Fire Along the Sky
Page 26

It was an image that made Hannah laugh out loud, and one that stayed with her for the rest of the day while she looked, without success, for her sister and her cousin.
“You should have waited.” Elizabeth looked up from the quill she was sharpening; she could not hide her irritation or her worry, and neither did she care to. “It might have gone better if you had come to fetch me, Nathaniel.”
Her husband sat on a low stool leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands dangling. He looked up at her with his head cocked, an expression that meant he was calculating how much of an argument he wanted just at this moment. He could say what they both knew to be true, that the conversation with Lily might have been worse too, especially if Elizabeth hadn't been able to hold her tongue. But Nathaniel had never been cruel, and he was worried about his wife almost as much as he was worried about their troubled daughter.
“I made a promise to her, Boots. I kept it.”
The penknife slipped and she put her thumb to her mouth to still the welling blood.
“I been thinking about your aunt Merriweather a lot lately,” Nathaniel said. “We never gave her much credit for telling the future, but she was mighty good at it. She promised you that Lily would give us a run for the money, didn't she?”
Elizabeth blew out an exasperated breath. “Her exact words were ‘she'll lead you a merry chase,' I believe. But I do not think I was quite so much trouble to my aunt and uncle . . .”
Her voice trailed off suddenly and was replaced by a reluctant half-smile, one that Nathaniel was relieved to see.
“You needn't give me that look,” she said dryly, winding her handkerchief around her thumb. “I take your point. In spite of all the concern I was to them at Lily's age, their concerns were unfounded. Things did turn out in the end, though not exactly as Aunt Merriweather had hoped at first. Nathaniel Bonner,” she said, her tone sharpening suddenly. “Do you ever tire of being so irritatingly clever?”
“It ain't cleverness, Boots.” He got up and brushed one hand over her hair while he reached for his rifle with the other. “I don't suppose there's much either of us could say or do anymore—good or bad—that would surprise the other one.”
“Is that true?” Elizabeth frowned. “I'm not sure I like being so predictable.”
Nathaniel laughed. “Wait until we get the youngsters sorted out before you hatch any plans about surprising me. We got our hands full as it is.”
Elizabeth's smile faded away, and she looked out the window toward the falls. “You really think I shouldn't go look for her?”
Nathaniel said, “Right now she wants to be left alone,” he said. “And then she'll need to talk to Daniel. In the meantime I need to have a word with Luke.”
“It's a complicated business, this raising of children,” Elizabeth said. “It's almost a relief, knowing there won't be any more of them to bring up and worry about.”
“You sure of that, are you?” He raised a brow at her, and she blushed in spite of her resolution not to. “Reasonably sure,” she said, and blushed again. He laughed at her over his shoulder on his way out the door.
“Don't feel obliged to prove me wrong!” she called after him, but he did not hear her, or chose not to.
Nathaniel found Luke sitting alone in the spray of the falls, his hair still dark with water and his expression unreadable. A strange thing, that his firstborn should be the most mysterious of his children, but Nathaniel had never seen or known about the boy until he was already on the brink of manhood.
He had a good memory, and he prided himself on the fact that where many men seemed unable to tell their children one from the other he could summon pictures of all of his own as newborns, both the ones still living and ones who had not lived long enough to get to really know. Red-faced and screaming or wrinkled and curious about the world, each of them had come into the world showing signs of the person they would grow into.
Over the years three women had borne him eleven children, and five of those had survived. Of those, four were grown and ready to start families of their own. Gabriel, the youngest one, was the sweetest of them all but wild at heart; Gabriel would keep them hopping into old age. Sometimes Nathaniel woke in the deep of the night sure that he could hear the beat of the boy's blood through walls and floors. He knew the four younger children well, but Nathaniel could read Gabriel's mind just by looking at him sideways.
For Luke, for his firstborn, he had no such talent. He told himself it was because he had got to know him too late. They itched at him, all those missing memories, like a wasp sting in a hand left behind on a battlefield.
Now Luke was watching Nathaniel, as Nathaniel had watched his own father for all his life, reading mood and thought and intention from the set of Hawkeye's jaw or the flickering of an eyelid. No doubt he was as big a mystery to the boy as the boy was to him, but somehow that was little comfort.
“Tomorrow,” Luke said when Nathaniel was close enough. “We'll set out tomorrow.”
“And here I was thinking we didn't know each other well enough.” Nathaniel sat down close enough to talk without shouting over the noise of the falls but not close enough to make the boy uncomfortable. He rested the butt of his rifle on a convenient rock and leaned into it.
“Or maybe you read everybody's mind that easy.”
Luke snorted. “That would be a useful talent, but it's one I can't claim for myself.”