Stone Kissed (19 page)

“He was a good man.” Cecily’s voice gained volume and a hint of glee. “He was so proud of you.”

“I didn’t know you were close. He never mentioned you.”

Cecily lips pressed together, but she continue to smile. “Oh, but he spoke of you all the time. You…and your little gift.”

Delia’s breath left her in a quick, silent rush.

Cecily’s smile widened. “Don’t worry. He didn’t tell everyone.” She brushed her cheek against Delia’s as if to give her a consolatory kiss. The skin of Delia’s cheek went numb and her jaw locked shut. “But I know, little cousin,” she whispered.

The place on her cheek burned like frostbite, and Delia was afraid that if she looked in a mirror, it would be the blue-gray color of dead flesh. She trembled.

“You really need to spend time with me. We have so much in common. We are family.” Cecily looked over Delia’s shoulder at the twins’ vault. Annabel gazed down at the Bible.

“Delia.” Grant’s voice was gruff and urgent. “I need to go.”

“I’ll join you, if I may, Mr. Wolverton.” Cecily stepped toward him but he shook his head, looking beyond them both into the trees.

“No.” He turned back to Delia. “Is your phone charged?”

“What?”

“Listen, we have to talk…” His voice trailed off and he looked at the gate. Then he reached back for her, scanning the sky even as he framed her face in his hands. His touch thawed the frozen flesh and brought her cheek back to life. And he was gone.

“I guess he wants to talk.” Cecily laughed beside her, but her voice was brittle and shrill.

“No. He just wants me to marry him.”

Cecily froze in place as Delia walked down the hill, smiling for the first time in days.

***

He vibrated with tension, his knuckles white on the wheel, even though the silver bird he followed was gracious enough to fly just over the speed limit ten yards ahead of him. It followed every switchback turn of the road without fluttering into the trees, or even bobbing on the breeze as a real bird should. In his mind he heard the cracking open of a stone egg. Although he’d spent two days resisting, turning his head away from the flicker of silver, the hovering ball of gray, the voices in the cemetery broke through his last resistance. He drove thirty-five miles an hour into his Harryhausen nightmare, into Delia’s dream.

Grant parked in the same clearing on the edge of the same meadow and looked across to the same tree line edging the still-scorched ravine. The air shimmered like water in the afternoon heat, but otherwise, the meadow was a greener version of what he’d seen weeks ago when they called off the search—with one significant difference. This time a short robed figure stood at the edge of ravine, his head bowed as if in prayer. If he were to stand beside St. Francis, Grant would find himself staring at a strange patch of mud that didn’t match the surrounding earth.

Frank was granite. He weighed hundreds of pounds. Grant circled him, looking for crowbar marks he knew he wouldn’t see. The mud had washed away, and the ground before St. Francis looked like the rest of the dandelion-patched meadow—except for the thick groove of mud that cut down the side of the ravine. Something had sledded down into it. Something had been dragged—or crawled—back out.

Grant’s nerves buzzed with awareness. He heard every chirp of the bird, every snap of a twig, every flutter of a leaf.

“What are you doing up here, Frank?” He bent down into the statue’s face.

St. Francis, naturally, didn’t reply. Statues didn’t talk, not even to brilliant, creative women with dark green witch eyes. Stone birds didn’t fly, and no way in hell had this chunk of rock walked uphill seven miles to serve as a monument to where a good man had died.

Grant strode back to his car. He could have a truck and some men up here in an hour, maybe sooner, but he burned with a confused, restless energy and the need to reset the world on its axis. He had to get out of here. He had to meet up with his sister and Lars in the church basement, drink some crappy coffee and then leave this town. He’d allowed a heap of brick and a sexy woman with an innocent act to distract him from the life he’d fought for, the life he’d created, the life he’d earned.

Sentiment be damned. He was going to flip Steward House.

He turned the key, threw the Lexus in gear and slammed his foot on the pedal.

The gears ground as he slammed his other foot on the brake, ripped back on the gearshift and threw the car into reverse. Grant backed up the meadow, tires spitting mud as he pounded the brakes, only inches from knocking St. Francis face first into the ravine.

He knelt and pulled the statue toward the back of his right shoulder. “Help me out here, Frank.”

Grant grunted, his thighs quaking and his back straining to bring himself upright. He felt the shift, the curve and the melt as the stone softened, wrapping itself over his shoulders, giving him better leverage and balance. He wanted to believe he imagined it, but as he made his way one careful step at a time to the rear car door, he saw St. Francis’s face in his peripheral vision—one eye was shut in a wink.

