Lover's Knot (30 page)

Kendra wasn’t sure whether Aubrey had called Prudence to smooth her visit, or for other reasons. She was certain his memory hadn’t faltered at the end of their conversation. He knew more than he’d let on, and if he wanted to keep a secret, he might well have called Prudence to tell her so. If Prudence knew the secret, of course…

Kendra wondered whether the secret might have something to do with bodies in the cave on Little Lock Mountain.

Flint Hill was a picturesque country town with a few small businesses. Nearby, the world-famous Inn at Little Washington had its own heliport so the rich and famous could fly in and out without having to brave the narrow country roads. But Rappahannock County had a mixture of residents, escapees from the city as well as people with roots sunk deep in Virginia’s soil. Locals could choose barbecue over the gas-station counter or organic Kobe beef burgers at the farm store of a retired AOL executive.

Prudence’s house was more the gas station end of the county, a cozy brick bungalow with a carport that had been given over to grandchildren. Kendra noted half a dozen riding toys, from tractors to smiling bananas, and a race course outlined in chalk that zoomed down the driveway.

She parked on the road beside another SUV and heard the sound of children in the backyard. Although at first she wondered if anyone would hear her, Prudence came to the door right away, introducing herself and briskly extending a hand. She was just a bit overweight with steel-gray hair cut into attractive layers, and gray eyes behind narrow copper-rimmed glasses.

“Just call me Prudence. My grandchildren are about to go home. Will you mind if I see them out?”

Kendra followed to meet the flock, three boys, one lone girl and Prudence’s daughter, who was a younger, more harried version of her mother. She was trying, with only moderate success, to dry off the two younger children, who had obviously been playing in the sprinkler.

The flock, ranging from perhaps seven to two, disappeared after a few raucous minutes, driving away in their Ford Explorer.

“I had my children late. She did the same, and so did my son.” Prudence shook her head. “It’s a wonder any of us survived it.”

“Judging from all the drawings on your walls, you’re loving it.”

“The spirit loves it. The flesh is tired. May I offer you a glass of tea?”

The kitchen was small and spotless, adorned in finger-paintings, plaster casts of tiny hands and framed inspirational poems. The windows had frilly curtains, and the tablecloth was flowered plastic—a sensible choice for cleaning up after spills and sticky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“Have a seat,” Prudence said. “Would you like a cookie to go with it?”

“Tea’ll be fine.”

“Aubrey tells me you’re a reporter.”

Bingo. Kendra could almost hear the words that had come after that.
This Taylor woman’s a reporter. Don’t tell her anything you don’t want the whole world to know
.

“I’m on a leave of absence,” Kendra said. “I’m living in the cabin Leah Spurlock left my husband. Isaac is her grandson.” She explained the circumstances as briefly as she could; then she waited.

Prudence held up the pitcher. “Lemon? Sugar?”

“Just lemon, thanks.”

Prudence busied herself finishing the tea, while Kendra tried to decide how best to find out what she wanted to know. Prudence finally came back, setting a frosted glass in front of Kendra before she dropped into the seat across from her.

“Aubrey told me your mother and Isaac’s grandmother were best friends,” Kendra said, after thanking her hostess.

“Mama talked about Leah quite a bit. I grew up on those stories. She made it seem like it all happened just a week or two ago, like it was that real.”

Kendra was encouraged. “Leah didn’t settle that far away, you know. Of course, it was harder to travel back then, but Flint Hill and Toms Brook were within driving distance.”

“Times were different, I guess.”

“Your mother…Puss, right?”

“Short for Prudence. Same as me.”

“Puss came here right after leaving Lock Hollow?”

“Not right off, you understand. She was working at Skyland—that’s a resort up in what’s now the park—to save money to help her folks. She stayed on a while, until she could afford to join them here. Mama wasn’t married at the time.”

“So her family came here to start over?”

“The government bought more than six thousand acres in the surrounding counties so they’d have a place for people to go. Took them some time, though, to build houses. Flint Hill was one of the places where people were settled. Our family got a house, a barn, and a chicken house and some other buildings, on about fifty acres. Mama said the house was fancier than anything her parents had ever seen. Running water, electricity, real appliances. Of course, some people said that was too much to give us hillbillies. I guess they thought stealing the land was good enough for us.”

One generation removed and Kendra still heard the resentment. “It must have been a painful time.”

“Mama said her own mama took a while to get over it, but Grandpa liked the new place right off. Mama got married after she’d been here for a few years, and she and my father took over the farm when my grandparents died. She was some homemaker. You never saw anyone half so committed to keeping house. Came from losing the first home she’d ever known, I guess. My brother took over that land until he died a few years ago. It’s sold now. Kind of a shame. But I was a widow by that time, and nobody in my family had any use for it.”

