Chapter Three--part two

...her heart sunk with the weight of Vannah's hard life.  But then Phia saw her sailing by in that brand new champagne-colored Cadillac and all she could think of was one of Auntie Riona's cliched expressions:  Vannah had made her bed, now she had to lie in it.
     When the eggs were ready, Annie dumped them into a bowl and spun Phia toward Mama.  As she dipped the spoon into the flowing yellow yolk, Mama asked, "How does it feel to be home?"
     "I don't know yet," Phia answered, though she felt a shudder trying to climb up her backbone.
     "You'll be fine," Mama whispered after swallowing another bite.  Then she raised her hand to her mouth to stop Phia from giving her the next bite. "I need to talk to you about Tommy, Bairn."
     Phia dropped the spoon into the bowl and looked into Mama's eyes, which looked more gray than green in the late afternoon light. "Aunt Annie does seem mad at him."
     "She didn't hide that for long, did she?" Mama took Phia's hand.  "She's been annoyed every since he--" Her voice slackened and her eyes drifted away to look out the window.
     "Since he what?" Phia squeezed Mama's hand, wondering for a moment if her mind was not as sharp as it had always been.
    Meeting Phia's gaze, Mama's eyes were clear and bright. "Since he moved in."
     Phia's eyes instinctively sought Annie, whose back was bent over the stove, scrubbing furiously.  "Tommy's been living here in the house with you?"  Annie stopped scrubbing and Phia lowered her voice.  "How--where--since when?"
     "Oh Bairn, where do you think?"  She patted Phia's hand, a smile playing at her lips.  "He's been so good to me."  Her eyes roamed around the room and she lay her head back on the pillow.  "So unaccountably good, Phia."  CLosing her eyes, she squeezed Phia's hand again.  "I knew I could count on you, Bairn--you've always loved him, too."
      Then Annie was behind Phia, taking the bowl from her hands, insisting, "Come on, Dee, just one more bite," but Mama couldn't keep her eyes open.  Annie bit her lip, a sign of displeasure Phia had first seen the winder after Papa died, when she'd come to visit on a break from teaching in Western Washington and found Mama wearing her green robe and slippers all day, her house filthy, and Susu and Phia living on the fried-egg sandwiches Phia cooked for dinner every night.
     "She's been so anxious about you," Annie said, wadding the frayed strings on Mama's blue calico apron into a tight ball.  Her lip was white where she'd been biting it.  "It's taken a lot out of her."
     "Anxious about me?  It seems to me she was anxious aobut Uncle--"
     "Now don't get all prickly," Annie cut in, bustling off to the kitchen with the the bowl and plunging it in the sink.  "We're just glad to see you home where you belong."
     Moments later, Susu brought in her chubby baby, Justin, freshly bathed, all wide-eyed and darling.  He perched in her arms like a little bird in a nest and when Phia looked at him, he bent his head down into his mama's shoulder and stared back at her with one blinking eye, the other hidden under his blanket.  Phia wan ted to reach for him, but the baby didn't know her, and she was built more in the shape of Aunt Annie--all sharp angles--rather than the curving softness of Mama and Susu.  Still, Phia wanted to have a stake in this youngest nephew's growing.
     "You've done well, Susu.  He's a keeper, as Uncle Tommy would say." Phia glanced down at Mama, whose gray hair fanned around her head like a halo, and felt a lump in her throat.  So Mama had found love again, after all these years.  There was something familiar about Tommy in their house, Tommy helping muck out the barn, Tommy teasing Mama until her face turned as red as her hair had been.  Tommy was all light and straightforward, not brooding and silent like Papa.  The whole family had always through it too bad his long-divorced wife, Ellen, hadn't appreciated that, instead of loathing then leaving, as surely as Papa had, the work and dirt and repetitiveness of the life Tommy loved.
     "Jack is so crazy about his little man," Susu was saying.  "He makes lists of all the things he wants to teach him--starting with through a ball, of course."  Susu's eyes lit up as she pulled back the blanket to peek at Justin.    "My lists are about people--who I want him to know--you, Mama." Her voice trailed off and she kissed his soft dark hair.
     Then the back door opened and a booming voice called out, "There are some wild dogs out here--should I let the coyotes get them?"
