The Sign of Seven Trilogy (27 page)

Fox knew tones, and hers was defensive. He kept shoveling. “Do you know the alphabet?”

“Of course I know the alphabet, but the point—”

“Would be,” he interrupted, “if you know the alphabet you can probably figure out how to file. And you know how to use a phone, which means you can answer one and make calls from one. Those would be essential job skills for this position. Can you use a keyboard?”

“Yes, but it depends on—”

“She can show you whatever the hell she does in that area.”

“It doesn't sound as if you know a lot about what she does.”

He also knew disapproval when he heard it. “Okay.” He straightened, leaned on the shovel, and looked dead into her eyes. “She's been with me since I set up. I'm going to miss her like I'd miss my arm. But people move on, and the rest of us have to deal. I need somebody to put papers where they belong and find them when I need to have them, to send out bills so I can pay mine, to tell me when I'm due in court, to answer the phone we hope rings so I'll have somebody to bill, and basically maintain some kind of order so I can practice law. You need a job and a paycheck. I think we could help each other out.”

“Cal asked you to offer me a job because Quinn asked him to ask you.”

“That would be right. Doesn't change the bottom line.”

No, it didn't, she supposed. But it still griped. “It wouldn't be permanent. I'm only looking for something to fill in until…”

“You move on.” Fox nodded. “Works for me. That way, neither of us are stuck. We're just helping each other out for a while.” He shoveled off two more blades of snow, then stopped just to lean on it with his eyes on hers.

“Besides, you knew I was going to offer you the job because you pick up that sort of thing.”

“Quinn asked Cal to ask you to offer it to me right in front of me.”

“You pick up on that sort of thing,” he repeated. “That's your part in this, or part of your part. You get a sense of people, of situations.”

“I'm not psychic, if that's what you're saying.” The defensive was back in her tone.

“You drove to the Hollow, when you'd never been here before. You knew where to go, what roads to take.”

“I don't know what that was.” She crossed her arms, and the move wasn't just defensive, Fox thought. It was stubborn.

“Sure you do, it just freaks you. You took off with Quinn that first night, went with her, a woman you'd never met.”

“She was a sane alternative to a big, evil slug,” Layla said dryly.

“You didn't just run, didn't haul ass to your room and lock the door. You got in her car with her, came with her out here—where you'd also never been, and walked into a house with two strange men in it.”

“
Strange
might be the operative word. I was scared, confused, and running on adrenaline.” She looked away from him, toward where Lump was rolling in the snow as if it were a meadow of daisies. “I trusted my instincts.”

“Instincts is one word for it. I bet when you were working in that clothes shop you had really good instincts about what your customers wanted, what they'd buy. Bet you're damn good at that.”

He went back to shoveling when she said nothing. “Bet you've always been good at that sort of thing. Quinn gets flashes from the past, like Cal. Apparently Cybil gets them of possible future events. I'd say you're stuck with me, Layla, in the now.”

“I can't read minds, and I don't want anyone reading mine.”

“It's not like that, exactly.” He was going to have to work with her, he decided. Help her figure out what she had and how to use it. And he was going to have to give her some time and some space to get used to the idea.

“Anyway, we're probably going to be snowed in here for the weekend. I've got stuff next week, but when we can get back to town, you could come in when it suits you, let Mrs. H show you the ropes. We'll see how you feel about the job then.”

“Look, I'm grateful you'd offer—”

“No, you're not.” Now he smiled and tossed another shovel of snow off the deck. “Not so much. I've got instincts, too.”

It wasn't just humor, but understanding. The stiffness went out of her as she kicked at the snow. “There's gratitude, it's just buried under the annoyance.”

Cocking his head, he held out the shovel. “Want to dig it out?”

And she laughed. “Let's try this. If I do come in, and do decide to take the job, it's with the stipulation that if either of us decides it's not working, we just say so. No hard feelings.”

“That's a deal.” He held out a hand, took hers to seal it. Then just held it while the snow swirled around them.

