‘Any time, Ivy. To be honest, I miss the field work.’
‘Any thoughts on what we learned?’
Will took a moment. ‘I don’t think Josie was abused. She probably would have shared with one of the women at Calvary House, and that would have gotten around quickly. I have the feeling Rebecca Taylor is on top of things. She would have known. I’ll be able to tell you a lot more when you ID her, and we can find out about her home life.’
‘Is it okay if I call you when I get that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Ivy got home at just after ten. She checked on her mother, and barely got undressed and into bed before the exhaustion took over.
As she slipped beneath the covers she thought about Calvary House, and what Rebecca Taylor said.
She was with a boy.
45
Detta left Red Oak around noon. The sky was clear and cloudless, the air sweet with the fragrance of ripening apples. It was a Rockwell painting of a day.
She took part in the hour-long orientation at the library. There was one other new part-timer in attendance, a sweet girl named Renee Billets. Renee was Detta’s age, and seemed to be a bit in awe of Detta when she found out that she was from New York. Everyone was really nice, and Jennifer patiently walked them both through all of their duties.
There was no sign of the boy.
After the meeting Detta got on her bike and headed down the main road, riding against the traffic.
The street went from the few businesses that were on the south side of the town square to long stretches where there were only a few houses per mile.
She knew from Google Maps that a winding country road called Treetop Lane would be coming up soon on her left, a road that led down to the river. In short order she saw it, and curved around to the two-lane road.
She came upon the river quickly. It was beautiful, and this part of it was very secluded. It was as if she were the only girl in the world. She got off her bike, lay it down near the edge.
She found a patch of warm, dry grass, sat down. Across the river, on a low hill, was a shack of some sort. It was the outbuilding of a nearby farm that had surely seen better days.
Detta found a dry branch, snapped it a few times, crafting a makeshift stylus. She made a rudimentary outline of the building in the drying mud.
Not bad. She found a smaller branch and made some cross-hatching, shading the dark side of the shack. She knew that when the level of the water rose, it would wash away her half-hearted drawing, but that was okay.
Detta tossed the small branch into the river, and as it floated away she began to cry. She didn’t stop for the longest time. She didn’t want to.
Twenty minutes later she stood up her bike and began to walk slowly along the path toward the village. After she’d gone fifty feet or so she saw something near the base of the huge apple tree near the river bank. At first she thought it was a piece of paper, a candy wrapper, perhaps.
When she looked more closely she saw that it wasn’t a piece of paper after all. It was an apple peel. A long, carefully carved corkscrew of an apple peel. The part that didn’t make sense was how fresh it looked. She’d baked enough apple pies with her mother to know that apple peels, and apples themselves, began to brown within just a few minutes. This was fresh.
But she’d been out here for more than an hour. No one had passed by. It didn’t make sense.
‘I like your drawing.’
Detta nearly jumped out of her skin. She whipped around to see who had spoken to her but there was no one there. She turned again, and again.
‘Up here.’
Detta took a few stumbling steps backward. She looked up into the tree. There was someone there, sitting on the lowest branch of the huge apple tree.
But it wasn’t just someone.
It was the boy. The beautiful boy from the library.
And he was holding a knife.
46
The boy wore a deep green hooded sweatshirt, a white T-shirt beneath, faded blue jeans and a pair of tan work boots. His sandy hair was a little long, and adorably messed up. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
Still, even though he was really cute, she wanted to kill him for frightening her.
When he came down from the tree he grabbed the branch beneath his feet and swung himself downward.
‘You scared me,’ she said.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
Detta tried to fix his age. She imagined he was sixteen or seventeen. Then again, he might have been even older. He seemed to have an older boy’s confidence.
‘I was sitting up there for a while,’ he said. ‘Just watching the river go by. Now that it’s warm enough I like to do it whenever I can.’
Detta said nothing.
He leaned back, against the tree. ‘I saw you come around the bend on your bicycle. I thought you were going to just ride by. I was going to say hello, but I didn’t want to bother you. Then you stopped.’
‘And you spied on me.’
The boy put up both hands in surrender. ‘Guilty as charged, Your Honor. Although I wouldn’t really call it spying.’
‘What would you call it?’
The boy thought for a few moments.
‘Have you ever been to an art museum?’
In truth, Detta had been to just about every art museum in Manhattan. Many times.
‘Yes. I have.’
‘So, you’re walking around the museum, looking at everything, and for the most part it’s a bunch of stuff you don’t really relate to. I mean, the medieval armor is pretty cool, and the portraits of the old dead English kings are all right, but, for the most part, nothing really speaks to your soul. Do you know what I mean?’
She knew exactly what he meant. She couldn’t believe he was actually saying these things to her.
‘It’s a couple of hours later and, just when you’re getting ready to leave, you come around the corner and you see something you didn’t expect to see. One of those museum pieces that is set aside and given its own special place, its own special lighting, to show it just as the artist intended.’
