by Celia Roman
The rest of the week passed much the same. I spent the bulk of my forced vacation either reading up on Cherokee history and lore or fairies and other critters.
If the runt’d just talk to us, it’d be so much easier to figure out what it was, but no. The dadgum thing sulled up when Riley weren’t around and wouldn’t so much as blink at me.
‘Course, that mighta been ‘cause Riley treated it about like a new pup, trying different foods on it, refilling its water bottle, and talking to it in a singsong voice like it was a newborn babe.
Come to think on it, it mighta been. It was kindly a runty little critter.
Riley claimed the fairy book for himself. Said he’d be the one to finish it, thank you very much, and I should stick to the other books on the subject, which I had in plenty. Not a one shed an inch of light on what the critter might be, but that didn’t stop me nor him from trying.
Meantime, the downtime was driving me batty. Well, battier anyhow. Three days after Doc told me to take it easy, I sat down and writ a long letter to Mama, describing ever blasted thing what’d happened since my last visit in September.
Woulda gone to visit, but Riley hid my car keys, dang his ever loving hide.
I ended the letter with a plea for information on Daddy’s side of the family, stuck it in the mailbox down the drive in a rare moment when nobody was hovering over me, and snuck back into the trailer feeling guiltier than a cat burglar climbing out a window with a sack of loot thrown over his shoulder.
And weren’t that a fine how-de-do?
That night, Riley dropped by right after he got off work, still dressed in his DNR polo and trousers, minus the ball cap usually covering his noggin. He come in, carry bag in hand, and plopped down beside me on the couch. “Hey, baby. How was your day?”
The question rankled, not least because he knowed I was stuck here doing not a blasted thing. “Why you got that bag?”
“Change of clothes.” He slumped lower on the couch and rested his head against the back, eyes closed. “Thought we’d go to the movies in Franklin.”
“You ever think on asking me before you go making plans?”
He sighed and rubbed both hands over his face. “Christ, Sunny. Give me a minute before you light into me.”
I sucked in my restless anger, spilt it out on a long exhale. He was right. Weren’t his fault Old Mother’d knocked me out cold, and he deserved better’n receiving the blunt end of my frustration, ‘specially after a hard day drudging in the coal mines.
So to speak.
I mustered up a contrite tone. “Long day?”
“Long enough.”
“Want me to rub your shoulders or something?”
A sly grin stretched his mouth wide and he peeked at me outta the corners of his eyes. “Or something.”
I snickered and smacked the backs of my fingers against his arm, playful like. “Oh, go on with you, Riley Treadwell.”
“You offered.” He rolled his head along the back of the couch, relaxing into it, then went still as a predator spotting prey. “What the hell, Sunny? You’re supposed to be resting, not doing home repairs.”
“I been resting,” I said, indignant like. “So hard, I about wore a hole in this ol’ couch.”
“Then what is that.”
He pointed straight up. I followed his arm toward the ceiling and blinked at the sparkling white section where a water stain once lived.
“Are you saying you didn’t fix that?” he asked, and I fumed under the accusatory tone.
“You didn’t believe me the first time I said so, and I ain’t saying it again.”
He sat there stone faced and silent. After a minute, his muscles relaxed and he clapped a hand over my knee. “Ok. I know you didn’t hire somebody to do it.”
Not if I could fix it myself, and I probably could, if I put my mind to it.
“So what happened to the ceiling?” he continued. “Water stains don’t disappear overnight.”
“No idea,” I said, and immediately regretted the snap in my voice. I let the last of my temper go and tried again. “Maybe Teus decided to finish the decorating job.”
Riley glanced at me again, a wry smile sparkling in them hazel eyes. “Naw, baby. He would’ve painted it blue, maybe glued some starfish up there or something.”
I laughed like he intended me to, and spent the rest of the evening making sure not another crosswise word passed between us.
