Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour (128 page)

“Ever been married?”

“No.”

“Ever get close?”

She glanced down for a second. It was all he needed to know. Someone had broken her heart. He’d bet that it was fairly recent. “Yes.”

“How about you? Have you ever been married?”

“Once. A long time ago.”

That seemed to surprise her. “Kids?”

“No.”

She looked at him sharply, as if she’d heard something in his voice. Their gazes held. Finally, she smiled. “So I guess you can have pie with anyone you’d like.”

“I can.”

“You’ve probably had pie with every woman in town.”

“You give me too much credit. Married women make their own pie.”

“And how about my sister?”

His smile faded. Suddenly the flirting didn’t seem so harmless. “What about her?”

“Have you … had pie with her?”

“A gentleman wouldn’t really answer that, now would he?”

“So you’re a gentleman.”

“Of course.” He was becoming uncomfortable with the course of their conversation. “How is your face feeling? That bruise is getting uglier.”

“We shrinks get popped now and then. Hazards of the trade.”

“You can never quite know what a person will do, can you?”

Her gaze met his. “Knowing is my job. Although by now the whole world knows I missed something important.”

There was nothing he could say, no real comfort he could give, so he stayed quiet.

“No platitudes, Dr. Cerrasin? No ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can bear’ speech?”

“Call me Max. Please.” He looked at her. “And sometimes God breaks your fucking back.”

It was a long moment before she said, “How did He break you, Max?”

He slid out of the booth and stood beside her. “As much as I’d love to keep chatting, I have to be at work at seven. So …”

Julia put the dishes on the tray and slid from the booth.

Max took the tray to the kitchen and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then they walked side by side through the quiet, empty hallways and out to the parking lot.

“I’m driving the red truck,” she said, digging through her purse for the keys.

Max opened the door for her.

She looked up at him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She paused, then said, “No more pie for me. Just so you know. Okay?”

He frowned. “But—”

“Thanks again.” She got in the truck, slammed the door shut, and drove away.

EIGHT

Julia refused to let herself think about Max. She had enough on her mind right now without obsessing over some small-town hunk. So what if he intrigued her? Max was definitely a player, and she had no interest in games or the kind of man who played them. That was a lesson Philip had taught her.

She turned onto Olympic Drive. This was the oldest part of town, built back in the thirties for the families of mill workers.

Driving through here was like going back in time. She came to a stop at the T in the road, and there it was, caught in her headlights.

The lumber store. In this middle-of-night hour she couldn’t read the orange banner that hung in the window. Still, she knew the words by heart:
This community is supported by timber.
Those same banners had been strung throughout town since the spotted owl days.

This store was the heart of the West End. In the summer it opened as early as three o’clock in the morning. And at that, men like her father were already there and waiting impatiently to get started on their day.

She eased her foot off the accelerator and coasted through a haze of fog. So often she’d sat in her dad’s pickup outside this store, waiting for him.

He’d been a cutter, her dad. A cutter was to an ordinary logger what a thoracic surgeon was to a general practitioner. The cream of the crop. He’d gone into the woods early, long before his buddies; alone. Always alone. His friends—other cutters—died so often it stopped being a surprise. But he’d loved strapping spurs onto his ankles, grabbing a rope, and scaling a two-hundred-foot-tall tree. Of course, it was an adventurer’s job. Near death every day and the money to match the risk.

They’d all known it was only a matter of time before it killed him.

She hit the gas too hard. The old truck lurched forward, bucked, and died. Julia started it up again, found first gear, and headed out to the old highway.

No wonder she’d stayed at the hospital so late. She’d told herself it was about the girl, about doing a great job, but that was only part of it. She’d been putting off going back to the house where there were too many memories.

She parked the truck and went inside. The house was full of shapes and shadows, all of which were familiar. Ellie had left the stairwell light on for her; it was the same thing Mom had always done, and the sight of it—that soft, golden light spilling down the worn oak stairs—filled her heart with longing. Her mother had always waited up for her. Never in this house had she gone to bed without a nighttime kiss. No matter how badly Mom and Dad were fighting, she always got her kiss from Mom. Julia was thirteen years old the first time she’d seen through the veil; at least that was how she now thought of it. In one day she’d gone from believing her family was happy to knowing the truth. Her mother had come in that night with bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. Julia had only asked a few questions before Mom started to talk.

It’s your father,
she’d whispered.
I shouldn’t tell you, but …

Those next few words were like well-placed charges. They blew Julia’s family—and her world—apart. The worst part was, Mom never told Ellie the same things.