     Phia looked up and the long and lanky frame in the doorway, a work-day's dirt on his face, and a grin cracking through it, was as comforting as it was familiar.  "Uncle Tommy," Phia said.  He placed his metal lunch pail on the counter, a pail she recognized from all the times she'd ridden in combines with him during harvest.  She'd dug through the pail for cookies, which he always let her eat, then she'd fed him a steady stream of unshelled peanuts or sunflower seeds, which he'd cracked with his teeth, spitting the shells out the window and chewing the meat without ever using his hands.  Looking at his weathered face, Phia knew Mama was right, she was happy for her and for Tommy--who wouldn't be?  His arms opened and, after a moment's hesitation, she walked straight into them.
      "It's about time you got here," Tommy said.  "Now the party can begin."
     "You're the party, Uncle Tommy,"  Phia told him.  And he was.  At dinner, he told them how the Warrens' cows had gotten loose, and Mrs. Warren had chased them down the road in her Buick, blowing her horn, which had just spooked the poor things.  Then she'd gotten out of her car and stood in the middle of the road in her robe and curlers, yelling at them.  When Tommy and Marty (another brother) had slowed down to offer their help, Mrs. Warren had raised her fist and hollered bfore they even got out of the car, "You boys better get these cows back in the pasture, and fix the fence while you're at it." Then she'd turned and marched back to her house in a huff.
     "She left the car running, right in the middle of the road.  Marty had to drive it back, left it, and hightailed it out of there before she could clobber him for stealing her car.  Shoot, you'd have thought it was our fault those cows were out, when everyone in the county knows it's the Warrens fences that haven't been repaired since that woman drove poor Earl off."  Tommy shook his head.  "If she had any more bite, they'd have to cage her and take her to the zoo."  Even Mama laughed until her cheeks turned rosy.
      Then Auntie Riona and Uncle Marty came swooping in from their house down the road.  Uncle Marty was the middle of Papa's brothers and Riona was Mama's only sister, making their kids, Moire and Daire, Phia's double cousins.  Riona did everything with a swoop and the cake she baked for Phia's homecoming was all white confection with pink roses.  She'd dressed her short rotund form in the exact hues of her cake, from her rosy fingernails to the raspberry tinge of her gray hair.  The older Riona got, the more red and curly her hair became.  But she did short and perky well, even in her sixties.  The whole house brightened up with her in it, even with Mama lying in a hospital bed right there in the dining room.  They sat down to cake and tea and family gossip Riona sprinkled like sugar in the cups.  Riona had always been lively, but that night she darted around like a firefly, lighting here and there to hug Mama, coo at Justin as Susu nursed him in the rocker next to Mama's bed, corner Phia in the back hallway so she could run her fingers through her hair.  "Tsk, tsk," she said, fingering the straggly length.  "You come down to the shop tomorrow for a shampoo and cut."
     After dessert, Phia crept out to the back porch to catch her breath while the others cleaned up the dishes.  Sitting in a cedar Adirondack chair, bleached gray from wind, rain and use, Phia stared at the clear night sky, remembering the spring before she turned twelve, now Mama had awakened all the girls in the middle of the night to see the Aurora Borealis.  At the top of the hill Papa had read the poem, "The Northern Lights," by Robert Service while they all snuggled under blankets until dawn broke over the hill and set Mama's hair on fire, as Papa described it.  It was one of Phia's last memories of the whole family being together.


    

Chapter Three--part one

Halfway across Washington on I-90, Phia stopped at the Rye Grass rest area and dialed home.  The dogs clamored at the end of their leashes, sniffing the dried weeds in the pet area, as she shifted her cell phone from one ear to the other, waiting for someone to answer at the other end.
     "Dee Daly," Mama said at last, her voice raspy. Three days earlier when Phia had talked to her, she'd sounded tired--but not like this.
    "Mama, you sound good," she lied. "How are you?"
     "Oh, I can't complain." That was Mama, all right.
     "Are you by yourself there?"
     "Ah Bairn, I haven't been left alone in about a century," she answered, the familiar Irish lilt in her voice lifting her sentence into a question. "Susu just went to put the baby douwn--she's on Mama watch at the moment."
     Mama watch--that was Vannah talking, probably thinking Mama didn't know.  "I'm about three hours out," Phia told her. "I'll be home for dinner."
     Driving down the hill at Vantage and across the Columbia River, Phia remembered the stories she'd heard about Mama when Papa had first brought her, his bride, to the Palouse, from her home in Ireland--how he'd met her while working in a used bookstore owned by some cousin-several-times-removed, the only year he'd spent away from the Daly farm, the one year of his life he'd spent doing work he truly loved. 