Chapter Fourteen
Having so much down time weren’t all bad. For one, I caught up on a lotta reading otherwise neglected thanks to an innate need to do. For another, Riley was a near constant presence, even more’n he was after that catfish near about et me. We had fun, me and him, and I enjoyed dang near ever second we spent together, ‘specially the smooching. Lordy, did that boy know how to kiss.
But he weren’t around all the time and a body could only stand so much of the written word. In between, my mind settled on the oddest notions. Couldn’t get Libby Squirrel’s words outta my head. Over and over again, I heard her saying as how maybe it weren’t a pooka what killed my boy. She implied it, leastwise, and weren’t that the same thing?
Did she have a-hold of some fact I weren’t privy to? Didn’t I owe it to Henry, God rest him, to find out?
I wanted to sit down across from her and ask her to spell it out, beg her, threaten if I had to, and I woulda if I coulda found where Riley hid my keys.
Monday morning when I woke, I stumbled into the kitchen searching for coffee and nigh on fell right into the table. The legs was straight as sticks, the top was a geometric mosaic matching the carpet, and the whole was shiny as new.
I snagged my phone and called Riley.
“Sunny?” he mumbled.
I glanced at the time on my phone and winced. Six a.m. Riley didn’t crawl outta bed for another hour on work mornings, and danged if a little niggle of guilt didn’t worm its way into my gut, deflating my early bird curiosity.
I gritted my teeth and plowed ahead. Some things needed to be sorted, and since he was on the phone, now was as good a time as any. “What’d you do to my table?”
“Huh, what?” he slurred, and my guilt sank bone deep. Poor feller. I shoulda checked the dadgum time before calling him.
“The kitchen table,” I said, enunciating ever syllable. “You have it fixed or something?”
He groaned and something thumped against his pillow, sounded like. “You woke me up because of a table?”
“Well, it’s all blue and green like the carpet.”
“Teus,” Riley said. “Go back to bed.”
“But what about my table?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Riley? You there?”
Still nothing.
I lifted the phone away from my ear and checked the screen, and scowled at the red call ended strip running across the lower third. Why, that no good hound dog’d hung up on me.
Never mind that I woke him up an hour before he needed to rise and shine. What kinda boyfriend hung up on his woman?
I pulled out a kitchen chair and flopped into it, and glared at the critter sitting all innocent like in his cage across the room on my desk. “Well?” I asked it. “What would you’ve done?”
He didn’t say nothing neither. ‘Course, he didn’t have to. I shoulda called Teus right off when I seen that color scheme. Don’t know why I bothered Riley instead.
I ignored the pure plum golly whopper that was and scrolled through my phone contacts. Before I could punch a single one in, the world went kindly wonky and colorful, like I was inside a kaleidoscope.
Next thing I knowed, I was surrounded by an ocean of aqua sheets and gawking at the glass wall in front of me. A school of fish swam by, skimming the swaying tops of lake weed, barely visible in the murky water.
Holy Moses. I was inside an underwater house.
A warm hand stroked down my back and a slightly accented male voice said, “You called?”
My eyelids drifted closed. Teus
. Lordy, but that boy was gonna be the death of me.
“Couldn’t you just come see me like a normal person?” I snapped.
His laugh was soft and husky and sensual. “And miss having you in my bed?”
I glanced around and about kicked myself for being blind as a bat. Yup, I was in bed all right, and there he was laid out like a present waiting to be opened. Dang his sorry hide. Had he set this whole thing up ahead of time?
A door on my left swung open, an ordinary wooden door sporting an expensive brass doorknob. In walked a middle aged woman carrying a tray. She was short and a mite dumpy under her jeans and hand knit sweater, but what drawed my eye was the teeniny tattoo on her neck, an inch below her right ear.
I scooted around on the bed and glared at Teus, him what was nekkid and barely covered by the sheet. “How come she got a tiny mark and I got a big’un?”
He tucked a hand behind that handsome head of his and grinned. “Your situation required something…unique.”