It was easier than he expected to get him to the car. St. Francis was still heavy, but his grip on the statue’s shoulder and lower thigh sank into the stone as if it were fresh clay. Kneeling, Grant released St. Francis and stood him upright. The wink was gone.

Grant shook his head. “You’re killing me.”

The old guy neither spoke nor moved, but a silver sparrow wafted down from a tree, drifting side to the side on an invisible breeze and settled on Grant’s shoulder. Grant felt its weight, watched the silver harden to gray.

When the first tear in over a decade came, he closed his eyes but didn’t wipe it away. Not one tear had done any good before, but if these were the price for sharing in Delia’s miracle, he’d pay it. The weight lifted free of his shoulder. Grant opened his eyes.

“We’re going back to her,” he told St. Francis and his bird, and he shifted the hard gray chunk of granite across his leather seats. He wrapped both seatbelts over and under St. Francis and strapped him in, angling him carefully onto his right side so that the bird on his left shoulder wouldn’t accidentally poke the upholstery—or, worse, snap off.

He headed down the ridge, keeping his eyes on the winding road. He couldn’t see the figure lying in the back of his car.

Miracles were no different from crimes. If you waited, if you policed your mind with discipline and intention, you could retain the necessary lessons and let the memories that disrupted your nights and invaded your days just fade away. He could ignore St. Francis entirely.

He slowed down for a hairpin curve. “The first time I met Delia, she gave me a lost Claudel.”

***

Cecily pulled out of the procession of cars leading to the Methodist church and backtracked to a clearing on the slope of the hill behind above the cemetery. She walked back through the trees to the edge of the family plot.

She’d underestimated Delia’s power. Cousin had seduced Grant Wolverton in spite of Cecily’s efforts, which meant she, too, had her own supernatural sexuality. Delia didn’t just gossip with the graveyard monuments, she
fed
the statues. From the hot rush she’d felt when she touched Delia, Cecily knew Delia could feed her too.

They were so cool, Delia’s statues. So calm and at ease within their own stone. They didn’t know the gnawing of hunger or the flare of passion. She walked among them, examining their faces, watching for a twitch or a melting in the stone, but they were as fixed as they had always been—until Delia had stood among them this afternoon.

“What’s she like? Do you feel an electric buzz, or is she like cool water?” She turned in a circle, trying to catch a flicker, a sudden twist. But nothing. “She has enough power to make stones move. Surely there’s enough there for me?”

She envied their equanimity. She would have that coolness, that calm, that sense of solid center once she’d tapped into Delia. All Cecily needed to do was hold her cousin while the power flowed freely from Delia’s body into her own.
So much power.

“I’ll find out. You all and me—we’re going to share.”

Cecily placed her shoes, stockings and jacket on the stone Bible between the Beckler twins and stepped forward to the mausoleum door. This, too, should have been hers. Her name belonged on the exterior wall.

Except, as far as she could tell, she would never have a resting place. Barring something drastic like beheading or evisceration, she saw no reason why she should even die. With careful planning, prudent use of makeup and frequent travel—perhaps years or decades at a time—she could have her home, her land for as long as she wanted, and someday her “daughter” would inherit the whole kit and caboodle.

How much room was left inside? Certainly plenty for her parents—the Stewards were many things, but not especially fertile. She tugged at the gate and heard stone shift on stone. She looked at the
pleurant
at her shoulder, but saw no change.

“Talk to me.” She threaded steel into her voice. “Speak to me.”

The statue remained still and silent. Cecily tugged on the wrought-iron outer gate that had slid open so easily only minutes before when the funeral director had unlocked it.

Cecily braced her bare feet in the gravel and yanked at the bars. She stumbled back as the gate jerked open. She was jerked forward again, however, as the weight of the statue beside her fell into the gate, slamming it shut on her left pinky.

Cecily pulled her hand back to see blood bubbling out of the stump where her finger had been. With the flow came the tide of pain—sharp and sweet and deep. She clenched in her core, felt her bowels contract, and her shoulder blades and elbows pulled into her body. With her right hand she squeezed the finger to slow the bleeding. Her blood coated her hands, dripped down her arms and splattered her neck and chest. A burst of blood drops decorated the stone door to the mausoleum and glistened on the glossy black paint of the wrought iron gate. The sight of her own bone hypnotized her, a white fragment cutting up through scarlet blood and pink flesh.

She sought for the fingertip in the gravel but didn’t see it. The statue, however, stood upright in its place as if Cecily had imagined the whole thing.

“You old bitch.” She slapped the stone veil.

Her hand stuck to the rock and she snarled in rage. By dint of brute force, she peeled her palm away. The blood that had coated her right hand was gone, as was the top layer of skin. Another hot wave of pain swept through her, but as she watched, the skin renewed, cell by cell, sheet by sheet. It was thick again…but scarred. She’d never, ever scarred before.

