Now she went to him in abject supplication to wholeheartedly offer herself.
As she gazed across the midnight sea, the full moon rose in all its splendor and laid a white path across the roiled waters leading her to eternity.
It was a sight she’d never seen before … because she faced west across the Pacific, and the moon did not rise in the west. “Oh.” She was on a metaphysical beach. Or maybe metaphorical. Whatever it was, the frog god had brought her here so they could speak. She lifted the bottle. She spoke. “I have a gift for you. I think you’ll like it.”
The wave rolled to her knees and retreated, rolled to her knees, paused and retreated. She placed the bottle in the sand. The wave rolled to her knees, captured the bottle and sucked it into the depths.
He was listening. Foolish of her to doubt it.
“I come in supplication. I wish to bring life to my friend Rainbow. You remember her. She delivered me. She has stood by me steadfastly through many trials. She always loved nature, loved the sea, and she believed me when I said you had taken me. She believed me. That counts for something, doesn’t it? She was hurt because of me, and she deserves life. I would give my own life for hers.” Kateri stretched out her arms to the ocean and waited.
The waves kept rolling, in and out, ceaseless and uncaring.
“Rainbow is dying. There have been times in the past when you let me bring someone back from the brink. Lacey. You let me save Lacey. I thank you for that gift. She is dear and wonderful. This time, with Rainbow, the situation is more delicate and I need—”
A wave rose high, crashed hard, rolled up the beach to touch her toes. And retreated.
“Okay. You know why I need help. I know for this large favor, I owe a sacrifice beyond even a bottle of port. Really good port. Expensive port. Bertha said so and you know Bertha knows her liquors.”
The ocean sloshed and somehow managed to look bored.
Hastily Kateri added, “I’ve wondered what might please you. Do you want me to serve you and you alone? I can quit the job of sheriff and become a hermit and be your devoted servant, trying always to do as you wish.”
A wave crashed again, rolled toward her …
Before it could touch her, she said, “But I would like to say I believe that would be a mistake. I’m a damned good sheriff and as a representative of the Native Americans, I impress the citizens, no matter how reluctant they are, and the media.”
The wave retreated.
Telling the frog god that was probably a mistake.
“I can sacrifice other things of importance to me. What would you wish? I can give you chastity, should you demand it. If you wish me to be a chaste vessel dedicated only to you, I will do so. Stag isn’t speaking to me anyway. I don’t believe you give a damn about my body or you would have kept it in the first place. But I have to offer it. It’s traditional.”
Bored ocean. Again.
She said, “I can sacrifice my ambitions. Perhaps my emotions. My loves, my hates.”
More waves, sloshing back and forth, back and forth.
“You can’t have my dog,” she said definitively.
More waves. More sloshing.
“I can sacrifice my … I don’t know. My grudges?”
Far out at the edge of the inlet, a wave rose, silent, menacing, glistening with moonlight.
“My grudges? My grudge against … my baggage? My…” Oh, God. Here on the edge of the continent where she’d been born to a woman broken from her lover’s betrayal, Kateri had to forgive the man who had taken her mother’s heart and ripped it like tissue. “You want me to forgive my father.” The wave climbed higher. She stood up. She shouted, “What difference does it make? He’s dead. Even if he wasn’t, my judgment meant nothing to him. No one meant anything to him. All he cared about was duty, success, being untouched by scandal. Why would you even care whether I forgive him?”
The frog god didn’t answer. Except that wave crashed and retreated.
But she heard the sound of Rainbow’s voice in her head saying what she had said so many times before: Your baggage is weighing you down. Forgive him. Forgive your whole family. You think they care what you feel? You’re carrying around a grudge all the time and they’re out dancing at a party. Let it go.
The grudge against her father had been a part of Kateri for so long. Like a bad habit, she was used to it. It was ingrained in her, with tentacles in every dark crevasse of her soul, and to dig it out would take concentration and effort.
She sighed. She sat down and shut her eyes.
Why not? If she was on a beach created of rubble from the frog god’s imagination, watching for him would do her no good. Probably never had.
She tried to find her hatred to rip it out. She couldn’t quite grasp it. Something about it was slippery, slimy, like a well-told lie. In her mind, she caught a glimpse of the frog god, implacable, impatient, disdainful. “Look,” she said, “I’m doing the best I can, and if this isn’t what you wanted, I don’t know what it is.”
The disdain flared brighter.
She opened her eyes.
A wall of water reared itself off the sand in front of her and, before she could move, slammed down on her.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kateri rolled, over and over, clawing at the sand, unable to tell up from down, salt in her mouth, water in her throat. She choked, cried. The water grew frothy; she reached up a hand into the air—and irrevocably, the wave sucked her toward the ocean, tumbling her like a rock that needed polishing. She fought, maddened with fear, afraid to go to the depths again, to see the frog god gloating over her return.
She had to get out. She had to go up. She needed to breathe, to be human, to be alive and part of the earth. Yet the current pulled her along the pale moonlit path and she kept sinking, sinking, into waters black and thick as memory.
Fourteen-year-old Kateri walked down the narrow wooded dirt lane. She had hitchhiked and hopped trains and walked and worked and rode buses from Baltimore to Virtue Falls. Now … she was almost home. Home. To her mother. Home. Where someone loved her. Home … In the twilight, she spotted the trailer house, the white metal siding dented by hail, the sloped roof covered in moss. She broke into a run, leaped up the listing porch steps. She grabbed the loose doorknob, jiggled it frantically until the metal door opened, raced into the living room and dropped her backpack. “Mama, I’m home!”
Faded flowered sheets covered the windows, letting in only the feeblest of light. Yet Kateri could find her way in the dark. This was the place where she belonged. Nothing had changed. Nothing … the stench hit her first. She remembered the smells. Mildew. Sweat. Spilled beer. Vomit. Rancid bacon. “Mama?”
A faint moan came from the couch.
Kateri turned, hurried toward the sound, knelt beside the short, skinny, half-clothed body resting on the sagging cushions. Kateri ran her hand over Mary’s feverish forehead, felt the skeletal shape of her shoulders.