the earth. Yet the current pulled her along the pale moonlit path and she kept sinking, sinking, into waters black and thick as memory.
Fourteen-year-old Kateri walked down the narrow wooded dirt lane. She had hitchhiked and hopped trains and walked and worked and rode buses from Baltimore to Virtue Falls. Now … she was almost home. Home. To her mother. Home. Where someone loved her. Home … In the twilight, she spotted the trailer house, the white metal siding dented by hail, the sloped roof covered in moss. She broke into a run, leaped up the listing porch steps. She grabbed the loose doorknob, jiggled it frantically until the metal door opened, raced into the living room and dropped her backpack. “Mama, I’m home!”
Faded flowered sheets covered the windows, letting in only the feeblest of light. Yet Kateri could find her way in the dark. This was the place where she belonged. Nothing had changed. Nothing … the stench hit her first. She remembered the smells. Mildew. Sweat. Spilled beer. Vomit. Rancid bacon. “Mama?”
A faint moan came from the couch.
Kateri turned, hurried toward the sound, knelt beside the short, skinny, half-clothed body resting on the sagging cushions. Kateri ran her hand over Mary’s feverish forehead, felt the skeletal shape of her shoulders.
The worst of the smells emanated from Mary.
But her mother was still alive. Mary’s cancer had brought Kateri’s father and delivered Kateri into hell, yet it had not killed Mary. That knowledge had been what kept Kateri moving across country, facing hardship, attempted rape, hungry days and cold nights. Cancer had not killed Mary, and Kateri could be with her again. Leaning close, Kateri hugged the limp body. “Mama, I’m home.”
Mary struggled a little, moaning slightly; Kateri felt as if she hugged a skeleton held together by thin, fragile, old skin.
Mary was only thirty-two.
“Mama?”
Rainbow’s quiet voice spoke from the sagging easy chair against the opposite wall. “Her remission is over. She’s dying.”
Kateri turned to face the shadowy form. “She’s … drunk.”
“Yes. She said she didn’t have enough money for food and drink, and she’d rather drink.”
“You let her?”
Rainbow chuckled, a dry, pained sound. “Let her? Kateri Kwinault, you have been gone five years. Do you remember your mother? Did anyone ever change her mind about anything? We warned her about your father, but she would have him, and he broke her heart. We told her to take you away, to take the money the government offered and get an education and make a life for herself and you. She would not leave Virtue Falls. She set her mind to this death; she will die from cancer and starvation, and she will die drunk. Hopefully the liquor will at least dull the pain.”
Wet seeped into the knees of Kateri’s jeans; she didn’t want to know what it was. “But I’m home.”
“I know, dear.” Rainbow’s voice was gentle. “She’s not dead yet. She’ll wake in the morning, and she’ll be happy to see you.” She sighed and stood, hauling her big-boned form out of the broken easy chair. “Since you’re here, I’ll take the night off and sleep. I’m tired, Kateri. Tired of watching and weeping alone.”
“Did she get my letters?”
“She did. She loves those letters. She reads and rereads them. She quotes them. She says you’re funny. She says you’re smart. She knows that you love her, and she talks about how she loves you.”
Hostility rose in Kateri, unwelcome and unconfessed. “If she loves me so much, why didn’t she ever write me back?”
Rainbow walked over to Kateri, cupped her cheeks in her hands and kissed her forehead. “She loves you. She cries for you every day. In the difficult times ahead, never doubt that.”
Now Kateri was dying, again, in the depths while a pair of large, black, glassy eyes watched her …
She had to get rid of this weight. She had to … in an instant, she offloaded it all: the hatred of her father, the hatred of her mother …
No. No. No! She didn’t hate her mother. She had never hated her mother. It was her father’s fault Mary became an alcoholic, unable to care for her only daughter, riffling through garbage cans, singing loudly at the night, falling down, making her body availa
ble to any man who would buy her a drink.
The humiliation. The mocking laughter. The fights Kateri had fought defending her mother’s honor, an honor Mary had not cared about … the pain, physical and mental. Knowing that her mother didn’t love Kateri enough to leave the liquor behind and make a decent life for them both.
