River snorted. Jasper looked amused, too, but hid it better.
“And I haven’t come back to you,” Raven said. “I’m only visiting. I’m going to live in Washington at my house.”
Aunt Sondra said, “Raven—”
“Let’s not discuss this now,” Jonah interrupted. “I’d like to show Raven around.”
Jonah took Raven all through the house. Jasper joined while the others sat in the living room.
Upstairs, Jonah took her in a room with a huge TV on the wall. “This was the nursery. First for the boys, then for you.”
“It used to be light blue,” Jasper said, “with birds and wildflowers on the walls. And clouds on the ceiling. Our mother painted them.”
Raven couldn’t imagine she’d ever been in that room. Or in the house at all. She didn’t like its style. It felt too sterile and fancy, very unlike the natural-wood spaces of her log home. And the views out the windows were of lawns, houses, and a road. She wouldn’t want to live in a home that didn’t look upon woods and fields.
They went back to the living room, and Raven sat on the couch with her aunt. The others faced them.
“Your aunt tells me you do very well in school,” Jonah said, trying to fill the awkward silence.
“I won’t if I don’t get back to my classes soon,” Raven said.
Again, both boys smiled, River’s grin more open than his brother’s.
“We’ll work that out,” Aunt Sondra said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What year are you in?” Jasper asked.
“Sophomore,” she said.
“What’s your favorite subject?”
Did he really care, or was it filler talk?
“I like English and biology,” she said.
He nodded. “I go to Cornell, where our mom and dad met. I’m premed majoring in biology.”
Raven had nothing to say, and the uneasy silence returned.
“I guess it’s my turn,” River said. “I’m a community college dropout majoring in . . .” He winked at Raven and held up his glass as if to toast.
“River!” his father said crossly.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“This is a special occasion that requires a drink. I mean, how often do you meet your long-lost abducted sister?”
He was drunk. Raven was quite sure he was stoned on pot or pills, too. She’d seen that look at her school often enough.
“Do you attend church?” Gram Bauhammer asked Raven.
Raven shook her head.
“Did the woman who took you—”
“Audrey followed no particular faith,” Aunt Sondra interjected.
“I remember that about your parents,” Gram Bauhammer said. “They abandoned their faith, and that led to their divorce.”
Aunt Sondra looked livid about her apparent criticism of her parents, but she kept her composure. “Not true,” she said. “It was only my mother who left our church.”
“She dabbled in Eastern religions, didn’t she? That had to be confusing for you and your sister.”
“Not for me,” Aunt Sondra said, “but it might have been for Audrey.”
“That explains everything,” River said. “No wonder she abducted someone else’s baby.”
“I was not abducted,” Raven said.
He looked both amused and angry. “You weren’t hers, she took you, and she ran away with you. I think that’s officially called abduction.”
“I was hers,” Raven said.
River drained his glass. “You have a bad case of Stockholm there, sis.”
“I’m very sorry,” Jonah said to Aunt Sondra and Raven. “My son is having some problems.”
River rose out of his seat with a stagger. “I am. My glass seems to have gone dry.”
“Jasper . . . ,” Jonah said, nodding at River.
Jasper took his brother’s arm.
“And away we go,” River said as his brother led him out of the room.
“I believe dinner is ready,” Jonah said. “Please come into the dining room.”
Two women wearing uniforms came out of the kitchen to serve them. Beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Gram Bauhammer said a prayer, most of it gratitude to her god for “returning Viola to the love and guidance of her true family.”
Raven wanted to throw her plate of food at the woman.
River and Jasper came back. “I apologize for my rude behavior,” River said to Raven.
He and his brother sat across from her and Aunt Sondra. Jasper was brought a completely different dinner. From what Raven could tell, he was vegan. He even looked a little like Jackie. Raven looked down at her food to stop her urge to cry.
Jonah and Jasper attempted to keep a conversation going. They mostly talked about what Jasper was doing at college. Gram Bauhammer inserted her strong opinions throughout. She told Aunt Sondra, “River would be in school with his brother if they didn’t give scholarships to people who have no right to be in an Ivy League school.”
“I have no right or desire to be at Cornell,” River said. “You’ll remember, I didn’t apply.”
“Only because you knew they would give preference to all those—”
“Mom, please keep those opinions to yourself,” Jonah said sharply.
Gram Bauhammer cast a sour look at her son but said no more.
Raven had no stomach for the food or the strange family seated around her. She ate just enough to be polite and kept quiet.
As dessert was served, Jonah asked, “Raven, is there anything you’d like to ask us?”
She wanted to ask them why they were forcing themselves on her. She wanted to ask if she could leave and never see them again. But she was curious about one topic all but Jasper had avoided: the woman who looked like her, the one who had painted birds and flowers on the nursery walls. “I would like to know about Ellis,” she said.
“Also known as your mother,” River muttered.
“We’ve been out of contact with her for a long time,” Jonah said.
