Silk and Stone (70 page)

“Then you’re goin’ to walk a long road before you understand Jake.”

“Please. Please help me to try.”

Clara was majestically still. Then she said, “God talks, and Jake’s got a rare gift for knowin’ how to listen. He touches people and learns about ’em. He touches the things they touch, and those talk to him too. Even the mountains talk to him.”

Joe whistled softly. “Man, that explains a lot.”

Sam hugged herself and bent her head. “I’ve thought about all the times when we were kids. When he was there every time I needed him. I never understood how he
knew.
”

“It’s not that he don’t trust you with it,” Clara said. She was frowning harder every second, as if caught up in
some dilemma she didn’t quite know how to resolve. “It’s that … well, he learns painful things about people, and it can bring on terrible trouble to talk about them.”

“What do you mean? What sort of things?”

“I can’t … I just can’t talk for Jake. It wouldn’t be right. You keep lovin’ him, Sammie. You’re right inside his heart and soul. You been there since the day he drew the first words out of you. It’s a powerful bond—a man who can feel the good and the bad inside people—loving somebody the way Jake loves you.”

Sam stiffened. “He’s come home, Clara, but he hasn’t said that he still loves me. I need to hear him say it.”

“Words are just the icing on the cake,” Joe interjected gamely.

“He never had any trouble saying it before.”

Clara stared at Sam shrewdly. “You give him the old ruby back yet?”

Sam felt the blood draining out of her face. Her confusion, her questions, suddenly had a symbol. The seed of the bitter feud between her aunt and the Raincrows. Jake wanted it. What did he think it would tell him? What would it do to their lives again?

“Did you give it back to him?” Clara repeated sternly

“No.”

“Good.
Don’t
. Don’t never give it back to him.”

Sam thought of the paths, those taken and those not, that had brought them, finally, together. The time he’d saved her from suffocating in an old trunk. How he’d tracked Charlotte and her when they’d run from Aunt Alex. And, with chilling comprehension, how he’d hunted Malcolm Drury down.

She thought of Jake locked in a cell, staking his trapped and battered hopes on her, scarring a vow into his skin. Believing she would be the one person who opened all the doors for him, and waiting for her, waiting endlessly. Believing that she would keep the ruby for him.

And the one question she was too afraid to ask began to haunt her.

If he could find anything he wanted, what kept him from knowing she’d buried the ruby beside his grandmothers spring
?

Tim glared at Alexandra and dismissed the reporter’s notes with a disgusted flick of one hand. He radiated high-strung menace. “What do you want from me? An apology? I’ve played by the rules I learned watching the two of you. I’m sorry I’m not as good at it as you. But that’s all I’m sorry for.”

“You seem to forget,” Alexandra said slowly, “that you’re at the center of this mess. I’m concerned about
your
predicament, first and foremost.”

“That’s bullshit, Mother. You would have traded me like a stunted colt when I was a child if you could have. I don’t doubt you’d still like to.”

“Oh, please. Must your excuses always hinge on slights you imagined you suffered as a boy?”

“I didn’t imagine that you despised me, Mother. I didn’t imagine that Samantha was the child you wanted to raise, not me.”

“How can you say that? You’re my son. I have tried to protect you from yourself all your life. I’ve given you opportunities few children ever have.”

“I’m a Vanderveer. That’s the only thing that’s ever meant much to other people. You didn’t give that to me. All you did was destroy the one person who ever really made me feel loved. You and Orrin took that away.”

“That is one of the most ridiculous accusations you’ve made to me in your life. And it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.”

“Yes, it does. I don’t care about proving my worth to you anymore. I just don’t give a damn who knows what about me—or about you and Orrin.”

“Until you snap out of that mood, at least stay out of my way and keep your mouth shut.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about.” A caustic smile played on his mouth. “I’ve been to see Gwen. You know, I always treated her the way you treated me. I
counted on some strange combination of love and fear to keep her under my thumb. But I underestimated her. Just as you’ve always underestimated me.”

“Are you saying Gwen went to the newspaper with stories about us? I don’t believe it. She’d have done it when she asked for a divorce, not now.”

“The reporter came to
her
with information. She panicked. She confirmed everything he already knew, and even filled in the details.” Tim took a step closer, leaning toward her. “It gave me a strange sense of satisfaction to hear what she’d done. Because I get to tell you
why
she was nervous enough to talk. She feared she was being spied on by another side of our family.” His voice had dropped to a lethal whisper. He bent his head near Alexandra’s. “One of your precious nieces had already come to see her. Charlotte showed up on her doorstep with Ben Dreyfus in tow.”

Alexandra stared at him with sick fury. “What interest could Charlotte possibly have in meeting Gwen?”