“Toms Brook wasn’t one of the places where people were resettled. At least not from anything I’ve read.”

“I don’t think it was.”

“I don’t know why Leah went there. Did your mother ever mention where she’d gone or why?”

Prudence swatted a fly. “Not that I remember.”

“Can you tell me anything she said about her?”

“People have a lot of reasons for asking questions, don’t they.”

Kendra had expected this. “I know Aubrey’s worried I’m doing this just so I can write about it. And I can’t promise I won’t. It’s an interesting story, but it’s also very personal. I think my husband needs to know where he came from. His life’s always been a mystery. Answers might help.”

Prudence searched her face. “Aubrey tells me you were asking about the bodies in that cave.”

“Leah left Isaac a quilt almost exactly like the one those bodies were wrapped in. It was the only thing besides the cabin and land she left him. She must have thought it mattered somehow. And names are embroidered all over it, including ‘Cade.’”

“Now that’s interesting.”

“It’s more or less a map of Lock Hollow. But two lines meet where the bodies were found, as if Leah was connected to it in some way.”

“People have different ways of revealing things. I’ve seen it all my life. Some people just blurt out whatever goes through their heads, and others, well, they move slowly into it, just a little at a time. Sometimes that’s because they aren’t so sure the people they’re talking to want to hear what they have to say.”

“I’ve noticed the same thing.”

“Mama used to tell stories about Leah. I told you that already. Mama wasn’t around much, but when she was, she watched the way Leah and Jesse acted after they were married. She wasn’t jealous, mind you, but she said watching them made her want the same things for herself that Leah had. A man who could be her world. It’s an old-fashioned notion, but she found that same kind of love with my father. She died of a broken heart after he passed on. I’m convinced of it.”

Kendra almost couldn’t imagine that. “It sounds like they were lucky.”

“And if Mama hadn’t come here, she never would have met him. So some things work out, even when you think they won’t. Which reminds me, I got something your husband might like to have.”

Prudence rose and went to a bookshelf that held a variety of cookbooks. “I said Mama was some housekeeper? Well, she kept notes, pages and pages of them, on how to clean everything. She kept quilt patterns from the newspaper, put them in this….”

She held up a thick bound notebook. “Recipes, household hints. Anything she could find in the paper or from neighbors. It’s a real piece of history. I treasure it.”

“Of course you do,” Kendra said.

“After you called, I got to thinking about your husband. And I remembered there’s a section in here on sickness and what to do. We would call that first aid these days. The thing is, Leah wrote Mama whenever she was away and told her how to cure little things that were wrong with her or other people wherever she was. And Mama kept them all. She fixed them to the pages here. And I still have them.”

Kendra was intrigued. “That really is a treasure trove, isn’t it.”

“I can’t give you the originals, because they’re glued tight, but I thought maybe your husband would like to see some things his grandmother wrote. Folk medicine, mind you, but there’s probably some truth in all of it. Anyway, I gave it to my daughter, and she took it in to work and had these pages copied.” She slipped a stack of papers out of the book and held them out to Kendra.

Kendra took what looked to be about two dozen pages. A glance showed that the handwriting was round and childish, but legible. “This is so wonderful. You don’t know how glad I am to see these.” Briefly she told Prudence about Leah’s garden.

“Then you’ll enjoy them that much more.”

Kendra tucked the papers into the side pocket of her purse. “You talked about how things worked out for your mother and father, partly because Puss was inspired by Leah’s marriage. But apparently things didn’t work out for Leah and Jesse. She moved to Toms Brook without him, even though she was already pregnant.”

“Down the road, I’m afraid there were problems in that marriage.” Prudence picked up her heretofore untouched glass and sipped.

“Do you know what kind?”

“Everybody had problems once it was clear the park was going to happen whether the people living on the land wanted it to or not. You can just imagine, can’t you? And it took its toll. I remember my grandmother telling me that when she realized my grandfather was going to be happy with the new place, she stopped speaking to him. For one whole month. Just to make a statement.”

“Do you think the problems between Leah and Jesse were related to the park?”

“It’s a good guess.”

“They must have been serious. She left her husband. And so far, I haven’t found any information about where he might have gone.”

She waited, but when Prudence didn’t speak, she continued. “Aubrey said Leah had a sister, too. Birdie Blackburn. And I haven’t found anything about her, either. It’s like she and Jesse disappeared from the face of the earth….” She let her words trail off and locked gazes with Prudence.

“That would take some doing.”

