The Story Keeper (28 page)

A chuckle forced itself past my lips. I’d said almost the same thing to Wilda Culp when she’d started this discussion my junior year of high school. “It’s not like what they tell you, Lily Clarette. The city is . . . interesting. It’s busy. It’s always active and there’s so much to see and do. There are opportunities beyond what you’ve been exposed to here. Come visit me this winter. Check it out and see for yourself what you think.” I wasn’t sure how I’d pay for the plane ticket or how I’d even get her to the Charlotte airport
 
—or how I’d wrestle her away from Daddy
 
—but I was determined. I’d find a way.

There was a light in her for a moment, the yearning of a curious, capable mind. “Oh . . . I don’t know. . . .” She glanced over her shoulder toward the men, noticed for the first time the conference happening there. “I mean, I’ll just have to wait ’n’ see.” The dreamy-eyed look faded as quickly as it had come. “You don’t have to worry yourself about me, Jennia Beth. I know
what I’m doin’. Craig’s got a good job, and if he gets some money ahead, he might even be able to buy the propane company off’a his uncle someday. I’m gonna live a different kind of life from Marah Diane and Evie Christine, I promise.”

I glanced up, saw Marah Diane headed our way. “Just think about coming for a visit, at least. At Christmas. How about that? We’ll do Christmas in the city. There’s still plenty of time after that for you to decide where you want to be once you graduate.” I opened my purse, slid out one of my business cards, tucked it into her hand, and folded her fingers over the edge. “Don’t decide right now, okay? E-mail me or call me and we can talk some more.”

The card seemed to tug at her attention, though she turned her hand over quickly, hiding it in the folds of her skirt. “Craig’s not gonna wait while I go flittin’ off all over the world. He’s twenty-one. He’s ready to have a life. A family.”

“If he loves you, he’ll wait until
you’re
ready.” I was almost whispering now, trying to keep the conversation between the two of us. The minute the family got wind of this, they’d jump in on the opposite side, and Lily Clarette would be a pawn in a twisted power play.

“Lily Clarette.” Marah Diane’s voice was shrill. “Go help Coral Rebecca get the food on.” She spoke in a way that allowed no argument, clearly indicating that she was the one in charge.

“We were talking,” I protested.

“Seems like you might be helpin’ get the food on too. Or did you forget how?” She snatched the toddler from my lap, stood him on his feet half-awake, and gave him a little push on the rear. “You go on and play with the other kids. If you’d’a gone on and took a nap when I told’ja, you wouldn’t be fallin’ out when there’s a birthday party happenin’.”

The little boy caught his balance and waddled away, his chubby legs bowed outward like a mini linebacker’s, his bare feet moving over the stony ground with not a hint of tenderness.

Lily Clarette abandoned the bench almost as quickly.

“You leave her be,” Marah Diane hissed, wagging a finger in my face in a way that gave the lawn chair crowd a good view.

I drew back, shocked. “Excuse me?”

“You
know
what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You let her make up her own mind. Don’t you be fillin’ her with none of your poison. She’s a good girl, and she’s got a good life ahead a her. In the church, with a man of the Brethren Saints, and you can’t
stand
that because you hadn’t got nothin’.” Her voice rose over the gathering, attracted attention, and I knew she wanted it to. Some part of this was for show. Female-on-female rebuke was always encouraged first, then the men came in if necessary.

My temper flared as heads turned our way. “You don’t want me to answer that. Trust me.” I looked around for Friday so I could gather him up and leave. No way was I doing this now. If Marah Diane really started in on our issues, the fallout would be cataclysmic.

“Well, why
not
? You know every little thang there is to know, don’t ya? You with your big job and your New York money. You’re so much
smarter
than all a us.”

“Marah Diane, stop it. This is your kids’ birthday party, for heaven’s sake.” I stood up to gain an equal footing. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

By the swings and teeter-totters, the kids stopped playing and watched us with grim expectation. I recognized those looks. Those faces were waiting for the bomb to drop. Expecting a
perfectly normal day to be upended by conflict and chaos. They knew the pattern, just as we always had. Contentment was the enemy in this family
 
—something to wage war against.

