Silk and Stone (56 page)

She drove well. Jake had taught her well. They had taught each other about marriage, about friendship, about the sweet, hot intimacy of sex.

And now he wanted her to forget about him. To leave.

Sam glimpsed the sleek black sports car in the yard. She squinted, not recognizing it at first. Her breath caught as she realized it was Tim’s car.

Charlotte’s alone with him
. Sam stomped the accelerator. The bulky station wagon careened into the yard. Sam slid it to a stop near the porch steps. The front door was shut, but a window to the front room had been pried up. One length of her smooth blue drapes had been pulled backward through the opening.

Sam bolted from the car, holding the ignition key in front of her like a tiny knife.

Before Sam could reach the door, it burst open. Tim glared at her, big and deceptively debonair-looking in a white sweater, leather jacket, and creased trousers. His face flushed darkly beneath his close-cropped red hair. “Where is it?” he demanded, apparently unconcerned at being caught.

Sam wanted to strangle him. “Where’s Charlotte?”

“Hell if I know.” He dismissed her with a contemptuous stare, then turned and walked to a small table inside the doorway. He jerked its shallow drawer out of the frame. Roadmaps, batteries, and other small items scattered on the floor. Sam bolted inside. He slung the
drawer against a wall. “My mother doesn’t give a damn about you,” he told her. “She wants the ruby back. I’m not going to put up with you and your lying bitch of a sister. You can’t crawl back under my mother’s wing and alienate her from me again. I came here to find that stone.”

Sam clenched her fists. “
Get out of my house or I’ll kill you.
”

“You’ve been taking murder lessons from Jake?”

Sam lurched at him, swinging the hand that held the key. She caught him along the jaw, plowing a jagged furrow as he whipped his head back. He yelled in pain and pinned her against the wall, digging his hands into her arms, lifting her to her toes. “Jake’s not coming back,” Tim said, his spit flecking her face. He shook her. “Who are you going to run to now? Hmmm? Who’ll come after me this time? My mother
owns
you, and Charlotte too. I can do whatever I want.
Now, where’s that stone
?”

Sam’s long wool skirt was wrapped between her legs. She squirmed. He slammed her against the wall. Her teeth clicked on her tongue, and she tasted blood. She got one leg free and jerked it up, catching him between the thighs. He gagged, staggered back, and dropped her. His face contorted. He drew back one fist.

Sam ducked as his fist grazed the top of her head. He grabbed the front of her coat and wrenched her into place, pulling back his hand again.

Charlotte’s warlike scream filled the hallway. She appeared with the full force of a small tornado, launching herself at him. Sam glimpsed the silver flash of a long kitchen knife next to Tim’s head.

He fell back against the facing wall, groaning. Blood poured down his neck. He clutched the side of his head and stared at Charlotte, who raised the carving knife to stab him. “I’ll make sure you never touch me
or
Sammie again,” she shrieked.

Visions of Charlotte killing him propelled Sam forward. She pushed between them and grabbed Charlotte’s wrist. Charlotte wrestled blindly with her, but Sam pried the knife out of her clenched hand and faced Tim. He
leaned against the wall, dripping blood, his face chalky. Sam jabbed the knife toward his throat. “Move,” she yelled.

He backed out, Sam advancing to match every step he took. Blood spurted between his fingers. When he reached the porch steps he turned and stumbled down them. Sam followed him to his car, Charlotte beside her. Sam clutched Charlotte’s jacket sleeve with one hand and kept the knife posed in front of them.

Tim staggered to his car, crimson streaks staining the collar of his white sweater, blood speckling the car door as he jerked it open. “She’s
crazy,
” he yelled, flinging his free hand toward Charlotte. “This time we
will
get her locked up. You can visit Jake in prison and
her
in a mental ward!”

“You’re not going to tell anybody the truth about this,” Sam answered smoothly. “Because you’d have to admit you were here. And you don’t want your mother to know that.”

He gaped at her, and she knew she’d made a point he couldn’t deny. He cursed viciously and threw himself into his car.

Her feet braced apart, Sam stood in the driveway with the knife raised until he was out of sight. An eerie silence descended. She heard only the sound of her own ragged breathing, and Charlotte’s. The knife and her hand were covered in Tim’s blood.

Charlotte inhaled sharply. “I fileted him.”

Sam pulled her toward the house. They halted inside the hall, staring at the grisly spatters of blood on the wooden floor and log walls. Charlotte yelped and fell to one knee, pointing to a small bloody object on the floor. Sam’s stomach twisted when she realized what it was.

Charlotte looked up at her with shaky triumph, then whispered, “I cut off the tip of his
ear.
” She scooted back, her hands rising to her throat. “I cut off his ear,” she said louder, with a hint of hysteria. “Sammie, I cut off his—”

“
It’s done
. Shhh. It’s all right.” But Sam was already thinking of the consequences.

“It’s not all right,” Charlotte cried. “I just did a
van Gogh
on him.” Sam pulled her to her feet and hugged her. They were both shaking. “Tim won’t tell anybody the truth,” Sam said.

