Authors: Melissa Conway
He relaxed his hold enough to look into her face. “I grew up loving you. I wanted it to be me.”
His confession took her breath away, but she managed to say, “I thought you didn’t believe.”
His grin reappeared, but now it was sheepish. “It’s like religion: when you’re raised to believe in something, it sticks whether you think it makes sense or not.”
The bell rang, and students began pouring from the gym into the hallway. Ben released her and backed off, shoving his hands into his pockets. He was staring into her face in exactly the same way Joseph had – as if he wanted to memorize her features. The constant reminders of Joseph were beginning to blur the two together in her mind. It haunted her how they were so different and yet strangely similar.
Sorcha didn’t know if it was this similarity, or the expectant look on Ben’s face, or the fact that Kristin Barber was walking towards them with her nose in the air, but she acted on impulse and stepped close to him.
“I’ll see you after school,” she said, and brushed his lips with hers in just the same way he’d kissed her yesterday, lightly, like butterfly wings. The last glimpse of him before she walked away should have reassured her, but it didn’t. He looked pleased enough, but it was mixed with something else, a wariness that hadn’t been there before.
She did her best to concentrate in her last three classes, but the wary look on Ben’s face bothered her. He’d just declared his love for her, and then the second she makes a move to reciprocate, he backs off? Although to be fair, all he’d admitted to was having a schoolboy crush on her – and not even her, really, just the legend of her. Just like Dalton for Paula, she doubted the real thing could possibly live up to Ben’s expectations. Especially after she’d lost control in the car this morning.
After school, she waited for him with Paula under the flagpole. The flags hung limp in the cold, stagnant air. In the distance, a haze of fog and smoke particulates partially obscured the hills.
“You’re not going to believe this, but Kristin spoke to me in Art Class today.” Paula made jazz hands like it was a big deal.
“She apologize for putting paint on your chair?”
Paula scoffed. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. But actually, she kinda surprised me. Told me she thought Dalton likes me.”
Sorcha’s mouth dropped open. “No way.”
At Paula’s raised eyebrows, Sorcha hastily amended it to, “I mean no way Kristin said it – not no way Dalton likes you.”
“Well, we both know it’s not true. She’s ignored me since she moved here, and the day you happen to thwart whatever skanky plans she has for Ben, suddenly I’m not invisible anymore?”
Sorcha studied Paula’s profile. Her nose was tilted up at the end, just slightly. It made her look younger than her almost-seventeen years, and very vulnerable. “You know, it’s not that far-fetched that Dalton would like you.”
Paula gave her a knowing look. “Kristin wanted to start a conversation with me so she could ask about you and Ben. Transparent much?”
“Did she? Ask about us.”
“Nah. All I had to do was ask her about that tube of paint and she decided she had other things to do.”
Sorcha nodded approvingly. “That’s my girl.”
Ben joined them. He glanced at Sorcha, the corners of his lips turned up in a small smile. “What’s up?”
They started walking to the car and Paula said, “Oh, someone told me Dalton Boyle likes me.”
“He does,” Ben said.
Paula stopped and looked at Ben like he’d sprouted a second head. “What?”
“I talked to him at halftime at the football game. Told him I was sorry for splashing him, he said sorry for getting in my face about it and then he asked if I was sitting with you.” Ben shrugged. “It was pretty obvious.”
Paula’s cheeks had gone pink during Ben’s story. “What were his exact words?”
Ben rubbed the side of his face. “Uh, I don’t know. ‘Are you sitting with Paula and Sorcha’?”
“Okay, so he said Paula
and
Sorcha. What makes you think he wasn’t interested in Sorch?”
Ben’s eyes flicked over to Sorcha, a silent plea for help. She didn’t know what to say. Unless he could offer more solid proof, she didn’t want to encourage him. It was safer to be skeptical so Paula didn’t get let down.
