The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

He drove Laura south to get her Jeep and the bulk of her possessions, which amounted to so few boxes that he was kind of amazed. Half of them were filled with flannel nightgowns.

Finally Grace called with the news that Stuart might be visited the following Tuesday. He,d not had a temperature for two days, and the rash and the nausea were gone. So were all signs of injury. And the boy,s height and weight had increased.

"Like I told you, it,s all happened so much faster," she said. "He,s not so manic now. But the moodiness has begun."

Frankly, she wanted Reuben to see him. She wanted Reuben to talk to him. The boy wanted to go home, and that meant San Francisco. His mother wouldn,t have him in the Santa Rosa house, she was afraid of the stepfather, and Grace didn,t trust him on his own.

"Yes, it,s a hell of a lot easier for me to look after him down here," said Grace, "in San Francisco. But this kid is acting too weird, just too weird. Of course he,s clever as they come. He knows better than to say anything more about hearing voices. Reuben, it,s playing out like it did with you, exactly. The lab results. Well, we make a little progress and then the specimens disintegrate! We haven,t solved that problem. And he,s not the same boy he was when I first talked to him. I want you to see him."

He sensed that they were able to talk about all this much more easily now that it involved Stuart. They were speaking as if there was no silence between them, no secret, no mystery, as if all the mystery had to do with Stuart.

That was all right.

Reuben said he would see Stuart anytime that he could. He,d be there early Tuesday morning.

Finally Grace asked: would he and Laura be willing if she, and Jim, and Phil came to dinner?

Reuben was overjoyed. He could control the Wolf Gift now. He had no fear of it. This was what he so wanted!

He and Laura spent all day Monday preparing for a feast in the august dining room.

They dug out linen for the table, great cloths trimmed in old lace, dinner-sized napkins embossed with the initial N, and heaps of old graven silver. They ordered flowers for the main rooms, and specialty desserts from the nearest bakery.

Grace and Phil were completely taken with the house, but it was Phil who fell in love with it, just as Reuben had anticipated. Phil stopped responding to questions or remarks and roamed off by himself, humming under his breath, running his hands over paneling and doorjambs, and the varnish of the piano, and the crinkled leaves of the weeping ficus, and the leather-bound books of the library. He put on his thick glasses to examine the carved figures of the hunters, boards and the medieval fireplace. Phil looked like he belonged to the place in his disheveled tweed with his long unkempt gray hair.

They had to pull him down from the second-story rooms finally because everyone was starving. But Phil was whispering to the house, communing with it, and paid absolutely no attention to Grace when she began to talk about the obvious expense of it.

Reuben was thrilled by this. He kept hugging Phil. Phil was in a dream world with the house. He murmured under his breath, "I,d live here in a second." And now and then he beamed proudly, lovingly, at Reuben.

"Son, this is your destiny," he said.

Grace said such houses were obsolete, ought to be converted into institutions, museums, or hospitals. She looked especially beautiful to Reuben, with her red hair natural around her face, her lips only slightly rouged, and her sharp intense features expressive as always. Her black silk pantsuit looked new; she had put on her pearls for the occasion. But she was tired, worn, and watching him intently no matter who was doing the talking.

Jim came to the defense of the place, pointing out Reuben had never been a terribly expensive kid. He,d traveled on a shoestring, used to tiny hotel rooms and coach fares, and attended a state university and not an Ivy League college. The most extravagant thing he,d ever done was ask for a Porsche when he graduated and he was still driving the same car two years later. He,d never gone into the principal of any of his trusts until now, and had lived for years on half his income. Yes, the house was expensive, but they didn,t heat the whole thing every day, did they?

And how long was Reuben expected to live with his parents anyhow? Yes, the house cost. But what would it cost to buy a new condo or refurbished Victorian in San Francisco? And what would Grandfather Spangler have thought of all this, the gift of a property of this value? He would have approved the maintenance in the blink of an eye! He,d been a real estate developer, hadn,t he? Someday this whole place would sell for a fortune, so would everybody please leave Reuben alone!

Grace accepted all this with a casual nod. What Jim didn,t say was that he, Jim, had turned his trust funds back over to the family when he,d joined the priesthood, and so shouldn,t his opinion count for something?

Jim had dropped out of medical school to be a priest, and his education in Rome had cost little in comparison. The family had made a hefty donation to the Church when he was ordained, but the bulk of his inheritance was now at the disposal of Reuben.

Reuben didn,t care what the hell any of them said. He kept his counsel about Felix, and Felix,s possible moral claim to the house naturally. His heart broke when he thought of losing the house, but it was the least of his worries. What would Felix think when he found out about Stuart?

What would Stuart think when he found out about Stuart?

But maybe nothing would happen. Hadn,t Marrok indicated that sometimes nothing happened? Oh, faint hope.

What Reuben loved was that they were here, his family, that their voices were filling the big shadowy dining room, that his father was happy and not bored, and it felt good, oh, so good, to be near them.

The meal was a great success - roast filet, fresh vegetables, pasta, and one of Laura,s enormous simple and herb-laden salads.

Laura got into a discussion with Jim about Teilhard de Chardin, and Reuben understood less than half of what they were saying. What he saw however was how much they enjoyed the conversation. Phil was smiling at Laura in a particularly delighted way. When Phil talked about the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Laura listened with rapt focus. Grace started another conversation, of course, but Reuben had long ago grown used to listening to their two separate conversations simultaneously. The fact was Laura liked his father. And his mother.

Grace asked what good theology ever did anybody, or poetry for that matter.

Laura remarked that science was dependent upon poetry, that all scientific description was metaphoric.

Only when the conversation turned to Dr. Akim Jaska did things turn unpleasant. Grace didn,t want to discuss the man, but Phil went into a fury.