Bone River (42 page)

“I don’t know. You seem a bit rattled.”

I made myself smile. “I’m cold is all.”

“Cold? You’re red as a beet.”

“Leave her alone.” Daniel’s voice now. Steady, unmoved. “It’s me you want to provoke anyway.”

“Really?” How icy Junius was, his face like a mask, his eyes blue stones. “Why would I want to provoke you?”

“Because you want me gone. Because you’re suspicious of me.”

“Why shouldn’t I be suspicious, given how
well
you’ve taken care of my wife?”

Daniel’s expression was unreadable. “I was only following your orders.”

“A bit too well, I’m guessing.”

Now anger flashed in Daniel’s eyes. “How little it takes to make you distrust her, when she’s been your faithful slave for twenty years—”

“That’s enough,” I said, sharply enough that they both looked taken aback. “This is ridiculous. People are watching.”

“The way they watched in Bruceport?” Junius asked.

“Daniel saved my life, Junius.”

“And just how did you thank him, sweetheart?”

My anger erupted. I grabbed Daniel’s whiskey and downed it in a gulp, smiling meanly at Junius’s shocked expression, and then I pushed back my chair hard enough that it screamed on the floor.

I was out of the hotel before I knew I was going, barely seeing the people on the planked sidewalk before me; when they were in my way I dodged them to slosh through the mud of the street. The whiskey churned in my stomach—I wished now I hadn’t drunk it. I’d meant just to show him I had a mind of my own, but it had been a mistake. I felt sick and unsteady. It wasn’t until I got to the salt meadow, to the swollen tide, that I felt better, that I began to feel myself again.

The parade ground fronted the bay, and I went to lean against an old cannon that had its place there and stared out. The cold sunlight peeked between a break in the clouds, quick and piercing, its light riffling on the water like little sparks before it disappeared again. One or two seagulls circled and flew away again, waiting for the shift in tides. The cold air felt good on my face, with its smell of smoke and tar and the stink of salt mud.

No one came after me, for which I was glad. I didn’t want to see Junius; the lie of who I was now felt heavy in my mouth. I didn’t want to deny his accusations, nor to admit them either, and I was angry at his mistrust at the same time I was guilty of his suspicions. I wanted desperately to see Daniel, but I was afraid of that too.

I couldn’t make sense of my thoughts or of my confusion, and I stood there until they chased themselves away and all I was doing was watching the tide recede and the gulls come back, the pelicans skimming the waves just beyond, looking for
the schools of fish that came with the change, feeling this place seep into me until I felt a part of the bay, until it seemed I might sit out here on this cannon forever, watching the play of light upon the water and the birds who came close because I was so still.

The weather began to turn, clouds coming in, darkness reflecting my mood, a wind rising that felt like the start of another storm. Then I heard them, Junius calling, “Leonie!” from some distance away. I glanced over my shoulder; they were down the street, walking in formation the way geese flew, Junius at the apex and Daniel and Lord Tom following behind on each side. I turned away again, letting my annoyance rise to cover my confusion, to cover the fact that I didn’t know what to say to Junius, to any of them.

Then they were behind me, and Junius’s hand was on my shoulder, and he was leaning close, kissing the top of my head, saying, “Done with your temper tantrum? Ready to go?” as if I were a child, and I was angry all over again, shrugging off his hand, jerking around to glare at him—and then at Daniel, who at least had the grace to look chastened. The only one I wasn’t angry with was Lord Tom, but he was the one who gave the look that chastened
me
, that brought my guilt to the fore so I was the one who had to look away. It was impossible to face the knowledge in his expression, that knowledge that I was to blame for this, that Junius and Daniel were only acting the way men acted when there was a woman at the center, and my actions had made that possible.

No one spoke much on the way back. I stared stonily ahead, refusing to look at any of them, not responding to Junius’s few attempts to speak with me, leaving them to talk among themselves in terse, clipped sentences—“tighten that sheet,” or “the mooring line’s dragging, Tom.” Daniel said almost nothing.

When we reached home, Junius said to me, “You and Lord Tom go on. I’m taking the boy with me.”

It surprised me, and frightened me as well. “Where to?” They were the first words I’d spoken to my husband since the hotel, and he set his jaw and shook his head.

