Griffith Tavern (Taryn's Camera Book 2) (7 page)

And she was looking right at Taryn, although she hadn’t felt a thing when she was taking the picture. Her dark eyes bore into the camera, through the lens, and straight into Taryn. The idea of being watched, observed, without her knowledge made her shake. How often were these presences aware of us, she wondered, while we had no idea they were even there?

Crossing her arms over her chest, Taryn tried to get it together. She couldn’t concentrate with Permelia’s image staring at her look that. She felt exposed. Was there nowhere she could go to get away from this? She actually kind of liked the idea of having a link to the past she loved, but this time it was going a little far: she’d dreamed about Permelia, felt a presence in her room, and now she was watching her.

Why her? Why Taryn? Had she done something, said something,
thought
something that encouraged this? Was she doing something wrong or very right?

Could she really go through this again?

S
he must want something, right?” Taryn paced back and forth, the room growing smaller by the minute. “I’m seeing this for a reason. Aren’t I?”

“I would think so,” Matt answered carefully.

“Shit.”

“And nothing’s happened since Kentucky? Nothing at all?”

“Not a damn thing,” she replied.

They were both quiet, contemplative. Taryn stopped pacing and looked at her bed. It had been made but was now rumpled from where she’d stretched out on it. Suddenly, she felt lonely. She didn’t know why, but she had the craziest urge to hug Matt. Not just a quick one, either, but a long one. A snuggle, really. At this moment she just wanted to find a cozy couch where the two of them could sit down together so she could bury her head in his chest and close for eyes for awhile.

“Matt?”

“Yep?”

“Never mind,” she sighed. What was the point? If she asked him to fly up now, he would. But just because she was lonely and feeling out of sorts didn’t mean he should disrupt his life and enter her chaos.

“You should go back, try to take more pictures. But be careful,” he cautioned. “I can research the area, see if there’s any shops where you might pick up some supplies.”

“I feel safe enough,” she replied honestly. And she did. “I don’t know that sage and a wand are going to help me because I don’t think she wants to hurt me. Or that anyone does.”

Not this time
, neither one of them had to say.

“If you need me, I’ll come up there,” Matt asserted with surprising sternness. “I have vacation time.”

“Oh, I’m sure. The last time you took a vacation was two years ago.”

“I can get someone to cover me here.”

Taryn grinned at the thought. Matt hated to leave his office. Being away made him nervous, as he was sure the whole place would fall apart without him. “I’m okay. You don’t have to come up here. But maybe when this job is over I’ll come down there for a little bit.”

“That’s a good idea! I’ve been meaning to try out some new restaurants and, well, I don’t mind eating out by myself and I do it a lot but for the first time there I always like to have someone with me. And then there’s the lighthouse they just got restored, you’ll like it a lot, and the pavilion at the beach has live music every weekend until the end of October–“

She let Matt continue making his plans while she laid back on the bed, tired. Matt loved playing tour guide when she was there, and most of the time she enjoyed it, but at the moment the thought making her the most excited was crawling into the bed in his guestroom, shutting the black-out curtains, and falling asleep under the hum of his window unit air conditioner. She thought if she could do that, she might just sleep for a week.

“I’ll let you know when this job wraps up,” she promised before she hung up. Of course, she had no idea where the money would come from to go down there but something usually came up. She’d drive if she had to and just pull over and nap at rest areas. She’d done that before.

D
aniel sat in the grass at Taryn’s feet, his long legs stretched out. Today he was wearing shorts that showed off his muscular, but ashen, legs. He had a long look on his normally cheerful face as he fiddled with a blade of grass and twirled it around. Taryn felt sorry for him.

“So they didn’t give you a reason at all?” She hoped she sounded compassionate and disappointed for him. The truth was, though, she wasn’t too surprised. Grants of the caliber they were applying for had a lot of competition.

“Not a thing,” he mumbled. “Just a standard form letter.”

“I’m sorry, Daniel.” This she said with conviction, because she
was
sorry. “Surely there’s something else…”

“Yeah, maybe,” he shrugged. “If we had more time to look. But we don’t. No way we’re going to find the money in a couple of weeks. I think we just have to face the fact it’s going to be bought, torn down, and nobody even cares.”

Taryn knew when it was time to work and time to talk and Daniel obviously needed to talk. Although she’d been making steady progress all afternoon, she laid down her brush and knelt on the ground next to him.

“I care. And, you know, others will. They may not know it before it’s too late, but they’ll remember it and talk about it.”

“It’s not the same though,” he sighed. “The building will be gone.”

“I know what you mean. In my job, I fall in love with a new place almost every day. Well, it feels like it anyway,” she smiled. “Unfortunately, most of them get demolished. It breaks my heart every time. I’ve tried to learn new ways of coping with it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“I think there’s something special about the tavern,” Daniel stated. “I know you see a lot of these things and it might just look like another old building, but it feels like there’s something here. I can’t put my finger on it. I just feel drawn to it. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I feel like maybe I was there in another life or something. I believe in that stuff.”

