Bone River (18 page)

I felt a little sting of resentment.

“Perhaps you should go through it yourself, then,” I said a little meanly.

Junius said, “You’re better at sifting than I am. More patience.” He put the towel aside and came up behind me, bending to kiss my shoulder. “Your father used to say it, I remember. That there was no one better for detail work.”

Detail work.
It seemed too little praise, an insult in some strange way, though I knew he hadn’t meant it so. And I
was
good at detail. I’d always been proud of that. I forced the thought aside and tried again. “I remember hearing a story about a settler out here who was buried in a trunk. When they dug him up a year later to plant a garden, he was mummified.”

Junius laughed. “What kind of a story was it? An Indian myth?”

“No. Someone told me. I don’t remember who—”

“It didn’t happen.” He was so certain. “Trust me, Lea. Cut her open and you’ll see. Unless you’re too squeamish.”

I thought I heard challenge there, a dare. “I don’t know that it will be necessary.”

“You mean you don’t want to do it,” he said. He unbuttoned his trousers, pushing them off his lean hips, revealing his long underwear that went dark and wet from the knees down where his boots had not protected him from the water. “It’s fine to admit it. You’re tenderhearted. No one faults you for it. Women are meant to be sentimental. It’s what makes them good mothers—”

“I’m not a mother,” I said, too sharply, disbelieving that he’d even said it.

“You’re a stepmother,” he said, as if that proved his point, as if being the stepmother to a twenty-seven-year-old was the same as raising a child from infancy. “And you’re proving to be a good one too, Lea. I would have sent the boy on his way, but you...I should have realized he would appeal to your natural sympathies.”

“Why did you marry me, Junius?” The words came out before I was even aware of thinking them.

His gaze met mine in the mirror. “What?”

Now was the time to take it back, to say never mind, to let it go unmentioned. But I twisted to face him. Again, I said, quietly this time, “Why did you marry me?”

“You know why,” he said.

“You promised my father,” I said. “But you had another wife. You had a child. Why did you choose me over them?”

Junius’s face softened, and suddenly I wished I had not asked the question. There was no reason for it, after all.
Land. The whacks. And a pretty little seventeen-year-old on top of it.
I knew Daniel’s suspicions for being the worst sort of bias. Junius was the one I knew, the man I had loved for twenty years. I had never before questioned his love for me.

But the question was there now and it could not be unsaid, so I waited.

He motioned for me to come to him where he sat on the edge of the bed, and when I stepped between his legs, he wrapped his arms about my hips, pulling me close, and his expression when he looked up at me was frank. “Why did I marry you? I’ve told you. Because you needed me, sweetheart, and Mary and the boy didn’t. When Teddy died...” He paused, glancing away as if too moved to keep my gaze. “You were so bereft. I couldn’t bear to see it, to tell you the truth. And then, when you said you wanted to marry me...well, there was so much hope in your face. How could I say no?”

“You should have,” I whispered.

His smile was wry. “Really? Who knows what would have happened to you here alone, prey for every idiot who set foot upon these shores? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

“But you could live with walking away from your son.”

“I told you, I thought he’d be better off. He had his mother to love him. You had no one.”

“I had Lord Tom.”

Junius shrugged as if that meant nothing. “The boy means to make you feel guilty, Lea, but it wasn’t your fault. None of it. Let him blame me, if he wants. That’s deserved, at least.”

His arms tightened about me, pulling me close enough so he could press his face against my stomach. I felt the warmth of him, the heat of his breath through my nightclothes. “Don’t let him come between us.”

“Why would he? Don’t be ridiculous.”

He drew away and looked up at me again. “It’s not ridiculous. Where are these questions coming from, if not him?”

“I was only wondering—”

“Because he said something to you about it, didn’t he? About how this land was worth something, about the oysters, about you being young and pretty.”

I squirmed a little. “No—”

“He did. I can see it.” He jerked me closer, holding me hard in place. “He wasn’t there, Lea. He doesn’t know. He’s angry and bitter and he has every right to be. But he doesn’t know anything about the two of us, and he has no right to make you doubt me.”

