A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,129

of his mouth. “No. I wanted to talk to you where we wouldn’t be overheard.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly onto the wind. “How is he?”

“Poor. I took him to one of the outlying villages near the Ugandan border, too far for the officials in Nairobi to bother with. He has no cattle of his own and he can’t claim his babu’s property when the old man dies. Without either of those, he can’t take a wife. And he won’t accept handouts from me.”

“So I did it for nothing.”

“He’s alive.” Ryder turned on me fiercely. “And that’s all that matters right now. He will work hard and he will make his own way. Don’t underestimate him, Delilah. He’s stronger than you know, and right now he is walking on his own two legs—a free black man in a white man’s Africa—because of what you did. Don’t ever forget that.”

I said nothing. Guilt was sitting too heavily on my shoulders to talk about it. I had acted impulsively, rashly, as I always had. And while it might have saved Gideon’s life, it also made it impossible for him to have the life he wanted. Once again I had acted from the heart rather than the head, and there were consequences. Only this time someone else was bearing the weight of them.

“Have you thought about what you mean to do?”

I watched the cheetah tearing happily at the throat of the little tommie. Survival was a bloody business. “I mean to leave as soon as I can. Nothing’s changed, Ryder.”

He went very still, but I felt the change in him. Anger shimmered off him, sparking the air between us.

“I should have known. Tusker warned me not to rely on you. She swore you wouldn’t stick it out, but I defended you. I told her she was wrong, that there was something fine in you, something that would see this place for what it was and be changed by it. But you won’t change, and do you know why? Because you never stay anywhere or with anyone long enough to let them in.”

I let out a ragged breath. “Do you know what a cicatrix is, Ryder? It’s a scar, a place where you have been cut so deeply that what’s left behind is something quite different. It doesn’t heal, not really, because it isn’t the same ever again. It’s impenetrable and it’s there forever, to protect you from hurting the same place again.”

“You get maudlin when you philosophise.”

“It isn’t maudlin if it’s true.”

He grabbed my wrist, twisting it hard where the black ribbon bow folded on itself like a mourning flower.

“Can you feel that? Can you feel anything? Christ, Delilah, I thought I was damaged, but I have never in my life met anyone so afraid of feeling anything as you are.”

“You know why,” I said with a shrug.

“No, I don’t. You told me what’s happened to you, but guess what? Bad things happen to everybody. I’ll give you that. But you can’t just shut down and refuse to keep living. Do you think that’s what Johnny would have wanted? You might as well have jumped down into that grave with him and pulled the dirt over you like a blanket for all the real living you’ve done since then.”

He turned and took my face in his hands. “Delilah, this may be the last chance you have to wake up. Life is giving you a new chance every goddamned day that you wake up and you’re throwing it away. Wake up, Delilah. Wake up.” He punctuated his words with his lips, pressing his mouth to my eyelids, my temples, my cheeks, my jaw, and with every touch he murmured, “Wake up.

“Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” An invocation, an invitation, an incantation, but I pulled away from him and shook my head.

He dropped his hands. Silence stretched between us, heavy and thick. He settled back and pulled a cigarette from his case. Wordlessly he lit it and passed it to me before lighting another for himself. We smoked them in silence but I could feel him thinking, planning his next move. He was playing a chess game, trying to win, convinced he could keep me if he could just hit on the right strategy. He just didn’t realise I wasn’t playing the game.

He spoke quietly, weighing his words. “You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever met, Delilah. You are the most appallingly selfish person I have ever