Chapter 17
“… wouldn’t change a thing that changed my life …”
The man in the dirty white cowboy hat and week-old beard sang into the mic with a voice that could almost rival Kenny Chesney. Emily held an ice-filled glass of tea to the pulse points on her wrists and kept her eyes on him—and away from the man sitting in the lawn chair next to her. “The trials, the tears … it’s hard to hate what got me here …”
Emily stared up at a star-flecked sky. A faint breeze wafted an intoxicating summer blend of hickory smoke and citronella across the lawn. How long would it take to not hate the things that brought her here?
And how long after she left would it take to stop liking “here”?
“Hungry?” Japanese lanterns reflected in the plastic tumbler Jake lifted toward her.
“Starving.” And more than ready to get up and move and busy her hands and her mind with something other than the whistle that had greeted her exit from Blaze’s car. Jake had taken her hand and twirled her in a pirouette like a ballerina in a music box. She wiggled the painted toes hidden by her gold-tipped boots. Who needs a prince?
Jake’s hand on her back steered her to the food table. With all the insensitive jerks in the world, why did she have to hire one of the few remaining gentlemen? She picked up a heavy-duty paper plate and caught Tina staring from behind the pig roaster. A greasy thumb shot in the air.
She felt a tug on her sleeve and looked down. All she saw was the brim of a red cowboy hat. “Michael? Are you under there?” She lifted the hat. “Thought that was you.”
Michael nodded, an all-business look on his tanned face. “I caught Squiggles again. He was in our garage on my dad’s working bench, and I bringed him over to show you but you weren’t there. I looked in your shed for the frog can, but alls I could find was a glass jar. Can I leave him there and come visit him again? For one day.”
“For one day.”
Jake pushed the hat over Michael’s eyes and got a smile out of him. Dimples showing, the boy shoved the hat back and looked up at him. “Russell says I hafta ask if you killed any ghosts yet.”
“Did I … wait, how do you kill a ghost?” Jake’s laughing eyes locked on Emily’s. “Isn’t dead kind of the definition of a ghost?”
“But Tina says you’re smashing down walls, and Russell says ghosts live in walls.” The boy’s eye’s widened. “Maybe you ‘bliterated one without seeing it and maybe—”
“Michael!” Tina called across the table. “Let the poor people eat.”
“I gotta go before Russell eats my peanuhbutter cookies. Adam’s grandma said you made ’em.”
Emily nodded and tapped the top of his hat. “I’ll take good care of Squiggles.”
“Okay.” Michael dropped to the floor and crawled under the table.
Jake smiled. “He likes you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It usually takes a long time for him to warm up to people. He knows you’re kid-friendly.”
She didn’t respond. He handed her a napkin.
Two banquet tables bowed like swayback horses under the weight of fruit salads, cheese platters, vegetable trays, and desserts. Massive ice-filled troughs cradled bowls of potato salad. A Nesco roaster of bacon-loaded baked beans formed the centerpiece.
And it all looked good. Amazing. She hadn’t hesitated when Jake asked if she was hungry. She was, and the fact still surprised her. Dear Vanessa, you won’t believe what happened to me this week. My stomach growled.
“Tina and Colt make their own sauerkraut.” Jake pointed to a crock as big as the pails of drywall mud lining her new great room.
“How very German. Can’t wait to try it.”
“Seriously?” His eyes, shadowed by a black felt hat, squinted at her.
“What? I don’t look like the fermented cabbage type?”
Serving spoon suspended over the beans, he shook his head. “Not tonight, you don’t.”
Don’t ask. Don’t give in to it. Don’t— “And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean …” He turned and graced her with a slow-and-easy country-singer smile. “Tonight you look like champagne and strawberries.”
Emily stopped breathing as Who Needs a Prince? melted off her toenails.
What’s the mantra for this, Vanessa? Focus on the moment. Live in the present. Nothing in her bag of emotion-stabilizing tricks fit. She needed to get out of the moment. Happy place! That’s it. Ocean breeze, sand in my toes, Coppertone, surfers skimming the—
“Crab dip.” Jake’s elbow nudged her off the beach. “Mom made that. Did you taste it?”
“No. Not yet.” Though it wouldn’t be hard to come by here in my happy beach place. “I made the broccoli salad.”
“You’re amazing.”
“Because I can chop broccoli?”
