Wonderland Creek (52 page)

“It wasn’t unexpected. Miss Opal was ready to go. And she went peacefully, in her sleep.”

I pulled away to wipe my tears. Maggie’s face was dry. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. But would you please let everyone in town know? I’ll need help burying her. I would like to hold her funeral tomorrow. She wanted to be buried in the family plot in town, behind the church.”

“Yes, of course. But I’m worried about you, up here all alone.”

“You don’t need to be. Let’s go inside, so we can talk. I’ll make tea.”

Maggie seemed so calm, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was a façade. I remembered her telling me that she had lost her faith, and also that she’d planned to turn the gun on herself and join Hank and Rhoda Lee in the graveyard after killing Mack. With Miss Opal gone, I feared for her life, but I had no idea what to say.

“I’ll be happy to stay here with you, now that June Ann and Feather have gone home,” I said as Maggie poured the tea.

“Thank you, but Hank’s brothers will be coming as soon as they hear the news.”

That didn’t ease my fears. I took a deep breath, praying for the right words. “You told me once how you didn’t think God loved you—and I’d probably question His love, too, if I’d been through everything that you have. But I just want to say . . . you gave up your rich life in Boston because of your love for Hank, and you said it was what people did when they were in love. They made sacrifices for each other. Well, that’s how you can know that Jesus loves you, Maggie. He came a lot farther than from Boston to Kentucky when He came down from heaven to earth. And He gave up so much more—for us. Including His life.”

Maggie nodded faintly. Her eyes were still dry as she stared into her teacup.

“You used to love God, Maggie. Please give Him another chance.”

She nodded again and breathed a sigh. “I’m going home, Allie. To Massachusetts.”

“For good?”

“For now, anyway. Maybe I’ll be back, maybe not. I’m going to ask Hank’s brothers to take over the farm.” She looked up at me and her tears finally came. “I need time to heal. I’ve been messed up ever since Hank died. Taking care of Feather made me realize how much I want a family of my own again. Hank would have wanted me to keep on living. He’d be horrified by what I tried to do to Mack, and by how bitter I’ve become. I need some time away from here so I can get over everything.” I reached for her hand and silently took it in my own. “Anyway . . . I suppose you’ll be going home, too, Allie? Now that Mack can take care of Lillie again?”

She was right. There would be no reason to stay once Mack came home. But I was surprised to discover that I was no longer as desperate to return home as I once had been. “I think I’ll be very sad to leave here,” I told Maggie. “I’ve enjoyed being a packhorse librarian. But you’re right, I will be leaving as soon as Mack returns. He went to Washington to talk to the mining officials about reopening the investigation into Hank’s death. I expect him back any day.”

“Be sure to let me know when you’re ready to go. I’ll give you a ride to the train station, if I’m still here.”

“A ride?” I pictured us swaying up the road on the back of Maggie’s mule with my suitcase tied on the animal’s rear end.

“Yes. A ride in my car.”

“You have a
car
? Where is it?”

“In my barn. Didn’t you know that?” I leaned back in my chair, shaking my head in amazement. Maggie smiled. “How did you think I got into Pottstown to buy supplies and things?”

I put my hand over my mouth to try to hold back my laughter. It didn’t work. My giggles sputtered out, and I laughed until the tears came. I felt terrible for losing control when Miss Opal lay dead in the next room, but I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?” Maggie asked.

“If you had a car all this time, I could have left Acorn months ago!”

“That’s true, but just think of all that you would have missed.”

Yes. Just think.

I
was reluctant to leave Maggie, even though she assured me that she would be fine. But I finally hugged her good-bye and rode back to town to tell everyone about Miss Opal. The packhorse ladies returned at the same time that I did, and I told them the sad news. They promised to spread the word to all the other folks in town.

“What a day!” I said to Miss Lillie as I sank into my chair behind the library desk. “People have been coming and going—Ike Arnett and Wayne Larkin and Miss Opal—and now Maggie will be leaving soon, too. How much more can happen in one day?”

“When it rains it pours, they say.”

“How quickly everything can change.”

No sooner had I spoken the words than I heard the kitchen door open and close. I didn’t even have time to rise from my chair before Mack strode into the room, smiling and out of breath. He dropped his carpetbag on the floor and wrapped Miss Lillie in a tender hug. She was so tiny and he was so tall that Mack seemed to swallow her up. Tears filled my eyes to see them together.

“Praise the Good Lord! You’re home!” she said, her voice muffled against Mack’s shirt. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the chair in the non-fiction room.

“Welcome home, Mack,” I said, following them.

“Thanks. It’s wonderful to be home. The big city is exciting, but I missed the hills and hollows. And I missed you, Lillie.”

“Tell us about your trip, honey. Did those city people like your book?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. My editor sure did. Now we just have to wait and see what the publisher thinks.”

I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Mack, that’s wonderful! I can’t wait to read it. I’ve never met a real live author before.”

“Have you met any dead ones?” he asked with a grin. “Because technically I’m still dead, you know.”

“We’re gonna have to fix that real soon, honey,” Lillie said. “Now, what about those mining folks in Washington. Did you talk to them?”

“Yes, I had a very good meeting with them. I showed them the documents I found and explained what Alice and I discovered at the mine. They promised to send a team out here to inspect the mine as soon as they can arrange it. They’re going to reopen the investigation into Hank’s death.”

“Let’s hope there’s justice finally for Hank Coots,” I said.

“Sounds like you got a lot done, honey. We’re so glad you’re back.”

“There’s one more thing I did while I was away.” Mack left us for a moment to retrieve his carpetbag, then knelt in front of Lillie to rummage through it. “I have a surprise for you, Lillie. There’s a letter in here somewhere I want to show you.”

“A letter? Who’s it from?”