“I don’t doubt you,” I said, and in that moment, it was true. I didn’t doubt him, and I was annoyed with Daniel for planting those suspicions, and angry with myself for being so susceptible to them, for forgetting so easily and well my own reasons for wariness.
You will regret it now he is here.

“I wish you’d let me send him away.”

“No,” I said firmly. I would stay on guard, but until Daniel proved he was unworthy, I would stay the course. “He needs to know the truth of you. I want him to know who you really are.”

“For what reason?”

I threaded my hand through my husband’s hair and looked at him affectionately. “Because he needs to know. For himself. He’s getting married soon, and I think it would ease his mind to
know you’re not the ogre he thinks you are. And I know you say you don’t care, but I think you would rest easier too, knowing that you have a son who doesn’t hate you.”

He laughed a little and buried his face in me again, his voice muffled as he said, “You know me too well.”

And I remembered suddenly the early days of our marriage, his gentleness and care, as if he’d known how sudden was the shift from student to lover and meant to help ease me through it. I felt a surge of tenderness. I leaned to kiss the top of his head, and he took the opportunity to pull me back with him onto the bed, and then he was kissing me gently and sweetly, undressing me with slow deliberation, so I felt how precious I was to him, how much he loved me, and I felt guilty again for doubting him, for allowing Daniel’s words to have any heft at all.

The next day, I woke to overcast but no rain. At breakfast, Junius said, “It looks like a good day to go to Toke’s Point.”

Lord Tom looked up from his coffee. “Toke’s Point?”

Junius nodded. “There’s a burial cave there. We heard about it from that settler over near Stony Point. He found a basket there that matches the one the mummy was in.”

Lord Tom’s expression went very still. “I know of the place.”

In surprise, I said, “You know it?”

“It has been a story for many years.”

Junius fingered his cornbread. “More than a story, I think. This man had been there.”

“It’s no good to go near any
memalose illahee.
”

“Of course not,” Junius said dryly. “Would that the weather was as predictable as your dire warnings. But it’s the best clue we’ve got to her origin. And if there are bodies there, perhaps we can find a connection. If they were sacrificed as well—”

“Sacrificed?” Lord Tom frowned.

“Leonie discovered how the mummy died. She was strangled.”

Lord Tom’s gaze turned to me, intent enough that I squirmed. I expected him to say something about how he’d known already, or how long it had taken me to tell Junius, but he was quiet. The talk turned to our preparations for the journey, but I could not help but notice how discomfited Lord Tom seemed, how restless. When he went to the back door to go out to the lean-to, I followed him, pausing just behind him on the narrow porch before his door. “What is it,
tot
?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

He hesitated, his hand on the door latch. “Do not go to this cave,
okustee.
”

“Because of the spirits? Or is there some better reason?”

“Why not because I have asked you not to?”

“I can’t stay away,” I said insistently. “The basket this settler had—it was the same pattern. And she wants me to find the answers,
tot
, I can feel it. In my dreams, she—”

“In your
dleams
?” Lord Tom’s glance went to the bracelet, and self-consciously I moved my wrist behind a fold of my skirt to hide it. He sighed. “Leave the mummy alone. Let her rest.”

“I can’t.”

“Will you like what you discover, I wonder?” he asked.

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged and twisted the latch. The door to his tiny room swung open, revealing the bed built into the opposite wall, the tangled Hudson Bay blankets, a lamp whose chimney needed cleaning. “You know the stories. Curiosity makes more trouble. Think of Italapas
.
”

“Italapas’s curiosity transformed the world. And Junius will go to the cave whether I do or not.”

“Yes. But you are the one I promised to keep safe.”

“I’m no longer a child. I think Papa cannot have meant you to watch over me forever.”

Lord Tom’s smile was small and soft. “It is never over,
okustee.
”

He slipped into his room, closing the door gently but firmly, closing me out, and I was suddenly fearful. I did not like to go against Lord Tom’s wishes. He had been the one who protected me from the dangers of this world—the tricky sloughs and riptides, marshes that tangled one’s feet and threatened always to pull one under, spirits and their lies...

But Lord Tom’s spirits were only stories, and I could ignore them now, because I felt her there too, urging me forward, and I felt her pleas and her urgency and I knew there was no question: I would go to Toke’s Point because I had to, because science said there was a singular truth waiting to be found, an indisputable answer, and I knew I was the one meant to find it.

