The Family Plot (7 page)

With nothing but the narrow wedge of sun behind her, she saw only a lumpy jumble of junk and big, dark shapes lined up in rows, with paths running between them. Dahlia thought there might be wheels, table or chair legs, and maybe some doors, but the rest of the details eluded her, no matter how hard she stared.

With feeble optimism, Gabe tried, “You said you'd be shocked if there was any power out here. Oh, wait, I get it:
shocked.
”

“No pun was intended,” she said. “But we're definitely out of luck.”

His dad confirmed, “Yeah, I didn't see any lines running from the house.”

“Me either,” Dahlia muttered. “So it's daylight and flashlight, or no light for us.”

She took a pry bar to the nearest boarded-up window, and pulled the boards down in under a minute. To her left and right, the guys each picked a spot to do likewise. Soon they had a whole row of east-facing portals sucking up the late-morning sun.

It was enough to get started.

“Good God, what's this over here?” Bobby asked everyone and no one in particular. He pulled a pair of screen doors loose and pushed them aside; their wire mesh collapsing to rusty particles when they hit the dirt floor. “It looks like part of a truck. Or … a whole truck? Buried under all this junk?”

Brad hopped to his side. “Something from the early twenties,” he assessed with a squint. “Garage gold, if it's intact.” While Bobby excavated the vehicle, Brad scoped out another nearby pile. “I think there's an armoire over here. It's under a bunch of windows, and a ladder, and … is that a cupola?”

Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding?”

“Probably went on top of this place, or the barn, or some other outbuilding that's no longer standing. It's not very big…” He stood beside it, demonstrating that it was only as tall as his shoulders.

“Is there a weather vane?”

“Nope. There's a notch for one up top, but it's missing.”

“Maybe we'll find it later.” She wandered farther down the line, scanning the ancient tangle of detritus. Broken statuary here, horse tack there. Farming or gardening equipment—it was hard to say precisely what kind. A narrow, curved object standing up on one end—and leaning against a row of crumbling wood shelves.

Gabe came up behind her, and squinted at it. “What's that?”

“Looks like a bridge. The kind you put over a runoff gulley, or in a garden.”

“Huh. Well hey, I've found something cool over here. Come check it out.”

Back around another corner, almost beyond the sunlight's assistance, Gabe showed off a rowboat filled with doorknobs, a metal fan, and half a dozen cracked slabs of stone. “Here we've got the S.S.… something or another. I can't read it. The paint's all come off.”

“I can't tell, either.” She picked at a flake, and it fell to the ground. The boat was yellow once, with white trim and black letters to tell its name. She thought the wood might be maple or pine, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

“What's with all the doorknobs?” Gabe asked.

“Heaven only knows.” She dragged a gloved hand through the little pile, and was pleased to see the glint of brass and scrollwork. “But they're old, and they're lovely. We'll take 'em. I wonder what these…” Her voice trailed away as she pushed at the topmost stone slab. It only moved half an inch, but Gabe added his weight to the effort, and it scooted aside.

Their little corner of the carriage house went quiet.

Gabe whispered, “It looks like a tombstone.”

She wiped the back of her hand across the freshly exposed surface, but that didn't reveal any clues like scrollwork or letters. “Maybe? I don't see any names or dates. But it's the right kind of stone, and the right shape.”

“They're all the same,” Gabe noted. “What's that, four or five of them?”

“Yeah. I don't know, they might be something else. Paving stones for a garden? We found that bridge over there, after all. Once upon a time, this place might've been landscaped out the wazoo. Anyway, if they
are
tombstones, they aren't very big.”

“Maybe they're for kids.”

“Wow, you're morbid.” She elbowed him in the ribs, but gently, and with a smile. “Good find, sweetheart. I'm going to make one more pass, and then go get the lanterns. You stay here and pick a few big items we can yank out into the yard so we can clear out some room to work.”

She left the shadow of the dark structure and stomped back into the sun.

