“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
“Is 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.”
He cut his eyes at Charlotte. “Private, you’ll make a damned fine cook if you can just stop experimenting.” Charlotte giggled. Daddy looked stern. To Sam he said, “Check off the daily assignments for me, Corporal.”
“Beds made, clothes laid out, shoes polished, homework ready, Sergeant. Sarge, Charlotte needs a note for her teacher. The first grade is going on a field trip next week.”
“File that requisition with your mother, Corporal. She’ll be here as soon as she finishes her pretzels.”
“Yes, Sergeant.” Pretzels was what Daddy called Mom’s yoga exercises.
“Carry on, then. Good work, soldiers. Dismissed.” They saluted. He saluted. Then he squatted down, held out his arms, and they ran to him for a hug. “What you doing today, Daddy?” Charlotte asked.
“I’m flying to Los Angeles to pick up an AWOL. I’ll be home tonight.” Daddy found runaway soldiers and brought them back; the lowest thing a person could be, as far as Sam was concerned, was AWOL. “I’ll keep the troops in line for you, Daddy.”
“I know you will, Sam.” He chuckled, then kissed her forehead. Sam put both arms around his neck and leaned against him happily.
After he left, Mom scurried into the kitchen, unfolded her astrology charts on the table, and huddled over them with her hands jammed into her hair. “What’s the matter?” Sam asked, sidling up to her and peering over her shoulder.
“It’s not a good day for your daddy to travel.” Mom spread her hands on the star charts as if reading a roadmap. “Not a good day,” she repeated with a tremor in her voice.
Sam patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Aw, Mom, let’s have some oatmeal. Come on, you’ll be late for work.”
“Oatmeal,” Charlotte added, grinning like a gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern and holding out the pot. “With garlic in it.”
Sam groaned and went to fix a new pot.
That afternoon, as Daddy and another M.P. were boarding a helicopter with their prisoner, the man got loose somehow, and grabbed the other M.P.’s gun. Daddy, being the bravest man in the world, jumped in between. And got killed.
Alexandra was in her element. She had a shattered little group to care for, and even Samantha—by far the strongest and most resilient of the three—was coming under her wing. Alexandra looked into the swollen, exhausted blue eyes of her ten-year-old niece and saw herself as a child, already aware that the world was made up of cruel and unfair rules, and that only the toughest survived.
They sat at opposite sides of the modest beige couch of Frannie’s living room, with the California sunshine streaming through a curtained window. Frannie was sleeping fitfully in the bedroom, an emotional invalid, with the confused and teary Charlotte dozing in her arms.
But Samantha sat dry-eyed and alert on the couch, her blue jumper smoothed neatly, her hair lying over one shoulder in a regimented braid. Alexandra leaned back, tucking a notepad into a small leather purse, flicking lint off the legs of her tailored slacks. “Am I such a stranger, Samantha? Do you still think of me as a witch?”
“You helped us take my dad to North Carolina,” Sam said slowly, staring straight ahead. “You made sure he had a nice funeral and all. You took care of things I couldn’t do. My mom is glad to have you around. I guess you’re not a witch.”
Alexandra sighed with relief and slid across the couch to her. Slipping an arm around the girl’s slender, taut shoulders, she said gently, “Your mother and I are very different from each other. We’ve always wanted different things, and sometimes I sound very, hmmm, set in my ways, I know. But I’m your aunt, honey, and I love you—I love you and Charlotte, and your mother, very much. And I want to make you all feel better. I want you to be happy.”
“My mom needs your help,” Samantha answered, flinching away from Alexandra’s arm. “And Charlotte really likes you.”
“You could like me, too, if you’d stop thinking of me as the enemy. Because I’m not. You can’t let your opinions be colored by what other people say about me. Especially when those people don’t know me very well—when they’re jealous and mean-spirited without reason.”
“You mean Mrs. Raincrow. You mean Jake.”
“Yes, honey. Jake’s mother never wanted me to marry her brother. I know it’s hard for a little girl to understand, but people are naturally suspicious when new people come into their lives, people who have new ideas. They look for things to dislike about the new people and the new ideas. They try to make others dislike them too. They don’t want their way of life to change. They’re afraid.”
“If you explained to them, though, and they saw that you were their friend, they’d—”
“I’ve tried, honey, I’ve tried since long before you were born. It hurt me so much for them to say mean things about me. It hurt your uncle William too. My only fear is that they’ve upset you so much that you won’t be able to make up your mind for yourself. You’re a smart girl; you don’t want other people telling you what to think, do you?”
“No, not anybody.”
Alexandra took her hands. “You are so smart, and so talented. Just look at these beautiful little hands of yours. I’ve never seen hands so perfect. I’m your family, honey. That means that I’ll always want what’s best for you. I want to see you and Charlotte become just as important as you deserve to be. You can trust me in a way you’ll never be able to trust outsiders.”
“I trust Jake.”
“Samantha, I think you have a marvelous capacity to daydream. Every little girl should. But there comes a time when you begin to grow up, and you see people and situations the way they really are, not the way you wish they were.”
&nbs
p; “My daddy’s dead,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Poor dear, yes, but now I’m here to help you, and Jake isn’t. Understand?”
“Well, yes, I guess, but he would help me if he could. He would—”
“He’s four years older than you are. He’s fourteen. That means that he’s interested in girls his own age; he’s not a child anymore, but you still are. And when you’re fourteen, he’ll be eighteen. He’ll be old enough to vote, and drive a car, and … even to get married. But you won’t be. You’ll still be growing up. It will be years and years before you’ll be anything but a little girl to him, and by the time you’re grown up, he’ll have a lot of girlfriends his own age, and he won’t even remember you.”
Sam considered that possibility in awful silence. She thought of older boys, high school boys she’d seen, and how they ignored kids her age. A terrible loneliness settled on top of the aching grief in her chest. Daddy was gone; Jake was some distant, manly stranger, Mother cried all the time, and Charlotte was Sam’s needy shadow, someone who always looked to Sam for answers.
“I need someone too,” Sam blurted out, looking up at her aunt tearfully. “I’m scared. What’s going to happen to us? Where will we go? If you’ll tell me what to do, I’ll take care of Mother and Charlotte. Just tell me what to do!”
Aunt Alexandra hugged her quickly, then leaned back and studied her wistfully. “I can’t convince your mother to move to my house. She wants a home of her own. She’s got her own way of doing things. She doesn’t want to live with me and your uncle Orrin. I can’t change her mind.”
Sam didn’t want to live with Uncle Orrin either. She didn’t even want to call Aunt Alexandra’s second husband uncle. Aunt Alexandra had brought him to visit during their honeymoon, on the way to Hawaii. He talked too sweetly and was too handsome to be real—a heartbreaker—Mother said after they left. He was a state senator, which meant, Daddy had explained, that he was a damned good liar.
Most of all, Sam remembered how he’d stroked her hair as if she were a kitten, but his constant touching had made her feel nervous for reasons she couldn’t explain.