Beautiful Lies (25 page)

“May!”

She forced her eyes open and saw that she was in her tiny, airless room at Jimiramira. It was filled with smoke.
As she watched, horrified, the trunk she had placed in front of the door slid drunkenly, then crashed against her narrow bed. In a moment Bryce loomed over her. He grabbed her shoulders.

“May! Get up. House is—” He coughed, hacking uncontrollably, as if he had swallowed live coals.

She was not standing beside the billabong. Terror engulfed her. She swung her feet to the floor, and Bryce, still coughing, grabbed her hand to pull her toward the door.

“Get out,” he managed. “My mum…can't find…”

She understood. He wanted her to escape, but he was going back to find his mother.

“No! Bryce!”

He pulled her along the hallway into a storage room at the back. The smoke was so thick she couldn't see, and she would not have found her way without him. He flung open the door and pushed her toward it. “Go!”

She held on to his hand. “No! You can't!”

He shook her off. “Get out. Now!”

He disappeared the way they had come. She would have followed, but he was swallowed up immediately, and she knew she would not find him without risking both their lives. She screamed for him to come back, but he didn't return. At last she stumbled out of the house.

Fifty yards away, she stumbled into Larry's arms. “Who else is out?” he demanded. “Where's the boss and the missus?”

She shook her head, coughing now. “Bry—”

“G'down to the billabong. We'll get buckets. Start a chain….” He disappeared into the night.

She understood what the men were trying to do, but it was too late. The house would burn to the ground, and everyone left inside would perish. She fell to her knees sob
bing. She remembered the fight last night, and the lantern. The room had gone dark, and in the confusion she had blamed a gust of wind for blowing out the flame. But she had never gone back to check.

Now she knew what she would have seen if she had. In the midst of the fight, the lantern had been spirited away, its flame husbanded lovingly by the woman who had tried once before to burn Jimiramira to the ground. Mei had no proof, but she knew that at the end of her life, Viola had not been as powerless or pitiful as any of them had believed.

She heard shouts and running feet. In the distance horses whinnied frantically, and the station dogs set up a howl. She stopped the first man to run by. “Bryce! Inside.”

“No one can get back in now, miss.”

She stumbled to her feet and started toward the billabong, stopping another man along the way, old Henry, the station hand who had helped her put the homestead to rights. “Bryce…Please…”

“Nothing we can do but put out the fire.” He slung his arm over her shoulders and propelled her along beside him until they were only a hundred yards away. “C'mon, May. The blacks'll be here to help as soon as they see the smoke. We can get it out.”

“Let…it…burn.” She began to sob.

Henry disappeared, leaving her alone to grieve. She turned and faced the homestead, and it was exactly the way she had dreamed it. As she watched dawn light the sky, the veranda collapsed in a shower of sparks.

But this time she felt only an unrelenting sense of dread.

The sky was nearly light before she heard Henry calling for her.

“May? You out there?”

She couldn't seem to answer. She opened her lips to reassure him, and something obscene rasped from her throat.

“May?” Henry moved into view, then, when he saw her, he came to her side.

She pointed to her throat, and he understood. “Too much smoke,” he said. “Bugger it. You'll be crook a while, but it'll come out all right in the end. Seen this before.”

She didn't care how it came out. She stared at the homestead. The ruins were merely smoldering now, and the human chain was beginning to break up.

Henry spoke calmly, as if he were discussing which cattle to send north to market. “Boss and missus are both dead, burned nearly to cinders. Fire started in one of the back rooms. They was together. She probably set the poor bastard on fire.”

“Bryce?” She managed the word with difficulty.

“Don't you know?” He looked surprised. “Didn't nobody tell you?”

She stumbled to her feet. His expression changed to dismay. “I sent Sally to find you. Didn't she?”

“Bryce?” she croaked.

“Larry found him passed out by the front door. Dragged him out just in time and carried him down to the kitchen, to his room. Emma's with him.”

She pushed past him and started around the ruins toward the kitchen. The building was far enough from the house that it hadn't been touched. Every step she took was harder than the one before. The ground sucked at her feet, but she kept going.

