The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Maybe not a creeper so much as a stalker!

  She stared at the picture she’d zoomed in on and then half tossed the phone back at Brent. The photograph, taken when she was a senior in high school, had edges that were bent and worn. Annalise was about twenty pounds lighter at the time. Her expression looked vibrant—unlike now when her smile was pasted on like a plastic Barbie doll’s. Like it had been most days since she was eighteen. When she became an adult for reasons other than the legal age.

  “Did you know Mr. Hayes?” Brent asked, taking his phone back.

  “Sure. Not personally, but everyone in Gossamer Grove knows of Eugene Hayes. Especially after Tyler’s not-so-nice article in the paper about the old man owing back taxes and the town giving him eviction notices.” Annalise hid her hands under the desk. They were shaking. She clasped her fingers together.

  “But, why would he have pictures of you, Annalise?”

  “How would I know?” Her voice pitched an octave higher, and Annalise focused on bringing it back down in tone. The sounds of coffee shop patrons—her patrons—filtered through her office door, along with the frothing sound from the steamer. She could use a straight-up espresso right about now.

  “I know you’re upset, but I have to show you something else.” Brent directed his attention back to his phone.

  No, not a picture of the body.

  “Here.” Brent turned the phone so that Annalise could see. She expelled a carefully controlled breath of relief at a sheaf of papers.

  “What are they?”

  “Old documents. All from Gossamer Grove. All from the turn of the century.”

  Annalise gave Brent a blank look. “So?”

  She eyed the phone again as Brent swiped to the next photo. A picture of a yellowed pamphlet with huge black-inked letters, announcing Corbin Bros. Come to Faith Revival Meeting, and a 1907 obituary for a Harrison Greenwood.

  Irony had a sharp and cutting edge. It went all metaphorically Jack the Ripper on her time and time again, and it hadn’t failed this time. If she could pay money to forget the Greenwood name, Annalise would mortgage her entire life.

  She raised her eyes to Brent’s and chose—very specifically chose—to ignore the obituary and the fact it was next to her photograph. Over a hundred years separated them. Chalk it up to awful coincidence.

  “Okay, so what does this mean? I don’t get”—she waved her hand toward his phone—“any of this.” Especially how Eugene Hayes came to possess a picture of eighteen-year-old her, taken at a campfire at Garrett Greenwood’s the night—

  “You have no idea how a picture of you, an obituary, and the old revival meetings might be related?”

  “Related? Hardly. They aren’t related.” Annalise bit back her incredulous defense. She lowered her voice. “Listen, I don’t know why he had those photos of me, and I don’t want to even consider why my pictures were next to an obituary of a Gossamer Grove Greenwood!”

  Greenwood. The name hung over her like a demon shadow. The black ghostly kind that dodged and dipped and mocked her just when she thought she had moved on. Annalise couldn’t afford to have anyone, even a hermit, digging into her past. She’d worked so hard to create a new life for herself, to be a person the town could trust, to become a benefactress who would take measures to look after people like Eugene Hayes instead of letting them become lost in a town that didn’t care. It was also why she kept most people at arm’s length. She was sociable and friendly, even politically inclined, but she didn’t let people in.

  Well, not most people.

  Annalise met Brent’s eyes. He knew. He would never tell, but he knew. And it was the knowing she was most afraid of. Those secrets never went away.

  Chapter 3

  Libby

  Obituaries were the final diary page of life lived, whether pleasant or tragic, full or barren. It was an account of a rather interesting life, or worse, a dramatic end. But never were they printed before the person died. Until now.

  Libby fell into the chair behind her father’s desk at his newspaper. Her entire body trembled. The pandemonium of the morning was wrought with grief, and she knew she’d never, never forget the keening wail from Mrs. Greenwood’s lips when Elijah broke the news to his mother. Libby would never forget the way Elijah looked at her, as if she were the one who had visited doom on his father. But, she’d not hung the man! No. The authorities had come at the beckoning call from the Greenwoods’ telephone—they were rich enough to have one—and the police determined quickly that Deacon Greenwood had taken his own life.

