Key Of Valor (16 page)

Crystal said nothing. Zoe hadn't expected her to. She just picked up the cigarette and took a long drag.

“How's everybody?”

“Getting on.” Crystal shrugged a shoulder. “Junior's still working for the phone company, doing right well. He knocked up that woman he lives with.”

Zoe's cup clattered against the counter. “Junior's going to be a daddy?”

“Seems like he is. Says he's gonna marry her. I expect she'll make his life a misery.”

“Donna's all right, Mama. They've been together more than a year now. They're going to have a baby,” Zoe said softly, and smiled at the idea of her baby brother being a father. “Junior was always good with babies. He's got a gentle way with them.”

“Like a baby's just gonna make everything all peaches and cream. 'Least Joleen's not looking to start popping them out right off.”

Determined, Zoe kept the smile on her face. “Are she and Denny settling in all right?”

“They both got work and a roof over their heads, so they got nothing to complain about.”

“That's good. And Mazie?”

“Don't hear from her much now she's got that place of her own down in Cascade. Thinks she's pretty high and mighty since she went to business school and works in an office.”

What made you so sour? Zoe wondered. What turned you so hard? “You should be proud, Mama. Proud that all four of your children are making their way. You gave us the means to.”

“Don't see any of them coming around here thanking me for working my ass off more'n twenty-five years so they could have food in their bellies and clothes on their backs.”

“I'm here to thank you for it.”

Crystal let out a snort. “What do you want?”

“I don't want anything. Mama—”

“You couldn't get away from here fast enough. Nothing was ever good enough for Queen Zoe. Got yourself pregnant from that highfalutin Marshall boy thinking you'd buy your way into the good life. He shook you off right quick, didn't he, and what'd you do but take off hoping to land in another pot of gold.”

“Some of that's true,” Zoe said calmly, “and some of it isn't. I wanted to get away from here, I wanted something better. I'm not ashamed of that. But I never thought of my baby as a ticket to a better ride. I worked hard for you, Mama, and I worked hard for Simon and for myself. And I made something. I'm still making something.”

“That don't make you better. That don't make you special.”

“I think it does. I think it makes me better than the people who don't buckle down and take care of their own. That's what you did. You took care of your own, the best you could, and that makes you special. I know how hard it is to raise a child,” she continued while Crystal stared at her. “How hard, and how scary it is to raise that child, and worry about him and work to figure out how to pay the bills and just keep it all going with nobody to help.”

Another car started up, with a frantic backfire. “I only have Simon, and there were times I just didn't know what I was going to do next, times when I didn't know how I'd make it to the next morning, much less the next week. You did it with four of us. I'm sorry if I made you feel I didn't appreciate it. Maybe I didn't appreciate it enough when it was going on. I'd like to thank you for it now.”

Crystal stubbed out her cigarette, folded her arms across her chest. “You pregnant again?”

“No.” With a laugh, Zoe rubbed her hands over her face. “No, Mama.”

“You just stop in here, out of the blue, to say thanks?”

“I can't say I knew that's what I had in mind when I got up this morning, but yes. I just want to say thanks.”

“You always were a strange one. Well, you said it. Now I've got a customer coming in.”

Zoe let out a little sigh of defeat and set her coffee mug in the sink. “I'll see you Christmas, then.”

“Zoe,” Crystal said as she turned for the door. After a brief hesitation, Crystal stepped over, gave Zoe an awkward hug. “You always were a strange one,” she repeated, then walked back to the counter and began separating rods.

With tears pricking her eyes, Zoe stepped out, let the screen door slap shut behind her. “ 'Bye, Mama,” she mumbled, and walked back toward the woods.

She didn't know if she'd accomplished anything more than a kind of backtracking, but it felt right—just as the brief, self-conscious hug from her mother had felt right. She'd taken a step toward healing a personal wound, and finding the key.

She had to understand herself, didn't she? She had to understand why she'd made the choices she'd made, and where they had led her, before she would understand what choice she had to make to find the key.

Eager to move forward, she hurried down the path. She would drive to Morgantown, go by the rooms she'd rented, go by the salon and the store where she'd worked, the hospital where Simon was born. Maybe there was unfinished business there, too, something to resolve, something to see.

She'd lived there nearly six years, the first years of her son's life. But she hadn't forged any strong ties. Why was that? She'd been friendly with the people she'd worked with, had spent time with her neighbors and a couple of other young mothers.

She'd had relationships with two men while she'd lived there, men she liked. But it was all so transient.

Because, she realized, that had never been her place. It hadn't been a destination but a stopping-off point.

She hadn't known it then, but she'd been heading to the Valley. To Malory and Dana. To the Peak, to the key.

Had she been heading to Bradley, too, and was he to be as essential to her life as the rest?

Or was he just another crossroads, there to lead her from one point to the next?

Move forward, she told herself. Move forward and see.

She checked her watch, measuring the time it would take her to drive, to spend the time she needed in Morgantown, then get home again.

She should be able to manage it and still get back before Simon got home from school. But she should stop and call, just in case. She should let Dana and Malory know she wouldn't be in to work.

She would go in early the next day to make it up, and she could work that night on the slipcovers for the sofa, maybe swing by HomeMakers at some point the next day and pick up the shelving she wanted. If she could get that together, and the next shipment of her supplies came as scheduled, she could . . .

Her busy thoughts trailed off as she stopped and turned in a circle.

She'd detoured off the path, she realized, which served her right for letting her mind wander. The undergrowth was thicker here, and armed with thorns that would play hell with her pants and jacket if she wasn't careful.

She looked up to try to judge her direction by the sun, but the sky had gone to pewter, with a few angry clouds crawling across the dull plate of it.

She would just go back the way she'd come for a bit, she decided. It hardly mattered, as the woods were no wider than a football field, creating a wedge between the field and the trailer court.

