Family Lessons

by Allie Pleiter

  “He’s run off. That nightmare of an old woman scared the pants off him and he ran.” Mason cursed under his breath and then cupped his hands to call out, “Liam! Liam, where are you?”

  The only reply was Reverend Turner coming down Third Street. “Has Liam gone off?” The reverend picked up his steps to meet Holly and Mason where they were standing.

  “He’s run away, Reverend.” Holly scanned the horizon but knew better. Finding Liam would be difficult given how well the boy knew how to hide. She turned to Mason. “What on earth did Beatrice say?”

  At that moment, Beatrice came stalking out of Mason’s office, furious. “I spoke the truth. That boy is trouble and you all are too weak to see it. I have proof now that he’s been sneaking out at night from the schoolhouse, just like I said from the start. I saw him with my own eyes. It’s no wonder things have gone missing all over town. He’s stealing. He’s been stealing all along.”

  “Now hold on a minute, Beatrice, those are serious accusations.” The reverend held up one hand to quiet Miss Ward down.

  “Accusations is right,” Mason growled. “She sat in my office and told him he was no better than the man who hung in Greenville this week.”

  “Beatrice,” Holly gasped. “You didn’t say that.”

  “Well, no one else will.” Beatrice sniffed. “No one else seems to see what’s happened to this town since those orphans came here. I had to speak my piece.”

  “Right to his poor, frightened face you did. What a fine, upstanding thing to do.” Mason stabbed an angry finger at Miss Ward.

  The reverend stepped between Beatrice and Mason. “Miss Ward, have you been to your house this morning?”

  “I can’t live there, you know that. The roof’s been shore off the east end.” She threw a sideways glance at Mason. “Evidently, it’s an excellent place for hiding, though.”

  “Yes, but have you been there this morning?” The reverend started walking in the direction of Beatrice’s house, motioning the group to follow.

  “Where are you going?” Beatrice asked, nearly trotting to keep up with the reverend. “Pastor, I can’t see what any of this has to do with that boy’s behavior.”

  “You will. That’s actually why I was heading toward your office, Wright. All of you, come!”

  With a quick glance at each other, Mason and Holly took off after Reverend Turner and Miss Ward.

  “Pastor Turner,” huffed Miss Ward as they dashed down Liberty Street, “I demand to know what’s going on here!”

  “I wish I knew,” the reverend called back as he turned past Mayor Evans’s house on the corner, and led the group up the block of Second Street to where they could see for themselves.

  Beatrice Ward was actually speechless.

  “Good gracious!” Holly could barely believe it, either.

  “Well, I’ll be hanged myself,” Mason said in utter shock. “Who’d do that?”

  There, affixed to the fence in perfect working order, was a new wrought-iron gate. Right down to the swirly letter “W.”

  “And that’s not all,” the reverend said. “I just came from the Millers’ where Mel told me a new set of tools was found sitting on Charlie’s shop porch this morning. And a new wheelbarrow showed up at Gavin’s, too.”

  “Are you saying everything that was stolen has been returned?” Holly couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Of course,” Mason said so slowly Holly could actually hear his mental gears turning. “Everything that was taken was broken somehow. It wasn’t stolen, it was replaced—with improvements.”

  “That’s not possible,” Beatrice said.

  “Nevertheless, there it is.” Reverend Turner clasped his hands. “There’s your new gate, right in front of us.”

  “Liam could not have done this.” Mason straightened up, pushing his hat back on his head. “Don’t make me stand here and argue with you, Miss Ward. Even you can see this clears him.”

  “Well, I...”

  “Enough, Beatrice. You were wrong.” He took a step toward her, making Holly gulp.

  “We don’t know who...”

  “You were wrong about Liam.” Mason was practically standing over her now. “Admit it.”

  “Why don’t we concern ourselves with this later?” Reverend Turner stepped in, gesturing Mason back from his stance. “It seems to me right now we ought to be finding Liam.”

