The Troubles (The Jessica Trilogy Book 2)

by Connie Johnson Hambley

  Nan began to wipe down the already spotless counters, adjusting the canisters of sugar and tea to perfect angles. “How important is it? You’ve got your notes.”

  “Look. I have to get these horses ready for a major event in a few weeks. The timing is tight, and the pressure on. I need to be efficient. This guy is good. Really good. But we only have one chance to get the training right, and I need to talk with him.” She stood and positioned her body directly in front of Nan, ensuring the housekeeper’s full attention. She bent her neck slightly to look directly into Nan’s face. “What did you say the man’s name was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She took the cloth from Nan’s hand and waited.

  Finally, Nan responded. “Tim.”

  “Tim...?” She let her voice trail off, asking for more. Getting nothing, her mouth firmed to a straight line. “He chose all of the horses, right? There’s no one else I’d need to speak with, right?”

  The older woman’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.”

  Jessica considered how to phrase her next question. “How long has Tim worked for Michael?”

  “For as long as I can remember.”

  “But Michael’s only been in Ireland a few weeks.”

  Nan stared at Jessica then shrugged. Without speaking, she gathered up her bags and left.

  Jessica was holed up in a safe house, enveloped in an artificial world created for her privacy, with her main contact feeling more like an adversary than an ally. Nan’s hint of Michael having a past in Ireland or friends for years only served as a painful reminder of how brutally separated from the world she remained. Isolation is perfect if you wanted to be alone. It becomes a problem when you feel alone.

  She realized her hands were shaking from wounds reopened and raw. Ruefully, Jessica acknowledged that she didn’t restore her name or her freedom. In some kind of cruel joke, just as she began to reclaim her life, she found out it wasn’t hers to begin with.

  Jessica felt too heavy to move and too muddled to make sense of the lengthy dawn. Emotional fatigue from the questions unearthed in her conversation with Nan pulled down her. Discordant details continued to impede her rest and, once again, sleep was light and brief with her habit of vigilance unbroken. The unnaturally short night did nothing to help her nerves.

  She gave up on sleep and changed into fresh jeans and a light fleece as the sky slowly shifted hues. Hugging herself against the morning air, she headed to the comforting smells and warmth of the barn.

  Before the sun peeked from the horizon, the bright morning moon colored the countryside a luminous blue. Stone walls and hedgerows heavy with wild roses crisscrossed patchwork fields. The drizzle of the past day had given way to mist that blurred nature’s green, pink, and blue hues. Low-lying clouds clung to the grassy knolls, waiting to be warmed and lifted.

  Planxty picked his way up the path, still mellow enough from yesterday’s training to be ridden bareback. Jessica used his senses to tell her they were alone and safe. He hung his head on a loose rein, his ears forward as he examined the trail. The loudest sounds were the steady breathing of the horse and his heavy thudding hooves.

  Lulled by the sensations of the horse’s movements, the hollow hurt of being shunned and cast away diminished. She wanted to ground herself to this time and this place. Everything that had gone before her existed as no more than a thought. In this moment she simply was. The gray of the horse, her pale skin, and wisp of blonde hair made her feel more a part of the mist than the earth. Whatever painful emotions or memories crept in she willed away before they hardened.

  Jessica and Planxty wandered along a countryside suspended in the moment between sleep and wakefulness. She let her horse do most of the thinking as she felt some primal part of her being drawn farther along the ancient trails. The terse interchange with Nan still rang through her head, so she steered away from paths she had ridden before. Maybe she could find the peace she yearned a little farther down the trail.

  Only once did Planxty balk at Jessica’s choice as he tried to overrule her final turn that took them both to the top of a rounded hill. Roused by the horse’s refusal, she listened for any indication that they were not alone. Satisfied, she encouraged the reluctant animal forward and was surprised again when the animal skittered at sounds she could not hear. Habit made her skin prickle from nerves.

