Rainsinger (26 page)

"Okay, it wasn't fine. Exactly." Sofia bows her head. Light arcs over her glossy, glossy dark hair. "She was pretty angry then."

"And she's happy now?" I scatter flour over the dough and table where it is beginning to stick. "Because her mother is in jail and her father is at war?"

"No. I mean—"

The phone rings. I glance at it, then back to my daughter. Obviously there is no possible way I can say no. The child has nowhere to go, but—

To give myself a little time, I tug my hands out of the dough, wipe them off with one of the thin white cotton towels I love for covering the loaves when they rise. "How old is she?"

A second ring.

"Thirteen. Going into eighth grade."

"Middle school." Not the most delightful age for girls. Even Sofia was a pain at that age—all huffy sighs and hair-flinging drama. And tears. Tears over everything.

The phone rings again, and I hold up a finger to Sofia. "Hold that thought. Hello?"

"Good morning, ma'am," says a deep, formal voice on the other end. "May I please speak with Mrs. Oscar Wilson?"

Every atom in my body freezes for the space of two seconds. Here it is, the moment I've been half-dreading since Sofia came home four years ago, her eyes shining.
Mama, he's the most wonderful man! He wants to marry me.

A soldier. An infantryman who'd already done two tours of Iraq during the bloodiest days of the war, and would likely do more. Oscar is older than Sofia by more than a decade, divorced, and father to this brand-new adolescent who has a very troubled mother.

Not a soldier, baby,
I kept thinking.

And yet, the moment I met Oscar Wilson, with his beautiful face and kind eyes and gentle manners, I knew exactly why she loved him. It was plain he worshipped her in return.

But here is the phone call.

"Yes," I say with more confidence than I feel. "Just a minute please." I put the mouthpiece against my stomach, turn to my daughter. "Remember, they come to the door if he's dead."

Sofia stares at me for a long, long second. Fear bleeds the color from her lips. But she has the courage of a battalion of soldiers. Taking a breath, she squares her shoulders and reaches for the phone. Her left hand covers her belly, as if to spare the baby. "This is Mrs. Wilson."

She listens, her face impassive, and then begins to fire questions, writing down the answers in a notebook lying open on the counter. "How long has he been there? Who is my contact?" And then, "Thank you. I'll call with my arrangements."

As she hangs up the phone, her hand is trembling. Unspilled tears make her lashes starry. She stands there one long moment, then blinks hard and looks at me. "I have to go to Germany. Oscar is...he was..." She clears her throat, waits until the emotion subsides "—his truck hit an IED, four days ago. He's badly injured. Burned."

I think that I will always remember how blue her eyes look in the brilliant sunshine of the kitchen. Years and years from now, this is what I will recall of this day—my daughter staring at me with both terror and hope, and my absolute powerlessness to make this better.

"I have to go to him," she says.

"Of course."

I think,
how badly burned?

She turns, looks around as if there will be a list she can consult. She's like my mother in that way, wanting everything to be orderly. "I guess I should pack."

"Let me scrape this into a bowl and I'll help you."

As if her legs are made of dough, she sinks suddenly into the chair. "How long do you think I'll be there? What about the baby?"

"One step at a time, Sofia. I'm sure you'll have those answers before long. Just think about getting there, see what...how...what you need to find out."

"Right." She nods. Touches her chest. "Mom. What about Katie? She can't stay where she is."

A thirteen-year old whose mother is in jail, her father wounded, her step-mother pregnant with a new baby and flying off to Germany, leaving her with a woman she doesn't know. "She's never met even met me. Won't she be scared?"

"Maybe for a little while, but I can't let her go to a foster home. She can just come for the summer. Grandma will help you, I'm sure, and Uncle Ryan and—"

I hold a hand up. There is only one answer. "Of course, baby. Let's get those arrangements made now, too, so you don't have to worry about her."

She leaps up and hugs me, her mound of belly bumping my hip. It is only as I put my arms around her that I feel the powerful trembling in her shoulders. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub her back, wishing I could tell her that everything is going to be okay. "Do your best, Sofia. That's all the world can ask."

Her arms tighten around my neck, like iron. Against my shoulder, I feel her hot tears soaking into my blouse. "Thank you."

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THE
TITLE
HERE

(Excerpt)

by
Barbara Samuel

One

A
blue jay feather lay on the sidewalk as Luke Bernali climbed from his truck. He almost stepped on it. A flash of iridescent blue caught his eye in time, and he bent over to pick it up.

Jessie.

The feel of her and the sense of warning were so strong, he had to resist the urge to look over his shoulder. Luke twirled the feather in his fingers, admiring the shimmer of color banded with sharp black stripes. Blue jays had been her favorite birds. Luke once made her some earrings from a pair of tail feathers.

He half smiled at the bittersweet memory. With the respect usually reserved for the feathers of eagles and hawks and other such birds of power, he nestled it between the folds of a paperback science fiction novel on the front seat of his truck. Jessie had cared little for traditional explanations of the qualities of feathers. Even if no one else in the world valued blue jays, she’d told him, she did. She liked their colors and their sass.

For just an instant, he felt another small wash of warning. He brushed it away. Silly. She’d been gone more than eight years.

With a quick glance at the dark storm clouds gathering in the November sky, he lifted a pile of Navajo weavings from the back of his truck and flung their solid weight over his shoulder. Mountains towered behind the bank of shops along the street, their deep blue color shadowed beneath the clouds obscuring their summits. Luke breathed deeply and smelled snow.