Annoyed with herself, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and started back. The air had chilled while she walked, and the scent it carried was more of snow than rain. She walked quickly, in a hurry to be on her way as much as to keep warm.

The trees looked bigger, closer together than they should have, and the shadows much too long for so early in the day. There was no tapping woodpecker now, no rustling from squirrels running about their business. The woods had gone quiet as a tomb.

She stopped again, baffled that she should be so disoriented in a place where she'd run tame as a child. Things changed, of course, everything changed. But hadn't it struck her when she'd come into it how little this place had changed?

Her stomach dropped as she stared down at the long, deep shadows crossing her path.

How could there be shadows when there was no sun to cast them?

As the first flakes of snow fell, she heard the low, throaty growl from deeper in the trees.

Her first thought was bear. There were still bear in these hills. As a child she remembered seeing their tracks and their droppings. Once in a while they would wander into the court at night and bang around in the garbage if it hadn't been stored properly.

Even as her heart fluttered at the base of her throat, she ordered herself to be calm. A bear wasn't interested in her. She had no food, she posed no threat.

She simply had to get back to the court, or out to the field and her car.

She walked backward for a time, scanning the trees in the direction of the growl. And began to wade through a creeping fog that was edged with blue.

Turning on her heel, she walked quickly now through the thickly falling snow, and dug in her back pocket for her penknife.

As weapons went, it was pitiful, but she felt better with it in her hand.

She heard the growl again, closer, and on the other side. She quickened her pace to a jog and gripped her shoulder bag with her free hand. It had weight and a long strap. It could suit up as another weapon if necessary.

She set her teeth to keep them from chattering. Around her the snow fell so fast and hard, it filled in her footprints almost as soon as they formed.

Whatever stalked her matched her pace, turned as she turned. It had her scent, she knew. Just as she had its—strong and wild.

Briars seemed to spring up, straight out of the ground fog to block her path, with stems thick as her wrist, with thorns that glinted like razors.

“It isn't real. It's not real,” she chanted, but those thorns tore at clothes and flesh as she fought through them.

And now she smelled her own fear, and her own blood.

A vine whipped up like a snake to wrap around her ankle and send her face-first onto the ground.

Panting, she rolled onto her back. And saw it.

Perhaps it was a bear, but not one that had ever wandered these woods or foraged for food in the garbage.

It was black as the mouth of hell, with eyes of poisonous red. When it snarled, she saw teeth long and sharp as sabers. As she hacked desperately at the vine with her pocketknife, it rose on its hind legs and blocked out the world.

“You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch.” Tearing free of the vine, she sprang to her feet and began to run.

It would kill her. Tear her to pieces.

She sucked in the breath to scream as she darted left, and let one rip. She heard its answering call behind her, and it sounded like laughter.

Not real, not true, she thought frantically, but deadly all the same. It toyed with her, wanting her fear first, and then . . .

She was not going to die here. Not this way, not on the run. She was not going to leave her child without a mother to satisfy and amuse some hell-bent god.

She bent down, scooped up a fallen branch on the fly, then spinning around, she held the branch like a club and bared her own teeth.

“Come on, you bastard. Come on, then.”

She held her breath and reared back as it lunged.

The buck came out of nowhere, one high leap out of the air. The rack speared into the bear's side, gored it. The sound of rending flesh and the furious howl was horrible. Blood gushed, splattering red over white as it turned to swipe the buck with those vicious claws.

The buck made a sound that was almost human as his white flank bloomed with blood, but he charged again, rack to claw, pivoting to range his body in front of Zoe's like a shield.

Run!
She heard the command explode in her head, jerking her out of the shock of watching the battle. She shifted her grip on the branch and, using all her strength, swung hard.

She aimed for the face, and aimed true. The force of the contact had her arms vibrating, but she swung again.

“See how you like it,” she muttered mindlessly under her breath. “See how you like it.” And slammed wood against flesh and bone.

The bear screamed, stumbled back. As the wounded buck bunched, dipped its head for a killing charge, the bear vanished in a swirl of filthy mist.

Gasping, Zoe went down on her knees in the bloody snow. Her stomach clutched, had her retching uselessly. When the nausea and the wracking shudders eased, she lifted her head.

The white buck stood, knee-deep in the snow. The gouges on his side glistened with blood, but his eyes were steady and unblinking on hers.

“We've got to get out of here. It might come back.” She pushed to her feet and, swaying, dug into her shoulder bag. She came up with a pack of tissues. “You're hurt, you're bleeding. Let me help you.”

But he stepped back as she approached. Then he bent his forelegs, lowered his great head in what was unmistakably a bow.

And vanished, in a shimmer of light.

The snow was gone, and the path to the field was clear once again. She looked down where the blood had stained the ground, and saw a single yellow rose.

She bent to retrieve it, and let herself weep a little as she limped out of the trees.

 

“
THEY
'
RE
just scratches, but some of them are nasty.” Malory pressed her lips together hard as she swabbed the cuts on Zoe's flesh. “I'm glad you came straight here.”

“I thought . . . No, I didn't think.” She was feeling a little drunk, Zoe realized, a little light-headed and punchy now that she was back. “I just drove here, didn't even consider going home first. Jesus, I hardly know how I got here. It's all one big blur. I needed to see you and Dana, tell you about it, make sure you were both all right.”

“We weren't the ones off in the woods alone, fighting monsters.”

“Hmm.” Zoe tried to ignore the sting of antiseptic.

She'd driven back to the Valley in a fog that had kept
her numb. She hadn't started to shake until she'd walked through the doors of Indulgence.

She'd had to shower. She'd needed hot water, soap. Clean. The need for it had been so urgent that she'd asked her friends to come up to the bathroom with her so she could explain while she washed.