  In the chaos of Deacon Greenwood being cut from his noose and laid in the back of the coroner’s wagon, to the clucking of Dr. Penchan’s tongue as he offered a consoling handshake to Elijah, Libby had seen Elijah watching her. Her and Calvin. She could read his thoughts in his eyes. She was to blame. As she always had been before.

  Now Libby leaned forward and grappled for a piece of paper, positioning it in the typewriter in front of her and scrolling it through the feeder. She snatched her father’s horrid notes, attempting to bring some semblance of calm into her trembling hands and body. News. A story. Anything but the horridness of the morning.

  The Corbin brothers’ revival service has brought another round of baptisms. Eight souls were delivered and received a watery covering at the Gossamer Pond baptism service last night. Following the event, Jedidiah Corbin led the attendees in a rousing sermon with such impassioned verbiage, it resulted in several of the husbands hurrying their wives home. Errant boys lit cannon crackers, and a small fire at the edge of the pond was fast put out by quick-thinking folk.

  Libby ceased her nervous typing. The clack-clack of the keys grated on every raw nerve that was well awakened by death’s striking hand. Now this? The past week, little tidbits of news about the Corbin brothers had made their way into the paper, and the energy surrounding their revivalist meetings fell between inspiring conversion and inspiring violence.

  She yanked the paper from the typewriter, the machine protesting its release of the page as if to argue.

  “Yes, well, I want to go back to yesterday too!” Libby muttered at the typewriter. Yesterday, when all she had to do was hide from her memories, avoid her father and his newspaper partner, and pretend her mother wasn’t piously requesting Libby attend the missionary tea tomorrow afternoon.

  Libby leaned her elbows on the desk, drawing in deep, calming breaths. The police were sure to come and question her over the morning’s events. She couldn’t even find comfort now in boring town news. The Corbin brothers just had to keep stirring the pot, and that boded no good for anyone. Trouble was running rampant in Gossamer Grove. The town, cloaked in the image of quaint Midwestern charm and embraced with whispers of grace and charity, had been awakened to darker things. All that Gossamer Grove had seemed to be floated away like a cobweb on a breeze.

  Libby squelched a yelp as her father slapped down another one of his handwritten articles on the desk. The pencil she was fiddling with flew through the air and clattered onto the floor. All the sounds of the newspaper returned to her, jolting her from her thoughts. The pulleys from the pressroom whooshed with last-minute copies, and through the large windows on either side of the office door, Libby caught a glimpse of a newsboy running down the hall, hoisting a bag of morning news over his shoulder.

  “Deacon Greenwood is dead,” her father, Mitch Sheffield, announced. “They found him early this morning hanging from the rafters in their carriage house.”

  She hadn’t the ability to look shocked. She was numb now. What her father thought of as fresh news, to Libby, was already well over two hours old. She sucked in a breath, but she knew better than to interrupt her father, who had declared at her birth that he wouldn’t bear the endearment of “Father” or “Papa,” but instead taught her to refer to him by his first name.

  Mitch waved his hand in the air. “He kicked a stool out from beneath himself. God knows there must be easier ways to take one’s life!”

 
A sharp intake of breath from Paul Darrow, Mitch’s newspaper partner, brought Mitch’s exclamation to a halt. Paul was frozen in the doorway of the office, his small stature magnified by his sour expression. Black sleeves ballooned around his forearms and over his elbows, covering his white shirt to avoid ink transfer. Wispy hair waved on the top of the man’s balding head.

  “You will not print that.” The words hissed between his teeth. He jammed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his index finger.

  Libby was cold, down to the tips of her toes. There was so much more than either Paul or Mitch understood.

  “Well, I—” she began.

  “I will print the news,” Mitch interrupted and rose to full height, which dwarfed Paul and made him look a bit like a puffed-up rooster trying to hide his scrawny frame.

  Paul dared a step into the office. The office that had once been his before Mitch bailed him out of financial ruin and took over sixty percent of the paper. Paul really had no say anymore, although he liked to think he did.

  “It’s disrespectful to Deacon Greenwood’s name and his family. We must handle this with deference to their grief and the church’s affections.” Paul’s argument had trivial effect.