Marah Diane leaned closer. “Don’t you go tellin’
me
how to raise
my
kids when you hadn’t even
got
any.”

“Food’s on!” Coral Rebecca called out as if she hadn’t noticed the apocalypse brewing nearby.

“Let’s eat before it gets cold,” Levi added. God bless Levi. I didn’t even know him and I liked him. He and Coral Rebecca seemed almost as frustrated by our family dynamic as I was.

There was a rustling and a shift in the action as people rose from lawn chairs and moved to the table, where my father, the eldest male host, would speak over the food to make it clean to eat.

Marah Diane gave me one last warning look as we parted ways. I skirted the table and found a spot on the women’s end near Coral Rebecca and her children. Friday sneaked in under my feet, ready to patrol for snacks.

After my father cleaned the food, the meal ensued with all the normal rhythms, a strange mixture of past and present. Our happiest times had always been when everyone was sated by the presence of food. What there was and how much we had depended on the season. We ate largely what the farm and forest proved, living the organic life before organic was cool.

I chatted with Coral Rebecca and watched her with her girls. She and Levi smiled down the table at each other, and I realized they would’ve been sitting together if not for the fact that Brethren Saints rules designated separate sections of the table for men and women. I wondered if Craig, the man Lily Clarette had picked out, was anything like Levi. As much as I wanted to prevent her from marrying so young, I hoped he was.

When the meal ended, Marah Diane brought in the cake,
making a fuss about the candles and swatting playfully at little hands reaching toward the icing. The kids giggled, the sound high and sweet. A birthday cake like this was such an unusual treat, it was hard not to enjoy watching them wait for pieces and then savor the bounty. Even my father seemed to be pleased by it. He laughed and conversed with the young man I had guessed to be Lily Clarette’s intended.

When the kids’ plates were empty again, the birthday girls began clamoring for their gifts.

“You’ll get ’em when your daddy says its time,” Marah Diane scolded, giving her husband a pleading look.

“It’s
my
table,” my father corrected. “And I got somethin’ to say.”

A lump of icing turned solid in my throat. I wasn’t even sure why at first, and then I realized the end of the meal had always been when the need for correction was attended to. At that point, if my father felt that someone had transgressed, wrongdoings were announced in front of the family, and punishments were handed out. If you’d done something bad enough to have earned the long rod, you were expected to walk calmly outside and prepare for a whipping.

Now I noticed the unsteadiness in him, how much weight he’d lost, how deep the hollows around his eyes had grown, how his hands shook as he braced his palms on the table, one arm twisted and scarred from his accident, three fingers missing.

His gaze swept the listeners, moving past me without stopping. Even the smallest of the children fell silent, slid back in their chairs. I fought to keep myself from shrinking along with them as he spoke.

“Craig Johns made his bid for Lily Clarette’s hand just now, and I find him to be a good ’n’ righteous man a the church. And
so I’ve give him my permission. It’ll be fine for them to marry soon as they pick them a time. You’uns make sure and do your congratulatin’.”

My father lowered himself slowly to his seat. In the instant before chatter picked up, I leaned in and turned Lily Clarette’s way. Her gaze was trained on her plate, her skin as pale as milk. When she looked up, she’d pasted on a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She hadn’t anticipated today’s announcement at all.

An excited round of conversation swept the women’s end of the table, the birthday party temporarily forgotten in favor of the making of plans, talking about the used wedding dress in the resale shop, which could now be purchased with some of the money from the dog trade, and discussing who had fabric that could be used in a wedding quilt or furniture that could be passed along to help the couple piece together a home.

On the men’s end of the table, back-patting and congratulations ensued, intermingled with talk of the fact that, if the dog business could be expanded, Craig could perhaps quit his job driving trucks and go to work for my father.

Everything I’d eaten was suddenly churning in my stomach. I leaned over to Coral Rebecca and said quietly, “I need to go, okay? Tell everyone good-bye for me when things settle down.”

I’d call her tomorrow, see what she thought about the situation with Lily Clarette. Surely there was something we could do to make her think twice about quitting school and slipping into the used wedding dress, just because it was my father’s plan.

