"Come closer."
Jake kneeled beside the bed and peered eye-level at Rass.
"He's your dad, isn't he?"
Jake gave him a sad, trembling smile. "I should have known I couldn't hide it from you."
There were so many things Rass wanted to say, but he had no strength, and his will to live was beginning to wane. "Tell him the truth, Jake. It's your only hope."
"I'm afraid to."
Pain twisted Rass's insides. He winced, tried to keep talking. "I let Mariah use that as an excuse. I won't let you. Tell your dad the truth or ... or I'll haunt you for life."
Jake tried valiantly to smile. "Okay."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Slowly, with great effort, Rass reached up and touched Jake's cheeks. "I love you, son."
Jake started crying in earnest. Silvery tears ran in rivulets down his pale cheeks. He bowed his head, pressing his forehead into the soft pile of blankets beside Rass. "I love you, too, Rass."
Rass started to say something else, but before he got the words out, he forgot what he wanted to say. The pain in his heart came pounding back, thundering in his ears.
Streaks of hot agony shot down his left arm and lodged, burning, in his wrist and fingers.
"Get Mariah," he gasped.
Rass sank into the bed, deeper, deeper. A strange feeling stole through his body, tingling like a thousand hot needles beneath his skin. He felt light-headed and weighted down at the same time. The blood pounded through his veins in an audible, throbbing rhythm.
His gaze took in the bedroom in a heartbeat; he saw it all, saw it and cataloged it in his mind. This had been his room for so long. ... His eyes fluttered shut; it took such an effort to keep them open. A memory flashed through his mind, bringing the moist heat of tears. He remembered the day, almost twenty-five years ago, when he'd brought his bride here from New York. This room, this bed, had been their sanctuary and their playground.
Tears pulsed past his closed eyes and slid down his face.
He felt his body weaken. It felt as if he were sinking slowly, inexorably, into the bed, disappearing.
He tried to reach for Mariah. She had to be beside him, had to be calling out his name, but he couldn't hear her. His head was filled with a low, buzzing hum that obliterated everything, even the thudding beat of his heart. He couldn't lift his good hand; it felt incredibly heavy.
He opened his mouth, tried to say her name, but his throat was so dry, he couldn't make a sound. His tongue felt thick and useless and dead.
Gradually he became aware of a dull, amber glow. He frowned. The golden light increased slowly, matching the erratic beating of his heart, spilled from the window and crept across the shadowy floorboards.
Rass realized with a start that his eyes were closed. He tried to open them, but couldn't.
A shape appeared at the end of his bed. At first it was dark, no more than a shadow ringed in impossible light. But slowly the shadow melted and features came forth.
"Greta." The name slipped past his lips in a sigh.
She smiled. Hello, love.
He smiled, and the moment he did it, he knew it was a real smile, not a one-sided, half-paralyzed shifting of lips. "You're here___"
You knew I'd wait for you. She reached out her hands. Come on, love. It's time. . .
Rass looked down, and though his eyes were still closed, he saw the glow emanating from his own body.
The light behind Greta intensified, turned from a molten gold to a shimmering white. Heat caressed his cheeks and made him feel strong again. The pain of old age slipped away. Effortlessly he sat up, his hands outstretched. "Greta . . ."
"No! Daddy, don't leave me." Mariah's throaty voice broke through the haze in Rass's mind.
Uncertainty stabbed through him. He stopped, sank unsteadily back into bed.
"Boo?" he whispered tiredly.
Something warm and strong curled around his hand, squeezing gently. "I'm here, Daddy. Don't go."
Greta held out her arms, a sad smile on her face. It's time, love.
With great effort, Rass opened his eyes. Mariah was standing beside the bed, holding his hand. Her eyes were teary, red-rimmed pools of agony against the ashen pallor of her cheeks. "Mama's here," he said softly.
"Oh, Daddy ..."
"We love you, Boo."
Tears filled her eyes but didn't fall, and somehow that hurt Rass more than anything he could imagine. "Let yourself cry.. . ."
She'll be okay.
Rass felt, rather than heard, Greta's words, and they filled him with a quiet, steady peace. The hot white light moved toward him, filled his body with shimmering, joyous heat. He felt his eyes flutter shut, felt his breath exhale one last time.
Then suddenly he was in a different place, enfolded in the arms of the only woman he'd ever loved.
Chapter Twenty-two Winter came to the funeral.
In the gray, soulless sky, the sun was a dull golden globe without power or heat.
Snow lay heaped on the feike line and bare tree limbs, encasing everything in an icy layer of translucent white. A freezing wind lashed down from snow-covered hills and barreled across the plain in a howling, mournful dirge.
Mariah moved stiffly forward, her chin tilted, her eyes painfully dry. Every crunching footstep was a brutal, heart-wrenching reminder of where she was going today, what she was doing.
She held up the back end of the pine casket. The hastily skinned wood abraded her skin, poked into the soft flesh of her palm. Dully she realized that she should have worn gloves.
Ahead, Jake and Mad Dog moved with the same stiff-backed reluctance, their heads bowed, their breath coming in great pluming streaks. Mad Dog held the right side of the casket; Jake, the left.
