This was a conversation of significant pauses. I had to think over his words for a minute to be sure I understood what Bill was telling me. “So the cluviel dor was a test of Eric’s sincerity, in Niall’s eyes. And the cluviel dor was a test of my love for Eric, in Eric’s eyes,” I said. “And we both failed the test.”
Bill nodded, one sharp jerk of his head.
“He would rather I had let Sam die.”
Bill let me see how startled he was. “Of course,” he said simply.
“How could he think that?” I muttered, which was a stupidly obvious (and obviously stupid) question to ask myself. A much more pertinent question was,
How could two people in love so misjudge each other?
“How could Eric think that? Don’t ask
me
. It’s not my emotional reaction that matters,” Bill said.
“I’d be glad to ask Eric, if he’d just sit down and talk to me,” I said. “But he turned me away from Fangtasia two nights ago.”
Bill had known that, I could tell. “Has he gotten in touch with you since that happened?”
“Oh, yes indeedy. He got Pam to text me to say he’d see me later.”
Bill did a great impression of a blank wall.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. “I can’t bear this halfway state. I need resolution.”
Bill sat forward on the couch, his dark brows raised. “Ask yourself this,” he said. “Would you have used the cluviel dor if it had been—say, Terry or Calvin—who was mortally wounded?”
I was stunned by the question. I groped for words.
After a moment, Bill got up to leave. “I didn’t think so,” he said. I scrambled to my feet to follow him to the door.
“It’s not that I think Terry’s life, anyone’s life, isn’t worth a sacrifice,” I said. “It’s that it might not ever have occurred to me.”
“And I’m not saying you’re a bad woman for that hesitation, Sookie,” Bill told me, reading my face accurately. He put a cold hand to my cheek. “You’re one of the best women I’ve ever met. However, sometimes you don’t know yourself very well.”
After he had drifted back into the woods and I had locked the house up tight, I sat in front of my computer. I had planned to check my e-mail, but instead I found myself trying to unravel Bill’s meaning. I couldn’t concentrate. Finally, without clicking on the e-mail icon, I gave up and went to bed.
I guess it’s not too surprising that I didn’t sleep well. But I was up and out of bed by eight, utterly tired of hiding out in my house. I showered and put on my makeup and my summer work uniform—Merlotte’s T-shirt, black shorts, and New Balance walking shoes—and got in the car to drive to work. I felt much better now that I was following my normal routine. I was also very nervous as I parked on the graveled area behind the bar.
I didn’t want to stand staring at Sam’s trailer, centered in its little yard at right angles to the bar. Sam might have been standing at a window, looking out. I averted my eyes and hurried in the employees’ entrance. Though I had my keys in my hand, I didn’t need them. Someone had gotten there before me. I went directly to my locker and opened it, wondering if I’d see Sam behind the bar, how he’d be, what he’d say. I stowed my purse and put on one of the aprons hanging from a hook. I was early. If Sam wanted to talk to me, there was time.
But when I walked up front, the person behind the bar was Kennedy Keyes. I felt distinctly flattened. Not that there was anything wrong with Kennedy; I’d always liked her. Today she was as bright and shiny as a new penny. Her rich brown hair was glossy and hanging in loose curls across her shoulders, she was made up with great care, and her sleeveless pink tank fit very snugly, tucked into her linen slacks. (She had always insisted bartenders shouldn’t have to wear a uniform.)
“Looking good, Kennedy,” I said, and she spun around, her phone to her ear.
“I was talking to my honey. I didn’t hear you come in,” she said chidingly. “What have you been up to? You over ‘the flu’? I started to bring you a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle.” Kennedy couldn’t cook and was proud of it, which would have shocked my grandmother, I can tell you. And she hadn’t believed I was sick for a moment.
“I felt awful. But I’m a lot better now.” In fact, I was. I felt surprisingly glad to be back in Merlotte’s. I’d worked here a lot longer than I’d held any other job. And now I was Sam’s partner. The bar felt like home to me. I felt as though I’d been away a month. Everything looked just the same. Terry Bellefleur had come in real early to get everything sparkling clean, as usual. I began to take the chairs off the tables where he’d put them while he mopped. Moving swiftly, with the efficiency of long practice, I got the tables squared away and began rolling silverware into napkins.
