The Deep Wood (Sunshine Walkingstick Book 2)

by Celia Roman

  I recognized lots of other folks, too. Aunt Sadie and some of her get, Jazz and BobbiJean and Mrs. Treadwell, too, but what surprised me was the number of darker skinned Cherokee dotting the sea of people. Libby nodded at me as did the man by her side. Her husband, I guessed, seeing as how two of the young boys standing beside her looked just like him. Charlie took one look at me and burst into a huge grin, and behind him, Johnny stood solemn and proud surrounded by a handful of Cherokee what seemed vaguely familiar.

  Riley led me right through all them folks to a row of chairs lined up in front of a fresh placed marker. Preacher Robinson stood there holding a Bible, but it was the tombstone what caught my gaze. Henry Walkingstick, it said above the dates of his birth and death, and below ‘em was a simple line.

  Born on Earth to bloom in Heaven.

  I fixed teary eyes on the picture of Henry gracing the top of the stone while Riley sat me down between Missy and his mama, then took up guard behind us as the preacher man began to speak.

  I don’t know what he said. I was too lost in Henry, too overcome by the grief of losing my boy and the love held in that stone, give by a community I always thought’d rejected me and him both.

  They hadn’t, though, had they? Me and my boy’d carved out our own place and created a family outta nothing, seemed like. Only now that I was sitting there surrounded by folks what’d interrupted their day to remember Henry, I had second thoughts. This was family, this girding up and taking care and sacrifice. This was where our family’d been all along, if only I’d been awake enough to see it.

  Preacher Robinson said his piece, then folks drifted by and paid their respects, and I sat there like a lump and let Missy and Mrs. Treadwell speak for me when sorrow and love and pride got so tangled up in me, my tongue stuck in place.

  Teus and Miss Jenny come by, and when they did, he leaned down and whispered soft to me. “I owe you a great debt, Sunshine.”

  I reared back and narrowed my eyes at him. “How you figure that?”

  His mouth curled into a knowing grin and his hand tightened on Miss Jenny’s elbow, and that was answer enough. “One quarter of your marks in exchange for the service you rendered.”

  “Miss Jenny ain’t no service,” I retorted.

  “The service of introducing us. One quarter is fair, yes?”

  I thought about it for a second, I truly did. Eight of them marks circled my left nipple. One quarter was only two marks gone, and that didn’t seem like nearly enough, you ask me.

  “One quarter and my eyes back,” I said.

  “Deal.” He ran an elegant hand careful like over the ‘do Missy’d coaxed my hair into. “There now. Better?”

  I blinked my eyes, tried to figure out if they felt different, and nope, they sure didn’t. I opened my mouth to say so, but what come out instead was, “When you gonna call in them other marks?”

  He stood up then, straight and tall and regal like the deity he was, and them ocean colored eyes of his went all foggy. “Soon, Sunshine.”

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” I muttered.

  “Everything in its time.”

  Miss Jenny broke off her conversation and kissed my cheek, and she done the same as Teus, whispering a quick thank you in my ear where nobody could hear. As they was walking off, Teus turned around and said, “Lay your ghosts to rest, Sunshine.”

  My gaze drifted to the picture of Henry crowning his shiny new memorial stone. The sun passed behind a fluffy white cloud and I shivered. Why was Teus so insistent on me letting my boy go? Weren’t no harm in remembering, was there? Wasn’t that why we was all gathered there?

  Johnny and all my Cherokee kin come by, in between some of Mama’s kin, and I thanked all of ‘em real polite. Libby winked at me and squeezed my hand tight, and said as how me and Riley best come visit soon.

  And Riley, that scamp, he answered for me, assuring her that we’d be there with bells on.

  Conner Robinson was one of the last to stop by. I stood up and give him a big ol’ hug in return for his. He let me go after a minute and stepped back, one narrow hand cupped over my shoulder.

  “If you need anything,” he said, “anything at all, you let me know.”

  “I’m doing ok, Reverand.”

  His hand tightened a bit. “The most charitable among us are often those who have little to give.”

  I cocked my head to the side. What was he on about?

  “But remember, Sunny. What’s given always comes back tenfold.”

  Riley come up behind me then and tucked an arm around my shoulder as the preacher man’s hand fell away. “Conner.”

  “Riley.” Conner reached into his suit jacket and drawed out a small slip of paper, then handed it to Riley. “Thanks for lending this to me.”

  I glanced at the paper as it exchanged hands, and was shocked to the core to see a replica of my boy, the very same picture what now graced his stone. “Where’d you get that?”

  Riley tucked the picture in his wallet without sparing me a single glance. “Mama sent it to me when I was in Afghanistan. She snapped it the summer after he turned five.”

  A year before Henry died. I swallowed down tears as memory rose up and engulfed me. Me and Henry’d been at the beach, same as me and Riley used to do. We run into Mrs. Treadwell while she was trying out a spiffy new digital camera, and she insisted on taking picture after picture of my Henry. A packet of ‘em had arrived in the mail a coupla weeks later. Don’t know why I hadn’t remembered that when I seen that picture on his tombstone. Funny what grief’ll do to a woman’s mind.

