Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (26 page)

On this visit he came with a bouquet of tulips.

"You don't have to bring me something every day, you know."

He was in the bathroom filling the vase with water, and when he came out he replied, "They're from your mother. She knows how you love tulips."

"Just the same."

He set the flowers on the windowsill.

"You look tired," she said. "You've been working hard."

"We took in another shipment of cattle today."

"How's the land look?"

"Good. Those little fellas are gonna get real big this summer."

She knew something was troubling him, but he went on talking about the ranch and the work.

Finally she asked him, "What's on your mind, Ethan?"

He paused and said, "Is it that obvious?"

"I think I know you pretty well by now."

"There's something I've been needing to talk to you about. I didn't want to bring it up until you were feeling better. It's about Eliana Zeldin."

"You're her legal guardian. I know."

"How do you know that?"

"Patti told me."

There was a long silence between them.

"She didn't leave a will, and her father, Annette's father..."

Ethan hesitated. He had never spoken her name aloud in front of Katie Anne.

"Poor old guy," she said after a moment.

"He's an asshole."

"He's lost everything, Ethan."

"He hasn't lost his granddaughter."

"Some people can't relate to children."

"Then they'd better not have children."

His words hung like a reproach in the air. They had flown out of him, words he had carefully caged in the back of his consciousness, walled up behind temperance and civility. Katie Anne saw this was just the beginning. All the pain from her body was nothing compared to the tribulations she would endure from now on. Ethan was not a vengeful man, but he would not forget.

"So you persuaded her grandfather to agree?"

"Yes."

"That must have been hard for him. She's the only family he has left."

Ethan studied her closely. So little about her was recognizable. Even her voice had an unfamiliar, raspy quality.

"I had to make the decision quickly. I didn't want child services to interfere."

She nodded. There was no way he could tell what she was thinking. Unless he moved very close and looked into her eyes.

"But we'll have to see how it works out," he continued. "I want to do what's best for the child. I'm not sure you and I would be the best parents for her. So I've got the court trying to locate the next of kin. They have some family out in western Kansas."

"Why don't you want her living with us?"

Ethan looked at her curiously. "That's a strange thing for you to say."

"I don't have anything against this little girl. My God, she's all alone." She stopped then, and she felt as though something had passed through her mind. A hint of a thought, and she couldn't formalize it, but somehow she sensed it was important.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

He paused again, then said, "I'd better go."

She looked up at him as he stood and put on his jacket. His visits were always like this. Reliable but short. And they never connected. There was nothing but this superficial exchange of information, about work on the ranch and messages from home.

"Where's her mother buried?"

He shot her a curious look. "Out at the Old Cemetery. Next to her own mother. Why?"

"I just wondered."

He leaned over and kissed her on top of her head.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

That night Katie Anne had a dream about a beautiful woman with pure white hair. The woman sang to her a song that seemed very familiar, yet the words were strange and foreign sounding. And in the dream the woman called her
Annie.
When she awoke in the night she felt as if the dream was not a dream at all, but rather another life lived at some point in the far distant past or future. No one in her family and none of her friends had ever called her Annie. She lay there in bed, feeling the pain in her body and weighing this name in her thoughts. It sounded so pleasant and familiar that she decided, in her half-conscious state, that this would be her new name. It was only suitable that she have a new name. She would have a new face and a new family. And as the weeks went by, she began to sense with more and more affirmation that she was a new being. Her flesh had burned and she was regenerated, and with this transformation, from the flames, phoenix-like, rose this sense of newness.

Chapter 27

Eliana didn't like the idea of going to live with Ethan Brown. After he quit coming to mass on Sundays, her mother didn't want to talk about him anymore. She'd sensed that something had gone terribly wrong toward the end, and that he'd made her mother very unhappy. Another reason was that she would have to leave Big Mike. The first of these reasons she kept to herself, but the second she shared with Jer one evening as they played cards at the kitchen table.

"So, you'll take Big Mike with you," Jer said as he rearranged his cards. "You got any Sammy Sharks?"

"Really?" The girl's eyes widened like moons.

"Yeah, really. Come on. Play. Sammy Shark. You got any?"

"No. Go fish."

Jer drew a card from the deck.

"Ethan's built himself some very fine stables. I think Big Mike would be very happy there. I've already talked to Ethan about it. To tell you the truth, it was his idea."

"It was?"

"Hey, he knows you and that horse are linked at the hip. Your turn."

Eliana's cards were all askew and Jer took them from her and fanned them out neatly, then gave them back to her. She clutched them tightly, her little fingers turning white at the knuckles.

"You have any Wilbur Whales?"

Jer scowled. "Drat it," and he slid two cards across the table to her. She grinned.

"I wish you could come live with us."