  “We print news, Darrow!” Mitch pointed to his pile of handwritten notes in front of Libby. “Whether that’s Deacon Greenwood’s death or the Corbin brothers shouting hellfire and damnation at the people from their pulpit. Gossamer Grove is festering with news, and you want to print a report on the Martha Washington Ladies’ Society spring fundraiser?”

  “I never said—” Paul’s bluster was interrupted by an equally affronted Mitch.

  “Please, may I—” Libby tried again.

  Mitch cut her off with a blustering wave of his hand, completely silencing her.

  “The Corbins already have the town splitting in half. Eight more baptisms last night. Either it’s authentic religion or fear of being condemned. Deacon Greenwood probably thought better of it and decided it would be easier to face God himself than the Corbin brothers.”

  “That’s disgraceful! You’re stirring up trouble like you always do. Dissension.” Paul glowered. “This paper was never meant to publish slander.”

  “Hah!” Mitch sniffed.

  Libby drew in a shuddering breath. If she didn’t announce that she’d been the one to discover Deacon Greenwood, then she would have—well, never mind. She wasn’t allowed to express what she would have to pay, but she’d pay it nonetheless.

  “There was an obituary delivered this morning.” Her interjection received an exasperated look from her father. Obituaries weren’t notable news in his definition.

  Mitch waved her off again, choosing instead to lambaste his partner who, for all sakes and purposes, was more of an enemy. “Did you hear about the Presbyterian church? Their windows were broken last night by a band of boys, after which they threw in a skunk for good measure.”

  Paul’s mouth tightened into a straight line. “I will repeat myself for your hardheaded idiocy. The Daily Democrat was never meant to print melodramatic gossip.”

  Mitch laughed and tugged the lapels of his jacket. “It’s not gossip when it’s the truth.”

  Paul’s eyes narrowed, and he sniffed. “You feed off others’ hardships.”

  “Regardless,” Mitch said, his tone indicating he meant to bring a conclusion to the erratic argument, “I do believe the town will notice when the deacon doesn’t show up for closing prayers at the upcoming tent meeting Friday night. Whatever his reasons, he’s dead.”

  “Fine,” Paul snapped. “But you mustn’t print the gory details.”

  Mitch curled his lip, sarcasm dripping from his words. “I’ll leave out the part of him being stiff as a board.” He shoved past Paul, but paused in the doorway and speared Libby with a well-placed look that stated he was both her employer and her father.

  Most days, she hated that equation.

  “Libby, see that those articles are edited and transcribed so they go to press immediately. Word for word.”

  She gave a short nod, and Mitch charged from the room.

  Heavens. What a tragic mess today was. Made more horrid by the fact that every time she blinked, Libby saw Deacon Greenwood’s dead face.

  “Excuse me.” She cleared her throat. “Paul?”

  “Yes?” He spun his attention toward her. The man practically pecked her eyes out with his glare.

  Libby stared at him. He was a daunting crank of a man.

  “What is it, Miss Sheffield?”

  Yes. All right. Libby summoned courage. Paul wasn’t Elijah, nor was he doomed to die by premature obituary. She mustered her wits and launched herself into the conversation. “There was an obituary left here this morning. I’m not certain when it was slipped into the mail slot, but when I arrived here at six-thirty, I almost stepped on the envelope.”

  “Fine.” Paul waved his hand in dismissal. “It’s too late to print in today’s paper. We’ll set it for press tonight.”

  “No, but that’s just it!” Curse these men who wouldn’t let her finish a cohesive thought. Libby pushed against the desk, rising so her dress floated around her ankles and her height gave her a bit of advantage over the shorter newspaperman. “The obituary was for Deacon Greenwood.”

  Paul paused, as if unsure how to calculate the information and reach a conclusion.

  Libby hurried on. “I just saw Deacon Greenwood last evening, at dinner at the Fairfield Boardinghouse. He was very much alive.” She had Paul’s full attention now. “I determined it had to be a wicked joke. I wanted to make sure of Deacon Greenwood’s welfare, so I left the paper after I found the obit this morning. Calvin was outside and he accompanied me.”

  Paul’s eyebrow raised and he sagged against the doorjamb. Libby could see he was reaching the correct deduction.

