Juliet's Law (15 page)

But most breathtaking were the butterflies. Thousands of them, attached to the trees and rocks in a thousand different ways; butterflies made of cloth and embroidered with beads and braided out of ribbons; painted and carved and fashioned from rocks; tiny and large. Expressions of gratitude and petitions for inter
cession. For a moment, stunned into silence, Juliet thought she could hear whispers, of praises, prayer, petition, thanksgiving.

“It's so beautiful!” she cried.

“In the summertime, there are thousands of mourning cloak butterflies,” he said. “It's unbelievable.”

“What do they look like?”

“They're black, with a little ribbon of yellow around the edges of their wings, and a blue spot on each wing.”

Just then, as if called by his description, a butterfly looped upward on a warm draft from the hot springs, its wings shimmery and beautiful.

“How is that
possible?
” Julie cried.

“They can last over the winter,” Josh said. “Hold out your hand.”

“I'm afraid! It'll feel weird!”

“It's half asleep. They have to warm up their wings before they can fly.”

“No, no. You do it.”

He chuckled and extended his hand. The butterfly lazily circled and landed on his finger, wings working. “Now you,” he said. “Hold out your hand.”

Juliet obeyed. The creature swooped and landed, as if a benevolent spirit were visiting, and to her surprise, she felt some intense, unnamed emotion rise in her throat. “It's beautiful!” she whispered, afraid to so much as breathe for fear it would fly away again. So close, she could see butterfly eyes and the pattern of scales on his wings and the long feelers.

Amazing.

In a moment, it lifted off and swirled lazily upward, as if carrying prayers toward heaven. Juliet swallowed. She didn't meet Josh's eye as she moved forward, and took a candle from the box by the little housing. Josh stepped away and Juliet was grateful for the privacy as she lit the candle and put it inside the safe house. Looking up at the sweet face of the saint, she whispered an urgent prayer. “Let her get through this safely. Please.”

After a moment, Josh came forward. “My turn,” he said, and Juliet gave him the same privacy. As she stood beneath the trees, waiting, she couldn't help but sneak a small glance backward at him, at his tall, sturdy frame, his walnut-colored skin, his beautiful cheekbones. An arrow went through her chest—
I'm falling in love with him!
—and then she turned away.

He came up behind her. “Are you ready to go back to town? I'm going to have to get Glory home pretty soon.”

“Sure.” She looked at the heavily dripping snow. “I wonder if I should go up to the cabin tonight. It looks like it will be fine up there, doesn't it?”

He met her eyes. “I can take you if you like, but the cabin is above 9000 feet. There will be a lot more snow up there than there is down here.”

“You're the expert.” She cleared her throat. “I was thinking, in part, of Glory. Like giving her the wrong idea.”

“It'll be all right.” He raised his chin, scanned the horizon. “It's not like we're all over each other or anything.”

Again she had the sense that his feelings were
wounded. There was a faint stiffness around his jaw and mouth. “Josh, I'm not sure what—”

“Don't worry about it, all right?”

Stung, she said, “Fine.”

 

Josh was aware of a knot in his chest the size of Montana as they went through the rest of their errands. They stopped in the drugstore so that Juliet could get some hair rollers, then by the store where they'd stashed their things from earlier. Only then did they walk to Helene's house to pick up Glory.

His mother had obviously been cooking, and the house smelled of her trademark corn fritters and potato soup. She came out, wiping her hands on a cup towel, rangy and lean, and not at all a grandmotherly-looking sort. “Hello, Juliet!” she cried. “What a nice surprise.”

Josh bent down and kissed his mother's cheek, handed her a bag of supplies, and called out, “Glory, I'm here!”

“I'm looking at a book right now!” she yelled from the kitchen.

Helene lifted an eyebrow. “She might not have had as much sleep as usual, spending the night with her friend.”

“We're gonna have a talk about that,” Josh said gruffly.

“No, we are not,” his mother replied serenely. “You're too protective. Time to lighten up.”

“Glory!” Josh yelled. “I brought somebody who knows how to curl hair.”

