The Forever Stone (21 page)

Jude’s grin told her that he was glad too. He circled around the swampy pools.

“You know where we are?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“Middle of nowhere, the best place for explorations.” His eyes sparkled. “You’d be amazed at the secrets in these woods.”

When they reached a small clearing, he paused with an air of having arrived at his destination. “I like this place,” he said. “I come here to think.” He walked toward a slope-sided depression, a mere dip in the sandy ground. Beside it stood a tree with yellow leaves that she didn’t recognize.

“Cellar hole,” Jude said. He gestured at the tree. “Walnut. They must have planted it by their house.”

An uneven series of flat stones, half-hidden by grass, stretched toward the hole. Someone’s front walk.

She gazed down the walk. What hopeful wife had watched her man set this into place? Had she lived to see the tree grow tall, to gather walnuts for a cake?

Jude pulled out his trowel and trotted toward a cluster of pines at the far edge of the clearing. He dropped the logs beside a teepee of branches built at the base of a rotting pine stump, and motioned her forward.

She knelt to look inside. He’d dug a hole, broad and deep, and carpeted it with pine needles.

“Pretty snug,” she said. 

“Yeah. I hope we won’t have to bring him here, but if we do, he’ll like it. I just have to finish the entrance.”

After he’d arranged the rest of the logs in front of the den, he sat back on his heels. “I’ve got to tell you something,” he said in a troubled voice. 

Great, he’d dropped out of school or robbed a bank or something.  

He swiped at his face, leaving a dusty streak. “There’s a girl,” he said, and her worry faded. Girl trouble was easier to handle.

He reddened, as if he guessed her thoughts. “Not that kind of girl,” he said. “Stringy red hair. Skinny. She ran away from home.”

He got to his feet. “This needs a door, kind of hidden.”

He paced back and forth beside the cellar hole. “There used to be bricks here, but I never meddle with ruins. Some idiot stole them, I guess.”

Madeleine trailed after him. What about the girl?

They had reached the far side of the clearing when he said, “She’s hiding out in the woods—scared of getting caught. She was hungry, so I took her some food.”

The extra cookies? The chicken casserole?

He picked up a pair of knobby branches. “These’ll work.” Back at the den, he used them to form an inverted V and secured them with the logs.

“How old is she?” Madeleine asked. “Is she hurt?”

“Lots older than me. She sleeps all the time, like she’s real tired.”

Before she could ask any more, he got to his feet. “You don’t have to do anything. Maybe she’ll get well and go back home. I wasn’t even supposed to tell you. Just pray.”

He’d confided in her, but shouldn’t she report this? Why had the girl run away? Shouldn’t she find out?

“All right.” She wouldn’t interfere, not for now.

He pocketed his trowel with an air of finality and gave an ineffectual brush to the sand on his jeans. “Got to get home,” he said. “Or Gemma will give me another talk about responsibility and stuff.”

On the way back, he asked about a ride for tomorrow’s canoe trip, but he didn’t say anything more about the girl.

The cat was waiting for her on the porch, and she picked him up for a snuggle as she went inside. Aunt Lin had put a frozen casserole into the oven and set out fruit for a salad, so supper was well on its way.

Madeleine washed her hands, found a knife, and started cutting up an apple. “How did your phone conference turn out?” she asked.

“I’ll have to go back on Monday. That deadline is breathing down our necks, and we’ve got too much at stake.”

During supper, Madeleine tried to listen as her aunt talked about problems with the current issue, but the mental cupboard where she’d stashed Jude’s secret seemed to have a door that kept swinging open. And what about Dan'l and the PC decoy? Who was PC, anyway? She should have asked him.

She made cookies for the canoe trip—chocolate chip with nuts—and turtle muffins, but it was hard to forget the look she’d seen on Dan’l’s face.

By the time she finished, she was tired enough for bed. “Write in your journal,” she told herself. “And pray for Jude and that girl, as you promised. Stop thinking about decoys.”

She was drifting into sleep when the cat leaped onto the foot of her bed and begin grooming himself. By now, she knew the routine. First his legs, one after the other, then his back, his chest, his face. On and on and on.

Finally she sat up. “Macbeth! Can’t you do your laundry some other time?”

She stroked the long silken back, and a drowsy question circled again through her mind. Who was PC?

Now the answer came: Paul Clampton. The grandfather who taught Paula all she knew.

Madeleine turned on the lamp, slid out of bed, and carried the gift-shop decoy into the light. The expression in its eyes—familiar? The eye groove—deeper? It was hard to tell without Dan’l’s PC in front of her.

She studied the wings. There it was: Bria’s signature.

She turned the decoy over. The initials burned into the base, and the base itself, were soiled, as if it had been handled many times. The paint was scratched too, but such things could be counterfeited. Slowly she put it back onto the bureau and returned to bed.

Mac watched her, still licking a paw.

She turned out the light and gazed into the darkness. Who would falsify a signature like that? Who else but Paula’s distribution manager?

A cheap, shady operation . . . something her mother and Brenn would think was just fine.

Coldness touched her, the same chill that used to scrabble down her back when Brenn put a hand on her arm.

Brenn . . . fear . . . Kent.

“Lord,” she whispered. “Be my Rock and my Fortress. I’m . . . I’m afraid.
”

She piled the pillows around her, pulled the blankets close. No more thoughts about the decoys or Kent.

Think about tomorrow’s canoe trip. Think about the canoe gliding weightless beneath her. Think about the water sliding, sliding, sliding past.

