Bone River Read Free Page A

terms with things I could not have, what wasn’t meant to be. “I’m all right.”
    “You’ve been better lately.” I heard the reluctance in his voice as he said it—he hated to speak of those times as much as I did. “I don’t want you to—”
    “You needn’t worry,” I said firmly, forcing myself to smile. “Truly. It’s only this wind. It’s so strong and...and it doesn’t sound right. It makes me uneasy.”
    “It’s no different than any other storm,” he said, though I heard his relief. “But I’ve been thinking...we could leave this place, Leonie. Before the winter sets in. Go someplace else. Someplace new, where there’s actually sun. This rain would make anyone melancholy. God knows I’d be happy to leave. I’ve been saying it for years.”
    “Please, not that again. I love it here. You know that.”
    “I don’t think it’s good for you to stay.”
    “I’ll be fine.”
    Junius hesitated. “All right. But...no stories for the next few days, I think.”
    I nodded, too unsettled to argue, though I did say, “I still think Baird will find a use for them, if I ever get them translated.”
    “Baird doesn’t care about the stories, Leonie. No one does. There’s no point in it. No one would notice if you put them aside.”
    This argument, too, was an old one, better ignored, so I went up to him, putting my arms around him and whispering, “Let’s go to bed.”
    He let the argument go, distracted as I’d wanted him to be. He reached up, taking out the pins in my hair until it fell down around my shoulders, a mass of wispy blonde corkscrews, more than any one man could hold, though, as always, he took it in his hands, squeezing it and letting it bounce back, laughing a little before he buried his face in it, his mouth finding my ear. He pulled me to the bed, and soon we were tangled beneath the blankets, and his hands roamed my body with familiarity and ease, making quick work of it, holding me as tightly as he always did, as if he were afraid I would move and thrust beneath him, and the truth was that sometimes I wanted to, but the first and only time I’d done so he’d been horrified, and I’d learned to do nothing but hold him.
    He groaned and collapsed upon me, his lips moving soundlessly against my shoulder. I stroked his back until he rolled off and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close until I was spooned against him, his hands cupping my breasts, his breathing soft against my ear.
    He was asleep within moments, though I never went easy into sleep when we were done, and tonight was no different. My skin felt charged. I felt again those spirits in the air, again that uncomfortable suspense.
Something was coming.
The words wentround in my head, twisting with Yutilma’s chatter, with the wild creak of the fir and alder and the slap of water against the shore. The house groaned, a loose shingle clattered. I stayed awake, listening.
    The storm faded before dawn, before Junius woke for good, in time with the tides as though his body were a clock that told them. He rose, leaning to kiss me gently. “Happy Birthday,” he whispered, and when I started to get up, he shook his head and said, “Stay in bed today. It’s my present to you. Lord Tom and I can take care of the oysters.”
    I didn’t object. It was cold and dark and the last place I wanted to be was on an oyster bateau in the choppy water after a storm. So I kissed him and fell back into sleep as he readied to go out to the whacks in the dark.
    He and Lord Tom were long gone when I finally got out of bed. The world was quiet, but I still felt last night’s uneasiness like a whisper against my skin. I went downstairs to find the stove already fired and a pot of steaming coffee. I poured myself a cup and raised it in a toast. “Happy Birthday to me, Papa,” I said. “Can you believe how old I am?”
    I never felt his presence more strongly than on my birthday, despite the fact that his things were always all around