The day was getting warmer, but it wouldn't top seventy degrees by suppertime, and the sun would have tipped behind the mountain before that. The entire estate sat in Lookout's shadow, where it was cooler and darker than the rest of the city, even in summer.

The steep grade did something funny to the light, Dahlia thought. It spilled between the half-naked trees in a warm yellow glow, but vanished too soon, leaving a dry grayness in its wake. Or maybe it was just the season—the smell of fall coming in fast, and winter sneaking up behind it—that made everything feel so sharp and loud: the distant sound of a train calling out as it crossed the overpass, and the sound of the Withrow house itself, neglected and angry and unloved.

The grass was high enough to slap against Dahlia's knees when she trudged through it, back across the yard to the trucks parked side by side on what should've been the front lawn, but was now just a derelict space where the only things that grew were overgrown. But that's what happened when you stopped working against the weather in Tennessee. It all got away from you, and the land went back to seed faster than you'd ever think. You leave it alone for a few years, and this is what you get.

It was a wonder that things weren't worse. It was nothing short of a miracle that any paths remained at all, and the creeping vines hadn't yanked the siding loose from every wall.

She rolled up the truck's back door and pulled out three or four LED lanterns, bright enough to bring daylight to the carriage house, even in its farthest corners. She slung a couple of head lamps onto her wrist, too, in case anybody wanted one, then closed the truck again. She wasn't sure why—they hadn't seen another living soul, but it was habit. She was always more cautious than she really needed to be, or that's what Andy would've said, back when he was still her husband.

Boring and stuck in her ways. Control freak. Totally OCD. That's what he did say, after the papers were signed. But, seriously, fuck
him.

It was a beautiful day, and this part of the job was nothing but fun. She might as well enjoy it. She might as well enjoy something.

Arms full and heart almost light, she headed back to the carriage house. It was right across the yard, but she didn't take the straight path because she saw a trail worn into the grass. It could've been a leftover walkway—or, more likely, where deer came and went often enough to leave a notch.

Taking the trail was easier than lugging all that stuff through the thick grass, and it only took her ten yards out of her way. It was a nice opportunity to see more of the grounds. They were beautiful and mostly quiet, except for the distant hum of traffic every now and again, when someone hit the brakes or the horn over on Ochs Highway. The trees rustled in the wind, and the ground was dry enough that there wasn't any mud to hang onto her heels.

Might as well take the long way around.

The mountain was just beginning to turn a sharp red all around her, with undercurrents of orange and yellow burning through the forest foliage. In another month it'd all be brown. In another month, those little flashes of color would fall, and rot to mulch.

Except.

Dahlia knew in a blink that something else was on the mountain, moving with the breeze. There was a flash of a different yellow. Butter yellow. It flowed; it didn't flutter.

She froze, and the lanterns clanked together in her arms.

She'd glimpsed it, but she couldn't have said what it was. It was only there for an instant: an impression of someone at the edge of her vision, off to the left. Almost behind her, but not quite. She looked back that way, harder, watching the scenery for another hint of fabric. Yes,
that's
what it was. A dress or a skirt. A scarf. Something cotton and light, for summer—not darker, and thick for autumn.

She didn't see it again, but she spied something else: a suggestion of shapes in the underbrush, something solid and straight-edged beneath a winding, twisted rose tree that'd grown to the size of a car. Her forehead furrowed, making those sharp “elevens” between her eyebrows that she'd always had, and always hated.

Andy used to tell her she ought to Botox it, just to see what it was like. It might be pretty. She'd replied that he ought to wax his balls. By the same rationale, that could look nice.

Goddammit, there he was again, worming into her thoughts unwanted.

Goddam him, in particular.

She set the lanterns down in the grass and gravel near the rose tree, letting the head lamps slide from her wrist. Grateful for her work gloves, she pushed the lowest thorny branches aside, and brushed a smattering of twigs and leaves away from a large, oval tombstone.

She could've pretended it was something else, but why bother?