I abandoned my seat and started walking, calmly at first, then faster, Friday jogging along behind. My mind was spinning like a tornado whipping across a freshly plowed field, gathering debris and chaff as it went.

I didn’t even realize where I was headed until I’d gotten in
my car, raced down the driveway, and wound a few miles up the dirt road. Suddenly everything was familiar. I’d traveled this back way via all means of transportation known to man
 
—horse, mule, rusty farm truck, on foot, even on an old bicycle we’d fixed up after we found it in a dump.

Wilda’s house lay hidden just past the T in the road, to the left and up the rise. Holding my breath, I waited for the first sight of it, and then there it was
 
—still nestled among the valley pines, still painted a dusty shade of blue, even though the color was fading.

The farm’s presence slipped over me, strong and steadfast like Wilda herself. Comfort fell like a blanket, and there in the driveway, I closed my eyes to the darkened windows, the time-ravaged exterior, the overgrown gardens. Resting my head on the steering wheel, I let the tears come and pretended Wilda was still here to wipe them away.

Chapter 23

A
front blew over the mountains as I drove back from Wilda’s house, and a chilly rain had started to fall before I reached the cabin. I didn’t dare try the driveway in the car. The trek downhill on foot, in the dark, slogging along under my umbrella, mud oozing through the seams of my boots, was pretty much the last straw. With only my cell phone as a flashlight, I stumbled over rocks and slipped in tiny rivulets of runoff, Friday clinging near my feet.

I am out of here. I am so out.
I could not wait to leave this place, and if it weren’t for the fact that it was too late to make the trip all the way to the airport tonight, I would’ve been gone already.

In my mind, I was back in New York, my familiar routines a pair of comfortable old shoes as I slipped back into them.

A streak of lightning lit the yard and the sky broke open,
wind rushing off the lake and folding my umbrella inside out. By the time I stumbled onto the porch, I was drenched, blinded by a curtain of wet hair, and in an ugly mood. Friday scratched frantically at the door, anxious to be inside.

“Hold on a minute!” Fumbling with the keys, I hit the porch light switch. The flickering bulb illuminated something that hadn’t been there when I left
 
—something rectangular and brown . . . and familiar. An envelope, but wedged behind the metal Welcome sign this time. I pinched it between two wet fingers and took it inside, dropping it carefully on the coffee table before hurrying to the bathroom to shiver my way into sweats and dry socks.

Why, all of a sudden, another delivery after three days with none? Who’d brought it here? What could possibly be inside? Assuming that Evan was telling the truth, the eight chapters I’d already read were all that existed.

Friday seemed to be wondering as well. When I returned to the living room, he was standing with his paws on the table, sniffing the envelope as if he’d detected something of interest.

“What’s in there, Friday?” This one was thin, lightweight. Maybe it really was the cabin bill this time.

I opened the flap, peered in, and thumbed the pages apart, making out rows and rows of print. Definitely not the cabin bill. This was . . . more of the manuscript. But how . . . and who?

An eerie sensation crept over me, a feeling of being watched. I checked the corners and hidden spaces of the cabin, then climbed the loft ladder and peeked upstairs. Except for the unexpected delivery on the porch, everything was just as I’d left it.

Why was someone still playing this game of cat and mouse? What did this person hope to gain?

The weariness of the day evaporated, and curiosity wound
through the air like a fragrance
 
—irresistible, tantalizing. I drank it in as the pages slid free.

“Chapter 15?”

Friday perked an ear and tilted his head. Perhaps even he realized that the next chapter should have been chapter 9. Perhaps even he knew that, according to Evan, the chapter in my hand right now didn’t exist.

Could this be part of another manuscript? Even something unrelated to
The Story Keeper
?

These pages were different. Narrower margins, a change of font. The paper had aged to a deep shade of ecru, grown stiff. The first few sheets were moth-eaten around the edges. They’d been typed on an old manual typewriter. Just like the machine on which Wilda Culp had hammered out her newspaper columns, year after year after year. I ran my finger along the underside, felt the indentations, imagined that I could hear keys striking paper with varying amounts of force.
Pinkie, index finger, middle, pinkie, ring finger . . .

Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink . . .

The author had given this installment a chapter title as well as a number.

Chapter 15

Deep Winter