“You’ve come about Finley,” Mary said, alternating her knit and purl stitches, counting them off without pause.
“Yes—Finley,” Annie agreed.
“Annie painted her,” Justin said.
Mary nodded. “After you sent her that picture. The one you took a while back.” She gestured in the vicinity of the tintype.
“No. Before,” Justin admitted.
“I’d never seen that tintype,” Annie insisted. “I know I hadn’t.”
Mary’s face grew serious. “You saw her in your mind,” she whispered, her own nearly-useless eyes registering a swirl of emotions: shock and slight confusion and even—Annie and Justin would have both sworn that it was true—hope.
“Finley was my mother’s aunt,” Mary said, seeming to direct her words now at the little girl on the floor. “I never got to meet her. She died, you know. Before I ever had a chance.
“So many chances missed,” Mary went on. “Finley didn’t get a chance, either. Not to live a full life. So young. Barely twenty. All the stories focus on Amos—the big important town founder. Sometimes, she seems like little more than a footnote. But she was so much more than that. She was a person all on her own. She was good at growing things—I bet you didn’t know that. So good. She had the ability to push things past their proper season. Tomatoes in December, people used to say that. Red and green for the holiday. Funny…” Her voice trailed.
“Couldn’t extend her own life,” Mary muttered. “So strange. So sad.”
“We’re working on a book,” Annie started, leaning forward.
Mary shot Annie the kind of look that silenced her, made her lean back in the side chair she’d chosen.
“A book,” Mary repeated, in a tone not dissimilar to the voices that had been shutting down any attempt to wrench out a story. She put her knitting aside and looked at Annie, as though she still had vision enough to see right through her.
“Come with me,” Mary announced.
Hannah jumped to her feet. “Where are we going?”
“To the attic,” Mary said.
Annie started to reach for Mary, offer guidance and balance, but Mary shook her away and started for the stairs herself.
The three of them followed Mary to the uppermost part of the house. Tiny windows along the perimeter shot streams of light about the attic.
“The trunk, Mary?” Hannah gasped.
“The trunk,” Mary said with a nod—always forbidden to her youngest, most curious visitors, including Justin and Damien more than a decade ago. But always also revealed in good time, when they were old enough to handle the contents with a proper sense of reverence.
Hannah squealed and raced toward the trunk so quickly, she nearly slid like a baseball player stealing a base. She removed an ancient straw hat from the top, then sucked in a breath and blew, knocking dust particles across the attic.
She stuck her tongue out, furrowed her brow in concentration, and attacked the latch.
“Now, don’t go getting too eager too quick,” Mary warned. “Precious, delicate things in there.”
“I know, I know,” Hannah moaned.
Mary cleared her throat. When Hannah glanced up and saw the degree of the woman’s seriousness, she pulled her tongue back in, straightened her back into perfect alignment, and pulled at the latch with less urgency. Metal pieces clanked, announcing the trunk had become an open door. Justin helped Hannah lift the heavy lid.
Mary leaned forward and gently lifted a fold of ivory lace. Annie’s fingers found her lips, stifling a response. She recognized the delicacy of the stitches. Her heart began to feel curiously warm. The material she’d painted around Finley’s shoulders had not been born in her imagination. It existed. It was here, in the trunk. How could she have painted it so accurately—down to the tiniest pattern in the lace?
“Finley spent the entire time that Amos was gone to war tatting this shawl, which she’d intended to wear on her wedding day,” Mary said. She draped it gently across Hannah’s shoulders. In true little girl fashion, Hannah began to parade, to mimic walking down an aisle, humming the “Wedding March.”
“She put her heart and soul into that shawl,” Mary said, just before angling her face into one of the streams of sunlight pouring into the attic.
“We had Native Americans here at the time,” Mary went on. “When Finley was young. When I was young, even. We lived side-by-side. A medicine man was still close by when I was little. Do you know that medicine men weren’t seen as doctors, not like we have? They treated the spirit.”
Annie became transfixed watching her.
“The soul is the most powerful part of a person,” Mary said. “It survives the unsurvivable. And when you put your soul in a physical object—an inanimate object…” her voice trailed as she pointed toward the fragile shawl. “The medicine man, he told me things. Lots and lots of things…”
Hannah lifted the shawl, tied it around her head. Giggled.
In the strong stream of sunlight, Mary could make out exactly what the child had just done. She gasped, lunged forward. Lifted the shawl from Hannah’s head. “This is too fragile for all your silliness,” she scolded.
“But—” Hannah started.
Mary folded the shawl, making sure to lovingly pat the corners and straighten the creases. Hannah stepped in front of the trunk like she planned to block Mary from returning it.
In that moment, Justin could feel the tug between young and old. Neither wanted to be what they were. Both would have traded their positions, right then, in a heartbeat. The little girl wanted the freedom to be the rule maker. And the older woman ached for the freedom that came with never having to enforce the rules, be the family ringleader. A person could get blisters when their foot rubbed on the same shoe over and over. Maybe a soul could get blistered, too, by rubbing over the same routine, the same thoughts.
