Bone River
Authors: Megan Chance
ALSO BY MEGAN CHANCE
City of Ash
Prima Donna
The Spiritualist
An Inconvenient Wife
Susannah Morrow
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Megan Chance
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Publishing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612184845
ISBN-10: 1612184847
For extraordinary friends
Lynn Beeman, Jo’Ell Catel, and Tammy McMullen
PROLOGUE
SHOALWATER BAY, WASHINGTON TERRITORY
SPRING 1855
I
T WAS A
sacred place, an ancient place. Here was the confluence of river and bay, of sky and forest, salt marsh and slough, the water stretching its fingers far into the land as if it meant always to reclaim it. Here was a presence that gave weight to the fog and the rain, that lingered in the swollen air, even in sunlight, especially in moonlight. A presence I felt, that I’d felt since my father and I had first come here three years ago, drawn by science, by possibility.
The Indians all said the land was haunted, but Papa built a house and put up a barn without regard for spirits or Indian superstition—almost in spite of those things, as if he meant to insist upon our rationality—and the river rewarded him, spilling its secrets onto the bank, relics from an old Chinook village, detritus from middens long buried or washed away in floods. An ethnological gold mine that kept my father here even as he hated it. He built the house on a rise and glared at the Querquelin River as if he could keep it within its banks by sheer force of
will. He saw only science here, and study, and he disdained that sacredness I felt, that sense that spirits hovered always. The land
was
haunted, I thought, but Papa only said, “You have too much imagination, Leonie,” and I knew he was right. It was unseemly in a scientist, a flaw I usually fought.
But today I felt those spirits waiting to claim him.
He coughed, and I was at his side in a moment, pulling the chair closer to his bed, reaching for the basin of cool water, dipping the cloth. I wrung it out, but before I could bring it to his fevered skin, he caught my hand to stop me with more strength than I’d expected.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked. “Can I bring you something?”
He shook his head. I let the rag drop back into the basin and curled my fingers around his, bringing them to my lips. His graying hair was sparse against his scalp, his sun-touched skin freckled with dark spots that only served to bring into contrast its ghastly hue. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and stubble upon his cheeks, and his lips were blue, as was the skin around his nostrils.
He beckoned weakly for me to come closer. I leaned down, a corkscrew of blonde hair loosening from my pins to bounce against his shoulder. I saw his eyes follow it. He had always loved my hair.
You have my mother’s hair
, he’d said to me once.
Funny, isn’t it, how things find their way down?
I blinked back my tears; he would not want to see them.
“Want...” His voice was hoarse, barely there.
“You mustn’t talk. Save your strength.”
A bare smile. “For...dying?”
“Please don’t say that.”
His fingers moved in my hand. “You...must...leave...”
“Leave? I won’t leave your side, Papa, not now.”
An impatient shake. “This...place.”
I sighed. I squeezed his fingers. “Papa, please...let’s not talk of this now.”
“When June...goes...”
My chest tightened. I had been trying not to think of that, of Junius leaving us, though I knew he would once Papa was gone. My father’s protégé was a restless man, always looking for something better, his gaze settled ahead as if the world around him didn’t exist. There was nothing to bind him to this place once Papa was gone. “When June goes, I’ll still have Lord Tom. He’ll stay with me. You know he will. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“No,” he said. “June...you marry.”
“Marry Junius?”
He coughed. It went deep; he hacked and shuddered, and I put my arm around his shoulders to keep him from choking on his own blood, grabbing a nearby handkerchief, trying not to see the clots, the darkness of the blood, the proof that his lungs were no longer whole enough to keep him here.
The attack went on long enough that I thought it must exhaust him. He closed his eyes and I leveled him gently back to the pillow. I wiped the blood from his lips and expected him to drift into unconsciousness, but he didn’t. His hand fell to his chest, searching for a talisman that was no longer there—a pendant he’d lost long ago, though the nervous habit of touching it had never left him.
“Marry...June.” Insistent this time, even through his weakness.
“You...you can’t mean it. He’s
old
, Papa. Why, he must be at least forty.”
“Good...man.”
“I know that.” And I did. But a husband...“I’m not ready. How can I be a wife? I have so much to do...”
“Marry...him.” He attempted a smile. “Keep you...safe.”
“He won’t want to, Papa. He has his own life—”
“He says yes.”
I stared at my father with surprise—and yes, a little resentment. “You asked him?”
Papa nodded. “Promise...me.”
He was
dying
. What right had I to question him? He’d never hesitated to do what was best for me. He’d been the only parent I’d ever known, becoming both mother and father from the moment my mother died birthing me. He had sacrificed everything for me. He had taught me everything I knew. And what else had I? When Papa was gone, I would be alone.
Alone.
I’d been fighting the thought for days. Now it rose to overwhelm me. What would I do without him? How would I survive?
And in the grip of that fear I said, “All right.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
Again, that faint smile. The obvious effort of it tore at my heart.
He closed his eyes.
I stayed there by the bed. He lingered another hour, and then I felt him go, a gasp, a sinking, there and then suddenly...not. I put my head on his chest, listening for breathing I knew already I wouldn’t hear, and the stillness crept into me, an emptiness I did not know how to fill. I broke into helpless, convulsing sobs, crying into his shirt, wishing for his arms around me, no matter how clumsy and inept the embrace. He had always been uncomfortable with such displays, but I would have given anything to feel once again his awkward, hesitant patting, to hear his
There, there, my dear
.
You know I hate to see you cry
.
I sat there for a long time, until I felt the warmth leave him, until the blue of twilight eased through the windows and my father’s body was covered in shadow, and then I went to his desk. On the shelf above were his leather-bound journals, on the desk were the relics we’d collected together, the ones that were his favorites: a bone knife from the Dalles, a Chinook horn spoon, a ceremonial rattle, a carved wooden bowl that now held spare buttons and a needle, and a small leather bag of tobacco, so dried out and old now it was mostly dust. I smiled at it, because it had
been more than a year since he’d had to give up the pipe he’d loved, and yet that bag was still here, and I knew he’d been unable to throw it away, although he had to have known he would never smoke it. The contradiction of him, so sentimental even as ruled as he was by logic and reason...Oh, I would miss him so.
I blinked, wiping tears away with the back of my hand, and glanced out the window at the deepening blue-gray sky, the fog rising now from the bay, ghostly and beautiful, and two men walking through it, crossing the salt marsh between the house and the mudflats. Lord Tom, the Shoalwater Indian who was like a second father to me, and Junius became more corporeal with every step, solid men finished with ghostly legs, Lord Tom looking for all the world like one of his Chinook ancestors, his long black hair bouncing over his shoulders, a net dangling from his hand, Junius capable and good-natured, laughing at something Lord Tom had said. I saw what my father loved about Junius. His strength was hard and sharp-edged; from here I could not see the gray threading through his brown hair. With a little startle I remembered the promise I’d made my father.
I heard them on the porch, the low murmurs of their talk, their stomping feet, and then the door opening and closing, the soft call, “Leonie?”—careful not to wake him who was already gone. I heard the steps on the stairs.
The two of them came inside, muddy-booted, wet from the knees, bringing cold and the smell of the bay and the marsh into a room that I realized suddenly was already cold. Had I fired up the stove today? I could not remember.
Junius said, “Leonie, why are you standing in the dark?”
Lord Tom said softly, “Teddy
yaka memalose.
”