Bone River (30 page)

“Against the mummy, you said.”

“Against
you
,” I told him. And then, bitterly, “And you can see how well it works, can’t you?”

“Protection against
me
?” He looked a little stunned. “She told you that?”

I nodded.

He ran his hand through his hair distractedly. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“No one could blame you for wanting to meet your father.”

“It was too much a...temptation.” He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “All of it. As if it had been set there just for me. Everything I wanted. The mummy. My father. I thought I didn’t care. I’d been looking for him for so long I didn’t want to find him anymore. I wouldn’t even have read the paper that day, but there was a wind that blew it up against the dock, and I was picking up a feather that had caught in it and I saw his name.”

“You were picking up a feather,” I said slowly, remembering the heron on the riverbank, its yellow beak, its questioning eye.

He glanced up at me. “It was a pretty color. Blue-gray. I’d meant it for...”

“Eleanor,” I whispered.

He swallowed. “Your widow is right, Lea. You don’t know anything about me. And I can’t...This”—a gesture, me, him, the
two of us—“is not what either of us should want. I should have gone back with the schooner last night.”

His words filled me with dismay, though it had been what I wanted, too, what I had not been able to ask of him.

“It was all...too easy,” he went on. “I should have realized. I did realize. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

It was as if he were speaking in a kind of code. I could not quite grasp him. I frowned. “What do you mean? What was too easy?”

“Finding my father. The mummy too. It was just...It’s all right. I’ll find something else. Don’t worry about me.” And then, bitterly, “I always land on my feet.”

I found myself protesting, delaying. “At least wait until Junius returns.”

“I can’t stay that long.” He gave me a frank look. “You know it too. He’s only been gone a few days and already we...I couldn’t bear a week or more.”

I was quiet. I wanted to beg him not to go; I wanted him to leave that moment. I looked down at the blanket clutched in my hands, the green and red bands against the white. I fingered the soft wool. When I looked up again, Daniel was staring at me.

“I’m afraid to stay,” he said. “And I’m afraid to go. I’m afraid of what you’ll become if I leave you, Leonie.”

I tried to smile. “What I will become? What a strange thing to say. I’m already
become
, Daniel. Dear God, I’m nearly forty. I’m happy. I am. I’ve told you that.”

“You almost died last night. You almost died, and what then? What have you done that was your own? You’ve wasted your talents. Don’t keep wasting them.”

“You’re wrong about me, Daniel,” I said. “And I—”

Drowning.

I faltered. Daniel frowned. “What? What is it?”

I was suddenly cold. Freezing. The plunge into icy water, unable to catch my breath. I felt the lap of water at my bare feet,
and I shivered and drew them up closer beneath the blanket. “I’m so...cold.”

He was on his feet in a moment. “I’ll put more wood on.”

I put my hand out to stop him. My head was reeling. I began to shiver. “No, I...it’s—”

Fear.
I was falling beneath the waves, choking. A memory of last night. The water rising and rising, tangling my skirts, pulling on my coat, drawing me under, and yet...not me at all...

“What is it, Leonie?”

I struggled for breath. I struggled to see past the fear.
You must come. Come now.

I leaped to my feet, letting the blanket fall. “The mummy,” I said. “The water’s rising. The river—” I rushed to the door, grabbing my coat, still wet, and pulling it on over my chemise, shoving my bare feet into my sodden boots. My hat—no hat, it was lost to the Shoalwater.

He asked no questions, but put on his own boots. He was dragging on his coat as we went out the door, and then we both halted, stunned. The river
was
rising—it had already risen, the wind I thought I hadn’t heard whipping it to a frenzy. Not overflowing its banks yet, but it was a matter of half inches. Edna stood at the barn entrance, lowing and crying, udder full and bloated—I’d forgotten she even existed.

“Oh dear God.” I was off the porch, running toward the barn, slipping and sliding through a marsh puddling and swamp-like with the heavy rain. I heard Daniel sloshing beside me.

“The mummy first,” I gasped to him as we made it to Edna.

He nodded. I lurched through the door; the trunk was there against the wall, closed and locked, though not watertight. The dirt floor was wet already near the walls, a growing pool of water, the lap of the river beneath the trunk. Daniel took one side and I took the other, hefting it—thank God it was so light.

“Where to?”

“The porch.”

The barn was too close to the river, and it had flooded time and again, but the house was on a rise and safe, even if the river kept rising. But the salt marsh was more like a bog now, and the trunk, though light, was unwieldy, and we struggled. We got the trunk to the porch, and then I ran back to Edna, grabbing her halter, pulling her toward the house, where I tethered her to the porch.

I glanced toward the springhouse, which was at the bend, and saw it was half-submerged already, milk and cream spreading into the water, a murky light cloud. How easily the river took what it wanted. I couldn’t help but remember what Lord Tom had said the day I’d found her. How the spirits would find a way to take back their own. But the barn was still upright, and it had never fallen in a flood, and soon the rain would stop. It always had.

Edna lowed piteously. Daniel started. “Are we safe here?”

“I think so.”

He nodded. “Then I’ll milk her.”

He left me there. I watched the river for a moment, churning and murky with silt, a fast current, too fast and too high. But there was nothing to do about it. I had no way of stopping it.

I looked away, glancing over my shoulder at the trunk. The porch was already wet from the storm; not a safe place to keep her, so I grabbed the handle of one end of the trunk and pulled it to the door and then inside, hearing Lord Tom’s words as I did so, trying to banish my own discomfort. There were already skeletons in the house, how was this different?

I closed the door, kneeling beside the trunk. I took the key from my pocket, turning it in the lock, opening the lid, dreading to see if there was water in there with her, if she had been damaged in any way, relieved to see her there, still in one piece, though up hard against the side as if she’d been thrown there. Daniel and I had not been gentle getting the trunk out of the barn.

