Silk and Stone

by Deborah Smith

  She cast a furtive look at the others, who bit their lips and tried not to smile. Then she lifted her chin and gave Jake a slit-eyed look. “I’ll make it a Thanksgiving tradition.”

  They gathered their coats. He kissed Mother’s cheek and gave Father a quick hug, then looked in on El again. She had returned to the chair by the window, the ruby lying on the sill near her outstretched hand. “Put it away,” he called in a low voice.

  She looked at him wearily, and nodded.

  Sam woke and sat up in bed. The darkness was deep and chilly; she pulled the quilts up to the soft collar of Jake’s huge flannel shirt that she slept in. She rubbed her eyes and squinted at the digital clock on the dresser across the room. Three A.M.

  This was the first night they’d spent apart since their marriage, and she was lonely. She kept thinking of him and Bo out in the frosty November night, working their way through inky woods with only a high white moon for company. She thought of the elderly man who was lost, hoping—knowing—that Jake and Bo would find him and glad that sheriffs in distant places were calling Jake to help them. Maybe soon the sheriff in Pandora would stop fearing Aunt Alex’s opinion and ask Jake to work for him again.

  Sam slipped into a heavy terry-cloth robe she’d made for Jake and tiptoed into the front room. They’d purchased a squat-legged old couch and two matching armchairs at a salvage store; Jake had refinished the ponderous wood frames, and they’d had the pieces upholstered in a warm shade of blue. With an assortment of other lovingly refinished old furniture, the rugs Sam had woven, and a few funky lamps they’d collected from junk shops, the room had taken on a friendly, comfortable feel.

  Charlotte was asleep on the couch under a jumble of blankets, with a half-empty pan of brownies on the floor near one dangling hand. The last embers of the banked fire glowed weakly in the fireplace. Sam adjusted her sister’s blankets, then wandered around the room, trailing her fingertips over the furnishings, feeling proud and protective of her and Jake’s home.

  She headed down the hall to her workroom, thinking that weaving for a while would settle her. She loved the methodical and precise rhythm of the loom.

  But the steady wooden clacking would probably wake Charlotte. There might be a new round of brownie eating, and Sam already felt stuffed.

  Grumbling under her breath, she returned to the front room, slipped her feet into the scuffed loafers she kept there, then carefully unlatched the door and stepped onto the porch. Frost sparkled on the leaf-strewn yard and the small hollies they’d planted at the porch’s edge. The forest slept peacefully, with moonlight dappling the ground beneath the bare limbs of the trees. At the base of the knoll, Granny Raincrow’s spring reflected the pale light like a mirror.

  Sam exhaled peacefully, then took a deep, invigorating breath. And smelled smoke.

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  She ran into the yard and turned urgently, studying the fat stone chimneys. But the cooling ashes in the front room’s fireplace couldn’t produce such a vivid scent, and she hadn’t built a fire in the bedroom at all. The roof seemed fine.

  Sam swung around, scrutinizing the forest in all directions but seeing nothing unusual. Still, she smelled smoke, and the scent was growing stronger. She told herself the fire could be miles away. The wind easily channeled smoke and fog through the narrow mountain coves.

  She faced the wall of forest that separated their homesite from Hugh and Sarah’s. They might tease her about her city-bred nervousness if she woke them up, but she’d take that chance. Better to make a quick phone call and get razzed for it than to stand out there, worrying.

  She started inside, but glanced in their direction one more time.

  A boiling cloud of smoke rose above the treetops, the moonlight filtering through it. Sam raced into the house and yelled Charlotte’s name. Charlotte bolted upright. Sam grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her awake. “There’s a fire at Hugh and Sarah’s! Call them, then call the fire department! I’m going over to the house!”

  Charlotte lurched off the couch, hands splayed. Sam pushed her toward the phone on a lamp table, then ran out the front door. To her horror, a tongue of orange flame curled above the trees. She raced down the path into the woods, stumbling on roots, clawing the whip-thin branches that sliced at her, leaving one of her shoes behind and kicking the other off so she could run faster.