Kendra was frustrated, but she had expected to be. “Did your mother ever say anything about Jesse or Birdie?”

“She did speak of them.”

Kendra waited and hoped.

Prudence looked away. “It’s not a pretty story.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“Some people thereabouts said Jesse and Leah had a falling-out, a big one. Afterwards they thought maybe he and Birdie ran off together. That the two of them just up and left Leah to find a new life by herself. Anyway, that’s what they said.”

This was new information. Kendra pondered it. “People really believed Jesse and Birdie fell in love? Did your mother think so?”

“She wasn’t clear. She loved Leah, you know. All those years later, she still loved and admired her. But I think there may have been more to it than she knew back then. Don’t you? Considering…”

“The bodies?”

Prudence smiled sadly. “That’s right. Because two people disappeared from Lock Hollow. Just up and left, and no one ever saw them again. Of course, homesteads were isolated. Nothing more than footpaths between some of them. Mama told me they’d go visiting at night with coal oil lanterns to light their way over rocky trails that were miles long. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“But even then, people knew what was going on. They checked on each other, visited, had work parties to shuck corn or string beans for drying. One day Jesse and Birdie were living at the Blackburn farm, the next they disappeared. And Jesse’s own mother never heard from him again.”

Kendra remembered that Jesse’s mother and her second husband had still lived on the farm just beyond the Cades’. The old Spurlock place, which someday would have belonged to Jesse.

Prudence nodded in emphasis. “Not a word, and from what I remember my mama saying, Jesse had sisters, and none of them ever heard what had happened to him, either.”

“What do
you
think happened?” Kendra asked.

“Me? I think maybe somebody was angry enough with Jesse Spurlock to kill him. Maybe Birdie got in the way. And if that’s true, wouldn’t it explain those bodies?”

“Somebody?”

Prudence looked straight at her. “That would be my guess.
Somebody
. That’s as far as my guessing goes.”

Kendra couldn’t let that be the final word. “Prudence, are you saying you think Leah killed her husband and sister?”

Prudence’s gaze didn’t waver. “I wasn’t there, was I.”

“It’s a terrible thought, isn’t it? That Leah might have been a murderer?”

Something about the way she said it must have touched the other woman, because her expression softened. “My mama thought the world of Leah Spurlock. She always said folks had jumped to the wrong conclusions. Maybe I can’t tell you what happened at the very end, up in that hollow, but I do know a little more about what caused the troubles between Jesse and Leah. Maybe that will help.”

T
he government arrived at the Blackburn house one morning when Leah was alone on the farm. Birdie was spending a few days with Etta and wouldn’t arrive back home until that evening, and Jesse was helping his stepfather rebuild the Spurlock chicken house. That he and Luther Collins would stubbornly improve any structure on the farm was a testament to their unwillingness to face facts. Luther was certain the city lawyer Aubrey had hired to represent Lock Hollow would work magic. Jesse was determined to stay and fight.

Leah opened the front door to find a tall, broad-shouldered man with curly copper-colored hair and pink-toned, freckled skin to go with it. He took off his hat, while a younger man—no, a boy—with his back to them, held the farm’s three snapping hounds at bay.

Leah admonished the dogs, who backed away at the sound of her voice.

“I’m right sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you coming, or I would have called them off. I was in the chicken yard.”

“Ma’am, my name is Daniel Flaherty, and this is Charlie Thompkins. He helps with the surveying equipment.” Flaherty gestured behind him to the teenager, who was dark haired and lanky. Both were dressed in black pants and shirts that were clean enough, but rumpled.

Leah felt as if someone had a palm flattened hard against her chest, because suddenly she understood why the two were here.

“We’re with the government,” Daniel Flaherty said. “We’re here to work out what your land is worth.”

“Everything.” She lifted her chin. “It’s worth everything and then some more.”

“Ma’am, I know how you must feel.”

“You couldn’t possibly.” She took a deep breath, surprised the air passed through her lungs as naturally as always.

“Is your husband in?”

“He is not, and you should be glad of it.” She considered closing the door, but unlike Jesse, she knew there were no gestures of protest powerful enough to keep the government away. And hospitality was ingrained in her.

She sighed and opened the door wider. “Come inside.”

The two males looked at each other. Thompkins, who looked younger than she, perhaps sixteen to Flaherty’s twenty-eight or so, shrugged.

Leah turned away but left the door open. “I reckon you’ll be thirsty. I’ll get you some fresh water.” The two followed her inside and waited on the sofa in the sitting room as she went to the pump.

“Sit,” she said when she returned. They did, and she handed them glasses before she perched on the edge of a rocking chair across from the sofa.