Julia went up the stairs. In the tiny second-floor bathroom that attached to her girlhood bedroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and slipped into the silk pajamas she’d brought with her from Beverly Hills, then went into her old room.

There was a note on her pillow. In Ellie’s bold handwriting, it read:
Meeting at Congregational church at six a.m. to discuss girl’s placement. Be ready to leave at 5:45.

Good. Her sister was working on it.

Julia stayed up another hour, filling out all the paperwork required to be appointed temporary foster parent for the child, then she climbed into bed and clicked off the light. She was asleep almost instantly.

At four o’clock she woke with a start.

For a second she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the ballerina music box on her white desk and it all came back to her. She remembered her dream, too. She’d been a girl again—
that
girl. The scarecrow-thin, socially awkward daughter of Big Tom Cates.

She threw the covers off her and stumbled out of bed. Within minutes she was in her jogging clothes and outside, running down the old highway, past the entrance to the national park.

By five-fifteen she was back home, breathing hard, feeling like her grown-up self again.

Pale gray predawn light, as watery as everything else in this rain-forest climate, shone in flashlight beams through the stand of hemlock trees that grew along the river.

She didn’t decide to move, didn’t want to, but before she knew it, she was walking across the yard toward her father’s favorite fishing hole.

Move back, Little Bit. Outta my way. I can hardly concentrate on my fishin’ with you skulkin’ beside me.

No wonder she had moved away from here and stayed away. The memories were everywhere; like the trees, they seemed to draw nutrients from the land and the rain.

She turned and went back into the house.

Julia and Ellie were the first to arrive. They pulled up into a spot near the church’s front door and got out of the car.

Ellie started to say something, but the words were lost in the crunching sound of wheels on gravel. A snake of cars rolled into the parking lot, lining up side by side. Earl and Myra were the first people out of their car. Earl was in full dress uniform, but his wife had on fuzzy pink sweats. Her hair was up in rollers and covered by a bright scarf.

Ellie took Julia by the arm and hurried her into the church. The door clanged shut behind them.

Julia couldn’t help feeling a twinge of nerves. It pissed her off, that weakness. None of this old crap should bother her now. It wouldn’t have if she’d come home in triumph instead of shame. “I don’t care what they think anymore. I really don’t. So why—”

“I never understood why you let it all get to you. Who cares if they don’t like you?”

“Girls like you can’t understand,” Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn’t know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.

The doors banged open, and people rushed into the church, took their places in the rows of oak pews. Their voices combined, rose, sounded like a Cuisinart on high, crushing ice. Max was one of the last to arrive. He took a seat in the back.

Ellie went to the pulpit. She waited until six-ten, then motioned for Peanut to shut and lock the doors. It took her another five minutes to quiet the crowd.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said finally. “I know how early it is and I appreciate your cooperation.”

“What’s this all about, Ellie?” someone asked from the back of the room. “Our shift starts in forty minutes.”

“Shut up, Doug,” yelled someone else. “Let ’er talk.”

“You shut up, Al. It’s about the Flying Wolf Girl, right, Ellie?”

Ellie held up her hands for silence. They quieted. “It is about the girl who arrived recently.”

The crowd erupted again, hurling questions at the podium.

“Can she really fly?”

“Where is she?”

“Where’s the wolf?”

Julia was awed by her sister’s patience. There was no eye rolling, no sneering, no fist pounding. She simply said, “The wolf is with Floyd at the Olympic Game Farm. He’s being well cared for.”

“I heard the girl eats with her feet,” someone called out.

“And only raw meat.”

Ellie took a deep breath. It was the first sign that she was losing her cool. “Look. We don’t have long to get ourselves together. The point is this: Do we want to protect this child?”

A resounding
yes
rose from the crowd.

“Good.” She turned to Peanut. “Hand out the contracts.” To the crowd, she said, “I’m going to read off your names. Please answer so I know you’re here.”

Ellie read off the names in alphabetical order, starting with Herb Adams. One by one people responded until she came to Mort Elzik.

There was no answer.

“He ain’t here,” Earl yelled.

“Okay,” Ellie said. “We don’t mention this meeting or the girl to Mort, or to anyone else who isn’t at this meeting. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” they responded in unison.

“But what is it we ain’t sayin’, Ellie?”

“Yeah. Speed it up. I got a charter in thirty minutes.”

“And the mill’s gonna open.”

Ellie held up her hands for silence. “Fair enough. As you all know by now, my sister, Julia, has come home to help. What she needs is peace and quiet, and a place to work away from the media.”

