Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (28 page)

I ran as fast as I could across what distance remained and launched myself into Dad's arms.  You're safe, I thought incredibly, deliriously, hugging him tightly, and he caught and hugged me effortlessly, like I only had the weight of a five-year-old.  Relieved and overjoyed, I felt kind of like a five-year-old, too.  I felt like a lamb that's found its way home again, or the small child each of us secretly hides at heart.

28

The Order of Things

"Cubby," Dad said, with relief of his own.

He let go of me.  I was aware of the firelight glowing dimly through the front room window, and of Rafael standing behind me, motionless.  I knew he hadn't left, because I would have heard it.  Stealth wasn't Rafael's area of expertise, and he was too big to tread quietly.

Dad was smiling.  This was especially noteworthy to me because Dad doesn't smile much--and when he does, it's usually pensive and faraway.

He looked past me, over my shoulder, and the smile on his face gradually fell into a frown.  I knew, even before I turned around, that he was looking at Rafael.

I couldn't decipher the look on Rafael's face.  Usually I found it a lot easier to figure out what kind of a mood he was in, because, unlike Annie, his face tended to betray his feelings--and he was a boy with many, many feelings.

Had there been better moonlight, or had the bonfire still been lit, maybe I would have seen something flicker across his eyes.  As it was, he whirled around and made to leave.

Logically, I knew that letting Rafael go was probably the smarter choice.  It was nighttime, and his uncle would probably start to worry if he missed curfew.  And anyway, I hadn't seen my father since the start of June, and it was Dad who took precedence right now.  But there was something about Rafael's posture--in his hunched shoulders, and the curve of his back--that told me he was extremely wary.  And when I thought about it, I didn't have to ask why.

If it had taken me only a day to recognize Rafael as his father's son, and that with a single, oblique memory, then Dad was guaranteed to have recognized him twice as fast.

I'd had enough of Rafael paying for his father's crimes.  I caught up with him before he could walk very far, seized him by the hand, and pulled him back to the bottom of Granny's porch.  It was almost comical, the way he staggered and lumbered after me.  I was a lot shorter than him, and no doubt forcing him to compromise his balance.

Dad looked on the two of us, and I could tell, from his face, that he had no idea what was going on.  "Maybe we'd best go inside," he suggested softly.

Rafael gave me a tense, blue-eyed look--a
What are you doing, you moron, let me go
kind of look--but I pulled him after us as we went inside the house.

Granny was sitting by the fire in her rocking chair, and the other rocking chair was occupied, too--by that friend of hers who liked to wear the sunflower-shaped earrings.  Ms. Sunflower took one look at Dad and let out a cry like, "Oh!"  She jumped up from her seat, and she and Granny said their hasty goodbyes.  Ms. Sunflower quickly left the house.

Granny stood from her rocking chair, remarkably calm, admirably poised.

"So," she said briskly.  With her hands folded before her belly, her eyes betraying nothing--eyes locked on my father's--she might as well have been some ambassador talking to her secretary, whose name she hasn't even bothered to learn.  "Decided to grace us with your presence!"

I looked between mother and son with great interest; this was my very first opportunity to find out what kind of a relationship Dad had with Granny.

If you know my dad, then you know he's always got this somber look on his face.  Doesn't matter whether he's actually feeling somber or not; that look is always there, very grave, very serious; very distant.  And--whenever the occasion happens to clash with his solemnity--very awkward.

Well, he sure looked awkward now.

"It's been a while," he said quietly.

"A while!  It's been eleven years!"

"I should go," Rafael murmured.  "Ow!"

I'd dug my fingers into his arms to keep him still.

Granny threw another log on the fire.  I heard her sigh quietly through her parted lips.

"So it's over, is it?" she asked my father, without looking at him.

What was over?  The cops and the social workers?  Because I kind of had the feeling that their visits were very far from over.

