Rachel, she was Isaac’s mother
.
Kendra recognized a bonus when it came her way. “I’ll give him a call. Manning Rosslyn.”
“Rosslyn and Rosslyn. Now that Manning’s getting up in years, his son’s in the business with him. Cash is his name.” Helen pointed to the garden area. “That was Leah’s garden. She was more or less the granny woman in these parts. You know what that means?”
“I guess not.”
“Nobody could much afford a doctor. We did a lot of healing on our own. But Leah, she was the best. She knew what to use for almost any problem there was. Grew plants in that patch the likes of which nobody else around here ever tried. She’d take care of sick people, stay with them and follow whatever directions their doctors gave her. But she added her own brand of medicine right alongside theirs. I think the doctors knew and just turned their heads. There wasn’t much anybody could do when my mama was dying, but when Daddy was going, nobody else could ease his pain. Leah knew how. I was always real grateful to her for that.”
Kendra liked what she’d heard about Leah. She wondered if Isaac would, or if he was so prejudiced against his biological family that no good news would seep through.
She gestured to the side of the clearing. “The garden’s still visible, at least the bare outline of it. I’m going to see if there’s anything there that can be saved.”
“Just watch out for varmints when you do. Be better just to mow it all down and start fresh.” Helen hiked a worn leather purse higher on her shoulder. “You remember, we’re just one phone call away. I put our phone number in that box with the food. And the Claibornes’, too. And some of the other neighbors’. You’ve got friends here. Don’t be afraid to call them.”
Kendra hoped that the tears that were such a new and disconcerting addition to her emotional repertoire would stop making appearances. “Thanks,” she said in a husky voice.
“No bother at all. You take care of yourself now, and we’ll expect a visit once you’re all settled.”
Kendra knew the offer was genuine. She planned to accept it.
O
n Sunday morning Kendra sipped a cup of French-press coffee on the front porch. She had been at the cabin for four days, and although every night she had wrestled with the usual nightmare, last night she had slept for several hours at a stretch. She was spending so much time outdoors in the sweetly scented spring air that, finally, sleep had claimed dominance.
This morning was an especially lovely one. Softly filtered sunbeams lit the gentle green of the surrounding woods. The fine mist that had played around the tree trunks like ghostly wood nymphs was gone, and shapes had emerged. Earlier a trio of deer had nibbled at the edges of the clearing, casually observing her observing them.
Every day she visually measured the newly emerging leaves on the closest tree shading the house, noting the subtle differences. Today she was almost certain it was an oak. Next week, when the telephone company installed a land line to the cabin and she could access the Internet, she would visit an online bookseller and order guides to help identify her environment.
On waking, she had considered attempting the drive to Community Church, but by the time she had warmed a fresh biscuit she realized she wasn’t ready to brave the hour-long service. In fact, she still hadn’t turned the key in the ignition of her new car. Each day she practiced sitting behind the wheel, thinking positive thoughts. Each day she stayed a little longer, felt a little calmer. Today, at some point, she was going to attempt her first drive. But small steps were in order.
Coffee on the porch had become a ritual. Now she could not imagine a time when she hadn’t sat quietly for some portion of each day and observed the world around her. Without a guide, she’d made up names for the birds she couldn’t identify. The cell phone bird had a song with brief, regular pauses between trilled repeats. The doorbell bird could make itself heard over the noisiest party.
She heard a rustling on the ground and casually glanced over the porch’s edge, expecting chipmunks or squirrels. Instead, she saw the head of a snake. She froze, and her heart began to pound. The snake was coming from under the porch. And coming.
And coming.
By the time the snake was completely free, the part of her brain that was still working told her it was a good seven feet long.
She made mental notes so she could describe it to someone. The scales were shiny and black, although the underbelly looked white. There was good news. She neither saw nor heard rattles, and the head was not the triangular shape of a pit viper. She and Isaac had hiked in enough wild terrain for her to have a basic knowledge of poisonous snakes. This one was harmless.
Of course the bad news was that the longest snake she had ever seen, probably the longest snake in existence, was living under her porch.
“Oh, Lord.” She closed her eyes, then snapped them open again. If ever there was a right moment to observe the world around her, this would be the one. The snake slithered—and there, she thought, was an appropriate verb—toward the woods east of the house and, after a while, disappeared.
“I am not alone here. More good news.” She tried to think what she should do.