Daisy Grimm stood up. She wore denim overalls that were covered with appliqud daisies. Her drugstore makeup was so bright against her powdered cheeks that it probably glowed in the dark. “Can your sister really help this poor girl? I mean … after what happened in California, I just wonder …”

The crowd went still, waiting.

“Sit down, Daisy,” Ellie said sharply. “Now, here’s the plan. It’s a version of Hide-the-Walnut. You—We—are all going to talk to the media. When asked, we’re going to secretly and
off-the-record
tell where the girl is staying. You can tell them anyplace you want—except my house. That’s where she’ll be. They won’t trespass on the police chief’s land, and if they do, Jake and Elwood will give us warning.”

“We’re
lying
to the press?” Violet said in awe.

“We are. Hopefully we can send them all on wild-goose chases until we know the girl’s name. And one other thing: no one mentions Julia. No one.”

“Lying,” Marigold said, trembling like an excited puppy and clapping her hands together. “This will be fun.”

“Just remember,” Ellie said, “until you hear differently from me, we’re lying to Mort, too. No one outside this building gets to know the truth.”

Violet burst out laughing. “You can count on us, Ellie. Those reporters will be looking for the girl as far north as the Yukon. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I never
heard
of Dr. Julia Cates. I believe the poor child is seeing Dr. Welby.”

NINE

While Ellie was parking the car, Julia went into the hospital. She was almost at the old day care center when she turned the corner and ran into a man.

He stumbled back from her, sputtering, “Watch where you’re going, I’m—”

Julia bent down for the black canvas bag he’d dropped. “I’m sorry. I’m in a bit of a hurry. Are you okay?”

He snatched the bag from her and then looked up.

She frowned. He looked vaguely familiar, with his rust-colored crew cut and Coke-bottle glasses. “Do I know you?”

“No. Sorry,” he mumbled, glancing away quickly. Without another word, he took off running down the hallway.

She sighed. People had been doing that a lot lately. No one quite knew how to treat her since the media frenzy and the Silverwood tragedy.

She picked up her briefcase and walked down the hallway to the day care center.

A few minutes later Peanut, Max, and Ellie arrived.

They stood at the window outside the day care center, looking in. The room was full of shadows. Pockets of light grew like mushrooms above the nightlights in the various outlets, and a pale golden haze fanned down from the only ceiling fixture they’d left on.

The girl lay on the floor, curled up, with her arms wrapped around her shins. The mattress, empty save for the pile of unused blankets, was beside her. From this distance, and without benefit of good lighting, she appeared to be asleep.

“She knows we’re watching her,” Peanut said.

Ellie said, “She looks asleep to me.”

“She’s too still,” Julia said. “Peanut’s right.”

Peanut made a tsking sound. “Poor thing. How do we move her without terrifying her?”

“We put a sedative in her apple juice,” Max said. He turned to Julia. “Can you get her to drink it?”

“I think so.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s try that. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go to Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B?” Peanut asked, her eyes wide.

“A shot.”

Thirty minutes later Julia went into the day care center, flipping on the lights as she went. Although the “team” had moved away from the window, she knew they were standing in the shadows, watching her through the glass.

The girl didn’t move a finger or bat an eyelash. She simply lay there, coiled up like a snail, holding her legs close to her chest.

“I know you’re awake,” Julia said conversationally. She set down her tray on the table. On it was a plate filled with scrambled eggs and toast. A green plastic sippee cup held apple juice.

She sat down on the child-sized chair and ate a bite of toast. “Um-um. This is good, but it makes me thirsty.” She pretended to take a sip.

Nothing. No reaction.

Julia sat there for almost thirty minutes, pretending to eat and drink, talking out loud to the child who didn’t respond. Every second bothered her. They needed to move this girl
fast,
before the press came looking for her here.

Finally, she pushed back from the table. The chair legs screeched against the linoleum floor.

Before Julia knew what had happened, all hell broke loose. The girl screamed; she jumped to her feet and started clawing at her face and blowing her nose.

“It’s okay,” Julia said evenly. “You’re upset. Scared. You know that word? You’re scared, that’s all. It was a loud, ugly noise and it scared you. That’s all. You’re fine. See how quiet everything is?” Julia moved toward the girl, who was standing in the corner, thumping her forehead against the wall.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Julia winced at each blow. “You’re upset. Scared. That’s okay. The noise scared me, too.” Very slowly, Julia reached out, touched the child’s rail-thin shoulder. “Shhh,” she said.