“Unique my foot,” I sputtered out.
“Indeed.” His hand lashed out lickety split and snagged mine, and down I went with one pull, sprawling on top of him.
The woman set the tray down on the nightstand next to the bed, her expression serene and smooth like nothing outta the ordinary was going on.
Which kindly begged the question: How many women did Teus bring to his bed anyhow?
“Enough for two, as requested,” she said.
“Whaddaya mean, as requested?” I demanded, and Teus waggled his perfectly arched black eyebrows at me.
“Thank you, Brenda,” he said without moving his gaze from mine. “Close the door on your way out.”
Brenda winked at me, saucy and knowing. “Of course. Enjoy your meal.”
Soon as the door closed, I pushed myself off him, not a bit careful as to where my limbs landed. He oomphed and groaned a time or two, and I tried hard not to be too satisfied at getting a few licks in.
I crawled away from him, never taking my eyes off the sneaky son of a water god. I was learning the hard way not to trust him, and about time, too. “I thought we agreed you didn’t want me.”
“I never said that.”
I thought back to our last conversation, run it through my head, and glared at him. Dang him, he was right. He’d only admitted to me not being right for him and had as much as said he wanted my companionship.
I shoulda pressed Miss Jenny harder on the relationship issue or at the very least given her Teus’s number.
“What am I doing here?” I asked.
His grin was gone, replaced by a disgruntled frown. “You called.”
“I done no such thing.”
“You thought of me while touching your marks of service.” He cupped a hand over his privates through the sheet and adjusted himself. “The enthusiasm of your departure was unnecessary.”
“Oh, it was necessary, all right,” I said, real cheerful like. “What’d you do to my table?”
“Your table?”
“My kitchen table. It’s all blue and green now.”
“It was an eyesore, Sunshine. You should’ve replaced it years ago.”
Until here of late, weren’t no money to replace it with, but that weren’t none of his beeswax. “So you took it upon yourself to fix it up, kinda like you took it upon yourself to switch out my carpet?”
Them blue-green eyes of his took on a speculative look. “I replaced the carpet. The table was not my doing.”
I throwed my hands up in the air and let ‘em flop onto my lap. “Then how come the table matches the carpet now?”
“I have no idea.” He held his hand out to me, palm up. “Come, Sunshine. Let’s play detective, shall we?”
His hand might as well’ve been a snake, for all I trusted it. “I ain’t a-touching you.”
“Take my hand,” he said, patient as the water on a windless day. “Take my hand, Sunshine.”
His voice was soothing and calm and near about hypnotic. My hand raised up under its own power, seemed like, and laid itself against his, and we whirled through color and mist and come out standing in the middle of my living room.
I yanked my hand outta his and staggered to the couch, then about fell over it trying to sit down. “I don’t like that a’tall.”
“Nonsense,” Teus said. “It’s quite fun once you get the hang of it.”
Get the hang of it. Yeah, right. “What’re we doing here?”
“Playing detective.” He walked over to the kitchen table, still nekkid as a jaybird, and run a palm over the mosaic tile surface. “Excellent craftsmanship. James?”
“Who?”
He sighed, long-suffering and patient all at once. “Jazz.”
“Oh. No. I went to bed last night with an ordinary table and woke up this morning to that.”
“Hmm.” A small smile played around that sensual mouth of his. “And you have no idea why.”
“Not a one,” I said slowly. “But you do.”
“I may.”
I waited a beat or two, and when no answer was forthcoming, near about shouted, “You gonna tell me or what?”
“I could tell you,” he agreed, “but that would deprive you of the joy of figuring it out for yourself. Adieu, love.”
His body shimmied and wavered, then he become mist, dissipating slowly in the early morning light shining into the trailer.
“Wait a goll darn minute,” I hollered, but it was too late. He done vanished on me again. I looked at the critter sitting statue still in his cage. “Ain’t that just like a man.”