She wasn’t particularly afraid of snakes. She had handled them with supervision, observed them behind glass, appreciated, at a distance, snakes on the trails she and Isaac hiked. Never, though, had she lived on top of one. At times she had been annoyed by the neighbors on the floor below her D.C. condo. But those young men were paragons in comparison to Slithering Godzilla, who was now having a leisurely breakfast of bird or beast before his next nap under her new home.
Maybe he didn’t live there. Maybe he had just dropped in, found it not to his liking and gone to find better digs.
She pondered that. When she’d decided to renovate, one of the first things she’d asked Dabney to do was chink the logs. Elsewhere, he had plugged up every possible hole, too. She knew country houses came with field mice bonuses, and she had wanted the best possible prevention. The snake would have a tough time getting inside either portion of the cabin. Heck, this snake was so big he’d have trouble worming his way through a porthole.
So, rationally, there was little chance this guy was going to get inside. Besides, snakes were more frightened of people than people were of snakes. Not that she’d ever met anyone who had psychoanalyzed a snake and could honestly make that comparison.
She kept her eyes wide open while she finished her coffee, but there were no more surprises. Her plan for the morning—pre-snake—had included a visit to Leah’s garden. Yesterday Cissy had stopped by with freshly baked biscuits and a well-thumbed paperback she had bought at a book sale in Woodstock.
“It’s about herbs and such,” she’d said. “I thought you might like it. Look, it has pictures.” She’d paged through, pointing out the illustrations. “You might find something in that garden that looks like these. You know, something still growing from when Ms. Spurlock lived here.”
Kendra had been touched by the girl’s thoughtfulness. And the biscuits had been impossible to resist. She’d already eaten three.
Now it was time to decide who was master of this property. If she was really going to remain here any length of time, she had to come to terms with the wildlife.
Inside, she pulled on her oldest jeans, a long-sleeve linen shirt, a brimmed straw hat and hiking boots that laced well above her ankles. She had to do this before the sun came out in earnest. Book in hand, along with an old weed cutter she had found hanging on a nail at the back of the house, she made her way down the steps and over to the garden.
Leah had been an ambitious gardener. That much was clear. Of course, Kendra knew ambition and survival often went hand in hand. Leah had lived on poverty’s doorstep. This garden had surely fed her as well as provided remedies for her neighbors and others in the community.
Although she knew too little about the woman, she did know that after marrying Tom Jackson, Leah had eventually moved into a modern house in New Market, about twenty-five miles to the south. But Kendra wondered if Leah had come back afterward to tend this garden. She had been dead for twelve years, so it was difficult to tell when the garden had been abandoned. Mother Nature could stage a takeover in just a year or two.
For a moment, teetering at the garden’s edge, she reconsidered her decision. Then she made the plunge. The weed cutter—at least that was what she called it—had a rectangular blade with serrated edges. The blade was attached to the bottom of a broomstick-like handle. Under better circumstances she would have found it lightweight, but even a dinner plate felt heavy these days. She set the book on the ground and began to swing at the nearest weeds, cutting a path through the dead stalks of last year’s foliage. Today, a simple path. Soon enough, a look at what was left of the garden beds.
By the time she trimmed a section three feet by about six, sweat was pouring down her cheeks. She was so exhausted that she wondered if she would make it back to the house. The beds flanking the path had been built up for drainage. After carefully checking the ground, she sank down on the bed at her right. Face in hands, she breathed deeply.
The sun was higher now, but the air was still cool. She was shaking from her efforts, and her arms felt as if she had been lifting fifty-pound weights. She’d had pneumonia. She’d barely survived two bullets. She’d had major surgery. Of course she was weak. Of course she had no stamina.
Of course she wanted to feel normal again, to be the fearless, energetic woman who had never taken no for an answer.
She sat that way until the trembling began to subside. It was time to stop for the morning. When the sun started its afternoon descent, she would try to cut another swath, only smaller this time.
She leaned back and realized that she was resting on newly emerging foliage, silkier and softer than the weeds at the edge. She turned around to examine it. The patch surprised her. It was crowded with the same plant—too crowded, of course, since no one had dealt with it in at least a decade except to mow weeds in fall. But the new leaves were a soft green oval with a pointed tip, and they emerged directly from the ground. She dug down a little and found that the root was a massive clump not far under the soil.
She felt a thrill of discovery. In her experience, weeds partied with friends, and they invited everybody they knew to join them. This plant had been set here many years ago to form a mat to repel gate-crashers.
She dug up a small clump to take back to the house with her. It took a few minutes to get it out of the ground with nothing more than fingernails and determination. Mentally she added good gardening tools to her growing shopping list.