Ben shrugged again, only this time his shoulders stayed up for several long, defensive seconds. He was clearly having a deer-in-the-headlights moment, so Sorcha let out a huff of impatience and pushed past him to link her arm with Paula’s. She and Paula started walking again, heads bent towards each other, talking in excited but hushed voices.
“I was only trying to help,” Ben’s plaintive voice followed them.
At the car, Sorcha sat in the passenger seat and relegated Ben to the back. He muttered, “I see how it is,” but it was good-natured. Sorcha noticed he didn’t say a word during the drive, just listened as she and Paula discussed Dalton, dissecting every possible nuance of the evidence for his liking Paula.
When they got to Sorcha’s house, a ‘protective detail’ car was already waiting at the entrance to the lane. Skip was leaning against the hood and he gestured to Paula to pull over. Ben rolled down his window and asked, “Where’s John?”
“He called and said he got detention this afternoon. Dumbass. Are you going to hang out at Sorcha’s?” He bent and looked into the car. As an apparent afterthought, he said, “Hi, Sorcha. Paula.”
After the girls returned his greeting, Ben directed puppy-dog eyes Sorcha’s way and said, “I was hoping I’d get invited.”
She laughed and obliged. “Ben, would you please hang out with me this afternoon?”
Ben gasped and put his hand to his chest like he’d just won an Academy Award. “I’d love to,” he said in a high-pitched voice.
Sorcha and Paula giggled, but Skip reached into the car and thumped him on the side of the head. “Don’t forget what we’re here for.”
Ben sobered instantly. “As if I would.”
Skip nodded. “Remember, I’m all by myself tonight. We need someone watching the entrance to the property at all times, so I won’t be conducting a perimeter check.”
Sorcha hadn’t known the WPS had been prowling her father’s property. “What kind of a threat are you expecting? Shouldn’t you at least give me a hint about what to look for?”
Skip’s face fell into that rueful look she was beginning to expect whenever she asked him anything. He sucked air though his teeth and said, “Sorry, can’t say.”
She didn’t know if he couldn’t say because he didn’t know, or if it was because of the paradox, but her irritation with the whole situation flared again. “Fine. I’ll keep an eye out for anything and everything. Is the threat bigger than a breadbox? Bigger than Godzilla? Or is it too small to see? Should I be wearing a Hazmat suit?”
Skip wasn’t fazed by the barrage of sarcasm. “Just stick with Ben and don’t take chances.”
She wondered what chances she was supposed to avoid taking in her own house, but closed her mouth to prevent the next retort. Skip was only doing what he felt was best. She tried to summon up some gratitude, but all she could come up with was a weak, “Alright. Thanks.”
To Ben, Skip said, “My relief comes at seven, so if you want a ride home, you better be here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Skip stepped back and saluted; his way of declaring the conversation over.
When Paula pulled up in front of the house, Sorcha invited her in, but she declined. “Can’t. I’m babysitting tonight.”
It smelled like cookies inside the house. Grammy Fay was in the kitchen, and she smiled when she saw Ben. “Oh, look who’s here! Just in time for a fresh batch.”
She held out a plate of oatmeal cookies and Ben took one, but eyed it suspiciously. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful because these look awesome, but are those raisins?”
“No, no, dear, those are chopped up dates. Better than raisins.”
He held the cookie in front of his mouth and said, “Well if by ‘better’ you mean ‘similar,’ I have to warn you: raisins make me yak.”
Fay looked at her granddaughter for interpretation.
“Barf,” Sorcha said.
“Oh. Well, then here,” Fay took the cookie out of Ben’s hand and went to the counter. She selected another one and gave it to him. “These aren’t hot, but it’s just chocolate chip. Those don’t make you yak, do they?”
By way of answer, Ben shoved half the cookie in his mouth and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Oh, my,” Fay murmured. “I think you’re going to need some milk to wash that down.”
While Fay opened the refrigerator, Sorcha leaned close to Ben and said softly, “So you think we’re going to see anything more threatening than raisins tonight?”
