Ben joined them. He glanced at Sorcha, the corners of his lips turned up in a small smile. “What’s up?”
They started walking to the car and Paula said, “Oh, someone told me Dalton Boyle likes me.”
“He does,” Ben said.
Paula stopped and looked at Ben like he’d sprouted a second head. “What?”
“I talked to him at halftime at the football game. Told him I was sorry for splashing him, he said sorry for getting in my face about it and then he asked if I was sitting with you.” Ben shrugged. “It was pretty obvious.”
Paula’s cheeks had gone pink during Ben’s story. “What were his exact words?”
Ben rubbed the side of his face. “Uh, I don’t know. ‘Are you sitting with Paula and Sorcha’?”
“Okay, so he said Paula and Sorcha. What makes you think he wasn’t interested in Sorch?”
Ben’s eyes flicked over to Sorcha, a silent plea for help. She didn’t know what to say. Unless he could offer more solid proof, she didn’t want to encourage him. It was safer to be skeptical so Paula didn’t get let down.
Ben shrugged again, only this time his shoulders stayed up for several long, defensive seconds. He was clearly having a deer-in-the-headlights moment, so Sorcha let out a huff of impatience and pushed past him to link her arm with Paula’s. She and Paula started walking again, heads bent towards each other, talking in excited but hushed voices.
“I was only trying to help,” Ben’s plaintive voice followed them.
At the car, Sorcha sat in the passenger seat and relegated Ben to the back. He muttered, “I see how it is,” but it was good-natured. Sorcha noticed he didn’t say a word during the drive, just listened as she and Paula discussed Dalton, dissecting every possible nuance of the evidence for his liking Paula.
When they got to Sorcha’s house, a ‘protective detail’ car was already waiting at the entrance to the lane. Skip was leaning against the hood and he gestured to Paula to pull over. Ben rolled down his window and asked, “Where’s John?”
“He called and said he got detention this afternoon. Dumbass. Are you going to hang out at Sorcha’s?” He bent and looked into the car. As an apparent afterthought, he said, “Hi, Sorcha. Paula.”
After the girls returned his greeting, Ben directed puppy-dog eyes Sorcha’s way and said, “I was hoping I’d get invited.”
She laughed and obliged. “Ben, would you please hang out with me this afternoon?”
Ben gasped and put his hand to his chest like he’d just won an Academy Award. “I’d love to,” he said in a high-pitched voice.
Sorcha and Paula giggled, but Skip reached into the car and thumped him on the side of the head. “Don’t forget what we’re here for.”
Ben sobered instantly. “As if I would.”
Skip nodded. “Remember, I’m all by myself tonight. We need someone watching the entrance to the property at all times, so I won’t be conducting a perimeter check.”
Sorcha hadn’t known the WPS had been prowling her father’s property. “What kind of a threat are you expecting? Shouldn’t you at least give me a hint about what to look for?”
Skip’s face fell into that rueful look she was beginning to expect whenever she asked him anything. He sucked air though his teeth and said, “Sorry, can’t say.”
She didn’t know if he couldn’t say because he didn’t know, or if it was because of the paradox, but her irritation with the whole situation flared again. “Fine. I’ll keep an eye out for anything and everything. Is the threat bigger than a breadbox? Bigger than Godzilla? Or is it too small to see? Should I be wearing a Hazmat suit?”
Skip wasn’t fazed by the barrage of sarcasm. “Just stick with Ben and don’t take chances.”
She wondered what chances she was supposed to avoid taking in her own house, but closed her mouth to prevent the next retort. Skip was only doing what he felt was best. She tried to summon up some gratitude, but all she could come up with was a weak, “Alright. Thanks.”
To Ben, Skip said, “My relief comes at seven, so if you want a ride home, you better be here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Skip stepped back and saluted; his way of declaring the conversation over.
When Paula pulled up in front of the house, Sorcha invited her in, but she declined. “Can’t. I’m babysitting tonight.”
