Dora grinned at Theresa. “Then it’s all right with you if I use your name like that?”
“In a case like this, yes,” Theresa said. “And you really do think you’ll be safer by yourself than if one of us goes with you?”
“I’m sure of it. All of these people know me. They know my parents. They aren’t going to do anything to me. The worst thing that could happen is that someone might refuse to let me check them.”
“All right, if you’re sure. Good luck tomorrow.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Saturday evening Theresa started looking for Dora about an hour before sunset. When dusk fell and she still hadn’t returned, Theresa began to get worried. She asked Marcus to use his seeing eye to check the roads around the valley to see if he could spot her buggy. After a few minutes, he saw it parked at one of the farms near town. An hour later, Dora pulled into the backyard at the chapel.
Theresa rushed out the back door and over to the buggy. “Are you all right? I was starting to get a little worried.”
“Sorry,” Dora said as she climbed down off the driver’s seat. “I didn’t mean to worry you. It just took a little longer today since I insisted on checking everyone. I had to track down a few of the men.” Dora looked worn out.
“Have you eaten?”
Dora nodded. “I had lunch with one of the families, and I had tea with a couple of the women this afternoon. I hated to take the time, but they do look forward to it.”
“Why don’t you come in and have some scog? I’ll have Marcus take care of your horse.”
“Thanks, but I told mother that I’d be there this evening, so I’d better unload the buggy and get started.”
“Where do they live?”
“Just a couple miles on the other side of the river, but the road’s rocky, so you have to take it slow. It usually takes me close to an hour to walk to their house.”
“Walk? Not tonight, you’re not. You can take the buggy.”
“No, that’s all right. Hayley and Marcus are planning to take it when they go out to explore the valley tomorrow.”
“Then Marcus can run you out to your parents’ house tonight. He and Hayley can unload it while you have a mug of scog. Come on in. I want to hear about your day anyway.”
Dora nodded and followed Theresa into the chapel. Theresa fixed Dora a mug of scog and a sandwich while Hayley and Marcus went outside to unload the herbs. Theresa carried Dora’s plate and mug into her office and motioned for Dora to follow her.
“Now, eat. Then you can tell me how it went today,” Theresa said as she sat down behind her desk.
Dora didn’t feel like she wanted anything to eat, but once she took a bite of the sandwich, her appetite picked up. After she finished the sandwich, she sat back in her chair and said, “First of all, I did see everyone in the valley today, and no, not one of them has a burn mark on their forehead.”
“Well, I guess that’s good news, although it doesn’t get us any closer to finding out what happened to Gerry.”
“No, and everyone asked if I knew where she’d gone. I got the feeling that most people think she just took off, but no one seemed to have anything to back it up.”
Theresa nodded. “We may never know what happened or where she went.”
“I just hope she didn’t wander around in any of those caves looking for herbs and fall down a shaft or something,” Dora said, shaking her head. “Horrible way to die. Trapped, hurt, and no way to get help.”
“Don’t dwell on it, Dora. And don’t feel responsible either.”
“But if I hadn’t gone off that night, maybe she’d have told me where she was going and then we’d have known where to look.”
Theresa realized just how exhausted Dora was. She was actually talking to her. “And then again, from what I’ve gathered about Gerry, she probably wouldn’t have told you anything. She’d have just gone. So don’t go beating yourself up about it. It was not your fault.”
Dora looked up at Theresa with a weak smile. “You’re probably right about that. She didn’t like for me to ask her any questions, that’s for sure. Oh, I don’t mean about herbs or healing. She’d answer those easily enough, but nothing personal.”
Hayley knocked on the open door to let them know she was there. “Dora, we’ve unloaded the buggy and Marcus is ready whenever you are. There’s no rush though. Theresa, do you want me to put the extra herbs in here or out in the workroom?”
“Put them in here, Hayley. Dora, do you have your list of orders?”
Dora nodded and reached down into one of the pockets on her skirt. She pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. “There were more than usual today since it’s been four weeks since the last time I made rounds. I’ll get them Monday.”
Theresa took the lists and started looking through them. “If it’s quiet around here tomorrow, I’ll start getting some of these together while you two are gone. We’ll tackle the rest of them next week.”
Dora stood up and stretched. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I think I’ll go.”
“Have a nice day tomorrow,” Theresa said as she walked with Dora towards the back door. “You’ve certainly earned it.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Sunday evening, Theresa was cooking dinner when Hayley and Marcus got back from their day off. She could hear them laughing before they got to the back door. Hayley walked into the kitchen with a large basket full of herbs and wild flowers. She set it down on the floor next to the kitchen table and washed her hands in the sink.
“Did you have a nice day?” Theresa asked.
“It was terrific,” Hayley sighed. “We had so much fun wandering around in the woods, and we found several spots that look like old herb gardens. I brought some back for you to look at. Marcus drew a map and we marked where we found each type so we can go back and get some more if you want us to.”
“Good. We’ll go through them after dinner. We might want to replant some of them around here.”