The next morning, while Madeleine was loading her backpack with food, Aunt Lin returned from a run through the fog-hung trees. “Canoeing at dawn, are we?” she remarked. “Not a bad idea—it won’t be as crowded.”

“That’s what Nathan said.” Madeleine slipped cookies into a side pocket, muffins into another.

“You look like a teenager yourself, with your hair pulled into a ponytail like that.”

“I just don’t want it hanging in my face while I’m trying to paddle,” Madeleine said. But she did feel younger this morning.

By the time she neared Timothy’s store, the fog had thinned enough for her to distinguish the Martinera’s van and trailer. Three men were doing something with the canoes—Nathan, tall and slender; Remi, mid-sized; Howard, square-built. A huddle of teens waited on the sidewalk.

As she stepped out of the car, Connie shrieked, “Here she is!”

Were we just a little excited this morning?

Nathan glanced over with a smile of welcome. He must be glad, already, that he was canoeing with Jude.

“C’mon folks,” Howard said. “Let’s get on the road.”

He and Remi climbed into the front seats of the van, and the teens filled the back two benches. The front bench was open, so she sat there, and Nathan slid in beside her.

They hadn’t driven more than a couple of blocks when Connie said, “I’m starved.”

Madeleine looked back at her. “No breakfast?”

“Not much. Did you bring anything to eat, Mrs. Burke?”

“Connie!” exclaimed her sister’s outraged voice.

“Mom said she’s such a good cook and stuff, I didn’t think it would hurt to ask.”

“Muffins?” Madeleine said. “That’s all I’m willing to donate right now.”

“Hoo-rah!” Connie said. “What kind? Can I have two?”

Madeleine handed the bag to Nathan, on the aisle. “First it goes to the pilots, up front.”

After Howard and Remi had helped themselves, she leaned over to put the bag into Connie’s hands. “You may pass these around and serve yourself last. Jude made the cinnamon-walnut ones.”

Under cover of the resulting noise, she turned back to Nathan, saying, “That may hold them for a while.”

He grinned. “Don’t we get any?”

“Didn’t you eat breakfast either?”

“Hardly.”

“I’d thought you’d fry yourself half-a-dozen eggs and a couple of sausages, the big, greasy kind. Top it off with pancakes and toast.”

He cocked his head. “You’re a morning person, aren’t you?”

“No, but I’m starving. Even fried eggs sound good. Would you like a muffin? Or a hard-boiled egg?”

“You have your own stash? My happy day. Yes, please, to both. What kind of muffin is this?”

“Turtle.”

“For extra protein?”

“For superior energy. To appease your scientific mind, I will mention that the chocolate and pecans synergize with the caramel in the center, providing powerful antioxidants and minerals.”

“Superior indeed! And your muffins are named for those fast-moving turtles?”

She elbowed him. “From the candies that look like turtles. They freeze nicely, so I’m sure you have them in Alaska. The candies, I mean.”

“Mmm,” he said. A minute later he asked, “These eggs. What happened to them?”

“Do you like deviled eggs?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Then you’ll like these. I deviled the yolks and put the halves back together.”

“Mmm.” Even with his mouth full, he wore that mischievous look on his face. “What’s in the thermos?”

She lowered her voice. “Is your name Connie? Chai tea. And yes, I’ll share. You must have driven your teachers wild, starting with kindergarten. How far is it to the river?”

“At least two muffins farther.”

“So kind of you to lighten my pack.”

Mist hung over the water, and it was still cool enough for a jacket. The sun’s pale lemon disc rose higher, glinting on the frosty gunwales of their canoes and turning the maples to scarlet.

While they waited for the others, she and Remi paddled back and forth, learning each other’s cadence and paddling style. She had asked to sit in the bow, letting him steer, so she could keep an eye on Bonnie and Connie.

From the noise they were making, she might have to intervene sooner than she’d thought.

Finally all the canoes were in the water. Pumper and Fritz were allowed to go on ahead, as long as they stayed within shouting distance. She and Remi paddled behind the two girls, and Nathan and Jude came last.

Remi proved to be a good steersman, and they talked quietly as they passed banks that were thick with cedar and maple trees.

This was the Mullica River, he told her, and they’d put in just below Atsion. After scouting the river, he and Doc had come up with the plan to paddle as far as Pleasant Mills, which would take most of the day.

The river gleamed in the sunlight, and she said, “Look at the color of this water! Like tea.”

“They call it cedar water,” he said. “Doc told me the water is naturally high in iron, and it picks up dye from the roots of mosses and cedars.”

“And how about this weather—for October!” The fog had burned off, and she was already glad she’d worn her sunglasses. She glanced ahead. Connie was wearing hers too, “pink, with sparklies,” as she’d put it. Bonnie had stopped paddling to pull her hair into a ponytail, and their canoe turned in circles.

Remi must have been watching. “They’re lucky the river’s slow here, or they’d be in the bushes.” He yawned. “Going to be a warm day, isn’t it? Did you get some drinks from Doc? I’m thirsty already.”

“Water. It’s under my pack.”

They let the canoe drift while she took off her jacket and he reached for the water. “Got them,” he said. “Here’s one for you.”

For the next few hours they followed the river’s gentle curves past sandy banks and bushes. After a while the bushes were replaced by hummocks of grass, and they entered a grassy marsh.

By now, Pumper and Fritz had paddled far ahead, and Doc and Jude were out of sight behind them. The girls’ canoe moved more and more slowly, but finally it crossed the marsh.

The sun was warm enough that she took advantage of the slow pace to shed another layer—the long-sleeved shirt—and rub sunscreen onto her arms and face.