It smelled like cookies inside the house. Grammy Fay was in the kitchen, and she smiled when she saw Ben. “Oh, look who’s here! Just in time for a fresh batch.”
She held out a plate of oatmeal cookies and Ben took one, but eyed it suspiciously. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful because these look awesome, but are those raisins?”
“No, no, dear, those are chopped up dates. Better than raisins.”
He held the cookie in front of his mouth and said, “Well if by ‘better’ you mean ‘similar,’ I have to warn you: raisins make me yak.”
Fay looked at her granddaughter for interpretation.
“Barf,” Sorcha said.
“Oh. Well, then here,” Fay took the cookie out of Ben’s hand and went to the counter. She selected another one and gave it to him. “These aren’t hot, but it’s just chocolate chip. Those don’t make you yak, do they?”
By way of answer, Ben shoved half the cookie in his mouth and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Oh, my,” Fay murmured. “I think you’re going to need some milk to wash that down.”
While Fay opened the refrigerator, Sorcha leaned close to Ben and said softly, “So you think we’re going to see anything more threatening than raisins tonight?”
“Dates,” he corrected. “And I hope not.”
After they consumed two cookies and a glass of milk each, Sorcha pushed Ben into the hallway. She handed him a pair of gloves.
“These are my dad’s, so they should fit you.”
He watched as she bundled up in a matching black-and-white checkered hat and scarf.
“I take it we’re going out?”
“There’s something I want to show you before it gets too dark.”
It was only four o’clock, but the days were getting shorter and combined with the overcast sky, it seemed much later. Sorcha led Ben through Grammy Fay’s greenhouse, where she snipped a few more roses from one of the bushes. Ben inspected a row of lush, green herbs growing in little pots and said, “Cool.” He plucked a leaf and rolled it between his fingers, inhaling the scent the crushed leaf left behind.
“Next time I cook for you, I’m coming here first,” he said.
“Come on.” She hooked her arm through his. They crossed the yard and went out the back gate.
The knee-high wild grass was turning yellow as it went dormant in preparation for the winter. They walked past the grove of oaks and Sorcha realized with a pang of guilt that she’d barely given a stray thought to Aggie, Bess and the children. Not that there was anything she could do if their fate had been as gruesome as Joseph’s.
She shuddered at the thought.
“Are you cold?” Ben asked.
“No, just thinking.”
“About?”
“The day Enid was kidnapped, the other members of the household hid in that oak grove. There were children she was responsible for. I don’t know what happened to them.”
Ben glanced over at the trees. “Seems like a good place to hide. I’m sure they were fine. Probably grew up and got married and had twelve strapping children each.”
She looked at him in wonder as his comment sparked a sudden insight. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him along behind her as she ran the rest of the way to their destination: the graveyard.
Her intention had been to replace the flowers on Elizabeth’s grave, but instead she went straight to a marble headstone three plots over. It was one of the earliest of the stones still standing, and one that had been a perplexing puzzle for Sorcha as she’d identified each of the cemetery’s other inhabitants. She assumed the occupant, like all the rest, had been a relative, but she hadn’t been
able to find any records.
Ben came to stand next to her. “Who’s Sarah Murphy?”
“I never found out. A fire destroyed all the birth records in the village before 1800 and Sarah has been a mystery. But the children I mentioned? The little girl’s name was Sarah.”
Sorcha had written down the epitaphs for each of the cemetery’s headstones. The mysterious Sarah’s stone had no birthdate, but it did show a death date of 1832. Jedediah’s daughter had been around six years old in 1776, so if this was her final resting place she would have been sixty-two when she died, a reasonable life-span for the times.
Sorcha looked around even though she already knew none of the stones bore Sarah’s brother Ezekiel’s name. But just because he hadn’t been buried here didn’t mean anything. If Jedediah had been killed in the Battle of White Plains, the children would have been orphaned. Had Fergus adopted them? Given his nature, it seemed unlikely, but if Enid managed to escape the Haudenosaunee with Joseph, she could have had a hand in convincing her father to keep the children on. It was more than a possibility; Sorcha was certain now that the long-dead Sarah Murphy was the same scared little girl Enid had met just a few days ago. If Sarah had grown up in town and gotten married, she would have taken on her husband’s name. Sorcha resolved to get online as soon as she got back to the house to research Sarah through her maiden name, which was presumably Johnson, the same as Jedediah.