  “Are you telling me it was you who discovered Deacon Greenwood?”

  Libby nodded, the vision flooding her memory like a nightmare.

  Paul rammed his spectacles up his nose and took a step forward. “You found him?” he repeated, as if she’d been bumbling in conversation again and confused him.

  “Yes.” Libby detested the watery tone to her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She’d stood there while they cut him down too. Watched as Elijah had delivered a swift, grief-stricken kick against the wooden stool his father had once stood on, shattering it against the wall.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Paul wasn’t empathetic, but more offended that she’d for some reason kept so mum while the two men sparred and wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise.

  Libby cleared her throat. “This morning was dreadful. I never truly expected to find him dead. But the obituary . . .” She waited, hoping Paul would put two and two together. When he looked back at her as if waiting, she plunged ahead. “I arrived at the paper at six-thirty this morning.”

  “You already stated that,” Paul snapped.

  Libby nodded. “I was reading Deacon Greenwood’s obituary before I discovered him dead. Before anyone discovered him dead.”

  They stared at each other. Color leaked from Paul’s face, and he shook his head. “There has to be an explanation. Perhaps the deacon left it himself.”

  “But why?” Libby raised a brow.

  “Those intent on taking their own life—” Paul paused and cleared his throat—“often leave a . . . note.”

  Libby nodded. She’d heard of that before, although most didn’t speak of such things. There were so many emotions in the taking of one’s life. Judgment, sorrow, a lack of closure . . . so many questions. But no. No. This wasn’t a note of farewell or an explanation from one intent on leaving this world.

  “It was an obituary,” Libby insisted. “I gave it to Elijah, and I’m not entirely sure what happened to it.”

  But she’d memorized it. Word for word, it was burned into her mind. It was what words did to Libby. They tattooed themselves in her brain.

  “Harrison Frederick Greenwood,” she rec
ited for Paul. “Born March tenth, 1853, passed away this the seventh of May, 1907. No more shall his secrets wound. No more shall his secrets shame.

  “Thy soul shall find itself alone

  “’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

  “Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

  “Into thine hour of secrecy.”

  A fateful sensation filled the room, like one might feel while passing through a cemetery at midnight. Thy soul shall find itself alone. That moment, right before death came, when a soul was truly suspended.

  “That last bit is Poe. Edgar Allan Poe.” Paul squeezed the bridge of his nose. “The darkest form of funeral verse.”

  “What do I do?” Libby whispered. Poe. She’d read the morbid poet before, but in the horrors of the morning, she’d yet to credit him with some of the obituary’s words.

  “Nothing.” Paul’s voice dropped to a whisper, hissed between clenched teeth. His eyes drove into hers with authority. “You do absolutely nothing. The obituary doesn’t exist anymore unless Elijah Greenwood has secured it himself. It does no one any good to revisit it.”

  “But,” Libby argued, “if it was written and delivered here prior to Deacon Greenwood being discovered, doesn’t it stand to reason that perhaps the deacon’s death was—” Good gracious. She was going to say it aloud. “That his death was premeditated?”

  “You’ve no evidence of that.” Paul stared at her, and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. “Let the medical examination speak for the truth of what happened. As for this obituary? Do nothing.” Paul raised a finger as if he were going to say more, but instead he spun on his heel and strode from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Libby stared after him. The day was barely in its infancy and yet Gossamer Grove was exploding into turmoil. Now she must add secrecy to the trouble? What if the police inquired—and they would—why she was at the Greenwood home in the wee hours of the morning with Calvin? She couldn’t very well lie. Well, she could try, but if she could barely spit out the truth coherently, how could she deceive with finesse? No, she’d have to tell them about the obituary. Of course, they would want to see it, and she didn’t have it anymore. So then, Libby knew before it even happened, the authorities would wave her away as they often did. The daughter of the sensation-seeking newspaperman. She would be Mitch’s pawn to create a story where there really wasn’t one. The truth, they would determine—unless Dr. Penchan found evidence to the contrary—was simple: Deacon Harrison Greenwood was a disturbed man whose secrets drove him to dark results.