     When Phia was little, she loved to sit in Papa's book-lined study while he read at his desk, filtered light streaming through the windows on autumn days.  If she was quiet enough, Papa would let her pull books off the high shelves and run her fingers down the uneven ridges of the binding, pressing them against her nose to smell the musty pages, as well as the tobacco from his pipe across the room.  Phia shifted in her seat, suddenly remembering another smell--the sharp smell of smoke for his shotgun, the way that smoke had hung in the air of his bedroom as she'd stood with her sisters in the doorway, watching Mama try to pour his blood back into his still body.
     Rage and longing carved a familiar hole in Phia's belly, and her arms felt suddenly weak.  She pulled onto the shoulder, shoved the gear-shift into park and hunched over the steering wheel. Clutching her stomach, she cursed the image of her father's face staring at her across that study, his eyes sad; and sadder still as his gaze touched her from the kitchen door.  When Phia finally lifted her head, pushing her hair from her face, her eyes in the rear-view mirror were puffy and bloodshot, as if she'd been weeping from hours, though she hadn't shed a tear. Sighing, she shifted back onto the road.
     As Phia drove into the rolling hills of Whitman County and entered the Palouse, the grain was corduroy in the fields, the newly sprouted wheat a green tint in the undulating ridges of dark dirt as far as she could see.  The sky, full of cotton candy billows, was broad and blue.  The road ribboned through hills she could drive with her eyes shut.
     Passing the last rest area, Phia thought of her twin sisters, Selena and Sierra , as she always did at this point in her drive, wondering what they would be like, what they'd be doing now, if they'd lived past their sixteenth birthday. Phia couldn't even picture them separately, only together, sitting on that window seat in the kitchen, sealed in her memory of that one afternoon as completely as the haunted eyes of Papa's face.
    She passed a barn with a couple of John Deere combines sitting beside it and remembered watching her uncles as they felt the earth, scanned the sky, touched stalks of grain, and counted days until the wheat was tall and golden across the horizon.  One harvest, when Phia was about ten years old, Papa's youngest brother Ben, his face drity and gritty  from a long day behind the wheel had stopped her at the bottom of her driveway, asked if she wanted to ride a while.  She hopped in and Ben, his mouth set in a slash across his face, drove the turck into the bottom-land of a field, and, as they stared up at the wheat at the top of the steep hill, Phia heard the noise of engines churning, and suddenly over the hill came four giant green combines, bearing straight down at them--Papa and his brothers racing to cut the field before a storm hit. Phia thought of the smell of wheat as it poured through the shoot of a combine, fresh and earthy. Now, the hills were a velvet dusting of mint and chocolate, and harvest was a long way off.  Opening the windows wide so the smell of the land could seep into the car, Phia let these memories wash over her and drive away the unbidden ghosts of Papa, Selena, Sierra.

As she turned off the pavement onto the gravel road that led home, Phia's pulse began to quicken.  Reaching the crest of the hill, she glimpsed the white farmhouse with the faded red barn on its right, the unplowed hill behind it, a tree-lined drveway running all the way to the road she was on.  Coasting down the hill, she braked at the bottom and stared at the house.  Two stories tall with a porch wrapping around all sides, the house looked stately and strong, its back up against the hills.  In the twenty-four years since Phia had moved to Seattle, she'd never spent more than a weekend a year sleeping inside those walls.  She didn't know how long she'd be staying on this trip, but she knew what was waiting for her.  Mama sick, Vannah angry, the Aunts squabbling with each other, Susu, caretaker and peacemaker, always cautious to take sides.
      Then a Cadillac sped out of Mama's driveway and turned toward Phia.  Pulling over, she rolled down her window as the Cadillac honked and drove past, spraying gravel and dust into her car.  Vannah, Phia thought. Nice welcome.
     After parking in front of the barn, Phia opened the car's tailgate to release the dogs and they took off through the fields like lit fuses.  Susu came bursting through the back door as Phia pulled out her suitcase.
      "You're home," she said, a small smile flitted over her face, and her arms stretched out.   
     "Vannah just passed me," Phia said. "She didn't even stop."
     "Can you at least say hello before you start complaining about her?"
     "Sorry, it's good to see you." Phia hugged Susu back.
