“You walk slow. Don’t get ideas, Leah.”
Leah knew that she had to look as if she really meant what she said. “I’ll take my bundle. The one you helped me tie. That’s all I’ll need. I won’t come back here.”
“You take it and git.”
Leah moved carefully toward the bundle. The moment her back was finally to Birdie, she began to tremble uncontrollably. Seeing her sister with a gun trained on her had been terrible enough. Not seeing her was devastating.
She was almost to the door, almost through it, when she heard a shout.
“No!”
Then a shot.
For a moment she expected to die right there. She waited for the white-hot pain that would come, the cessation of breath and heartbeat. She had seen death enough times to know what would happen.
Time seemed to pause, but she knew it was really only seconds before she whirled. Birdie began to scream. Jesse lay on the floor.
Birdie ran to him and laid the gun beside him. She gathered him in her thin arms. “Why’d you do that, Jesse? I had to kill her. Didn’t you see?”
Jesse was still alive, but even in the candlelight, Leah could see the blood pouring from a wound in his chest.
Birdie looked up and saw Leah running toward them. She grabbed the gun again and aimed it at her sister. “You stay away!”
“Let me help him, Birdie!”
“It was you was supposed to die!”
Leah knew Jesse had thrown himself at Birdie before the shot went off. She could see it as clearly as if her back had not been turned. “That don’t matter now. Let me help him!”
Birdie looked down at Jesse in horror, then up at her sister. She got to her feet, gun outstretched, as if she intended to follow through on what she had started.
“No…” Jesse’s voice was barely audible. “No,
you
come with me,” he said. “Not her. Leave her here. You…Birdie.
You
have to come with me…. Together…”
His head fell back, and Leah knew he was gone.
“Jesse!” Birdie looked at the gun, then at her sister. “I knew he loved me!”
Before Leah could do more than scream, Birdie turned the gun on herself.
It was over within seconds. Leah stood paralyzed, but the screaming went on and on, and she didn’t even know where it came from.
From nowhere, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She whirled and found Aubrey behind her. He gathered her in his arms and held her as the screams turned to sobs.
He was sobbing, too. “I saw it all through the window. As I was coming up. Saw it all. Heard it all. Every bit. I ran, but I couldn’t get here fast enough.”
“Birdie was touched. We didn’t know. She was in love with him. When she realized Jesse and I…we were going to get through these hard times—”
“Hush. I know. I heard enough.”
“Two times. He saved my life two times. He threw himself in front of that bullet. And he convinced her…He…Maybe they’re not dead. Maybe there’s something we can do.” Leah fought to turn around, but Aubrey held her firmly.
“There’s nothing to be done now.” His voice was low and broken. “Except think about what we have to do next.”
I
saac sat in the silence that had fallen after Aubrey finished his story. Finally he shook his head. It was all he could manage.
“I’m sorry, son,” Aubrey said. “The rest of my life, I wondered how things would have been that night if I’d just got there sooner. But truth be told, I was reluctant to get to the Blackburn place. Like everyone else, I’d heard the rumors about Leah and that Flaherty fellow. I think Birdie set Etta to telling that story so Leah would feel more inclined to leave with Flaherty and avoid the scorn of her neighbors. With all that, I didn’t know what I’d find going on between Jesse and Leah.”
“There’s a lot I still don’t understand.”
“I imagine so.” Aubrey sat forward as if he wanted to comfort Isaac. “I can fill in some more, if you’re willing to sit.”
“I want to know why my grandmother was forced to leave Lock Hollow under a cloud. You could have prevented it by just telling the truth.”
“Simpler than you’re thinking. See, there were two things at work. The first was about Birdie and the second about the hollow. Let me start with Birdie.”
“You’d never seen any sign she was mentally ill?”
“Of course I had. We all had. But none of us knew what we were looking at. She had peculiar notions, yes, and her days were woven around old superstitions. She had a way of looking off when she talked to you, and sometimes the things she said just didn’t ring true, like she was answering questions nobody else was hearing. But I just figured it had to do with the way she could never leave the house much, and the pain she suffered. And her vision, well, it was so poor, I just thought that was some part of it. Mrs. Blackburn protected her, you know. She took it on herself to keep Birdie out of harm’s way, out of the world’s way. In the end, maybe that’s what done it.”
Isaac was still trying to put the story together. “I don’t see what this had to do with Leah leaving Lock Hollow.”
