Chapter 20
That one looks really old.”
Adam ran to a rectangular headstone about three feet high. It leaned slightly forward, casting a stretched-out shadow.
“That’s him! That’s Edwin!” On Adam’s heels, Emily high-fived him and turned to Jake. “That’s the guy who wrote the letters to his father in England.”
Shifting the drawing pad to her left arm, Lexi set the pink plastic box of peeled crayons on top of it. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Adam and Emily dashing to another grave marker. Jealousy, pure and simple. It might as well have been stenciled on her forehead. The relief on her face when Jake had assured her Emily was moving was like the sun popping through a thunderhead.
When he tried seeing the world through the eyes of an almost-teen who’d recently lost her mother, it made at least a little sense. Adam and Emily were hitting it off like they’d known each other for years. In spite of the age difference, Lexi could be looking at Emily as a threat to the bond between her and her twin. And if Lexi saw Emily as in any way usurping her mother’s role, her little defensive claws would bare the way Pansy’s had when she’d left the scratches Lexi thought she was hiding.
Adam waved. “Lex! Uncle Jake! Come here.”
With a sigh as big as she was, Lexi marched toward them. “What?”
“We found the first guy buried here. He was born in 1785.”
“It’s not the original marker,” Emily added.
“Joseph Mitchell 1785–1846.” Jake read the inscription over Lexi’s shoulder. “First recorded burial in English Settlement Cemetery.”
“He probably just had a wooden cross when they first stuck him in there.” Adam tapped the granite with the toe of his shoe. “Bet he’s happy to have this thing.”
Lexi did her famous “Ewww” and crinkled her nose. “You make it sound like he’s still there.”
“Maybe he is.” Adam tortured her with a wicked laugh. “There was a guy in the eighteen hundreds who tried injecting acetate of alumina into dead people’s carotid arteries. Like six quarts—that’s how much blood is in the human body. Which means he must have drained all the blood out fir—”
“Adam.” Jake covered a maverick smile as he told Adam to get on with the necessary facts.
“So he buried the bodies and dug them up a year later. They all looked fresh as a daisy.”
“Disgusting.” Emily’s lips rippled in an adorable wavy line.
“What’s disgusting is bodies that aren’t embalmed and the worms eat through the coffins and devour the—”
“Adam!” A trio of voices ordered him to cease and desist.
With a grin and a shrug, Adam took two huge strides to another stone. “You tell me all the time how good it is that I like learning, but nobody ever wants to listen to what I learn.”
“Ignore the boy.” Jake stepped next to Emily. Lexi turned away and walked across the cemetery. There goes my conscience. He put his hand on Emily’s back as he pointed to an inscription. JAMES SOTCLIFFE. DIED OCT. 28, 1856 AE 33. “Makes you grateful for modern medicine, doesn’t it? A lot of these people didn’t live to see their fifties.”
Emily bent and put her hand on the stone. “Don’t you wish you knew all their stories?”
Jake couldn’t suppress a polite laugh. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were fast becoming a history addict.”
She smiled and turned away. “I never had a reason to care this much.”
Was there really any reason he couldn’t be concerned about her walk with the Lord and just plain like the woman at the same time? He held out his hand. “Let’s soak up some history.”
Emily stared at his hand and closed her eyes. “Jake, I’m—”
“I know. You’re leaving. Moving to California for some hugely important reason I can’t know.” He took the hand that rested on her hip and fit it into his. “But you’re here now. Can’t we just enjoy the moment and each other?”
Her lips separated, but her hand stayed tucked in his. With a shaky sigh, she shrugged. “I guess.”
This is insane. Holding hands with a guy she had no hope of ending up with wasn’t any smarter than trying to trap one who didn’t love her.
But it felt so good.
Emily tried to focus on the mission. They were looking for Elizabeth Shaw’s headstone. “She died in 1851.”
“All of the older ones are here in this corner so we can ignore everything over there.” Jake gestured toward the trees that bordered the small cemetery. Way in the far corner, Lexi sat with her back against a tombstone, drawing in her sketchbook.
“Is she okay?”
“Just a little bent out of shape. She’s twelve. Need I say more?”
“Did I do something?” Emily had tried to pass off Lexi’s terse answers in the car as adolescent moodiness, but she’d seemed fine with everyone else.
“She’s having a problem with you and Adam getting along so well. She’s a twin—it’s a different relationship than regular siblings.”
“I can understand that.”
Jake pulled her hand to his chest. “Guess I’ll just have to keep you away from Adam. And with me.”
“L-let’s find Lizzy Shaw.” What was wrong with her tongue?
“We need a system. Let’s start at the corner and—”
“Found her!” Adam waved with both long, skinny arms then turned around. “Lex! Bring the crayons!”
Emily walked ahead of Jake. Lexi didn’t move from her spot.