“Gwen didn’t talk to her long enough to find out. But you can put the puzzle together, can’t you, Mother? Charlotte’s just scouting for Sam. Oh, this is rich. Your pet is after you with all her pretty claws sharpened this time. But she’s not the one who dug up dirt about us. It’s Jake. I don’t know how he did it, but I’m convinced he’s the one. I doubt he’s forgotten all the times you tried to take her away from him. Especially after he was sitting in jail.” He hesitated, studying her face. “That scares you, doesn’t it, Mother?” His voice was an accusing, satisfied hiss. “Jake’s come home, and he’s going to destroy us.”

She slapped Tim. He drew back, his face flushing deeply, his eyes glittering. Alexandra trembled furiously. “Don’t wallow in your self-destructive cowardice,” she whispered between gritted teeth. “You really have no idea how ruthless I can be. Neither do Jake and Samantha. Any harm that’s been done to me pales in comparison to the harm I inflict in return. Get out of here. I’ll take care of this problem. As always.”

Tim’s expression had become a stony blank. “Not this time, I think.” He turned and left the room. Alexandra
waited until she heard the front door slam. Then she turned to Orrin. He sat with his head against the back of his chair. His face was ashen.

Alexandra composed herself by sheer willpower. She was quivering inside. “We can assume we’ve found the source of our trouble,” she told him. “Now we simply have to determine a way to eliminate it. I promise you, we will. We’ll be
fine
. We can pretend this episode never happened.”

“Pretend,” he said. He slurred the word. Then his eyes closed and he slumped sideways in the chair.

Chapter
            Thirty-One
 

H
e couldn’t think when he was with Samantha. Couldn’t think about anything but her. Her unanswered questions loomed over every brief, quiet moment when they were not dissolving into each other with blind need. So he’d visited his campsite for the first time in days, and gathered his totems to bring here.

The sun had dropped to the rim of the vast, rolling sea of mountains below, casting long shadows across the ledge of Sign Rock. Jake sat there with his collection of newspaper clippings spread before him. His own ancient guidemarks. Like the wind filling a high mountain cave, the familiar gnawing dread began to expand inside his chest. He had the terrible sense that something had gone wrong.

He trailed his fingertips over each sallow piece of paper, sorting through them, driven by something urgent
and deep, an intuition that scalded him. Someone had intervened. Hands other than his own had touched what he was touching.

Samantha? No. He would have felt her presence easily. And if she’d examined his belongings, he’d have felt her silent concern—and her guilty invasion—every time he held her.

He closed his eyes. His hands lay flat on the photograph of Alexandra, Orrin, Tim, and Tim’s wife.

Charlotte. Charlotte and Ben
.

He drew back in horror. He’d spent years chipping slivers of hard bedrock away from the hidden truth, infinitely methodical and patient, pushing Samantha away so she would not be caught under the hammer.

He had looked away from his work, looked only at Samantha, and shattered the stone. Now he pictured the truth bursting into sharp, glittering fragments as deadly and indiscriminate as shrapnel.

The wind caught his collection and scattered it into the high currents. He staggered to his feet. What door had he opened? What demons had he freed from Pandora’s box? Jake turned back toward the Cove quickly, sick with fear.

“Going fishing has always relaxed me and helped me sort through my problems,” Ben said darkly. He gave Charlotte a sideways glance as he cut his Jeep’s engine. “I had hoped, with pathetic optimism, that the mood might rub off on you.”

She pointed defensively to a patch of shiny fish scales clinging to the grimy, stained thighs of her jeans. “I cleaned. I gutted. Turning trout into nice little filets relaxes
me.
”

“Then why haven’t you spoken to me all afternoon?”

“Because I didn’t want to go fishing. I wanted to visit Sammie and see how she and Jake are doing. See if he really has come out of his surly cocoon. Find out whether he’s explained anything to her. I want to know if
he’s told her his hobby is collecting scrapbook material on our relatives. And I want to ask Jake if he has any inkling why our mutual cousin’s ex-wife is jumpier than a lobster in a pot of hot water.”

She climbed out of the Jeep and slammed the door. Ben followed her to the door of her condo, muttering under his breath. Charlotte searched for her key in a pocket of her jeans, then lost patience and tried the knob hopefully. “Oh, great, I left the door unlocked again.”

Ben shook his head. “As your lawyer and your main squeeze, it’s my responsiblity to tell you that you qualify as an ‘attractive nuisance.’ ”

“Don’t worry. I have a built-in security system. Little invisible antennae that set off an alarm when anyone messes with me.”

“That’s the problem.”

She shoved the door open, then batted her eyes at him. “But I gave
you
my secret entry code.”

“Oh, you let me inside the premises, but you haven’t given me the combination to the safe yet.”

She stepped into the darkened living room and beckoned grandly for him to follow. “There’s nothing in my safe, but I’ll show you my—”

Tim moved out of the shadows and kicked the door shut between her and Ben.