“Ah, as is Arlie over there. The rest of Marvena’s men … well, they were not so willing to cooperate when asked, so indeed they will need to be sent on to face their charges—”
Marvena says, “Come on now; let them go—”
“Miss Whitcomb, you should be counting your blessings,” Abe says. “If you produce again, I will know, and there will be no second chance for you.”
“Why would George Vogel possibly care?” Lily says. “One small still! And Daniel—”
Abe allows another flicker of smile. “I’m surprised you’d care so much for Daniel’s friend. In any case, you do not have the relationship with George Vogel that Daniel did.”
“And what, exactly, was that? What hold did George have over my husband? I can’t believe Daniel was motivated simply by the payments he received from George.”
Marvena recoils at Lily’s words, wants to holler at her, What are you playing with? Stop! She’s afraid of making their situation with this Abe—and George Vogel—even worse.
But Lily is going on, inflamed by Abe’s thin smile. “Oh yes,” she says, “I’ve figured it out—that Daniel got separate payments from George.…”
Her voice withers to a stop. Marvena notes the look on Lily’s face as the other woman figures out, finally, that she’s pressing too hard.
“If Daniel didn’t tell you of the hold Mr. Vogel had over him, it is not my place to decide whether or not you should know it.”
“But Mr. Vogel doesn’t have a hold over me—” Lily starts.
“Doesn’t he?” Abe snaps the words like a whip.
“Well, you said … if ever I needed help…” Lily falters at Abe’s look.
Abe says, “Choose the use of your favor wisely, Sheriff Ross.”
Marvena wants to scream at her, Use the favor to get back my business! But then she sees in the sorrowful look flickering in the shadows on the other woman’s face: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
* * *
The next morning, outside the jailhouse, Lily says, “Please, at least let me drive you?”
Marvena shakes her head. Her men have already been transported to the state prison, pending trial—except Arlie. Lily had given him a head start the night before, after Abe Miller left. Marvena had hollered at him that he’d better never show his face around here again as he’d scurried out. Now she’ll have to go back to living hand to mouth on hunting and gardening. She doesn’t like the notion of asking the very men she’s pushing to strike to help her out.
“Thanks for the offer of a ride,” Marvena says, “but I’m ready to stretch my legs a mite.”
“I couldn’t ask Miller to help you. Not until I find out what happened to Daniel.”
“Then what? You unleash the wrath of Vogel on whoever had a hand in Daniel’s death?”
She’d meant the words as a sneer, to show that she didn’t believe Lily was tough enough to do so. But Lily’s suddenly hard gaze startles Marvena—yes, that is exactly what Lily plans.
From inside the house, the women hear the voices of their three children all singing together: “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-rah, That’s an Irish lullaby.” Frankie’s voice rings the strongest, and Marvena knows that she’d have been the one who convinced the other two to make a chorus with her.
“I lost the baby,” Lily says flatly. “I haven’t had a chance to ask after Eula.”
“I’ve been myself,” Marvena says. “The proprietress tells me that Eula ran off with a new miner who took a fancy to her. She didn’t know his name.”
Lily gives Marvena a long look. “You believe that?”
Marvena shrugs. “I want to.” She looks down. “I’m sorry about your baby.”
“Thank you. Deep down, I knew from the outset that something was wrong, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. There are lots of things, I’m finding, that are like that. Anyhow, I reckon some of Tom’s friends were watching for an opportune moment to overtake me and get the keys and set Tom free. So while I was laid up, that’s what happened. So I’ve been told.”
Her snap on the last word makes her look back at Lily. Marvena reads in Lily’s expression that she doesn’t believe what she’s been told. A sense of unease overcomes her. I want to, she’d just said, about believing the simple explanation for Eula’s disappearance.
“Have you seen Tom?” Lily asks.
“No,” Marvena says, knowing that Lily won’t believe her. “I’m sure his friends made sure he got a long way from Bronwyn County. That’d be the smart thing.”
“Tom also told me that Daniel was going to do more than come out for unionization. That he was going to contact a friend at the Bureau of Mines to inspect Ross Mining.”
