Call the Devil by His Oldest Name

by Sallie Bissell

  “Enough to make a normal emotion go off the charts?” Mary asked.

  “Two drinks at a bar can make a normal emotion go off the charts” Price replied prissily. “You should know that.”

  Yes, Mary thought. I do. But had Ruth’s jealousy gone so far out of control that she’d joined up with Logan? Once again Ruth’s words echoed in her head as she watched Jonathan playing with Lily. Logan and I had one thing in common, Mary. You. She’d never told Jonathan what Ruth had said, but in the past month Mary had gone over those ten words ten thousand times, desperately searching for reason and motive. Some days, it actually seemed conceivable that Ruth had colluded with the former sheriff of Pisgah County; other days, Mary was ashamed to even consider such a thing. All she knew for sure was that she would ponder Ruth Moon until the day she died. Right now she preferred to think Logan acted alone. Who knew what she would think tomorrow? In a way, it didn’t matter—the truth lay buried in a freshly dug grave in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. And there it would remain, forever.

  She watched as Jonathan started carrying Lily toward the driveway. His breath was making plumes of smoke in the bright, cold air. Laughing, she tapped on the window. He looked up and grinned, and waved for her to join them.

  “Coming!” she called. She rose from the window seat, closed the bulging suitcase that lay on her bed, and lugged it downstairs to the kitchen.

  Though the room had been professionally scoured after CSU had finished, they had not taken any of their meals there since the night Ruth died. Mary could not look at the kitchen door without seeing Gabe there that night, fresh from the hospital, frantic to warn her that Ruth Moon was a poisoner. He’d driven first to Tremont, then to Atlanta when Dula told him that the Walkingstick baby had been found. He’d gotten her home address from the suitcase that she’d left in his van and called the Atlanta cops to meet him here.

  “Thank God for that” Mary whispered, closing her eyes against that awful night. Dropping her suitcase beside the door, she walked over to the telephone and looked at the list of numbers she’d left for Danika. Plumber, electrician, yard­ man, Walter and Pat Smith, her next-door neighbors. She thought she’d covered everything, but if she hadn’t, Danika was a home girl. She had re­sources of her own in Atlanta. Her property would be in good hands.

  As she turned to take a final walk-through of the house, the walls seemed to echo with seventy-five years of her family’s history—Eugenia’s wild parties, her father’s guitar playing, her own addiction to figuring out the past. She would miss them, just as she would miss all her friends in Atlanta, but it was time for her to go. She glanced upstairs once, toward her father’s old room, then she returned to the kitchen, threw on her coat, and lugged her suitcase outside, just as a white camper pulled into the driveway.

  “Hi!” Gabe waved at her as he climbed down from the driver’s seat, cloaked in a brightly striped Mexican serape. “How is everybody?”

  “We’re fine.” Jonathan shifted Lily in his arms as the two men shook hands. “How about you?”

  “Ready to head south,” Gabe replied. “You two still going home?”

  Jonathan nodded. “It’s time for me to get back to real life. I don’t think Aunt Little Tom can handle the Christmas mail rush all by herself.”

  “So Lily and her dad will have to help out,” Mary said, walking over and taking Lily from Jonathan. The child grinned at Mary, once again making her funny little bird chirps. Though she immediately grabbed a lock of Mary’s hair and gave it a painful tug, Mary held her close, enjoying the exquisite softness of Lily’s cheek against her own. Smiling, she turned to Jonathan.

  “Have you gotten everything from the house?”

  He nodded. “I loaded up this morning. While you two were still asleep.”

  “That’s your dad, Lily.” Mary laughed. “The early bird, out catching all those worms. Come on. Let’s go get in the truck.”

  She carried Lily over to the camper, Jonathan following. As their footsteps squeaked through the powdery snow, she could feel his gaze upon her, heavy as the now-white branches of the magnolia tree. When they reached his truck, he opened the passenger door, slipping a little in the process.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled, suddenly awkward. “Except I love you.”

  She looked up at the face she’d held so dearly for so many years.

  “Me, too,” she whispered. “But now I’ll have to take a number. This brown-eyed girl snuck ahead of me in line.”

  “I have you to thank for that, too.”

  Mary shrugged. “I owed you one. Or maybe two. I lose count.”

  “Then let’s just call it even.”

  “Suits me.” Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed him. Even with the truck door between them, their old electricity zinged through her, just as intense as it had been way back in the sev­enth grade. For an instant she lost herself in the feel and taste of him, then Lily squawked, and she remembered that Gabe was standing there, not twenty feet away. She stepped back, embarrassed. “You sure you won’t change your mind about coming with us?” Jonathan gazed deeply into her eyes, his voice a husky whisper.

  She shifted Lily in her arms, hugging the child’s sweet warmth close. She loved Jonathan as no other, but so much lay tangled between them that she wasn’t sure it could ever be sorted out.

  “Thanks.” She shook her head. “But I can’t.”

  He looked at her for what felt like a lifetime, then his mouth curled in an ironic half-smile.

  “Maybe not now. But someday you will. We’ve come through too much to be apart.”

  His words took her by surprise. She leaned over quickly to tuck Lily into her car seat, trying to hide sudden tears. Jonathan was right—they had come through too much to be apart, but they’d also come through too much to stay together. For her, the best thing to do seemed to simply say farewell, and hope that all their wounds grew less tender with time. As she buckled Lily’s seat belt, she whispered in her ear, “Take care of your edoda, Lily. He’s mighty special.”

  With Lily secured, she wiped her eyes and straightened up. Jonathan was still looking at her, pointedly.

  “I’m going to get you back, Koga,” he said, closing Lily’s door with finality. “I promise you that.”

  She wanted to tell him that no, he really needed to find someone else, but she couldn’t make the words leave her mouth. Instead she just watched in silence as he walked around the front of the truck, got in, and started the engine. “Be careful” was the best thing she could finally come up with. “Take good care of Lily!”

  He gave her that odd half-smile again, then drove slowly out of the driveway. With a plume of white smoke sputtering from the exhaust he turned right and disappeared down the road that would take him first to the interstate, then to the mountains, finally to the rambling country store beside the Little Tennessee River. There a new little Cherokee girl would spend her rainy days playing on the porch, and her starry nights watching Orion rise above the mountains in the eastern sky.

  “Dodadagohuhee, Lily,” she whispered. “Grow up as smart as your mother and as brave as your dad.”

  “Hey.”

  She jumped, unaware that Gabe had walked up beside her.

  “I can catch him, you know. It’s not too late to revise your travel plans.”

  She turned and looked up at the new man she’d grown to love. “Don’t even think about it,” she said, lifting her hand to stroke his cheek. “I was just saying goodbye to my oldest friend.”

  “You sure?” His deep blue eyes asked the unvoiced question. “Lima’s pretty far away. I sure don’t want to take you if you don’t want to go.”

  “I want very much to go,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. Though his kiss was different from Jonathan’s, it elicited an equally compelling tingle deep inside her. “And I very much want you.”

  They s
tood there for a long time, then she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the camper. “Now come on. You promised me a Peruvian Christmas—sixty-five degrees, sunny, with the smell of jasmine in the air.”

  “You got it,” he said, laughing. Suddenly he stopped. “Oops, I almost forgot. I brought you these.”

  He reached under his poncho and pulled out two bright blue sweet-potato looking things with a line of holes punched along the top.

  “What are they?” asked Mary.

  “Ocarinas—the national instrument of Peru. I figured we could learn to play them on the way down.”

  “You do realize that I’ve never played a duet with anybody in my life?” she asked as they walked to the camper together.

  “Neither have I.” He smiled, pulling her close.

  “That should make it interesting.”