     Susu held on tight. "I know this is hard," she said. "Try to remember that you're not the only one."  She took Phia's hand, led her through the gate, up the steps and into the back hall by the kitchen.  Phia took a deep breath and Susu placed one finger between her shoulder blades.  "Go on, Phia," she whispered.  "She doesn't look great, but she'll be better again before she's really worse."  Phia walked through the kitchen to where Mama lay beside the fireplace in a hospital bed.
      Mama looked up, smiling, her lips retracted against her teeth, her skin stretched tightly over the sharp bones of her face.  Phia swallowed hard, trying to fight the impulse to run.  Mama was wearing a brightly flowered nightgown and looked small under the tattered heirloom quilt that covered her, one socked foot sticking out the bottom.  Phia reached out, hating how sluggish and heavy her arms felt, and hugged Mama's bony form, buried her nose in the wiry gray hair.  Then Phia felt Mama's arms wrap around her back and relaxed in the familiar embrace.
     Mama put her hands in Phia's and Phia remembered how Mama used those hands to plant vegetables, bandage scrapes, brush hair, and dance with her five daughters.  Her hands were older now, the skin wrinkled and covered with purple bruises on the backs, but they were still Mama's hands.  "Don't tell me I look well," she said. "I'm sick of hearing lies."
     "I'm glad to see you, Mama," Phia said, feeling the lump in her throat dissolve.
      Then Aunt Annie was at Phia's side, arms outstretched, gathering Phia into her whippet frame.  Phia kissed her rough cheek and smelled leather and horse lather.  Nearly sixty-eight years old, and she's still galloping off her troubles, Phia thought.  After her hug, Annie ushered Phia over to the stove to poach some eggs for Mama.
     "How's everyone?" Phia asked, standing beside Annie at the stove, glancing over at Mama, whose eyes had fluttered closed.
     "Fine."  Annie sprinkled pepper with a heavy hand on the eggs.
     "Any news?"
     "Not much.  The boys are still working--too long and hard, if you ask me."
     "Uncle Tommy and Uncle Marty are old enough to retire--you should probably stop calling them boys." Phia laughed.
      "That Tommy acts like a boy--always has," Annie said. "Don't even get me started."
     "You have a fight with him or something?" Phia asked.
      "It's just like you to pry before you've even unpacked," Annie answered, pursing her lips.  "Just pour the water, would you?"
     "Well, excuse me." Phia poured water from the tea kettle into the pan and covered it with a lid.  She wished Susu was in the room to roll her eyes at the edge in Annie's voice, but Phia figured she'd learn what was brewing between Annie and Tommy soon enough--if not from Annie, then from Susu, Mama, Mama's sister Riona or Tommy himself. "What about Vannah--where was she off to in such a hurry?"  Phia asked, pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
     "Rudy called, so she left.  You know how it is."
      Sipping her orange juice, Phia realized she knew exactly how it was with Vannah.  Rudy had probably come in from the shop and only their daughter, Dana Rose, had been home, so he'd lifted the phone, his fingers black with grease, and bellowed for Vannah to get home where she belonged.  Phia could picture her standing in front of her stove, trying to put together dinner while Rudy sat in his relciner with a beer in his hand.  Then she imagined Vannah tiptoeing past him on her way to bed as he slept in his recliner that night, a pile of beer cans crumpled on the table beside him, and for a moment, Phia's fury subsided, and her heart sunk with the weight of Vannah's hard life.  But then she saw Vannah sailing by her in that brand new champagne Cadillac, and all Phia could think of was one of Annie Riona's cliched expressions: Vannah, she'd made her bed, now she had to lie in it.

To be continued--- (tomorrow)
   

Chapter Two

Phia's feet pounded in rhythm as she ran around Green Lake, weaving in and out of the traffic of women pushing strollers, children stopping without warning, dogs on leashes--everyone edgy to be outside, enjoying the budding trees, blooming daffodils and glistening lack on this unusually sunny March afternoon.  It was her first day back from Spain and the familiar path was welcome after a long, jet-lagged day at work, but now she felt hemmed in by the crowd clogging the paths.
     Sprinting the last three blocks from the lake to her ranch bungalow, Phia unlocked the door and heard the phone ringing over the barking of her dogs, who were impatient for a game of catch.  Walking past the phone, she opened the back door and Harli and Spring bolted outside, still barking as the machine picked up.
     "Phia, are you there?" It was Vannah, her older sister, sounding irritated as always.
     Tossing balls out the door to the dogs to stop their noise, she picked up the phone. "Hey, Vannah."