She had to feel it, he thought, had to feel that immediate and tangible link. That recognition.

Cybil cracked the door an inch. “Breakfast is ready.”

Fox released Layla's hand, turned. He let out a quiet breath before calling the dog home.

 

P
RACTICAL MATTERS HAD TO BE SEEN TO. SNOW
needed to be shoveled, firewood hauled and stacked. Dishes had to be washed and food prepared. Cal might have felt like the house, which had always seemed roomy, grew increasingly tight with six people and one dog stuck inside it. But he knew they were safer together.

“Not just safer.” Quinn took her turn plying the shovel. She considered digging out a path to Cal's storage shed solid exercise in lieu of a formal workout. “I think all this is meant. This enforced community. It's giving us time to get used to each other, to learn how to function as a group.”

“Here, let me take over there.” Cal set aside the gas can he'd used to top off the generator.

“No, see, that's not working as a group. You guys have to learn to trust the females to carry their load. Gage being drafted to make breakfast today is an example of the basics in non-gender-specific teamwork.”

Non-gender-specific teamwork, he thought. How could he not love a woman who'd use a term like that?

“We can all cook,” she went on. “We can all shovel snow, haul firewood, make beds. We can all do what we have to do—play to our strengths, okay, but so far it's pretty much been like a middle school dance.”

“How?”

“Boys on one side, girls on the other, and nobody quite sure how to get everyone together. Now we are.” She stopped, rolled her shoulders. “And we have to figure it out. Even with us, Cal, even with how we feel about each other, we're still figuring each other out, learning how to trust each other.”

“If this is about the stone, I understand you might be annoyed I didn't tell you sooner.”

“No, I'm really not.” She shoveled a bit more, but it was mostly for form now. Her arms were
killing
her. “I started to be, even wanted to be, but I couldn't stir it up. Because I get that the three of you have been a unit all your lives. I don't imagine you remember a time when you weren't. Added to that you went through together—I don't think it's an exaggeration to say an earth-shattering experience. The three of you are like a…a body with three heads isn't right,” she said and passed off the shovel.

“We're not the damn Borg.”

“No, but that's closer. You're a fist, tight, even closed off to a certain extent, but—” She wiggled her gloved fingers. “Individual. You work together, it's instinctive. And now.” She held up her other hand. “This other part comes along. So we're figuring out how to make them mesh.” She brought her hands together, fingers linked.

“That actually makes sense.” And brought on a slight twinge of guilt. “I've been doing a little digging on my own.”

“You don't mean in the snow. And on your own equals you've told Fox and Gage.”

“I probably mentioned it. We don't know where Ann Hawkins was for a couple of years, where she gave birth to her sons, where she stayed before she came back to the Hollow—to her parents' house. So I was thinking about extended family. Cousins, aunts, uncles. And figuring a woman that pregnant might not be able to travel very far, not back then. So maybe she'd have been in the general area. Ten, twenty miles in the sixteen hundreds was a hell of a lot farther than ten or twenty miles is today.”

“That's a good idea. I should have had it.”

“And I should've brought it up before.”

“Yeah. Now that you have, you should give it to Cyb, give her whatever information you have. She's the research queen. I'm good, she's better.”

“And I'm a rank amateur.”

“Nothing rank about you.” Grinning, she took a leap, bounced up into his arms. The momentum had him skidding. She squealed, as much with laughter as alarm as he tipped backward. He flopped; she landed face-first.

Breathless, she dug in, got two handfuls of snow to mash into his face before she tried to roll away. He caught her at the waist, dragged her back while she screamed with helpless laughter.

“I'm a champion snow wrestler,” he warned her. “You're out of your league, Blondie. So—”

She managed to get a hand between his legs for a nice, firm stroke. Then taking advantage of the sudden and dramatic dip of his IQ, shoved a messy ball of snow down the back of his neck.

“Those moves are against the rules of the SWF.”

“Check the book, buddy. This is intergender play.”