“And we found the cutest little cave. Someone must be living there because it had a couple of nice chairs, a table with a lamp, and a large rug on the floor between the chairs and the fire ring. There was even an old pitcher and a teapot stored under the table along with two mugs. The only thing missing was a sleeping pad, but that could have been farther back in the cave. We didn’t go in.”
“Why not?”
“I felt like I was intruding, like I was walking into someone’s house uninvited,” Hayley admitted.
Theresa nodded. “Maybe Dora will know who lives there.”
“I’ll ask her when she gets back tomorrow. I had never really thought about it, but living in a cave house might not be so bad.”
“I can’t speak for all of them, but the one I lived in was nice. The workroom there was a whole lot better than the one out back here.”
“Anything would be better than that one,” Hayley said with a grimace. “Why don’t you ask Marcus to see what he can do with it? He built his own house. He could make it bigger, put in more storage, more herb beds, and add some more workbenches.”
“Have you already talked to him about it?”
Hayley nodded. “He brought it up while he was putting on the new latch. I told him I’d see what you thought.”
“Tell him I’d appreciate anything he can do, but we don’t have any wood other than what he can find lying around in the barn.”
“He’s supposed to help several of the farmers this week. He was thinking that he could ask for his payment in wood and nails.”
“That’s a good idea. Tell him to have fun, but keep in mind, we aren’t going to be here long, so don’t make plans too far in advance.”
“Do you have any idea how long?”
“Not really, but I imagine we’ll be here at least another ten days or so,” Theresa said. “Tell him not to make any commitments past that point. We’ll take it day by day after that.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Monday morning, Dora got back before sunrise. By the time Theresa
and Hayley got up, there was coffee on the stove and fresh buns in the oven.
“Good morning,” Dora said as she handed each of them a cup of coffee. “Did you have a nice day yesterday, Hayley?”
Hayley nodded as she sipped her coffee. “Marcus and I found a cave I want to show you later. Looks like someone’s living in it.”
Dora frowned and looked thoughtful. “I don’t know of anyone living in a cave right now, but we’ve had several families do that in the past. Maybe what you found was one of the old homesteads.”
“I don’t think so. The stuff inside was too nice for someone to have just left it behind. Maybe we can ride out there later this afternoon.”
Dora looked over at Theresa and asked, “And how was your day yesterday?”
“Boring. The most exciting thing I did was clean out Gerry’s closets. I packed up all of her clothes. I thought you could store them in the attic for a few months, and then if no one hears from her, you can use them for barter or give them away to whoever needs them, whatever you want to do. Most of her stuff looks like it’s in pretty good shape.”
Dora nodded. “My mother used to do her laundry. If anything needed mending, she took care of it before it got bad.”
“Did Gerry pay your mother?”
Dora shook her head.
“It was really nice of your mother to do that, but there was no reason she should have,” Theresa said. “Gerry was perfectly capable of taking care of her own things.”
“Well, she complained that in her last position the women of the village took care of things like that for her, and she felt like someone here should too, so I asked my mother if she would.”
“I think she was lying, Dora. I know no one does my laundry, or Sister Agnes’s, or even Sister Brena’s. I don’t know who your new sister will be, but I bet you’ll see a big difference after she gets settled in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dora said. Then, under her breath, she added, “I certainly hope so.”
Hayley poured herself another cup of coffee and said, “I really do want you to see this cave. When do you want to ride out there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We have a lot of work to do around here. We were going to transplant some of the herbs into beds here at the chapel, and the workroom could use another cleaning, and it’s been a week since we scrubbed the patient rooms, and …”
“Whoa,” Hayley said. “The patient rooms haven’t been used since we’ve been here. We’ll give them a quick dust and sweep and they’ll be fine. Marcus is going to do some work on the workroom out back, so there’s no need for us to clean it up until he’s done. As for transplanting the herbs, we can work on that this morning, but I don’t want to spend all day doing it, unless Theresa’s in a hurry for us to get it finished.”
Hayley looked at Theresa.
“No, there’s no hurry,” Theresa said. “And we only have four empty troughs anyway. It won’t take any time to fill those up.”
“What do you want to do with the mushrooms?” Dora asked.
“Nothing right now. I’ve written to Brena and asked her if she knows what they are and why Gerry had them, but until we hear from her, we’re going to leave them alone.”
Dora nodded.
“So, are you two heading out to the cave this afternoon?” Theresa asked.
Hayley grinned and nodded.
~ ~ ~ ~
After lunch, Hayley and Dora set off on horseback to check out the cave. Hayley had the map that Marcus had drawn, and with Dora’s help, they found it without too much trouble.
When Hayley pulled the bush aside and held it out of the way for Dora to step inside, Dora gasped. “That’s my chair!” she said as she walked over to one of the chairs and looked it over carefully. “I brought that from home when my husband first got sick. I sat in that chair beside his bed for weeks, nursing him, watching him die.” As she ran her hand along the back of the chair, she pointed towards the rug. “And that rug. It came out of my living room back at my house. I brought it to the chapel and put it in my bedroom a couple of months later, after the epidemic was over. Gerry said she got rid of it because it was infested with fleas.”