  The dream of Henry reaching toward me, his arms like tree limbs, popped into my head and I shivered again. Just a dream, that’s all. It was just a dream.

  Later, after Riley took me home, I slipped into the bathroom to change into jeans and a tshirt and closed the door firm behind me, shutting him out good. My reflection caught my eye and I leaned toward the mirror, checking the job Teus’d done changing my eyes back. Sure enough, they was the same brown I always knowed, only a little spark lit ‘em, the same spark I seen in my Cherokee kin.

  I dropped back on my heels and stared at myself in the mirror. No, it couldn’t be. I didn’t have enough Cherokee in me to be two-natured and I hadn’t spent enough time around ‘em to take on the painter nature.

  I snorted at my fancy and marched outta the bathroom right into Riley’s arms.

  Me and Teus was gonna have a word or two about my eyes, but later. Much, much later.

  “Hey, baby,” Riley said in a soft, husky voice, and a smile growed on his face, lighting him up inside and out. “You ready for some supper?”

  I wrapped my arms around my feller and grinned up at him. “Steaks and baked sweet taters?”

  “Better,” he said and grinned right back. “We’ve got a reservation at Fortify.”

  “La ti da,” I teased, and Riley laughed and kissed me smack on the mouth, and I couldn’t think of no better way to spend the rest of the evening than right there with him.

  # # #

  Thank you for reading The Deep Wood. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review for it here.

  Dedication :

  About the author:

  Celia Roman is the pen name of author C.D. Watson. She lives in Western North Carolina in an historic farmhouse built by her great-grandfather. Find her online at:

  www.celiaroman.com

  The Sunshine Walkingstick Series

  Greenwood Cove

  The Deep Wood

  Cemetery Hill

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  A Sneak Preview of Cemetery Hill

  The phone shrilled its annoying chirp, waking me from a deep sleep. I rolled over and groped a hand across the bed to the nightstand. My fingers hit my cellphone, and away it went, skidding across the polish slicked surface onto the shag carpeting.

  Damn it all to hell and back.

  I sat up and flipped on the bedside lamp, already regretting th
e two quarters I’d be donating to my cussing jar, and blinked my sleep deprived eyes in the too bright light ‘til they focused on the phone lying like a black stone on the sea’s surface. It’d landed face up. Soon as I saw the name of the caller, my heart flipped over behind my sternum and a sappy grin replaced my irritated scowl.

  Riley Treadwell, a childhood friend and my newly acquired boyfriend. We been dating for a while now, long enough for me to relax into the idea, but not so long we felt free to broach the s-e-x subject ‘less we had to. Riley was gung ho and ready to go, but me, I was a mite skittish about the whole subject for reasons I didn’t much like to ponder.

  I leaned over, fished the phone outta the carpet, and thumbed the call open. “Hey.”

  “Get dressed, Sunny.”

  Riley’s voice held a grim note, tense and completely contrary to his normal, laid back drawl. I sat straight up and glanced at the time. 2:48 a.m., far too early for him to even be awake, let alone calling me. A cold knot of dread slid into my stomach. I flipped the covers off my bare legs and shivered in the bedroom’s too cool air.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Dad’s on his way over to Fame’s to arrest him.”

  “What?” I squawked.

  “Some kids found Fame’s wife and brother out on Cemetery Hill.” Riley sighed and a sound like skin scraping against skin filtered through the connection. “They’re dead, Sunny, both of them.”

  And ever body knowed Fame’d run his wife off for cheating on him with his brother. Ever body also knowed Sheriff Treadwell, Riley’s daddy, and my uncle was in a long-standing feud, ‘though what they was a-feuding over was anybody’s guess.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and winced. Three quarters in one night after being good for so long. Oh, well. The preacher man’d be able to do something good with my bad, surely.

  I cradled the cellphone between my shoulder and ear, yanked open a dresser drawer, and fumbled for clean clothes. “How long ‘til he gets here?”

  “Soon,” Riley said, real low and soft. “I’m sorry, Sunny. If I could do anything to stop him…”

  “Ain’t nothing you can do, hon.” And that was a fact. Probably nothing I could do either ‘cept warn Fame and Missy and my two cousins. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “I’ll be there soon as I can.”

  “No,” I said right off, and slammed the drawer shut. “You go on back to bed. I’ll call you soon as I know something.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up, and soon as the line broke, I hit Fame’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

  “The Sheriff’s on his way,” I said without preamble. “Some kids found Lily and Ferd dead.”

  “I’ll be ready for him,” Fame said in that deceptively soft voice of his, and that’s all either one of us needed to say. We hung up without another word, and I stumbled into the bathroom to clean up, shivering from the cold air and the sick feeling growing off dread in my gut like a canker.

  Lily and Ferd, dead. Fame the most likely suspect. And Sheriff Treadwell was on the case, good ol’ boy Chip Treadwell what had a burr in his side over Fame and the weight of the law behind his gun. I didn’t need two guesses to know how the investigation would go. Fame’d already been judged guilty by the folks in the know, and there weren’t a blessed thing anybody could do about it.

  Cemetery Hill is coming soon.

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