But the water had got in—the bottom was wet. She could not stay in it until I dried it out again. I reached in to lift her, pulling her out as if she were a small sleeping child, bending to lay her on the settee as if comfort mattered. I looked at her, her hair draping over the edge of the settee, her arms drawn up, lost in dreams.

Daniel came up beside me. As if he sensed my thoughts, he said, “She almost looks alive there. As if she’s only sleeping.”

“You’re the only one,” I said quietly.

“The only one
what
?”

“The only one who thinks of her as I do. The only one who doesn’t think of her as something to sell or hide away.”

He was quiet for long enough that I looked over my shoulder at him. He had turned to stare out the window.

“Do you think they would have made it to Astoria in this storm?” he asked. “You don’t suppose they drowned?”

“If it began to be a danger, they would have beached the canoe and taken shelter. Lord Tom grew up on these shores. He knows what to do.”

“How certain you sound.”

“I am certain. He and Junius have traveled in weather worse than this.”

“And he thinks nothing of leaving you here alone. With flooding rivers.”

“There was no fear of that when he left,” I said softly. “And he didn’t leave me alone. He left me with you.”

He turned to look at me. “What a fool he is.”

“He trusts me,” I said. “And Daniel...I’m not going to give him a reason not to.”

Daniel took a deep breath and nodded. He glanced out the window again. “The water’s rising quickly. Perhaps we should make for higher ground.”

“It won’t come this far.”

“Why not?”

“It never has before.” I could not say why I was so certain, exactly, except for the reason I had told him, that it had never happened before, as many times as the river had flooded. And the mummy was part of my certainty too, though I would not admit it even to myself, this sense I had that she would keep us safe, that she wanted me to find the answers and the river would not take her back until she was done, and she was not done.

He turned to look at me, and in that look was this morning, and I thought of the kitchen floor and the way he’d kissed me and the strength of my desire. I said, “Don’t look at me that way.”

“I can’t help it,” he said.

“You have to try,” I said. “For my sake, if not for your own. I’m married to your father.”

“Married? You’re not married to him, not really.”

“I made vows.”

“Not binding ones. He was already married.”

“They felt binding to me. They still do. I meant them, Daniel. I’ve been married to him in my head for twenty years. How can that be nothing? And...and you have your Eleanor.”

He sighed. “Yes. Eleanor. I used to dream about her, you know. Every night, I dreamed of touching her, of...ah, never mind.”

I felt the sting of jealousy, though I had no right. None at all. “I imagine it must be hard to be away from her for so long. You must miss her. And here...we’re so isolated...”

He skewered me with his gaze. “Now it’s you I’m dreaming of.”

I was shaken, warmed, aroused. “You love
her
, Daniel. It’s only that I’m here, and you’re lonely.”

“That’s not the reason,” he said quietly.

“You’re affianced. You’ve made a promise you have to keep. I think you should make yourself think of her. I think you should—”

“Would she want me to keep such a promise now, I wonder?”

“Of course she would. And you must anyway. This is...a passing thing. We won’t give in to it.”

“She was my mother’s choice for me,” he mused. “I was happy about it, but now I...I wonder if...if perhaps I only loved her because my mother demanded it.”

“Do the reasons matter? You
were
happy about it. And your mother knew you best. I’ve no doubt she wanted only your happiness.”

“My mother was trapped in her own misery. What she wanted for me was not happiness.”

That startled me. “How can you say that? She was your mother.”

“Because I knew her,” he said, his eyes fierce. “Because I listened to her hate him every day. Because I watched her up to her elbows in lye soap and scalding water, saying one moment that he would return and save us, and the next that I must find him and take vengeance for both of us. I know why he left her, Lea. I know because I loved her but every day I wanted to leave her too. And I feel her there, in my head, urging me always—” He bit off the word and turned away.

I stared at him, surprised by his words, feeling a sinking in my stomach for what his father and I had done to him, for the hatred that lingered in him still. “Urging you to do what?” I asked softly.

“To hurt him,” he said. “To give her peace.”

I felt sick. I remembered now, too late, that I wasn’t to trust him, that I
hadn’t
trusted him. “I...see. So...I’m to be your revenge?”

He looked at me. The fierceness in his eyes died. They were only blue now, and weary. “Lea...the very first time I watched you dance I wondered what it would be like to be your lover. I’ve never stopped wondering. I can’t sleep for wanting you. You’re not my revenge, and this isn’t an act. It would be better if it were.”

His words silenced me. I felt naked before him, unbearable heat rising, this wretched confusion, this bewitchment of
yearning. I didn’t know what to say. Daniel did not look away, but only watched me with a haunting stillness, as if I were a curiosity in a museum that he expected to animate at any moment—would I run? Would I stay?

“I’ve frightened you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to tell you any of that.”

“It’s all right,” I said, and my voice sounded high and breathless, not like mine. I swallowed, trying to right it. “Truly it is.”

He said nothing. His smile was small and self-deprecating, and I felt absurd and comical.

“I...I think I’ll make us something to eat. We haven’t even had coffee,” I said, needing desperately to escape him, to right myself.

He raised a brow as if he knew it and said, “By all means. Coffee fixes all ills.”

I fled to the kitchen.

D
ANIEL WENT TO
his room, and I busied myself with stupid tasks. I listened to the drenching rain and the roar of the river and was aware that I could be wrong about how far it would rise, that it might overtake the house and we would have to find a way to escape it, and yet I baked bread and made a meal as if the world depended upon how elaborate it was. An oyster pie and a dried berry buckle and squash made sweet with molasses. I set out pickles and fried up brined pork and put coffee on to boil, and each of these things settled me more firmly into who I was, until by the time I called up to him that it was ready, I felt myself again.