He nodded. “I’m not sure why, but she says John and Caillin would have believed in me.”
Stunned, I let him guide me up stone steps worn on the edges by decades of rain and weather. Wrapped like a human burrito in the quilt and shawl, I leaned into him when we reached a landing high among the delicately naked branches of the tree canopies. “Some day we’ll find out what really happened in this valley.” I put a hand to my quilted heart. “Don’t you want to know?”
He paused from unlocking an arching wooden door with a key Anna had given him. “I’m not sure. The past can’t be changed. I like things right now, the way they are. Between us.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. I nodded. My eyelids began to feel heavy. “Truce?”
He pulled me to him in a deep hug. I burrowed my face into the crook of his neck. “Truce,” he murmured.
Gabby
The perfect night
I WOKE UP SLOWLY, peaceful, in the soft, silver evening light coming through the picture window of the most intimate bedroom I’d seen in my life. Nest, hideaway, sanctuary, haven. The sheets were softly textured silver flannel; the air, sweet with roses in a vase on an old table by one stone wall. The light toasted the filmy drapes an eggshell color.
This was a bedroom made to be shared by a couple who had no secrets. I felt the bedroom’s effect in my thighs, my breasts, my womb; Jay’s hands and lips and other, even though I was alone. The pulse of him, inside me. I’d fallen asleep fully dressed, alone. But with his kiss on my forehead and his hands tucking the covers around me.
They ate apple pie and ginger ale spiced with peach schnapps, here. I taste . . . honey and hot biscuits; also the hard-sweet bite of smooth corn whiskey and passion. Caillin and John.
The bed was huge, with tall, carved posts; a downy nest of flannel, embroidered linens, quilts and a thick comforter. Across from the foot, a large picture window framed the snowy horizon of the Eerie Gal mountains. A magenta slash of color hooded their setting sun in a sea of pewter clouds. To my right, a large wooden door with a stained-glass transom was carved with Celtic eternity symbols and a stylized oak tree. One of the valley’s legendary Memory Oaks. Above a lovely old side table, where the roses stood like full red lips, a tall painting took my breath away.
I put my bare feet on a thick fleece rug as soft as a kitten’s fur. My hiking boots lay across the room. I was still dressed in sweaty, pickle-stained jeans and a shirt. Rumpled and hypnotized, I made my way to the painting. A small portrait lamp illuminated it from above. There was no name plate, but I knew the man and woman must be Caillin MacBride—my ancestor—and John Bonavendier, of the New Orleans’ Bonavendiers, Will’s grandfather. Her daughter came from a previous marriage, as did his children.
I studied the tall oil portrait. She and John sat atop one of valley’s monolithic granite and limestone outcroppings. They lazed, deceptively casual and sympatico, almost like movie stars camping in the southern wilds. Both wore slouchy pants and shirts; broad-brimmed felt hats were tilted back on their heads at rakish angles. Her deep auburn MacBride hair tangled in retro waves down one shoulder; his dark brows and somber, craggy face tilted toward hers with affection. His arm was draped around her shoulder; hers was curled around his updrawn knee. A thick wooden cane leaned against his thigh.
He limped. “He had a spinal injury on one side,” said Caillin in her journal. I walked beside him knowingly, careful of his dignity. I told him a man didn’t need two perfect legs when he was blessed with angel wings.
They were in love. Caillin and John seemed larger than life against the background of rounded mountains, cerulean sky, and billowing, gray-white thunderheads. The violence and passion in those clouds filled the painting with drama; even the sky predicted the forces leading to John’s death in the valley and accusations of murder against her when she fled. Her body had never been found among the wreckage of the small plane John had taught her to fly. Her plane had gone down in the cold waters beyond North Carolina’s Outer Banks. To some, she’d been a seductress, leading her John a merry chase in her bid to regain the Little Finn valley. To others, she was a woman who loved true and hard and without reservation. John had been willing to jeopardize his legacy for her.
The ironies and contradictions echoed in my own life. Loyalty is a liquor distilled from love and trust. Grief and revenge can define families for generations to come. Love and devotion can overcome any curse. Or can they?