“Because you can chop broccoli, bake cookies, morph into a butterfly, and transform my cranky niece all in the same day.” He nodded toward a bench swing Lexi shared with another girl about the same age. “She might not have acted like she was having fun, but it turned her day around.”
Emily’s chin dipped. Her head tilted. The butterfly comment slipped to the back of the queue. “We had a great time. Did she give you the idea she—”
“Emily!” Tina waved through roast pork steam. “Come meet my man.”
She introduced Colt, a large man with a miniature pitchfork in one hand and foot-long knife in the other. Emily wondered if he knew she’d been curled in a corner of the dining room the day he’d delivered her air conditioner. Tina sashayed around the table and took her by the arm. “Whew, it’s hot by that thing. There are so many people I want to introduce you to. Have you met Sherry and Rod or—”
Jake stuck his hand in front of Tina’s face. “Stop. Look down.”
Tina complied.
“What do you see?”
“Plates. Food. Oh. Bet you guys would like to eat.”
“Yes, we would.” He planted a noisy kiss on Tina’s cheek. “Wonderful party. As soon as we’re—”
“Is this her?” A little woman appeared behind Tina, hugging a book the size of an unabridged dictionary. She directed her gaze at Emily. “You’re the one who bought Grace Ostermann’s house, aren’t you? I’m Dorothy Willett, president of the Historical Society. You go ahead and eat and then come find me. I’ve got some things to show you that I hope you’ll find fascinating.”
“How can I eat when you leave me hanging like that?”
Wise eyes crinkling, Dorothy Willett smiled and turned away then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Have you heard the ghosts yet?”
Jake swung his leg over the bench and leaned across the picnic table. “You haven’t, have you?”
Emily’s hair fluttered against her cheek as she sat down. His opinion about short hair on women was rapidly changing. She tucked it behind her ear, revealing a tiny square emerald on her earlobe. “I haven’t what?”
“Heard the ghosts.”
She laughed. “Only in the letters.”
“What’s in them? Learn anything?”
Emily looked down at her plate and picked up a piece of cheese. Her fingernails were painted a pale blue. “I’m waiting”—her chin lifted—“to read them with you.”
“I …” There had been a beginning, middle, and end to the sentence when it formed in his head. Where had it gone? “Thank you.”
“You found them. It’s only fair that we read them together.”
“No quotes from ancient myths this time, I promise.”
She answered with a half smile. “No drama scenes, I promise.”
Jake rested his fork on his plate. “You’ve been through a lot. I can only guess—”
“Cob!”
Topher’s bullhorn voice carried across the barn. In a red plaid shirt and a white Stetson, he strode toward them like Paul Bunyan.
“Topher!”
Loose cannon, headed this way. There’d be no more referring to his time at Emily’s as “the Foster job” after this. The eyebrow gymnastics zeroing in on Emily didn’t bode well. Thankfully her back was turned to the approaching giant.
But something had caused a sudden change in her expression. Was it the weird glow from the little white lights overhead, or did the color just fade from her face?
Lasering a look he hoped conveyed “Keep your trap shut about the girl,” Jake waved. “Emily, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. This is Christopher Hansen. He’ll be doing a lot of the drywalling at your place, unless you change your mind after tonight.”
Emily offered a weak smile. She looked as if the ghosts they’d just been talking about danced along the barn walls. Topher shook the table when he plunked down next to Jake. “Glad to meet you, Em—” His black-bearded chin dropped. “Emily? The Emily? Cob, you been holding out on me?”
Enough with the theatrics. Whatever he was up to, it wasn’t good. Jake turned from Topher’s bizarre grin to Emily’s frighteningly pale, wide-eyed face. What in the world was going on?
Topher doffed his hat like Hoss in an old Bonanza rerun. “Soooo glad to see you again.” He picked up her hand and pressed his lips to it.
“What the …?” Jake’s fingers curled into his palms. Hands off my lady.
A massive hand clapped his shoulder. “My Emily’s back and you don’t even tell me?”
“Your …?” He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. Meanwhile, Emily seemed to have forgotten how to speak altogether. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s the one. For real, you don’t remember? You preached at her all night. The other chick got bored and left and I had to do something to rescue this one.” Topher’s stupid grin widened. “So I thought of the perfect thing.”