      "Where have you been?"
     "Running," Phia said, squatting to untie and kick off her shoes.
     "Why weren't you at work?"
     "I left early to get a run in before dark." Sliding the water pitcher out of the refrigerator, she poured a mug and gulped it down.
     "On vacation for tow weeks, then checking out early--hope your boss likes you."
     "I went in early this morning to catch up." Phia hated herself for explaining, but couldn't bite back the words.
     "Well, I've been calling you at both places for over an hour and your cell phone's turned off."
     Phia leaned against the refrigerator and pulled her Achilles taut, picturing Vannah at her immaculate table in her tidy brick house, drinking tea, reading a romance novel, with nothing to do for the whole day but call and bother her sister.  "So--what did you need, Van?"
     "Didn't you get my message?"
     She pushed away from the refrigerator.  "I just got in, remember?"
     "You need to come home," Vannah said. "It's Mama."
     Phia froze.  "What about Mama?"
     "The cancer's back, in her liver."
     Phia stared at the answering machine, its blinking light an incessant reproach.  "Did you hear me?" Vannah asked. "Are you even listening?"
     Bending her head against her knees until her hamstrings began to burn, Phia imagined the muscles ricocheting up into her groin. "I heard you, Vannah."
     "I told Susu you wouldn't come," Vannah said. "That you'd have some excuse--as if she doesn't have enough on her plate already with Mama and the baby."  She laughed, a brittle sound that made Phia cringe.  "We'll do our best to explain, but really--after all Mama's done for you, I'd think--"
     Phia threw the mug against the wall.  "You think I don't love Mama, that I don't appreciate her?" She tried to inhale, just take one mouthful of air, release, then another.
     "Look," Vannah said with a sigh, and Phia could just see her rolling her eyes, shaking her head.  "Mama's really sick, but if you can't handle it, you should just stay there."
     Staring at her hand, Phia willed it to stop shaking and tried to steady herself against the counter, but couldn't hold the phone anymore, so let it drop, left Vannah's voice dangling, all coiled and caught up in that long, loopy cord.
     Stumbling into the bathroom, Phia shed her clothes and adjusted the shower until it was as hot as she could stand.  As the water beat against her scalp, she was stunned by a sharp memory of Vannah's fingers pulling gently at this very hair as she French-braided it; then another of her at sixteen, bent over the desk in the room Phia shared with Susu, Vannah's long dark hair hanging over her face like a veil as she let it air dry, cutting out paper-dolls for Susu, who was in bed, sick with the flu.  She used to be so loving, Phia thought as she massaged conditioner into her hair.  Where had all this bitterness come from?
     Waiting for the conditioner to soak in, Phia picked up the shell she used as a soap dish, remembering the spring Mama had come to stay in this house for her cancer treatments at the Seattle clinic.  Taking the ferry across Puget Sound to Whidbey Island the afternoon before Mama left, she'd leaned against the railing, a knit cap covering her bald head, her arms spread wide to catch the mist coming up off the water.  "It's like the Irish Sea," Mama'd said, "only the trees are bigger and the rocks on the coastline are missing."  Phia remembered her finding the shell as they'd walked along the beach, holding hands.  "Keep this so you'll remember to pray for your Mama when you're in the shower each day," she'd told Phia.
     The shower's spray turned suddenly cold, and Phia's hands shook as she dried off and dressed, then made a cup of tea and dialed home. If Vannah answered, she vowed, teeth still chattering, she'd hang up.
     "Susu," she whispered when she heard her baby sister's voice.
     "Phia, I've been worried." Susu's voice dipped.  "Vannah said that telling you didn't go well."
     "Did she mention that she told me not to come home?" Shivering, Phia watched clouds roll in over her back fence.
     "Phia--Mama needs you.  She needs all of us."
     "Vannah doesn't want me there."
     "Focus on Mama," Susu said, her voice sharper than usual. "Can you please try to make peace with Van?"
     "That depends on her," Phia said, wincing as she cut her foot on a piece of the broken mug.
     "She's here," Susu said, "if you want to talk to her."
     "I wanted to know about Mama," Phia said, hobbling back into the bathroom.
     "She's just settling in.  We brought her home from the hospital earlier."
     Pressing a cotton ball against the cut to staunch the bleeding, Phia listening to the sound of water running and dishes clanking over the phone.  Mama was in the kitchen, tidying up, just as always.  "Why didn't anyone tell me?" She asked as she spread disinfectant on the cut, savoring the intense burn.