Marvena looks down, not wanting Lily to read her expression as she’d just read Lily’s.
“Tom said Daniel referred to this friend as someone from the war. But Daniel almost never talked about the war with me. So I don’t know who that might be. I’ve read and reread all of Daniel’s letters from the war, looking for the name of this friend. I haven’t found anything.”
Letters. Could the name be in the letters he’d sent her? Marvena doesn’t know many who can read. Maybe one of the children who’d been with their mamas at Nana’s house the other day? She’ll have to think carefully about who to trust, to ask. Should she ask Lily? But no. If Lily’s willing to let Vogel stamp out her little business, would she be willing to betray anything she learns about the unionization cause if it might help her avenge Daniel’s death?
“I don’t know what Tom was talking about,” Marvena says.
“I’ll come by in a few days, in case you recollect—”
“There’s no need for that.”
Lily walks down the rise of yard, from the jailhouse to her back kitchen door, opens it, goes inside. A moment later, she steps out with Frankie, gently holding the girl’s hand. Marvena’s heart grabs at the sight of her littlest daughter.
Frankie runs to Marvena, flings herself at her mama, suddenly sobbing.
“It’s all right,” Marvena says, catching the child up in her arms. “I’m all right. I’m here.”
Then she carries Frankie past Daniel and Lily’s house, out to Court Street, and begins the trek, again, back to her cabin.
CHAPTER 21
LILY
The next day, a man, who introduces himself as LeRoy Sanderson, the new farmhand for Ada Gottschalk since Rusty’s disappearance, comes to Lily’s house with bad news.
“It ain’t a pretty sight,” LeRoy says.
“Show us,” Lily says.
“The smell is kinda fierce, too—”
“Go!”
“I’m jus’ sayin’, you bein’ a lady an’ all. Maybe you’d better leave this to the men.”
“Either share the news, or I’ll arrest you for harassment!” Lily snaps.
She isn’t sure that is a real charge, but it is enough to get him to drawl, “Well, I was down t’the creek fishing, and then I saw something, rollin’ up agin the bank. Mrs. Gottschalk said I’d better come right quick to report it.”
Lily’s stomach turns, but she simply nods and then sends Jolene, with a basket of fritters they’d just finished frying up, down to Mama’s with Micah. Then she rounds up Martin and some other men and follows LeRoy back to Ada’s farm.
By the time they gather behind Ada’s farmhouse, LeRoy’s again dithering about the propriety of a woman seeing what he’s found.
Lily is impatient to get to the site and the body before full dark sets in. She puts her hand to her revolver. “Do you want me to bring you in for interfering with an investigation, or lead us to the bank where you supposedly found this body?”
Ada Gottschalk, standing behind them on the back stoop of her farmhouse, clears her throat impatiently. “Mr. Sanderson, lead the sheriff and her men on down. She can handle it.”
Lily looks back at Ada to give her a smile of thanks, but the woman has already turned to go back in, to tend to the bread L
ily can smell baking in the oven just inside the kitchen door.
He turns, and she and Martin and two men they have deputized follow him to a line of trees just on the other side of Ada’s newly turned vegetable garden. A soft spring rain has started. Lily shivers in her coat, pulls her hat down more tightly on her head.
They all smell the body before they get to the bank. Martin puts his sleeve to his nose. Lily makes it a few more steps before pulling out a handkerchief from her pocket. One of the deputized men veers off the path, vomits.
They’re all quiet the rest of the way down the path to the bank. Here large rocks edge between earth and creek. Lily looks at the body. Female. Facedown. The dress is faded, but Lily can see it is mainly blue. Snagged in an eddy of broken branches and rocks. Lily steps forward.
Oh God. Lily silently prays, Not Eula—though Eula is the only girl she knows of who is missing in Bronwyn County. She does not want to deliver bad news to any mother, but she shudders at the thought of going to Marvena to utter the words: Eula’s been found.
“Lily, you don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do, Martin,” she says. “Help me pull her in. Roll her over.”
Within minutes they have the body out of the water, up on the path. There’s little intact of her face; what’s left of her is bloated, skin peeling back from muscle and bone. She could have been in the water just weeks, or longer if she’d frozen after she’d first fallen in.