After a few minutes, I heard the employee entrance opening. I knew the cook had arrived because I heard him singing. Antoine had worked at Merlotte’s for months now, longer than many other short-order cooks had lasted. When things were slow (or simply when the spirit moved him), he sang. Since he had a wonderful deep voice, no one minded, least of all me. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket if it were raining, so I thoroughly enjoyed his serenades.
“Hey, Antoine,” I called.
“Sookie!” he said, appearing in the service hatch. “Glad you back. You feeling better?”
“Right as rain. How are your supplies holding out? Anything we need to talk about?”
“If Sam don’t come back to work soon, we got to make a trip to Shreveport to the warehouse,” Antoine said. “I’ve got a list started. Sam still sick?”
I borrowed a leaf from Bill’s book. I shrugged. “We’ve both had a bug,” I said. “Everything’ll be back to normal in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“That’ll be good.” He smiled and turned to get his kitchen ready. “Oh, a friend of yours come by yesterday.”
“Yeah, I forgot,” Kennedy said. “She used to be a waitress here?”
There were so many ex-waitresses that I’d take half an hour if I started trying to guess her name. I wasn’t interested enough to do that, at least not right then, when there was work to be done.
Keeping the bar staffed was a constant issue. My brother’s best bud
, Hoyt Fortenberry, was soon to marry a longtime Merlotte’s barmaid, Holly Cleary. Now that the wedding was close, Holly had cut back on her work hours. The week before, we’d hired tiny, bone-thin Andrea Norr. She liked to be called “An” (pronounced
Ahn
). An was curiously prim but attracted men like soda cans attract wasps. Though her skirts were longer and her T-shirts were looser and her boobs were smaller than all the other barmaids, men’s eyes followed the new hire every step she took. An seemed to take it for granted; we’d have known it if she hadn’t, because of all the things she liked (and by now we knew most of them), most of all she liked to talk.
The minute An came in the back door, I could hear her, and I found myself smiling. I hardly knew the woman, but she was a hoot.
“Sookie, I seen your car outside, so I know you’re back at work, and I’m real glad you came in,” she called from somewhere back by the lockers. “I don’t know what bug you had, but I hope you’re over it, ’cause I sure don’t want to get sick. If I can’t work, I don’t get paid.” Her voice was getting progressively closer, and then she was standing face-to-face with me, her apron strapped on, looking spic-and-span in a Merlotte’s T-shirt and calf-length yoga tights. An had told me during her job interview that she never wore shorts outside the home because her father was a preacher, that her mother was the best cook in An’s hometown, and that she herself had not been allowed to cut her hair until she’d left home at eighteen.
“Hi, An,” I said. “How’s it been going?”
“It’s been going great, though I missed seeing you and I hope you’re all better.”
“I do feel much better. I have to run over and talk to Sam for a minute. I noticed that the salt and pepper shakers need topping up. You mind?”
“Let me get right on that! Just show me where the salt and pepper are stored. I’ll fill those up in a jiffy.” I’d say this for An: She was a hard worker.
Everyone was doing what they should be doing. I had to, myself. I took a deep breath. Before I could chicken out, I marched out the back door of the bar and over to Sam’s trailer, following the path of stepping-stones. For the first time, I registered that a strange car was parked beside Sam’s pickup, a little economy car with dents and dust as its main motif. It had Texas plates.
I wasn’t completely surprised to find a dog curled up on the welcome mat on the little porch Sam had added outside the front door of his trailer. My approach was no surprise to the dog, either. It was on its feet at the sound of my footsteps, watching intently as I passed through the gate and crossed the green grass on the neat stepping-stones.
I stopped a respectful distance from the steps and eyed the dog. Sam could transform himself into almost anything warm-blooded, so it was possible this dog was Sam . . . but I didn’t think so. He usually picked a collie form. This sleek Labrador just didn’t have the right feel.
“Bernie?” I asked.
The Lab gave a neutral sort of bark, and her tail started wagging.
“Are you going to let me knock on the door?” I asked.
She seemed to think about it for a minute. Then she trotted down the steps and out onto the grass. She watched me go up to the door.
I turned away from her (with a little misgiving) and knocked. After a long, long minute, Sam opened it.
He looked haggard.