      "You were in Spain, and it all happened so fast.  Mama didn't want to worry you." Her cheerful sister sounded so tired.  She pictured Susu's hand cupped over the mouthpiece, trying to keep her from hearing whatever she was saying to Mama. "Here she is, Phia," she said with a sigh, and Phia pictured her massaging her temples, as she'd done so often when she was a teenager with migraines.
     "Bairn, you're home," my mama said, her voice hoarse.
     "How are you, Mama?"
     "Fine now that I'm home." She heard Susu and Vannah and others--my Uncle Tommy?  Auntie Riona?  Aunt Annie?--chattering in the background.
     "You entertaining folks your first night home?"
     "No, just family," Mama said, sounding even more tired than Susu.  "How are you, Bairn?"
     "Wishing we could take a ferry across the Sound."
     "I remember that day.  It was good.  I love the sea."
     "You could come back."  Phia pressed a bandage over the cut on her foot.  "I'd take care of you again."
     "Not this time, Phia," she answered with a yawn in her voice.  "Tell me about Spain, the marathon, Robert."
     Phia twisted her hair into a braid, holding the phone between her chin and shoulder.  "We broke up." Robert's face rose in front of her eyes, the angles sharp and rigid, his eyes always ready to pick a fight.  She shook her head, shattering the image, replacing it with Mama's soft smile.
     "He wasn't the man for you," Mama said. "He was like a fence, stiff and straight, and didn't let you out.  Your man's still out there."
     "I'm not so sure."
     "You come on home, Bairn," Mama said.
     Looking down at her bandaged foot, Phia stood tentatively, testing her weight.  Outside, the clouds hung low and a spring rain began to pelt the roof.  "I'm coming--as soon as I can get away."

Chapter One

     "This reminds me of storms at home," Phia told Robert, pointing at the huge, splattering raindrops pelting the Plexiglass airplane window.  The clouds over the JFK runway hung low, crowding the sky like steep, black hills. obscuring any view of the city.
     "This is not Seattle rain," Robert snapped.
     "I wasn't talking about Seattle," Phia answred.  Robert had been irritable since an early morning argument in Barcalong, when he'd wanted to go to Bar Ra, one of the trendy cafes from the guidebook that they hadn't tried, a last tick on his all-important list.  But Phia had insisted on eating in the hotel resaurant, wanted a simple, relaxing meal before having to catch the airport shuttle.  Robert had let her win, but Phia'd been paying for that victory all day.  It will be good to get back to our separate houses, Phia thought as she closed her eyes and tried inhale kind thoughts about Robert.  But traveling over the past two weeks had left little to recommend him, except for the sight of his long legs when he ran.
     "So are you from Seattle?" the man sitting in the aisle seat asked Phia.
     She shook her head. "The Palouse--in eastern Washington."
     "She's is from Seattle," Robert said, looking up from his magazine.  "She hasn't lived in eastern Washington for twenty-five years." He wet his finger, then flicked the page.
     "I've never heard of the Palouse," the man said after an awkward silence.  "What's it like?"
     Phia pictured her family's wheat farm.  "Deep rolling hills that turn from rich brown to bright green to gold as the wheat grows.  Real seasons--you know, winters with snow, and hot, dry summers."
     The man smiled.  "Sounds great.  I moved to Seattle from Pittsburgh six months ago, but I haven't been out of the city yet--haven't seen much of anything except rain."
     The plane's engines roared and Phia reached into her purse for gum.
     "So you have family there, in the Palouse?" the man asked, unwrapping the gum she offered.
     "A whole clan," Robert cut in.  He snapped his gum, a habit that had annoyed Phia for the past two years.  Two years too long, Phia thought bitterly.  "She never goes home, though," Robert continued.  He smiled, his teeth white against the dark tan he carefully cultivated.  "But why would she? We have mountains, the ocean, the original Starbucks." Robert lifted the long, dark braid off Phia's shoulder and stroked it down her back.  "Sure, it rains now, but wait until summer--you'll see.  You run?"
     "The man shook his head.  "Not much."
     "You should," Robert said.  "We just ran the Barcelona Marathon.  Did pretty well--PR for me.  Phia here could have done better--needs to pace more evenly, I keep telling her.  You know, I could get you hooked up with our club."  He pulled a card from his wallet. "Running would do you good, if you don't mind me saying."
