Nicholas took a step back. “I will treat Sophia well, sir. I promise.”
Mr. Ashton shooed Nicholas from the porch. As he closed the door, he shouted, “And don’t come here uninvited again, boy.”
“No, sir.” Nicholas slapped his hat on his head and jogged to the wagon.
As he climbed to the bench, Connor raised an eyebrow. “Did you get what you came for?”
“Barely.” He stared at the house as they drove away then broke his gaze, refusing to look back.
Chapter Thirteen
On her third day of working for Justin Mercer, Bailey let herself into his house, received a vacant stare as she greeted his inebriated mother, and knocked once before slipping into Justin’s bedroom.
“Hey, beautiful,” he greeted as he touched a button on a remote keyboard and his trio of computer monitors went black.
She ignored his annoying greeting and closed the door. “Did you see the news?”
He moved his gaze back to the dark screens. “About the U.S. joining Global?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
“They talk like it’s a done deal.” She slid her backpack straps off her shoulders. “Did you get the equipment I need for the molecular analysis?”
“No.”
She pulled a notebook from her backpack before lowering it to the plush carpet. “Why can’t we take the saplings to the lab? Professor Tim won’t tell anyone about the gray leaf plant. He’s the only person who has gone near the lab building in months. We’d have the whole place to ourselves.”
“My plan has changed.” Justin reached for her notebook. He opened it to her sketches of the saplings, the little silver leaves, and the root system. “I don’t need a molecular analysis anymore.”
She shouldn’t have quit working at the bar so soon, and she shouldn’t have trusted her livelihood to Justin Mercer. “Great. So, now I’m out of a job?”
“No.” He leaned back in his chair and it squeaked. “I still need you to take care of the saplings.”
“When you came to me at the bar, you said this was a research job. You don’t need me to keep your hydroponics lab running. You could do that yourself.”
“I do need your help, Bailey.”
He was yanking her chain. No one was allowed to do that. She grabbed her notebook and flipped to the notes she’d taken when confirming her ancestral ties to the Colburns of Accomack County, the Providence from Weathermon Shipping, and the Ashton estate abandonment. She stabbed the page with her index finger. “How do you know my ancestors? Why am I really here? Where did you get the gray leaf saplings?”
Justin calmly pointed a palm toward the bed across from where he sat at his desk. She hesitantly lowered herself to the edge of the mattress.
He straightened the papers on his desk. “I swore never to tell anyone where the plants came from. I made that promise to your relatives, and I think they would consider you family.”
“Are you talking about the descendants of the families who left Accomack County together in eighteen sixty?”
He rubbed his hands over his face before he spoke. When he did, his voice was somber. “You can’t tell anyone about this, about any of this.”
“You’ve already involved Professor Tim.”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone else.”
She gave a shrug. “Fine.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“There is an uncharted island in the South Atlantic Ocean where gray leaf trees grow in abundance.” He leveled his gaze on her, but his fingers played with the flap on a sunglasses case on his desk. “I planned to make a fortune from PharmaTech with the gray leaf. As the saplings grew, I discovered the leaves are putting off a… I don’t know what it is. It’s not a gas. It’s not simply an odor, although it has a unique scent.”
“I like it. It’s kind of minty.” She lifted a hand. “What’s the big deal?”
“It’s leaving a film on my closet ceiling.”
She glanced around his impeccably clean room. “You’re a neat freak. I get it. Why let that stop you from taking the plant to PharmaTech?”
He shook his head. “I don’t care about the closet ceiling. It made me realize if the gray leaf tree deposits a residue in here, it could be traced geographically. Thanks to my connections at PharmaTech, I got a device that analyzes airborne particles.” He pointed at a six-inch-long metal cylinder on his desk. It had a digital screen embedded in the handle. “And an acquaintance once gave me access to complex satellite imaging before he died. Last night, I used it to locate the unique molecule emitted by the gray leaf tree.”
He tapped a button and his trio of screens awoke. The center screen showed a ghostly silhouette of a sizeable island in the South Atlantic Ocean. He zoomed in and clicked on the grid lines near the middle of the Island’s eastern coast. “Thirty-five degrees south, twenty-five degrees west. That’s it.”
She rose from the edge of the bed and leaned toward the screen. “That is what exactly?”
“The Land.”
“The Land?”
“That’s what they call it.”
“They whom?”
“Your relatives… the Colburn family… and all the other people who live there.” He cocked his head as he stared at the image on the screen, momentarily seeming nostalgic. “It’s bigger than I thought when I was there—maybe bigger than the inhabitants know.”
“That is where you met my relatives? The long-lost Colburns from Accomack County?”
He nodded.
She’d never known any of her family members. Her imagination stirred with questions. Did her relatives look like her? After seven generations of being isolated, did they speak differently? Justin had called them trustworthy. Would they accept her if she went to the Land? Was any of this real?
She pointed at the screen. “You’re telling me a bunch of people with whom I share a common ancestry live on a hidden island and you went there and they gave you the gray leaf saplings?”