Dora looked at the rest of the stuff in the little cave carefully. “That table. It was a gift from Niklas’s wife. She gave that to Gerry to put in her bedroom next to her bed. I wondered what happened to it.” She picked up one of the lap rugs out of the other chair and ran her fingers lovingly over the material. “These are my lap rugs. I made these myself. I had them at the hospital during the epidemic. I just assumed that they got packed up with someone else’s stuff after it was all over. Parents were staying with children, husbands with wives, wives with husbands, so many people sick and dying.” Dora shook her head sadly. “That was a horrible time.”
Then she spotted the little teapot under the table. “That teapot used to be at the chapel. I don’t know about those mugs, or the glowstone lamp, but that pitcher is one of ours, too. What’s going on here, Hayley?”
“I don’t know,” Hayley said quietly. “I had no idea. I thought someone had set up housekeeping here and wondered if you might know who it was. Do you think Gerry was staying here after she left the chapel? Do you think she might still be here?”
“I don’t know, but my lap rugs have been missing for nearly two years now, and so has my chair. She might have come here after she vanished, but this place has been set up for a long time,” Dora said as she kept looking around. “Look at that table. It’s got at least three week’s worth of dust on it. And that fire’s been out for a long time, too. You don’t even smell the ash in the air any more, but there have been a lot of fires in that fire circle. Look at the ground around it.” Then she shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on here.”
“Could Gerry have set this up as a place to get away?”
“All of this for one day a month?” Dora frowned and thought for a moment. “I guess so, but it seems a little strange. Unless I was right, and there was a lover. Then it would make sense.” Dora looked around again. “Two chairs, two mugs. I wonder whom she was meeting. He didn’t bring anything of his here though. Everything in here is hers, or rather the chapel’s.”
“And yours. What should we do about it?”
“Let’s tell Theresa and see what she says, but I’d like to have my stuff back eventually.”
~ ~ ~ ~
That evening, after Hayley and Dora had gone to bed, Theresa sat down at her desk and jotted down everything that she could remember hearing about Gerry since she’d arrived in Glenco, looking for a thread that might lead her to the reason for the woman’s disappearance. The best explanation that she could come up with was a love affair, but how had she managed to keep it so quiet? And why hadn’t she taken her clothes when she left? Whether she’d gone with her lover or had left when things went sour, she would have needed her stuff. Why leave it all behind?
Theresa stared at her notes and played with all kinds of different scenarios, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find one that really seemed to fit. Finally, she folded the pages she had written, slipped them in her pocket, and left her office.
Chapter 23
Walnut Springs
Kevin spent all day Sunday involved with opening the ministers’ conference. He didn’t finish traveling through the energy field with various ministers, most of whom were complete strangers to him, until mid-afternoon.
The ministers were uneasy around him to begin with, and the trip through the energy field only made matters worse. Isak and Cameryn took charge of the guests as soon as they arrived in Kevin’s office, and moved them on towards the governor’s office as quickly as they could. Chris spent most of the day floating between the two offices, trying to help out.
By the time he went to the opening dinner, Kevin was bushed, but he had to play host and officially welcome everyone. He hated speaking in front of any group of people, and speaking in front of eighty strangers who were evaluating him in terms of his ability to
be their head of state would have been disconcerting, if he hadn’t been too tired to care.
After dinner, he quickly retired to his room, where he planned to spend as much of Monday as possible, recovering. He had barely gotten stretched out on his couch when Chris walked in.
“I thought Karl handled the opening dinner just fine,” Chris said. “Didn’t you?”
Kevin mumbled an agreement. “I guess his experience on stage at the Pioneer Village where he and Joan used to work really paid off. He seemed perfectly comfortable speaking in front of all those men.”
Chris sat down in one of the chairs. “You didn’t see him before he went into the dining room. You were still in your office. He was so nervous, he was shaking.”
“You’d never have known,” Kevin said. “He acted like it was an everyday thing.”
“I know. Right before they went in, Joan pulled him into Cryslyn’s office and made him do some breathing exercises and run through a few concentration drills. She’s good. By the time she finished with him, he was steady as a rock.”
“Next time we have to go to a council meeting maybe I should drop by her office first,” Kevin said, only half joking.
Chris shook his head. “The situation’s totally different. You’re in front of some serious enemies there. He was in front of people who basically want to like him. And besides, when you’re nervous it doesn’t come through. I’m probably the only one who knew you were nervous tonight.”
“Only because I was too tired to shake,” Kevin said as he closed his eyes. “I didn’t have a chance to say anything to Joan. Did she get everyone settled all right?”
Chris nodded. “Between the soldiers’ barracks and the guards’ quarters, they’re all bunked down for the night. I bet there’ll be an all night party over there.”
“Well, they can have it. All I want is some sleep.”
“I’ll let you get on with it then,” Chris said. “I’m going downstairs to see if anyone needs any help. See you tomorrow.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Kevin did manage to spend a good portion of Monday in his room, but Chris spent the day in the office with Captain Lawrence, scheduling the individual conferences for Tuesday. By dinner, both schedules were posted.
The Dragon's Flame (The Chronicles of Terah # 2) Page 32