Something Blue

Chapter 22

Katherine

Sharing a roof, a bed, and a name with a violent man for so many years, Katherine had become an expert in reading subtle energies. Jacob was not always outwardly angry. Sometimes he simmered, and she learned to sense his fury even before he realized it himself. She learned to sense Isobel's tantrums and fits while the child was still happy and smiling. She was as practiced at sensing underlying truths as her husband was at spinning lies.

Because of this skill of hers, she knew something was wrong. Melissa's mood had been off for three days. When Josh had come by on Tuesday to help with the horses, the dissonance of his unease had warbled through the air around him like the heat bent the space around a flame. Even the air was wrong, the weather restless and confused. Never fully cloudy, never quite sunny.

And yet when she asked, pressed, pestered, they all just smiled and told her everything was fine. As if she was some foolish child who couldn't recognize a false smile.

Fortunately, there was one person who wouldn't lie to her and he was finally here. His figure was blurred through the glass in the sitting room window, but she recognized him all the same, riding up the snow-covered hill to the house. Pale horse, dark rider. Like death in the book of Revelations. Funny how he had always meant quite the opposite to Katherine.

Isobel had been in Melissa's treatment room all morning, delighting over the instruments and bottles and books, asking endless questions. Rather than run to fetch her daughter, Katherine slipped quietly out onto the porch to await their visitor, hoping for a few moments of adult conversation. A few minutes or privacy to question him about why everyone was being so... odd.

The clouds overhead were strange, agitated things, cutting rapidly through the air and casting shifting shadows over the rolling white landscape. The sun burnished the edges of each lumpy cloud in harsh yellow, their centers a dangerous dark gray. Shivering, Katherine pulled her coat tighter around her and strode out into the yard when Gabe finally drew to a halt. And if she hadn't already felt something was off, she'd have known it when she finally saw him up close.

Of course, it was Gabe so there was no expression in the stone-etched lines of his face. But there was nothing he could do to hide the pallor of his face reminiscent of the gray hearts of the clouds overhead. Nor could he mask the utter lack of grace with which he slid from Reaper's back, standing for a moment with a hand wound tight in the horse's withers, eyes closed as if fighting for balance.

"Gabe?" Her steps quickened, booted feet kicking up plumes of snow and crunching through the old stuff beneath it as she dashed to his side. "Are you alright? What's the matter? What happened? What's wrong?" The words tumbled from her mouth, and her hands acted with just as little regard for the fear and restraint that had held her captive for so long. Cold nipped at her bare fingers as she reached up to frame his face, her heart skipping and stuttering when a smile tugged at the edges of his implaccable frown. It wasn't a very powerful smile, but it was more genuine than the tight-lipped masks Melissa and Josh had been wearing for the last three days.

"I'm fine, Kat," he soothed, rough stubble rasping against her palm as he shifted on his feet. Her belly felt as if it was full of sun-dappled leaves, fluttering in a breeze.

"You are not," she said sternly, pushing the hair back from his brow like it hid the secrets everyone was hiding from her. "Something is wrong. Nobody will tell me what's happened but something has been wrong for days and now look at you!" Unbidden, her nose began to burn with rising tears. This was one of the reasons why she'd turned her back on him so many years ago. She couldn't bear to see him hurt.

How silly of her to assume that in her absence he simply wouldn't. She had only condemned them both to hurt alone.

"Katie, please," he murmured, still clinging to the horse as if he couldn't stay upright without it, but shifting his free hand to pull her fingers from his face, and the smile grew stronger. "I promise you, I'm alright. But you're not wearing gloves or a hat, and I need to put Reaper up. Why don't you head inside and start us a pot of coffee or something? I'll join you when I'm done and we can talk."