Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [52]
Maybe Caleb was right. Maybe she should leave.
She turned to Sophie as she slowly drove the car down the mountain. “Do you feel like taking a little break from here? Maybe a minivacation, just you and me? We could go somewhere sunny, eat food that’s terrible for us, maybe go find some street fairs and markets. We wouldn’t have to come back for weeks.”
There was no missing the hope and delight that sprang into her daughter’s bright blue eyes, but a second later they were shuttered, blank. “What about David?”
For a moment Rachel was at a loss for words. “He says he can get some time off if we wanted him to come with us. We do, don’t we?”
Sophie said nothing.
“What with all the things that have been going on, he doesn’t really feel he can leave right away. Or that we should leave. But maybe in another week or so.”
“Sure, Ma,” Sophie said, sounding singularly unenthusiastic. “That would be great. But you know I’m really busy right now anyway. I’m just about ready to be bumped up a class, and if I go away now I’ll have more catching up to do.”
“Honey, you’re already working on college level math.”
“That’s because you taught me to go for it, Ma. I just have to fill in the gaps with English and chemistry and I’ll be just fine. Give me three weeks and we can take off.”
“If we left then we’d be gone over Christmas.”
“I don’t think David is terribly invested in Christmas, do you? He doesn’t seem the type,” Sophie said.
“I think he’s been looking forward to a real Christmas with his first family.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Christmas was her favorite thing in the world, and she loved going to strange, new places and celebrating it with local customs. The local custom here was probably The Festival of Coal.
“We’ll see,” she continued. “In the meantime I need you to stay close to home. Don’t leave the school with anyone but me or Maggie Bannister. Don’t walk home, don’t accept rides, and don’t let anyone but me get you from Maggie’s house.”
Sophie looked at her. “Not even David?” she asked.
Rachel thought back to Stephen Henry’s words. Don’t trust anyone. “Even David,” she said finally, the words tasting like acid in her mouth.
Too many people, people she distrusted, told her not to trust anyone. If the liars and tricksters warned her then the situation had to be pretty bad.
But they’d make it through. Sophie was too young, and as long as Rachel was vigilant she would be perfectly safe. Absolutely no one would want to harm her.
No, if they just kept their heads together and didn’t panic then everything would be resolved. And in fact, Sophie would like Christmas here as well. A traditional American Christmas was just as foreign as celebrating it in the Sudan or South America. And maybe the three of them would finally start feeling like a family.
In the meantime she simply had to stop thinking about Caleb Middleton, his dark warnings, and Stephen Henry’s odd behavior. She needed to get home, immerse herself in her darkroom, secure in the knowledge that Sophie was planted in front of the wide-screen television, and not think about anything but exposure and negatives and the safe, dark world of photography.
He was going to have to do something, Caleb thought, watching them head down the mountain. The stubborn redhead wouldn’t listen, and if he told her the truth she’d be even more resistant. She would believe it was some demented sibling rivalry or childhood vengeance.
There were a number of ways to get rid of her, short of kidnapping and dumping them five states away. If he could only think of something. Right now he’d tried every way of telling her and none of them had made a difference. Nothing would, short of the brutal truth, and the fact is, he had no proof. Nothing but circumstantial evidence that could lead to him as easily as it could to his brother.
Maybe he could sabotage her car. If she banged herself up a little bit then it was too damned bad. He’d like to bang her head against the wall to make her listen to him, and that was far from the only thing he’d like to bang, but she