Ben pointed to a phrase inscribed at the bottom of Sarah’s headstone. “That looks like Algonquian.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. Mahican, probably,” she said. “That word means ‘two,’ or at least I think it does. My grandmother spoke the language, but she couldn’t write. Enid tried asking her, but didn’t know how to pronounce any of the words.”
“You try online?”
She shot him a sidelong look. “Of course I did. No one speaks it anymore and it’s not like there’s a free online translator. I’d have to pay for someone to translate it for me.”
“Well, my uncle Harry speaks several Algonquian dialects. If we can find him, you could ask him, or Luanne could help,” he said. “She’d probably drool all over this place.”
“Yeah,” she said absently, her mind winging ahead to the planned Internet search. Sarah Johnson was a very common name. Even with a death date and location, the search would be time-consuming. Sorcha bent and ran her fingers over the stone, feeling the roughness where the chisel had chipped it away to reveal the letters. There were any number of reasons why Sarah’s loved ones might have had Native American words inscribed on her headstone, but none that came to mind.
She shrugged off her thoughts and went over to Elizabeth’s grave. The flowers she and Fay had placed there had either blown away or were withered and sad. Sorcha tossed the remaining blossoms aside and replaced them with the fresh ones. Ben came and stood next to her.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “That’s your grandmother.”
Reflexively, Sorcha opened her mouth to say, “Enid’s grandmother,” but a sharp, loud retort sounded from the vicinity of the oak grove.
Gunfire.
Ben threw his arms around her and dragged her to the ground, keeping himself between her and the trees. “Get behind the tombstone!” Elizabeth’s stone was too small to provide adequate cover; Ben shoved her towards the closest one that would.
She crawled rapidly along the moist ground, elbows churning the dirt like a marine in training, Ben on her heels. The stone they were headed for was crowned with the statue of an angel. It belonged to Sorcha’s great-great-grandmother Ruth, and as they hunkered behind it she silently thanked the unknown relative who’d sprung for such a large, ostentatious monument.
“Is it a hunter?” Sorcha’s voice shook. She clutched Ben’s arm. “It’s hunting season – he’s probably not even shooting at us.”
Another shot rang out, immediately followed by one of the wings of the stone angel taking flight and ricocheting off the gravestone directly in front of them.
“My mistake!” Sorcha buried her face against Ben’s shoulder.
“He’s going to circle around and we’ll be sitting ducks,” Ben said grimly. He snatched the distinctively patterned hat from her head and put it on his own, then yanked her scarf off and tied it so the ends hung down his back.
“Stay here. Stay close to the ground.” The words were uttered between clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare move, do you hear me?”
She started to nod when she realized belatedly he meant to draw the gunman’s fire by pretending to be her. She reached a hand out, saying, “Ben, don’t,” but he’d already lurched away, scrambling out from behind the headstone and bolting for the trees to the north of them.
Sorcha closed her eyes tightly and hunkered down behind the tombstone. She pressed her forehead to her knees and crossed her cold fingers, muttering, “Run, run, run…Oh, my God, Ben, run.”
The next gunshot rang out with a ‘Crack!’ that made her whole body jerk. She opened her eyes and stared at her knees as the shot echoed ominously. She felt like a coward hiding like this and desperately wanted to peek around the stone, but if she did, whoever was out there might see her and then Ben’s gambit would be a sure loss. She consoled herself with the thought that he was her Ben, and Enid had yet to tell anyone in her world about him, which meant he couldn’t die now. He just couldn’t.
She waited for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only ten minutes or so. Her breath came shallowly and she tried to listen past the pounding of her heart for any sign that Ben wasn’t, even now, lying dead just beyond the graveyard.