He’s doomed, Donny had said.
A chill went through me. No. I can save him.
I walked into a bathroom, softly lit by a single wall sconce. I took a shower with water warmed by solar panels on a cistern above the cottage roof. On a hanger I saw a short nightgown, unbelievably feminine and flowing, with embroidery of pale silk flowers on the bodice. I put it on. It felt not quite made for me, a midi-length sheath that would have been more classic on a shorter, smaller woman. On me it was a nightie, not a gown. My legs looked pale beneath the hem, a thousand miles long. Too long. Too thick. Not at all like I’d dreamed in fantasy.
Apples and rum. She offered him apple cider mixed with rich, dark rum. After several drinks his hands filtered through this gown to frame her breasts, then trailed down her stomach to her thighs, and he poured the apple-laced liquor between them . . .
This gown had belonged to Caillin. She had been shorter than me, more delicate. I looked at my image in a mirror on a claw-footed stand. My hair tangled around my shoulders and down my back. The soft material clung to my breasts. The embroidered hem whispered around my thighs.
I looked vintage. And sexually aware. The gown was short and nearly sheer.
So be it. Why pretend this was my and Jay’s first date?
I opened the bedroom door. The scent and heat and soft crackling of a fireplace came to me. Masculine essences, primitive. At the end of a short hall I pivoted through a small archway. There, amidst crowded bookcases and fat sofas, old lamps and crystal bottles of richly-colored liquors, Jay stretched his long body along a pillowed chair and leather ottoman. A faded flannel shirt and thin chinos draped his powerful chest and legs; his big feet were bizarrely encased in cheerful red and green Christmas socks with a snowman motif.
Those socks made me love him even more.
The smart phone in his big hands seemed . . . cuddled. He held it the way a fatherly man holds a baby. The sight filled my belly with an ache. I knocked on the wall to warn him I was watching. He pretended to keep reading. “You’re ogling me,” he said.
“It’s the socks. I have a thing for yarn snowmen.”
“They were sent here, made for me, by Lucy Parmenter. Anna is one of her mentors. ‘Women of the eternal yarn,’ they call themselves.”
“We need to tell Gus about Lucy’s history. But Tal says Lucy doesn’t want to. She likes being his pen pal, and doesn’t want him to feel sorry for her.”
“He’ll come home someday, on leave. He’ll come looking for her. He needs to know.”
“How interesting,” I said. “You think people who care about each other should be trusted with the facts about their backgrounds and motives.”
He raised his eyes to mine. “Let’s change the subject. You almost set a world record for pickle eating today.” He waggled the phone at me. “Google says so.” His baritone, an elegant Asheville drawl with worldly consonants, seeped inside me. Changing the subject. How Jay-like.
I countered. “I can swallow a long pickle without even taking a breath.”
His eyes went darker. He set the phone on a table. “Not fair.”
I laughed.
He nodded. “Tell me more.”
Foreplay. This was it.
His dark hair was damp and tousled, forgetting that some expensive private barber had sculpted it in Asheville. His face looked scraped, as if he’d shaved his jaws with a sharpened flint rather than a ra
zor. A tiny fleck of blood high on his cheekbone confirmed he might have been distracted or reckless.
I walked toward him, slowly. “I just . . . slip a pickle into my mouth and . . . bite down. Hard.”
“You can’t scare me.” He raked my sheer gown with a glance that burned my skin. “I’m already distracted.”
“Flattery.”
He shifted his feet on the ottoman and picked up a tall glass of amber liquid. “Please sit. Here.” He held out the glass.
I took the cool crystal cylinder—no ice, neat, a fat double of golden whiskey with the rich scent of fermented grain and Forgetting. I sat down by his Christmas socks from Lucy Parmenter and sipped the smooth liquid. “Wonderful. Apples and cinnamon and corn and honey. A slight acid tang of fermentation. Perfect. Every plant, every bee and farmer and hummingbird and human being who made this. I feel them all. How old is this?”