“She wants her hair curled?” Helene asked. “Why didn't she ask me?”

“Because you have
short
hair, Grandma!” Glory
said, coming out of the kitchen. She carried a book, with her fingers stuck between two pages. She would be five in six weeks, and he was pretty sure she had taught herself to read quite some time ago, but she pretended she didn't know how if anyone asked. She always said was just looking at the pictures with Pink and Ink.

“Silly me,” Helene said, plucking at her thick, cropped hair. “I still know how to curl hair.”

“I've never seen you with a curl.”

“True.” Helene waved a hand good-naturedly.

Glory had not caught sight of Juliet yet. Juliet waited by the door, looking oddly nervous, her mittened hands smushed together. As Josh looked at her, his senses were slammed again, a winding depth of memory, yearning, desire, braided together. Her lips were a little swollen from their kissing last night, and he only had to look at her to remember the way she tasted, when they'd—

“Princess!” Glory squealed. “Hi!”

“Hey, sweetheart.” Her low, well-modulated voice poured like butter into the room. “I'm so happy to see you.”

“You haven't been to my grandma's house before! Are
you
going to curl my hair?”

Juliet smiled and held up a plastic bag from the grocery store. “I've got the rollers right here.”

“Can we do it right now?”

“Wait until you wash your hair, kiddo,” Josh said. “After supper. Juliet is going to stay with us until tomorrow because she's not used to being all alone in the mountains, and Desi is—” He scowled “—away for the weekend.”

“You're going to stay in
my house?
” Glory said.

“Just for tonight, if that's okay?”

“Yes! We can read stories, maybe. Or if you want, we could watch
Snow White
or
Cinderella
or—” she leaned on Josh's leg “—what other ones do I have?”

Her face was awash with light and excitement. Josh put his hand on her silky head. “We have a lot of DVDs,” he said. “I'm sure we can find one to watch together.”

Juliet looked up, and he saw for the first time the slight bruising beneath her eyes, the weariness and strain of the past few days starting to show. “I'm really looking forward to it.”

“First, we're going to eat some of the best corn fritters you've ever tasted,” Josh said, and picked his daughter up. “Who makes the best?”

Glory raised her hands above her head, a cheerleader move. “Grandma!”

“It's not ready for a little while,” Helene said. “Maybe another twenty minutes on the soup.”

“No problem.” Josh wiggled Glory in his arms. “Whatcha want to do?”

“Wash my hair.”

“Then we'd have to go home with it wet. Not a good idea.” He shook his head sadly. “Your hair would turn into icicles and fall on the ground and break into pieces. Not great.”

“Na-uh!” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “That sounds like a story.”

“Let's go read the book, kiddo.”

“Okay. You want to read with us, Princess?”

Josh spoke up before Juliet had a chance. “The princess is going to hang out with Grandma.”

“I am?”

He nodded firmly. When she just stood there, awkwardly holding the bag of drugstore hair rollers and barrettes and such things, he took it from her, nudged her shoulder. “Go on in there and sit at the table, Princess. I'm going to let you borrow my mom for a little while.”

 

As Juliet stripped off her coat and sat down at the big wooden table in Helene's roomy kitchen, she suddenly felt exhausted. Not just a little bit tired, or stressed, but absolutely, bone-deep demolished. Everything seemed to catch up with her at once—Desi's arrest, the emotional storm from last night, the sudden and surprising connection to Josh and all that stirred up. Not to mention all the purely physical things they'd been doing—hiking, making love, walking all over town.

“You look all done in, honey,” Helene said, touching her hair. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“That would be wonderful.”

From the doorway, Josh said, “Ma, remember my friend Agatha, from the Ute School?”

“Sure.”

Josh looked at Juliet, significantly. Nodded.

Juliet scowled. “Don't make secret gestures around me,” she said irritably.

He half grinned. “The princess needs a nap.”

Helene shooed him out of the kitchen. “He's my one and only,” she confessed as she poured water into a red
enameled teakettle. “I might have spoiled him a little. He thinks he knows what's best for everybody all the time.”