“They didn’t give me saplings. They gave me seeds. Twelve marble-sized seeds in a hand-knit sock.” He tapped on the screen, enlarging the image. The western half of the island was faded instead of distinctly outlined like the eastern half. “I made it to the shore of the Land this time last year—on the equinox to be exact. I was dying from the tuberculosis plague. When their gray leaf medicine cured me, they suggested I bring the seeds back here to help save the world. They called it healing for the nations. Naïve people.”
She glanced back at his closed closet door. “Twelve seeds? But you only have four saplings.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not a botanist; I’m a pilot. I was a pilot. The navy won’t re-enlist me.” He pressed his lips together. “Eight seeds rotted. Yesterday you asked me why I live with my mom. That’s why I moved her in with me. She knows plants. Used to anyway. She changed after she lost my brother.” His voice broke. He cleared it and continued. “So, I kept the gray leaf to myself. Did a little research and got the last four seeds to grow. I was going to sell the gray leaf and use the money to set us up somewhere better. It doesn’t matter now.”
“It sounds like it does.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t care about the money. The Unified States Navy might not want me anymore, but if the military knew about the power of the gray leaf tree, they’d think twice about joining Global… but the Land could be detected.” He hit a button, blacking out the screens again. “It’s for the greater good.”
Bailey closed her eyes and recalled the image of the shape of the Land. She had family somewhere out there, and Justin was going to endanger them over politics. She’d never had a family but always imagined if she did, she would fight for them. “You can’t do that. You promised you’d tell no one where the plants came from. If you uploaded the gray leaf’s molecular identity into a satellite system, anyone can find the Land.”
He disconnected the scent molecule d
etector and held it up. “I uploaded nothing. It’s a read only image… for now.”
“What do you mean for now? If you didn’t do it yet, don’t!”
“Our country needs the gray leaf.”
“What country? Global is about to take over.”
“I still have military contacts that are some of the strongest patriots I know.” He pointed two fingers at the closet. “It will take a few years for the trees to mature to use for medicine, but knowledge of the gray leaf will bolster the Unified States enough to keep us from joining Global now. Or maybe they would let me lead a mission to the Land to harvest mature trees.”
“You can’t do that! Those people are innocent. They gave you medicine that saved your life and they trusted you.”
Justin continued unabated. “The only problem is that even with knowing the Land’s coordinates, it’s not easily accessed.”
Finally, good news. She sat back down. “Why not?”
“It’s somehow protected. The only times in their history that anyone, including me, has entered the Land is on their vernal equinox. We think the phenomenon has something to do with the Land’s location under Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt and the South Atlantic Anomaly.”
She didn’t understand what he was talking about and could only imagine a place where people had been hidden from the world war and the plague—and every war and plague for one hundred sixty years. Then something in his statement puzzled her. “Wait a minute… who is we?”
“Hm?”
“You said we think. Who have you discussed this with?”
“Connor Bradshaw. He and I flew together. Our aircraft malfunctioned and we were ejected over the Land. I drifted out to sea. He lives there now. Married the village doctor and they have a baby. He teaches at a high school that has about twenty students. I don’t know how he can stand it. Their village, Good Springs, has squash festivals and barn dances.” He snickered. “Prudes too, all of them. When I went looking for Connor in the Land, I was hoping for a deserted island or maybe women in grass skirts. But it was like a churchy, prairie settlement—butter churns and all.”
“Other people from the U.S. have been to the Land?”
“Just me and Connor.”
“And it can only be entered on the equinox?”
“The March equinox.”
“Which is in two weeks.”
When he nodded, she asked, “How did you get there?”
“When we were ejected, I watched Bradshaw’s parachute drift toward the shore. I ended up in the water and was rescued at sea. The Land wasn’t visible anymore. It took me three years to find it again.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I wish. If it were, I’d still be in the cockpit where I belong.”
She opened the closet door and turned off the ultraviolet lights. Under one bare bulb, the silver leaves dangled from their scraggly limbs. She knelt by the saplings and rubbed a leaf between her finger and thumb. Its oily residue tingled her skin. Nothing about this plant was normal. Its conflicting features left classification impossible.
Justin’s shadow darkened the closet doorway. “Help me write up the report for my contact at the navy. I’ll pay you until you get another research job.”
She longed to know more about the gray leaf tree and the possibility of using its medicinal power to help a disease savaged world, but if letting Justin go through with his plan meant exposing good people and ruining a safe place, she had to stop him.
She released the gray leaf and stood. With every intention of getting the gray leaf saplings and all of Justin’s data away from him, she smiled. “Sure. I’ll help.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sophia sat on the flower-print rug on her bedroom floor, dipping a soft rag into a murky bowl of tepid water. She bent forward to wash the ornate balls on the feet of her ancestor’s Davenport desk, which once belonged to the captain of the Providence. As she wiped away years of caked-on dust, her grandfather’s words played through her mind. When our founders came to the Land, they salvaged everything they could from the ship. Our ancestor, Doctor Joseph Ashton, who had been a friend of the ship’s owner, kept this desk in his tent on the shore until his house was built. Later, he gave it to his son Jonah as a wedding gift. It’s been in our family for many, many years.