“Anna says it’s another bottle from a hidden stash that survived the raid. That Caillin knew where the remnants of the best liquor were stored in the caves and cellars the feds didn’t find in nineteen thirty. This whiskey is at least eighty-five years old. It’s amazing that it’s even drinkable, much less world-class.”
The people who grew the corn that made this whiskey are inside me; they lived and loved in this valley, they brewed the mash and distilled the essence and stored it in barrels made from the timbers of their Memory Oaks . . . they’re here, in my blood, slipping down my throat, whispering to me in the spirit of this spirit.
“We’re sharing it. They want us to.”
“Yes.”
My hand shook slightly as I leaned over and set the glass on a stone coaster atop the lamp stand. “I need to ask you some questions. Don’t dodge them. Gus has already blown your cover.”
“Never trust a MacBride. It’s a Wakefield motto.”
“You’ve always said it wasn’t safe for me to know everything about your business. I want to know what you mean by that.”
“Family legacies have a way of re-seeding themselves in every new generation. The stronger the mutation, the more it reinforces a dominant trait. The sad fact is: my family’s primary trait is the joy of crushing its opposition by any means necessary. Your family’s primary trait is resisting the opposition even if it kills them.”
“I don’t believe that. Your tendencies aren’t quid pro quo. Not in your case. And not in your father’s.”
“I like it when you talk legal Latin to me.”
I leaned toward him. Suddenly the short space between us was reduced to a heated transfer of sexual tension. A hot, invisible stream. “If you’re going to stonewall me, at least get as naked as I am.”
A ripple of response shimmered through him. “What would you suggest?”
“You can see me through this gown. I want to see at least a little more of you. Take off your shirt.”
He curved his fingers beneath the rumpled hem then slowly lifted it over his head and dropped it softly to the floor. He was heavier than ten years ago; so was I. The added weight made a firm layer over his well-set chest and abdomen, his thick shoulders and veined forearms. An inverted triangle of dark chest hair led down to his navel. It disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants, where the soft material rode a thick bulge.
An aura of acceptance, of welcome, settled around me. There is a moment when the consummation between lovers is inevitable; the die has been cast; the rest becomes preparation, acknowledged by both parties. Great truths and easy lies simmer in that phase. I hoped for the former.
“What is the danger?” I stroked a finger down the center of his abdomen, pressing my fingernail into his flesh.
He grasped my hand gently and stroked my trapped fingers to his jaw. “That you’ll decide you hate my family, and leave me.”
Like his mother did.
I curled a fingertip to the edge of his chin. “You’re in luck,” I whispered. “I’ll judge you only by what you do, not by your name. And when I look at you, I’ll only see the man I know personally, not the image you show to others. The man I want, right now.”
He reached for me.
The rest was as easy as cooking.
Jay
Merry Christmas, with pickles
I SAT BACK on my naked heels, holding tumblers of whiskey-laced eggnog in both hands above Gabs’s nude body, as starlight filtered through the cottage window. I clamped a slice of dill pickle between my teeth. Blueberry jam, thick with seeds and hulls, was smeared on sensitive areas low on my body. There. And there. Also there. Gabs trailed a finger through a delicate spot, making my back flex. She rubbed the jam into her lower lip and tasted it with her tongue.
I dropped the pickle slice between her breasts, like a devoted dog delivering a bone. “Merry Christmas, Pickle Queen. Snack time.”
She lifted the slice to her mouth, sucked it as I watched, then bit and slowly swallowed each piece. She sat up, jiggling and dewy. One hand went between my thighs. The other took her glass of eggnog. We clicked our crystal together. “Merry Christmas,” she said hoarsely. “Kiss me. With a lot of tongue.”
Five minutes later we were licking eggnog off each other.
The best night of my life.
Gabby
A dark morning for Christmas
I DOZED IN JAY’S arms, with his big hands moving down my naked back and over the curve of my hips. Then he slept in my arms, his head pillowed on my breasts as I stroked his hair and face. When the pounding and the yelling woke us, my smart phone said three A.M. The sky outside the big window was snowy and starlit. Magical. Christmas.
“Help us, help us,” begged a high, young voice. Female. Terrified.