  When they finally entered the clearing, Jessica caught her breath. The random scattering of rock debris she thought she saw turned out to be a perfectly formed circle of ancient boulders—Stonehenge on a smaller scale. The tall grass on the hilltop bent from its own weight, unkempt and untouched, perfectly bowed as if smoothed by hand. Grass inside the circle was lumpy, having grown over rocks deposited there centuries ago. Boulders varied in size from being somewhat square in shape and about three feet wide to the largest close to eight feet tall and rectangular. Two boulders, that once stood upright and leaned with age, were capped with a slab that threatened to topple off. Their gray and lichen covered sides glowed in the growing light, matched in color only by the mists that were finally warming to life. The scene had an expectant quality, as if waiting for her.

  The sun finally conquered the horizon, and she watched in fascination as the white-gold crescent rose, perfectly framed by the three huge stones. Long shadows crept toward her and she turned to see what they marked. A sudden flash made her heart stop. She instinctively ducked, listening for a sound that never came. Raising her head, she was rattled when she saw her own shadow cast upon a church steeple down in the valley. The illusion happened only for an instant and disappeared before a gasp escaped her lips. Planxty stood rooted on stiffened legs with muscles tense and ready.

  Even if Jessica wanted to run, she couldn’t. Time lengthened, and she became aware of a deep and seductive pull at some unknown part of her. An ache of sorrow grew unchecked. For a moment, the stone circle wasn’t foreign or separate, but was as much a part of her as it was to Ireland. The encrusted boulders surrounded her with centuries of myths and history. She could feel the imminent arrival of something. A presence? Mesmerized, she shaded her eyes with a raised arm and watched as films of mist began to glow with the same white gold of the rising sun. The vapor expanded upward in a single layer from the ground and then settled back again—a deep sigh of the earth. The focused heat of the sun warmed one wisp enough for it to separate and become independent. The cloud hovered before it slowly drifted into two. Suspended by an unseen power, the two parts intertwined then parted, each trailing a reluctant finger of vapor behind it.

  A cool breath of air teased at the nape of Jessica’s neck, and she shrugged her shoulders to usher the feeling away. She listened to the mist’s whisperings as it lifted around her, seeming to carry her emptiness with it.

  Jessica!

  She cocked her head to listen. The line between real and fable dissolved as she let herself be drawn toward whatever wanted her. For a moment, she felt loved, teased with warmth and comfort on the wings of the angelic mists. Sleep-starved and half dreaming, she resisted the beckoning Trojan as too powerful, too familiar. Its proprietary grip lured her senses to believe the impossible. Jessica breathed deeply, teetering between worlds. Then she bore down, forcing out what had so cunningly tried to seduce her. The fight for what she thought was real left her uncertain and uncentered.

  Jessica!

  The wind carried a whispered word, chilling her. She strained to hear what her eyes didn’t see. Was it a bleating sheep or something else? A plaintive, pleading sound rose and fell as if depleted and renewed with giant breaths. Jessica couldn’t be sure if the distant wail was human or even real. Her heart stilled as the keening became clearer. No sooner had she determined its direction, the cry was lost again in the morning wind.

  Jessica stared at the stone circle, a place now sharpened by a force she couldn’t identify. Ancient and timeless, its existence had seeped into her, somehow changing how past and present fit together. A connection to this place existed whether
she liked it or not and she stifled a cry, rubbing away the goose bumps that rose on the back of her neck.

  The sun rested on the capped headstone of the cairn, forcing shadows to reach across the undulating ground. An energy threatened to pull horse and rider deep within the circle. Rejecting its gravity, Jessica slapped Planxty’s rump so hard her hand stung.

  She hadn’t planned to ride hard on a horse and terrain she barely knew, but as soon as they had turned to the barns with the stone circle at their backs, Planxty fought for his head. He was as spooked as she was, so she didn’t question his urgency. If she had not been so muddle-headed, she may have been able to listen more clearly to the message her horse sent—the first in a long line of messages she didn’t hear.

  Planxty ignored the paths and took the straightest line home. Without the benefit of a saddle, Jessica gripped with her legs and felt the powerful muscles of the horse propel them over walls and streams. Across open fields, the soft sod swallowed up any sound of hooves. The hillside rose and dipped and Jessica barely corrected their course as they barreled through pastures and backyards. Time stopped, and her world narrowed once again to the familiar feelings of flight and relief.