A young Indian girl danced alone on the sidewalk in front of the store he was about to enter. Against the wintry background of the approaching storm, she looked like a wood sprite or a flower swaying in the wind. Grinning at the unselfconscious beauty she projected, Luke paused to watch her.

Long black hair flowed like satin ribbons to her slim hips. Her limbs were lanky and long, promising willowy height one day. In the dusky rose of her cheeks, a dimple flashed, elusive and charming.

She was the spitting image of his sister, Marcia, at this age. Luke stepped forward, intending to ask the child about her clan.

She spun around and saw him watching her. Luke caught a swift impression of beaded earrings flashing in her great mass of hair before his attention was snared by her unusual, exquisite eyes.

Pure topaz.

The color alone was startling in her powerfully Navajo face, against her dusky skin and broad cheekbones. Together with their enormous size and calm expression, they were astonishing.

In that single split second, Luke’s world shifted abruptly. He blinked, took in a breath and looked at her again. She had stopped dancing to look at him with those beautiful eyes.

His jaw hardened. There was only one person in the world who had eyes just that color. This child, beautiful against the dark day, was not just a relative to his clan, as he had first suspected.

She was his daughter.

“Hi,” the girl said. “You must be the guy they’re waiting for.” She pointed with her lips toward the shop selling rugs and pottery and various other Southwestern artworks.

Luke took in another slow, deep breath, trying to keep his emotions soft, quiet, fluid. “Are they waiting?”

Her lids flickered over the topaz irises, then swept up again. Mischief flashed in her dimple. “Not too long. The man in there said you were probably on Indian time.”

Luke chuckled. “Just another kind of time.”

“Where’s Daniel?” she asked.

“He’s—” he cleared his throat “—he’s not feeling well. Is he a friend of yours?”

She nodded.

“I’m Luke. Daniel’s a friend of mine, too—or he used to be, a long time ago.”

“Luke?” The child measured him. Her gaze flickered toward the rugs he carried over his shoulder, then narrowed on his face. “Luke Bernali?”

If he’d had any doubt that one of the people he’d find waiting for him inside would be Jessie Callahan, it was now erased. “That’s right.”

She shook hair from her eyes. “There’s a picture of you in my mom’s office,” she said, as she glanced through the windows of the gallery and then back to Luke. “My mom’s inside.”

“Don’t go away,” he said and pulled open the door.

* * *

Jessie shifted impatiently. She wore no watch at which she could glance with pointed severity, so she folded her arms and sighed. Loudly.

The man on the telephone didn’t even look up. He’d been absorbed in his conversation since five minutes after her arrival, and it was no accident, she was sure. Geoffrey Wilkes wanted Jessie to know he was a powerful, important man, a force to be reckoned with.

At moments like this, she really wondered why she had given up cigarettes.

She shifted, strolling away from the man at the desk and into the showroom. Just beyond the window, her daughter, Giselle, danced to the imaginary tune playing in her mind, as she always did. Jessie smiled. What a kid.

Her smile faded, though, as her attention returned to the inner walls, where Navajo weavings were displayed to best advantage on adobe-colored walls. Tasteful arrangements of Hopi pottery reclined on pedestals scattered around the natural clay tile floors, and several understated collections of silver and native stone jewelry were exhibited in glass cases. Everything in the store catered to the hunger for original Southwest art that swept the country, and every last article was genuinely American Indian made. Guaranteed.

For a price, of course. The huge rug on the wall dangled a tiny handwritten price tag in five figures. Undoubtedly worth it—the wool had been sheared from a sheep the weaver owned, then combed and dyed by hand, then spun and woven over many, many days and weeks of work. The highest possible quality.

Too bad the weaver had received less than a tenth of the price for her efforts.

A familiar burn welled in Jessie’s chest as she glanced at the man behind the desk. This time, he caught her eye. His expression, to her surprise, showed not the worry or coldness she expected, but a very definite male appraisal. He lifted his eyebrows in suave acknowledgment of her catching him.

Annoyed, she shook her head. Where was Daniel? She could handle the confrontation on her own, of course, but it all went so much more smoothly with someone from the reservation to back her up—someone with fresh, lovely products to display.

Wilkes ended his phone conversation and glided toward Jessie. “I’m sorry, Ms. Callahan, but you must know how temperamental some artists are.”

Dryly, Jessie inclined her head. “One thing after another.”

The glass door of the showroom whispered open.

Jessie murmured a prayer of thanks and turned toward the door. The showroom was dim in the cloudy afternoon, and all Jessie could make out was that the man in the doorway was not Daniel. Daniel wore his hair in a long braid, and he was not as tall as this shadowed man. As he shifted the rugs on his shoulders, Jessie felt a jolt over the way he moved his head, just so, as if—

She frowned, waiting for the man to come forward where she could see him clearly. He paused a moment, then moved toward them with a lazy, loose-limbed grace. His hair caught and reflected all the light in the room. Her knees shivered dangerously. Oh, please, she muttered to the universe at large. Not this. Not now.

But her plea went unanswered. In a softly accented voice, the man spoke. “Jessie,” he said. “I knew there was something familiar about that little girl out there.”

Only Jessie would have picked up the fury in the dulcet tones. And even after eight years, she was intimately familiar with that voice. Not deep, not rumbling, not loud. Indian men rarely had deep voices, and Luke was no exception. His was a voice rich with promises, a tenor of deceptive gentleness, musical with the accents of his first language.

Jessie clutched the fabric of her shawl tight in her fist. A roar of white noise filled her ears as Luke stepped into the light. For long moments, Jessie stared at the once-beloved face, unable to breathe or move or blink. When she felt a prickling blackness at the edge of her vision, she forced herself to breathe deeply.