Kirsten laughed softly.
"Television, I suppose."
"This is more than mindlessly babbling a commercial ditty."
"You've always had a knack for voices, haven't you, Christo-man?"
Ginny put in. Around her, no one talked for long about a child as if they weren't even in the room.
His sly little grin told Kirsten that Christo knew he was being admired. He settled in and began pulling apart the drawstring closure of the medicine bag.
"Now... where is that lucky charm?"
"What is this lucky-charm business?" Burton teased.
"Like cereal?
That's all you've got in there? "
"No way," Christo dismissed Burton's bait, bringing his little fist out of the bag.
"This is a real charm. See?" He opened his hand.
"Isn't it a real charm, Aunt Ginny?"
"Wow, yeah!" Ginny looked over Christo's head to Kirsten.
"That's a real charm for sure."
Kirsten leaned forward.
"If that's what I think it is, Christo, you are in deep doodoo."
"But I need it, Mom." The tendons in his small neck strained.
"You let me keep the feather" -- "You can always find another feather, Christo."
"No, I can't." His little jaw jutted defiantly.
"Not one with spirit medicine."
"This isn't about the feather, Christo."
Obviously sensing a pitched battle, Burton made a beeline for the sideboard, poured himself some more wine and joined Sam out on the front stoop.
Ginny cradled Christo's sturdy, angry little body. A nickel-size bronze medallion, of an age to have a dark patina, hung from a delicate chain through
Ginny's fingers. Meeting Kirsten's eyes with interest in her own, she said, "Maybe for just tonight your mom will let you keep the charm in your medicine bag?"
Kirsten felt thwarted, manipulated.
"I told Christo" -- "And then, I bet," Ginny went ahead, "the medicine will rub off on all your stuff so you could give the charm back?"
"Maybe." Christo accepted as solemn truth anything Ginny told him.
Kirsten may have painted the night stars onto his ceiling, a campfire on the wall and mountains in the distance, but Ginny was the one, after all, who had totally disguised the offensive safety rails of Christo's brand-new child bed by making them into supports for a teepee. And then dubbed the equally noxious child monitor a magical translator of smoke signals from afar.
"I think so," Ginny affirmed.
"If it's very powerful medicine, that happens sometimes. Is it very powerful?"
"It's my daddy's," Christo said.
"Really? Your daddy's?" Ginny looked to Kirsten again.
"What do you think, Mommy? For tonight?"
Kirsten nodded. What else was there to do? Ginny had no kids, would never have any of her own. Sam was sterile. But Ginny had a way about her with kids, a naturalness, heart, an instinct for the shape and form of compromise that Kirsten envied fiercely. Now, though, there was a cat out of the bag Kirsten had never intended to set free.
"All right. For tonight."
He stuffed the charm back into the bag before she could change her mind, then scampered up the stairs with a whoop.
Kirsten began picking up the dessert plates. Ginny followed her into the kitchen with the remains of the cherry pie and a couple of emptied glasses.
Kirsten busied herself filling the sink with soapy water. Her best friend was moving a thousand miles away, but Kirsten could think of nothing to say. The subject of Christo's new charm was hanging in the air, thicker than the scent of winter nights that came wafting in through the window cracked open over the kitchen sink.
Ginny could run a powerful waiting game. They had known each other less than four years, dating back to Kirsten's hire at the high-school academy, where Ginny was the principal, but a lot of water had passed under the bridge. A few tears, too. She picked up a tea towel and began drying glasses.
Kirsten sighed, latching on to the first topic to come to mind.
"I
wish Burton hadn't shown up just as we were sitting down to eat. He's been calling lately. He thinks I have a chance of getting my old job back if we could just prove Chet Loehman is a killer, but"-- " Kirsten, stop. " Ginny knew Kirsten's history, knew she wanted no part of her old job, and understood that whatever it was Burton Rawlings wanted stood no chance with Kirsten. Ginny wasn't willing to let her stray even a little while.
"I want to know how come I've been under the impression that Christo's was a virgin birth?"
"I never said that, Ginny."
"You never said anything about Christo's father, period. All this time, not a word. Not to mention that there was some keepsake of the liaison--aside from Christo, anyway."
"The charm wasn't a keepsake."
"Neither is Christo. He's a living, breathing boy."
"Let's not start this, Ginny, please." She shoved the faucet arm on all the way to hot, nearly scalding herself rinsing dishes.
"I won't argue that it would be lovely if Christo had a father, but he doesn't.
He's too little anyway. I should never even have shown the charm to him. "
"Well, that just begs the question, Kirsten. The charm" -- "The charm just got left behind, okay? I was drinking, lacking in judgment and I had mad, passionate, anonymous sex with a total stranger. That doesn't make a father out of him."