All the firstborn Ashton men since had been doctors, her uncle included. While he practiced medicine in Pleasant Valley, her father, a second son, had moved away to Woodland when he married her mother. She didn’t know their anniversary date as they never spoke of it.
Sophia’s childhood probably wasn’t the noble upbringing her grandfather had wanted for her. On her rare visits to Good Springs, she would sit on Grandpa Ashton’s lap at this desk and listen to his stories. Hopefully, he would have been proud of what she was trying to accomplish.
When she finished scrubbing the desk’s exquisitely carved exterior, she removed its packed drawers one at a time. It would take her weeks to read through all the letters and documents, and she would relish every moment.
After stacking the drawers, she began removing the papers that had slipped behind the drawers over the decades. Most of the pages were lists or notes scribbled on gray leaf paper. A chunk of palm-sized crackly pages caught her attention.
She slipped the brown papers out of the cabinet back and took them to the window. The older style pages weren’t made from gray leaf pulp but from the paper the founders brought with them from America. Their faded pencil markings attested to their age. Bound by thread, the ancient pages appeared to be a section of a journal.
The first page read: Personal observations in study of the Gray Leaf Tree conducted by Mrs. Marian Ashton, wife of Dr. Jonah Ashton, 1870.
Though difficult to read, the faded notations detailed Marian Ashton’s experiments with the gray leaf and included her account of the first time she made tea from its leaves. It had left her unconscious for hours. The second time she drank gray leaf tea, she slipped into a coma, and the other settlers feared she would die. The gray leaf’s use was banned for years, but Marian continued experimenting in private with the support of her physician husband.
Sophia leaned against the window ledge as she examined her ancestor’s notes. On the final page it read the gray leaf’s mesophyll discharges an aromatic substance as it begins to decay. A simple diagram followed. It detailed Marian’s design for collecting high concentrations of the substance released by the gray leaf.
An aromatic substance? Her ancestor had focused mainly on the airborne particles released by the gray leaf. But why?
Sophia read every notation on the diagram twice. Could that substance contain the healing element she was hoping to isolate? Marian’s notes held logic, her theories were plausible, and her contraption to collect airborne particles seemed replicable.
Could this be it? Not only the missing equation in Sophia and Lydia’s research, but also the key to making Lydia see her worth despite her failings and make her position permanent?
She pressed the pages against her bodice and glanced about the room. With its wrought-iron bedframe, wide chest-of-drawers, and mirrored dressing table, the room had never felt like a place she deserved to live in. She still kept her clothes stacked atop the dresser and her personal items in an open satchel. Though Lydia had moved into the main house when she and Connor had Andrew and the room had been vacant for over a year, to Sophia it felt like someone else’s space. But if this discovery aided their research, this would be her permanent home.
In the coming winter, Sophia would light the log on the grate and cuddle under the extra quilt. She would look out the west-facing window and watch the sunset, unafraid of what the night would bring, knowing the sweet silence of solitude would sing her to sleep.
Sophia danced down the stairs and into the medical office, unable to control her smile. She held out the old papers to Lydia. “Dr. Bradshaw, look at what I found in my grandfather’s desk.”
Lydia drew her head back. “The Dave
nport desk Nicholas carried upstairs for you last week?”
“I found these pages behind one of the drawers.”
Lydia accepted the brittle pages. “This looks like the type of paper the founders brought from America.”
“Yes! That would make them over one hundred sixty years old.” Excitement buzzed through her hands as they ached to hold the papers again. She tapped her fingertips together. “These pages must have fallen out of an old journal.”
As Lydia read the papers, astonishment laced her voice. “Dr. Ashton’s desk was from the Providence?” She sat at her desk and took out a magnifying glass. “I’d always wondered.”
Sophia lowered herself into the chair beside Lydia’s desk and waited for her mentor’s assessment. After a moment, Lydia passed the magnifying glass to her, beaming. “This document is an incredible find.”
Some of the phrases were clear and bold: lost at sea… not South America… flecks of light in the air… unusual and strong aroma… unknown species… named it the Gray Leaf Tree… peace-giving scent… saved my life.
Sophia pointed at her ancestor’s notes. “It says they were overwhelmed by the smell of the gray leaf tree. She calls it a peace-giving scent. I wonder if her theory is correct—that a substance released by the gray leaf holds its extraordinary power.”
Lydia tapped a fingertip against her chin. “It’s an interesting notion.”
All at once something Connor had said in class long ago came rushing into Sophia’s mind. She almost gasped. “Maybe that substance is what helps keep the Land hidden.”
Lydia leaned back in her chair. “How so?”
The points of fact swirled within her imagination. Maybe it was outlandish speculation, but if she were right, the gray leaf tree did more than provide medicine and paper and wood. She tried to tamp her excitement over the theory, but her hands tingled. “Since we live in the gray leaf forest, we are accustomed to the strong aroma. We don’t even think about it. But you told me when Connor first arrived in the Land he was quite overwhelmed by the smell. And long ago he theorized that an atmospheric phenomenon helps hide the Land.”
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