A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(6)

“What are you going to do?”

“Find him and bring him back.”

Carey stopped eating and sat back in his chair. His eyes were staring, and he took several deep breaths. “Really?”

“I know.”

His face was tense with dismay and growing anger. “It’s hardly a year since you came in the kitchen door barely able to walk. The burns on your back have hardly had time to heal even now. Tell me—when you go out running, don’t you ever feel a twinge on your right side and remember what caused it?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I know this sounds to you as though I’m out of my mind. But I’m not going off with some stranger who’s got people chasing him down to kill him. They want me to find an old friend and tell him that coming back is for his own good.”

“I can’t believe that you’d even consider getting involved in something like this. We have police. We have courts. In spite of everything, most of the time they do their jobs and get things right. It almost never makes sense to run away from them. This is just madness. For a long time you told me this part of your life was over.”

“I’m sorry, Carey. I know this is difficult for you to understand. I don’t want to go. I especially don’t want to spend any time away from you. But this time I have to.”

He stared at her for a moment. “If you honestly believe that’s true, then I guess I have to accept your judgment. I can have my people postpone my appointments and go with you.”

She shook her head. “They’re not just appointments. They’re surgeries. People could die if you don’t help them. And what I have to do might be possible if I do it alone. It won’t be if anyone goes with me. That’s why the clan mothers came to me.”

“You know that if you shelter him from the police, even for a day, you can be arrested and charged with a crime.”

“I know.”

He sat unmoving. He looked as though he was about to give in to the anger, but she could tell he was fighting it to keep his composure. “I think you’re making a mistake. That’s for the record. But I can see you’re going to do it anyway.”

“I’ll try to make it as quick and painless as I can.”

“I hope you succeed.” Dinner was over. He got up, tossed his napkin on the table, and walked to the staircase.

When Jane finished clearing the table, loading the dishwasher, and cleaning the counters, she went upstairs. Carey had gone to bed.





3



Jane drove away from the McKinnon house early the next morning. The traffic on the New York State Thruway going eastward away from Buffalo was light, even though the incoming traffic was heavy.

The Tonawanda Reservation was about three miles north of the Thruway, just northeast of Akron. After the Revolutionary War, George Washington had signed the treaty letting the Senecas retain roughly two hundred thousand acres of land in this single plot. During the next half century, a cabal of prominent New York businessmen formed a land company and stole legal ownership of the reservation with the help of federal Indian agents who were openly on their payroll. The Tonawanda Senecas, led by the clan mothers, could only repurchase eight thousand acres. What was left was mainly swampy lowlands and second-growth forest, but various parts had been farmed as long as the land had been occupied.

Jane drove through Akron to Bloomingdale Road, then to Hopkins Road. The houses she passed were all ones she had known since she was born. She knew the people who owned them, and knew the complicated network of kinship that connected one family with another throughout the reservation, and even some of the connections with people from other Haudenosaunee reservations in New York and Canada. Jane turned and drove up to the house on Sand Hill Road that belonged to the Sanders family. She stopped her white Volvo beside the road and studied the place for a few seconds. There had always, for Jane, been a profound feeling of calm in the silence of the reservation. The thruway and major highways were too many miles away to be heard. The roads on the reservation didn’t allow for much traffic, and didn’t lead anywhere that big trucks wanted to go. Today the only sounds were birdsongs and the wind in the tall trees.

The Sanders house was old, but it had a fresh coat of white paint on it, and Jane was glad to see the shingle roof was recent too. Jane got out and headed for the wooden steps to the porch. She had always loved the thick, ancient oak that dominated the yard and shaded the house, so she patted its trunk as she passed. She remembered how she and Jimmy had made up stories about it when they played together as children. They agreed that a great sachem had been buried on this spot thousands of years ago, and an acorn planted above his heart had sprouted into this tree. They decided that the buried sachem’s power inhabited the tree, and so the tree had always protected the family from harm.

The front door of the house opened while Jane was still climbing the steps, and Mattie Sanders came out. “Jane?” she said. “You’re looking wonderful.”

“So are you, Mattie. All I did was grow taller.”

Mattie Sanders hugged Jane tightly. She was about five feet nine inches tall, with long, thick hair that had been jet black when Jane had come here as a child. Now it was hanging down her back in a loose silver ponytail, the way Jane wore hers to do housework. “If you came to see Jimmy, I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”