“It’s from your blood kin. A descendant of your son, Buster.”

“My Buster?”

“One and the same. I asked a friend of mine in Washington to do some research for me, and she was able to find out what happened to him after he was sold away from your plantation before the war. Buster has gone on to heaven now, I’m sorry to say. But this letter is from his grandson. He remembers Buster quite well and wrote this letter to tell you all about him.”

“Oh my . . . oh my, I don’t know what to say . . .” It was a good thing Lillie was sitting down because she looked as though she might faint.

Mack located the letter and pulled it from his satchel with a flourish. “It took a lot of work, but my friend not only found Buster, she found his family. It helped a lot when Alice found that piece of paper telling us that Buster had been sold to a Mr. Drucker in Thornburg, Virginia. My friend in Washington discovered his name on the U.S. Census register and learned that Buster grew up and got married and had five children. This letter is from one of his grandsons.”

Lillie looked from Mack to me and back again. Tears rolled down her lined face, but I could tell from her expression that they were tears of joy. She couldn’t speak. I knelt beside her chair, too, and put my arm around her tiny shoulder as Mack pulled the letter from the envelope. “You can read the whole thing later, but I especially wanted you to hear this part:

“ ‘My grandpappy used to tell stories about how he grew up as a slave, and how his Mama Lillie taught him all about Jesus. He was trusting Jesus when the Union soldiers came through and set all the slaves free on his plantation. An army chaplain took a liking to him, so Grandpappy Buster traveled all around with those army folks until the war ended. That’s when he decided he wanted to be a preacher, too, and he kept right on preaching the Gospel until the day he died. Folks would come from miles around just to hear him.’ ”

Lillie wiped her eyes on her apron. “Well, the Good Lord can take me on home now. I know I’ll see my boy up in heaven. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be that we found each other this side of heaven. Our lives mighta been much different if we’d had our way instead of God having His way.”

We talked until suppertime, and it would have been wonderful to kill a fattened calf and celebrate this glorious reunion with a banquet. But our food supplies were sparse, as usual, and there wasn’t time to prepare a big meal.

Mack told us more stories about his travels as we ate leftover corn bread and eggs scrambled with bacon. Lillie listened to the rest of the letter, spellbound, as it told about Buster and his family. The way she gazed at Mack reminded me of my dried-up garden soaking in the rain. She barely ate, barely breathed, as if afraid this was a dream and she didn’t want to wake up.

“How did you find Buster’s family so quickly?” I asked at the end of the meal. I had gotten up from the table to heat water to wash the dishes.

“My friend Catherine Anson in Washington did the research before I got there. She really worked hard at it and turned out to be quite a detective.” I felt an emotion I couldn’t quite place as he talked about Miss Anson, and I was surprised to realize it was jealousy.

“What’s been happening here while I was gone?” Mack asked after a while.

“Opal Coots passed away,” I told him. “The funeral is tomorrow. Do you think you might attend? You can let the town know you’re alive now, right? And come out of hiding?”

“No, not yet. I will soon, I promise. But not tomorrow. I don’t want to disturb Maggie and her family by showing up and reminding them of Hank. Is the funeral up at Maggie’s cabin?”

“No, Miss Opal wanted to be buried in the churchyard. Which reminds me—where is Acorn’s old church? I’ve never seen it, you know.”

“It’s across the road from the post office and back in a hollow. It isn’t very far.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Nothing around here is very far. I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Acorn. Uncle Cecil drove straight through town and out the other side before we even knew it.”

“I’ll never forget the look on your face,” Mack said, “when I told you Acorn didn’t have a hotel or a restaurant.” We both laughed, but at the same time I felt a sense of loss. I would be going home now, and I would probably never see Mack or Miss Lillie again. I had grown to love them both, and I would miss them. It was impossible not to grow fond of the man whose life I had helped save, a man who had stood alongside me facing danger and death. I turned away to hide my tears.

“Maybe I’ll walk over to the church after I finish washing these dishes,” I said. “It’s a nice warm evening.” I needed time alone to sort through my feelings. I had waited so long to go home to Blue Island, and now the time of my departure had come too soon. I realized that in the beginning I had wanted to leave Acorn because of all the hard work I’d been forced to do, the inconveniences of rural mountain life. But ties of friendship and love now exerted a much stronger pull than my own selfishness.

I finished the dishes and followed Mack’s directions, walking up the road toward the post office, then turning down a dirt road I’d never explored before, across the main road. I passed several houses wedged into the side of the hill before finally arriving at the church, nestled in a hollow. It looked as though it had once been a nice little building, but it had fallen into extreme disrepair over the years, the white paint peeling, the roof sagging, the exposed wood weathering. Most of the window glass was missing. I wondered if people had “borrowed” little pieces of the church whenever they’d needed a spare board or a new window to patch up their own homes, just as they had “borrowed” from the mining camp. But the main reason the church had deteriorated was because of the feud. “What a shame,” I murmured.

The front door was boarded up, yet I didn’t care to go inside, knowing that snakes and bats and other creeping things liked to inhabit deserted buildings. Instead, I walked around to the back to explore the graveyard. The cemetery wasn’t very large, with graves crammed into every available space. Some of the plots had been tended over the years while others were unkempt. I walked up and down the rows, pushing vines and weeds aside and idly reading the names on the tombstones.

The gravediggers had been at work, and I found the large, gaping hole where Miss Opal would be buried tomorrow. A dozen other Cootses were buried in this section of the cemetery, including one whose name I recognized: Abraham Coots. He was the man who had died in the Civil War, the close friend of Isaac Larkin and Wilbur Arnett, the two men who had stolen from the bank robbers and inadvertently started Acorn’s long, bitter feud. I bent to read the epitaph on the weather-beaten stone: