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Begni’s letter drew Tom’s attention again and again over the next few days. There was something there, something he couldn’t pinpoint. The Bones of the Just. The phrase leapt out at him every time he read the letter. He studied every document he could find related to bones and the Sisters, and still, it nagged at him like water hitting his brain one meager drop at a time. He e-mailed Naomi and sent her a transcription, pleading for any assistance she could give, and asked the director’s permission to bring Ruanna in, anything to help him break through the wall he was banging against.
Moira continued to dig through the forgotten rooms in the Archives, rooms Naomi hadn’t discovered or had time for in her own explorations. She’d moved to another room since finding the bones now in the eager company of young George. He’d come out the same day Tom had called him and picked up the remains, promising to keep Tom and Moira both in the loop on any findings.
Maybe it was too much to ask, but Tom sincerely hoped George could identify those remains and possibly fill a hole in the People’s history.
Thanksgiving morning dawned clear and cold. Moira chased Tom out of the bedroom an hour before they were supposed to leave for his family’s get together. The evening before, while he’d cooked the pumpkin pies his mother had asked him to bring, she’d slipped out of the apartment, leaving the ever-faithful Ruanna behind to watch him. Two hours later, Moira had come back carrying a hanging garment bag and another one of her duffel bags. She’d hidden them in the closet and refused to discuss their contents or the reason she’d left, but now he had to wander what she was up to.
He filled his time sitting on the couch, going over his notes on Begni’s letter. Ruanna had translated the section containing the reference to the Seven Sisters as, “Five shall there be, together (unintelligible phrase; name?), and there the Bones of the Just shall forever lie in sacred slumber.”
The Bones of the Just. A metaphor? A literal reference? Bones, bones. He turned the phrase over in his mind, contemplating the possibilities. Interpreted literally, the phrase likely referred to the remains of the Seven Sisters, but if it wasn’t a literal reference, it could refer to anything, like the laws and customs of the People or even the People themselves.
He rubbed his fingers over his forehead and stared at his laptop’s screen. Literally interpreting the phrase was an idea he kept returning to. The Prophecy of Light was, well, a prophecy, full of portents both mysteriously vague and absolutely clear, but this was a letter, a communication from one party to another, written by a woman who could very well have known one of the Sisters personally. If bones literally referred to the Sisters’ remains, then there existed a slim possibility that somehow, somewhere, their locations had been recorded and the remains could be found. If they could, perhaps they would, in turn, somehow point to Sanctuary.
He rested his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Moira had found bones. No chance those were a Sister’s, though, surely not. Who would cram the remains of such an important person into an unmarked box in a near-forgotten room? But the bones of a Sister had been found not long back, when Dani had fought her mother. Or had those been the bones of a Daughter?
The bedroom door opened and soft footsteps swished along the carpet.
“Hey, Moira, those bones found when y’all went to that nightclub...”
He twisted around and his thoughts trailed into nothingness. Moira stood just outside the bedroom’s entrance wearing a slinky black long-sleeved sweater held up by thin straps, leaving her creamy shoulders bare. It fell in loose, elegant folds over her hips, encased in a tight black skirt that fell to mid-thigh, hiding the healing scar on her upper leg. Her legs were covered by sheer hose and she wore black heels so delicately fashioned, they looked like they’d fall apart with the next step she took. He jerked his gaze upward. She’d curled her soft strawberry blonde hair and piled it on top of her head, baring the elegant line of her neck, and she’d somehow made her eyes bigger and bluer and her whole face more exotic.
Tom Junior stirred to life and poked at the fly of Tom’s slacks.
Moira’s eyebrows veed into a furrow. “Well. Say something, ye big lug.”
He stood slowly and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets where they’d do no harm to her outfit. “You are by far the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
She twisted her hands together and dropped her gaze. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” But she always was, even in her chunky sweaters and baggy cargo pants, the exact outfit she’d been wearing the day he’d first seen her and nearly swallowed his tongue. “Mom will never believe a woman like you is willing to marry me.”
“Ye must know ye’re an appealing man.”
“Not that appealing.” He slid a glance down her long, toned legs and imagined them wrapped around his waist, minus the hose, heels on and digging into his back with every thrust of his body into hers. “You sure you want to go out? I don’t mind staying in.”
She laughed and strolled toward him, her normally quick walk now a slow, seductive glide. She rested her hands on his chest and leaned into him, eyeing him from beneath lowered lashes. “If we stay in, how can I flirt with ye in front of our families and seduce ye with me womanly charms?”