Together, step by halting, heavy step, they made their way across the silent, fallow farm, and up the hill to the knoll where Greta and Thomas lay. Wind whipped through the stark, bare branches of the oak tree, rattling the limbs. The iron settee creaked and moaned at the force of it.
"Okay," Mad Dog said quietly. "Let's put it down." The three of them bent and set the casket on the frozen, snow-covered ground. It hit with a muffled thud that echoed forever in the crisp silence.
Mariah straightened. The first thing she saw was the hole Mad Dog and Jake had dug last night.
Pain shot through her, hit her so hard, she staggered. She tried to push the obvious thoughts from her mind, but she wasn't strong enough. She didn't want her daddy going in there. ... It was so cold and dark and ... final.
She jerked away from the box, from the hole, and stood apart from everything, stiff and alone. Cold air buffeted her face, whipped thin strands of hair across her unprotected cheeks. She didn't pull the furred collar of her gossamer coat around her throat; she didn't care.
It felt as if she were being slowly, cruelly twisted in half. Every breath hurt, her eyes burned with the need to cry, but still she couldn't. Just like before, like always, the tears were locked in her chest in a throbbing, scalding ache.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to find some impossible warmth.
"Mariah?"
With great effort, she lifted her head. And found Mad Dog standing in front of her.
"Mad Dog." His name slipped out in a whisper of longing. With some distant part of her mind, she thought how easy it would be to go to him right now, to wrap her arms around him and let him comfort her.
But the effort was too much for her. She felt icy cold inside, as dead as her father.
As if there were nothing beneath her skin but broken glass, nothing in her heart at all.
She no longer wanted anything to do with Mad Dog, or Jake, or anyone. She just wanted to be left alone with the memories of her father, left alone with the hammering grief that kept her wide-eyed all night and half-asleep all day. She didn't want to talk to anyone, or say anything, or hear anything.
She wanted to die.
"Mariah?" he said again.
She stared at him, feeling nothing. "What?"
"Do you want to say a few words?" He gave her a look of such gentle concern, it almost broke through her apathy. He reached for her.
She let him touch her cheek, felt the warmth of his touch. But it meant nothing.
"Yes," she said, hearing the lifeless tone of her own voice. "I'll say a few words."
She moved past Mad Dog, feeling his gaze on her. He was worried, she knew. Once that might have meant something, and she knew it should still. But it didn't.
Standing beneath the skeletal winter remains of the oak tree, she stared dully at the gaping hole. At the sight of it, stark and terrifying against the snow white ground, she shuddered and closed her eyes.
"Rass . .." She paused, bowed her head. A headache throbbed behind her aching eyes. "Rass would have said, 'Don't cry for me. I'm not here.' "
Great, wrenching pain coiled around her heart. She brought her head up, stared at the farm he'd loved so dearly. "He believed that death was a gateway to another, better world. I hope he's right. He .. ." Her voice cracked. "He deserves it."
She kneeled on the cold ground and placed her icy hand on the splintery wood of his casket. Misery pulled her shoulders, dragged her head downward. It felt as if she were being slowly crushed by a wall of cold, unforgiving stone. Breathing became almost impossible. She stared at the planks of hammered pine through gritty, too dry eyes. "Good-bye, Daddy. I love you."
She squeezed her eyes shut for a long, pain-drenched moment, then slowly she opened them and pushed to her feet.
Mad Dog and Jake were looking at her. In their eyes, she saw the offer of refuge, the promise of comfort. And she knew that in that moment, they could come together, the three of them, and get through this grief with one another's help.
She didn't care.
She was too tired to try, too spiritually broken to even long for the comfort of a family anymore. Mad Dog and Jake would be leaving soon; she knew that. Rass was the glue that held them together. Without him, they were three strangers. She had already begun to think of her nights with Mad Dog as fantasy, a fairy tale without substance or truth.
She looked at him and Jake, standing so closely together, banded in the similarity of their grief. They almost looked alike.
Mariah felt achingly alone, separate. She wished she had the strength, or the courage to go stand with them.
But she couldn't.
Tiredly she picked up her skirts and headed away from the grassy knoll. They didn't even try to stop her.
In the long days and even longer nights that followed Rass's death, the house slid into a bleak gully of despair. Dust piled up on the furniture, coated the win-dowsills.
The kitchen sat in waiting silence, a cold and empty reminder that the heart of the farm had gone away.
No laughter floated through the air, no conversation rang out at mealtimes. There were no mealtimes. There was no conversation. There were only memories, dark, aching memories that seemed to be everywhere.
Mad Dog couldn't stand it anymore. He'd tried to give Mariah time, tried to give her the space she needed to grieve. But she wasn't grieving; she was dying. Slowly, day by day, inch by pitiful inch. He couldn't watch it anymore.
He had to either do something for her or leave.
That was the problem. He didn't know what to do and he didn't want to leave.
He stared down at the stew bubbling in the pot in front of him. Absently he stirred it. The rich aroma floated upward, streamed past his nostrils and scented the room.