Flaherty was clearly the one in charge. He sipped, then set down the glass and leaned forward. “You understand about the park, don’t you?”

She examined him, curious about the man who would put her family out of their home. “Can you sleep at night? Doing what you do?”

He looked genuinely unhappy. “I sleep knowing I have a job to go to in hard times. And Charlie and I, well, we do the best we can for people. We try to get them the most money the government will allow. Isn’t it better people like us do the job than people who don’t care?”

She couldn’t fault him. Thompkins looked as if he wanted to be anywhere other than where he was, but Flaherty seemed truly concerned. He had an appealing face, with sincere hazel eyes. He was a man most women would be attracted to, a man who projected both gentleness and strength.

“We don’t want to go,” she said.

“You have a beautiful place here. I wouldn’t want to leave it, either. But it’s not up to you and me. People you’ll never see made this decision. My job is to help you make the best of it.”

“My husband says he won’t leave.”

“Our records say the property belongs to one Leah Blackburn.”

“It’s Leah Blackburn Spurlock now, and you’re speaking to her.”

The two finished their water; then Flaherty stood, and Thompkins, taking his cue, got to his feet, as well.

“I’m going to tell you something in confidence, then,” Flaherty said. “Your husband can fight this a while. It’s likely no one will come and drag him away. Not for some months, anyway, or maybe longer. It’s even possible you could get on the life list.”

She rose to follow them to the door. “What’s that?”

“There’s a chance some people will be allowed to stay, but I don’t want you holding out hope. If the park officials decide to do that, mostly it’ll be the oldsters who get that privilege. And why would you want to? Those people won’t be allowed to clear more land or cut trees for firewood. They can’t add on to their houses, since they would belong to the government. They might not even be able to graze their animals. It won’t be a good way to live, and their children won’t be allowed the same privilege once they’re gone.”

She tried to imagine this, being a prisoner in her own home, with the government watching everything she did, every blade of grass she disturbed. Her eyes closed, and for a moment she could visualize everything he had said. Their hollow filled with ghosts and old people waiting to die. It would be worse than moving away.

“Ma’am, you’ll be better off if you start making preparations.”

She opened her eyes and saw he believed everything he said. At that moment she realized that Daniel Flaherty, a complete stranger who represented a government she had grown to hate, was more concerned about her adjustment and future than her young husband.

They stared at each other for a moment. Something inched along her backbone, something not quite sexual attraction, not quite a need to cry on this man’s broad shoulder.

“We’re camping not far down the road. We’ll be walking your land, looking it all over carefully,” he said at last. “I hope your husband isn’t thinking about doing anything foolish.”

“I’ll make sure he don’t,” she said softly.

“Thank you.”

She saw them to the door, but when they were halfway between the house and fence, Flaherty turned to regard her. His eyes were filled with compassion…and something else. “You take care of yourself, Mrs. Spurlock. God bless.”

And she knew, without knowing how, that he wanted to say more.

Birdie was exhausted when she returned from Etta’s in the wagon driven by Etta’s father. Leah made her a cup of valerian root tea sweetened with honey and gave her sister a biscuit with huckleberry jam.

“Do you feel all right, Birdie girl? You’re looking peaked.” Leah knelt in front of the rocking chair where Birdie had collapsed. “I got some Red Liniment. I could rub your legs and arms.”

“I reckon I just need a rest.”

Birdie kept her feelings to herself. Leah suspected she was afraid complaining set her further apart. Even Leah wasn’t always sure what was on her sister’s mind.

“I’m making us some supper,” Leah said. “Jesse should be home soon enough. I made squirrel stew and dumplings, but it don’t taste as good as when you make it.”

“Where did Jesse go?”

“Back home to help his step-daddy.” She paused. “I was glad to have him go. I’m ashamed to say so, but it’s the truth. It’s so hard to get along with him, I only feel I can breathe right when he goes out that door.”

“He does take it all to heart, don’t he.”

Leah sat back and crossed her legs under her dress, gazing up at her sister. “He’s not the same as he was. He hardly says a word to me, Birdie. I talk to him and he looks at me like he don’t remember where I come from. Like I don’t belong to him anymore.” She didn’t recount the worst, that Jesse turned away from her every night now, no longer taking pleasure in their marriage bed.

“He does have a lot gnawing at him.”

“But why cain’t he talk to me about it? I want to make him talk to me, but I reckon I don’t know how to do it.”

“The Spurlocks get these sorry spells. You know they do. That’s how Jesse’s daddy was. Maybe you cain’t remember, you being younger and all. But I do. He’d have dark times, just like Jesse’s having, and he’d sit in the corner when company came and say nary a word. He’d stare at the wall, and he’d stare some more. Then the next time he was about, you’d think he was pert near the friendliest man in the holler.”