“Leah didn’t want folks to know what Birdie had done. Leah’d protected Birdie all her life, too. You never saw a more loyal sister. The Blackburns raised her that way. Birdie was Leah’s burden. Even after…well, everything.” Aubrey cleared his throat.
“You mean my grandmother decided to take the fall for her sister?”
“That’s about what happened. But that weren’t all of it, you see. Part of it was my fault.”
“You?”
Aubrey folded his arms. “You learned a lot about the park and what happened since you started looking into this, didn’t you.”
Isaac gave a short nod.
“You learned the way they looked at us mountain people? You go back, and you look at the stories the papers were printing, the firsthand accounts from people who didn’t have a bit of sense about what they were seeing, people who just wanted what they wanted and were happy to get it one way or another. Didn’t matter to them who they struck down while they were getting it, either.”
“I fail to see how this had anything to do with my grandmother.”
Aubrey smiled sadly. “Leah would be glad, I guess, to know someone is defending her at last.”
Isaac was surprised at how angry he felt, but everything that had happened had been such a terrible waste. “Just explain it to me.”
“I told Leah if the real story got out, it would about do us in. I was trying to use the law to our benefit, to make the world see that we were good, intelligent people who were about to lose everything we had. There was an important court case going on at the time, one that looked promising, and I thought if it ended in favor of the fellow who’d brought it before the judges, then we had a chance of keeping our land.”
Aubrey turned up his hands. “Then this awful thing happened. And nobody down below would have seen it for what it was. They wouldn’t have seen one young woman, what we now call psychotic, who destroyed a family. No, they’d have seen it as some sort of pathetic lover’s triangle, a hillbilly love story. I could almost see the headlines. And it would have doomed the only chance we had to hold on to what was ours.” He paused. “Of course, later on that case ended in defeat and we still had to go.”
Isaac was trying to imagine this, to move beyond fury to understanding. “And my grandmother went along with that.”
“More than anyone, she didn’t want Jesse’s or Birdie’s memories tarnished. She didn’t want to hurt her neighbors. To be truthful, she only wanted to get away as fast as she could, too. We couldn’t bury them in the family plot. When folks came sniffing around, wondering what happened to Jesse and Birdie, that would have been the first place they checked. We couldn’t disturb the dirt and start rumors flying. So I had to think of a solution. Jesse and I played in those caves at the bottom of Little Lock as children. Leah played up there some, as well. We knew them all. I spent the night carrying their bodies up to the one that was the most remote. With the help of gravity and a tree limb, I was able to send a couple of boulders rolling downhill till they covered the mouth of that cave.”
“And the quilt?”
“That was Leah and Jesse’s marriage quilt. She wrapped them inside it when we got up there. Said she didn’t want to look at that quilt ever again.”
Isaac considered that. “So the Lover’s Knot I have…?”
“It was Birdie’s. She’d made two identical tops, you see, but only finished the one. One top for herself and Jesse, because she was fixed on the idea he’d marry her. One for Leah and whoever she chose. When Leah left the Blackburn place for the last time, she packed up everything she could. Maybe it just got mixed in with everything else, maybe she took it on purpose. I’m not sure of that part. But later, when her daughter ran away from home…”
Isaac got to his feet and went to a window. “Are you guessing about this part, Aubrey? Because this part happened well after the night my grandfather was murdered in Lock Hollow.” He turned and correctly read the expression in Aubrey’s eyes. “You were in touch with my grandmother after she left, weren’t you.”
“After everything, you don’t think I would have let her go off without a bit of help? I looked in on her whenever I could, made sure she was doing all right with her little ’un, made sure she could provide for her. I owed her that. I owed Jesse that.”
“Just you? No one else ever knew?”
“Not just me. Puss, as well. I told Puss the truth a month later, though Leah didn’t want me to. But I figured Leah would need her friendship after everything, and Puss was sworn to silence. They wrote each other at first. In later years, they talked on the phone every week. Maybe they even visited each other again, though I’m not certain of that. But the three of us, we were the only ones from the hollow who ever knew what happened. Years later when she married again I don’t think she even told Tom Jackson.”
Isaac was putting the pieces together. “Then my mother took off because someone told her what everyone
else
from Lock Hollow believed.”
“That’s when Leah realized she’d made a terrible mistake by not telling Rachel the truth. And when she found out about you, she started worrying that someday, if you went looking for your birth family, you’d be told she was a murderer, too.”
“So that’s when she finished that quilt top and made a map out of it.”