The girl went totally still. Julia could feel the tension in the girl’s shoulder and back, the tightening up. “You are okay now. Okay. No hurt. No hurt.” She touched the girl’s other shoulder and gently turned her around.

The girl stared up at her through wary blue-green eyes. A purplish bruise was already forming on her forehead and the scratches on her cheeks were bleeding. At this proximity the smell of urine was almost overwhelming.

“No hurt,” Julia said again, expecting the girl to pull free and run.

But she stood there, breathing like a deer caught between two headlights, too fast, her whole body trembling. She was weighing the situation, cataloguing her options.

“You’re trying to read me,” Julia said, surprised. “Just like I’m trying to read you. I’m Julia.” She patted her chest. “Julia.”

The girl glanced away, disinterested. The trembling in her body eased, her breathing regulated.

“No hurt,” Julia said. “Food. Hungry?”

The girl looked at the table, and Julia thought:
Bingo! You know what I said. What I meant, anyway.

“Eat,” she said, finally letting go and stepping aside.

The girl sidled past her, moving cautiously, never taking her gaze off Julia’s face. When there was a safe distance between them, the girl pounced on the food. She washed it all down with the apple juice.

After that, Julia waited.

Their early morning journey from town to the edge of the deep woods had the hazy feel of a dream.

In the miles from the hospital to the old highway, no one spoke. For Max, there was something about this clandestine rescue that precluded the luxury of talk. He assumed it was the same for his co-conspirators, for although they told themselves this move was in the girl’s best interest—and indeed believed it—there was still a nagging worry, an unbound thread. At least at the hospital she was safe. The door locked; the glass was too thick to break. Here, in the last stretch of valley before the big trees, the world outside was too close; none of them doubted that those woods would beckon her.

He was in the backseat of the police cruiser, with Julia seated to his right. The girl lay between them with her head in Julia’s lap, her bare feet in his. In the front seat, Ellie and Peanut sat in silence. Except for the sound of their breathing and the crunching of the tires on thick gravel, the only sound came from the radio. It was turned down so quietly it could hardly be heard at all, but every now and then Max caught a stanza or two and recognized a song. Right now it was “Superman” by Crash Test Dummies.

He looked down at the girl in his lap. She was so incredibly thin and frail. Today’s scratches marred her cheeks, but even in this half-light he could see the silvery scars of older scratches. Evidence that she’d often attacked herself or been attacked. The bruise on her forehead was purple now, angry-looking. But it was the scarring on her left ankle that made his stomach tighten. The ligature marks.

“We’re here,” Ellie said from the front seat as she parked beneath an old shake lean-to. Moss turned the slanted roof into a patch of green fur.

Max scooped the sleeping child into his arms. Her arms curled around his neck; she pressed her wrecked cheek against his chest. Her black hair fell sideways, over his arm, almost to his thighs.

He knew exactly how to hold her. How was it that even after all these years, it still felt as natural as breathing?

Ellie hurried on ahead and turned on the exterior lights.

Max carried the girl toward the house. Julia fell into step beside him.

“You’re still safe,” she said to the girl. “We’re outside now. At my parents’ house. Safe here. I promise.”

From somewhere, deep in the woods, a wolf howled.

Max stopped; Julia did the same.

Peanut made the sign of the cross. “I am not feeling good about this.”

“I’ve never heard a wolf out here,” Ellie said. “It can’t be her wolf. He’s over in Sequim.”

The girl moaned.

The wolf howled again; an undulating, elegiac sound.

Julia touched his shoulder. “Come on, Max. Let’s get her inside.”

No one spoke as they walked through the house, up the stairs, and into the bedroom. Max put the child on the bed and covered her with blankets.

Peanut glanced nervously at the window, as if the wolf were out there, pacing the yard, looking for a way in. “She’s gonna try to escape. Those are her woods.”

So they were all thinking the same thing. Somehow, as impossible as it sounded, the child belonged out there more than she did in here.

“Here’s what we need, and fast,” Julia said. “Bars—skinny ones—on the window, so she can see outside but can’t escape, and a dead bolt for the door. We need to cover every scrap of shiny metal with adhesive tape—the faucet, the toilet handle, the drawer pulls; everything except the doorknob.”

“Why?” Peanut asked.

“I think she’s afraid of shiny metal,” Julia answered distractedly. “And we’ll need a video camera set up as surreptitiously as possible. I’ll need to record her condition.”