  Smoke met her, billowing through the forest, acrid, flecked with glowing bits of debris, a hot cloud that choked her and stung her face. Sam covered her nose and staggered, panting, into the yard. The roar of the fire filled her ears; there were sharp popping sounds as the aged logs surrendered. The sight of the house—engulfed in a sheet of flames, smoke belching from the upstairs windows—wrung a guttural scream of horror from her.

  They must have gotten out. Her mind refused to believe that Sarah, Hugh, and Ellie were inside the inferno. She staggered forward, her arms shielding her face. A suffocating wall of heat drove her back. She punched the air. Screaming their names, she circled the house, falling over the stone edge of Sarah’s flower beds, crawling, shoving herself up again.

  They must be here somewhere. They must have gotten out. Oh, Jake. We can’t lose them. I won’t let them die. She stumbled through a hedge of evergreen shrubs along the backyard, then fell to her knees beside a spigot and a coiled hose. Sam wrenched the spigot’s handle and dug her hands into the hose, grabbing the free end triumphantly. She lunged to her feet and pointed it at the rear porch. Flames burst under the roof, and the roof collapsed with sickening metallic shrieks as sheets of tin ripped from the rafters.

  Sam heard her own shrieks of fury and despair. Not a drop of water came from the hose. She shook it, cursed it violently, then realized with galling defeat that the well pump ran off electricity from the house.

  The upstairs roof caved in, and shards of burning wood rained down on her. Sam covered her head and stumbled back, coughing, blinded by smoke. She fell again and crawled until the air cooled and she could breathe. Rolling onto her hands and knees, she stared at the house and beat the ground with one fist.

  “Sammie!” Charlotte collapsed beside her, shaking her. “They didn’t answer the phone! Where are they?”

  “Inside. Oh, Jake, Jake. I can’t get them out!”

  Charlotte clung to her, sobbing wildly. Sam sank back on her heels and rocked, one hand latched in Charlotte’s nightgown, the other clawing at the silent scream in her own throat.

  Somewhere in the distance the high, thin wails of sirens began.

  Jake fell against a sheriff’s car, his knees buckling. He was covered in sweat, weighed down by a horror he couldn’t comprehend. The glare from portable floods and the headlights of a dozen police and emergency vehicles pierced his dazed vision.

  Someone clamped a hand on his shoulder. There were people around him, talking loudly. He’d burst from the woods at a run with Bo galloping beside him. “What’s wrong with you, son?” Jake braced his arms on the car’s hood and stared into a deputy’s florid, worried face. “Found him,” Jake said, shuddering. “He’s all right. Left him asleep beside a creek. About a mile back.” He gasped. A band of unfathomable terror squeezed his chest. He knew only that something was wrong, something terrible that had closed in on him as he stopped to let the bewildered, exhausted old man lie down to rest. He had to get home.

  “I need a phone,” he said loudly, pushing himself away from the car, swaying. “Goddammit, give me a phone.”

  “All right, son, whatever your problem is, come on. We got a mobile unit.”

  Jake was dimly aware of the hustle of startled men around him, of pushing ahead of the deputy, of lunging inside a van and grabbing the phone someone held out to him. He called Samantha first. He shook the receiver as if it were lying to him as he listened to their phone ring repeatedly with no answer. Neither Sam nor Charlotte could sleep through so much. He choked back the bile rising in his throat and called his folks’ house next.

  That line was
silent. Jake fought an urge to slam the receiver against the van’s floor. “What is it, son?” the deputy asked. Jake barely heard him. He knew the number at the sheriff’s office in Pandora, had memorized it years ago, when he began tracking for the department. His fingers shaking, he punched it into a console. The moment the dispatcher’s familiar voice answered, he said, “Get somebody down to the Raincrow place. Now.”

  “Jake? Is that you?” The woman’s maternal voice was a moan of tearful recognition. “Yes. Send somebody down there. I can’t explain. You’ve got to—”

  “They’ve already gone. Everybody’s gone down there. Oh, hon, get here as fast as you can. I don’t know how bad things are yet. But there’s a fire.”

  Jake dropped the phone and lunged out of the van. He ran to his car, not daring to think about anything. Bo leapt ahead of him as he slung the door open.

