“Then they spoiled you. And it’s time somebody un-spoiled you.”
Now she was furious. She got to her feet with one push. “No, they just treated me like a human being. And that’s the way you were raised, too, don’t tell me it wasn’t. Nobody in your house taught you to be as stubborn as a mule and as mean as a rattlesnake! You learned that all by yourself!” She turned on her heel and headed straight for the door.
Before she could even think about grabbing her shawl, she was walking down the road in the chilly mountain air. Luckily she had pulled on shoes earlier in the evening to take scraps to the hogs, and had yet to remove them. She was used to bare feet, but the road was soft from spring rain, and the mud would be icy against her soles.
“Jesse Spurlock, somebody’s got to talk some sense into you, but it won’t be me!” She paused outside the gate, trying to decide which direction to take. She wished Puss was living at the Cades’ place again. Even on a dark night, she knew the way so well she would probably be safe without a lantern. But Puss was at Skyland, and there was no one to run to. She turned right and started up the hill. At least on the road she wouldn’t get lost. When she got too cold to go farther, she could turn around. Maybe by then Jesse would be in bed and she wouldn’t have to see his face.
She wasn’t out of sight of the house when she saw the silhouette of a man just yards away.
Startled, her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh!”
“Don’t worry. It’s me, Daniel Flaherty. I’m sorry I scared you. You’re all right?”
He materialized out of the shadows as he approached. He was smoking a cigarette, and the small flame illuminated his face. He was dressed the way he had been that morning, but he wore a heavy coat over the rumpled shirt.
“What are you doing out here?” she demanded.
“We’re camped that way.” He stomped out his cigarette, then pointed over the hill. “Nobody lives there.”
The land he spoke of had been abandoned last year when an old couple without children died within four months of each other. It was hardscrabble land, steep and rocky, and no one had claimed it, despite views that could set a heart pounding.
“Then what are you doing
here?
” she asked.
“I was out for a walk. Looks like you were, too.”
“I just needed to do some thinking.”
“No place to be alone, is it? I mean, you surely know your way, but don’t you worry about running into something or someone you don’t want to see?”
She shivered, and as quickly as if he were trying to save her life, Flaherty stripped off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. “And it looks like you ran off without thinking about the weather,” he added. “It turned cool this evening after the rain. Very cool.”
The jacket felt good, heavy and warm, and she wrapped it around her for a moment, although she knew she needed to give it right back.
“You ever just find yourself somewhere you didn’t plan to be?”
“You mean like you right now? What made you race off?”
There was only one man she should be telling her feelings to, and it wasn’t Daniel Flaherty. Unfortunately, the man who should be listening wasn’t interested.
“You told your husband about our visit, didn’t you,” he said when she didn’t answer. “And he wasn’t happy. I’m sorry we put you in that position.”
She couldn’t discuss Jesse with him. “Tell me what it’s like where you live.”
He laughed. “Right now I’m living up here, and it’s cold and wet, and I’m tired of taking a bath and doing my laundry in a stream.”
“How about the rest of the time?”
“I live down in the Valley. In a place called Harrisonburg. You’ve heard of it?”
“I know where it is. What’s it like living there?”
“Not as quiet as this. Flatter, because we’re down below, but you can see the mountains, and there’s plenty of farms and land around us.”
“Us?”
“Us who live in Harrisonburg. I have a small house on the outskirts. My mother lives not far away. It’s easy to go to church and school, but people still help each other.”
She tried to imagine this. She had never been that far, but she thought it was possible she might be happy in a place like that.
“I didn’t see any other Blackburns on my list. Are you alone up here? Do you have anybody you can talk to about what’s happening?”
“It’s not something people want to talk about.”
“That makes it hard on you, doesn’t it.”
“Are there jobs in Harrisonburg? For people like us who had to walk four miles to school every day and couldn’t get there as much as we needed?”
“I think you could learn anything you needed to know very quickly. Some men are getting jobs with the park, helping to put in the roads and clearing the dead chestnut trees. They’ll be replanting, doing all sorts of things. Your husband could apply.”
“When our old hog flies south for the winter.”
He laughed, his teeth white in the moonlight. “What would you do if you could, Leah? What kind of job would you like to have?”
“A job?” The thought wasn’t so strange. Puss was cleaning rooms at Skyland. Other women sold crafts or pies to visitors there. Her own mother had always been paid for helping the sick.
“I would be a nurse. I’m the one they all come to now for help anyway. I’m the one here that knows the old ways and some of the new.”
“Nurses are always needed. You could get some training.”
The thought excited her. With Jesse earning money to put food on the table, Birdie keeping house, she could get the education she needed. She knew she was smart enough. They could do it.