Its round eyes fixed on me, but it said nary a word, just like it done for days now.
The follow up doctor’s appointment was scheduled for the next afternoon. While I was waiting for Riley to come pick me up, I finished the section in Mooney’s outlining what he learnt on the history of the Cherokee. By that time, I was more’n ready to be shed of the past. Dang book was thicker’n my wrist. How was a body supposed to absorb all them words in a solitary week?
I was about to drop Mooney’s book onto the couch when mine and Riley’s conversation about them what shifted between animal and human popped into my noggin. On a whim, I picked Mooney’s up again and thumbed through the index, then looked up the painter references listed in the index.
None seemed of particular interest ‘til I landed on a legend about a man what was out hunting one winter day. A painter appeared and frightened him, and just when he was raising his gun to kill it, it spoke to him and asked where he was going. So the man explained as how he was out hunting deer. The painter replied that him and his kin was about to do the Green-corn dance and was looking for a buck, and seeing as how the hunter and them was looking for the same thing, why didn’t they all hunt together?
So along the hunter went with the painters. After a successful hunting trip, the hunter followed the painters back to the underground den whereupon the dance begun with the hunter joining right in. ‘Long and along, he decided he better get back home to his own kin, so the painter let him out a door and away home the hunter went. He died a few days later, having took too much of the painter nature into himself. A small note at the end said as how if he’da stayed with the painters, he woulda been just fine.
I shivered under the familiar hand of uneasy and stared across the room, unseeing. Painters what could speak. Humans what took on the painter nature after being among ‘em. It followed, then, that them painters’d been human once themselves, didn’t it? Or was I just reading too much into an old legend?
My phone buzzed against the table, and I closed the book. I could think on it later, after Riley dragged me to that doctor and I maybe got cleared to go back to work.
Chapter Fifteen
About ten minutes before Riley was supposed to pick me up, a soft knock hit the front door, startling me out of the nap I fell into outta sheer boredom. I scrubbed my hands over my face, grimaced at the sweaty feel, and about jumped outta my skin when the knocking picked up, a good deal ha
rder.
“Sunny?” David called, just loud enough to be heard.
I groaned and pushed myself off the couch, and stumbled across the living room toward the door, too groggy to temper my progress. “Come on in,” I hollered.
The door opened and David stepped into the living room. Dark shadows highlighted a fine array of wrinkles under his eyes and his skin was ashen. I stopped dead still and eyed him real close. His cheeks was sharper’n they was the last time I seen him and his lips was pinched and thin.
“Lordy, David.” I hooked my hands on my hips and clucked my tongue. “You’re about as gaunt as a scarecrow.”
“Thanks a lot,” he murmured, absent the humor I’d intended to give him. “Riley called and told me you were sick.”
Why, that scoundrel. See if I baked him a black walnut cake again. “Ain’t nothing wrong with me outside of his and Missy’s imaginations. What about you?”
He huffed out a laugh and them hazel eyes of his drifted away from mine. “Gregory left me.”
“Oh. Dang, David.” I stood there a minute, torn between wanting to comfort him and not knowing how, and finally waved toward my bedroom. “Come on back. We can chew the fat whilst I clean up.”
A faint smile softened his mouth. “Chew the fat?”
“Yeah, you know. Jaw away at each other.” I pivoted on a socked foot, not easy to do on shag carpeting, and stalked toward the back of the trailer. “You coming or what?”
“Coming,” he murmured, and his footsteps shooshed along behind me on the recently revitalized floor. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Not a thing.” I waved him to a seat on the end of the bed, then skeedaddled into the bathroom and cut the water in the sink on to warm. “How come I had to hear you was in Atlanta from Teus?”
“Ah.” David cleared his throat and the mattress squeaked. “It was a spur of the moment trip.”
I stuck my head outta the bathroom door and leveled by best no nonsense stare on him. “And that’d be why?”
“Gregory called.”