"You must have gotten a name" -- "I didn't ask. He didn't tell. All I knew was that he had what you have, Ginny. What you and Sam have. The kind of love that only happens once. In his case, she died. If you want to know, he buried his wife the day I buried Lane. So sue me." She was beyond tears over it, way beyond, but a hot prickling went on behind her eyes just the same.
Facts were what they were, and fantasy was what it was.
"I stole that woman's swan song with her husband, and I'm not sorry."
"What if someday you happened to meet up with Christo's father? What will you say?"
"Nothing."
"But Christo is his son" -- "No." She felt so fiercely unbending.
"There is no baby but mine." Her heart had long since hardened to any other possibility.
"I won't set Christo up with promises I can't keep about a man I don't know, who doesn't know us, who couldn't possibly want" -- "How do you know that?" Sam put in from the doorway. Kirsten spun around, not thinking to dry her hands.
"You could look for him, you know. Ask him." Sam shrugged.
"Sorry, but we, um... I couldn't help overhearing. And we all could agree it isn't my tact that keeps us friends."
"Sam, don't," Ginny warned, but a look passed between them, a caress, part comfort, part understanding, altogether so intimate it ripped Kirsten's breath away.
"I have to say this, Gins. You know I have to say this." He turned his gaze on Kirsten again.
"All's I'm saying, Kirsten," he went on in his quietly unemotional manner, "and this has been comin' for a long time because I think we all knew you were never going to go off and get pregnant and have a baby by yourself on purpose--it's possible this man didn't intend to go droppin' his seed without a care, any more than you intended to get pregnant."
His chin wagged, betraying more feelings than she'd ever seen Sam display.
"I'd give my right arm for a kid like that. You know it's true. So if you could find Christo's father and you don't even try, the fact you didn't is going to be a logjam between you an' me for a real long time."
Standing there, Kirsten died a little inside. In some ways she was even closer to Sam than to Ginny. He had spent many hours with her. He knew her. He loved her, like a brother does a little sister. This was not the first time he had ever called her on a choice or comment or attitude he didn't approve of.
She would not stand here and pretend that she feared Christo would be rejected if ever she found his father. What she feared was that she would be rejected. The man who had made love t
o her the night Christo was conceived, even if he loved Christo, even if he turned out to be the greatest father ever, would never love her, or any woman, the way he had loved his wife.
And having once experienced it, even having stolen those hours from a dead woman, Kirsten could never settle for less than a man who loved her like that.
What Sam saw was how stricken she was, not the selfish motives themselves. He crossed the room and took her by the arms. She was struck by the glittering light in his eyes. Her throat tightened.
"You just think about it, Kirs. You know if you ever need anything, Ginny and I'll be here."
But in another half hour they were gone, and she needed them, so where was the truth in Sam's promise? She would never have been ready for them to go She turned to go back into the house. The silence outside would never stop unnerving her, the dearth of insects, the lack of crickets to give the night some sound. The neighborhood was a quiet one without many kids who would be out after dark either. Still, she felt an uncharacteristic wariness crawling up her spine. Burton Rawlings was standing on the stoop beneath the yellow porch light, his baseball cap clutched between his hands.
"Look, Kirsten. I know you've got a lot on your mind, but I have to talk to you. Just a minute?"
She dropped her hands into the pockets of her denim dress and nodded.
Burton followed her inside. She closed the solid six-panel door behind her.
He should know before he started that she had no interest in anything to do with rectifying what had happened to them both as a result of Lane Montgomery's treachery.
"Burton, there's really nothing you can say" -- "Looks like you're doing just fine," he interrupted, acknowledging her right up front.
"And from all the prints I see around here, your talent sure isn't going to waste."
"Thank you." Her house on Queen Anne Hill might be old, drafty and decrepit, but it was hers. She'd turned with a vengeance from forensic anything to filling every nook and cranny with prints she'd done of all the things that fascinated her.
"Things might be heating up, so you're better off out of it anyway."
She sank to the sofa. She should have let well enough alone, but he seemed so fragile.
"Heating up, how
"I've found a way into Loehman's inner circle." He settled back. He had her attention, but she had the feeling he was tempering his tale now as he might not have had she agreed to consider joining him.
"I was out digging up some geoducks about six months ago" -Kirsten wrinkled her nose. Even the name of the edible Pacific clams, pronounced "gooey-ducks," put Christo in spasms of giggles. Digging them out was pretty much like pulling taffy, only something live out of the sand.
"Tell me what happened."
"I got caught in a downpour that nearly washed out the beach road. I took shelter in a little dive where if you're interested in your own health you wouldn't want beer off the tap. Couple of guys were shooting off their mouths. It wasn't long before I learned they were joining up with Loehman. The Truth Sayers are even on the Internet now." He paused, shaking his head.
"They're stronger than ever.