She fell back to earth. “I’d better be going.” Reluctantly, she removed the coat and handed it to him. “I shouldn’t be out here like this.”
“I think you need somebody to help you feel better.” He left the rest unsaid, but Leah knew what he was thinking.
Because your husband isn’t doing it
.
“Jesse’s a good man. He’ll come ’round. He has to. But this is his life.”
“I would think
you
would be his life. He’s a lucky man.”
For a moment she was afraid to breathe. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t moved a hair closer, but suddenly the space between them seemed too small.
She stepped away, but her eyes sought his. They were concerned, as if he wondered what she might face again when she went back inside.
“Good night, Mr. Flaherty.”
“Daniel,” he said.
She knew better than to call the man who was evicting her family by his Christian name. But she nodded anyway. “I’m Leah.”
“Good night, Leah.”
She hurried back the way she had come. The temperature was dropping steadily, and by the time she got inside, she was shivering again, but from exactly what, she couldn’t say.
Jesse was waiting by the door. “What call you got to run off that way and scare your sister? I know she’s been staring out her window wondering where you went to and worrying!”
For a moment Leah couldn’t speak. Had she been standing close enough to the house that Birdie, even with her limited vision, had been able to see her from her bedroom window? Had Birdie seen her with Daniel Flaherty, and would she tell Jesse?
“Jesse, I told you she was all right,” Birdie said, coming to her doorway.
Leah whirled and saw Birdie nodding. “She was just outside looking at the stars. I seen her from the window. Just looking at the stars on a purty April night. You be good to her now, and don’t you be angry.”
Leah watched her sister go back inside her room.
“What do you think them stars is going to tell you?” Jesse shoved his hands in his pockets as if he were afraid what they might do. Then he started toward the loft.
She waited until he was up the ladder before she closed her eyes in relief.
E
arly on the Wednesday morning after Kendra’s visit to Prudence Baker, Manning paid a scheduled visit to the worksite. The sun was just beginning to glow through the trees that surrounded the clearing, and a fine blue-gray mist rose from the ground around them.
“It’s going to be a fine house once it’s finished,” he said as he climbed out of his pickup.
Kendra was prepared with a cup of coffee that he took gratefully. “Which won’t be as soon as you said, will it?”
“There’s just no predicting the delays.”
Kendra remembered her sister’s warning. She and Jamie chatted several times a week now, and Jamie always laughed when Kendra bemoaned how slowly the work was going. Kendra was glad to be the butt of this particular joke. She had to overcome a lifetime of being the wise older sister.
They walked around the construction, which was nothing more than a foundation, a bare-bones frame and roughed-out plumbing. Kendra asked a few questions, satisfied each time with Manning’s answers. Either Manning or Cash came by every week to see what their crew had accomplished and to consult with her.
“Your men are starting to feel like family.” Kendra paused for effect. “Family I don’t see often enough.”
“Cash told me there was some trouble with Randy last month.”
She was sure Manning had heard the entire story. “I haven’t noticed him here for a couple of weeks.”
“I have enough work to keep him busy elsewhere. He’s a hothead, has something of a drinking problem, but he’s a good enough young man under it, I think. I take on a man or two like that if I can. I was a hothead, too, when I was his age, and having a regular job and good people to work with settled me some. I try to return that favor.”
“Maybe you could find a few more like Randy and let them work extra hours. I’d be happy to help them achieve patience and harmony in the name of getting my house finished.”
He laughed. “You like my lady plumbers?”
Kendra was delighted that two women did all Manning’s plumbing. “I do. Which is good, since I’ll be seeing a lot of them one of these days. Soon, I hope.”
“There’s no rushing it. We’re doing what we can. But with all this dry weather, we’re scurrying around trying to get everyone’s framing finished. And you’ve chosen some fixtures and other specialty items that are hard to get. Besides, working around the old cabin makes it that much harder to do right.”
She
had
gone crazy choosing any number of things for the house that would make it take longer to complete. But how many times in her life would she be able to do this?
They completed their tour, and Manning made a list of questions he couldn’t answer, saying he would have to get back to her.
Dusty, who had just realized Kendra was in the yard, came down to stand beside her. The puppy didn’t quite touch her, but the outer edges of her fur tickled Kendra’s shin. Kendra reached down and petted her, and Dusty looked up as if to ask for more.
“That dog’s the laziest thing I ever saw,” Manning said.
“This is Dusty at her most active.”
“Well, she seems happy.”
Kendra looked down. “She does, more or less, doesn’t she?”
“Like she feels at home. I’d say you’re feeling at home, too.”