“She did. She studied on the matter a long time. She wanted to make it possible for you to find out what happened, but only if you were sincerely interested. She didn’t want to force anything down your throat. She knew eventually, if you set your mind to looking, you’d find me from my name being on the quilt. She entrusted me with making sure you got the story, but only if you really needed to learn it. That’s when I joined up with the folks at The Way We Were. I was watching for you, and hoping.”
“You’re ninety-two. Did Leah think you were going to live forever? She certainly didn’t.”
Aubrey grinned. “You met my Jennifer.”
Isaac understood at last. “Jennifer knows?”
“Every last bit. I had to tell her some time ago, on account of my being old as a rock, as you pointed out. She’s the one had a little headstone made for Jesse and Birdie both and took it up to the park to put in your family cemetery. She said it was the least we Graylings could do, considering.”
Isaac sat back, taking it all in.
“And now the truth is this,” Aubrey said. “The last little pieces of it. You come from good people, Isaac. Both your grandpa and grandma were special to me. They weren’t perfect. You’ve got that part figured out on your own. But they had integrity, loyalty, strength, and they loved each other as much as I’ve ever seen anybody love anybody. Maybe Leah was wrong not to let the truth come out. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked her to make that sacrifice. But I think she went to her grave believing it was important. Spurlocks and Blackburns, they stand up for what’s right. They always did. And they take the consequences when they have to. And that’s what you need to know about the people you come from, son. That’s all you ever really needed to know.”
K
endra felt a kinship with Leah Spurlock Jackson. Sometimes she tried to imagine how different Isaac’s life would have been if Leah had been alive to guide him. She had finished reading Leah’s advice to Puss, and savored the way Leah had taken knowledge learned from her own mother and applied it. Medical science would dispute some of what she had believed, but by the same token, some of it was grounded in reality.
Leah’s formal education had been minimal, but she had soaked up every bit of information that had come her way. It was no surprise to Kendra that Isaac was both as smart and inquisitive as he was.
Kendra stopped in the midst of gathering bundles of dried spearmint and lemon balm from the front porch rafters, and gazed into the woods, much as Leah probably had. She hadn’t spoken to Isaac since the weekend. She had risen early on Saturday morning, prepared the coffeepot for him, then headed for the Metro. Once she was back at the cabin, she had phoned and left a message at the condo, but he hadn’t returned her call. They hadn’t talked since.
Back in the spring, she had retreated to Toms Brook to give herself time to think. Now she had retreated to give
him
time. Her leaving was not an ultimatum. She wouldn’t abandon Isaac if he made the wrong decision about Pallatine Mountain. She trusted him. He wasn’t struggling with black and white, but she hoped they could both live with the shade of gray that was his personal solution.
She was alone at last. The construction crew was beginning serious repairs on the original cabin, and this morning they had torn out the false ceiling in the living room. Even with tarps covering the furniture, the room was a mess. The men had carried out the old beadboard and stacked it in front of the porch to haul away after they ripped the ceiling from the bedroom wing. She had swept and swept again, but a lot more chaos was coming.
Afterward, the lumberyard had delivered assorted materials, and the crew had piled them beside the old boards before heading off for the day. Cash had dropped by to promise that, beginning tomorrow, they would roust her out of bed at dawn and ruin her days straight through until sunset. She didn’t need Cash to see what was coming. Before long, she would be forced to abandon the cabin until the worst was over. She wanted to go back to D.C. to spend the bulk of that time with Isaac, but she wasn’t sure if she would be welcome.
After all the excitement, the afternoon promised to be too quiet. She had planned to spend it shopping with Elisa, but just before lunch, Elisa had called to say she was catching a cold. The temperature had grown steadily hotter, remaining dry, with a strong breeze that whipped in gusts and brought no relief. Now the woods, where the temperature was always milder, beckoned. For weeks she had planned to wander through with field guides in hand. She liked the idea of brewing her own teas from plants that everyone, including the FDA, considered safe. Today she would settle for picking young blackberry leaves to dry.
And she would think of Leah when she drank the tea.
She had about an hour of sunlight left. Inside, she changed into long pants to thwart ticks. She donned a cap and a long-sleeve shirt, and hooked a bottle of water over her belt.
She remembered that Caleb was coming before dinner to drop off a CD slide show he’d made of the photos from their camping trip, and she scrawled a note to leave on her windshield, telling him where she had gone, in case she wasn’t back in time.