The sun was up now, balancing on the horizon as if weighing its decision to rise. Some of the men were already picking through the ruins, their mouths screened with handkerchiefs, and in front, two sad mounds carefully cov
ered by an array of saddle blankets testified to the fire's deadly force.

She averted her eyes from the shrouded bodies and saw the skeleton of the piano surrounded by charred timber. She remembered the night Archer had complained that Viola hadn't wanted it. The night he'd drunk too much and seen her father in the room.

She wondered if in some world beyond this one Archer still complained of all the things that hadn't gone right. Had her father and mother met him at the instant of his death to damn or forgive him? Had Viola, beautiful and sane once again, taken her place beside him?

Mei's vision of that other world was foggy, composed of Bible illustrations and stories and legends her mother had brought from China. Willow had prayed to Kuan Yin, the goddess of Mercy, and sometimes to the Virgin Mary. She had not believed in anything, so much as hoped.

Now hope filled Willow's daughter. Archer and Viola were dead, and her father had been avenged. The pearl was gone from all their lives, but Bryce was not gone from hers.

She and Bryce had one chance. When she could speak clearly again, she could tell him the truth, starting at the very beginning. She could tell him of her change of heart, of the way her love for him had grown. He might hate her. He might be unable to forgive. But she had to know.

Thomas lived on the other side of the world, and now she had nothing to take to him to start a new life together. Bryce was only a few feet away, and she had everything to give him.

Inside the kitchen she saw Emma sitting at the table, her hands neatly folded, as if she was waiting for instructions.

“Emma?”

The girl stood.

“Bryce?”

Emma frowned at Mei's rough whisper. “He been sleep.”

Mei motioned for Emma to leave. The girl shot her a grateful smile. Mei paused at the door to the room where Larry slept, then she opened it slowly. Bryce lay on his back on Larry's bed, staring at the ceiling. One arm was credibly bandaged, and his trousers had been cut away at one knee so a portion of his calf could be bandaged, too.

“Bryce?”

His gaze settled slowly on her, as if she were pulling him back from someplace far away. “May?”

He sounded only slightly better than she did. He pushed himself to a sitting position, coughing as he inched forward. “You're all…right?”

She nodded.

“Sally said you disappeared, that no one knew where you'd gone.”

“No one…told me.” She moved closer so he could hear her better. “About—”

He tried to smile, but his face was a study of warring emotions. “I made it. Larry—”

She reached out and touched his lips to silence him, but he spoke anyway. “They're…dead.” He closed his eyes.

She didn't know what to say. She couldn't tell him she was sorry. Viola was better off, and Archer had deserved to die.

Her
father by water,
his
by fire. The cycle was complete.

He sat on the bed, struggling not to cry. She wanted to comfort him. She eased down and put her arms around him. He winced when she touched his chest, but when she tried to withdraw, he pulled her closer. “May…” The tears he wouldn't cry were in his voice.

“Maybe…they have peace now?” She rested her head under his chin, even though she knew her hair smelled of smoke.

His arms tightened. “That would be new, wouldn't it?” His voice broke.

She lifted her face and kissed him. It was the only way she knew to comfort him. He returned the kiss, as if he hoped that small intimacy might be able to heal a broken heart. The kiss deepened. She could think only of what she had to tell him. She wanted him to know she loved him. When she told him the truth, she wanted him to remember this, to remember that now, when she had no reason to kiss him, she had kissed him anyway. Not for the pearl. Not for revenge. But for love.

“Oh, May…” He kissed her cheeks, her chin, her forehead. He loosened the braid that fell untidily down her back and spread her hair over her shoulders. “Promise me you won't leave me, too.”

She thought he might want her to leave very soon, but she murmured her promise. She would not leave unless he asked. If he could forgive her, she would stay beside him and help build a new home from the ashes of a home that had never been.

He eased her down beside him, turning so that he could kiss her better. His arms were boyishly awkward and trembling, but she embraced him. He cupped her cheek; then his fingers tangled in her hair. “Stay with me….”

