The Innocent (21 page)

It could be she sensed his attraction to Carlyn and worried he’d tempt Carlyn away from the village. She’d probably seen many young women desert the Shaker way for a more normal life.

But if Carlyn was feeling any temptation to leave the Shakers, she didn’t show it. She had washed her face and changed clothes since they talked that morning. Now he was the one with the black smudges on his face and the odor of smoke clinging to him.

She still wore a Shaker dress with the wide white kerchief draped around her shoulders and lapped across her front. No unruly strands of hair escaped her cap. With her head bent and her hands folded in her lap, she didn’t look anything like the girl he carried in his thoughts. It was as if the Shakers had gathered her spirit and stuffed it out of sight somewhere the same as her hair hidden by her cap.

He wanted to reach across the space between them to lift up her chin and make her look at him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Even if the old Shaker sister and Elder Derron hadn’t been there beside them, he couldn’t. She was yearning after her missing husband, not him.

He needed to rein in his imagination. It could be he was simply moved by her admirable faithfulness after the way Hilda so quickly forgot her promise to wait for him when he marched off to war. His heart was bruised by Hilda’s betrayal and by the war. Something about running toward death in battle after battle made a man dream of a wife and children around his supper table or sitting beside him on a church pew. He’d gone through the war certain that woman would be Hilda, but now when he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine her being the wife he’d dreamed about in those army camps. If they had married, they would have both been miserable.

His foolish imaginings about Carlyn might be every bit as delusional. She had spirit. They both liked dogs. That was hardly enough reason for him to want to take her hand and lead her away from this place.

He needed to look for the answer to his dreams elsewhere. There were women who would welcome his attentions. Women other than Mrs. Snowden’s Florence, who was definitely not in his dreams.

Did he reach for the unattainable on purpose? A way to protect his heart. He could stop that. He could put Carlyn out of his mind.

Then she raised her head and looked directly at him. While every inch of her posture suggested submission to the Shaker rules, her eyes were still that woman he’d first seen standing in her doorway, a gun hooked over her arm. And his heart beat a little faster.

Elder Derron cleared his throat and broke the odd silence in the room. “I believe you know Sister Carlyn and Sister Edna.”

Mitchell pulled his eyes away from Carlyn but not before he caught the ghost of a smile on her lips. Strange how easy a man’s hopes could be lifted.

He pushed that thought aside to turn toward the elder. The man’s cough was gone. Also gone was the trembling weakness Mitchell had noted at the site of the fire. Here at his desk, the elder looked in control, very capable of attending to the business of the Shaker village.

“Yes. Mrs. Kearney brought me her dog when she found out she couldn’t keep it here, and I talked with Sister Edna earlier today.” He smiled over at the old sister. Her face tightened into a fiercer scowl. “I apologize, Sister Edna, if I upset you this morning.”

Her face didn’t soften. “It’s my duty to protect the young sisters in my charge from those of the world.”

“I meant no harm.” Mitchell tried to look as sincere as possible, but there was no way he was going to win Sister Edna over. Not unless he joined the Shakers and began wearing their costume and probably not even then. She didn’t seem much happier with Elder Derron than she was with him. In fact, her frown darkened when the elder spoke.

“I’m sure Sister Edna knows that.” The elder turned toward Sister Edna.

The woman wasn’t silenced by the elder’s words. “Whether he did or not, someone meant us harm and our brother is dead because of it.” She stared straight at Elder Derron until he looked down at his hands spread on his thighs.

“Yea, Sister, you speak truth.” The elder pulled in a breath. “Sorrowful truth.”

The old sister narrowed her eyes and stared at the elder’s bent head. “The truth is what we need to discover.”

Mitchell had heard the sisters had as much say in the Shaker Society as the men. Even so, he was surprised at how Sister Edna addressed the elder. Then again, that might be her usual manner of speaking. It was certainly how she’d spoken to him that morning when she’d accused him of being the devil.