“Even if he doesn’t, he won’t just
forget
what we did, what I did. He’ll come back.”

Sam cried out, overwhelmed by decisions that ripped away the last shred of hope. She pushed Charlotte down the hall. “Go on. All we can do right now is
run
. Grab all the clothes you can carry. I’ll get mine.
Hurry.
”

Charlotte swung around and stared at her. “We ran once before, and you hated doing it. Sammie, this is your
home
. And Jake—what about Jake?”

Sam’s teeth chattered. She wanted to sink to the floor and cover her head, curl up like a child and cry until there was no pain left in her. “He doesn’t want me. You understand? I’ve brought nothing but bad luck to him and his family. He went to see Malcolm Drury because of
me
. He’s in jail because of me. He’s going to prison because of—”

“He loves you! He wanted you to come here and marry him, and you made him happy—everybody said so! You didn’t cause the fire, and you didn’t ask him to find Malcolm!”

“It doesn’t have to make sense. It hurts too much to make sense.” Sam shook her lightly. “Listen to me. We’ll go away. We’ll go to … to California. Aunt Alex can’t find us there. I know how I can make money—a lot of money.” She thrust her hands into her sister’s startled face. “With
these
. These are all I’m worth right now. These will earn a living for us, and pay Jake’s legal fees, and the taxes on the Cove.”

“But, Sammie, it’ll
kill
Jake if he thinks you deserted him.”

“He told me to go. I said I’d never do it, but he was right. I have to.” Sam’s hands fell limply to her sides. She threw her head back. Sorrow overwhelmed her, and she made a guttural sound of defeat mingled with his name.

If you break down, you’ll be no good to him, or Charlotte, or yourself
. Sam took a deep breath and looked
around her with brutal resolve. She would not think of the loom Jake had made for her, of their wedding night in this house, of all the days and nights since, when they’d believed nothing could intrude on this small, contented world of theirs. “Get your things,” she repeated. “We’re leaving.”

Charlotte ran toward her bedroom. Sam walked blindly into hers and Jake’s. She threw armloads of her clothes onto the bed, then gathered them inside the beautiful quilt she’d made for him years earlier. Every second was laced with despair.
I’m not deserting you
, she heard herself saying out loud in a hollow voice.
I’ll find some way to take care of everything. I swear
.

She thought of the ruby, safely stored in the car, inside her purse. She had brought it to the Cove innocently, and now, not innocent anymore, she was taking it with her. Or it was taking her. And someday she’d come back. So would Jake.

Whether there would be anything left of his love for her, anything for them to share except that stone, she couldn’t say.

Before she walked out, she lifted the dreamcatcher from its place on the bedstead’s post, kissed it, then put it back.

A part of her was lost forever. She was only nineteen years old, but when she locked the front door behind her and Charlotte, she left the last bit of her young self inside.

Joe Gunther had the keen, disquieting feel of watching a train wreck in slow motion, wanting to stop it but helpless to do anything. There was too much he didn’t understand, and what he did understand came from a grandfatherly conviction that he hadn’t misjudged the love between two young people he’d known for years.

Sammie hadn’t up and run off because she wanted a new life now that Jake was going to be locked away for a long time. It was a hard thing to live with, her knowing Jake was in this mess for something he’d done
on her behalf, tracking down the man who’d conned her mother out of money. But Sammie wouldn’t have left out of shame. She’d stand up to it, and try to make everything up to him.

Joe had spent too many years watching Jake’s uncanny way of finding stones and people not to believe that Jake had some kind of sixth sense. Jake had known when Sammie left.

Joe sat across the table from him in the spare little visiting room, staring at Jake’s taped, swollen hands, trying not to think about Jake slamming his fists into the concrete wall of his cell. Joe told him quietly, “I don’t know where she was when she called. She said she’d let y’all’s lawyer know soon as she and Charlotte get wherever they’re headed. She’s afraid Alexandra wants to get her hooks in her and Charlotte, with your folks out of the picture, and all. I don’t know what made up Sammie’s mind. She just said she’d been a fool to think her aunt would let her alone.”

Jake’s large, hooded eyes met Joe’s with a haunted coldness no one could breech. “I told her to go. I told her I didn’t love her anymore.”

“That’s a lie, man.”

Jake’s big, broken hands flexed hideously on the table. “She’ll be safe now. I trust you and Ben Dreyfus to keep it secret—you make sure Alexandra never finds out where she is.”

“She said she’ll be sending Dreyfus money. And letters. For you.”

“I don’t want her letters. I’ll never give her a reason to come back.”

“Are you
trying
to break her heart? You’ll be free someday. She’ll be waiting. I don’t care how long it takes.
That gal will wait for you the way she always has.
”

“It won’t be safe for her then either.”

Such strange talk reduced Joe to silence. Jake seemed bent on self-destruction. There was something terrible and lonely in Jake, something no one could reach.

Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone
?

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When
?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again
.

T
HOMAS
W
OLFE
Look Homeward, Angel

Part
          Three
 

Chapter
            Twenty-Five