What was left of the afternoon light was fading fast when she heard cautious footfalls. She looked frantically around the near vicinity for a rock to throw or something suitable to defend herself with, but Ben’s voice came softly, “Sorcha!”
She let out a cry of relief and sprang up, but after crouching for so long on the cold ground, her legs failed her after two wobbly steps and she sprawled forward into Ben’s arms.
“Who was it? Did you see him?” Her feet began to tingle as the circulation returned.
“No. He got away.” Ben was breathing hard. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah.” They started back to the house. She looked over at the oak grove and gasped when she saw the dark silhouette of a man walking towards them in the gloom of the twilight.
“It’s Skip,” Ben said. “He heard the shots.”
The sound of sirens faded in and out on the cold air. “If Skip heard them, then Grammy Fay did, too,” she said.
She couldn’t see the house from here, but a flicker of light through the trees and a faint cry of, “Sorcha!” told her Fay was concerned and out looking for her with a flashlight. She would head straight for the graveyard.
They intercepted Skip’s path and he joined them on the walk to the house. “Now, Sorcha,” he said, “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think you know how difficult it’s going to be to explain this to the cops.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling them anything,” she replied. “I’ve spent my whole life avoiding the loony bin. You think I’m going to blow it now just because someone wants me dead?” Her voice was tinged with irony.
Ben looked over at the older man. “Did you find any clues?”
Skip lifted his hand. Pinched between finger and thumb was a bullet casing. “.22 long range cartridge. From those trees, with that rifle, he was too far away for an accurate shot. Not a hunter, or at least not a good one.”
Sorcha silently thanked her lucky stars her would-be assassin wasn’t a pro. She could barely make out Fay in the distance now, and raised her hand. “I’m okay, Grammy!” she yelled.
“You find anything?” Skip asked.
“Fast runner. Prints were size ten Nike’s.”
“Really?” Sorcha asked. “You could tell that?”
“Yeah, Sorch, all Indians can read tracks,” Ben said. “Especially when the print is the same size as mine and there’s a logo s
tamped in the dirt.”
She socked him on the arm and then noticed he was still wearing her hat and scarf. The girly cashmere checked knit contrasted sharply with his masculinity. It looked absurd, and she giggled. She saw the whiteness of his teeth against the shadowy backdrop of his face as he grinned back. He put one hand behind his head and stopped walking long enough to pose for her.
“You like this look on me?” Rather than make him look feminine, the stance demonstrated to Sorcha how confident he was with his sexuality.
It struck her as hysterically funny, though, and suddenly she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to respond, realizing even as she doubled over from abdominal spasms that this was a reaction to the shock and fear of having been shot at. Vaguely, she heard Skip say, “Now look what you did,” but she was too caught up in uncontrolled mirth.
It took her awhile to restrain herself, and it didn’t help when she glanced over and saw that Ben had pushed the hat to one side at a jaunty angle.
“Take that damned thing off!” Skip said, and Ben complied, but he responded, “Give the girl a break. She needs to let off some steam.”
Back at the house, Fay fussed over them. “I’m so glad you were here, Mr. Webster. We’ve had hunters stray onto our land before, but never so close to the house.”
“Call me Skip. It was just lucky I came by early to pick Ben up. Whoever it was is long gone, though.”
The police officer who showed up seemed bored and got more so as Skip, Ben and Sorcha downplayed the facts. There was no mention of the shots coming close to actually hitting anyone. Officer Hurley took their statements and said, “We’ll keep an eye out.”
Fay took exception to his blasé handling of the situation. “Young man, I’ll have you know our property is both fenced and posted with private property signs. Whoever did this had to have knowingly entered.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll make a note of that, but since this was the intruder’s first offense, it’s possible he was just following injured game onto your land.”
“And he had to shoot at it three times?” Fay said indignantly.
“Or maybe it was just some kids out being stupid,” Skip said. “No harm done.”
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