“Hey, Dusty. Time for a walk.” She stomped on the floor twice to wake the snoozing puppy. Dusty woke long enough to wag her tail, then settled back on the cool wood and closed her eyes. Ten was sleeping not far away. He opened his eyes and watched warily as she approached. Kendra wiggled her fingers not far from his nose. He managed a pathetic hiss; then he batted her finger without bothering to extend his claws and fell back asleep.
Between the two animals, she figured she had the equivalent of about half a pet. But she was a sucker. Despite everything, she had grown outrageously fond of them both.
She was perhaps fifty feet into the woods when she thought she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway. Not long ago she would have had to talk herself into staying calm. Now she was simply curious. But as the engine grew louder, and she heard blasting rock music and men’s voices, she finally began to worry. She remembered the last time someone had come and hoped these visitors would leave, too.
She debated what to do, but in the end, she knew she had to go back.
When she arrived, Randy and two other young men were standing by her front porch. One of the young men, a blonde with a Marine haircut and a tattooed eagle on his biceps, had a rifle, barrel down but still menacing.
“Come to shoot that snake of yours,” Randy said with a self-conscious swagger. “Like good neighbors.”
Fear inched through her. The men had been drinking. A lot. If she’d had any doubts, the beer cans they’d already tossed out of their pickup put them to rest. And Randy wasn’t quite steady on his feet.
“You need to leave.” She was surprised at the words that emerged easily from her own throat, and even more surprised at how calm they sounded.
Randy looked shocked, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Hey, you’re not s’posed to be here.”
She wondered how he knew she had planned to visit Elisa. He hadn’t been with the crew this morning, but she remembered that as the men were leaving, she had teased them about never working on the house if she planned to be gone. Another of the Rosslyn and Rosslyn pickups had come in about then to confer or trade materials, she didn’t know which. But now she bet that Randy had been in that pickup.
She drew herself up to her full height. “Well, I
am
here. And you’re trespassing. With a gun. And you’ll notice I’ve posted my land. Not that it’s hunting season.”
The man with the rifle hooted, poking the tip of the barrel into the bushes around her front porch. “Hey, we come to help.”
The third man, who looked enough like Randy to be a relative, flipped a cigarette butt over his shoulder and pulled out the pack to light another.
“I don’t want your help.” She spaced the words.
The smoker cupped his hand around the flame, then shook out his match. “I hear you got a snake lives under there as long as a tree trunk.” He gestured to the space under the porch as his friend continued to poke the shrubs.
Kendra ignored him and turned back to Randy. “Randy, neither Cash nor his dad is going to be happy about you bringing your friends to a worksite. You’d better get going. I won’t say anything. But don’t come back like this again.”
“I got no job. Quit today!” Randy puffed out his chest, but his eyes looked troubled.
Maybe his inner turmoil was a result of too much beer, or maybe it was genuine regret. She didn’t know, but she took a step closer so she could lower her voice.
“Why? Cash told me you’re a good worker.”
“I do better work than any two men on that crew whether I’m sober or not. He’s got no reason to criticize me. I don’t have to take that from nobody.”
She lowered her voice still further. “Does
this
seem like a better way to spend your time?”
He narrowed his eyes. Beer bravado. She’d seen it before. But she also saw it was passing quickly, and the reality of what he’d done was beginning to hit him.
“Go,” she said even more softly. “Listen, just get out of here. Go home and sober up, then talk to Manning or Cash. Tell them you’ll never drink on the job again. Maybe you can fix this.”
“No, we come to kill that snake.”
“Randy, I’m sorry I embarrassed you the day you tried to shoot the snake. I really am. But my snake is not what’s wrong with your life.”
He sniffed. For a moment she was afraid he was going to burst into tears, a scene he would never live down. Then he straightened his shoulders as best he could and beckoned to his friends.
“Lady don’t want us, boys. Her loss.”
Kendra stepped back and watched the other two men laugh as Randy wove a circuitous path back to the truck. He made it without falling, a feat that seemed to take an inordinate amount of skill.
She stepped in front of the smoker before he could follow. “I hope one of you had less to drink than Randy.”
“Oh, I’ll drive.” The man gave a forced laugh and flipped another butt to the ground, making a halfhearted attempt to grind it into the earth with the sole of his work boot. “Bet there weren’t no snake to start with.”
She concentrated on every stone that spun under their tires as they backed toward her Lexus. The pickup had turned and was on its way back down the driveway before the impact of the past few minutes hit her. She was trembling. Her stomach was churning, but she had survived the confrontation. She had stood up for herself. The Kendra Taylor who had covered dangerous stories, who had put herself in harm’s way for the sake of a byline, might never emerge again. But she could live with the woman she had become.