  They barreled into the paddock and skidded to a stop. She chastened herself for her lack of judgment in riding like such an idiot, but the pit in her stomach and the knot in her shoulder muscles were gone and the longed for release finally came. She remained content while she cooled Planxty, but her relaxed mood dissolved when she discovered the horses had been tended and, once again, Tim had managed to avoid her.

  She entered the cottage to see a large cardboard box sitting on the kitchen table. Battered and bruised, the box had been roughly shuttled from place to place in search of a recipient. Its brown and slightly pinkish sides were plastered with forwarding labels. Postmarks chronicled when and where the package continued its course—no doubt frustrating the obedient civil servants who instinctively knew by looking at the patchwork of addresses that the simplest measure would have been to stamp it “return to sender” and put the box out of its meandering misery. But with every kind of address slapped on it except a return one, a weary bit of obligatory action sent it on its way again.

  The addresses read like chapters of her life. Hamilton, Massachusetts. Saddle String, Wyoming. Perc, Kentucky. Boston, Massachusetts. Other places were sprinkled in for good measure but obscured by layered labels. Despite her best efforts to prevent being followed anywhere by anyone, this box had done just that. Its dingy sides smirked at her through its dents and creases, finally victorious. Jessica grabbed a knife and stabbed it open, looking for a note from Michael.

  Papers and journals filled the box. Their sudden presence in her life triggered only mild amusement—as if someone had dialed a wrong number and yapped on mindlessly before realizing the error. The top layer meant nothing to her. They were old, yellowed notebooks covered in frayed and fading canvas. Abuse from neglect and wear tattered their covers and ruined their pages. The surviving entries were written in the rounded swirls of a young girl’s hand. As the journals progressed, the handwriting became smaller and more controlled. The mid layers included scrapbooks of a more recent vintage, holding a variety of clippings and photographs. As she examined each more carefully, her amusement turned to curiosity. Most of the photos were from her childhood. Her excavation stopped as she sank into a chair, stunned. She thought the only thing she possessed of her old life was her name. The box transformed into an unexpected treasure. It made her happy to think Michael took the time to locate them and send them on.

  Jessica looked at herself as a young girl in the pictures and felt she was seeing her for the first time. The blue eyes that looked back at her showed only comfort and security. Her face was remarkable only in its complete lack of guile. Framed in long, straight hair alternately pulled back in a skewed ponytail or hung in smoothed and gleaming strands, her expression in each photo showed the open and pure trust of a child loved and protected from the world, free to explore and bloom.

  In one picture a young Jessica, about five years old, sat in front of a Christmas tree with her new baby sister, Erin. The tree dripped with tinsel and red and gold ornaments. Frosted glass lights, round and in a variety of colors, covered the tree, and lit the surrounding living room. Beneath the tree sat a trove of carefully wrapped presents. The wooden mantel over the fireplace, painted white in the typical New England fashion, held—as it always did for the holidays—the carved animals and figures of the crèche. Mary and Joseph looked on adoringly as sheep, cows and angels reveled in the presence of the new baby Jesus. The swaddled baby held His arms in a gesture of love and welcome. Young Jessica’s expression was one of love, wonder and the barely hidden excitement of knowing Santa had indeed delivered. She cradled her own baby sister with both arms, handling Erin like a china doll.

  Sorting through the stack of photos slowly, Jessica paused on another image. In front of the same fireplace adorned with the same decorations, sat a six-year-old Jessica and her year-old sister, both smiling as she helped Erin raise her arms in a gesture meant to imitate the baby Jesus. Even then, the evidence of Erin’s brain injury was obvious. The young Jessica didn’t have a way to keep Erin’s head from lolling to one side.

  Pictures from different Christmases brought back a flood of memories. One picture was sent as their Christmas card that year. It showed the traditional holiday tableaux of smiling mother, proud father, with their children as enacted by Margaret cradling Erin and Jim standing behind Jessica with his hand on her shoulder. Their carefully choreographed pose exuded the pinnacle of the happy nuclear family. Pictures chronicled Easters and Halloweens, school parties and country club events at Myopia Hunt Club. All of them showed Margaret and Jim as the proud parents of two beautiful girls. None of them showed the truth.