Juliet couldn't even muster up much of a smile. She nodded, was caught by a massive yawn, and covered her mouth. “Sorry! We hiked up to the shrine so I could light a candle for Desi. I think I'm pretty tired.”

“Have you seen your sister this morning?”

“Yeah. She's not doing well.”

Helene said, “She's a wolf—jail will kill her. We have to make sure she gets out. We're going to drum for her tonight, her sisters and I.”

“Sisters?”

“Spiritual sisters, I guess you'd call it. We sweat together. To heal ourselves, each other, the earth.”

Juliet could think of nothing to say to that. “I see.”

“Maybe you'd like to come sometime.”

“Maybe.” She wasn't sure what it entailed and it seemed a little bit intimidating.

“You can think about it.” Helene sat at the table, her kind, strong face as calm as a mountain morning. Her hands, long-fingered and graceful, were very much like her son's, and she folded them in front of her the same way. “I am a healer, Juliet. May I take your hands?”

“Um. Okay.” Juliet put her hands on the table, and Helene enfolded them in her own. Her fingertips were cool at first, but as she held Juliet's hands in her own, Helene's hands warmed up, getting hotter and hotter with every passing second. When it seemed it would be uncomfortable and Juliet would have to pull away, the heat suddenly stabilized and Juliet let go of a breath.

“You're worn out,” Helene said.

Juliet nodded. She had a sudden vision of herself crawling into a cave and curling up by a fire to sleep and sleep and sleep. Hibernating.

“Winter,” Helene said, her voice sounding more lyrical somehow, “is the time we can rest. Sleep more, eat more. Like the earth, we're being more quiet. You can use this winter to let all those wounds heal, and by spring, you'll feel much better.”

Juliet thought about saying, “I'm not wounded,” but it would have been such a blatant lie that she would shame herself uttering it aloud. Instead she heard herself say, “I lost my job a month ago. I worked so hard to get it, and then—”

“Then?”

She dropped her gaze. It wasn't that she didn't want to say anything more; it was that she couldn't seem to focus on just one thing to pull out and offer as an explanation.
I was raped
seemed as valid as
I am not sure that was ever what I wanted. I think my mother wanted it for me.

Finally she said, “I don't know. I don't seem to want to do anything to get it back. It doesn't matter. Or—it matters, but it's not
my
job.” Which sounded stupid, so she added, “Or something like that.” Frowning, she said, “That doesn't make any sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense. Maybe there's something else you need to do now.”

Juliet thought of the mothers she'd met at the immigrant center, both earnest and weary, with their children clinging to their legs. How satisfying it had been to help them find work, housing, food for another day or two! “The law doesn't move very fast,” she said. “I was
growing more and more frustrated with the way that worked in people's lives.”

Helene nodded. Patiently, she kept her hands around Juliet's, her eyes steady and calm, her face smooth. “What brought it to a head?”

“I was raped,” Juliet said simply. “A year ago.”

No ripple of judgment or shock or slightly prurient interest. Helene simply nodded. A quiet radiance came from her, and it felt like it was spreading to Juliet, a silvery energy that radiated upward from her hands, through her arms, into her tight, weary shoulders.

She would have said she didn't believe in hands-on healing, but it was impossible to deny there was something going on with Helene's hands. It was pleasant enough she didn't feel the need to do anything about it. For long moments, they simply sat at the table, her small hands enfolded in Helene's larger, rangier ones.

The kettle began to whistle. Gently, Helene pressed Juliet's hands together. “Let me get the tea.”

As she poured water into the kettle, Juliet asked, “What happened to Josh's friend at the Ute School?”

“She was abandoned by her mother.”

“Oh.” Juliet felt a ripple pulse through her, a sense of having been recognized, seen. Josh hadn't focused on the rape at all, but on her feelings of not being able to reach her mother. It took her breath for a moment.

Why did people fall in love? Was that what was happening here? And if it was, why was Juliet so skittish?

Somewhere in the house, a phone rang. “Uh-oh,” Helene said. That's Josh's phone. Usually means trouble.”