Light to the Hills: A Novel (68)

Finn stood in the half-lit barn in a spot where the white moon cast a thin light through cracks in the planked walls. He rubbed a hand across his jaw, scratching his patchy, half-grown beard.

“What—what’re you doing out here?” she shot back. Had he seen her?

“Got back late and didn’t want to wake the whole house up, so I bedded down out here.” He jerked a thumb toward the hay, where she now saw he’d made a kind of nest with a holey old quilt, like the one she still wore around her shoulders.

Sass’s face flushed hot. She was glad for the darkness. “I—I just came out to check on the horses. Owl woke me up and I went to the outhouse.” It was partly true. “Jane needed some water,” she said, pushing the bucket aside with her foot. It was hollow, flimsy. Finn would see right through her. But Finn didn’t notice.

“All right. Well, watch your step on the way back,” he said, yawning.

Sass held the lantern with one hand and tried to hold the back of her wet dress away from her legs with the other. “Finn?”

“Yeah, Sassy?”

“I got something to tell you.”

He smiled at her, with that lopsided grin she loved so well, and leaned against the rough center beam in the barn. “Let’s hear it.”

“Who you been working with since you quit the mine?” she asked.

Her brother’s eyes darkened, and his face grew serious. “What’s Daddy been saying?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Not a word. I don’t know what y’all are in such a tiff over if that’s what you mean.”

“Then what’s it matter? I bring in enough to make up for what I made in the mine—more than enough. I guess Cricket got shoes yesterday, didn’t he? I guess Mama got her some sugar and coffee?”

Sass nodded. This hadn’t started right. “Yes, yes, for certain. I ain’t saying nothing about that. I know why you don’t favor going back to the mine.” Her eyes fell to his leg. Where he leaned against the beam, he still cocked his hip, all his weight borne by its opposite. “You told it straight out the night you pulled Myrtle’s calf. I don’t blame you a bit and wish Daddy didn’t have to neither. Or Cricket soon enough.”

“Out with it, then, Sass.”

“In town today,” she began, “I heard a man talking at the Feed & Seed.” Sass sifted through the facts in her head. What should she tell, and how much could she leave out? A low, dull ache pained her stomach. “He claimed to have had something to do with the accident—the one you were in at the mine. He said he’d done it, set a charge to settle a score. On purpose, Finn.” She had his attention and let her words settle.

She could see his mouth working in the dim light, the muscles in his jaw tensing and releasing. “Nobody’d be low as that,” he said, finally. “All those fellers in there that day.”

“That’s prob’ly how he walked away from it. Who would even think anyone was to blame?”

“Who said it?” Finn asked. “Who was the feller?”

Sass bit her lip; her heart thumped wild under her dress. “I don’t know his name,” she whispered. “But when he saw I’d heard, he—” She broke off, swallowed down the lump that had risen in her throat.

Finn stood solid on both feet now, peering at his sister’s face in the moonlight. “What? Did he do something to you?” Even in the dim barn, Sass knew color had started rising from Finn’s collar to his cheeks. He clenched his hands, his hackles up like a fenced-in coyote. “Did he?” he demanded. The horses moved uneasily at the sound of his raised voice.

Sass stared at the hard-packed dirt floor of the barn. “He said he could do it again. Said he knew Daddy worked there and could make something happen.” Hot tears slid down her cheeks and landed in the dust by her shoes.

“We’ll go to the mining office and you can tell. The sheriff’ll be after a feller like that quick as a spring hare.”

But she was already shaking her head. “No, Finn. I can’t tell. If I do—” Sass wiped her nose on the quilt. “He said he’d tell about what you—what kinda work you been doing. That you’d be in jail for running moonshine.”

The air whooshed out of Finn like he’d been gut-punched. Sass knew what he’d been up to—of course she did. He hardly looked at her as she stood there shedding tears for him. What was it their granny used to say? “Wicked chickens lay deviled eggs.” Finn’s shoulders sagged as he thrust his hands into his pockets.

“Aw, Sassy,” he said. “I’m awful sorry you come to know about that.”

Sass was crying full out now. It actually felt good to release the tears, like a breath she’d been holding in for too long. Finn crossed the distance between them in a few steps and hugged her tight before she knew what was happening. She was aware once more of her wet clothes, the reason she’d come out to the barn in the first place, and she twisted free despite wanting to be comforted more than anything.

“I’ve seen him before,” she blurted. “In the woods way back off the path behind the cabin where the grapevine gets too tangled to walk through. Me and Hiccup were hunting morels and seen him back there with a rooster. He was on the mountain, Finn, not just in town. Our mountain. He knows where we live.”