"Well, you'll see a lot of me, I imagine. But I got a lot of animals here, and they can't fend for themselves."

"I can help you."

"Maybe in the summer, when school's out. You'll have time then."

"Why can't I live here?"

"I'm not really set up to take care of a little girl."

"I wouldn't be much trouble."

He leaned in and said gently. "Hey, nobody thinks you're trouble. Don't you think that for a minute."

"What about Mrs. Brown?"

"Katie Anne?"

"What's she like?"

"She's very nice. And she loves horses too."

Eliana went very quiet. "Am I ever going back to France?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know."

She laid her cards on the table, and Jer saw the sadness drop down over her eyes like a veil.

"I don't want to play anymore," she said. "I'm tired now. I want to go to bed."

* * *

Jer packed up the truck with her two suitcases—one of which was filled with her mother's things—the violin and a small box of toys he'd bought her, as well as the stuffed lion that was almost as big as she was, and he drove her over to Ethan's ranch one spring day when a windstorm was blowing through the state. Ethan stood waiting for them on the front porch as they drove up, escorted by Traveler, who had greeted them with a first-rate performance, racing alongside the truck, barking at the wheels.

As Ethan showed her around the house that smelled of new wood and fresh paint, he kept glancing at her for signs of approval, but there were none. He noticed how different the child appeared now, as if the light had been torn from her eyes.

Her bedroom was large and luminous, with a hardwood floor and its own bathroom. In the back of his mind Ethan had always thought this would be Jeremy's room; anticipating the day when his son would come to visit again, he had hung framed posters of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and placed on the dresser top some framed photos of himself and his son taken when the boy was five, the year Paula had moved away with him. This bedroom was on the same side as the stables, with a clear view of the pasture from the window, and the evening before her arrival Ethan decided to give it to Eliana instead, thinking she might like to look out on the horses grazing below. If and when his son ever decided to visit, there were other bedrooms to choose from.

"I'm sorry about the posters," he said.

"That's okay."

"I thought we'd drive to Wichita this weekend and go to Target. Get you some things for your room. How would that be?"

She lifted her shoulders in a despondent shrug, then remembered her manners, and said, "Yes. Thank you."

"And you can pick out a bedspread and some curtains."

"Thank you."

"We can paint the walls, too. Whatever color you want."

She sat down on the bed and looked silently around the room.

"Maybe some horse posters?" he added.

She lit up a little. "Yeah."

"Okay."

"Mr. Brown?"

"Hey, call me Ethan."

"Can Traveler come inside?"

He started to tell her that his wife liked for the dogs to stay outside, but then he decided that was another thing he'd change around here.

"He's not much used to being indoors, but you're welcome to call him in."

"Could he sleep on the bed with me?"

Ethan smiled. "He's a farm dog. He gets pretty dirty."

"I'd make sure to clean his paws. I promise."

Ethan looked into her eyes and saw Annette as a child. Saw how hard she tried to please everybody, to do things right. How it must have seemed it was never quite enough.

"Hey, how about if we get a dog bed for your room. And he can sleep next to you, on the floor."

"I'd like that."

"Well then, we'll put that on the shopping list along with the posters and the bedspread."

Finally, she smiled.

* * *

Eliana couldn't bring herself to put away her clothes. She didn't want to stay but she didn't have anywhere else to go. The house was very nice and modern, and bigger than anywhere she'd ever lived with her mother. But it felt cold and sterile. In Paris their home was filled with exotic and whimsical and totally useless things her mother brought back from the cities where she'd toured, or oddities she found at the flea market. There were elephant lamps and a silver camel teapot and a bronze monkey holding up a porcelain planter, a serape rug from Mexico and Berber kilims from Morocco. The walls had been covered with artwork by her mother's many artist friends, alongside old movie posters and feathered Mardi Gras masks from Venice. When she was very little her mother used to throw a sheet over the dining room table to make her a tent, and she recalled the kilim rug on the floor and how it intrigued her with its mystery as she crawled around through the maze of chair legs.

Her mother had the gift of making everything beautiful and festive. At Christmas they'd searched the Bois de Boulogne looking for low-hanging mistletoe, and they had tied red bows around the necks of the monkey and the camel and the elephant. The house had smelled of cinnamon and oranges, and there was always Christmas music playing.

A terrible wave of homesickness came over her, and she curled up on the bed with Cosette and stared at the white wall that smelled of fresh paint.

* * *

A strange thing happened to Katie Anne while she was in the hospital. Patti, whose company she had always found so entertaining, began to get on her nerves. Patti seemed to feel it was her responsibility to monitor Ethan's movements and make regular reports to Katie Anne. The fact that he'd taken legal guardianship of Eliana had set her all atwitter.

"Everybody's talking about it."

"I'm not surprised."