Kendra was glad an opening of sorts had occurred. After she’d told Helen about Isaac’s relationship to Leah, she’d taken Manning aside and explained the truth to him. He had seemed pleased to discover some part of Rachel Spurlock still existed. She hoped to introduce him to Isaac one day soon.
“Manning, I’ve been meaning to ask you about feeling at home in this house. I’m starting to find out more about Isaac’s grandmother.” As briefly as she could, she filled him in on everything she’d discovered about Leah.
He gave a low whistle that reminded her of Cash. “That’s all news to me. The park, huh? I never heard anyone say that’s where she was from. Of course, I was a kid, and kids don’t listen all that well.”
“I’m not sure anybody knew. But I suspect someone knew
something
about her past.”
He waited.
“Rachel,” she said. “I think Rachel knew something, and I think she might have told you what it was that night she called you. I don’t want to pry. I know you didn’t want to share it last time we spoke of this. But this is Isaac’s family, and I think he deserves to know whatever we can find out.”
He considered, crossing his arms over his wide chest and leaning against the door of the truck. “Sometimes it’s better to just imagine what happened, that it was a prettier story than it really was.”
“I understand, but
you
have to understand, my husband’s always imagined the worst about his birth family. Knowing the truth will be better for him. Even if it’s grim.”
“It doesn’t get a whole lot grimmer.” He pushed away from the door. “Rachel said that her mother would burn in hell. And the reason was that she had killed Rachel’s father.”
Kendra had been afraid of this. “How could she know such a thing?”
“She used to wait tables over in Strasburg to make a little money after school. She’d hitch a ride over, hitch one back. She was required to wear a plastic nametag. One day some man who stopped in asked if she was related to some Spurlocks up in the mountains. She told him her father’s name was Jesse. Then he told her that her mother had run away from wherever it was because she killed Rachel’s father.”
Kendra couldn’t even imagine what news of this kind would do to an impressionable teenager, particularly one who was already desperately unhappy with her life. “Can you imagine somebody telling her that?”
“You have to question somebody who’d do such a thing, don’t you? But he told Rachel he came from wherever Leah had lived, and everybody there knew she’d done it, only nobody could prove it because the body was never found.”
“And Rachel believed him?”
“That’s why she left Toms Brook and never came back.”
“Before she died in that fire, she was planning to come home. Leah’s stepson told us. It must have been well after that phone call to you. Rachel called Leah and told her she’d had a baby, then she promised to come back and see her. Maybe she wanted to find out once and for all if the man at the restaurant had been telling the truth.”
“Leah never told me Rachel called her. I guess she thought it might make things harder, knowing she’d almost come back and died before she could.”
“A pretty mess, huh?” She touched his arm in sympathy. “Thanks for telling me what she said to you.”
“Do you believe it?”
Kendra didn’t know. “Maybe people in Lock Hollow—that’s the name of the place they were from—maybe they thought Leah murdered her husband and maybe even her sister. Does that mean she did? Not in my book.”
“I think you’re falling under Leah Spurlock’s spell.”
“Was there such a thing?”
“You’ll have to decide.” Manning tipped his Rosslyn and Rosslyn cap, then opened the door of his truck and drove away into the mist.
Every morning at eight, Kendra fed Dusty before she made her own breakfast. She’d been feeding the dog on the porch so that Dusty and Ten wouldn’t collide, but this morning she didn’t have the inclination to stand over the puppy and watch her eat. She was going to make good on her promise and attend the Wednesday Morning Quilting Bee. She still had to finish getting ready. For the first time, she let Dusty into the living room and went into the kitchen to prepare the puppy’s meal.
Ten had not appeared for Kendra the way he had for Isaac, but several times she had caught glimpses of him. He no longer darted back under the sofa the very moment she came into the room. He moved more slowly, as if he were taunting her to catch him. When she showed no interest, he slowed down even more. Entire seconds went by when she could examine her new pet.
She poured the dry puppy food into a bowl and set it down for Dusty, but for the first time in their brief history, Dusty showed no interest. Dusty was lying on her stomach, legs splayed flat, peering under the sofa.
“I’ll warn you,” Kendra told the dog, “he’s got a reputation. He could eat you alive.”
Dusty took no notice of her.
“Don’t say I didn’t try.”
Kendra popped a piece of bread into the toaster and snacked on a banana as it cooked. She was spreading the toast with jam when she heard footsteps on the porch. A knock, the door opened, and Elisa poked her head inside.
“Almost ready?”
Kendra hadn’t expected to see her friend. She greeted her, toast in hand. “How did you know I was going to the bee?”
“Well, I didn’t, but when I went to pick up Helen, she wouldn’t get in the car unless I came over to fetch you first. She’s waiting at home.”
Kendra grinned. “I’ll be ready in just a minute.”