“Dates,” he corrected. “And I hope not.”
After they consumed two cookies and a glass of milk each, Sorcha pushed Ben into the hallway. She handed him a pair of gloves.
“These are my dad’s, so they should fit you.”
He watched as she bundled up in a matching black-and-white checkered hat and scarf.
“I take it we’re going out?”
“There’s something I want to show you before it gets too dark.”
It was only four o’clock, but the days were getting shorter and combined with the overcast sky, it seemed much later. Sorcha led Ben through Grammy Fay’s greenhouse, where she snipped a few more roses from one of the bushes. Ben inspected a row of lush, green herbs growing in little pots and said, “Cool.” He plucked a leaf and rolled it between his fingers, inhaling the scent the crushed leaf left behind.
“Next time I cook for you, I’m coming here first,” he said.
“Come on.” She hooked her arm through his. They crossed the yard and went out the back gate.
The knee-high wild grass was turning yellow as it went dormant in preparation for the winter. They walked past the grove of oaks and Sorcha realized with a pang of guilt that she’d barely given a stray thought to Aggie, Bess and the children. Not that there was anything she could do if their fate had been as gruesome as Joseph’s.
She shuddered at the thought.
“Are you cold?” Ben asked.
“No, just thinking.”
“About?”
“The day Enid was kidnapped, the other members of the household hid in that oak grove. There were children she was responsible for. I don’t know what happened to them.”
Ben glanced over at the trees. “Seems like a good place to hide. I’m sure they were fine. Probably grew up and got married and had twelve strapping children each.”
She looked at him in wonder as his comment sparked a sudden insight. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him along behind her as she ran the rest of the way to their destination: the graveyard.
Her intention had been to replace the flowers on Elizabeth’s grave, but instead she went straight to a marble headstone three plots over. It was one of the earliest of the stones still standing, and one that had been a perplexing puzzle for Sorcha as she’d identified each of the cemetery’s other inhabitants. She assumed the occupant, like all the rest, had been a relative, but she hadn’t been able to find any records.
Ben came to stand next to her. “Who’s Sarah Murphy?”
“I never found out. A fire destroyed all the birth records in the village before 1800 and Sarah has been a mystery. But the children I mentioned? The little girl’s name was Sarah.”
Sorcha had written down the epitaphs for each of the cemetery’s headstones. The mysterious Sarah’s stone had no birthdate, but it did show a death date of 1832. Jedediah’s daughter had been around six years old in 1776, so if this was her final resting place she would have been sixty-two when she died, a reasonable life-span for the times.
Sorcha looked around even though she already knew none of the stones bore Sarah’s brother Ezekiel’s name. But just because he hadn’t been buried here didn’t mean anything. If Jedediah had been killed in the Battle of White Plains, the children would have been orphaned. Had Fergus adopted them? Given his nature, it seemed unlikely, but if Enid managed to escape the Haudenosaunee with Joseph, she could have had a hand in convincing her father to keep the children on. It was more than a possibility; Sorcha was certain now that the long-dead Sarah Murphy was the same scared little girl Enid had met just a few days ago. If Sarah had grown up in town and gotten married, she would have taken on her husband’s name. Sorcha resolved to get online as soon as she got back to the house to research Sarah through her maiden name, which was presumably Johnson, the same as Jedediah.
Ben pointed to a phrase inscribed at the bottom of Sarah’s headstone. “That looks like Algonquian.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is. Mahican, probably,” she said. “That word means ‘two,’ or at least I think it does. My grandmother spoke the language, but she couldn’t write. Enid tried asking her, but didn’t know how to pronounce any of the words.”
“You try online?”
She shot him a sidelong look. “Of course I did. No one speaks it anymore and it’s not like there’s a free online translator. I’d have to pay for someone to translate it for me.”
“Well, my uncle Harry speaks several Algonquian dialects. If we can find him, you could ask him, or Luanne could help,” he said. “She’d probably drool all over this place.”