Dad gave Granny a nod I could only describe as polite.  It was as though he were addressing a stranger.  "Yes," he said.

And then Granny did something I fully hadn't expected her to do:  She brought her hands together in prayer, her eyes closed.

"Praise God," she said.

Did that mean the cops
weren't
after Dad anymore?  Then how had he managed to give them the slip?  I looked back and forth between Granny and Dad, but neither offered a further explanation.  I was starting to feel irate--which is something I don't feel very often.

Dad and Rafael were looking at each other.

"Eli's boy," Dad said, his eyes calm as still water, impassive and impenetrable as stone.

I had never heard anyone use Rafael's dad's name before.

Rafael's eyes were eddying ocean storms, dangerous, dark blue with night.

I wanted to say: 
Not Eli's boy.  Susan's. 
I let go of Rafael's arm and he rubbed it.

Dad said, "Does he know--?"

Whatever Dad meant to ask, he never got to finish.  Rafael bolted out the door with record-breaking speed.

I heard the door slap shut with the night wind.  Granny, Dad, and I each exchanged weighted glances.  Looking at the two of them, no one would have doubted for a second that they were mother and son.  Their faces--Granny's stern, Dad's solemn--were as reticent as they were, unwilling to convey their true thoughts.

Jeez, I thought.  This was one confusing mess of a conversation--because no one was really conversing.  And I really wanted to sort this out--I wanted to know exactly what Dad had been up to these past few months, where we were going next, why he had fallen out of touch with Granny--but Rafael was the roadblock that wouldn't let me stay put.  Rafael was outside somewhere, hating himself, afraid of what people saw when they looked at him, and I couldn't let him go to bed with a heart full of hatred and fear.

I gave both Dad and Granny an apologetic look.  Dad nodded.

I ran out the door after Rafael.

It really didn't take long to find him.  I had guessed that he was headed north, either to his home or to the badlands, and I was right.  I caught up with him beneath the mossy southern oak.  He didn't seem to notice me at first, running his hands through his hair with taut nerves.  He turned; he caught a glimpse of me, illuminated by the moon hanging low over the wide open badlands.  He started toward me--then stopped.

Tell me
, I wanted to say.  If he was hurt, I could help him.  And maybe he saw that on my face--he must have--because he started talking.

"I have memories of him," Rafael said, his voice tight, panicked.  "He wasn't a monster in my memories.  He gave me my first hunting knife.  He built me my first raft.  We won the raft race together when I was five."

Pain, and some other conflicted emotion, flashed across his face.

"He taught me how to draw," he said.

I bit down, hard, on my lip.

"How the hell can that guy that I loved so much have turned out to be a monster?"

I wanted so badly to have an answer for him.  But I didn't.  I didn't know what made some people turn out to be murderers while others were exemplary human beings.

We stood together beneath the southern oak, on the side facing the blue-gray canyons.  A different line of thought seemed to occur to Rafael.  Suddenly his jaw was hard and square, his eyes cool and smoldering all at once.

"Is he going to take you away?"

I didn't know that, either.  I shook my head slowly.  I knew Rafael wouldn't mistake it for certainty; and he didn't.

"I won't let him," Rafael said passionately.  "Don't know what the hell I'm gonna do, but--I don't know.  I'll tie you to me or something.  I won't let him take you away."

I cracked a grin, amused at the imagery.  Rafael was starting to calm down, too; I saw the corner of his lips twitch in an almost-smile.  Then I realized that I was still my grandmother's ward.  My dad didn't have custody over me anymore.  He couldn't make me go anywhere.  I breathed a small sigh of ease.  Rafael watched me earnestly and gleaned, from my reaction, my relief.

"You're okay?"

I nodded.

"Good," he said.  I felt the smile return to my lips.

Rafael's eyes darted furtively in the shadows and moonlight.  "I should probably go inside," he said.  "Uncle Gabe's gonna kill me."

But he made no immediate effort to leave, and I didn't push him.