“I thought you said no pictures,” Ellie said, frowning.

“That was for the tabloids. This is for me. I need to observe her 24/7. We need food, too. And lots of tall houseplants. I want to turn one corner of the room into a forest.”

“Where the Wild Things Are,”
Peanut said.

Julia nodded, then went to the bed and sat down beside the girl.

Max followed her. Kneeling beside the bed, he checked the girl’s pulse and breathing. “Normal,” he said, sitting back on his heels.

“If only her mind and her heart were as easy to read as her vital signs,” Julia said.

“You’d be out of a job.”

Julia surprised him by laughing.

They looked at each other.

The bedside lamp flickered on and off, sparking electricity. The girl on the bed made a whining, desperate sound.

“There’s something weird going on here,” Peanut said, stepping back.

“Don’t do that,” Julia said quietly. “She’s just a child who has been through hell.”

Peanut fell silent.

“We should go to town. Get supplies from the lumber store,” Ellie said.

Max nodded. “I have time to put up the bars before my shift.”

“Good. Thanks,” Julia said. When they were gone, she remained at her place by the bed. “You’re safe here, little one. I promise.”

Julia said it over and over again, keeping her voice as gentle as a caress, but through it all, there was one thing she knew for certain.

This girl had no idea what it meant to be safe.

Gone is the bad smell and the white, hissing light that stings her eyes. Girl opens her eyes slowly, afraid of what she will see. There have been too many changes. It is as if she has fallen in the dark water past her place, that pool in the deep forest that Him said was the start of Out There.

This cave is different. Everything is the color of snow and of the berries she picks in early summer. It is morning outside; the light in the room is sun-colored. She starts to get up but can’t move. Something is holding her down. She panics, kicking and flailing to be free.

But she is not tied.

She moves out of the soft place and crouches on the ground, sniffing the scents of this strange place. Wood. Flowers. There is more, of course, many smells, but she doesn’t know them.

Somewhere, water is dripping; it sounds like the last rain falling from a leaf to the hard summer’s ground. There is a banging, clanging sound, too. The entrance to this cave is like the last one, a thick brown thing. There is something about the shiny ball on it that is the source of its magic; she is afraid to touch it. The Strangers would know then that she was wide-eyed. They would come for her again with their nets and their sharp points. She is safe from them only in the dark time when the sun sleeps.

A breeze floats past her face, ruffles her hair. On it is the scent of her place. She looks around.

There it is. The box that holds the wind. It is not like the other one, the trickster box that kept the outside out, through which you couldn’t touch.

She moves forward, holding her stomach tightly.

Sweet air comes through the box. She carefully puts her hand through the opening. She moves slowly, a bit at a time, ready to pull back at the first sharp pain.

But nothing stops her. Finally, her whole arm is Out There, in her world, where the air seems to be made of raindrops.

She closes her eyes. For the first time since they trapped her, she can breathe. She lets out a long, desperate howl.

Come for me,
that noise means, but she stops in the middle of it. She is so far away from her cave. There is no one to hear her.

This is why Him always told her to
stay.
He knew the world beyond her chain.

Out There is full of Strangers who will hurt Girl.

And she is alone now.

Years ago, Ellie had gone to the drive-in with her then-boyfriend, Scott Lauck, and seen a movie called
Ants.
Or maybe it had been
Swarm.
She wasn’t entirely sure now. All she really remembered was a scene with Joan Collins being swarmed by Volkswagen-sized ants. Ellie, of course, had been more interested in making out with Scotty than watching the movie. Still, it was those long-ago film images that came to her now as she stood in the hallway outside the lunchroom, sipping her coffee and looking out at the melee in the station.

It was a hive of people. From her place at the end of the hall, she couldn’t see a patch of floor or a sliver of wall. It was the same way outside and down the block.

The story had broken this morning under a variety of headlines.

THE GIRL FROM NOWHERE

WHO AM I?

REMEMBER ME?

And Ellie’s particular favorite (this from Mort in the
Gazette
):
FLYING MUTE LANDS IN RAIN VALLEY.
His first paragraph described the girl’s prodigious leaping capabilities and, naturally, her wolf companion. His description of her was the only accurate report. He made her sound crazy, wild, and heartbreakingly pathetic.

At eight
A.M.
the first call had come in. Cal hadn’t had a moment’s peace since then. By one o’clock the first national news van had pulled into town. Within two hours the streets were jammed with vans and reporters demanding another press conference. Everyone from journalists to parents to kooks and psychics wanted to get the scoop firsthand.