Toke’s Point was about five miles away by water, near the mouth of Shoalwater Bay, on the northern shore of the mainland. The worst of the journey would be when we’d almost reached it, when the bay was no longer protected by the long finger of land that shielded it from the open ocean. The water was gray beneath the heavy overcast, and choppy. Though there was no rain, the air was wet, the sails slack and heavy. Our way was slow, mostly tacking, and before we’d been out an hour, I was freezing. Even the birds seemed huddled into themselves against the cold. I tucked my hands into my armpits and felt the tension between Junius and his son, the way Junius focused on sailing the plunger as if he’d never done it before, Daniel’s studious quiet. He hardly looked at his father, but glanced at me now and again as if I were some mystery he was trying to puzzle out, reminding me uncomfortably of yesterday in the barn. I remembered Stony Point, too, and what he’d offered me, and I didn’t trust him. So I avoided Daniel’s gaze and ignored my curiosity about him that had not faded but only grown.

We were about halfway across, drowning in silence, when I could not bear it another moment. I said to Daniel, meaning to
lure Junius into conversation as well, “Have you been working at the newspaper long?”

He gave me a look that said he knew what I was doing, and then he glanced away with a wry smile that reminded me of his father. “No.”

“Is it a good job?”

“Better than some.”

“Not as hard as working oysters, I imagine.”

Again, that smile, along with a shrug. “Not as lucrative either.”

I searched for another question.

Junius said, “Not much of a talker are you? Not like your mother.”

“I never saw that in her,” Daniel said, staring out into the gray. “She was always too tired. Worked out, I guess. By the time I was old enough to help, I think she’d lost the habit.”

We fell back into silence. I caught Junius’s gaze, and he raised his brow and shrugged. I narrowed my eyes at him, and finally he cleared his throat and said, “This girl you’re planning to marry.”

Daniel turned his gaze almost idly to his father. “What about her?”

“Tell me something about her. What’s her name? Is she pretty? Where did you meet her?”

“Why do you care?”

“She’ll be the mother of my grandchildren, won’t she?”

Daniel laughed, short and derisive, and then he glanced at me and went sober and thoughtful. “Eleanor. Her name’s Eleanor. I met her at a missionary rally.”

“You have a religious bent?” Junius sounded as surprised as I was.

Daniel shook his head. “I was on my way somewhere else and got caught up in it.”

“So
she’s
of a religious bent.”

“Her father’s a missionary working in Chinatown. She helps him.”

“Ah. Charitable works. She sounds a paragon.”

“I couldn’t like a paragon,” Daniel said. “But you’d find no reason to complain of her.”

“What did your mother think of her?”

“She liked her well enough. She wished us to be married last year, but...”

“But what?”

Daniel said stiffly, “Eleanor’s father preferred us to wait.”

“He doesn’t approve?”

“His hopes for the future mirror mine.”

“Ah.” Junius nodded and glanced up at the sail. “Don’t have enough money to support his daughter, do you?”

Daniel looked away.

“Well, no man values what he comes by easily,” Junius said.

“You’re a shining example of that yourself,” Daniel said, glancing at me, and I knew he spoke of how easily Junius had gained me, the way my father had handed me and the land over the way one might hand over a watch or an heirloom. The thought surprised me—such a thing had never occurred to me before.

The wind picked up; the plunger sped ahead, its bow slapping against the choppy water. Junius was distracted adjusting the sail and our course. Soon, Toke’s Point came into view.

The tide was in, revealing only a strip of sand that gave way eventually to a stony beach leading right up to woods of spruce, alder, and hemlock, smoke rising from the chimneys of the one or two houses settled in the trees. We came ashore, each of us grabbing a bag of provisions and extra clothing and things for camping overnight. I knew Bill McInery lived nearby, and we could stay the night at his place without trouble, but Junius intended to hike to the cave if we could, and spend the night there, skeletons or no, and I knew already I would not be able to talk him out of it.
Perhaps the skeletons Sanderson had seen were already gone, but I didn’t want that either, because it would mean the cave would be scraped clean of anything useful.