  “Yes,” Holly agreed. “Why don’t we split—” She stopped speaking, for Mason had turned and begun running down the street toward his office without another word. She stood for a moment, mouth open midsentence. That man never waited for anything once he made up his mind. “He can’t have gone far,” she said to the reverend and Miss Ward, but it felt like an unnecessary afterthought. No one doubted, by the way Mason ran, that the sheriff would get his man. Or, in this case, his boy.

  * * *

  An hour later, Mason ran around another corner, watching the sun dip lower in the sky. The boy was in none of his usual hiding spots, nor had any of the other children seen him. Mason turned in a slow circle, racking his brain for options, hating how panicked he felt. When had Liam come to mean so much to him?

  Think, Wright, think. What does your gut tell you? Liam wasn’t ready to run very far; Mason’s instinct told him that. Besides, anyone serious about skipping town would head for the train tracks, and while Liam was frightened and feeling rejected, he wouldn’t go back to a place with all those horrid memories. He’d go somewhere he felt safe, somewhere nearby but still distant from all the accusing eyes of Evans Grove. He’d said Beatrice’s house made an excellent hideout, but he’d never go there after what she’d said. He’d go somewhere with good associations. The schoolhouse? No, he’d have heard from Holly if he was hiding somewhere near there. He didn’t seem the type to hide out near the church, and the hotel was too busy. He’d want someplace calm. Someplace small and maybe even dark.

  He’d go to the cave.

  Of course! Mason nearly whacked his forehead with his hand. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? He turned on his heels and ran up Fourth Street to the footbridge that led over the creek. Liam had to be there. Mason didn’t want to consider an alternative. The thought of losing Liam—and losing him to the lie that he wasn’t wanted here—made Mason crazy. He wasn’t the kind of man who liked needing anyone, much less an eleven-year-old boy. But how to convince the lad Beatrice’s sharp words weren’t how everyone in Evans Grove saw him? Show me how. The burst of prayer startled Mason as he cut through a grove of trees just north of the cave. He hadn’t felt this far out of his depth since the night Phoebe died. In some ways it was worse: there was no remedy for Phoebe’s loss, nothing to be done but mourn. Now, this loss could be stopped—but only with the right words.

  And words were the last thing Mason Wright was good at. Words were Holly’s realm.

  Why hadn’t he taken Holly with him to find Liam? He knew the answer to that, and liked it less than his growing affection for Liam. He couldn’t contain himself around her, not with the storm going off in his chest right now. You’ve got to help me, Mason prayed, too desperate to worry what his new habit of praying might mean. I can’t mess this up. I need You to give me the right words.

  “Liam?” Mason started toward the clearing where they’d been fishing. By some cruel joke, he found himself behind the same outcropping of bushes where Holly must have hid when she listened. Some of the forget-me-nots she’d been gathering were spilled on the ground, withered. He stared at them while he listened for sounds of Liam, his mind imagining Holly in a field of the flowers, sunlight catching the colors in her brown hair. He’d never loathed silence more.

  Moving slowly, Mason stepped into the clearing, studying the grass on the creek bank for signs of a visitor. There was a scrape of mud to his left, the damp side of a rock recently overturned just beyond it. He’s here. Thank You, God, he’s here. “Liam, come out.”

  No response. Then a quiet scraping sound from inside the cave. “I
know you’re here. I’m glad you’re here and not gone.” Mason sat down on a rock, laying his hat beside him in the lengthening shadows. “I don’t believe what Miss Ward said. No one believes that.”

  A twig snapped from beyond the dark opening of the cave.

  “We can prove now it wasn’t you who took those things. Whoever took Miss Ward’s gate replaced it last night with a new one. And Mr. Miller’s tools, and the wheelbarrow from Gavin’s store. You couldn’t have done that.”

  A pair of puffy eyes became barely visible in the cave shadows. “I could’ve.”

  Thank You. Mason felt one corner of his mouth turn up, right after his entire body let go of the tension that had gripped him for the last hour. “Is that so?”

  “Could be.” The boy’s body shifted into view from the mouth of the cave. He had a big swath of mud down one arm, and one pant leg was soaked. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his clean sleeve.