Bleached white and rounded at the top, the stone stood on a block of matching rock. The characters were shallow and weathered. Emily took a quick breath as she stared at a basket of apples carved beneath the curved top. Almost identical to the apple basket painted on the cellar door. “Elizabeth Yardley Shaw. Died December 22, 1851. AE 38.”
Adam’s head swayed slowly back and forth. “Three days before Christmas. Bummer.”
“A year older than Mom.” Lexi had materialized without a sound. She handed the notebook and plastic box of crayons to Adam and walked away.
Jake squeezed Emily’s hand. “Somehow I’d envisioned this as a fun afternoon.”
“It is. Ignore her.” Adam ripped off a sheet of paper. “Do you guys know what AE means?”
“Age,” they answered together.
“Of course it means age.” Adam got down on his knees and took out a crayon. “But it comes from Latin. Anno aetatis suae—it means ‘In the year of his—or her—age.’”
Emily ruffled Adam’s wild curls then remembered she was supposed to keep her distance. “Who needs the Internet? We have you.”
“Finally, somebody appreciates me.” Adam held the paper against the headstone and ‘Elizabeth’ appeared in white amid his dark blue crayon strokes. “Did you know that the Kamchatkan Indians bred dogs for the purpose of devouring their dead because they believed that those eaten by dogs would be better off in the…”
Adam’s voice faded in the distance as Jake dragged Emily, laughing too hard to walk straight, toward the parking lot, yelling “Ignore the boy!”
In spite of Lexi’s drama and Adam’s attempts to make them gag, it was turning out to be a great afternoon. Until a minute ago, when she’d wandered off in search of more Bottomleys, Emily’s hand had nestled nicely in his. Jake followed several paces behind, more engrossed in the way the breeze flitted through Emily’s hair than in dates engraved in granite.
She wore white pants that came to the middle of her calves, a sleeveless blouse the color of Batman Bubblegum ice cream, and white sandals with tons of skinny little straps. Thin gold chains encircled her neck, wrist, and ankle. It was the first time he’d seen her wear any jewelry other than earrings. The girl was transforming before his eyes. The day she arrived in Rochester she’d resembled a black-and-white cardboard cutout folded on the kitchen floor. Each passing day infused a bit more depth and color.
He caught up with her and they walked in comfortable silence along a row of time-smoothed gravestones. Adam showed off his stack of rubbings then went off to find Lexi. Emily pulled out the phone Jake had rescued and took a picture of Elizabeth Shaw’s marker. “It’s haunting,” she said. “Not in a creepy way, just strange to think of the connections. This woman lived in my house.”
Jake couldn’t remember her calling it “my house” before. Good. Take ownership. Stay here. Half an hour of hand-holding and praying it out had convinced him once and for all to wave the white flag. He liked her. He wanted to pursue something deeper than friendship. If she snubbed him and rode off into the sunset in her ugly gray van, he’d be trashed for a while. But not trying would drive him crazy. “She probably helped design it—planned exactly where she wanted each wall.”
A featherlight fist cuffed his arm. “Are you familiar with the serenity prayer, Mr. Braden?”
Jake rubbed his arm. “Yes, and I totally agree with the ‘courage to change the things I can’ part.”
Emily’s laugh blended with the chirp of goldfinches from the border of trees. “But my mind is not one of those things. I was under no obligation to compromise with my contractor, but I let the windows and the trim and the ugly old cupboard stay, and he should be kissing my feet in gratitude.”
Tempting. If there weren’t children present. “When it comes time to sell, you’ll be the one kissing feet, Miss Foster.”
“We’ll see about that.” She turned with a huff, walked several feet, and stopped. At her feet stood a marble urn about ten inches high filled with daisies. The inscription on the pedestal beneath it read:
ANGEL MARIE
APRIL 14, 2011
STEP SOFTLY … A DREAM LIES BURIED HERE
One date marked both birth and death.
Emily covered her mouth with one hand. Her body stiffened. Jake put his arm across her shoulders. “How sad.”
She nodded and a sob ripped through her.
“Emily?” Jake turned her to face him then wrapped his arms around her. Her chest heaved, her shoulders shook. Hand against her hair, he pressed her close to his chest. Lord, what do I do? He held her until her sobs quieted. “Talk to me,” he whispered.
Minutes passed. Finally she took a shuddering breath, let out a word he couldn’t understand, and cleared her throat. “I was pregnant when I had the accident. I lost the baby.”
His arms tightened. “Emily. I’m so sorry.”
“It was too early to know”—she pulled away and swiped her face with both hands—“if it was a boy or a girl, but I know it was a boy. I just know.” The sobs resumed.
Again, he pulled her into the shelter of his arms. The tears he’d witnessed, the sad, drained look, all made sense now. “How awful.”
“I had no right—”
His chest tightened. “Lots of women ski early on in their pregnancies.” Didn’t they? He knew of one, the wife of a friend. “Accidents happen. You can’t blame yourself.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
She shattered again. Jake felt like he was literally holding her together. Questions peppered his mind, but he didn’t voice them.