She tried to scramble up, fell, then whooshed out a breath when his weight pinned her. “And still champion,” he announced, and was about to lower his mouth to hers when the door opened.

“Kids,” Cybil told them, “there's a nice warm bed upstairs if you want to play. And FYI? The power just came back on.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Apparently the phones are up, too.”

“Phones, electricity. Computer.” Quinn wiggled out from under Cal. “I have to check my e-mail.”

 

C
YBIL LEANED ON THE DRYER AS LAYLA LOADED
towels into the washing machine in Cal's laundry room. “They looked like a couple of horny snow people. Covered, crusted, pink-cheeked, and groping.”

“Young love is immune to climatic conditions.”

Cybil chuckled. “You know, you don't have to take on the laundry detail.”

“Clean towels are a memory at this point, and the power may not stay on. Besides, I'd rather be warm and dry in here washing towels than cold and wet out there shoveling snow.” She tossed back her hair. “Especially since no one's groping me.”

“Good point. But I was bringing that up as, by my calculations, you and Fox are going to have to flip for cooking detail tonight.”

“Quinn hasn't cooked yet, or Cal.”

“Quinn helped with breakfast. It's Cal's house.”

Defeated, Layla stared at the machine. “Hell. I'll take dinner.”

“You can dump it on Fox, using laundry detail as leverage.”

“No, we don't know if he can cook, and I can.”

Cybil narrowed her eyes. “You can cook? This hasn't been mentioned before.”

“If I'd mentioned it, I'd have had to cook.”

Lips pursed, Cybil nodded slowly. “Diabolical and self-serving logic. I like it.”

“I'll check the supplies, see what I can come up with. Something—” She broke off, stepped forward. “Quinn? What is it?”

“We have to talk. All of us.” So pale her eyes looked bruised, Quinn stood in the doorway.

“Q? Honey.” Cybil reached out in support. “What's happened?” She remembered Quinn's dash to the computer for e-mail. “Is everyone all right? Your parents?”

“Yes. Yes. I want to tell it all at once, to everyone. We need to get everyone.”

She sat in the living room with Cybil perched on the arm of her chair for comfort. Quinn wanted to curl up in Cal's lap as she'd done once before. But it seemed wrong.

It all seemed wrong now.

She wished the power had stayed off forever. She wished she hadn't contacted her grandmother and prodded her into seeking out family history.

She didn't want to know what she knew now.

No going back, she reminded herself. And what she had to say could change everything that was to come.

She glanced at Cal. She knew she had him worried. It wasn't fair to drag it out. How would he look at her afterward? she wondered.

Yank off the bandage, Quinn told herself, and get it over with.

“My grandmother got the information I'd asked her about. Pages from the family Bible. There were even some records put together by a family historian in the late eighteen hundreds. I, ah, have some information on the Clark branch, Layla, that may help you. No one ever pursued that end very far, but you may be able to track back, or out from what I have now.”

“Okay.”

“The thing is, it looks like the family was, we'll say, pretty religious about their own tracking back. My grandfather, not so much, but his sister, a couple of cousins, they were more into it. They, apparently, get a lot of play out of the fact their ancestors were among the early Pilgrims who settled in the New World. So there isn't just the Bible, and the pages added to that over time. They've had genealogies done tracing roots back to England and Ireland in the fifteen hundreds. But what applies to us, to this, is the branch that came over here. Here to Hawkins Hollow,” she said to Cal.

She braced herself. “Sebastian Deale brought his wife and three daughters to the settlement here in sixteen fifty-one. His eldest daughter's name was Hester. Hester Deale.”

“Hester's Pool,” Fox murmured. “She's yours.”

“That's right. Hester Deale, who according to town lore denounced Giles Dent as a witch on the night of July seventh, sixteen fifty-two. Who eight months later delivered a daughter, and when that daughter was two weeks old, drowned herself in the pond in Hawkins Wood. There's no father documented, nothing on record. But we know who fathered her child. We know what fathered her child.”