     "Robert!" PHia slapped the card to the floor. "Sorry," she mumbled to the man.
     He raised his eyebrows and opened the book on his lap, some self-help guide, Phia noticed with a measure of disgust.
     Robert returned to his magazine.  His hand on her back made Phia's skin crawl, and she let her weight fall back on his hand until he had to wrench it from behind her back.  I am from the Palouse, Phia thought as the place raced down the runway and surged into the storm.  Watching the rain pummel the window, she thought of how much she'd loved watching thunderstorms roll over the hills in the Palouse, surrounded by her family huddled together on the front porch.  But here, the plane was moving through a dark cave of menacing clouds and there was nothing familiar to anchor her.  Phia pressed two fingers into her temples, beating back the panic as the plane hit an air pocket and lurched.  In the turbulence there was a blinding flash off the wing, then a sudden crack.  Several passengers screamed as the plane dropped. "Mama," Phia cried as the lights in the cabin dimmer and eery shadows fell over the faces.
     "For god's sake!" Robert hissed.  "Stop calling for your mother."  He held out his hand but Phia didn't want his perfectly clipped fingernails to touch her.  The hands she wanted were rough with dirt beneath the nails, Mama's hands.
     The plane dipped again and Phia clutched the arms of her seat, knocking Robert's elbow off.  He shook his head in disgust.  "You'd think you'd never flown before," he said.
     Suddenly the plane punched through the storm into blue sky and bright sunlight, then leveled off and settled on top of rolling banks of clouds that looked like the Palouse hills in winter--all covered with deep, fresh, ice-blue snow.  Looking over those snowy clouds, it was hard to imagine the dark fury just beneath them.

Hours later, Phia's head had stopped aching and she opened her eyes, stretching.  "Can you open the shade?" she asked Robert, leaning forward.
     "Nothing to see but farmland."
     She reached past him, raised the shade and stared at the patchwork quilt of flat land shadowed by puffy clouds far below them.  Where were they? she wondered.  What was growing down there--corn? wheat? grass? "See what I mean?" Robert asked, blocking her vision.  Get out of my way, Phia wanted to tell him, but bit back the words and clenched the arm rest to keep herself from pushing him.  Beside her, the man from Seattle had head-phones on, watching the in-flught movie.
     "I'm really tired," Phia told Robert.
     "You just slept," he answered, closing the shade.
     "Of you.  Tired of you."
     He stared at her, his eyebrows knit into a thick black line.  "Phia," he cajoled.  "We just had a great vacation--think of all the people we met, the things we saw."
     She sighed.  "I love running with you.  But--"
     "Don't say it." Robert put a hand on her arm.
      "This is exactly what I mean," she said, shaking off his hand and waving her hand in front of him.  "You have me pinned to a butterfly board, don't let me move."
     He opened the shade again and made a noise in his throat.  The plane was again flying on a bed of clouds, obscuring any vista.  "I'm disappointed in you," he finally said.
     Phia reached up and turned the know to let more air flow.  She felt hot, sticky. "Your life revolves around work and running."
     "And you spend your days pining for you precious Palouse hills."  He stared at her, his eyes cold. "That life obviously wasn't enough for your father."
     Feeling nauseous, Phia bolted out of her seat and down the aisle into the restroom, trying to breathe with her head between her knees, gagging as the toilet disinfectant burned her throat. What does he know about the land, she thought, her chest heaving. What does he know about Papa?  Pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes to stop the tears, Phia saw her father's face as she'd last seen him--standing in the kitchen hallway, crying, before he walked away.  And just as she had every moment of her waking and dreaming life, ever since that October afternoon thirty years ago, she wondered who she'd be if that memory had only been a nightmare.  If Papa had stayed in his study that day instead of climbing the stairs.  If he were still there now.  If she'd never seen Mama cupping his blood in her hands, never seen him lying in a crimson pool on his bedroom floor.
     Lifting the seat, Phia threw up the salad she'd picked at while Robert wolfed down a burger, fries and beer in the JFK food court, a meal bristling with all the tension and discontent that had been brewing during their two-week vacation.
     Standing in front of the tiny stainless-steel sink, running her fingers under the icy water, she kept her head down, avoiding the mirror, not wanting to see Papa's eyes in her own reflection.  Stomach clenched, she sunk onto the toilet seat, taking one deep breath after another, until a flight attendant jiggled the door handle, asking if everything was alright in there.
     "What happened to our friend?" Phia asked when she returned to their row and found Robert in the aisle seat.
