Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (6 page)

"Your mother's brisket was always good."

"Are you finished?"

"Yeah."

She rose and carried the brisket to the kitchen.

"I saw the attorney today," she said. "Did he send over the consent forms?"

"Yeah. But I'm not going to sign them."

She closed the refrigerator door. "What?"

"I don't want you to sell that land."

"Why not?"

"You'll just take the money and fritter it away."

Annette came back to the table and sat down. She looked him calmly in the eye. "You've never changed your opinion of me, have you? After all these years. You still don't trust my judgment."

"Not where money's concerned, I don't."

"I have plans for that money."

"I don't want to hear it, Annette."

"Why are you doing this? Is it to keep me here?"

"This is a good place to live, with good people. It just isn't good enough for you, I guess."

"Why are we having this discussion?"

"You could teach music. In El Dorado, or Emporia. Someplace within driving distance. That's what your mother was always hoping. She never pressured you. Didn't want to make you feel guilty."

"You still have to control her, even when she's gone. You can't even respect her dying wishes."

His voice rose angrily. He'd once been a handsome man but fury turned him ugly. "We worked and saved all our lives, Annette, and I'm going to make sure you don't waste what little money we leave behind."

Charlie rose abruptly from the table and with palsied hands he carried his plate to the sink and rinsed it, then meticulously stacked it in the dishwasher. He dried his hands on the dish towel and went into the living room, settling into his recliner and clicking on the television. Annette took the rest of the dishes to the kitchen and emptied her uneaten dinner into the garbage disposal.

Chapter 7

Annette sat in Ethan Brown's office with her hands quietly folded in her lap listening to him apologize. If she had ranted and raved, Ethan would have been able to retrieve some of his self-respect. But her silence only provoked him to more effusive and transparent verbosity. Finally, disgusted with himself, he fell silent.

When at last she spoke, her voice was quiet and controlled. "Mr. Brown, I'm very disappointed in the way this has been handled. I was told you were one of the best civil-law attorneys in the state."

"I don't know about that, ma'am. But I know I care a lot about the folks around here."

"But I'm not from around here, and you don't like me, do you?" she said. He started to protest, but she stopped him. "The point is, if you cared about my mother's final wishes you would have handled this differently. My mother had nothing to leave me except this land. She was not rich. She left me great wealth, of course, but not in material things." Her voice caught in her throat. She stopped to regain her composure. "My father and I have never gotten along well, and I'm not going to come back here and take care of him."

"Is that what he wants?"

"Not really. But he's frightened now and he'll be very lonely. He's strong as an ox and in good health, but who's to say what will happen to him with my mother gone."

"I want you to know I did try to persuade her to get his written consent when the will was drawn up. But she didn't want to. I can advise my clients, but I can't make them do what they don't want to." He paused. "She was afraid it would hurt his feelings."

She stared blankly at Ethan for a moment, then looked down at her hands. "Yes," she said quietly. "That's the way it's always been."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

She looked up.

"Have you ever seen the house?"

"No."

"Let me drive you out there Sunday. You should at least take a look at it. Then we'll discuss how best to deal with Charlie. I think I'll be able to bring him around. I can be pretty darn persuasive when I need to be."

"And you'd like to buy the land, wouldn't you?"

He smiled broadly, a contagious smile, and said, "Maybe we can be on the same team after all."

* * *

Ethan felt very uncomfortable with Mrs. Zeldin and her daughter riding in his truck. He thought it was because she was wearing that damn sable-collared coat and the same black dress she wore every time he saw her.

"If you don't mind me asking, ma'am, do all Frenchwomen dress like you?"

She smiled. "It's the other way around, Mr. Brown. I've learned to dress like they do. Otherwise you don't get much respect."

"I suppose you're right. We Americans are a scruffy bunch."

"That pretty much says it."

"Don't women wear jeans in Paris?"

"The young ones do."

He wondered if she was inviting a compliment, but decided not; she wasn't the type to play trite games. He was acutely aware of her grace, the way she held her hands and her shoulders, the way her breasts moved when she sighed, how she sat with her legs intertwined at the ankles like little girls had been taught to sit in etiquette classes when he was a kid. Her dark hair was long and very feminine, and her face bore only the faintest touch of makeup. He knew how old she was, he had all the relevant statistics in her file, but only her hands betrayed her forty years. And her eyes.

Eliana, who was sitting between them, twisted around and stretched her neck to check on Traveler, Ethan's border collie, riding in the back of his truck, then she said something to her mother in French. Annette shook her head. Eliana looked wistfully at the dog again.

Ethan said, "She can ride in the truck bed with Traveler if that's what she wants. Perfectly safe."

"I'd rather she didn't."

"I'd slow way down. Don't you worry. I'm not about to throw that pretty little child onto the road."

Annette turned to Eliana and said, "Maybe on the way home."

Eliana smiled and said something in French, and her mother replied. Ethan didn't understand a word of it, but he was surprised by how sweet it sounded.