“I need your pocketknife,” Lily says. Her voice sounds so distant, wooden.
Martin tosses his knife on the ground next to Lily. Then he jumps up, runs a few steps before stopping to retch. Lily holds her breath, swallows back bile. She slices off a piece of cloth from the girl’s hem, stares at the swatch in her hand. She recognizes the same red-flowered blue cloth as that of the tiny dress on the doll she’d found in Daniel’s drawer. As the cloth patching the quilt in Marvena’s cabin.
Lily figures the girl’s body had snagged underwater in rocks and branches, rather than going downstream to the mighty Ohio River, and that a winter colder than usual made the water icy enough to preserve the body for a time. But the rush of water in the spring thaw had carried the body down, where it snagged again in the eddy by the Gottschalks’ farm. At the hairpin turn.
Lily looks over the girl’s body. She doesn’t see any bullet wounds or stab marks, but those could have been obliterated by decomposition. There is, though, a thick indentation in the waxy yellow flesh of her neck. The indentation is about the thickness of a rope. Had someone tried to hang her or strangle her? Or was there another explanation?
Lily walks over to the men who’ve gathered with Martin. They’re all staring at her, silent.
“We need to fetch Elias,” she says. She pauses, her voice catching. The last time he’d have been called as county coroner would have been after Daniel was found. Lily clears her throat, goes on. “The girl’s body will need to be examined before she’s transported to the Kinship funeral home, and prepared for a proper burial.”
Then she looks at Martin. “You and I—” Lily stops, looks at the bit of cloth in her hand. “We’re going to go tell the poor girl’s mother.”
Yet she knows she will not need to say anything. Marvena will read the terrible news writ into her face.
CHAPTER 22
MARVENA
A loud snap startles Marvena awake from a fretful dream.
It takes her a moment to adjust to the dark of her cabin. Frankie stirs on the straw mattress next to her, and Marvena sits up, touches the child’s forehead, checking for warmth, suddenly terrified that her foot—though nearly healed by now—has set up with an infection that Marvena somehow missed. But Frankie feels cool to the touch.
Marvena wants to find the source of the snap. Tom? Surely he’d not be fool enough to come out of the cave now. He’d gone deep, deep down a narrow, dangerous tunnel when he’d heard Lily and her men, then stayed hidden.
She’d gone to him, dark of night, as soon as she was back. He had raged, wanted to rush down the mountain, find whoever had betrayed her, find Luther and kill him, grab Alistair.
She’d slapped her brother then, just to get him to hush, told him not to be a fool. He’d be dead before he could get near Luther, and what good would that do poor Alistair?
She told Tom to bide his time, that the men were set now not just in Rossville but throughout the region to rise up.
Now Marvena sits up, slides to the foot of the bed, picks up her shotgun. She gets her knife, too, sheathed in its leather cover, and tucks it in her skirt’s waistband.
Shotgun at the ready, she goes out the front door onto the porch. She almost laughs when she sees the source of the loud snap, the nearly full moon revealing that a dead branch on the sycamore tree had fallen to the ground.
There’s a soft chill to the air, yet Marvena sits down on the porch swing and sets her shotgun aside, wrapping her arms around her chest. She rubs her arms for warmth. She doesn’t want to go back in the cabin, fearful she’ll wake Frankie, who’d barely stopped weeping since they’d left Lily’s this second time. The child wept for her cousin Alistair. She wept, missing Jolene and even Micah. She wept for her Uncle Tom and the man she’d known as Uncle Daniel. She wept, wanting her big sister, Eula, back.
Marvena rocks slightly in the swing, resting the back of her head against the heavy chain. Might be that she’ll doze out here, a blessedly dreamless sleep. She can’t quite recollect, but she senses she’d been dreaming of Eula. Or of a barn dance, of her and Daniel as partners—a ridiculous dream. She and Daniel had never danced like that.
Still, her heart is racing, and though she tries to tell herself it’s the snapped branch that’s worried her to restlessness, she feels a tightening in the air. She’s staring down the lane, waiting, watching for a sign—a sound, a movement, a stirring.