“Talked all night? I nev—” He stared at Emily’s mouth opening into a perfect oval. Just as both hands slid over her face, the oval warped into a smile. In that instant, Jacob Braden was fourteen again. A short, chubby kid on fire for the Lord. A kid who witnessed to any and everyone polite enough to not walk away. A kid who didn’t know his father had only three months to live, a kid a year away from a growth spurt that would propel him into sports and girls and away from God.
Topher’s Emily.
His best friend’s first kiss.
Fanning her face with a Dorito, Emily bit the corner of her lip and squinted at Jake. Looking at his friend was way too awkward. “You don’t look anything like you did back then. You were…”
“Fat.” Topher filled in the blank.
Emily laughed. If Jake was indeed the boy who brought her to her knees and prayed her to Jesus nineteen years ago, she had to agree. Cob. Short for Jacob. If she’d known his last name at the time, she’d forgotten it. “Braden” hadn’t rung any ancient bells. Unexpected tears prickled her eyes.
Jake’s warm hand covered the spot where she’d just gotten her second kiss from the guy next to him. “Are you okay?”
“You … prayed with me. You led me to the Lord.” A thought whispered in her mind. Are you here to lead me back?
“I remember.” His voice slid over her like satin sheets. “But I don’t remember how we met.”
Topher laughed. “I’m takin’ the credit for that one. We were across the street from the Ostermann’s, riding dirt bikes in the field, and all of a sudden there’s two cute chicks standing in the road gawking at us.” He winked at Emily. “I killed my engine and yelled at Tubby here to stop, but he just kept going. He was totally oblivious to females back then. So I took it upon myself to welcome you ladies to the neighborhood.”
In spite of burning cheeks, Emily laughed. “You introduced yourself as Christopher and I was sure you said, ‘But you can call me Gopher.’”
“And you did, as I recall.”
As she bantered with Topher, she was only too aware of Jake’s stunned silence. After several minutes, Topher slapped the table. “Gotta get me some food while this all sinks in. I’ll be back.” He stood to a height much, much taller than he’d reached nineteen years ago. She hadn’t stood on tiptoes to reach his lips.
She remembered the blatant signals she’d sent that night by the fire, the tug-of-war as part of her mind hung on the chubby boy’s words, while the other part wished he’d stop talking so she could be alone with his friend. The thought made her shiver. Topher was probably a nice enough guy, but—
“He kissed you.” Jake stared at her with an indecipherable expression—part teasing, part accusing.
She wrinkled her nose. “That was a long, long time ago.”
“It wasn’t really fair, you know.”
“What wasn’t?”
“I present you with the keys to eternal life and he gets the kiss.”
Could her face get any hotter? What was she supposed to say to that? You’re right—I’ll make it up to you? “Um … You were right about the sauerkraut. It’s so much better than canned.”
He laughed. “Sorry. That was awkward. Isn’t it strange, though? That we’ve come full circle, meeting like this again?”
“Kind of makes you wonder.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“You think God planned for us to meet again?”
“Of course. The question is, why?” A shimmer of mischief hinted at something not so spiritual. “It just seems—”
“How’s the pig?” Tina plopped onto the bench next to Emily, her back to Jake, and nudged Emily’s shoulder.
“The food is wonderful. Thank you so much for inviting me.”
“Hey”—her head tipped back and her eyes rolled up as if trying to see behind her—“any friend of Jake’s is a friend of mine.”
With a slosh of beer, Topher set his plate and cup next to Jake and puckered his lips at Emily.
“Hey,” Tina whispered. “How’s the kiss-and-run plan coming along?”
Emily turned away from Topher’s puckered lips and laughed. “You have no idea.”
“The Shaws built your house in 1847, a year before Wisconsin was granted statehood.”
Dorothy Willett ran a bony finger along the bottom of a yellowed photograph.
Seated on the other side of Dorothy, Jake leaned over the photo album for a closer look. “I found that same picture on the Historical Society website.”
Dorothy nodded. “Of course, the house was more than fifty years old when this was taken.”
Emily stared at the sapling oak and the big white dog. “The Shaw family lived there until the 1940s, right?”
“Yes. Several generations.” Dorothy turned a page. “But there are indications that it was empty for several years before the war.”
“The war?” There were several to choose from.
“The War Between the States. We have a letter.” Dorothy flipped several more pages. “There’s no envelope or last names, but the story passed down with it is that Big Jim was Jim Thornton, who was the town blacksmith in the 1850s. Here.”