“Stay here,” Jay said. He threw on his clothes and headed through the cottage.
Of course, I followed no more than ten seconds behind him.
Arwen shivered in the low light of a solar lamp outside the front door. She wore nothing but baggy pink flannel pajamas, Ugg boots and a striped sock cap. Her hair stuck out beneath, long and tangled, vaguely dark blond but soaked in sweat. A tiny gold stud rode the crease of her left nostril, and another perched over her right eyebrow. Her pink-lidded eyes were huge and blue. A fairy emblem danced on a leather necklace tied snugly around her throat.
She stared up at us, clutching her hands in front of her. Tears pooled in her tired eyes. “Aunt Denoto’s gone crazy. She says she’s taking Dustin to Mexico and hide him there—even if he doesn’t want to go with her. She tried to shoot the Clagg for getting in her way. Donny freaked out and ran. Dustin tried to catch him. She chased them both. Dustin and Donny climbed down the side of Tendril Bald while The Clagg went for more help. Dustin fell and hurt his arm. My brother says he’ll jump if she comes down after them.” She pressed her shaking hands to her throat. “Please come before things get worse. Please.”
Gabby
The summit at Tendril Bald
JAY, ARWEN AND I slipped through the snowy forest to the edge of a high “bald,” a broad pate of exposed stone like a skull plate in the mountain’s head.
“There,” Arwen said, whispering and pointing through a fringe of laurel. Ahead of us was a panorama of starry sky and nothingness. We were at the top of a rounded peak in the Derry Fogs, with craggy overhangs and sheer drops that plunged into winter forest and eagle sanctuaries below. My ears had popped twice on the drive up a rutted trail. The last mile, on foot, had been fast, breathy and hard on my legs.
The sight of Denoto scared the hell out of me.
She stood at the apex of the bald with her booted feet braced apart, coatless, her long dark hair straggling around her shoulders. In one hand she carried a large pistol of some kind. With the other she held up a propane lantern. It’s powerful glow cast a weird white circle around her, gleaming on the snow and showing where dangerous patches of ice glittered even b
righter. The edge of its light ended where the bald plunged downward into starry sky and tree tops.
She raised her chin and shouted hoarsely, “I can outwait you, Dustin! I’m only trying to do what’s best! Don’t you understand?”
From below the precipice came Dustin’s voice, wracked with pain. “Mom, you have to put the gun down and leave! I can’t climb up without Donny, and he’s terrified of you!”
“I’ll jump!” Donny shrieked. “I’ll learn to fly! I’ll turn into a bat or an eagle!”
Arwen cried softly. “If we don’t do something quick, he really will try to fly. Guns scare him to death.”
“Stay here, both of you,” Jay ordered. “I’m going through the shadows. I’ll climb down and get them.”
Be careful . . .
He was gone before I had time to whisper the words.
Jay
Past, present, and future
I CRAWLED TO the edge of a drop-off that stair-stepped down a thousand feet of craggy rocks, wind-carved pines protruding at impossible angles, and dangerous Nothing. The snow-chilled night wind buffeted me. Beneath the stars, a white panorama of forest rose below me, falling away into broad hummocks and deep nooks. A million wild eyes, some living, some only remembering life, watched me. I pulled a small flashlight from my jacket and directed its beam downward.
A good thirty feet below, Dustin and Donny huddled in the alcove of a jutting boulder. When I was sure I was below the rim and could do it without Denoto seeing me, I shined a flashlight down. Dustin held his injured right arm close to his body and looked up at me like a trapped animal, his face, so much like mine when I was young and couldn’t hide it, bitter. “Are you on Grandfather’s side?” he asked.
“No.”
Donny crouched, pale and shaking. “If you come down here, you’ll die. I’ve seen it.”
Dustin’s eyes narrowed in pain. “Please don’t let anything happen to Donny and Arwen. I can handle the family torture. They can’t.”
“Nothing’s happening to any of you. I’m getting you out of here, and the three of you are coming with me. Permanently. When I have time to explain, I’ll make it clear that that’s a happy thing. Nothing for you to dread.”