  “You bought Miss Ward a new gate just like her old one? And blacksmith tools? And a wheelbarrow?”

  “I could have managed it.”

  Mason shifted toward the boy, who moved farther into the light but still hadn’t left the mouth of the cave. “I expect you could. Only you didn’t take any of those things, because you’re not a thief.”

  “Miss Ward sure thinks I am.”

  “Miss Ward is dead wrong.”

  “But I am a thief. I did steal, back in New York. Get hungry enough, and anyone’ll figure out how to steal food.”

  It clawed at Mason’s gut that the boy had learned those kinds of lessons. How dare the world let this boy want for anything ever again? He’d had enough misery for three lifetimes, let alone less than a dozen years. “That’s not the same. Those men on the train? They didn’t need what they were taking. Wanting something because of greed isn’t the same thing as wanting something for survival.” He tried to draw Liam out by looking straight into the boy’s red-rimmed eyes. “You’re not them. You’re not anything like them.” Oh, how he wanted to strangle Miss Ward for ever making such a cruel comparison. That woman was twelve kinds of mean some days.

  “Nobody wants me here.”

  The boy’s wounded tone wrapped itself into a tight little ball Mason felt at the back of his throat. “That’s dead wrong, too.”

  “No, it’s not. Miss Sterling and Miss Sanders, they’ve tried real hard to get someone to take me in, but you and I both know it ain’t worked.”

  “I’d take you.” It leapt out of Mason’s mouth, ridiculous as it was. “They wouldn’t let me, I’m sure, but if they did...”

  “Why won’t they?” Liam stepped out of the cave with a heartbreaking eagerness.

  How to explain this? Mason pulled his hand across his chin, reaching for the words. “A boy needs a mother and a father. I don’t have that kind of life.”

  Liam took two steps toward Mason. “I like your life.” The boy looked positively bedraggled, and Mason was surprised he had to squelch the urge to swallow the lad in a hug.

  “I do, too.” That suddenly felt like a lie. He’d come to hate his life lately, mostly because two people had stuck themselves so far into it that all the lonely spots stuck out like thorns. “Only it’s not...” He found he couldn’t finish the sentence. “It’s not what the OSS thinks you ought to have.”

  “How come they get to choose?” Liam’s words were defiant. He must think the whole world didn’t give one fig what he wanted. That was a poor way to live at any age, much less eleven.

  Mason groped for the right response. “Someone your age can’t always see what’s best. You got your future to think about.”

  He moved his hat, motioning to Liam to come sit on the rock. When the boy eased himself down, Mason allowed himself to rumple Liam’s hair.

  “My future,” Liam mocked, mimicking Beatrice Ward’s righteous tone with alarming accuracy. He turned to look up at Mason with eyes so cynical they looked out of place on his young face. “C’mon, what kind of future have I got?”

  Something fierce roared up out of Mason’s chest. “You got every kind of future, that’s what. You’re smart and young and you got more energy than twenty of me, and that’s just for starters.” He wanted to take the boy and shake him, make him realize how much good was ahead of him despite what fools like Beatrice Ward chose to believe.

  Liam wasn’t buying it. He leaned on his knees with slumped shoulders, wiping the mud off one hand. “I can’t subtract, I got no parents, no money and no prospects and I’m a thief. I done too much wrong to end up with some nice family. I belong on my own, alone. I don’t need mean ol’ Miss Ward to lay that out for me. I can see it all by myself.”

  Mason grabbed the boy’s shoulders. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t you dare let them make you feel that way. Your future is yours, not anybody else’s to take. Yours. And I don’t care even if you stole every day of your life in New York, you don’t have to live like that here. You get to choose how it goes from here on. No one ever has to be alone, ever. No matter what they did.”

  Liam looked up at him, and Mason felt the weight of his own words come back around to hit him full force. No one ever has to be alone, ever. No matter what they did. Did he really believe that? His memory cast back so fast and so clearly to the inscription Holly had written that Mason almost had to blink and shake his head. “Around these parts,” Mason choked out, feeling as though he’d lost complete control of whatever was going on here, “we believe everyone gets a forgiven future. What’s past is gone, as long as you’re willing to make the next part right.” He put his arm around the boy, feeling a wave of warmth as the bony shoulder leaned into him.