There in the deep places of the ocean, Kateri cried salt tears for herself; for her mother; for her father; for the secret, shamed relief she had felt when he came and took her from Mary and into his home, into a place that was clean and normal.
It wasn’t her father she hated. Or even her mother.
It was herself for an unwilling betrayal and condemnation of loving, weak-willed Mary.
Fine. Kateri had faced her reflection and seen the truth. If that was what the frog god wanted, he could have all that.
She was here for a different reason. She was here for Rainbow. Reaching out to the frog god, she silently implored, Allow me to save Rainbow.
The large, black, glassy eyes blinked out.
The wave blasted her onto the shore, scraping her cheek on the sand, then pulled away, leaving her gasping and sputtering.
“Hey, lady, didn’t anybody ever tell you not to swim alone?” Someone put his hand under her elbow and pulled her to her feet.
She blinked into the face of a teenage boy. He looked both disgusted and concerned. “You okay?”
She stared around the beach.
Early morning sunlight shone on the sand. A few beachcombers strolled down the way, buckets in hand, picking up shells, driftwood, glass floats, anything the waves tossed up. A fire smoldered in a fire pit while all around it, people slept in bags or stood and stretched, or poured water into a pot for coffee. Had they spent the night?
“What day is this?” The empty bottle of port rolled up beside her.
“You must have been on quite a bender. It’s Friday.” The kid pulled a big strand of deep green, sticky seaweed off Kateri’s back and clarified, “Morning.”
So she’d spent the night in the depths being sloshed around like laundry in a washer. “Thanks. Now I’ve got to get going!” She had to see Rainbow while the magic was fresh.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
In the still hospital room, Kateri stood over Rainbow and stroked her forehead. Leaning close, she breathed in Rainbow’s faint exhalation, then blew her own breath into Rainbow’s space. “Rainbow,” she whispered. “Listen to me. I went to see the frog god. He made me leave my baggage with him. In exchange for that, my breath is pure. Rainbow, this is your chance to find life again.” Again Kateri breathed in Rainbow’s breath, then breathed out toward Rainbow’s face. “I’ve been hurt in great ways, and sometimes the pain of recovery is unbearable. But Rainbow, to see the dawn break across the mountains, to smell the pines, to feel alone as if no man has ever stood on this place. I don’t know why the frog god cared enough to demand my baggage…”
Rainbow’s rough, long-unused voice whispered, “Maybe the first time when the frog god consumed you, he didn’t like the taste of bitter.”
Kateri sighed with relief and at the same laughed out loud. She said, “Maybe not, Rainbow. Maybe not.”
Rainbow opened her eyes and smiled weakly at Kateri. “Your sister was here.”
That made Kateri stagger back from the bed. “That bitch! When?”
“I don’t know when. She asked about the box.”
“You could hear her?”
“Heard everything.” Rainbow took a long breath. “Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Wouldn’t have told her anyway. But the box … is with Margaret.”
“Of course!” Kateri felt like slapping her own forehead. Who else would Rainbow trust with the box? Only Margaret Smith, Garik’s stepmother and the woman who had run Virtue Falls Resort for more than eighty years.
Rainbow nodded. “You’re welcome.” She fell asleep with a sigh.
Kateri reached for the call button.
Before she could push it, the door burst open. Peggy hustled in and headed for her patient. She checked the machines, took Rainbow’s pulse, lifted her eyelid.
Rainbow opened both eyes. “Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep here.”
Peggy burst into tears.
Kateri gave her a hug and a box of tissues and headed toward the Virtue Falls Resort.
* * *
Margaret opened her bedroom closet and pointed. “There it is, dear.”
Kateri put down her walking stick, reached up to the top shelf and lifted the large, weighty, textured black box.
“You tall girls are so lucky.” Margaret had always been a tiny woman, and age had deprived her of inches and agility.
“Thank you for keeping the box.” Kateri weighed it in her hand. The raven was heavy. The album was, in her mind, heavier.
“I was glad to do it.” Margaret pushed her walker into her sitting room—her suite at the Virtue Falls Resort was both homey and luxurious—and over to her easy chair. She operated the mechanics that lifted the seat, then sank down onto it and lowered it once more. “Rainbow told me you’d come for the box.”