“Oh, you do that every day.” He kept his hands in his pockets, certain they’d get ideas, though he leaned close enough to catch a whiff of her perfume, something smoky and dark. “God, you smell good. Let me call Mom and tell her we’ll be late.”
Moira whirled away from him, sashaying toward the bedroom with all the grace of a runway model. “Not a chance, Thomas. It’s too much of a bother getting this way to have ye ruin it with yer grabby man hands.”
He smiled and eyed her luscious curves, outlined very clearly by her mini-skirt. “I do not have grabby man hands.”
“Aye, ye do, and ye can use them to help me with me coat, like a gentleman of your breeding should do.”
He caught up with her in three strides and snagged her around her hips, drawing her back against him. “Tonight when we get home, I’m gonna kiss your pretty shoulders, sink my teeth into your neck, and bend you over the bed while you’re wearing this outfit, and then I’m gonna make love to you for a very long time.”
She shuddered and relaxed against him, and her hands covered his, soft and gentle. “I’ll think of nothing else the whole day through.”
Neither would he and that suited him just fine.
* * *
Tom’s mother’s home was a gray, one-story, board and batten house sitting flat dab in the middle of a huge tract of rolling pasture outside of Gainesville. Moira accepted Tom’s help out of his Prius. Feckin’ heels made walking nigh on impossible. Wearing them had been worth the trouble, though, if only for the dazed look on his face when he’d first seen her and the lingering gleam in his brown-green eyes.
She should’ve tried wearing a skirt sooner.
He carried the pies in, leading her up the rock-lined walkway through the neatly trimmed front yard, its grass yellowing under winter’s coming cold. Her stomach roiled and jittered, each step irritating her nerves something fierce. Why had she agreed to this? To all outward appearances, there was a huge age gap between her and Tom, though his family would hardly countenance the truth, that there was, indeed, an age gap much greater than it seemed, only her the elder by centuries.
And they had so little in common. A love of the written word and of history, a love of good food, and enough chemistry to set the world on fire, but what did they truly know of one another?
Worry pinched at her. She inhaled around the dizziness rising within her. What was she doing, about to meet Tom’s family? She should’ve kept him at home, should’ve sent him on his own, should’ve done anything other than face the critical stare of a mother over her eldest son’s choice in a mate.
“Moira, sweetheart, what is it?”
Tom’s voice pierced through the fog enveloping her head. She glanced up and met his concerned gaze. He stood on the top step of the house’s porch. She’d stopped halfway between his Prius and the house, standing as still as a doe trapped by a car’s headlights, frozen by fear and insecurity.
Foolishness. Daughters faced their fears head on and wrestled them into submission.
She pressed a calming hand to her stomach and forced herself to close the distance between them. Tom had met her halfway, allowing her to claim him though he felt another path more prudent. The least she could do was return the favor.
She followed him through the main entrance into a warmly lit living room, shedding her coat as she went. The space was cozy. A merry fire burned in the fireplace on the far side of the room, caught within a glass-fronted insert. A long sofa upholstered in sturdy earth-tone plaids was placed at a right angle beside the fire and a matching recliner sat across from the fire next to the sofa, arranged around a coffee table. Bookcases lined the wall behind the sofa, filled to the brim with books and family photos and mementos. Two doors bracketed the fireplace, one leading into what appeared to be a dining room and the other into a hallway.
A man with Tom’s dark hair and slightly hooked nose sat on the sofa between two teenagers, a tow headed boy with a spatter of freckles across his upturned nose and a solemn-eyed girl with braces. They were watching the Thanksgiving Day parade on the tele across from them. The man rose and nodded, his tanned face holding the weary lines of someone who’d handled more than his share of sorrow.
“Moira, this is my brother Mike and his kids, Jilly and Josh. Everybody, this is Moira, my fiancée.”
Moira murmured polite greetings to the somber crowd. Tom disappeared into the dining room, and she perched carefully on the edge of the recliner, her gaze pinned politely on the giant, blown-up turkey floating above the parade on the tele.
“Tom said you work with him.”
Moira glanced at Mike. He regarded her with such a neutral expression, she thought he must be reserving a poor judgment. The acid in her gut leapt high, gnawing on her innards. She willed it down, willed her heart to calm, and met his stare evenly. “I do.”
“Just out of college?”
“Hardly.” She smiled, aiming for friendly, or at least polite. “Me youth is donkey’s years behind me, Mr. Fairfax, with many hard miles between here and there.”
Jilly fixed a round-eyed stare on Moira. “Where are you from?”