“We won’t be late,” he said.

I glanced at Daniel, who did not seem the least surprised, and then back to Junius. “But June, it’s going to storm—”

“Go on to the house, Leonie,” he said. “We’ll be back tonight.”

I was suddenly very afraid. “Where are you going? Why do you need Daniel?”

“He’s going to help me with something. Go on now.”

Lord Tom took my arm. “Come home,
okustee,
” he said, pulling me gently with him.

“He’s your son, Junius,” I said—uncertain why I said it, what I thought.

Daniel said gently, “It’s all right, Lea. Go on.”

Some agreement between them, then, but still I felt the threat of it. I went with Lord Tom reluctantly. I watched Junius push the sloop back into the bay, and turned to Lord Tom as Junius and Daniel sailed off. “Where are they going?”

“He would not say,” he told me—and I wasn’t certain if it was a lie.

The house was cold when we went inside, and I tried to keep from thinking about the two of them, of where they were, of what Junius intended, of the fear I felt, and busied myself with the stove. But once I had it lit, I sat in a chair at the table, staring into space, not thinking to cook or do anything else. I picked up my father’s journal finally, turning to the place I’d left off, but my mind was restless, wandering, returning over and over again to Junius and Daniel as I read over lists and trade agreements, nothing until August 24, 1853, where was written only:

This could ruin everything.

I frowned at the page, reading it again—my father’s handwriting was sometimes hard to decipher, but this was very clear. I
glanced again at the date. I’d have been fourteen. Just after we’d come here, before my father had met Junius.

I scanned down the rest of the page. Nothing. A new collection. A few bowls, a Nez Perce necklace—which was odd. How would a Nez Perce necklace come here?—but then again, perhaps it wasn’t so odd. They were only on the other side of the mountains, and trade was brisk between them and the Upper Chinook. But I didn’t remember it, and I remembered most of the things listed in these pages—or at least I remembered the stories I’d told myself about them.

I looked further—no other mention of ruin. Nothing new. I turned the page. It was dated August 26, 1853. Two days later.

Thankfully, the experiment is unaffected. I have made everything right and there will be no repeat, which is the only thing that matters.

“Where no law is, there is no transgression.” God surely forgives a man for protecting himself against lesser creatures.

I frowned again at the page and turned it. There was nothing more. Nothing about the experiment or whatever threat there was to it, and I came to the end of the journal without discovering a single pertinent thing. But by then the night was full-on and it had begun to rain hard, the wind gusting against the windows. I heard voices in it, the presence of this place whispering, and I listened and let the journal fall to the table and waited, playing with the tooth hanging around my neck.

I was worried enough that I did not go to bed. I felt a dread I could not banish, and I stood at the window, looking down on the closed trunk of the mummy on the porch just outside, seeing nothing beyond that, only her and then the rain and wind-filled darkness past the halo of light cast by the oil lamp. So when I did see movement, they were already at the porch, coming up
the steps, both of them, and I felt a rush of pure relief—I had not realized how much I had expected only one of them to return.

The front door opened; Daniel came in—the quick flash of his gaze, heated, rushing through me so I was breathless—and Junius just behind. They were both filthy and wet, and Junius carried a very large burlap bag that clacked and jittered in a way I knew too well. Bones. He was carrying a sackful of bones.

My relief turned to dismay. “Junius, what have you done?”

He gave me an irritated glance. “No, ‘you’ve returned, my love,’ or ‘I was worried, it was so late?’ How nice to be accused the moment a man walks through his door. Don’t you feel the unfairness of it, boy?”

Daniel shrugged and winced. He said to me, “He made me with go with him to another cemetery.”

“A cemetery? But...what cemetery?”

“The only one around here,” Junius said grimly. He dumped the bag on the ground with little ceremony. “The
tenas memelose illahee
. The island. Where else?”

I was stunned and sick. “You didn’t. Junius, you didn’t take the bones from there.”

“We’ve got five bodies in here, give or take a skull or two.”

I glared at Daniel. “You let him do this?”

He pulled off his boots slowly, as if it were difficult. “I didn’t have much choice. He was testing me.”

Junius laughed. “The boy doesn’t lack for courage. He didn’t bat an eye when the shooting started.”