“Since not long after you were abducted,” River said pointedly. He stared at her, expecting her to challenge the word abducted.
She had no interest in playing games with the drunken attention-seeker. “Where does she live?” she asked.
Jonah looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”
River snickered, and his father aimed a dark look at him.
Their exchange implied that Jonah did know. She wondered why he’d lie.
Raven was relieved when the dinner ended. She whispered to her aunt that she wanted to leave. Sondra drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, that familiar sign of an impending fight. “Come sit with us in the living room,” her aunt said.
Raven went but refused to sit.
“The situation is this . . . ,” her aunt said. “I have to get back to my work and family in Chicago, and you have nowhere to live but here. At least for the time being.”
“I have a house in Washington! I’m not staying here!”
“You don’t own that house yet. It belongs to my sister until I can prove she’s deceased.”
“Ms. Danner will be my guardian. I’ll live at her house.”
“Neither she nor a judge would agree to that when you have a legal guardian. Your father is here for you, Raven. He’s here to help and guide you.”
Raven looked at Jonah. His smile came off too weak to inspire confidence.
“This is your family,” her aunt said. “You need time to get to know them.”
Raven had a desperate feeling she knew well, her raven spirit wanting to fly away. But then she remembered she had no raven spirit. She felt as she had in the hotel bed, cold and sick and empty.
“Jonah has talked to a psychologist who will help you get accustomed to your new home,” Aunt Sondra said.
“You’re leaving me here?” Raven said. “You lied to me at the hotel?”
“You have a family that’s been missing you for sixteen yea
rs, and you have nowhere else to go. This is a reality I can’t change.”
“I’m never going back to Washington?”
“You’ll go back, but I don’t know when. I’ll have anything you want sent over. I promise the movers will be careful with your belongings.”
She didn’t want to cry in front of them, but she couldn’t hold it back. “This is why she didn’t like you, isn’t it? You lied to her and bullied her and never did what she wanted. No wonder she didn’t trust you!”
She saw guilt glaze her aunt’s eyes.
“I bet you’re lying about leaving her body where she wanted it. I bet you already had police look for it!”
“I haven’t,” her aunt said.
“Not yet. But you’ll do it when you go back there. You’ll leave me here and ignore everything she asked in her letter. She wanted me to live there. With her spirit. She wanted me to have a guardian and stay on that land.”
Her aunt looked at Jonah, pleading for help.
“Raven,” he said, “what Audrey Lind wanted for you is based on a lie. She took you from us. All these years, you were supposed to be here.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t!” Raven said. “Who would want to live in this family?”
“Ha!” River said, holding up his glass to toast her.
Everyone ignored him.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it here,” Jonah said. “That’s completely understandable when you’re used to another way of living. But I can tell you’re a strong person who will get through this rough time. Your aunt knows that, too. The psychologist you’ll see is very good. What you’ve been through is her specialty.”
“What I’ve been through? What I’ve been through is my life. You’re trying to take away my whole life!”
He and Aunt Sondra had no reply. Raven could see by the grim looks on their faces that they would not allow her to return to Washington. But she couldn’t live with these odd people in this ugly house in the suburbs.
She turned to River. “Where is Ellis?”
He glanced at his father but said nothing.
“I know you know where she is. Tell me.”
Jonah said, “When she left, she made me sign a legal document that said I wouldn’t try to find her or contact her.”
“Why?” Raven asked.
“Because she was a very disturbed person,” Gram Bauhammer said. “She left you in a parking lot—that was why you were stolen. Has anyone told you that yet? Then she left her sons and never spoke to them again. Believe me when I say you want nothing to do with that woman.”
Jasper and River looked upset by her harsh words.
“Ellis Rosa Abbey lives in Florida,” River said abruptly. “She owns a business called Wild Wood Natives.”
“How do you know that?” Jonah asked.
“Well, Dad, it’s this thing called the internet.” He laughed at his father’s fury. “What, are you pissed that I found out for free? How much did you spend on private detectives to find her?”
“You knew where Mom was and never told me?” Jasper said.
“Dude, internet,” River said.
“I didn’t know her name to look her up,” Jasper said.
“And why is that?” River said. “Why didn’t we even know her name? Why did I have to dig through Dad’s papers in secret to find it? What bullshit is that?”
“She specified that she didn’t want contact,” Jonah said. “I was honoring her wishes.”
“But you knew?” Jasper asked his father. “Even those times I asked?”
Jonah looked haggard. “I didn’t at first. She completely disappeared for a long time. As River says, I had a private detective try to find her. Because I was afraid for her. You may not remember how she was when she left . . .”
“I do, and good riddance,” Gram Bauhammer muttered.
“Enough, Mom!” Jonah said. He said to Jasper, “When she bought property and started a business, she showed up in public records again.”
Raven didn’t like the constant tension and anger she felt in these people. She couldn’t live with them. And she had no interest in being with Aunt Sondra, who had caused so much pain in Mama’s life. Her only hope for an acceptable living situation was Ellis. A slim hope but better than none.
