Sunshine made the spring day even brighter. The day of a funeral should not be shrouded in beauty. At least Ivy didn’t think so. Three onlookers gathered in addition to her father, the reverend, and Joel. The sheriff was one, Mr. Foggerty the other, and the third a curiosity seeker. There to gawk at the wooden casket of a murdered woman. Worst of all, the deep pit of earth that had no marker. Eventually, there would be a simple cross, but no name or specifics to remember Gabriella by.
Ivy glanced at Joel. His expression was indecipherable, although she noted him studying Mr. Foggerty from time to time. Andrew’s gravestone stood three rows behind him and to the right. Her vision fell on it and caressed her brother’s name. She didn’t miss how Joel avoided looking at it. As well he should. He didn’t deserve to mourn Andrew, not after he put the exclamation point on the tragedy by proving his loyalty did not run deep.
“Ashes to ashes . . .” The reverend’s rote was unemotional. The young woman had felt the life squeezed from her, she’d been hidden in a rotting tree trunk, and no one was sincere in their grief over her. It was tradition to lay a soul to rest in peace, but how did that happen when her killer still ran free, she was nameless, and her infant had vanished?
The reverend bowed his head in prayer. Ivy closed her eyes. She should pray, but she couldn’t. Ivy hadn’t been able to since Andrew died. She wasn’t angry with God. She had simply come to terms with the idea that God would do what He pleased, when He pleased, and she would be there when it happened. It saddened her father, whose faith was steady. But Ivy had a difficult time justifying why God, who supposedly loved His creations, would allow tragedy to strike. Andrew was her brother and, outside of Joel, her best friend.
She didn’t have friends anymore.
Joel edged her way after the prayer ended. A robin chirruped from a tree above them, reminding them of spring, while the sun’s rays cast a warm, comforting embrace over Gabriella’s casket.
“I hope you can find closure today.” He was distant, his tone impersonal.
Ivy didn’t blink. The lace at her throat choked her. Closure? For whom? Gabriella? There was no closure, only a litany of unanswered questions. She stared down at the casket, then bent and placed a dried rose on the top of it. It reminded her of the dried roses on Andrew’s casket, that cold, wintry day. The snowflakes had been large, soft, but as freezing as the ground into which they buried him. Joel’s hand was the only thing that kept her warm, and later, even that slipped away. She had been cold ever since.
“Did you grieve Andrew’s death?” Ivy whispered. Her question hung between them, hovering in the warmth of the sun but the starkness of death.
Joel took a deep breath through his nose. “Of course I did.”
“You never came, Joel.” Maybe she should listen, ask, and just listen. But it was so hard to hear Joel’s version of those days. It meant reliving them, and she’d lived in her own interpretation for so long—it felt safer there, if not happier.
“Ivy . . .” Joel shifted his feet. “I was an orphan. I didn’t have a family.”
“We were your family. Andrew and I.” Ivy stepped backward as Joel’s hand extended toward her. To take hers? To touch her arm? Regardless, he couldn’t touch her. She couldn’t let him. Her shoe sank into a soft, mossy patch of earth. She pulled it out.
What if she and Andrew had begged their father to adopt Joel? Would he have? With their mother’s death at Ivy’s birth, he’d fathered them well. But it was so much to care for two, let alone three children. They’d never asked. Their father had never offered.
Still, it was years ago. One couldn’t change the past. Even if Joel gave her a more palatable explanation, it still wouldn’t change the fact that Andrew had died, Joel had gone away, and she had been left behind.
Ivy sniffed back tears she refused with every ounce of her will. She gave Joel a sideways glance, but he was staring back down at the grave.
“We cannot let her go unremembered.” Ivy’s whisper covered the distance between them.
She didn’t miss Joel’s subtle nod of agreement. In this one small thing, they were unified. For now, it was enough.
The water poured from the pitcher into the washbasin, the sound a promise of refreshing and cleansing. Ivy plunged her hands into it and splashed it over her face. She allowed the drips to trail like tears down her cheeks as she lifted her face to the mirror. Her green eyes reflected back, filled with memories. Gabriella’s funeral had sapped her of energy but not determination. The search party had not turned up a baby, nor had Joel or Sheriff Dunst found anyone who knew Gabriella. Sleep would be difficult to come by tonight, and now, with so much time passed, she could only pray someone had Gabriella’s baby, or else it was most assuredly dead.
Drying her face, Ivy tied the ribbon at the neckline of her nightgown. She wandered across her room to a small desk and eased onto the chair, running her hand over a leather-covered journal. Her “death journal,” as the town of Oakwood preferred to call it. They only knew of it because Ivy would take it with her to the examination room of her father’s office or to the deathbed of the person who’d passed. They saw her writing in it, her pencil gliding across the page, and assumptions were made.
She opened it, flipping through the pages. Mrs. Templeton, her schoolteacher, died of consumption. Ivy had written her three favorite memories of the woman. Then there was George Clayborne, the town drunk. She’d been the only person at his funeral outside of her father and the reverend. It was more difficult to find pleasant memories of the crotchety man, but eventually she did. Widow Bairns had supplied Ivy with tales of when she and George were younger and he’d been charming, flirtatious, even debonair, only changing after he lost his wife and newborn son in childbirth. Ivy turned the pages to a blank one. She picked up her pencil and in a fine script sketched Gabriella across the top. Her pencil moved to write and child, and then laid it down. No. She could not accept that. Not yet.
The ping of a stone against the upper panes of her open window captured Ivy’s attention. Visions from years before invaded her mind. Joel, truant from the orphanage, sneaking to her window where he’d beckon her to come down. Nighttime jaunts in the moonlit woods, happy and soulful. Innocent and adventurous. So long ago.
Ivy pushed off the bed and lifted her heavy hair over her shoulder.
The shadows from the woods beyond the house were dark against the moonlit sky. The chill of the wind was more striking here, and Ivy grabbed a shawl from the back of the rocking chair in the corner.
Poking her head out the window, she peered into the night.
Joel. Just like old times. He stood below, only now, instead of the lithe body of a sixteen-year-old boy, was the broad-shouldered version of a man. His hand was poised to toss another stone.
“Please don’t. I’d prefer not to drop dead like Goliath.” Ivy swallowed back the yearning for happier times. He’d caught her in the wake of her sentiment. When her guard was down.
“But I only wield my hand, not a slingshot.” A hint of a smile touched Joel’s mouth, then faded. “We need to have a chat.”