  Samantha was all right. He could feel that much, that certainty.

  But the rest was a terrifying blank.

  This was how hell looked. How it smelled, and tasted, and sounded. Fire trucks and ambulances. Police cruisers. Pickup trucks and cars. Plumes of water shooting from hoses into the hissing, smoldering ruins of the house. The glare of headlights and huge portable lamps. People hurrying around in no apparent order, shouting at one another. Strangers everywhere—no, some of them were people she knew, friends of the family—but when they tried to hug her or talk to her, she stared back at them without responding. She couldn’t take her eyes off the house. The roof had caved in, flattening the upstairs bedrooms. The upper walls had collapsed inward, and the wide roof of the front porch tilted crazily to one side. The windows of the bottom level had shattered, and smoke boiled out of them.

  The front door was still shut. Smoke curled around its edges, outlining it in obscene detail, as if taunting her to open the door and find what waited inside.

  Which she could not think about anymore. Not if she wanted to keep her sanity. Sam knew she was covered in soot and dirt, that embers had burned holes in her robe, that her bare feet were bleeding. But shock had taken over—a surreal and emotionless stupor that let her stand on the edge of the chaos, dry-eyed and unflinching. A paramedic had placed blankets around her and Charlotte’s shoulders; Charlotte sat at her feet, staring blankly into space.

  Only one dread could penetrate the haze in Sam’s mind. The thought of Jake coming home to this.

  Sam stiffened as several firemen approached the porch gingerly, pulling shields over their faces, their axes raised. The blanket slid, unheeded, from her shoulders. Please, let this only be a nightmare. Please let the house be empty. Please let me wake up. Please don’t do this to Jake.

  “They went somewhere.” She heard Charlotte’s voice, hollow and pleading. “They got up and drove to the all-night diner in Owessa. Sure. We did that two or three times. To get waffles. Sarah says it’s an adventure to eat when everybody else is asleep.”

  Sam fought an urge to scream. The cars are still parked in the barn. I checked. “Yes, I bet that’s where they are. Eating waffles.” She shuffled forward. Charlotte grabbed the bottom of her robe. “Where are you—don’t go. I’m telling you, they’re eating waffles.” Her voice broke. “Don’t go over there, Sammie.”

  The firemen ducked under the lopsided porch roof. One of them swung his ax at the door. The heavy old wood refused to give. He slammed the ax into it again. The sound nearly shattered Sam’s control. The door swung inward. The firemen disappeared into the house.

  Sam distractedly pulled her robe away from Charlotte’s anxious grip, then put a hand on her sister’s bowed head. A group of women converged on them, tugging at Sam’s arms, urging her to stay put. Sam shrugged them off. “I’ll be back in a minute. Stay with my sister, please.”

  “Oh, Sammie,” Charlotte moaned.

  Sam walked toward the house slowly, bumping against the fenders of closely parked vehicles, her gaze riveted to the open door. She edged past a crowd of men in the yard, who were watching and waiting so intently, they didn’t notice her. Sam halted near the firemen controlling the hoses. There was now nothing to block her view.

  She was a dreamcatcher. The weave of her web was unbreakable. She would catch this nightmare before it reached Jake, and when dawn came, the sunlight would whisk it away.

  The first fireman backed out the door, his movements labored. Sam hunched over, desperate to see under the sunken porch roof and know what heavy weight he pulled.

  He dragged his burden by its blackened arm.

  “Keep her away,” Sam yelled. Her voice was a raw groan. She huddled on the ground beside the three bodies and slung her hands fiercely. People had stopped trying to lift her up. “Keep my sister away from this! I don’t want her to see them this way!”

  Sam hugged herself and rocked slowly, forcing herself to look, wishing she were blind. She had to see what Jake would see, as if she could make it easier for him by knowing first.

  Each second left its brutal mark.

  I can tell them apart.

  They’re still wearing their bed clothes.

  They didn’t burn.

  They suffocated in the smoke.

  They choked to death in the heat and the smoke.

  “For God’s sake, get the sheets over them,” someone ordered. The sheriff spoke close to her ear gently. “It’s not your sister we’re worried about. The women got a hold on her. You come on now. Get up.”

