The Deep Wood (Sunshine Walkingstick Book 2)

by Celia Roman

  Was it sweet to redirect a minor deity’s attention away from me onto a kind, unsuspecting schoolmarm? Probably not, but I couldn’t rightly tell her that, now could I?

  We chatted a while more about school and kids and the tourists clogging our highways, then parted ways on polite goodbyes. Riley come outta the stacks right then and lit up when our eyes met. “Hey, baby. You almost ready?”

  I waggled a thumb over my shoulder at the direction Jenny disappeared to. “Was chatting with somebody. Still gotta ferret out some books.”

  He tucked the lone book he held under his arm and offered me a broad palmed hand. “Let’s divvy it up. I’m hankering for a long drive with my best gal.”

  I shook my head, but divvy I did, giving him the books catalogued in the children’s non-fiction section.

  Which served him right for fibbing about how drunk he was last night.

  I headed off for the adult non-fiction section and scanned through the handful of books on wild animals. Not a single one discussed large cats in depth, leastwise not the cats what was native to the Southern Appalachians. I bit back my frustrations and lit off toward the circulation desk, and was caught by Riley holding three slender volumes in his hand, not one over a quarter inch thick.

  I didn’t even have to open ‘em to know they was the wrong ones for my purposes.

  Riley sighed and pressed a quick kiss to my mouth. “Sorry, baby.”

  The simple touch warmed me inside and out. I shook it off best I could and tried to act like it weren’t no big deal for a man to kiss me so casual like in public. “Not your fault. I’m gonna try to order some.”

  It took a few minutes for the clerk on duty behind the circulation desk to track down a coupla decent books on mountain cats and another few to order ‘em. Riley was back by then, having apparently refiled the books where they belonged.

  I glanced away, hiding a grin. What a Boy Scout.

  He checked out his lone book, then we hit the outdoors, ready to enjoy the first day of turkey month, and I forgot all about re-reading back issues of Foxfire Magazine for them myths.

  Glenville Lake was pretty as a picture under the strong November sun. Trees spread their leaf-shorn branches over second homes, a stark reminder of the coming winter. True to his word, Riley carried me to Slab Town Pizza and split a Duke with me. We ate our fill and near about rolled outta there, then strolled down to Grandpop’s Ice-Cream Parlor and topped ourselves off with a scoop of the good stuff each.

  As we rolled outta the parking lot onto the road leading to Cullowhee, Riley said, “We’ll bring the boat up next summer and spend a day or two on the lake.”

  I gandered at him side-eyed. That was taking an awful lot for granted, assuming I’d let him stick by me ‘til then, or that he’d want me at his side either one.

  I love you so much, baby.

  I glanced out the passenger’s side window, pretending an interest in the passing scenery what weren’t there. Naw, he couldn’ta meant it, not as liquored up as he been. That’d just been Riley being sloppy drunk and sentimental, was all, or at least too tipsy to drive. Any woman’d be a fool to set store in what a man said when he was under the influence, and Fame Carson didn’t raise no fools, Gentry aside.

  ‘Course Gentry being the way he was had more to do with his mama doing meth when she was carrying him than any native smarts, or lack thereof, on his part.

  Me and Riley spent the rest of the day together, hitting landmarks and historic sites when they appeared and otherwise having a high ol’ time. After a quick supper at his place, we headed out to Wal-Mart shopping for necessities. We hadn’t done more’n park and get out when a friendly voice called, “Hey there, Sunny.”

  Conner Robinson. I cringed and near about ducked back into the SUV. He was the preacher man at the Baptist church me and Henry attended way back when. Was him I gifted them quarters from my cussing jar, by way of leaving ‘em on the stoop of a door at the church. He was a good man, was Preacher Robinson, in spite of hailing from the city. Brung his family up and settled ‘em into the community proper like, and done his best to minister to any what needed him.

  Including, apparently, a no account half-breed like me.

  Riley come ‘round the side of the car and smiled. “Conner. How’s it going?”