Taryn came close to telling him about the pictures she’d taken the day before. She had a hunch he’d appreciate them and they might improve his afternoon. But she wasn’t ready yet. The only people who’d seen them was Matt and Rob, the owner of New Age Gifts and More in Lexington. She didn’t know if she could show to them anyone else at the moment. They were for her, of that she was sure, and she didn’t know what the “rules” were for sharing them.

“Oh, I’m very interested in it, too. I was just reading about the history of it. It’s pretty fascinating. I didn’t know much about the stagecoach stations until I got here,” she said instead.

“Not too much written about this one, but I’ve talked to some of the older people here in town and recorded them for an oral history project. Some of them still remember when it was a tavern. Not the original one, of course, but they still remember. And others remember their grandparents talking about it. Kind of unusual to have a woman running it all those years,” he added.

“Permelia,” Taryn affirmed, remembering the shadowy figure in her pictures. “She must have done a good job to keep it going.”

“I have a little bit of a crush on her,” Daniel admitted as he rose to his feet. “She’s kind of my historical girlfriend. You know, like a book girlfriend? Some of the stories I heard…well, she was interesting.”

“How so?”

“Most people say she was quiet. Liked to sit out on the front porch and read in the evenings. I dig that. But also that she ran to anyone who was hurt or sick and fixed them right up. Never complained. That she was a serious businesswoman and even the men around here respected her. But that she gave the best parties and was always ready to dance and laugh and keep the beer flowing.”

Taryn laughed. “Sounds like my kind of woman!”

“Mine too,” Daniel smiled.

They shared a moment of silence, both staring at the tavern and thinking their own thoughts, until finally Daniel broke the quietness by fishing for his car keys. “I guess I need to go back home. I have a paper due. I’m taking this course in museum studies this summer. Once it’s finished I just need to wrap up my dissertation and I’m done.”

“What’s your dissertation on?” Taryn asked. She remembered her college days, how eager she’d been to get out. Looking back, she wished she’d tried harder to enjoy it more while she was there.

“You know the Shakers, the religious group?”

Taryn nodded.

“Whether or not they achieved religious experience through, well, actual religion or through psychological manipulation brought on by segregation, fatigue, and personal affliction.”

“Damn,” Taryn whistled. “And what do you think?”

Daniel smiled and scratched at his beard. “I think if you get me up at the crack of dawn every day, make me work hard, separate me from my wife and kids, tell me I’m not allowed to have fun or do any of the things I enjoy anymore and then throw me in a building at night and say it’s okay to scream and shout–I’m probably going to feel some kind of release.”

“Good point. I always liked the Shakers, though,” Taryn mused. “Very organized souls with their chairs hanging on their walls and minimalism.”

“And they did give us the modern day broom,” Daniel added with a laugh.

T
aryn spent the rest of the afternoon in a painting frenzy, catching up on the lost time she’d spent talking to Daniel. She liked Daniel and missed his company; she felt a nice, easy kinship with him and was sorry about his grant. He was still young, naïve, and hopeful. He’d lose some of that along the way, especially with his field, but she hoped he held onto those qualities as long as he could. He’d need them; the
field
needed them.

Taryn took a walk at the end of the day, after she’d wrapped everything up and stored it in her car. The traffic on the road behind her was light now and only a few cars lumbered by.

The early evening light hit the bricks, causing the tavern to light up against the darkening sky and giving them a rosy glow.  It was a lonely spot, despite its close proximity to town and its position on the road.

One thing was for sure–when they put in the new interstate exit things would pick up around here traffic-wise.
Especially
, she thought grimly,
if they threw in a few big box stores and a multiplex
. Not that she, herself, was above a little retail therapy but it seemed unfair that in order to have great shopping they had to destroy all the fields and farmlands. Taryn would’ve been perfectly content to go back to even the way things were when she was a kid and there were still big department stores on Main Street. Sure, you might have to go to a few different places to find what you wanted and her grandmother had grumbled more than once about having to drive into Nashville for a dress, but there was adventure in it. Now, everyone just seemed to move through these big stores with dead eyes, never stopping to talk to each other or really look around. It took the joy out of shopping.

Matt would say there had never been any joy in shopping in the first place. Then again, he was still trying to squeeze into his high school letter jacket at the age of thirty–not because he had any nostalgia about those years (they’d been torturous for him, band geek and all) but because he hated to shop.

On the last trip back to her car, something made her stop and turn around. It was just the faint whisper of a breeze, nothing that should have been disturbing, but the deliberateness tugged at her and made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She had the strongest feeling someone was watching her and that someone was not looking at her from the road, but from the supposedly deserted house. Thinking about the picture from the day before, she hesitated, not sure she wanted to pursue the matter.