He waited for the elder to speak, but instead another uncomfortable silence fell over them. Mitchell decided to take the bull by the horns. It was getting late in the day, and he needed to get back to town in case something there needed his attention. Problems didn’t take turns. Instead they often came in bunches.

“I asked Elder Derron to let me speak to you about what you said this morning, Sister Edna. About Mrs. Kearney witnessing an argument between Brother Henry and someone.” Mitchell let his gaze drift from Sister Edna to Carlyn. She was gripping her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white.

“Sister Carlyn reported such to me.” Sister Edna stressed the Sister Carlyn as though Mitchell calling her Mrs. Kearney brought the idea of matrimony too much to mind.

Mitchell didn’t care. Carlyn wasn’t his sister. “Tell me what happened.”

Carlyn looked up as though ready to answer, but Sister Edna pushed her words out first. “Our sister says she took a wrong turn yesterday on her way back to work in our Gathering Family gardens. She had been confessing her sins to me and was somewhat distraught due to her failure to conquer such wrong behavior. At least that is what she claimed. Is that not correct, Sister?”

“Yea,” Carlyn murmured, but there was little conviction in her voice.

“It might be helpful if Mrs. Kearney speaks for herself, Sister Edna.” Mitchell turned in his chair to face the women directly and used his most official voice. “Then once she has told her story, you can add what you feel necessary.”

Sister Edna pursed her lips, refusal obvious in her frown, but Elder Derron intervened.

“Let the young sister tell the sheriff what she saw, Sister Edna.”

Carlyn moistened her lips as she glanced toward the older woman and then at the elder. Mitchell worried he might be making trouble for her, but he did need to hear her story firsthand. She shot a look toward him and then stared back down at her hands. As though she suddenly realized she was gripping them too hard, she unfolded her hands and placed her palms flat on her apron. Her fingers danced up and down nervously.

Mitchell wanted to reach across the space between them and take those hands in his. Lend her some of his calmness. At the same time, he had to wonder what was making her so nervous. He didn’t want to think she was involved in something wrong, but it was plain she wasn’t eager to tell what it was she knew. At least to him.

Elder Derron leaned forward in his chair toward Carlyn. “Sister, it is getting late. It would be good for you to tell your story so that we can be about our duties and the sheriff can be about his.”

A little of his earlier nerves sounded in the elder’s voice. The fire had upset them all. Mitchell leaned back in his chair. He could wait. That generally brought out the story quicker than did peppering a reluctant witness with questions.

“Take your time,” he told Carlyn.

She looked up then and lifted her chin a bit as she began
talking. “It is as Sister Edna said. I was meeting with her to confess my wrongs and Sister Edna suggested I give my behavior more thought. I know she didn’t mean for me to do so if it meant not paying attention to my duties, but that is what happened. I let my thoughts blind me to my proper path back to the garden. Then I heard men talking, and because there was no one else around, I feared they would think I was doing something improper.” She looked at the elder. “Sister Edna has impressed upon me that I should guard against being a temptation to the brethren.”

“As is only proper.” The elder nodded.

“What do you mean a temptation?” Mitchell knew what sort of temptation she was to him, but the Shakers didn’t have normal ideas about such feelings.

Color rose in Carlyn’s cheeks and she was so slow to speak that the other woman jumped in with the answer first. “She’s pretty. That can be a problem for some among the brethren who have not fully embraced the Shaker way.” Sister Edna glared at Mitchell. “I have no doubt that you, being of the world, understand exactly what I mean.”

“Come, Sister Edna.” Elder Derron held his hand out toward Sister Edna. “We are not here to judge the sheriff. We are merely here to let Sister Carlyn tell what she saw.”

Sister Edna turned her frown on the elder, but he pretended not to notice as he said, “Please continue, Sister Carlyn.”

Carlyn once more moistened her lips as though her mouth were too dry. “I stepped back against the chicken house out of sight of the men. I had already realized I was on the wrong path, but I hoped to find a way to the garden without backtracking. I had seen the barn and that’s how I knew where I was.”