"Eliana, do you have a dog at home?" Ethan asked.

The child shook her head and replied that their dog had died when she was two and her mother didn't want to get another one.

"Why's that?"

"Because she doesn't want to have a big dog in the city."

"Why don't you get a small dog?"

"
Maman
doesn't like little dogs," Eliana said. "They're yappy."

"Is that right?"

Ethan shot a quick look at Annette. She was staring out the window, trying to suppress a smile.

"She says we won't get a big dog until we have a house in the country."

"Well then," he said to Annette, "all the more reason to get this matter settled."

They reached the top of a hill and met with a glorious panorama. The low-flung Flint Hills were grasslands stretching as far as the eye could see. There was not even a telephone cable in sight. The nearer hills were still a lush wet green and the farther ones were muted, softer, fading into a purple-blue haze that shrouded the most distant hills. A few cottonwoods and oaks struck bright dots of orange and gold.

Ethan turned off the dirt road onto a gravel entrance, but after a few hundred feet there was nothing left except tire tracks overgrown with grass. The truck climbed a steep hill, and as they pulled to a stop underneath a cluster of cottonwoods Annette saw the old Reilly farmhouse. Although battered by the elements and overgrown with tall grasses, it had clearly once been a noble house.

Annette sat very still, staring at it. Eliana threw an uneasy glance at her mother and quietly reached out and took her hand. It was a gesture that struck Ethan.

"All that land out there, to the west. That's yours," he said.

Eliana nudged her mother out of the truck.
"Allez, Maman. Sors."

Ethan got out and whistled to Traveler; the dog sailed from the back of the truck and raced with Eliana down the gently sloping hillside.

"You've got over one thousand acres of this," said Ethan.

Annette was quiet for a long time as she gazed at the hills. Ethan had never known a woman who was comfortable with stillness. Katie Anne always seemed to be filling up the airspace with chatter or music or the television.

After a while Annette turned and followed him to the house. He unlocked the front door and she stepped inside. As her eyes passed over the rotted window frames and the uneven wood floor thick with years of dust, her thoughts turned to another house in a little village near Aix-en-Provence. It was only a three-acre plot but she had fallen in love with its small orchard of centuries-old olive trees. She and David had intended to buy it; she had convinced him it would be a balm to their tortured souls. It had been a time in their lives when they were in desperate need of a refuge, a place with no memories, where they wouldn't be haunted by murmurs and cries. But other things had happened, and the property was sold to someone else. In her mind she had seen her mother's land as a means to rebuild that dream; she had planned to sell this property and find something like that again, in Provence, where she and Eliana could go for the summers. The house would have thick stone walls, cool even in the summer heat, and high ceilings buttressed with dark, smoky beams. The smooth red terra-cotta floors would be worn by centuries of foot traffic. The grounds behind the house would be full of creeping thyme and olive and lemon trees, and they would eat there with friends on summer evenings on a patio flagged by bright red geraniums, at a long table sitting elbow to elbow, their bare brown arms still radiating the heat of sharp Provençal light, their faces wrinkled from laughter and too much sun.

The screen door banged in the wind and Annette looked around to find Ethan's eyes on her.

"It's still livable," he said. "And there's plenty of room for a big dog." He flashed her a broad smile. "If you should change your mind."

Annette softened a little toward him. His thoughtfulness was sincere, and despite their differences, she saw that he was earnest in his desire to please. She had a sudden urge to explain her dream to him, to convince him of its beauty and her longing for those things. But she remembered his prejudices.

Instead, she turned to him and said, "Where's your land, Mr. Brown? Show me."

Ethan took her outside and pointed to the south.

"See that tallest hill over there? That's Jacob's Mound. That's the boundary. This time next year I hope to have a little herd of my own grazin' out there." He turned back to the north. "Up there, all that land belongs to the Mackeys. Tom Mackey."

"They're big landowners, aren't they?"

"That they are."

"Aren't you engaged to his daughter?"

"Now, how'd you hear that?"

"Nell Harshaw."

Ethan laughed pleasantly. "Doesn't take long for word to get around."

"Your life isn't your own in a place like this."

"I don't have anything to hide."

She smiled at him. "I imagine you don't."

They stood in the blustery wind, succumbing to the silence between them. Tall billowing thunderheads darkened the northern edge of the horizon, and the temperature was growing steadily colder.

"Rain's movin' this way. Where's your little girl?" asked Ethan.

Annette pointed to a gully below, where Eliana and Traveler were ambling along the dry creek bed. Ethan whistled and Traveler came at a run with Eliana racing behind.

"Dad's warming to your idea," Annette said. "About setting up a trust for Eliana with the money from the sale."

"I know you wanted unconditional consent, but he wouldn't budge on that point."

"I don't think he really cares if I live on the land. He just wants to have some control."

"Yeah. That's Charlie. We know him well."

"You'll make sure the trust is flexible."

"It will be very flexible. You'll be the executor."

"It's a decent compromise. And you can buy me up and then you and the Mackeys will be one big happy family."