“You hag.” She sniffed. The veil twitched.

She backed up, stumbling slightly. She was woozy. The finger stump had stopped bleeding, but the bone hadn’t come back. Cecily ripped the black camisole over her head and wrapped it so she wouldn’t have to see it, then snatched her clothes out of the mud at the foot of the twins’ crypt and scrambled back up the hill to her car.

It wasn’t until she was locked into Daddy’s old Volvo that Cecily admitted she was frightened of the stupid lump of stone. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed while backing out of her parking spot, but her father’s line went straight to voice mail. She’d reached Main Street when she dialed her mother’s line, but after four rings—enough time for someone to check caller I.D. and make a decision—that call was forwarded to voice mail too.

She didn’t leave messages. They’d never listened to her before and they wouldn’t now. She was alone, and it didn’t hurt. The missing finger—that was real, and it hurt. The hole in her chest because her own parents would rather never speak to her again was a figment of her imagination.

She rolled down the hill toward the church but turned off to her house instead. It was time to get out of her best funeral suit and into jeans and a T-shirt. She’d bet the last remnant of her dearly-departed husband’s bequest that she would grow her fingertip back once she got Delia alone. After all, they were blood.

Grant’s sister stood on the opposite side of the archway just inside the church basement’s entrance. “Here.” Randi held a cup of punch out to Delia. “Shall I spike it?”

“Could you?”

“Sure. After you show me the windows.”

The windows of the Methodist Church, while lovely, were not unique. Dozens of Southern churches were adorned with similar frosted stained glass in symmetrical lines and curves. But Randi didn’t want to see the windows, did she? She wanted to interrogate Delia about her relationship with Grant, who had disappeared before Delia could tell him about her decision to leave.

“Must we?” Delia asked.

“I know this is a difficult time,” Randi said. “You must forgive me.”

Must I?
She held her tongue as they strolled up the outer aisle, pretending to examine a fuchsia window divided into quadrants by a bright golden cross.

“It’s just that I’ll only be here a couple of days. I want to get to know you a little, since Grant tells me you’re to be married.”

“He’s mistaken.”

“He asked you to marry him, didn’t he?”

“In point of fact, he didn’t.” Delia felt the last of the adrenaline that had kept her standing drain out through her feet. She smoothed her black dress and sat on the front pew.

Randi sat beside her. “I see. He told you.”

“That’s your brother.”

“Indeed it is.” They were silent a couple of moments, and Delia attempted to inspect Randi out the corner of her eye. Obviously Randi was attempting the same thing, because they turned to each other at the same moment and laughed. Delia’s own laughter was tinged with hysteria, and Randi sobered first.

“Grant can be overbearing with those he loves.”

“Love? Your brother doesn’t believe in love.”

“Just because he doesn’t believe in it doesn’t make it any less real.”

When her breath came back, Delia’s broken heart cracked again. “No, just because someone doesn’t believe, doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“Grant loves deeply. He loves you,” Randi persisted, heedless of Delia’s gaping mouth or half-sunken eyelids. She believed what she said. She expected Delia to believe it too.

Delia scanned the sanctuary for the nearest exit. She needed to escape Randi’s faith in Grant and her talk of his love. “What makes you say that?” her faithless mouth whispered.

“He talks about you. He admires you, admires how hard you work, which is a big deal to Grant. Once you’re married to him, though, you won’t have to lift a finger.”

“I’m no gold digger, Randi.” Delia’s voice broke. “I’m not marrying him.”

Randi sighed and picked up Delia’s hand, placing it between her own. “Right. When your wings beat against the cage door, you can call me. I have ways to escape the dogs.” Delia must have shown her shock, because Randi laughed. “No. No real dogs. But Lars, now. He’s as reliable as a St. Bernard.”

“Better looking than any St. Bernard I’ve seen.”

Randi sighed. “I know.” Her voice was bitter, and her eyes narrowed to light blue slits. “Grant’s been the only parent I’ve had for as long as I can remember. Your children will be lucky…” Randi broke off, swallowed and continued. “Your children will be lucky to have him as a father.”

Delia rubbed her bare arms and shivered. The church smelled of mildewed hymnals and dust from the vents. She wished she hadn’t donated her blazer to St. Vincent de Paul. “It’s a pretty fantasy, Randi, but that’s all.”

“Grant needs that. Grant needs a family and a home to love. It’s all, really, he’s ever needed, only he can’t see it. And I need him to have those things.” She twisted her fingers in her lap. “If, when you’re married, you could keep him from breathing down my neck, I would be eternally grateful.”