The boy took a few steps forward.
‘That’s what I thought when you came around the bend. I thought about saying something but I knew there would never be another moment like this. I would never again have the opportunity to see you in this perfect light. I didn’t want to mess up the moment with my idiot blathering. So I just watched you. I hope you’ll forgive me. I was being selfish, and I was wrong.’
Detta felt dizzy. Instead of saying anything witty, she took a deep breath, and said:
‘It’s okay.’
‘Am I forgiven?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
He leaned back against the tree. ‘I really like your glasses.’
For a fleeting moment Detta could not remember who she was wearing today, which designer. They all looked the same from her side of the frames these days.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m blind as a bat without them.’
‘When I first saw you I thought you looked a little sad.’
‘Yeah, maybe that’s because I’ve been in the dogs’. I’m out now, but it was bad.’
‘Uh oh. What did you do?’
She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone what happened, least of all this boy. On the other hand, in this town, everyone probably already knew what had happened in that store.
‘I went full Chernobyl in Wal-Mart.’
‘Wait. That was you?’
Detta looked up, horrified. ‘What did you hear?’
The boy held her gaze for a few agonizing seconds. Then he smiled. ‘I’m just kidding. I didn’t hear anything. It isn’t that small of a town.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘So, what did you do?’
‘I opened a couple of bottles of wine.’
‘In the store?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay. At least you didn’t drink them.’
�
�Yes I did.’
The world suddenly went silent for a few seconds. Then the boy clapped his hands. ‘Oh, no! That is awesome!’
‘It wasn’t awesome. It was stupid.’
‘It was awesomely stupid,’ he said. ‘But therein lies the beginning of a legend around here.’
‘Great.’
‘Were they the screw top kind or the corkscrew kind?’
‘Screw top.’
‘Well played. How did it all end?’
Detta shrugged. ‘No handcuffs. My dad had to pay for the stuff I broke.’
‘You broke stuff?’
‘I told you it was bad. The worst part is that I said terrible things to my father. I didn’t even mean them.’
‘Then why did you say them?’
Detta felt the emotions close in on her. ‘I was just mad, I guess.’
‘At what?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it. We made up, but I still feel bad.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘My name is Billy, by the way.’
‘I’m Bernadette.’
But you already know that, she wanted to add. You know that because you wrote it in The House of the Seven Gables.
She didn’t say these things because she wasn’t quite sure she believed them, and she didn’t want him to think she was crazier than he already did.
‘Bernadette is a beautiful name,’ he said.
Except for her mother and father, no one had ever said this to her. Not once.
‘You think so?’
‘I do. There is a Saint Bernadette, you know.’
She had never heard this. Trying not to be too obvious about it, Detta stole a glance at her watch. Where had the afternoon gone?
‘I should get going,’ she said. ‘If I’m not home by dinner my dad calls in a SWAT team.’
Billy nodded, picked up his backpack, shouldered it on. ‘Come on. I’ll walk with you.’
Before she could say anything, he crossed the path, righted her bike and, without a word, headed toward town. She caught up with him in a few seconds. They followed the river all the way to town, came around the bend. They soon arrived at Red Oak.
Detta didn’t want to walk up to the inn. She didn’t want to be anywhere in the world other than where she was at this moment, in this place.
‘I guess I should go.’
‘Okay,’ Billy said. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around town.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m doing summer work in the orchards. I’ll be around.’
‘Okay.’
He reached out, touched the back of her hand. It was just the slightest contact, but it sent a low-level electrical charge through her.
‘Abbeville is a pretty cool place,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll like it here.’
Detta took her bike by the handlebars, walked it up to the front entrance of Red Oak, reminding herself that she had been walking for years, that it wasn’t that hard to do. Except now, in this place, at this moment, Billy was watching her.
When she reached the door, she decided to spin around slowly, and wave. It would be a cool move. A Lauren Bacall move.
One, two, three. She turned around.
Billy was gone.
47
As Will walked from Red Oak to Godwin Hall there was a spring in his step. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, that in each blade of grass, in every note of birdsong, there was hope for the future.
Life had a pretty fair resemblance to good.
He thought about his work with Ivy Holgrave. She was a good cop. He made a mental note to call her and ask about any progress she might have made in the case.
He stopped at the coffee shop on the square for his daily dose. The owner called him by name, and wished him good luck. He was starting to be known.
As he drank his coffee he picked up a copy of the local weekly, The Villager. He saw why people were giving him greetings. On the front page was the short article on Godwin Hall written by Eli’s granddaughter. It was odd to see his name in print. He had been written about before, had indeed suffered the barbs of lukewarm book reviews, but to see his name used in connection with something other than his work was strange.
