Hidden in Plain Sight. Amy Lee Burgess

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СКАЧАТЬ so good to see you!” Jossie turned her gaze to me and the spring breeze carried a hint of her scent to me. Lavender soap and the faint tang of citrus shampoo. No perfume.

      “Have you really been in Boston for the past two years? Is what I’m hearing from Councilor Manning true?”

      I nodded.

      “Why didn’t you let anybody know you were so close? After I found out Riverglow cast you out I called your parents to see if they had any contact information and they said they didn’t. I know you were exiled, but only by Riverglow. The Councils cleared you. Why didn’t you want your friends around you? I would have gone crazy alone if I’d been you.”

      I didn’t answer because I had no answer.

      Jossie, astute at reading expressions, frowned, and her eyebrows slanted together ominously. “They lied, didn’t they? They knew all along where you were.”

      Her words hung there in the space between us.

      “We don’t really talk much anymore, Joss,” I whispered. I thought of the monthly calls I’d made when I had been exiled. The messages I’d left they’d never returned. Then there were the three messages I’d left in the past three months since Murphy, Vaughn and I had taken up residence in Boston. None of those calls had been returned either.

      “Nobody falls faster or harder in a pack than the child of a founding family.” Nate was the one to break the uncomfortable silence. “You’re what, fourteenth generation?

      “Fifteenth,” I said.

      “And you threw it all away to join Riverglow?” Nate gave a low whistle. Vaughn’s mouth got small but he didn’t say anything. Riverglow wasn’t his pack anymore.

      “I’m fourth generation. Doesn’t mean shit to most packs, but I still get the pressure to keep the pack going. You’re Mac Tire now, right?” Nate was relentless. “If that doesn’t impress your family, nothing will. This your bond mate?”

      I introduced them. Murphy’s hello was not very warm but Nate didn’t seem to notice.

      “Mac Tire your birth pack?”

      Murphy allowed as it was.

      “So what generation are you?”

      After a moment’s thought, Murphy said, “Thirty-one.”

      Nate burst into laughter. “Well, that makes me and Stanzie look just plain silly, doesn’t it? Thirty-one. Jesus. You descended from a founding family?”

      “No way.” It was Murphy’s turn to laugh and not very politely. “The founding families left are on the fiftieth generation at least.”

      That put the pack’s inception more than twelve hundred years ago.

      “We don’t have packs anywhere near that old here in the States,” said Nate after a moment’s respectful silence as he absorbed the history.

      I was flabbergasted myself. I’d known Mac Tire was old and I’d known it was Murphy’s birth pack, but I’d never known it was that old, nor did I realize that Murphy’s family had been in the pack for centuries.

      “Mayflower’s the second-oldest in the country, Stanzie?” Nate looked to me for confirmation.

      “Third,” I said. “The Jamestown pack is older by a couple decades and then there’s Spiritwolf.”

      “Now there’s a pack that’s old. You’d think there’d be more Native American packs, wouldn’t you, but there’s not.”

      “Because our ancestors came from Europe and did to their packs what the Other Europeans did the Native American tribes. Conquer and divide. Take their territory.” Vaughn’s tone was derisive.

      “Hey, if you can’t protect your land, you don’t deserve to have it.” Nate walked to the porch steps. “Get your luggage and come on in. Joss, looks like we need two spare rooms made up instead of the one. Unless you three are a triad now?”

      He turned back to look at us appraisingly.

      Vaughn flushed. “Nah, we’re not a triad.” For some reason he wouldn’t look at any of us, especially Jossie.

      * * * *

      Dusk settled around the eaves of the old farmhouse a little bit at a time. Incremental shadows crept across the dirt drive and the flagstone path that led to the porch where we all sat with glasses of wine.

      Jossie rocked her daughter in one of the wooden rocking chairs while I snapped the ends off a bowl of green beans that had been grown in the back garden last summer and frozen until just today.

      Murphy and I sat on the glider and, while I snapped beans, he gently propelled us back and forth, careful not to jar the bowl in my lap.

      We’d unpacked our things in an upstairs bedroom with strange angles and wallpaper older than both of us put together.

      Vaughn’s room was across the hall—full of even more eaves and angles but his walls were painted a soothing moss green.

      Jossie, Nate and Heather slept in the addition on the ground floor.

      They’d slowly remodeled the farmhouse since they’d moved into it after they’d bonded ten years ago.

      “This is nice, Jossie,” I said as the dusky shadows crept closer and a whippoorwill began a plaintive song from the pine tree near the barn. “A lot different from Boston.”

      Jossie smiled. Her daughter, Heather, rested in her lap and faced the front of the porch. The glider sat to the side so Heather had to crane her neck to keep me and Murphy under her wary gaze.

      I snapped a green bean in half and gave her a little smile, which made her eyebrows lower suspiciously.

      Murphy was getting a real kick out of the baby’s attitude. He blatantly flirted with her, but she was having absolutely none of it, which secretly tickled me. Here, at last, was one female who wouldn’t succumb to his Irish charm.

      Vaughn stretched his legs out in front of him as he slouched in his rocking chair, wine glass perched on the wide arm rest near his hand. He hadn’t said anything since we’d gathered on the porch, just looked out the screen at the gathering darkness. I wondered what he was thinking about. Callie? Peter? Jossie? A combination of everything? Or maybe nothing at all.

      Nate bustled back and forth from the porch to the kitchen to fetch more wine, a plate of cheese and crackers, and put on a jazz CD then adjusted the volume so it didn’t interfere with the desultory conversation. He couldn’t keep still and brimmed over with vitality and energy.

      Jossie had always been energetic, but Nate took it to all new heights. How she managed not to go crazy with his frenetic movements was beyond me. He never sat still for more than three minutes before he jumped up to get something or to start another project.

      “Want some beer, Liam?” Nate offered right on schedule. He’d sat for two and a half minutes. I’d timed him. “I brew it myself. Got a little home brewery in the basement. I’m sure it won’t compare to what you’re used to in Ireland, СКАЧАТЬ