“Randi, I’m leaving. I finish my work at Steward House this week, and then I’m headed out west.”

“He’ll take you anywhere you want to go. He’ll do anything to make you happy.”

“He doesn’t love me.” It hurt so much to say it, but Delia pressed on, forcing out the words over the lump of tears forming in her throat. “He gave me a laundry list of reasons why it would be practical and rational to marry him. I match Steward House and I don’t use drugs. He’ll have a full-time caretaker and a willing bed partner.”

Randi flinched at that.

“Sorry.” Delia deflated. “Too much information.”

Randi took her arms and pulled Delia into a hug. “I know it’s incredibly forward to ask, but may I be a bridesmaid?”

Girlfriends did this. They hugged each other and picked colors for gowns. They gossiped about men. Randi was offering her the warm, normal affection girlfriends shared.

She couldn’t afford to be seduced.

Delia broke the hold and sat back. “Every weekend, as far as I’m concerned. But I’ll be in Wyoming.”

“Will you?” Grant’s quiet voice echoed through the vaulted sanctuary.

She and Randi rose together and turned to face him. In the shadows behind Grant glowered Lars Gunderson. “Sorry, Grant. I hadn’t looked up here yet.”

Delia felt Randi’s cool, delicate hand squeeze her own work-roughened skin. “May I come with you?”

***

Delia wished Randi had come with them. Grant drove in rigid silence, his only movements those necessary to operating the Lexus, his only sign of life the muscle ticking in his jaw. She tried to focus on the street in front of them, but kept stealing glances at his face.

“I found Frank.”

“So you said.” Delia was surprised at how bitter and angry she sounded. She wasn’t supposed to be bitter or angry. She was free and she had an open future ahead of her.

“He was up on Taylor Ridge.”

“That’s seven miles!”

Grant nodded slowly.

“I don’t understand…”

“…how he got up there?” His lip twisted.

“I’m not…I can’t…it’s too far.” St. Vincent was only five miles down the highway, and he was well out of her range of influence.

“I imagine he didn’t do it all by himself.”

“I never said he did.”

“But he could have. Certainly the bird flew that far.”

Delia gripped the seat on either side of herself and closed her eyes.

“He doesn’t fly like a normal bird,” Grant continued, his voice warming. “He flew right in front of the car and led me the whole way.”

“I don’t…”

“And I’m pretty sure Frank adjusted his own weight somehow because even when I’ve been to the gym, I can’t lift a four-foot granite column under my own steam.” Grant pulled into the drive to the caretaker’s shed in the woods at the back of the estate. “I left him here. Asked him to wait for us.”

“They do what they will. You can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do.”

He stopped the car and turned to her. “Delia—I wouldn’t presume to try.”

His words froze her, and then thawed her. He reached across the car and enfolded her in his arms, holding her until her grief, her anger and her resentment had been cleansed away on a silent stream of tears.

He kissed the top of her hair. “Forgive me for not believing you?”

She nodded into his shoulder. She loved him too much not to forgive him. But it changed nothing.

***

The three of them stood in the semi-dark of the shed. Even if he wasn’t hearing Frank’s words, Grant watched the statue communicate with Delia. His head turned slowly, twisting on a neck of molten liquid. His hands rose and fell softly. Grant was fascinated by the moving stone, and fascinated by the woman who stood without fear and spoke to it as if things like this happened every day.

For Delia, they had. What had it been like to grow up berated, scorned, for who you were?

Stupid question. He knew the answer.

“He says Cecily took him the night Dad died.” Her brow was furrowed. “She tossed him in the ravine to do right by Carl Benson.” Delia turned to Grant. “But Carl’s long gone.”

Grant’s toes curled in his shoes. “No. He’s up there. I’m calling Cardinal.”

“And saying what?” She blew a curl off her forehead. “You are so new at this.”

“He knows I have a knack for locating things.”

“A knack?”

He shrugged, and she shook her head. “What’ll you say? A statue told your…employee Carl might be in the ravine?”

“Fiancée.” His stomach knotted.

“Stop. Just. Stop.” She raised her palm to him and turned away.

She’d said “stop,” but she hadn’t said “no.” He knew what she wanted from him, and he went in for the kill. “I believe you.”

“Of course you do. Now.” Her eyes became as flat and empty as those of a classical marble. Delia drew in on herself and pulled away from him. “Maybe she loved him.”

“What?”

“We don’t know he’s up there. Maybe the cops are right and he just faked it, disappeared. Left her. But if she believes he’s in the ravine—if she
wants
to believe he’s in the ravine—she’d show her secret love the way people do—by giving him a monument.”

