A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(54)

IT WAS AFTER NINE AT night when Dr. Carey McKinnon drove along the highway toward home. Even after dark he would be able to see the house in the next mile, he knew, because he’d been using this route since he was a small child. The McKinnon house was an old one, built along the side of a minor Seneca trail. In 1726 the French had built Fort Niagara about twenty miles from here to control the place where the river flowed into Lake Ontario, and when the British and Iroquois took it in 1759, a McKinnon had been at the nineteen-day siege.

A few months later the former soldier built his two-story log-and-mortar house and began to farm and trade with the Senecas. Later he sheathed the house in fieldstones, and expanded the structure beyond the simple rectangle it had been. The house today still stood on a remnant of his farm, and it had been expanded periodically over the next two centuries. Most of the trees in the ten acres around the house had been alive at the time the house was built, all of them now three or four feet thick and very tall—white oak, black walnut, sycamore, bitternut hickory, sugar maple, chestnut. The next few generations of McKinnons had been doctors, and the farming they did on the side became less and less important. If Carey had been the sort of fool whose pride in his family depended on their long tenure in the area, marrying a Seneca woman was the perfect cure for that folly. How long had Jane’s family been here? Ten thousand years? Twenty? He missed her, and it seemed that almost any thought he had led him back to her. Worse than missing her was thinking about the way they had parted. Worse than that was the worry.

This time when the big stone house came into view, there were lights on in the first-floor windows. He searched his memory, trying not to leap to conclusions, but he remembered turning off the last light when he had left for the hospital before dawn. His foot involuntarily stepped harder on the gas pedal, and the BMW took the turn into his driveway a bit faster than he had intended. He pulled around the house, craning his neck to see into the lighted windows, but all he saw from the car was ceilings. He drove into the garage that had once been the old carriage house, and then trotted to the kitchen door. It was unlocked.

He swung the door open and saw her standing on the other side of the big old kitchen, a figure in black. The doctor in him took note that she seemed thin. She said, “Pretty fast driving, Doc. If you roll your car when your wife is away, who will call the ambulance?”

He crossed the kitchen and held her in his arms. “I must have been showing off for you.”

“It’s not necessary,” she said. “I’m already sufficiently seduced. You’ve got me on your hands for life.” They shared a long, slow kiss, until Jane gently separated herself from him and held him at arm’s length. “You don’t seem that mad at me anymore.”

“You don’t seem that mad at me, either.”

“I’m quietly holding a grudge. It’s late, and I’ll bet you’re starving. I made us some dinner.”

“I thought I smelled something good.”

“The meat will take a couple more minutes. Go sit down so I don’t burn you, and I’ll bring it in.”

Carey went to the dining room sideboard and opened a bottle of Bordeaux he had bought and set aside for a time when Jane was home, took glasses from the shelf, and filled them while Jane brought in their plates. “Rack of lamb,” said Carey. “My favorite.”

“I may not get a high grade for attendance, but I’ve learned a few things you like.” She set the plates across from each other at the far end of the long antique table.

“To you,” he said. “My eyes don’t want to stop looking at you, so I probably won’t be able to eat this beautiful meal and I’ll starve to death.”

“To both of us,” she said. “And if I know you, somehow you’ll manage.”

Carey had come home later than usual this evening, because when Jane was away he took longer with his evening rounds to visit his surgical patients, so they were both very hungry. They ate and drank their wine with little conversation at first, and then Carey said, “I was really worried about you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I kept wishing that I hadn’t reacted the way I did before you left,” Carey said. “I know it’s bad enough to have to do something difficult, without having your family criticizing you for doing it.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just a bad situation. Nobody asked to be in it—not you, or me, or Jimmy. We’ll just have to get through it.”

When they were finished, Jane said, “Nia:wen.” She sat still and watched him.

Carey repeated, “Nia:wen.”

He stood and began to clear the table and she joined him. When they met a few minutes later with their hands free of dishes, they kissed again and held each other.

Jane said softly, “How much wine is left?”

“Not enough to drown a hummingbird.”

“So at least it’s not a safety hazard. Bring some cognac and glasses and I’ll meet you upstairs.”

After a few minutes Carey came upstairs carrying the two small snifters and the bottle, and walked down the hallway into the master bedroom, where Jane stood waiting for him, naked. “Oh, there you are,” she said.

Carey put the two glasses on his dresser, poured a splash of cognac into each, and handed her one. “This is a nice surprise. With all these lights on, I assumed you’d be dressed more formally.”