“The barn that burned?” Mitchell asked.

“Yes.”

It felt something like a victory to hear her answer without the Shaker yea, however foolish that was. “So then what happened?”

“The men’s voices got closer.” Suddenly the color that had been in her cheeks drained away. “They appeared to be arguing.”

“And did you recognize Brother Henry as one of the men?”

“I did not know Brother Henry. I haven’t been here long. But you know that.” She flashed a look up at him and then at the elder. “Anyway, Sister Edna later said it was Brother Henry after I came back out on the main path and stumbled into her.”

Mitchell looked at Sister Edna. “So you saw the men as well?”

“Nay, only Brother Henry. I did not see the man from the world.” Sister Edna’s voice carried distaste. “I feared Sister Carlyn had arranged to meet this man since she knew him, but when I said as much and she looked near to fainting, I realized that was not the case.”

“What man?” Mitchell asked, but he knew before Carlyn answered. He knew from the way her hands trembled and she had to summon her voice from some place it had gone to hide.

“Curt. Curt Whitlow.”

19

Carlyn hadn’t wanted to say Curt Whitlow’s name. She didn’t want to even think his name. None of what happened had anything to do with her. It was a mere coincidence that she saw Curt arguing with Brother Henry. Nothing more.

Even so, speaking the man’s name aloud to Sheriff Brodie made it sound too odd. Of all the people in the village, she was the one to stumble across Curt Whitlow. A coincidence, she reminded herself. But then her mother said coincidences were sometimes the Lord’s invisible hand at work. Could it be that Carlyn was meant to be on the wrong path so she would overhear the argument?

But why? If it was to save Brother Henry, she had failed miserably in that. Or perhaps she wasn’t the one who’d failed. She told Sister Edna about Curt. Sister Edna said she’d tell the Ministry, the two eldresses and two elders appointed leaders of the community. They lived in isolation with no contact with the rest of the village.

“That’s so they can be impartial when they make judgments.” Sister Berdine had pointed out the windows of their rooms one day when they passed the Meeting House. She kept her voice low as though worried she might be overheard. “They live up there over where we have church. They’re supposed to be wiser and holier than everybody else.”

“Have you ever seen them?”

“Only their eyes.” When Carlyn looked puzzled, Sister Berdine explained. “In those peepholes above the doors in the Meeting House. They watch to be sure no one misbehaves during the worship.”

“Misbehaves?”

“You know. Starts jigging to a different tune than the Shaker one. No waltzing around the rules allowed.”

There was always someone watching. Even here, especially here in Elder Derron’s office, eyes were staring at her. Sister Edna’s. Elder Derron’s. Sheriff Brodie’s.

“The man you saw arguing with Brother Henry was Curt Whitlow?” Sheriff Brodie’s voice held a measure of disbelief.

Carlyn pulled in a slow breath and raised her eyes to look at the sheriff. “I have no reason to lie about that.”

Sister Edna spoke up. She lacked Sister Muriel’s gift of silence. “The young sister has a propensity to bend the truth, but I have yet to know her to lie outright, Sheriff.”

Carlyn ignored Sister Edna and kept looking at the sheriff. “I would not lie to you.” She wanted him to believe her. With Sister Edna glaring at her and Elder Derron staring down at the floor as if the sight of her was painful, she needed to think the sheriff was a friend and not someone suspecting her of wrongdoing.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Kearney.” Sheriff Brodie met her eyes.
“It wasn’t that I doubted your word. I am just surprised that Whitlow was the man you saw.”

“That is not so surprising,” Elder Derron raised his head to say. “We have had dealings with Mr. Whitlow in regard to properties in the area and he has purchased things from us on occasion. He may have been asking Brother Henry about a horse.” His voice turned somber. “Brother Henry was an excellent horseman. He will be sorely missed.”