Emily’s hand rose to her mouth. She locked eyes with Jake. They’d seen that scrolling, expressive script before.
Fredericktown, Missouri
May 8, 1853
Big Jim, my faithful friend,
How you must tire of me asking for news. I know how hastily you will get word to me as soon as you know anything at all.
Papa and I are doing well, though it is already as hot as July is back home. I will dearly miss the mountains when we return to Wisconsin. How gentle and quiet our little Fox
will seem, but nothing will be a more welcome pastime than watching the river roll by if I return to Rochester to marry. God has not yet taken from me the conviction that my prayers are not in vain, and so I continue to pray and plan for a long and wondrous future.
How is your work going? It troubles Papa deeply to not be there. I remind him daily of the magnitude of the task we accomplished before winter. That God could use us in that way still brings me to my knees.
There is much unrest here. Even more division than back home. It is hard to hold my tongue. Working at the store exposes me to so many opinions, but I will remain as outwardly neutral as Missouri claims to be.
Please give our love to anyone else you speak to.
Always, Hannah
Emily read the letter silently and looked up, waiting for Jake to finish. “Her name was Hannah.”
Dorothy nodded. “Her mother, Elizabeth, died when Hannah was a girl. She’s buried in the cemetery at the English Settlement Church.”
“Where is that?”
“On A and J,” Jake answered. “About three miles from us. The church would have been built about the same time as the house, right?”
Another album page turned in Dorothy’s veiny hand. “Building began on the chapel in 1846, but they ran out of money before they could finish the interior, so the first service wasn’t held there until New Year’s Day of 1849.”
“What else do you know about Hannah? Did she ever marry?”
“We don’t know. We have the record of her father’s second marriage. He married a widow from Burlington. They must have had a son together because the Ostermanns did purchase the house from someone named Shaw. Hannah may have stayed in Missouri, or if, like the letter said, she married when she came back, it would be hard to trace her. Maybe, if someone were curious enough to search all the local cemeteries, that person would find some answers.”
Jake looked at her over the top of Dorothy’s head. Anticipation sparked in his eyes. “What are you doing on Sunday afternoon?”
“Visiting cemeteries apparently. But first I need to catch up on some letters.”
Dorothy glanced from Jake to Emily, closed the album, and slid two thin booklets and a red-bound hardcover book in front of her. “I’m keeping you two from dancing.” She patted Emily’s hand. “Will you come and visit me soon?”
“I’d love that.”
“I’m old-fashioned enough to be in the phone book. I’ll get you caught up on everything we know about your house, and you can fill me in on what you’ve learned from the ghosts.” She stood and waved with her fingertips. “See you soon.”
Restraining a laugh, Emily didn’t dare look at Jake until Dorothy was out of earshot.
“You have to bring her over to the house. I bet she can see them.”
“Right. I’ll bring her over so she can introduce me to my own ghosts.” She watched the lines deepen on each side of his mouth. “They are mine, right? If I own the house, I own the ghosts.”
“Absolutely. It’s in the fine print of every bill of sale: ‘The Seller hereby grants, bargains, sells, assigns, transfers, conveys, and sets over unto the Purchaser all ghosts, ghouls, goblins, spooks, specters, apparitions, and ethereal beings real or imaginary residing in or on the Property.’”
Emily swiped at laugh tears dampening her lashes. “I can’t wait to write the listing. ‘For Sale. Historic three-bedroom—’”
“Shoulda been four-bedroom.”
“‘Three-bedroom, two-bath home complete with fireplace, back porch, trapdoors, secret room, and quiet, well-mannered poltergeist.’”
“It won’t be on the market more than a week.” His smile waned and he reached for his hat. “Let’s not talk about that now.” He held out his hand. “May I have this dance?”
She slid her palm onto his. Warm, large, calloused, his hand closed around hers. She looked up at unruly sun-lightened hair peeking from under the black cowboy hat and tried to remember why she was supposed to say no. The band played the first few notes of “We Like to Party” as he pulled her to her feet and led her to the back row of dancers. As her feet began stomping in place in time to his, she remembered one of the reasons she should have declined. “I thought you hated dancing.”
His forehead furrowed. Boots tapped, hands clapped, and a grin split his face. “Where’d you ever get an idea like that?”