She touched his chest, his shoulder, the slender plane of his hip. She didn't know when sympathy and love became something else. By then she was floating on a flood tide of hope for the future. They could overcome the past. If she could forgive him for being Archer and Viola's son, then he could forgive her. They could start over together.

She let him undress her, and she moaned when he touched her breast. Then, slowly, she forgot about the past, about revenge and regret. She forgot about the future and the hurdles they still faced. She gave herself to him, and for those moments there were no ghosts between them.

 

Mei lay beside Bryce, who was breathing heavily. He had been sleeping for a while now, and she suspected he would sleep for most of the day. She knew she should rise and find Larry to help her make breakfast for the men. But she was drained of everything, content to lie beside the man she loved.

From somewhere nearby she heard the peculiar call of a bird. For a moment she wondered how it could so perfectly imitate the barking of a dog. Then she remembered walking with Bryce to see the lovingly constructed bower. The bowerbird was near, perhaps investigating to see if the fire had left any shiny bits of glass or stone.

“You'll hear one singing around the homestead from time to time. A big spotted fellow with a bit of color at the back of his neck. He's a mimic, that one. He can low like the cattle, bark like a dog. I reckon I could teach him to talk if I wanted.”

She sat up suddenly, remembering the other things Bryce had told her about the bowerbird. The male built his bower, then adorned it with anything bright or shiny that he could find. Shells, pieces of bone.

A pearl?

For an instant she wondered if she was as crazy as Viola. If she stayed at Jimiramira, would she always look, always hope that someday she would find the Pearl of Great Price? And what would she do if she found it?

What about Thomas?

She told herself to go back to sleep. She told herself to get up and begin breakfast preparations. But when she rose and dressed, she didn't pretend she was going to look for Larry.

She told herself the truth.

Outside, several of the Aboriginal stockmen were picking through the ruins, and they took no notice of her. Larry was coming from the direction of the quarters, and he paused as she passed. “Henry'll be riding over to the telegraph station to tell them what happened.”

Mei knew that the telegraph station was many days away, a particularly difficult trip in the Wet. But the authorities had to be notified.

“There's no house for you to see to anymore,” Larry said. “If you want to leave, he can take you that far. When he's able to, the man there can help you get back to Darwin.” He didn't wait for an answer.

She started toward the billabong, as if that was her destination. But when she reached the trees, she followed the route she had covered with Bryce, taunting herself as she walked. No pearl waited in the bower. The pearl was gone forever. If she didn't guard her sanity, she would become like Bryce's mother.

“Bryce.” She didn't smile as she said his name. In her own way she knew she was preparing to leave him.

She reached the patch of scrub, and she stood just outside the trees, her mind whirling. She didn't know what to hope for.

At last she stepped into the scrub and found her way to the bower. In the daylight it was larger and more complex than she had remembered. But even as a part of her marveled at the bird's extraordinary talent, another part screamed at her to turn around and run away.

Instead, she slowly stooped, and when she had taken a
deep breath, she peered inside. The pearl for which her father had died glowed at the entrance.

The bird had known that no female could resist its temptation.

 

“Of course, I took the pearl,” Mei told Liana and Cullen, in the sitting room of her small apartment in San Francisco. “I held it in my palm, and I saw Thomas's face reflected on its surface. I knew I could not keep it for myself, that I must bring it to him in California. This is what my mother would expect of me. Your grandfather was still sleeping, Cullen, as I rode away with Henry later that morning. I never saw him again.”

Liana blinked back tears, but Cullen, who seemed less affected, spoke. “You chose your brother over my grandfather?”

“I came to America three months later. There was much flooding in the week after the fire, and even if Bryce had wanted to find me and take me back to Jimiramira, he could not have. I was able to make my way to Darwin, where I found a family traveling to the United States. I agreed to help care for their children in exchange for my passage. I was an Australian citizen because my father was white. And I was able to emigrate to California because of it. In those days, Chinese were not wanted in America, either.”