“Shooting?” My voice rose. “Who was shooting?”

“I don’t know. Never got a good look at him.” Junius looked at Daniel. “Did you?”

“It seemed too dangerous to investigate,” Daniel said.

There was something between them, some kind of collusion, an air of negligent risk, shared danger, something that left me out and bound them together, and though that’s what I had wanted and what I had hoped for, to see it now—Junius’s casual
bravado and Daniel’s nonchalance—was disconcerting and distressing. Neither man was who I knew him to be. Together they were something else, something I didn’t like at all.

“What happened tonight?” I asked coldly.

Junius put aside his boots and took off his coat. “Just what I told you. We went to the
tenas memelose illahee
. I didn’t think anyone would be there in the rain. I thought you would appreciate my effort to get to know my son.”

“Not a sincere effort,” Daniel put in. “I think he was hoping to get me killed.”

“I told you to run, didn’t I?” Junius asked. His mouth quirked; again I felt that vibration within him, the thrill of the chase, the thrill of danger escaped.

Daniel pulled off his coat and winced again. He looked wryly at his arm, where a streak of red colored his shirt. “I thought I felt something.”

I had crossed the room to him before I realized I was moving. I reached for his arm, and he pulled away with a small shake of his head. “It’s all right, Lea. Just a scratch. I’m not hurt.”

“Such motherly concern,” Junius said dryly.

I ignored them both. Tersely I said to Daniel, “Take off your shirt. I want to get a look at it.”

“It barely hurts.”

“Take off your shirt.”

“Best do as she says, boy,” Junius said. “If you die of infection, I’ll never be forgiven.”

I waited, tense, worried. Daniel gave a short nod and unbuttoned his shirt and then his long underwear, shrugging both off his shoulders, and I tried not to look at him; I tried not to think of how it had felt to touch him. I felt Junius watching, and I pretended to be what I was not and had never been.
Motherly
, he’d said.

I licked my suddenly dry lips and bent to look at Daniel’s arm. The bullet had only grazed, but it was more than a scratch,
and it was bleeding and dirty, a diagonal scrape across his arm just below his shoulder. I said, “You’d best sit down. I’ll need to clean it.”

He nodded and went to the settee, and I glanced at Junius, who was watching us with a curious expression, one that made me uncomfortable at the same time I didn’t understand it. I hurried to the kitchen for warm water and soap and the rags I kept just for this purpose.

I sat beside Daniel on the settee and tended to him, concentrating only on the wound, cleaning it—he flinched once, and I glanced up and met his gaze, which was carefully blank. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Just get it done. Please.”

“Most men would appreciate such tender ministrations,” Junius said. He was sitting on the organ bench. “What is it, boy? Is she not gentle enough for you?”

“It’s fine,” Daniel said.

“Put some affection into it, Leonie. Perhaps you could kiss it and make it better.”

Daniel jerked away. “That’s enough. It’s all right.”

I grabbed his arm back. “Let me finish tying the bandage, at least. Ignore him.”

“Yes, by all means, ignore me.” Junius said. “Pretend I don’t exist. You’ve already had some practice with that, I think.”

I had barely finished tying the knot when Daniel was on his feet, stepping away. He glared at his father. “I’ve had enough of your little word games and your ridiculous tests. What is it you want from me? What is it you’re accusing me of? Just say it and be done with it.”

I went cold. “Daniel—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Junius said, ignoring me. “And I don’t want anything either. Why would you think it? It sounds to me as if you have a guilty conscience. Shall I play the confessor for you?”

Daniel didn’t move. I felt him struggling for control, and I was frozen, waiting, afraid. I didn’t know what to say, how to stop anything. I knew he would tell Junius what only his promise to me had kept him from revealing the moment Junius returned.

But Daniel said nothing. His chest rose and fell hard, and then he said in a voice so clipped it sounded as if each word was a struggle, “I’m going to bed. It was an exhausting night.” He gave me a short nod, flicking his fingers at the bandage around his upper arm. “Thank you.” Then he went to the stairs, and up. I heard his bedroom door open, close, and I was sitting there with my husband, a bowl of soapy, lukewarm water on my lap, a wet rag striped with blood and dirt floating within it.