     "You scared him off," he glared.  "Traveling has always made you sick, hasn't it?"
     Squeezing past Robert's knees, Phia sat next to the window.  "Look, Robert, I didn't plan for any of this to happen." She shivered and reached to close off the air valve, feeling dizzy and nauseous againa, hemmed in by Robert's long legs.
     "I've been very understanding," he said, leaning into the empty seat between them, his face so close his minty breath blew across her face.  "You come with a lot of crap."
     "You're probably better off without me," she murmured, reasting her head against the window, yearning to slide it open and free-fall into the pillowed clouds, away from Robert, this trip, her father's face streaked with tears, the past that haunted at every turn.  The clouds scattered and she could see striped brown fields following the contours of the earth, beckoning her to follow their curves, calling her home.
   

Prologue

It is an early October afternoon in the Palouse and I am riding home on the late bus, which is empty, since our house is the last stop on its route.  Out the window, I see a man on a tractor plowing a dark circle around the contour of an empty field.  I squint, wondering if he is my father or my Uncle Tommy, since from this distance, they're hard to tell apart.  The bus driver, Mr. Olson, honks and the man on the tractor waves.  Uncle Tommy, I decide.  Papa wouldn't wave.  He keeps his head down when he's working.
     Trudging up our steep driveway, my violin bumps against my hip and the leaves on the trees rain vermilion, maize and puce over my head.  Clouds tumble in from the west, foretelling he autumn storm that will break at dusk.
     Standing at the back kitchen door, I watch my mama knead bread dough at the scarred oak table, her head turned to my baby sister, Susu.  The twins, Sierra and Selena, whisper and giggle on the long, low window-seat in the kitchen.  Vannah is playing something bleak and mournful on the piano, music she plays when she's been fighting with her boyfriend, Rudy.
     Mama lifts a hand to swipe hair out of her eyes, and flour, like a smear of whitewash, streaks her forehead.  "Phia," she says when she sees me, "Come sit."  At the table next to Susu, I munch on a handful of popcorn from a large yellow bowl.  Susu has her head bent over a sheet of math facts and is carefully turning all the minus signs into pluses. When I ask her about it, she says she likes adding things, but taking them away makes her sad.  Mama rolls, punches and sways with her kneading. "Here you go, Bairn," she says, placing a hunk of dough in my mouth.
     Then Vannah presses a single, haunting note in the middle of her piece, and there are tears on my face.  Looking up, I see Papa standing right outside the kitchen door--home at 4:30 in the afternoon, when he should be working in the fields until dark.
     He backs away from the door, gazes around the room and when he looks at me, I see that he is crying too.  My papa--crying.  He turns, walks down the hall and the study door opens, then closes.  Mama is too busy working the bread to notice.  Flipping open a book, I lower my head and read.
     Later as Mama sets the loaves of bread in the oven to rise, I realize that Vannah is studying beside me.  Mama walks to the sink to wash off her hands, and then I hear a sharp crack from upstairs.
     We all look at Mama, then tear after her as she flies through the kitchen and tumbles up the staircase, smearing the the banisters with bread dough.  Bunching into the doorway of her bedroom, we see her kneeling next to Papa, clawing at his chest, moaning, "Please, Duncan, please," cupping a ruby river and pouring it back into Papa's shirt, but it's pouring off his chest, pooling over the old braided rug, the shaft of Papa's smoking .22 rifle, the dark folds of Mama's skirt, which look like the hills above the river.  I hear the pounding of feet, see Papa's brother, Tommy, kneel next to Mama, place his fingers against Papa's neck, lift Mama's hands from Papa's chest. "It's no good, Dee.  You see that, don't you?" he says.
     Mama stands, her hands gloved in blood, and the country in her skirt floods the floor around Papa.  Uncle Tommy closes Papa's eyes, smears the blood from his hands onto his jeans.  Mama walks toward us, whispers, "Not this house," then raises her bloodied hand and swipes it in a wide arc over the doorway.
     "Oh Papa, " I whisper, creeping down the stairs after my mama, then sneaking through the door to Papa's study, my heart pounding, my palms sweaty.  But the study is dark and empty, the curtains closed.  There is an open book on the bare desk, Papa's pen in the crease.  In the dim light, I read the words, "Remember me," written in his bold script, and I turn and run out of the study, down the long corridor to the back door.  I fling open the screen and stumble out onto the porch.