The retreat had ended. The rest of her life had begun.
She waited a few minutes to be sure the men didn’t return; then, with one deep breath, she started back into the woods.
Isaac read the note on the Lexus windshield and knew there was no point in going up to the house. Kendra was prowling through the woods, and if he wanted to talk to her, he had to go there to find her.
He was in no particular hurry, and he supposed this was a good time to get used to that. He strolled a short distance in, listening as he went and enjoying the way the temperature dropped. He didn’t call her name until he was out of sight of the clearing.
“K. C., are you in here somewhere?”
He heard a noise ahead of him. Then Kendra backed out of a thicket of blackberries about ten yards away. “What are you doing here?”
He covered the ground between them, skirting trees, avoiding spiderwebs and vines. When he reached her, he slipped his arms around her waist. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you the story of Little Red Riding Hood?”
She smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling. “The Big Bad Wolf and his friends were just here. You must be the friendly Woodcutter.”
“Wolf?”
“Long story. Not to worry.”
He kissed her forehead; then he hugged her again, pillowing her face against his shoulder. He realized just how much he had longed for this in the hours since he had met with Aubrey. “I guess you’re really not in any danger of getting lost or eaten, are you.”
“Not much. Any straightish line will take me back to civilization. And I’m too skinny to tempt any critters.” She stepped back so she could examine him. “What’s up? You’re the last person I expected to see.”
“Who was the first?”
“Well, Caleb’s supposed to be here pretty soon. You didn’t see him, did you?”
“Not yet, but I read the note.” He smoothed her hair behind her ears. “I’m glad I found you.”
His smile faltered, and she began to look concerned. “Really. What are you doing here? It’s Wednesday.”
“I was more or less in the neighborhood. Well, a lot less than more.”
“Okay, I’m intrigued.”
She was waiting, clearly aware that something had changed. He supposed that level of intuition came with the package when a man and woman were intimate.
Now he dug for the right words, words that would explain his feelings easily, until at last he shrugged. “I went to see Gary Forsythe.”
He watched the way her smile disappeared in tiny increments. “Should I ask why?”
“I went to tell him exactly what’s up with Pallatine.”
“Has he signed the papers, then?”
That, of course, was the big question. Had Isaac bought into Dennis’s plan? In a way, the question seemed odd to him now. That he had ever considered not telling Forsythe seemed impossible.
“No, the closing’s scheduled for next week. Since Heather is leaving, she was going to tell Forsythe herself and take the fall, but in the end,
I
told him, because
I
was the one who needed to.”
He could see she understood everything this entailed. She looked worried, but still, despite that, pleased. “I can’t imagine how you feel. And now you wait to see what happens?”
“I know what will happen. I gave him the names of two other organizations who will buy Pallatine with the right kind of promises. All his lawyer has to do is wave the names at Dennis, and Forsythe will get any stipulations he wants. I’m sure ACRE will end up with the land. Dennis will scurry around soothing feelings and finding the money somewhere else. Then he’ll brag about what a great deal he made, and how strong his scruples are. Most people will be happy enough, except the ones who were going to build environmentally friendly mini-mansions.”
“And you?”
Isaac was surprised to find he was no longer worried. “Me? I’m toast.”
“You’re certain?”
“Just to be sure nobody’s in the dark about who did what or why, I’ll write an account of the entire transaction for the board. Then I’ll follow it with my resignation, which will be accepted immediately. They’ll tell me how sorry they are to lose me. Then I’ll be escorted out of the building by a security guard. I’ll be lucky if they give me enough time to grab your photo off my desk.”
Her gaze softened. She placed her palm against his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
He held her hand in place for a moment; then he kissed it. “There’s no reason to be. I feel better than I’ve felt in months.” He pulled her face against his shoulder again and ruffled her curls. How could he explain that, for the first time in a long time, he felt free? Free to figure out who he was and what he really wanted. Free to follow a path somewhere other than to the top. Free to try new ideas, new approaches, find new solutions.
He tried as best as he could. “I’ve been walking a tightrope for a long time. Today I just dove off, and there was a safety net below me.”
“As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been working your way into a job where you felt you could make a real difference. This is going to affect that, isn’t it?”
“I hope I can make a difference by doing what I know is right. If I can’t, at least I can live with myself.”