“You know, this fussing over you’s a good sign. For years Helen was almost a hermit. Now she meddles, and it’s an improvement.”
“Want a piece of toast?”
“No, but do you have coffee?”
“Come and drink it with me.” Kendra started back toward the kitchen. After just a few steps she stopped and spread her arms, and Elisa collided with her. “Look at that,” she said softly.
Ten had slipped out from under the sofa and was inching sideways toward Dusty, like a crab on four paws.
“Are we about to have a fight here?” Elisa asked.
“You don’t know this cat. If I intervene, he’ll pin me to the ground.”
With few choices, she started forward, but Elisa grabbed the back of her collar. “Let them work it out.”
“You’re kidding. I’ll be cleaning up for weeks.”
“You have to trust them.”
“They have little brains.”
“A hummingbird brain weighs about as much as a paper clip. But it knows how to fly forward, backward and sideways, things you can’t do.”
Kendra got the point. She waited, poised to interfere if necessary.
Ten sidled up to Dusty, back raised, hair on end, and hissing. Dusty lethargically wagged her tail. When that turned out to be too much work, she plopped down on her hindquarters and watched the cat moving closer.
Ten stopped just inches away and stared at the puppy. Dusty yawned.
“Anda despacio que tengo prisa.”
“My Spanish isn’t that good,” Kendra whispered.
“It means, “‘Make haste slowly.’ That’s what your dog is doing.”
Ten’s head snapped around, as if he had just realized people were in the room. He looked at them, then at the dog. Dusty took that moment to stand, and before Ten could streak away, the dog’s tongue shot out to lick Ten in the face.
“Yikes.” Kendra started forward, but Elisa pulled her back.
Ten hissed and batted the puppy with a paw. Dusty licked again. Then, content that she had tamed the wild beast, Dusty shambled off to get her breakfast.
Ten, eyes wide, back still high, turned to look at Kendra as if to say,
You didn’t see that
.
Kendra held up both hands. “I wasn’t watching.” Ten headed for his retreat under the sofa. But with dignity.
“Ver y creer,”
Elisa said.
This one Kendra could figure out. “Seeing is believing.”
“We’ll have you speaking Spanish in no time.”
The Community Church Beehive was a small room in the walkout basement that no other church group had claimed. The quilters had made it their home. There was just enough room for a large, sturdy quilt frame and some comfortable pieces of furniture. The group had grown since Kendra had first visited them, and now there was talk of knocking out a wall and expanding into a seldom-used storage room.
After everyone had settled in, the meeting began with a show-and-tell, and Kendra showed the signature blocks Helen had given her. She was encouraged to lay them out on the design wall—a piece of batting nailed onto the paneling—and the group discussed the best placement and what kind of sashing to use between blocks. Despite herself, Kendra was enthused about some of the possibilities.
“You have had it now,” Elisa told Kendra when she was allowed to sit down. “There will be no turning back.”
The official conversation meandered to other things, and finally Kendra was paired at the quilt frame with Dovey Lanning, who promised to help her take her first quilting stitches. The other women were cutting squares from brightly colored cotton to make Christmas quilts for the children at La Casa.
Kendra slipped a thimble Helen had provided onto her third finger. It felt like a lead weight. “I really feel I need to warn you. My high school had a class called Women’s Studies—History and the Domestic Arts. We had to make an apron and write a paper on how the experience helped us grow. I nearly failed the semester.”
“We called it plain old home economics and were lucky to have it.” Dovey looked to be as old as Helen, with white hair scraped into a bun and a magnifying lens on a cord around her neck to augment the glasses she already wore. “One sewing machine among us, an old treadle. We had to make a dress, mostly by hand, and wear it to school the last day.”
Kendra tried waving the thimbled finger, just to see if she could. “I’m sure yours was wonderful.”
“When I sat down at my desk, one seam ripped. I spent hours trying to hide it, until the teacher found a large enough safety pin. When I got home, I looked down and saw that the hem had come loose and was hanging in three places.”
“I feel better.”
“Meant for you to. Now, watch the way I do this.”
Five minutes later, Kendra had managed to get her needle through the quilt and bring it up again. An inch or farther away. “This won’t do, will it.”
“Not hardly. Take it out and start again. It’s just practice you need.”
Privately, Kendra thought her thimbled finger and thumb were going to need a stiff drink, a relaxing soak in a tub and at least six ounces of chocolate.
“How do you like living at the old Spurlock place?” Dovey asked.
“I love being out in the country. My husband’s grandmother left him the cabin and land. Nobody’s lived there for a long time.”
Dovey didn’t seem surprised. Kendra suspected the story had made the rounds.
“I knew Leah Spurlock. Knew her in the best possible way.”