When Cassie had asked him personal details he had been taken off guard, and simply told the truth. Now that he saw the word widower, in connection with his own life, he felt as if it were somebody else.
He moved on in the article. The piece ended with an upbeat note, that he and Detta were welcome new additions to Abbeville, and that if Godwin Hall reopened as a bed and breakfast it would be an asset to the village, the county, and the landscape of northeast Ohio as a whole.
At some point during this day Will knew he would receive a visit from the local building inspector. It would be then that Will would learn if all the work he’d done – mostly by Reuben Yoder and his crew – would pay off. It was up to the inspector as to whether or not he received an occupancy permit.
It was with this equal amount of excitement and trepidation that Will walked the final block to Godwin Hall.
When Will rounded the corner to the rear entrance he was surprised to see a number of packages waiting for him. The two largest, by far, were the mattresses he had ordered via Amazon. Next to them was a forty-two-inch LCD television and a few smaller boxes.
The sight of these items, stacked so casually against the red brick façade, made him laugh. He needed no further proof that he was no longer in New York City. The fact that a box containing a flat screen television had not been stolen was all the validation he required.
He got one of the mattresses up the steps and down the hallway to the last bedroom on the left, a sun-splashed room with a window overlooking Platteville Road. It was to be Detta’s room.
After a short break he went back downstairs, unboxed the flat screen, took it into the parlor and set it on top of some milk crates in the corner. He knew that the cable installers had been by a few days earlier when Reuben’s crew had been in the house. He hooked up the television, flipped it on, found a news channel. Same as it ever was.
He flipped off the TV, went back into the dining room. He worked the last mattress into his bedroom. He cut off the packing material and flopped it onto the bed.
He was just about to take out the trash when something caught his eye. Something he had not seen before. When he had refinished this bedroom set he’d noticed that the headboard had a number of nicks and grooves in it, something he decided was character, instead of flaws. But now, in this light, he saw that it was something else. It looked like a carving.
He stepped across the room, opened the Venetian blinds fully. He walked back to the headboard and ran his fingers across the nicks and cuts. There were a lot more than he had thought.
He leaned close and saw that, in total, there were seven words. They were definitely not English.
Will walked out to the dining room, grabbed his notepad and pencil. He walked back, sat down on the mattress, and started to transcribe what he saw.
After a few minutes, he had it.
Iucundissima est spei persuadio et vite imprimis.
It was surely Latin, but he had resisted the language mightily in junior high school, and therefore had no idea what it meant.
That, of course, was what the internet was for.
He watched her; her facial expressions, her body language, how she moved through these new spaces. She was tentative at first, but before long she took to Godwin Hall as he had hoped she might.
Will told her about his day with Ivy. Detta listened, asking all the right questions, not the least of which was her concern about the dead girl about her age being found in the nearby woods.
Will assured her that all was safe.
After giving Detta a tour of the house, they stood in the dining room. Will could see the emotion in her eyes. She was probably thinking what he was thinking, that Amanda Hardy would have loved this place.
‘It’s beautiful, Dad.’
�
�You really think so?’
‘I do. I can’t believe how big it is.’
‘Try painting it. Which, by the way, you’re going to have the chance to discover.’ He pointed at the box of brushes, rollers, and drop cloths in the corner. ‘Godwin Hall is hiring.’
‘Bring it on,’ she said. ‘I’m an artist. What’s a few thousand gallons of latex?’
Will smiled.
Detta glanced at her watch. ‘I have to get to the library.’
‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘While you’re there, could you look something up for me?’
‘Sure.’
They walked across the dining room to Will’s bedroom. He showed Detta the engraving on his headboard, the bedroom set he’d bought at auction.
‘It came like this?’
‘Well, it was painted,’ Will said. ‘I stripped off the paint and then I saw this underneath.’
He handed her the sheet of paper with the transcription.
‘It’s Latin, right?’ she asked.
‘Pretty sure it is. ’
‘I’m on it,’ she said. ‘I’ll check it out at the library.’
To Will she sounded like the Detta Hardy of old. Inquisitive, bright, helpful, determined.
‘Also, I need to ask you something,’ Will said.
Detta looked a little nervous. ‘Okay.’
‘Have I ever talked about this place?’
‘What do you mean? This house?’
‘Yes. Godwin Hall. Or even this village.’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘So, you don’t remember me ever talking about Abbeville, or Ohio, or Aunt Millie?’
Detta thought for a moment. ‘No.’
‘I never talked about coming here when I was a kid?’
‘Wait. You’ve been here before?’
Will wasn’t sure how to respond. If he said he didn’t know, it would cause concern. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to remember if we’d planned a trip here when I was a kid. Right around when my mother died.’
Detta thought a few more moments. ‘I don’t think you ever mentioned anything like that. In fact, the first I ever heard about this place is when you told me right before we moved here.’
‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘Just curious.’
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