“Cecily Johnson?”

“You heard the rumors. Maybe his wife wasn’t the only woman he left behind.” She turned and glared at Frank. “It would leave you hollow too.”

“What?” These three-way conversations had become annoying, now that Grant understood he really didn’t understand.

“Frank says Cecily is hollow. I’m explaining that being abandoned by the one you love would empty a person’s soul.”

Her words speared Grant into the ground. Because of the howling in the base of his skull, he almost missed what she said next. “Please, please stay here until full dark, Frank. I’ll come back and take you to the hospital.” She angled her body away from Grant as if he were not even there. “Yes, I know. But I’m asking you to wait, just the same. It’ll be hard enough explaining your return without someone seeing you on Main.”

Delia stepped back as the bird settled on Frank’s shoulder and he flowed back into his original position. Frank became solid, and Grant willed himself to do the same. “I’ll drive you back,” he said in his grandfather’s voice.

“No, you won’t,” she answered, chin raised. “Give me a scrap of dignity, please?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Delia.”

“I know.” Her lips twisted in a parody of a smile. “I don’t know why I expect anything different from the Great Grant Wolverton.”

***

Delia stood outside her apartment listening to the Beastie Boys pumping through the cheap plywood door. When the song ended, she slid her key in the lock. By the time she got the door open, everyone had frozen except Bert, who was pushing the eject button with the tip of his ear.

“It’s okay. I’m alone.” She set her handbag on the counter and rubbed her arms. Romana’s evenly-spaced curls smoothed back into solid stone. Dorrie sat on her perch at the front edge of the refrigerator, still gazing down at Sophie on the counter below. Sophie gazed back up at her, the longing on her face echoing the longing Delia felt herself.

One last time.
For the rest of her life, she needed one last time.

“How was it, dear?” Athena called down from her perch over the door.

“Lovely.” Delia slipped off her dusty dress flats. The funeral seemed years away. Grant believed her. He’d had his proof and now he knew Delia for the freak she really was. It hadn’t stopped him from maintaining his pretense that he wanted to marry her—and maybe her gift wasn’t a barrier, after all. Lord only knew she could be useful to Wolverton International.

She needed to go home, to spend one last night there.
One last time.

She put on her jeans and packed her duffel bag.

“When are you going to take me back home?” Bert asked.

She stepped back inside the door and looked at the little rabbit.

“Tomorrow, Bert. I’ll come for you tomorrow.”

***

The moon glowed a benediction upon Steward House, silvering the edges of the brick. Starlight illuminated the new gutters. Freshly-painted wood shutters shone black in the night, framing each window like dark eyelashes. She was clean, ready and welcoming.

Delia stroked her fingers across the warm wood paneling and up the gleaming finish of the banister. She inhaled the scents of fresh plaster, sawdust and wood stain. The downstairs walls were covered in butter-yellow and pale robin’s egg blue papers and velvet draperies dressed the windows. Scuffing her shoe on the floor in front of her, she admired the long lines and whirlpool swirls of the oak grain in the wide-plank floors. The planks had been recycled from old factory beams, who were full of stories to share with Steward House.

She was beautiful, inside and out, whole and healthy and clean. For one-and-a-half centuries this house had sheltered and nurtured her ancestors. Thanks to her work, Steward House would be here for generations to come. Not for her descendants, but what did that matter? It didn’t matter.

He sat on the bottom stair, waiting for her, which shouldn’t have mattered either. Her heart should no longer lift at the sight of him. But it did.

***

“Why are you here, Delia?”

“You knew I’d come.”

“It’s what I would have done. But why did you?” He needed to hear her say it. He was more than ready to give her what she wanted. He had the power to make one woman—this woman—happy, and he could never be finished with her until he had. He needed to hear her use that word again—even if it was only for the house.

“I don’t want to talk.” She kept walking toward him, placing her foot on the bottom riser as if he were not in her way.

“What do you want, Delia?”

She needed to say it, damn it. She needed to say she wanted the house. She needed to ask, and he needed to counteroffer.

“I want to go to bed, Grant.” Her voice was low and melodious, her words direct, confident and surprising.

He hardened in an instant. Swallowing, he asked, “And after that?”

She stepped past him and up the stairs, her footsteps muffled by the new Persian carpet runners she’d had installed. “I’ll get up and work.”

“And after that?”

Her voice was fading. Only one room had a bed. “Packing. Lawyer’s office.”

“And after that?” he was coming up behind her now, the blood pounding in his ears, his chest, his groin. He moved deliberately, but he also took two steps at a time.

“I don’t want to talk, Grant.”