Someone's gotta get in the way of Loehman and this vigilante threat. "
"Grenallo hasn't stopped looking for a way to do that, Burt" -- "I'll never understand why they didn't just press on with the case they had. Sure your photographic evidence was destroyed, but you took the pictures! You were an eyewitness to the murder Loehman committed" "Not exactly, Burt." In her mind's eye she could recall perfectly the video graphic images of a man of Loehman's height and build wearing a blue flannel shirt with a fray at the elbow on the verge of becoming a three-corner tear. At the end of the arm was a hand holding an unregistered machine pistol and at the end of that was another man's head, a young rancher who'd defied Loehman, and at the end of that split second, the man was dead of a bullet hole in the side of his head.
She'd torn through every image she had ever caught on film of Chet Loehman, and in three of them, on another occasion days earlier, he'd been wearing that shirt. The fray matched, thread for thread, and with that, her evidence and testimony was enough to convict Loehman. But she hadn't witnessed the murder herself, only caught it by the use of a remote video cam
Burton Rawlings knew all that, but he was a gee ky intellectual properties lawyer. He had no business trying to insinuate himself into a group of lawless, self-righteous vigilantes. And he didn't know how things went in a criminal trial. They could not prove by any evidence save all that was destroyed in Kirsten's lab that Loehman had ever owned a blue flannel shirt.
Grenallo made his decision. Better to wait than to have a jury return a not guilty verdict which double jeopardy would forever preclude prosecuting again.
Burton reluctantly agreed.
"It's just a wonder to me Loehman didn't see fit to kill you off, too."
"He wasn't afraid of my testimony. Not without the evidence. But Lane's drowning? Loehman probably didn't even hesitate. One last warning to me, I suppose, in case Grenallo changed his mind and decided to take the case to trial after all."
"A warning?" Burton frowned.
"You think... Kirsten, you think Lane's death was a warning to you?"
"Wasn't it?" Tension skittered over her nerves. She had no idea why, only a vague uneasiness.
"Never mind." His breathing changed, grew harsh.
"Nothing's changed.
Loehman was playing God then and he's still doing it. There's a sheriff out in Montana that busted up a couple of citizen rallies he called unlawful assembly. Now he's bought himself a space at the top of Loehman's playbill. "
"Playbill," she remembered, was Loehman's name for his blacklist of those who trampled on the liberty of all citizens everywhere to exercise their constitutionally mandated rights of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to arm and protect themselves.
People who found their way onto Loehman's playbill suffered. Some from crippling or fatal accidents, others, from devastating lies. Lethal rumors propagated by Loehman's machine.
Burton seemed to come to some sudden decision to wind it up.
"So anyway, these yahoos I met are getting leery of me. I thought of you.
Who'd believe a pretty little thing like you was out to bust their chops? "
"I can't do it, Burton." The truth was, neither could he. Loehman was never going to be vulnerable to the likes of Burton Rawlings. She sensed there was more he hadn't said, but whatever it was, she didn't want to know.
"Will you do me a favor, Burt? Take care of yourself. Don't be a cowboy. I don't want to hear of anything happening to you."
"Me and my scrawny butt? Nah. I'll be fine. Nice meeting your friends.
And Christo. "
Burton let himself out. After he was gone, Kirsten wandered through the living room, straightening up.
Maybe it wasn't so awful that he'd been there. At least he'd managed to distract her from the pain of watching Ginny and Sam drive off. But the house was so quiet now that all she could think about was just how she and Christo would miss them.
She turned off the downstairs lights and checked on Christo. He was curled up so far inside the teepee she could only catch a glimpse of the sweet cowlick in his dark brown hair. She sat a moment on the floor beside his bed, inhaling the little-boy scents, listening to him breathe. She couldn't imagine her life without him.
Couldn't imagine her life with his father in it in any capacity. She rose, touched her fingers to her lips and transferred a kiss and a blessing to the teepee, then took a long shower.
When she'd planted herself in the middle of her bed, she could no longer avoid thinking about disappointing Sam. Or imagining all the ways she could search for Christo's father, and legitimately fail to find him. Like sea tide to the shore, she was drawn to her computer.
To the photo files and the likeness she had created from memory in the Identicomp software she had contributed to developing herself.
It wasn't that she
sat in the dark of night mooning over him.
She had never had any illusions, or intended to recall what he looked like. But the day the home pregnancy test kit had confirmed Christo's existence, Kirsten sat down to re-create his father's image.
She had keyed in the commands to print the digital image when she heard a crackling noise coming from her room. She switched off the computer, then got up from her chair to check out the noise. Christo was jabbering in his sleep, but that wouldn't account for the kind of feedback she was hearing. Was it possible the baby monitor was picking up a radio transmission of some kind?
Carly Bishop - No Baby But Mine Page 2
