Under a Gilded Moon(25)

Kerry kissed the twins on their foreheads—nearly at the same height as hers now. “If you two are taking that path anyhow for the chestnuts, I wouldn’t object to company part of the way. I’ve missed you two urchins.”

Flour sacks slung over their shoulders, the twins hung close—their way of saying they’d missed her, too. Instead of a sack, Kerry grabbed a book: the one book left from Miss Hopson’s days here, a poetry collection of Wordsworth. Even just holding its frayed cover helped her recall lines. And that helped distract from the endless pictures sprocketing through her head: the attack at the station. Her father’s reaction to Bratchett’s word murdered. The collapsing roof.

It was good just to ramble through their mountains. For a few minutes, at least, to let loose the worry over how they would survive. And to push back resentment, clawing and fierce, over having to leave what she’d worked so hard for.

She breathed in the sun on the pines.

With one finger, Jursey twirled the tweed cap he and Tully had salvaged back out of the mud. “Powerful good thing Mr. Bergamini didn’t get arrested.”

“Yet.” Kerry muttered it more loudly than she meant to.

The twins’ heads came up.

“That is,” she reassured them, “the whole truth will come out. Eventually.”

Kerry pictured John Cabot and Madison Grant on the train, the way the reporter had stiffened when he saw them, mouthed a warning about one or both of them, and seemed to note when they’d mentioned the name of a guest toward the end. How he’d taken notes.

But there’d been no notepad on Berkowitz when he’d been killed. She shook her head. She wouldn’t upset the twins with the jumble of her own suspicions. She’d report to Wolfe what the reporter had said to her on the train and the warning he’d seemed to mouth to the Italian, the Watch out about the two gentlemen who’d entered their car. She’d tell the sheriff what she’d seen and heard, then let him do his job. Incompetent as he might be.

“So maybe today’s the day I get a position in town.” It was the perkiest voice she could muster. But even she could hear the weariness underneath.

Walking ahead, Jursey emerged into a circle of morning sun. On a broad, steep-sloping hill of bright green. And a gazebo with a Greek statue just there up ahead.

“No.” Kerry halted. “I didn’t really just follow you two straight onto . . .”

Tully sniffed. “Aunt Rema said she’d be back around lots to help out caring for Daddy. But for now she’s all moved in here to the castle.”

Kerry stalked to catch up with them. “We do not need any castle!”

Like their heads could swivel on a single neck, Tully and Jursey both looked away.

Kerry reached for a softer tone. “Not when we have each other.”

Biltmore House was going from lilac to a light pearly gray as the sun, sprawling low and golden over the tops of the mountains, began rising higher now in the sky. Encircling it were autumn patches of scarlet and ochre and topaz mixed with green bands of hemlock and balsam.

Kerry shook her head. “I’ll look at the mountains. But I won’t look at that house. Castle. Whatever it is.” She faced sideways.

Tully was the first to speak again. “Looks honest to God like a quilt pattern. One of them Momma did most. Bear’s Paw, maybe. Or Lost Children.”

“Drunkard’s Path, looks to me,” Jursey said. “Or, no . . . Bachelor’s Puzzle.”

Kerry flopped down on the grass, knees and her book hugged to her chest. “Love in a Tangle. That’s what it is.”

Collapsing beside her, the twins gaped at the gray-violet sprawl of the house.

At least, Kerry thought, they know better than to comment on it.

“School,” she said suddenly. “You two are supposed to be in school.”

Jursey shrugged. “You got to find a job that pays during the day. Me and Tully, we got to take care of Daddy and things at the farm till you get back and take up the night caring. If a schoolteacher can learn us, we can learn our ownselves.”

“Teach. We can teach ourselves,” Kerry corrected, sighing. “Between the last couple of schoolteachers who left midyear and . . .” She could not add living with Aunt Rema. “And how plenty of people speak here, you two could use some attention to your education, don’t you think? I’m more to blame than anyone, my being so far away. Maybe I can get some schoolbooks sent down through Miss Hopson. For however long . . .”

When Tully spoke, her voice had gone boggy, wet and unsteady with tears that she rarely let herself cry. “Reckon Daddy won’t ever recover?”

Rather than answer, Kerry leaned over to wipe away a single tear. Which was so like Tully. And mountain women. Controlled. Restrained. In grief and in hope. Because there was always more grief, and more hope, ahead.

Jursey, on the other hand, already had two streams of tears rivering down his cheeks. Just like he’d devoured his biscuits that morning in big desperate bites—with gusto. In case there were no more biscuits—or tears—to be had in this life.

The three of them stared down the long slope of green toward the house.

Dragging a heel that was coming unstitched from its sole across the grass, Jursey pondered. “Maybe you could check that inn where them people from the train station were staying—Battery Park. They might be needing extra help there.”