Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(62)
She’d given Walker her email address earlier. As promised, he’d sent her links to all the files he possessed on her birth family, including the genealogy chart. She studied the visual, trying to assimilate all the information he’d collected. How had the Ingersson farm ended up in a trust? Shouldn’t it have gone to her mother instead of to an infant and a woman deteriorating into madness? Although Val had been young and presumably sane back then. The legal document didn’t reveal the court’s thoughts.
As Walker had predicted, Kurt Kennedy knocked on the door before she’d dug too far into the files. Sam closed the browser and cleared history as Kurt entered.
“Hope I’m not disturbing important research,” the lodge manager said. Despite his bespoke suit and expensive haircut, he looked older than the early thirties she knew him to be. He was a well-built, striking man, but he possessed the charisma of a dried oak leaf—as if the life had been sucked out of him.
Now she sounded like one of the Lucys!
“Just checking email. I have an offer of a possible position as a federal environmental program manager in Anchorage,” she said brightly, just to prove she had a life outside of waitressing in a small-town café.
“And I don’t suppose you’re going to take it?” He sat on one corner of the printer desk and played with a rubber stress ball someone had left there.
“I might send a resume, but no, I don’t imagine I’ll pursue it.” She didn’t give him more than that but let him take the lead.
“You were at the town meeting tonight?” he asked. “Has Cass talked them into burning us at the stake?”
Sam leaned back in her chair and tried to work out what was expected of her, but she couldn’t. Honesty and openness were all she’d been taught. “I’m wondering if my mother gave me to my adopted parents because they were the most down-to-earth, honest, upright people she knew,” she said, not giving him an answer yet.
“And they lived someplace so barren of magic and imagination that she thought you’d be safe from this town’s craziness?” he asked with both amusement and sympathy.
She almost liked her uncle at that point.
And then he had to add, “Cass hates us. She won’t be happy until she brings us down. It really isn’t about smoke and magic, just plain old family feuds.”
Sam shook her head and said gently, “I don’t think so. I know I haven’t been here long, and I’m far from understanding all the nuances, but Cass isn’t a woman who hates. She’s afraid, maybe, and possibly bitter, but hate. . . ? No, that’s much too strong. She and Mariah and the other Lucys oppose what you want, maybe even what you stand for, but that’s not the same as hate. Yet. There is still a chance of reconciliation.”
He grimaced as if in thought, then rejected the notion. “No, I don’t think so. They live in a utopian world that doesn’t exist. We live in a world that requires we pay the mortgage and payroll. I hope you don’t fall for their idealistic bullshit.”
Sam was debating how much she ought to tell him, when a large shadow passed the plate glass window and shoved open the door. Walker.
“It’s midnight; the witch’s spell has broken,” Walker said in a cool tone that covered many layers of meaning.
Sam warmed at the look he gave her, but the way he took a confrontational stance in front of Kurt gave her cold chills. Walker had a defensive streak a mile wide. She needed to establish boundaries.
Kurt returned to his feet, one bull facing another.
“You’d do better to talk to Cass or your mother than to Sam,” Walker said in a deliberately casual tone. “You’re placing her in a tough place by putting her in the middle.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Walker,” Kurt said. “We were just discussing generalities. It’s been a long day, and I thought talking to someone who wasn’t from Hillvale might wind me down.”
“A pretty someone,” Walker supplied for him. “Sam, you really need to explain who you are so Kurt here doesn’t get any odd ideas.”
Sam didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. “Don’t go all macho on me, Walker. I’m trying to be polite by telling Mr. Kennedy he needs to talk with Cass. If Carmel hasn’t said anything by now, I don’t think she intends to open communication. The Nulls and Lucys need to find channels for talking besides me.”
Kennedy made a face. “Don’t make me feel older than I already do. Call me Kurt, please. And I may be busy, but I’m not ignorant. I know Cass was my grandfather’s daughter by his first wife, that she inherited a large portion of his assets and has blocked any expansion in the direction of her property. My mother despises her and anyone who has anything to do with her, which means Sam. Sam, you tell me Cass doesn’t hate, but my mother does, so don’t be too certain about Cass. What two old women do means nothing to me. I make my own decisions. And I have no reason to talk to the Lucys.”
“You should,” Sam said, standing. “Because apparently I’m one of them, Uncle Kurt. Talk to your mother. Talk to Cass. I won’t be here long enough to resolve the problems you’re not seeing.”
She walked past both men and into the dim corridor, in an emotional turmoil she had no experience in handling.