It'd fallen, and it'd been chewed up by the seasons, but she could still read the face:
PFC REAGAN H. FOSTER,
1897–1915. The military logo was worn, but still visible. He'd been eighteen years old, and in the army. He'd likely died in World War I.

“Aw.” She scooted over to its side. Call it superstition or politeness, but she didn't want to stand on anybody's grave, if she could help it. “Poor kid. Barely any younger than Gabe.”

Dahlia's knees cracked when she stood up straight again. With her hands on her hips, she surveyed the rest of the area. It was a level corner of the lot, with several more roses and a lilac or two planted haphazardly … or, no, not haphazardly. They were planted deliberately, on an incomplete grid.

She tiptoed through the site, and found another stone. This one was facedown, so she couldn't read it. When she tried to turn it over, she disturbed some worms, then swiftly lost her grip. The marker collapsed back into the earth with a thud, but beside it, a broken nub was hidden by the grass. She didn't see the top of the stone, but the bottom bit read, “his everlasting arms.”

She squeezed herself between two small trees, and three more tombstones revealed themselves—all with military insignias, all with dates in 1917. And over by the trunk of an oak tree that must've been a hundred years old when it fell … there were two others, both belonging to women, Mary Joanne Alber and Christina Fay Wright. If they were related, there was no indication.

Pieces of at least four other stones littered the remains of a paving stone path. Dahlia was just starting to hunt for more when Brad said her name. He only spoke it, not called it, but she jumped. She hadn't heard him approach.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Flustered, she replied, “I found a cemetery. I didn't know … well, it wasn't in the paperwork.”

He perked right up. “What? Where? I don't see…,” he began, but his eyes landed on the rose tree, and the things beneath it.

“I counted about a dozen graves, but I only just started looking.”

“And your dad didn't mention it?”

“Maybe he didn't know about it. Some of the stones are from the First World War, but others seem to belong to random people. I don't see the Withrow name on any of them. But…” She used her hand to shade her eyes, and scanned the area. “There could be more. I can't tell how far back the plot goes.”

“Yeah, this is pretty overgrown. How'd you find it?”

She thought again of that flicker, a billowing flap of light fabric. It might have had flowers on it. Or was she only making up details after the fact? “I … um … I thought I saw something. Out of the corner of my eye, you know. Figured I'd go take a look.”

“A hidden cemetery is pretty cool, but it's no good to us, is it? We can't take the stones back to Nashville.”

“Of course we can't. It's just strange, that's all. I wonder what the demo crew will do about it when they tear everything down.”

Brad shrugged and picked up the LED lanterns where Dahlia had dropped them into the grass. “Probably the same thing the Withrows have done for the last hundred years: Ignore it, and forget about it. Let the woods have it.”

“They can't, if it's an open cemetery. They have to cordon it off, preserve it, something like that. There are laws about that kind of thing—and, besides, if we need to make a path for Dad and the big trailer … it'll cut right across this part of the property. I'd better call home, or maybe Ms. Withrow herself. We might have a problem.”

The lanterns jangled in his hand. “Why would we put the pathway here?”

“Where else would it go? The Dooley probably won't fit through the main pass, so it'll have to come around that bend, instead. Even if by some miracle it
did
squeak through the squeeze—the demo crew will need a wider route to bring in the bulldozers when they come for the teardown later this month.” The idea of a cemetery holding up the demolition was almost a little ray of sunshine. “Ms. Withrow's timeline for destruction might require some adjustment.”

“Ours doesn't. Not yet.”

“I know.” She joined him on his walk back to the carriage house. “I'll drop Dad a line tonight or tomorrow, and we'll figure it out from there. Anyway, I guess my smoke break's over—it's back to work for me.”

“You don't smoke. Wait, does anybody here smoke?”

“No, but a smoke break sounds better than a cemetery break, doesn't it?”

“No way. I'd rather take a cemetery break any day of the week.”

She nodded approvingly. “And that's why we like you, Brad.”