Sara, through her teeth, said, “This is not a time to be joking, Joanne,” and two days of worry that I’d been holding off through force of will alone came to boil acid in my belly.
I was not close to my father. I hadn’t actually talked to him in years, not even a happy birthday or merry Christmas. I blamed him—unfairly, as it turned out, but then, it turned out most of the blame I laid was unfair—for raising me on the road, for always looking at me like he’d been saddled with a kid he didn’t know what to do with, for more or less everything wrong with my life that I couldn’t lay at my mother’s feet for abandoning me. I had issues. Hell, I had subscriptions. And I was only just discovering how badly I’d misread, oh, every situation that had shaped my life since infancy. I’d only resolved things with my mother after she was dead, which was not a statement most people got to make.
I was desperately afraid of the same thing happening with Dad. I had regrets with Mother, but I hadn’t known her very well. Dad had raised me. If I lost him and the chance to settle things between us, I didn’t think I’d ever forgive myself. Classic scenario, thinking I had time, in so far as I’d ever thought about it at all. Which I hadn’t, because I’d been busy being The Wronged Party, but a little forced perspective over the past week had changed that, and now—
Now my hands were cold and shaking and bile scored the back of my throat. I swallowed. “This is exactly the time to be joking, Sara, because otherwise I’m going to freak the hell out, okay? I know you’re stressed and I’m sorry, but so am I an—”
“Funny way of showing it.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, “yeah, that’s exactly what I’m trying for. Funny-ha-ha ways of showing it. You probably told Lucas you loved him the last time you saw him. I can’t even remember the last time I talked to Dad, much less what I said, so in fact, yes, I’m trying hard to act like none of this matters very much so I don’t burst into tears. Okay?” She didn’t say anything, so after a minute I said, “Okay,” and went back to the business of driving. Slowly, or at least less fast than I’d started out.
The road leading up to the mountains was better than I remembered. Either it had been resurfaced recently—sometime in the past ten years—or the late-model rented Impala had better suspension than my 1969 Mustang. Actually, it probably did, or at least better suspension than Petite had had when I drove her out of the Qualla. I’d done the restoration work myself over the course of a decade, but I hadn’t gotten nearly that far on her before I’d left. The smoother ride made driving faster easy, and I had to keep a steely eye on the speedometer to keep myself from panicking Sara. Truth was I hadn’t driven Appalachian roads in so long even I didn’t think I should be speed-demoning over them, but I could hardly say that aloud and lose face in front of my high school rival.
“I didn’t think you ever cried.” Sara spoke to the window, not me, and it took a moment to realize she was probably addressing me anyway. Then I snorted.
“Used to be my motto, I guess. Never let ’em see you bleed.”
“Yeah. I used to think you were so tough. So cool.”
“Sorry to spoil the illusion.”
It was her turn to snort. “I got over it a while ago.” She shifted in her seat, then muttered, “Or not. You were still a jerk when we met in December but you were fearless. I guess maybe I thought you were still all that. Pull over here.”
“There’s nowhere to pull over.” I pulled over anyway. Mountain rose on one side of us and dropped off on the other, with a road slightly wider than a horse track between. It reminded me of Ireland, except their horse-track roads had stone walls on both sides, not mountains.
Sara gestured for me to get out, then climbed across the seats and got out on my side. Had to; pulling over, such as it was, put her door up against the mountainside. Ten years earlier I wouldn’t even have objected to the lack of room. “Up or down?”
“Up. I’m pretty sure there’s a better way in but nobody would show it to me.” Sara walked along the road a few yards, searching for a trail I couldn’t see, then stepped off the road and disappeared into foliage. I tried to remember when poison ivy started to bloom, then shrugged and followed her. At least I was wearing a long-sleeved coat.
Sara, whom Les had accused of not being the outdoorsy type, was already a couple dozen feet up the mountain by the time I fought through the roadside brush. She bounced from one foot to another, lithe steps that took her higher while I scrambled along behind, wondering how it was I was climbing my second mountain inside a week when I didn’t make a habit of climbing them at all. This one was easier than Croagh Padraig: that had been slippery shoal and switchback rock face, while this one was wooded, mossy and offered things to hold on to. I kept an eye out for poisons ivy and oak, and called, “Who wouldn’t show you the better way?” after Sara.
“Everybody. The elders, the locals, nobody. I guess growing up here doesn’t count for much if you come back wearing an FBI jacket. A hundred and fifty years after the Trail of Tears and half of ’em still don’t trust Feds, even if it’s one of their own.”
“They kind of have a point.”
“That’s why I didn’t make an issue of it. Besides, I grew up here. This used to be my path up to the hollers and the backwoods.”
“Dad’s house backs up to the mountains. I used to just go out the back door. We could’ve gone that way.”
“Except this is the path I showed Luke.” She glared at me over her shoulder.
I sighed. “I’m sure he didn’t go through Dad’s house to go hiking on Saturday night, Sara.”
Her mouth pinched. Clearly that was not the answer she’d been looking for. She’d wanted me to say I never took him up in the mountains myself. I supposed I could have, but that would have been a lie, and no doubt would only make things worse at some point. She said “Anyway” a little too loudly, and went back to climbing. “Anyway, this is the long way around to where the mountain is crying—” She broke off again and shot me another glare.
This time I stopped, scowling the short distance up at her. “Sara, there’s almost nothing you can say that’s so weird I’m going to flip out. Les already told me about the hollers, er, hollering—”
“Can you hear them?”
“I’m not listening.”
“What’s that mean?”
I tipped my chin back and looked at the pale blue sky as if it could give me patience. “It means I’m not listening. I’m not using any power right now. I like to get the lay of the land through normal means first if I can, but more important, if the earth is screaming loudly enough that half the Qualla can hear it, then it’s probably going to knock me on my ass when I turn the Sight on, and I’d rather be sitting down, not climbing a mountain, when that happens. Okay?”
“Oh. Okay.” Sara waited another moment, still frowning at me, then shrugged and kept climbing. After a minute she crested a small ridge and waited for me there. I popped up beside her a few seconds later and exhaled sharply.
A scar across the mountainside drew my eye first, earth that hadn’t yet healed from the centuries-old tobacco farm that had been there. The broad-leafed plants were no longer part of the landscape, done out of business by bigger farms or given up on by families who’d lost too many members to the variety of diseases smoking offered. Mostly big business, though: even my grandfather, who had died of lung cancer, hadn’t given up his tobacco farm until it cost him more to run than it profited.
Surrounding that scarred earth, though, bluegrass and new leaves shimmered over hills so old they’d forgotten what it was like to have rough edges. A stream cut through the holler’s floor, feeding more life than the eye could see. Insects and birdsong hummed through air soft enough to touch, soft enough to wrap myself in and settle down where I belonged.