  “That’s just you. You and I, we understand each other.” There was the “old man” voice Liam so often used. Mason was delighted to see it come back, annoying as it was.

  “No, it’s not.” Mason reached into his pocket and pulled out the inscription page from Holly’s book of Psalms. Had this moment been the true reason he’d been unable to throw her heartfelt words away? No, there was more. They were true words, but they were also Holly’s words. There might have been a time when he thought that inscription would be the only part of her he got to hold on to, but he was starting to see how wrong that was. “Take a look at this.” Mason carefully unfolded the thin paper to reveal the delicate, swirly handwriting:

  “To Mason,

  Who believes himself lost, but isn’t.

  God’s eye never wavers,

  A forgiven future always waits,

  And the true heart knows a true hero.

  Holly”

  “All that’s the same for you,” Mason told him. “You think you’re lost—done for—but you’re not. If God’s got some kind of plan for the likes of me, He sure must have one for you. I done worse things than you by far, Liam. More than you know.” It was like some tight cord around Mason’s chest had finally unraveled. He felt like he was taking his first deep breaths in years, and the words kept spilling out of him. “Only I’m just figuring out I don’t have to be alone, and I’d rather you didn’t spend years on your own like I done. The way I see it, we both got futures right here, and we’d best get to them. It’d be a waste if we didn’t, don’t you think?”

  One corner of Liam’s mouth began to curl up in the familiar impish smile. Somehow, that boy had managed to sneak into Mason’s dark, closed heart and crack it wide open. “I know what I think,” the boy said wryly.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think Miss Sanders is stuck on you something fierce to write something so fussy.” He looked at the ragged edge. “What’d she write it in?”

  Mason couldn’t stop his smile. “A book.”

  Liam’s eyes popped. “You tore something out of a book? A book of Miss Sanders’s?”

  “It wasn’t my best idea.”

  “No foolin’ there.” Liam watched him fold it back up and return it to his shirt pocket. “Why’d you do something like that?”

  “A dumb notion. I wanted to hurt her �
�cause she cared about me.” He raised a knowing eyebrow at the boy. “Sort of like running away from folks who want you to stay.” Mason ruffled his hair again, wondering again how this scrap of a boy could manage in the space of a few days to peel years of guilt and punishment off his spirit. Actually, he knew the answer. Liam had managed it because Holly had done much the same thing. The pair of them, he realized, were an unstoppable force.

  The pair of them. All three of them together.

  With one more look into Liam’s eyes, Mason saw the whole thing line up in perfect order. The train, the boy, Holly, all of it. No matter how hard he tried to push it away, God had sent him the things that could heal his life. Holly’s relentless insistence that he had a future allowed him to show Liam his. The astonishment at the perfection of it all was matched only by his fright that he’d nearly managed to throw all of it away.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Liam asked, eyebrows furrowed. “You look all funny all of a sudden.”

  “I just figured out something really important, that’s all.”

  “Just now?” Liam moaned in his “old man” voice. “Just now you’re figuring out you’re sweet on Miss Sanders, too? Didn’t you know that when you kissed her?”

  That boy was far too clever for his tender years. “Funny enough, I didn’t.”

  “Well, that is dumb.”

  Mason snatched his hat off the rock. “What’s dumb is you and I sitting here yakking away while a whole bunch of folks are over there worrying about us. What do you say we head on back and set things to rights?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What is wrong with that man?” Beatrice looked off after the figure of Mason running down the street. “I don’t see why we can’t just let God’s will take its proper course here.”

  “Now, Beatrice...” Reverend Turner placated.

  “God’s will?” Holly balked. “You think God would permit us to make a young boy feel as though he’s not wanted? Over something that isn’t even true?” Holly could normally write off Beatrice’s judgmental nature to the woman’s abrasive personality, but this got under her skin.