“Are you okay?” I blurted. It was clear he was not.
Without speaking, he backed up to let me in. He was wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and his oldest blue jeans, worn so thin in spots that there were little splits in the fabric. The interior of the trailer was surprisingly gloomy. Sam had tried hard, but he couldn’t make the trailer completely dark—not on a bright, hot day like today. Between the drawn curtains, the light came in in sharp shards, like brilliant glass slivers.
“Sookie,” Sam said, sounding somehow remote. That scared me more than anything else. I eyed him. Though it was hard to see the details, I could tell Sam was unshaven, and though he was naturally wiry, he looked as though he’d lost ten pounds. He’d showered, at least; maybe Bernie had insisted. When I’d evaluated Sam, I looked around at the living room, as best I could. The sharp contrasts of light hurt my eyes.
“Can I open the curtains?” I asked.
“No,” he said, his voice sharp. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Well, okay, one.”
Moving slowly and carefully, I pulled back a curtain over the window mostly shaded by an oak tree. Even so, as light brightened the trailer, Sam winced.
“Why does the sunshine bother you?” I asked, trying to sound absolutely calm about it.
“Because I died, Sookie. I died and came back.” He didn’t sound bitter, but he sure didn’t sound happy.
Okayyyyy. Well, since I hadn’t heard a word from Sam, I’d figured he wasn’t dancing in the streets over his experience, but I guess I’d thought he’d at least be, I dunno,
pleased
about it. That he would say something along the lines of,
Gosh, you wonderful woman, now that I’ve had time to rest and reflect, I thank you for altering your life forever by bringing back mine. What an amazing gift.
That’s what I’d figured.
So. Wrong again.
Sam’s mom scratched at the door. Since Sam was still standing in
his “tense and tortured” pose, I obliged. Bernie walked in on four paws, nosed at Sam’s leg for a second, and went into the little corridor leading to the bedrooms.
“Sam,” I said, to get his attention. He looked at me, but I wasn’t getting a lot of expression from him. “You got a bar to run,” I said. “You got people depending on you. After all the stuff you’ve been through, don’t flake out now.”
His eyes seemed to focus on me. “Sookie,” he said, “you don’t understand. I
died.
”
“You
don’t understand,” I retorted with some heat. “I was there. I had my hand on you when your heart quit beating. And I brought you back. Maybe that’s what you should be thinking about, huh? The ‘brought back’ part?”
If he said “I died” one more time, I was going to slap him silly.
Bernie, in woman form, entered into the living room dressed in khaki shorts and a blouse. Sam and I were too locked in our conversation to speak to her, though I sort of waved my hand in her direction.
“You had a cluviel dor,” Sam said. “You really had one.”
“I did,” I said. “Now it’s only a pretty thing that looks like a compact.”
“Why did you have it with you? Did you expect what was going to happen?”
I shifted uneasily. “Sam, who could expect that? I just figured there wasn’t any point in having something like that if you didn’t have it on you to use. Maybe Gran wouldn’t have died if she’d kept it on her.”
“Like a fairy Life Alert,” Sam said.
“Yeah. Like that.”
“But you must have had a plan for it, a use. I mean, it was a gift . . . to keep. Maybe to save your own life.”
I looked away, getting more and more uncomfortable. I’d come over here to find out what was happening in Sam’s head, not to raise questions (or answer questions) that might lay a burden on him he shouldn’t have to assume.
“It
was
a gift, which means I could use it as I chose,” I said, trying to sound brisk and matter-of-fact. “And I chose to start your heart again.”
Sam sat down in his dilapidated armchair, the only item in the trailer that looked as though it needed to be kicked to the curb.
Bernie said, “Have a seat, Sookie.” She came farther into the room and stared down at her oldest son, the only family member who had received the shifter gene. “I see you looking at the old chair,” she said conversationally, when Sam didn’t speak. “That was my husband’s. It was the only thing of his I gave away when he died, because it just reminded me of him too much. Maybe I should have kept it, and maybe if I’d looked at it every day, I wouldn’t have married Don.”
Maybe Bernie’s problem wasn’t so much marrying Don as not telling him before the wedding that she could turn into an animal. But Don shouldn’t have shot her when he found out, either. You don’t just haul off and shoot the one you love.