Leah didn’t remember this. All she could remember about Jesse’s real father was a grin and a whistle.

“What should I do about it? Should I try to make him talk to me?”

“You’d best just leave him alone. You cain’t make him talk if he don’t want to. But you sure can make him angry.”

Leah wondered. If she was feeling as bad as Jesse, she would want to talk about her feelings. She would want to know someone cared enough to ask and listen. But Jesse was a man, and in her limited experience with that breed, talking wasn’t what men did best.

“I have something to tell him, something he don’t want to hear.” Leah explained what had happened that morning, describing the two men. “Those men, especially the one name of Daniel, they really cared how I saw it all. They don’t like doing this. I could see that, clear as a poor man’s window. Daniel, he said they want the best for us.”

Birdie’s eyes had fallen shut, but now they flew open. “You gonna tell Jesse they was
here?
”

“I have to tell him. They got a camp up the road. He’ll see them walking over the place making notes, or one of the neighbors’ll mention it. He has to know. I don’t want trouble.”

“You liked them?”

“It’s not their fault. They have a job and they’re doing it, that’s all.”

“You better tell Jesse that they’re good men and mean no harm, then.”

“Won’t he think I’m some kind of traitor?”

“He’ll know it’s better to be set off our land by good people than bad.”

Leah didn’t know what to think, but she was glad her sister was there to give advice. Birdie might live in a limited world, but she was queen of it. She saw everything, knew everything. And unlike Leah herself, Birdie had less invested in the outcome. No matter what happened, she knew that she would be welcome wherever Leah and Jesse went.

“I’ll talk to him.” Leah nodded to confirm it.

Birdie smiled, as if she was glad her advice had been taken. “Just don’t say too much. Let him come to you whene’er he’s ready.”

That night, Leah waited until Birdie had gone to her room at the back of the house before she joined Jesse in the sitting room where he had been whittling all evening.

“What are you making, Jesse?”

He looked up and turned his head to gaze around the room. When he seemed satisfied, he spoke in a low voice. “Got some good oak boards for a new quilt frame for Birdie. She’s got a birthday coming up soon, don’t she?”

She was greatly encouraged. This was the first time in weeks Jesse seemed to be thinking of something other than the park.

She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. “She needs a new one. She’s about wore out Mama’s.”

“I’m whittling clamps to keep the quilt stretched tight.”

“You’re as good at carving as your daddy was. Do you ever wish you could just do that?”

“From time to time. But folks up here don’t need fancy carving. And most of them can make what they need to get by.”

“Down below it might be different.”

He only paused a heartbeat. “We’ll never know.”

“I got something to tell you, and you won’t like it.”

“I don’t like it already.”

She squatted in front of him, her dress floating like a lily on the floor around her feet. “Don’t be like that, Jesse. I got to be able to talk to you, don’t I? What’s the reason for being married if we cain’t talk?”

He looked up, hand poised as if he planned to start right back to whittling. “Just say it, then.”

“Two men come by while you were over to your mama’s house this morning. They’re gonna be up and down the holler surveying the farms and land, and deciding what they’re worth.”

He froze. Seconds passed; then his hands began to move again, the scraping of his knife against the block of wood the only sound in the room.

“They seem like good men,” she said. “They seem powerful sorry to be doing this, but Mr. Flaherty, he’s the one seems to be in charge, he says that he’s going to do everything he can to get us a good price and a good place to live when we leave here.”

He looked up. “Who’s leaving?”

“He says
we
are. He says we need to be prepared. Jesse, I’m scared. If we don’t do what they say, how can we keep them away? Nobody else up here is talking about staying to the bitter end. Nobody’s going to declare war on the government just so we can keep this place. When it comes time to go, you’ll be standing in front of this house by yourself.”

“You’re saying you won’t be standing beside me?”

She didn’t know how to answer that. “If I do, there will still only be two of us. And there will be as many of them as they need to make us go. Won’t it be better to get ready? Maybe go in on that lawyer Aubrey and the others have hired? To make sure we get what’s our due? Mr. Flaherty says—”

“I don’t care what he says!” Jesse slammed the block of wood down. “I don’t want you caring what he says, either. I don’t want you listening to anybody but me.”

Anger filled her. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. “How can I listen when you don’t even talk to me? I might as well be one of the dogs lying on the porch for all the words you send my way. Even my mama and daddy talked to me before they expected me to do anything difficult. They explained what was happening, and if I had feelings about it, they listened.”