  Conner murmured to his wife, swung his youngest onto a hip, and goose-stepped across the parking lot toward us between cars rolling along the asphalt. “It’s going. You ready for basketball? I hear the Rec Department’s trying to get the men’s league going again.”

  “I’m not ready to give up football yet,” Riley said, and both men grinned like dang loons.

  What was it about men and sports anyhow?

  Conner glanced at me. “Do you mind if I steal Riley away for a minute?”

  I shook my head, too relieved at not having to muster small talk to question him. “Sure. I’ll just go on in and get started.”

  Riley bent down and pecked a kiss on my cheek. “Be right there, babe.”

  I waved him away and trotted across the street, and happened to look ‘round whilst checking for cars. Riley had his wallet in one hand and a small slip of paper in t’other, and was handing the latter to the preacher. Both men wore somber countenances, like they done lost their best friends then and there, and I almost turned right back around and walked over just to see what was wrong.

  A car honked, startling me out of spying, and I turned my attention back to getting in and outta Wal-Mart without being mowed down. Weren’t none of my beeswax what them two was up to. Riley spending a night in my bed didn’t make it otherwise.

  Saturday night was social time, judging by the crowded aisles. Near about ever body was gussied up and strutting their stuff with a partner. I shook my head and turned into the paper goods aisle. Date night. Never thought I’d be part of it again, ‘specially not with Riley Treadwell at my side.

  My earlier worry reared its head and I brushed it aside. If something was wrong with Riley, he’d tell me. Or else. That’s just all there was to it. That weren’t possessiveness talking. It was friendship. Friends leaned on each other, didn’t they? And me and him was friends again after too long apart.

  A Cherokee woman pushing a buggy with a round faced toddler seated in front of her wheeled past me. I paid her no never mind. Likely, we was related in some way. About all the Eastern Band was, but seeing as how my daddy’s parents disowned him before I was born, I knowed not a single other Cherokee soul.

  “Sunshine?”

  The voice was hesitant and feminine and unfamiliar. I half turned toward it. The Cherokee woman was standing behind me, one hand gripping the buggy’s handle in between the toddler’s hands. She was about my height, but chubbier by some thirty pounds, which ain’t saying nothing. I was plum scrawny. She was maybe average weight for her height or a little less. Her long, near black hair was pulled into a ponytail and her dark eyes was the same shape as the young’un’s. They was both dressed in upscale jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts.

  An uneasy finger run down my spine. This woman was trouble. I immediately rejected the notion, reexamined it when it stuck. Not her, but something about her. I fished around a minute trying to place where the uneasy originated from and got not a blessed notion for my troubles.

  So I nodded polite like and said, “I’m Sunshine.”

  Her face broke out in a wide, friendly smile. “I thought that was you. We saw your picture in the Clayton paper not long ago. Rhapsody?”

  I swallowed down a groan. Riley talked me into going to that charity function a few weeks back so I could meet the Greenwood Five and maybe solve the problem they was having with their docks being torn up, and look how that turned out.

  “Sorry,” the woman said. She stuck a hand out to me and shook mine good. “I’m Libby Squirrel. Your grandmother and my grandmother were sisters.”

  Being the grandmother what disowned me, I reckoned. A bitter twist grabbed hold of my innards. Me and Libby was of an age. We shou
lda growed up together, shoulda knowed each other inside and out, and woulda if it weren’t for Betty Walkingstick.

  I took my hand back soon as polite was satisfied and stuck it in my back pocket where it couldn’t be persuaded into touching no more strangers. “Pleased to meetcha.”

  “Likewise.” She patted the buggy’s handle. “This is Charlie, my youngest.”

  The solemn-eyed toddler stared unblinking at me and kicked the back of his heels against the buggy. Libby tapped her hand gently against the handle and said, “Tsali,” and the kicking stopped just like that.

  Now, that was some good discipline.

  I shrugged a shoulder toward the paper towels. “Best get back to it.”

  “Me, too.”

  Not knowing what else to say, I waved and started turning back toward my own buggy.

  “Sunshine, wait.” Libby glanced at Charlie, then stepped closer to me and lowered her voice. “I was sorry to hear about your son.”

  That got my attention in a flash. How’d she knowed about Henry when the Snowbird Cherokee was so insular? I cast around for a polite response and settled on, “Thank ye kindly.”

  “It was a shame, the way he died.”

  A wad of loss slammed into me, unexpected in its vim. Hardly nobody knowed the truth about Henry’s death outside a handful of family, and them what didn’t know would never believe what’d happened.

  Libby inched closer and her next words came out in a near whisper. “Are you sure it was a pooka?”

  The blood drained outta my head and I swayed. How’d she knowed about the pooka? How could she question it?

  Riley rounded the corner behind Libby and stopped dead in his tracks. “What’s wrong, Sunny?”

  Libby glanced around at him, then hissed a quick, “Not everybody agreed with your grandmother, Sunshine. Remember that.”

  She took the buggy in hand and wheeled it and her son away, right past Riley and his all too keen stares, and I stood there like a lump, sorrow and shock so deep in my heart, my limbs froze where they was.

  Chapter Nine

  Riley got me outta Wal-Mart and into his apartment, though the hows and whats was beyond my ken or remembrance. He settled me down on his couch and pressed a cup of hot chocolate between my numb hands, and sat down beside me, one hand stroking my stick straight hair, the other helping me hold the hot chocolate.

  I was trembling from head to toe. Real careful like, I handed him the cup. “Better take this before I spill it all over your couch.”

  “Ok, baby.” He took the cup, set it on the coffee table. Cupped both my hands between his and rubbed. “What happened?”

  I blinked at him through tears and my vision blurred. “She’s my cousin. That woman in the Wal-Mart? On Daddy’s side.”

  He nodded like I made perfect sense. “She upset you.”

  “Yeah, she…”

  No, that weren’t right. She didn’t upset me so much as I was upset over her words and the remembrances her words inspired. Riley done knowed about daddy’s family. I told him when we was young’uns, back when I still believed in things like hope and love and happy ever after.

  “Did she say something?” he asked.

  “Henry,” I said, and my voice broke like my heart, into a million pieces scattered on the wind. “She asked if I knowed what killed him, if I was sure.”

  Riley swore under his breath and tugged me onto his lap, and I nestled there, somehow needing his strength more’n I ever needed anything from him. Couldn’t tell him Libby didn’t mean nothing by it. Couldn’t say she just been trying to comfort me, like he was now.

  Only, coming from a stranger, them words cut right to the bone. Nobody knowed the full truth about the pooka what killed Henry outside of close kin, not even Riley. I hadn’t told him, had I, hadn’t had a chance to spill the beans, though I was dead sure rumor’d reached him. That’s why he come to me in the first place a few weeks back. I had a real talent for killing the killers.

  He really needed to know how Henry died, didn’t he?

  I opened my mouth, full on intending to blurt out ever last horror from finding Henry’s blood splashed across the trail to tracking the pooka through the deep wood and killing it with Daddy’s bone handled hunting knife.

  His legacy twined with Mama’s murderous blood, all wound up inside me.

  My mouth snapped shut around the truth. What was I doing tainting Riley with my sins?

  I struggled to get away from him, and his arms tightened around me and he shushed me, and instead of breaking free, the gusto flooded outta me and I went limp. A harsh sob erupted outta me, like lava spewing from a volcano, and I cried all the heartache into Riley, and he sat there and shared his strength ‘til I couldn’t cry no more.

  The earth shifted under me, and I woke wrapped in Riley’s strong arms. He set me gentle as a lamb on his bed and sat down beside my feet.

  I blinked away sleep and the remnants of tears clouding my vision, and forced my eyes to focus on him. “What’re you doing?”

  “Taking care of you,” he said without looking up. “You’re sleeping here tonight.”

  An odd note tinged the words, harsh and firm and no nonsense, a tone I never heard from him before.

  I cleared my throat, wishing for all the world he’d look at me, say something, do anything to let me know what was going on in that handsome noggin of his. “I’m ok now.”

  It was mostly true. The sorrow and loss what’d drove me to sob like a baby into his shirt was muted now, and not much bigger’n normal inside me. I was groggy, sure, but that weren’t no cause for concern. A hot shower, a snack, and a good night’s rest, and I’d be right as rain.

  Riley scooted the hem of my pants up and picked at the knots tying my left boot together. “I said you’re sleeping here.”

  I waited for irritation to strike and got a whole lotta numb in its place. For the sake of my independence, I mustered up a good sound alike. “You ain’t got no right telling me what to do.”

  He glanced up then, and I near about flinched away from him, them hazel eyes of his was so hard and flat and cold. “Don’t test me, Sunshine. Not tonight.”

  I opened my mouth, about to spit something ugly back at him, and closed it when nothing come out. Hang it all, where’d my gumption run off to?

  His fingers picked up their work, trembling so slight nobody else woulda noticed ‘less he was touching ‘em. He was touching me, though, weren’t he? And his fingers’ faint vibrations feathered through my boot into my skin.

  My breath went shaky and shallow, and an awful foreboding rose within me. “What’s wrong, Riley?”

  “Nothing, baby.” He blew out a breath and his hands clutched my ankle, gripping me tight. “Maybe you should do this while I find you a t-shirt to sleep in.”

  “I’m ok,” I said, but my voice was so thin and weak, not a soul woulda believed it. “I can take care of myself.”

  His gaze rose up and clashed with mine, and fire shone where he was so distant before. “Goddamn it, Sunny. Why can’t you just let me help you for once? Why do you always have to push me away?”

  I reared back, shocked to the bone. “I weren’t—”

  He shoved himself off the bed and stared down at me, his temper a vivid ghost overshadowing his kinder self. “Get your boots off. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Riley,” I said, but he pivoted and stalked outta his bedroom, and a few seconds later the outer door to the apartment opened and near about slammed shut, leaving me alone and shaky and weary as I ever been.

  I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the bed. The world spun ‘round and pain speared into my forehead. I groaned and slapped my hands to my noggin, holding on like that’d do any good. Crying always give me the worst headache. On top of the sorrow throbbing in my chest, it was about more’n I could stand, hang it all.

  A beat passed, then two, and finally, reality settled down around me long enough for me to lean over and set to work on my bootlaces without ke
eling over onto the industrial beige carpet.

  Riley was back before I could get my boots undone, stalking through the apartment like that painter what appeared on the trail between Fame’s trailer and mine. My hands stilled on the knots and I waited for him to come into the bedroom, but his footsteps veered off into another part of the apartment. Hollow metal hit metal. A door swooshed open and closed.

  The kitchen, then. Maybe I should go after him, try to talk him outta his mood.

  I shrugged the notion off soon as it popped into my head. Riley’s temper was hot, but it never lasted long. Give him enough time and he’d come ‘round all apologetic, even when he was in the right.

  Like right now.

  I flexed stiff fingers and attacked the bootlaces again, focusing all my attention there and not on Riley banging pots and pans in the kitchen, and lost myself in the tangle they become.

  Oh, what tangled webs enmeshed me, ‘cept I hadn’t wove ‘em to deceive.

  “Sunny,” Riley said, soft like.

  My heart shot into my throat and I about jumped outta my skin. He was standing in the doorway, expression inscrutable, with his hands tucked into the back pockets of his worn jeans. I give up on the bootlaces, tried on friendly over the thready thump of my heartbeat, and managed a thin smile. “You ok?”

  Pink flooded his cheeks and he glanced away. “Didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  “Aw, Riley.” I hefted out a gusty sigh and patted the bed next to me. “Thanks for taking care of me. You know, before when I was crying like a banshee and soaking your shirt through and through.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched and he shrugged.

  I forged ahead, determined to mend the rift gaping between us. “You got time to round up that t-shirt for me?”

  His eyes snapped to mine and he blinked. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Or I could just go on home.” Not that I wanted to.

  My face twisted into a frown. No, I sure didn’t wanna be by myself tonight, alone with my thoughts and Henry’s ghost hovering over me, questioning what I thought was right when I was a-doin’ it.