Justin’s eyes wandered toward Annie. Would he be relieved to get past the same thought of wanting Annie and never having her—at least, not in the way he dreamed? Or had the thought been with him so long that it had become more like his friend?
There were two roads in his head, running parallel—Annie as a friend, Annie as more. But dust had settled across the two of them—and maybe, just maybe, what lay beneath that dust was every bit as fragile as Finley’s shawl.
Mary was tired; they were invited to stay and ushered outside all at once.
Hannah clomped about the front porch, grumbling about being bored and only wanting to wear some old smelly shawl and she wasn’t going to mess it up and why didn’t anyone trust her? Then she disappeared around the corner of the house—skipping as if suddenly very happy.
“I love it here,” Annie began as she removed her camera from her bag. “What Mary said back there—about the shawl? And the medicine man? Don’t you think this place feels spiritual? More so than the rest of the town? Her land here, it’s different, isn’t it?”
Justin watched her, not answering. She squinted through the back of her camera, snapping shot after shot.
“Usually,” Annie continued, “when you’re painting, you can make up the background. But this place, right here—it doesn’t feel like backdrop. It feels like it has to be drawn from source material. Like I need to be looking at a photograph in order to paint the dusty ground. So it’ll be right. Do you know what I mean?”
Justin did. He let her take her pictures. Together—and in no hurry to leave—they wandered away from the house. Justin sat beneath a tree and began to scribble page after page of notes. He wrote all he could remember that Mary had ever told him about the tribe that had once lived in the area. He wrote about Mary herself, and Hannah. Annie pulled out a collection of dark charcoal pencils and began to sketch. The afternoon passed and evening approached.
They had only started to consider gathering up their belongings when a shout hit the air.
“Mary,” Justin gasped.
They raced toward the house, both of them afraid that Mary was hurt. They
found her on the porch clutching the railing.
“She’s gone!” Mary cried out.
Justin glanced about the porch. “Hannah?” he asked.
“Her too,” Mary agreed. “She sneaked back up to the attic. Got Finley’s shawl. She’s out, she’s out—”
“We’ll find her,” Justin promised, dropping his bag near the spot where Mary stood. “Come on, Annie.” He raced across the yard, his feet kicking up dirt clouds with every step.
Annie had only started back down the ancient front step when Mary clawed at her arm. “She’s out. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Of course,” Annie said, and patted Mary’s fingers soothingly.
“No, no. You don’t. She’s out. Her heart and soul was in the shawl. Her soul.”
Annie shuddered. “Her—soul?”
“You saw her. You did. When you painted. There was a reason. There had to be. All these years, tucked away. This isn’t the first day the shawl has been removed since Finley passed. Others have seen it. Touched it. But now, now—she’s out. She’s gone. I felt her leave. She left with the shawl. She came to you—why? Why?”
“I have to go,” Annie insisted, pulling away. “Before she gets too far gone. Before she’s lost. It still gets cold at night.” But even as she spoke, she wasn’t entirely sure who she was speaking about: Hannah…or Finley?
“Cold?” Mary frowned. “No, no. You’re still not listening. Her soul. Her soul. She’s out. Because of you. You put this in motion. Your painting—your book. It’s you.”
Frightened, Annie began to run. In the distance, she could hear Justin’s voice calling Hannah’s name.
At the edge of the yard, she paused. There it was again—the strange, almost spiritual feeling that had tickled her the moment she’d stepped out of Justin’s car.
“Hannah?” she called out, but her voice didn’t feel the same inside her throat—everything vibrated oddly, as though she were a just-struck tuning fork.
Annie saw a hint of the lace shawl running up ahead.
Only, when she got closer, it turned out not to be a shawl at all—it was long pale-blond hair, bouncing with each step. The figure seemed too tall to belong to a seven-year-old girl. And hadn’t Hannah been wearing shorts? Whatever it had been, it certainly hadn’t been a hoop skirt.
The figure turned briefly, as if to catch a glimpse of who was trailing her. Then sped into a cluster of trees beyond the road.
Annie nearly tripped over her own feet. That was the same face that had come to her in New York. The one she had felt compelled to paint. The same face captured in the tintype in the front room of Mary’s house.
“Finley!” Annie cried, her voice rippling in the air.
The woman flinched. She stopped running. She shook her head, as if scolding Annie. “You have time!” she shouted. “Lots of time! And he’s right here. You’re wasting it all.”
“Justin? Is that—?”
Instead of answering, the woman just started running again, a desperate name on her own lips. It sounded a bit muffled, but Annie thought she heard her cry, “Amos.”
“Wait! Finley!” Annie tried again.
This time, when Annie called her name, she was engulfed by complete darkness. A musty smell invaded her nose. Her chest ached with the pain of waiting and knowing there might never be an end to waiting. Her ears exploded with the sound of distant canon fire, and she knew that she might never get another moment with her love. Another touch, another kiss. Darkness became a prison. Lonely and unending. A realization came to Annie (as inspiration always came, in a single flash): this was how Finley had felt for more than a century, locked inside a trunk in her family home. She had waited in the dark, aching through the years, there in the layers of the wedding shawl that she had never gotten to wear.