"Sky," he said.  He sounded so much like a little boy just then, hurt and heartsick, but trying to hide it.  "Don't let him turn you against me.  Please?  I know he's your dad, and I know he probably hates me, but please don't hate me."

What right did anyone have to hate him?  He hadn't done anything wrong.  I could never hate him.  I wanted him to know that.  Usually he knew what was on my mind.  I guess that ability didn't work, though, when he was beside himself with loneliness and fear.

Plenty of people had turned away from him for something he hadn't done.

I closed the gap between us and took Rafael into a hug.  I could feel him stiffen in my arms, like he didn't know what to do; and then he relaxed, like he had known all along.  We'd held each other before, on lazy summer days, between private kisses and languid touches, but never anything that I would have considered a true hug: selfless support not instigated by desire, comfort for comfort's sake.  This was different.  My embrace was firm, arms tight around his back, and his head on my shoulder, weary and sad, had found solace on a friend's shoulder.

It wasn't terribly late when I left him and returned to Granny's house.  Dad and Granny were still awake, but had moved from the sitting room to the kitchen.  Granny was peering out the window--at what, I couldn't imagine:  The owls were hidden by the higher foliage, and the coywolves, though unafraid of humans, only came out if there were scraps on the ground.

"Cubby," my dad said.  He had a mug of roasted acorn tea between his hands, the contents untouched.  His eyes were on his fingers.  He looked like a snapshot to me, a piece of art that you can't interact with, only observe.  "I think we'll be staying here from now on."

I wanted to stay in Nettlebush more than anything, but something was way off here.  What was with his sudden willingness to live in the place he had actively avoided for more than a decade?  He hadn't even wanted me to grow up knowing my grandmother.  Where had he been these past few months?  What had he been doing?  And why had he left without a moment's warning?

I remained standing, and I fixed Dad with a hard, scrutinizing look, the hardest look I've got.  He met my gaze but briefly before he followed Granny's out the window.

I slapped my hands on the scrubbed pine table.  Normally I wouldn't have done it, but I was really fed up with all these questions and no answers.

"For heavens' sake, Paul," Granny said.  It felt weird to hear her call Dad by his real name.  "Tell him what you were doing.  The boy's got to know sooner or later."

"No," Dad said quietly.  "I don't think he does.  Let him be.  It's not for his conscience."

I really, really hated this.  Dad wasn't being any more difficult than he usually was--which is to say, he's been a difficult guy for as long as I've known him--but lately I'd grown sick of all the secrets.  Both figuratively and literally.

Dad looked up from the table; and I guess he saw that sickness written on my face.  Again, he looked away.  He took a moment to gather up his thoughts, the exact words that he wanted to say.  He couldn't have any mistakes.

"The man who took your mother from us," Dad began, "was named Eli Gives Light."

I started a little.  Dad never talked about Mom if he could help it, not even to reminisce.  I'd always found that odd.

"He murdered six other women before taking your mother's life.  Rebecca Takes Flight, Mercy In Winter, Violet Quick, Charity Gray Rain, Naomi Owns Forty, and Dolores Black Day."

And Rafael's mom, I thought, though maybe not with his own hands.

"That time was very dark.  When it first became obvious that there was a serial killer in Nettlebush--you can imagine the commotion, the mass paranoia.  The reservation was small, even then, and most of us were intimately familiar with one another, comfortably so.  To suggest that there was a murderer here--it was like...I don't know.  Like having to tell someone that their own brother was the culprit, that their own mother could be the next victim."

Dad took a sip of his tea to wet his throat.

"It took seven dead women before we discovered that the murderer was none other than a member of the tribal council.  One of the very people appointed to protect us.  He had abused his power.  In a time when we looked to the council to save us from this new and sudden terror, he took advantage of the people's implicit trust in him.  I don't even want to consider how many women might have let him into their homes thinking he had come to protect them."