“I had to wait until she told me where it was.”
Margaret put her palms together. “Her recovery is the miracle I’ve been praying for.”
“Me, too.” Although Margaret used a rosary. Kateri went swimming.
“She’ll recover completely?”
Kateri searched her mind for the answer. “Yes. She’ll be changed, of course. Near death will do that to a person.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been near death.” Margaret cackled drily.
A little of the frog god’s vision still clung to Kateri, and she used it to examine the tiny, thin woman who unflinchingly stared one hundred years of age in the face. “Margaret, you’ve got one more grand adventure in you before the end.”
Margaret broke into a smile, and her wisp of an Irish accent strengthened. “Do I? That’s a good thing to hear. What are you going to do with the box?”
“I’m torn between giving it to my sister immediately and getting her the hell out of town, or keeping it to frustrate her.” Kateri thought of Lilith and having to deal with her constant criticism and said, “I’ll give it to her.”
“Not without looking to see what is in that box that she so desperately wants?”
“She says it’s the raven.”
“Is it?” Margaret lifted the receiver on her phone. “Shall I call down for tea, dear?”
“I can’t stay.” Kateri considered the bright-eyed old woman. “How do you know about my sister?”
“Did you think that the discovery you had a sister wouldn’t set the cat among the pigeons? Gossip and speculation, my dear. The lifeblood of any small town. And of course where else could she find a meal even close to the quality she deserves, except at Virtue Falls Resort.” Margaret’s mouth was puckered.
“Oh, no.” That sounded exactly like the kind of compliment Lilith would give. “She’s been here.”
“Charming woman,” Margaret said with patent insincerity. “Tea?”
“I really shouldn’t stay. Terrible things are happening.”
“Terrible things are always happening. All the more reason for a fortifying cup of tea.” Margaret coaxed, “Cook prepared cream scones today to go with our clotted cream and fresh blueberry preserves.”
Kateri was in uniform. She had her cell phone and her radio. Right now, Garik was working with Mike Sun to recover the owner of that fingerprint and her guys were patrolling the roads, making their presence known. “Tea sounds lovely.” She placed the box on the floor by the chair opposite Margaret and leaned her staff against it. “But I may have to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“I remember. When Garik was sheriff, he was always running off to save the world.” Margaret called down and ordered. “Don’t you have any curiosity? I’d love to know what’s in that box.”
Kateri seated herself. “It’s something about my parents, and all my knowledge of them has proved … p
ainful.”
“Yes, dear, I understand that. But your sister isn’t asking merely for the raven. She wants the box. There’s something of value in the box. A truth that’s been proven to me time and again over my long years—with the relatives it’s a good idea to assume the worst, and if you’re wrong … well, what a lovely surprise.”
Kateri laughed. “I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one with a difficult family.”
“There are no functional families,” Margaret said firmly.
“My God! Bergen said that exact thing to me not long ago!”
“It’s a well-known wisdom.”
One of Margaret’s room-service servers knocked on the open door.
“Ah! There’s our tea,” Margaret said. “How are your ribs?”
Surprised, Kateri poked at them with her finger. After being tumbled around in the ocean all night, she would have thought the scab would have broken open. Instead, she had … no pain. “They’re fine. Apparently the frog god doesn’t approve of injuries he didn’t inflict. Although actually”—she moved her hips—“everything is feeling better. Perhaps I’ll stop carrying my walking stick.”
Margaret peered at her. “And perhaps not.”
Kateri rubbed the smooth walnut on her staff. “Yes, it does make a handy weapon.”
“More important, it makes people underestimate you.” Margaret smiled. “As tiny as I am and have always been, I find it’s quite the advantage to be underestimated. I imagine in the town’s first female sheriff, it’s a gift.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
That evening, Merida held her hoodie close around her face, looked up and down the empty street, and watched for movement anywhere—on the lawns, at the windows.
Nothing.
She slipped through the hedge and made her way over the dry, stubbled lawn and up the broken concrete walk to the porch. Every time she came here, the house gave Merida the creeps. But something was wrong and she feared …
At times like these, she most missed her voice. If she could, she would stand out here and call his name.
Instead she stepped up to the door and knocked.