Halfway back to the house, clutching her fuzzy-leafed prize against the linen shirt that had never been made for gardening, she realized that although she still felt weak, she no longer felt as discouraged. She hadn’t done much, but she
had
done something. Surely this was the way true healing began. This was the way people moved forward.
With such beautiful weather, lunch on the porch seemed like a good idea. Kendra borrowed one of the two ladder-back chairs from her kitchen table and set it against the front wall. She planned to have another of Cissy’s featherweight biscuits with deli ham she’d brought from the city and cold green bean casserole. She still had to force herself to eat every day, but with less effort. Now, though, by the time she dragged the chair through the door and went back for a glass of cold tea, she was too tired to fix a meal.
Instead she rested and sipped, listening for more birds to name.
The sound that greeted her several minutes later was a car engine. She supposed she was getting used to living alone in the country. This time she was only mildly rattled.
The car was an SUV with a number of miles behind it. With pleasure she recognized Sam and Elisa, and got to her feet to greet them. She knew that after delivering her car, they had gone out of town. Elisa’s brother Ramon was a freshman at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, farther south, and they had gone to visit him, returning home late last night. Elisa had called once to check on her, and she had been delighted to hear that Helen and Cissy had Kendra in their crosshairs.
Kendra held her hands high. “I repent. I’ll come to church just as soon as I’m able. You can count on me.”
“You’d better,” Sam said. He waited for Elisa and slung his arm around her shoulders as they headed up the path. “Don’t think you’ve disappeared from sight out here.”
Elisa was carrying a grocery bag. When they got to the porch, Kendra embraced them both clumsily. “You look great. A few days off agrees with you.”
“And
you
look pale.” Elisa put the back of her hand against Kendra’s cheek. “Are you overdoing it?”
“I’ve only dog-paddled from bank to bank of the river a couple of times since I arrived.”
“You sit.”
“There’s only one chair. Let’s go inside. Tell me about Ramon.” Elisa’s brother was a handsome, charismatic young man who, like his sister, had experienced too many hard times. Despite a formal education with substantial gaps, he had received such a high score on the SATs that he had been offered admission to several important universities. He had chosen James Madison, not only for its excellent reputation but for its proximity to Elisa and Sam. They were helping him make up the deficits in his education.
They followed her inside, and Sam made himself at home on the sofa, while Elisa carried her groceries into the kitchen. Although she had been born Alicia, she had called herself Elisa for so long that she had decided to go by it permanently. She was slender, with straight black hair that fell to her shoulders. Her English was perfect and only lightly accented. An obstetrician trained in Guatemala, she was now in the process of jumping through hoops so she could be licensed to practice in Virginia. She had to complete a two-year residency and a three-part exam, but she was under consideration at the University of Virginia and at several hospitals in the D.C. area.
She set the groceries on the counter and began to unpack. “Ramon still likes the university and sends his love. He’s taking classes through the summer to catch up but will have a break in early May. We’ll have a party.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” Kendra meant it.
“There’s nothing fancy in this bag. Bread, cheese, fruit, some deli salads. Enough to keep you for a few days.” Elisa looked up. “You’re not up to going shopping yet, are you? I don’t want to nag, but it won’t help if you push too hard.”
“I did a little gardening today, that’s all. And I stopped well before I was ready to collapse.”
“Make sure you do, okay? I don’t want to lose my good friend.”
Kendra crossed her heart. “I promise.”
They joined Sam on the sofa, and he put his arms around both of them. He was dark haired, blue eyed, and so appealing in his clerical robe that the attendance of young women in his congregation had increased. “This place is pretty basic. Are you getting along here? The parsonage has a guest room.”
“Isaac thinks I’ve lost my mind.”
“I think you’re trying to find your heart, and this is the kind of place where you can listen to it beat for a while. Just don’t forget we’re only a few heartbeats away if you need us.”
“You’ve been so good to me.”
“We could never be good enough. Your story changed the course of our lives.”
Kendra’s story about Elisa and Ramon’s separate escapes from Guatemala and their long search to find each other had only been one link in the chain of events that had freed them from the nightmare of their past, but the story had also helped Kendra move from features into investigative reporting. Elisa and Ramon had fled false murder charges, the result of political oppression, but had since been cleared to find new lives in Virginia.
“I have to meet with the deacons in just a little while.” Sam gave Kendra’s shoulder a squeeze before he stood. “Have you driven the car yet?”
“You ought to see me slide behind the wheel.”
“Ready for something more?”