  “No.”

  “Jake’s here,” someone said loudly.

  Sam lurched to her feet and pushed through the crowd, searching the confusion of vehicles and people for him. He appeared from behind an ambulance, dodging everything in his path with the frantic grace of an athlete. When he saw her, the stark agony in his face tore her apart.

  Sam threw herself at him, making incoherent sounds of pain and comfort. She wanted to hold him back. He gripped her around the waist and carried her with him, lodged against his side. People leapt out of their way. Sam put her arms around him and held him with all her strength.

  A terrible raw shout of despair came from him when he saw the bodies. He and Sam sank to the ground together. She wound her arms around his neck, trying to shield him, trying to hold him so close, his pain would flow into her.

  His hands convulsed in the back of her robe, and he shuddered against her. Like everything else about him, his grief was a private torture only she could share.

  Crying, Sam pressed her cheek against his hair. Nothing she could say would reach him. We’ll get through this somehow. I love you. I love you. We can survive anything together. We always have.

  Clara Big Stick’s misgivings suddenly loomed in her mind, blacking out everything else, making her retch helplessly against Jake’s shoulder.

  What if Clara’s original warnings were true? No, I don’t believe, I never seriously believed …

  She and Jake couldn’t have brought this on his family.

  The funeral director was a short, puffy woman who looked as if she’d learned to do her own makeup by practicing on corpses. Talkative and eager to please, she led Alexandra down a somber hall. Their footsteps made no sound on the deep beige carpet. They were alone—except for the dead, and the dead couldn’t listen.

  “Mrs. Lomax, it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” the director said. “That young man and your niece coming in here to see his loved ones before the coffins were closed. They stayed long past our visiting hours, and I finally peeked in on them to say I really must lock up for the night. Your poor niece had to beg him to leave. He said something very strange, something about witches stealing from the bodies, and she looked absolutely heartbroken.”

  “Witches are an old Cherokee superstition,” Alexandra explained, giving the woman a meaningful glance that dismissed such things.

  The director nodded sadly. Then, leaning closer as they walked, she whispered, “I checked the caskets after he and your niece left. He’d put all sorts of little mementoes in each one. It is so tragic.”


  “I appreciate you opening the house a little early today so I can pay my respects in privacy.” The director seemed pleased to be commended. She led Alexandra to a half-shut door. Alexandra smiled sadly at her. “I won’t be long.” With that she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Draperies shut out the morning light. An amazing number of flower arrangements crowded the spaces between the caskets, which were positioned along three of the walls. A subdued chandelier cast the elegantly simple room in soft shades of light.

  Alexandra stood in the center a moment, stunned at the triumph she’d accomplished by merely waiting until circumstances favored her. There was no doubt in her mind that Malcolm Drury had started the fire. Jake had paid for his interference in her life. And most perfect of all, she was guilty of nothing but letting his foolishness follow its own course.

  She went around the room, studying the cards on each flower arrangement and making a mental list of the people who had sent their condolences. She wanted to know who thought highly of the Raincrows. There was an astonishing variety. The tribal council at the reservation’s offices at Qualla. The agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Abraham Dreyfus, the respected lawyer from Durham, who had done considerable amounts of legal work for the tribe, a man she and Orrin considered an arrogant Jew. All the physicians in Pandora who’d insisted to her over the years that they considered Hugh Raincrow a laughable country doctor. The mayor. The sheriff. The woman who chaired the arts league Alexandra had created and still generously supported. The dean of Ellie’s medical school. Sheriffs from all over western North Carolina and the states bordering it.

  And, most irritating of all, flowers from several of Alexandra’s closest friends, women who inhabited the fine homes around town, women who stupidly assumed Alexandra had not heard how they’d purchased Samantha’s weaving and avidly placed orders for more.

  Ungrateful fools. The Raincrows didn’t deserve this homage. It was she who’d turned Pandora from a sleepy nothing of a town into the beautiful, interesting place they loved. She who’d endured Sarah’s bitterness, she who’d lost the treasure that proclaimed her place in the Vanderveer legacy.