But the longing that Annie felt was not only Finley’s. There, in the cold darkness, she was forced to face her own innermost self. She was afraid, too—how could she not be? She’d just been confronted by—what? A ghost? And the kind of darkness that could only exist inside a shut-tight trunk. But she was still running, too. She was racing across the grounds, feeling the dusty earth shift beneath her feet. Fear had a way of illuminating everything—and now, Annie knew that she had to find Justin. She had to tell him—finally—how important he was to her. How important he’d always been to her.
She knew it now. It came to her as suddenly as the vision she had painted: Justin was the one thing she could never stand to lose. Even last winter, when she was hurt at the awful review he had written. Even then, beneath her anger, there was still hope. Hope that it wasn’t over, that he hadn’t changed, that what they’d once had hadn’t been obliterated.
And now, she knew that if he were gone, she would not be able to breathe. She would ache for him, more than she would ever ache for New York. More than she would ache for success. She would miss their joint daydreaming. The kind of artwork she created when he was in her life. The kind of person she was when he was around. The way he made her feel close to her roots. A strange undercurrent had flowed between them ever since she’d gotten home. No, she finally admitted to herself, it’s been there always.
She had seen Finley. And there, in the darkness, as she ran, Annie knew that just like Finley, she’d been locked up tight—or her heart had been, anyway. Locked like Mary’s trunk. And now, she was calling Justin’s name. The lock had been undone, the latch snapped open, the lid cracked.
Finley was out. Mary was right. She had escaped. She had slipped out, just like Annie’s feelings were slipping, coming out of the darkness, spilling through her chest. Why now? Maybe it was timing—being done with school, being back home. And more—no longer being so young, so foolish, so afraid. So tied to the way things had always been: friends, she’d always insisted. As Justin had insisted. And all this time—she could admit it now—her heart had been crying out for something more.
Annie’s heart was out. Finley was out. None of it ever would have happened if Justin had not brought her here. Together, they’d stumbled upon what could be the best story of all—the story of Annie and Justin.
As Annie ran, she felt she was chasing so many things, both old and new: the hope of a June bride awaiting her soldier’s return. The reality of Amos Hargrove. The love that she and Justin could share. Everything they could accomplish together.
And Hannah. She was supposed to be chasing Hannah, too. Where was she?
Annie tried calling her, but got no response.
She called out again.
This time, she heard Justin. He was close by. His voice soothed her instantly, like a washcloth of cold milk on a sunburn.
She ran toward him, finding herself at the outer edge of Founders Park.
“Hark, fair Juliette,” she heard.
“Justin?” she croaked. Her thoughts were a tornado. What was going on?
There he was, just ahead of her. Justin. Down on one knee, like a man proposing.
Annie tried to take slower breaths. She placed a hand over her heart as though to reassure it, calm it down.
“What light that pours through a broken window—” she heard in response from another man talking in falsetto.
She raised her head, looking through the branches toward Mark’s tree house. Toward the balcony that jutted out from the limbs of an ancient sycamore. Built by the man most in Finley referred to as the town’s biggest eccentric.
She began to giggle to herself at the word: “eccentric.” Wouldn’t she have thought it of anyone who had the audacity to describe what she had just experienced? Believing a woman’s spirit had spent more than a century in a trunk?
But she did—she believed what she had witnessed. And all she wanted to do was scoop what had happened up into her arms, hold it tight to her chest. She would share it with Justin—in the way that a woman would share her heart. No—it already belonged to them both; it was something that had happened to the two of them. They had disturbed the dust, and now, Finley was o
ut. She had raced off—she was no longer in the folds of her shawl.
There was a reason Finley had shown herself to Annie.
No, no, she thought as she stared at Justin—reasons. More than one. Finley had called Annie home. And now, Annie felt as though she had suddenly become the strongest protector of the legend of Amos Hargrove. She understood why the rest of the Finley-ites had refused to talk. She didn’t want to throw this story out haphazardly, either. Mostly because she did not entirely understand it all. She didn’t see the full picture yet—no one in town had the full picture.
Well—no one other than Amos and Finley.
She smiled at Justin. Her chest warmed again.
“That’s not the way the line goes at all!” Justin shouted up at Mark. “Besides, it’s Romeo’s, not Juliette’s!”
Mark laughed. They were still playing a game. Actually, it appeared that they were rehashing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliette. Justin was taking on the Romeo role, and Hannah, standing on the deck of the tree house, surrounded by the giant leaves of the supporting sycamores, was playing the Juliette role. Sort of.
“Hark!” Mark said in his falsetto, hiding himself behind Hannah, pretending to speak for her.
Hannah giggled. She beamed. She had gotten her way—figured out a way to play at the tree house.
“No!” Justin corrected. “You’re Mark.”
Again, laughter. The two grown men seemed to be having as much—or maybe even more—fun as the little girl.
Annie chuckled softly, too. What a silly game—what a silly thing to think a seven-year-old girl would enjoy. But it only made sense—what else would a novelist and a university professor come up with to entertain a child? Yes, Annie reminded herself, staring up at Mark, a university professor. She would never use the word “eccentric” when thinking of—well—anyone in Finley. Not ever again.
Forever Finley Page 14