“I want to talk to Ellis,” Raven said.
“I can’t contact her to arrange that,” Jonah said. “Though I’m bound by my agreement to leave her alone, I’ve tried in recent years. I have a financial matter to discuss with her. But she has no email and doesn’t answer calls to the phone listed for her business. I tried sending something through the mail and never heard back.”
“How can she run a business without answering calls?” River asked.
“She must filter the calls, only answer the numbers she knows.”
“She’d lose customers if she did that,” River said.
“Your mother has never followed the usual rules of society.”
Raven was intrigued by this woman who’d divorced her family and society as Mama had. “Do you know her address?” she asked.
“There’s a business address for the plant nursery,” Jonah said.
“Then we can go there,” Raven said to her aunt.
“This doesn’t sound promising,” her aunt said. “She clearly wants no contact with her family.”
“I don’t care. I’m going.”
“And you expect me to take you?”
“If you don’t, I’ll get there on my own. I’m not staying here.”
“I’ll drive you down there,” River said.
“You will not!” his father said.
Raven sensed River had only been trying to stir trouble, but Aunt Sondra glanced at him uneasily. “I’ll take you,” she said. “But only if you promise to stay with your family after you’ve met her.”
Another promise that felt like being trapped in a cage. Just like Mama. Maybe she had learned to force promises on people from her elder sister.
“Do you promise?” Aunt Sondra said.
“I promise.”
2
ELLIS
Ellis helped Tom load the last of the potted Fakahatchee grasses into his truck. She stood back and surveyed the thicket of native plants in the dark cavern of the truck interior. She would send many more trees, shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers with Tom and his landscaping crew in coming months. The plants were going to a new upscale subdivision, the largest order Wild Wood Natives had ever filled.
“Thanks for the help,” Tom said.
“Of course,” Ellis said.
“Damn, it’s hot,” he said. “More like August than April.” He lifted the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe his face, exposing his muscular stomach and chest.
Ellis turned away, filled a cup from his big thermos of cold water. She gulped the water so fast, it ran down her chin onto her sweaty T-shirt.
“I like a woman who knows how to drink.”
“Seems I don’t,” she said, wiping her chin.
He gestured at something behind her. “The ranger has perfect timing.”
Keith was walking over from the house, still in his uniform. Quercus III plodded behind him, tongue hanging.
“I came over to help,” Keith said.
“Too late,” Tom said. “Ellis does the work of two of my crew in half the time.”
Keith wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her.
Tom closed the truck and pulled out.
“Truthfully, I came over to kick his butt out of here,” Keith said, watching the truck turn out of the nursery.
Ellis snorted.
“Don’t say I’m imagining it. His flirting is too obvious.”
He wasn’t imagining it. But Ellis knew how to handle Tom.
“He’s a friendly guy,” she said.
“Too friendly.” Keith pulled her tight against his body. “And I can see why. You look damn sexy when you’re covered in dirt and sweat.”
She pressed harder against him. “I think you shoul
d come home from work early more often.”
“Do we have time?”
“There’s always time.”
She led him into the nearest trees, slid down her shorts and panties, and leaned her chest against a big live oak.
“Jesus, Ellis. How do you still do this to me?”
“Do what?”
She heard him quickly unbuckling his belt behind her. “You know what, Witch.”
She smiled. Even after all these years, he still sometimes called her Witch.
Quercus paced around them barking, as if he thought their lovemaking was a game.
“Remind me to lock the dog in the house next time we do this,” Keith said afterward.
“That might ruin the spontaneity,” she said.
They walked hand in hand to the house. Inside, Keith gave her a few pieces of mail. There was a card from Dani. More pictures of her baby.
Keith picked up the photos. “Wow, she’s adorable, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Ellis said.
He put the photos on the refrigerator with the other babies and kids. There were a lot of them now, his nephew and two nieces at all ages, years of Christmas card photos of friends’ children, and ten months of Dani’s baby. Ellis would rather have a clean refrigerator, but she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it; he enjoyed the ritual.
While she showered, Keith changed into shorts and a T-shirt.
They put Quercus in the house and locked the door.
They sat in the old SUV they were trading for a new full-size pickup. She hoped the old car made it to the dealer. Keith had kept it running far beyond the usual mileage, but now it was definitely in its last throes.
“Excited?” he asked.
“You know I’m not one to get excited about cars.”
“It’s difficult to get rid of it, isn’t it?”
She ran her hands over the faded, sticky steering wheel. “Yeah, it’s been all over the mountains with me.”
“And your husband gave it to you. That must matter.”
“It was part of the divorce settlement. Not exactly sentimental circumstances.” She started the motor and drove down the lane to avoid the conversation.
Keith had left the gate open when he came in. They’d gotten lazy about that because Quercus III didn’t roam like his predecessors. As they arrived at the gate, a car was turning into the lane.
The Light Through the Leaves Page 29