For a long spell, it’s just her, the porch swing, the moon. “In the stillness of the midnight,” Frankie singing the refrain from her favorite hymn, “Precious Memories,” comes to her.
Then she hears the automobile. The sheriff’s.
Marvena holds the shotgun steady, even after the automobile stops, even after Lily gets out of the driver’s side, and Martin gets out of the passenger’s side. Neither of them raise weapons. They start to the porch, but then Lily turns, mutters something to Martin, and he stops, leaning into the vehicle’s open door.
He stares at the ground, but Lily walks to her, eyes on her steadily.
Marvena’s hands sink down with the shotgun. She hears it clatter to the porch as if from a great distance, as if the sound of it is already a memory or perhaps another dream. Marvena trembles. Oh God, oh God, let this be a dream. But she knows the truth before Lily steps on the first porch step. She sees it in the woman’s walk, in her eyes, not pity, worse than pity. Sorrow.
Then Lily is in front of her, and she holds out her hand, fingers closed over her palm. Marvena wants to look away, but something pulls her gaze down to Lily’s hand.
Lily opens her fingers, and Marvena sees the filthy calico cloth, tiny red flowers on pale blue cotton, same cloth she’d used to make Eula’s sixteenth birthday dress, same cloth that offered scraps to patch old quilt curtains and make a tiny dress for one of Daniel’s whimsical dolls, the one Lily had found in his drawer in the jailhouse. Lily starts to speak, but the scrap of cloth signifies the bitter truth: Eula’s been found.
Marvena stumbles forward, as if something horrid has shoved her from behind, knocking the wind from her lungs. Lily catches her, dropping the cloth, and some part of Marvena wants to twist away from the other woman, but she has no strength for it. All of her will is caught by the wretchedness twisting her heart and lodging in her throat, and she slumps silently in Lily’s arms.
CHAPTER 23
LILY
Two days later, Lily glances over at Mama, rewrapping her dried apple stack cake.
“You’re going to worry that poor cake down to crumbs,” Lily says. She’s putting jars
of food—canned peaches, pickles, jams—in a wood crate. She hesitates, suddenly wanting to keep the last jar of black raspberry jam for her children.
“That poor woman, losing a child, it’s the worst—” Mama stops, puts a hand to Lily’s face, and Lily sees in Mama’s eyes what she said while Lily was recovering after the miscarriage—Take care of yourself, child. Now Lily put the black raspberry jam back in the box, reminding herself to be generous with Marvena and Frankie. She can pick more black raspberries later in the summer.
They hear the front door open, a somber deep male voice.
“Elias is here,” Lily says. She puts the jar in the crate, closes the lid, picks up the box.
“Should you be lifting—”
“I’ll be fine, Mama,” Lily says.
They go to the parlor, where Elias is kneeling to greet Jolene, Micah, and Caleb Jr., all gathered around him excitedly. Like Daniel, he always had a soft spot for children, and always thought to bring them some treat or another. This time it’s butterscotch buttons. He’d been so good with his own daughter, and Lily suddenly misses Sophie and Ruth. How would Elias’s life be different if they’d survived the influenza outbreak years ago? They’d both died within days of each other shortly after the horrific scene with Hahn and Ada Gottschalk. For one, it was likely Luther wouldn’t be living with him.
Elias scrambles up. “Good morning, Lily. Here, let me get that crate for you.” He hurries to her, takes the crate.
Though it’s only nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning, Elias looks weary. As county coroner, Elias had examined the remains of the girl’s body, reporting to Lily that she’d suffered a broken neck, likely from a fall into the creek upstream, hopefully dying immediately.
When Lily informed Elias that the boardinghouse proprietress had told Marvena that Eula had run off with a young miner, Elias suggested that Eula fell to her death as it appeared and the young lover had panicked and run away. Maybe, Lily had said. But doubts gnawed at her later as she wrote out the facts of Eula’s death and Elias’s theory in her notebook, adding her concern that the young miner seemed too easy an answer for Eula’s death.
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