  The smile of nostalgia that crept to her lips soon faded as harder memories came forth. Jessica closed her eyes to the strangers she saw. When she opened them, she dove into the photographs with renewed vigor. This time, instead of letting the memories come to her, she dug through them to see if they could have told her the truth if she had known where to look. A few pictures showed Margaret and Margaret’s sister, Bridget. These were of particular interest.

  Jessica stared at one particular image for what may have been a half hour, not moving, letting it absorb into her. A nine-year-old Jessica and four-year-old Erin were in the foreground with Jessica holding the halter and lead line of a shaggy pony. Erin smiled her beautiful lopsided grin as a mischievous Jessica drew a carrot up Erin’s chin, causing the pony to nibble at the carrot, but only succeeding in lipping Erin’s face, tickling her. Erin’s shoulders were hitched up to her ears, body twisting, face alight with delight. Jessica cupped her sister’s elbow in a protective grip, steadying and ready. Giggles and pure happiness consumed both girls. The scene should have brought an instant smile to the face of any onlooker. Instead, in the background, Margaret and Bridget stood, stiff, arms at their sides with expressions of abject sadness.

  Jessica got up and retrieved one of the few items she carried with her on her recent journeys. It was a large, silver-framed portrait of Erin in Jessica’s arms. Jessica gathered herself before prying off the back and sliding out a yellowed sheet. The paper told her the pictures documented a lie and were part of a well-constructed veil of deceit.

  Her birth certificate showed that her mother was not Margaret Wyeth. For reasons Jessica struggled to understand, Bridget and Margaret lied, hiding the fact that Bridget was Jessica’s mother. A palpable sadness inhabited the bodies of the women in the picture. One mother watched her child struggle with a brain injury that no amount of maternal fury or love could rescue her. The other mother held fast to the lie she created when she gave her child to her sister to raise.

  A bolt of nervous energy shot through her, and she could no longer sit still. She paced around the room with her hands gripping her upper arms, pausing occasionally to stare at the box and wonder what other st
ories it might hold if she knew how to see them. The uninvited guest sat expectantly, wanting to belong and claim its place at the head table, but knowing it was an illegitimate friend. Jessica couldn’t accept the box’s presence. She was irritated that it existed. The presumptive way with which it demanded attention riled her. Her fingertips ran over the seams and sides of the box, feeling the raised edges of the tape and labels. The crushed corners and dented sides tried to telegraph their meaning to her like the raised bits of Braille would talk to the blind. She couldn’t begin to comprehend the answers or the questions it presented. The gatecrasher needed to be treated accordingly.

  She hastily gathered up papers and photos, unwilling and unready for their revelations. Weaving the flaps together, the box felt resistant as if it had a life of its own, and pretending to know her secrets. It unsettled her. Willing herself not to set the whole damned thing on fire, she compromised by hiding it inside her empty suitcase, which she stuffed as far back into the closet crawlspace as it would go.

  Jessica pulled the door tight, checking it twice to make sure a sturdy barrier remained between her and whatever that box truly meant.

  A thick veil of fatigue wrapped around her shoulders. The morning’s ride sapped her energy. The additional hours of sunlight, bombardment of adjustments she had to accept, and the reality of her situation closed in on her. Constant movement and a refusal to dwell on past traumas had worked for years. Focusing on things outside of herself, like her horses, succeeded in getting her out of bed every day, but the cost of her uprooted life was evident.

  Exhausted and fragile, she used the last of her strength to curl herself in the overstuffed armchair. She stared out the window, wishing for coffee, longing for something else.

  Nan might not have had a choice to deliver the box, instead she chose to actively avoid Jessica. Standing under the eaves of the cottage, she pushed herself back into its shadow. In the ring below, Jessica rode a chestnut horse, its coat flashing burnished red in the morning light. Clots of earth flew off its hooves as Jessica guided the animal over a series of increasingly larger jumps. Nan liked the girl’s grit, but her job was going to be harder because of it. In an unconscious habit Nan performed whenever she felt unsettled, she ran her fingers over a barely visible marking on the doorjamb. Paint flecked off the carving of a circle inside an open-bottomed square, with what looked like a cross on top. She dusted her fingers off on her apron and made her way out to the barn with a resolute stride. Through the open door to the hayloft, she could see shadows moving around.