He simply let her cry it out.
The crayon snapped in Lexi’s hand. She stared at the bumpy red edges of the break, picked up a purple one and broke it, this time on purpose.
Emily was crying. And Jake was hugging her. Holding her like a child, his head resting on her hair—her short, wedged hair he was supposed to hate.
Who cared? Pansy would be home tomorrow. That was all that really mattered. That was all the family she needed anyway.
But she couldn’t keep from looking at Jake hugging Emily. She’d never seen him with his arms around anyone other than her mom or grandma. Sure, he gave Tina a goofy kiss on the cheek when he saw her, but everybody knew that didn’t mean anything. He’d brought the lady with the pretty hair to a family picnic once. She had a name from a book. Heidi. She was nice in a too-nice way, and pretty, but she whispered to Jake the whole time and hardly talked to anyone else. Adam told Jake he was glad when he dumped her. Adam said it, so Lexi didn’t have to.
It probably wasn’t going to happen that way with Emily. Jake looked happy and that should be important to her. But if things had worked out the way she’d planned, they’d all be happy. And Emily would be in California.
She hated the selfish person she was turning into. But it was really just her survivor instincts that made her like this. If nobody else was worried about her future, she had to be. Maybe Adam could just drift along like it didn’t matter where they lived, but she couldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t end up on the street, but what kind of a life would they have living with Grandma forever? By the time they graduated from high school Grandma Blaze would be an old lady. Who wants to bring friends over if the person you live with keeps her teeth in ajar in the bathroom?
Maybe it was time she told Jake about her plan. He’d like it because it would be way better for him than living in an ugly black room in his mother’s basement. He loved his niece and nephew as much as a lot of fathers loved their own kids, and he spent more time with them than any real dad she knew. And she and Adam wouldn’t be any trouble. Adam would mow the lawn and shovel snow and she’d cook and do dishes. She’d even babysit to buy her own clothes.
It didn’t have to be a really huge house. She could give up her dream room with its big arched windows and the bed that looked like a tree house. She wouldn’t mind sacrificing if the three of them could be a family.
She snapped a green crayon.
She had to get Emily out of the picture.
October 15, 1852
“Venison stew.” Hannah handed the bowl to the emaciated man as Papa covered his shoulders with a blanket. “It’ll warm you.”
“Thank you. God bless your kindness.”
Papa sat on the bench across from the man who called himself George. “How long have you been on the road?”
“Since las’ snow.” He kept his eyes on the soup bowl. “Stayed on awhile near Springfield. Buried my little girl there.”
Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m so sorry. How old was she?”
“Only saw ten summers. Los’ my wife las’ summer tryin’ to give birth once again.”
Papa put his hand on the man’s back. “I lost my wife to the fever last year, but I can’t imagine the heartache of losing a child.”
George’s head swayed from side to side. “Shoulda stayed. My sister told me to stay. I left her ‘n’ my mother. I couldn’t stand the thought of one more plantin’, but maybe my Mariah’d still be here if I’d stayed. They’d’a brought the doctor so’s not to lose her.”
“Was it the fever?” Papa’s eyes pooled with tears.
“Infection took my girl. They can take the strap to me. Won’t stand for it with my own. Still, they wouldn’ta let her die … like I did.”
Hannah took a step forward. “The infection came from a whipping?”
“Yes’m.”
Fingernails biting the flesh of her hands, Hannah kneeled at the man’s feet. “You must not blame yourself. Not for one minute. You took your daughter away to save her from further beatings. You did the right thing. It was their fault.” The figure in her mind, face distorted like an angry, hateful mask, arm raised to crack a whip, resembled Liam’s father. “The man who lashed her is the guilty one.”
Papa raised his hand to still her. “Are you a God-fearing man, George?”
“Wouldn’ta lived long ‘nuf to see my baby born if’n I weren’t. Lawd’s been good in spite of the bad.”
“Then I think we ought to pray.”
George folded large, work-worn hands. Papa closed his eyes. “Heavenly Father, we come before Thee with heavy hearts. Great evil has been done to this man and his family. We ask for Your peace to flood his heart and, Lord, hard as it is, we ask for forgiveness to flow like the breath we…”
Hannah clenched her hands together, but couldn’t form words into a prayer.
“Amen.” George wiped his face with both hands. “Miss Hannah, may I give you something?”
“You don’t need—”
“I want you to have this.” Scarred fingers reached into a pocket in his frayed coat. “I was workin’ on a set of animals for my little girl. Noah’s animals. Two by two.” His gaze wandered far from the small room. He pulled out a tiny, intricately carved frog. “I’ll keep the other one for ‘memberance, but I want you to have this one.”
As she held out her hand, it shook with the sobs she could no longer control. “I will pray for you when I look upon it. I will pray you will soon be reunited with your mother and sister. As a free man.”