“Ireland, all over.” And that was the truth. She’d spent enough time in each county to know them all like the veins in her skin. “Where are ye from, young Jilly?”
“Here.” The girl’s voice was a scant whisper, barely loud enough to hear over the announcers on the tele and the pop and crackle of the fire. “We live next door.”
“I run the farm,” Mike said.
Moira waited politely for him to elaborate, though it was clear he’d said all he intended to. His face had that pinched look to it, closed and hard, not from anger or disinterest, but from simple habit.
After a short silence, she took pity on him. “The cows must be yers then.”
“Lowline Angus. Dad started the farm years ago. Tom had his books, but I...” Mike’s mouth snapped shut and his lips thinned.
He wasn’t used to talking, Moira guessed, not about himself leastwise.
Tom walked back in followed by a raw-boned woman, her graying hair twisted into braids on either side of her head. She wore a beaming smile on her thin face and a flour-specked red-and-white checkered apron over a flannel shirt and jeans.
“Mom, this is Moira, my fiancée. Moira, this is my mother, Dolores.”
Moira rose and threaded her icy fingers together in front of her.
“Call me Do,” Dolores said, her voice husky and firm. “Everybody does.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Moira said, and wasn’t at all surprised by the quaver in her own voice.
Dolores parked herself in front of Moira and placed bony hands on her shoulders. “Well, now. Let’s look at you. Right pretty, you are, and younger than Tom let on.”
“Not nearly so young as I look, I promise,” Moira murmured.
“Good breeding. It’s in the genes.” Dolores nodded, sharp and decisive, her Carolina blue eyes dancing. “And the hair. Tom always was a sucker for the red-heads.”
Tom coughed into his hand, though Moira saw the smile he hid behind his fist plain enough. “She’s not a heifer at auction, Mom.”
“Didn’t say a thing about her breeding hips, now, did I.”
Josh snickered, turning it into a hum when his father speared him with a stern glare.
“We haven’t talked about kids yet,” Tom said. “In fact, that subject is completely off limits for the foreseeable future.”
Moira’s stomach dipped and rolled. Would Tom want children with her? She glanced at his niece and nephew. Their gazes avidly followed the adults’ conversation. Tom had spoken of them in the days leading up to this one, always with a proud fondness. Men always wanted their own seed to prosper, sons especially, and he’d want a son.
Her heart sank down to her knees. Tom would want a son, and she could never give him one. Daughters, though, that was a different story. She met his gaze across the room. A soft smile played along his mouth and he’d tucked his hands into the loose pockets of his slacks. He’d be a good father, would Tom, never abandoning his children, never leaving them to a Daughter’s hard fate.
The tattoos in her back burned and itched. If Siobhan and Hannah had had fathers such as him, ones who’d protected them and talked sense into their hard, stubborn heads, they might still be alive today, and Moira wouldn’t be living with the agony of watching them die.
Dolores slung an arm around Moira’s shoulders and squeezed, taking Moira’s breath. “Don’t suppose you know how to baste a turkey.”
“I’ve a fair hand in the kitchen, though nothing near as good as Tom’s,” Moira admitted.
“That’ll do, then. Jilly-girl, it’s your turn in the kitchen. We’ll leave the boys to the TV.”
Jilly rolled her eyes, though she rose quickly enough, a familiar smile tugging at her mouth.
Moira tagged along behind Dolores and Jilly. Tom stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t let Mom pester you,” he said softly.
“We’ll be fine.” She cupped his jaw and pressed a gentle kiss to his lovely mouth. “I’m safe with her, and she and Jilly with me. The turkey might squawk a protest, though.”
He grinned and stole another kiss, then let her go. She glided past him, moving slowly more to humor her shoes than to entice her lover, and was well aware of accomplishing both.
Would he want children, her Tom? Would he mate with her during the needing and see her through the pregnancy that would surely follow? Would he stand beside her as she gave birth and welcome the life she pushed from her body?
Once in the kitchen, a cramped, cheerily decorated space full of light and the delicious scent of turkey roasting, Dolores handed out aprons. Moira pulled one carefully over her hair and secured it, then helped Jilly do the same, the small routine achingly familiar and nowhere near forgotten.
Daughters had long, long memories, crisp, clear memories sharpened by the enduring centuries and the curse levied by an unjust hand. The pain of her daughters’ deaths would never heal, not entirely, and though she’d sworn to think carefully on having another, her mind couldn’t quite push aside the tiny need buried deep in her heart, to carry Tom’s child under it and gift him with a love like no other.
