The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “Libby.”

  She shrieked. Spinning around, her arms wrapped across her chest, she squinted in the darkness at the form that had come up behind her. She glanced toward the pond, a deep gray reflection rippling in the water. Being trapped between the water and the shadowy form was intimidating.

  The man tipped his head, and as he did, his face turned into the shaft of moonlight.

  “It’s you.” Libby’s breath released in a whoosh. She stepped toward him, away from the bank.

  “Who did you think it was?” Elijah frowned. “I was almost certain you intended to launch yourself into the pond.”

  “The thought did cross my mind, but of course that would be nonsensical, and it wouldn’t help a soul.” Libby abruptly ended her nervous chatter. Her skin had broken out into little bumps.

  “I noticed you escaped the revival.” Elijah looked back toward the tent. “I had to as well.”

  Libby nodded. “It was quite . . . well, I wasn’t finding myself drawn to salvation. Maybe if I’d stayed I would have. I mean, it’s not that I’m not saved as it is, but if I weren’t—if I didn’t believe in God—I mean, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ—then I would be going to hell, I suppose.” She stumbled to a halt. Elijah was not standing before her to inquire about the state of her eternal soul.

  “Why are you here?” She sought for an avenue of escape from her scattered thoughts.

  Elijah took a step closer to the pond, and he watched its dark outline for a moment. “My father was to give the closing prayer.” His quiet voice, so matter-of-fact, explained why a grieving son would attend a revival meeting on the day of his father’s funeral. Not that it would have been enough of a reason to give Libby the compulsion to attend, but Elijah was, after all, a Greenwood. They stood on principle, not feelings.

  “Elijah—”

  “Don’t, Libby.” His voice dropped an octave, thick with memories and truths long buried between them. Elijah turned to her. His dark eyes were troubled, his newsboy cap tugged down over his hair. “I need to clean up after my father’s affairs. To take over the mill and get it in order. I cannot—” He seemed to struggle to find words. “I cannot pick at an open wound with suggestions of foul play over my father’s own cowardice toward life.”

  “That’s unfair,” Libby dared reprimand him. Elijah gave her a sharp look. “One never knows why a person determines to end his life before God chooses. Perhaps there was heartbreak, a sense of lost direction, or maybe—maybe—burdens weighted him down. You mustn’t speak with such judgment toward your father.”

  She floundered. But it hadn’t been suicide, had it? She knew it. So, if he were honest with himself, did Elijah.

  Elijah’s jaw worked back and forth in the darkness. She could see the sharp outline of his chin, the cleft there, and the sad lack of joy at the corners of his eyes. Libby tried again, mustering the courage to confront the man she far preferred to stay in the shadow of.

  “The obituary—”

  “No.” Elijah held up his hand.

  “But, you cannot discount it!” Libby insisted. “Why would you want to discount it? If it means your father’s life was taken against his will—if someone determined to remove him from this world for feelings of ill will or perhaps a personal vendetta?”

  “Oh, the questions! Don’t forget, Libby, what of the note? In the straw? Did my father have secrets? What man doesn’t, I ask? Must he die for them? Or take his own life for them?” Elijah’s voice rose, and he stifled his outburst by running his palm across his mouth and looking beyond Libby toward something unseen. Finally, he met her eyes, the moonlight reflecting in his pupils. “I’m not in a place where I can—where I can contemplate it.”

  How very selfish! Libby swallowed back her ire and tried to temper her voice. The words came in a nervous stutter. “W-whyever not? You’re willing to risk another life if they were to strike again by pretending your father’s death was not by another’s hand?”

  Elijah tugged his hat down and sniffed. An awful silence was covered by the sound of the impassioned speech of Corbin in the distance and frogs peeping their night song at the pond’s edge. Then the organ started playing, its shaky tones wafting eerily over the night sky with the confessional tune of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  She wished Elijah would say something—anything. But he pushed his hands in his trouser pockets instead. Libby couldn’t read his face in the darkness of the night. His shoulders were tense, but finally he drew a deep breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. His words were grave, his tone deep, telling, and all too knowing.

  “When, dear Libby, have you ever been concerned how others’ lives may be affected by another’s choice?”

  It was an unfair question. Hurtful. But burdened with truth all at the same time. Elijah leaned forward, his breath against her face, and his mouth inches from her nose.

  “This is what we do. We continue on. We forget what has happened and look toward the future.”

  “This is . . . is, well, it’s murder. That’s what it is! To pretend it’s nothing is cowardice!” Libby knew she should not have said the words the moment they filtered from her lips.

  Elijah’s eyebrows shot upward. His hand lifted, and he brushed the back of her cheek with his knuckles. “And we both know that you and I are the worst sort of cowards.”

  His whispered words hung between them, bringing the horrid truth into the moment and damning their souls in the echoes of the tent revival.

  Chapter 10

  On any other almost pitch-black night, Libby would have been at peace to walk home alone. The warm spring air, the crickets chirruping, lightning bugs flickering as the road took her from the outskirts of town toward the center. But tonight their two-story home with the gables and scalloped trim and stained-glass windows would be a welcome sight. Restlessness gripped her, along with guilt. They were feelings she didn’t want to explore—hadn’t wanted to explore since her fifteenth year of life. Almost nine years later, just a whispered word from Elijah and it set her heart astir. So much. So much had gone wrong, and yet so much had thrust her into Elijah’s life. Including the death of his father. The murder of his father, if he would only admit it, and if she’d not given him the obituary to secret away or destroy.

  Libby clutched her dress, lifting it higher so she could hike faster and make it home. With the darkness pressing in, the imagery of Deacon Greenwood’s body grew more real. So did the gravel beneath her shoes, the shivering branches of the trees, the shafts of moonlight that illuminated shadows she’d not have seen if the moon weren’t peeking from behind a cloud.

  Whoever had left that obituary at the paper had to know it’d been found. Had to know she had found it, for after all, it wasn’t a secret she was the one to have discovered the body. It was simple deduction. The police might rule it a fluke, but not the killer. Not the person responsible for kicking the stool from beneath Deacon Greenwood’s feet.

  Libby hitched up her skirt and hurried faster. Alone on the country road from Gossamer Pond was not a place she preferred to be. Mitch must have scurried away from the revival meeting without her. He’d have a “stop the presses!” proclamation to sour-faced Paul, who would glare at his eccentric partner as Mitch slapped his indecipherable article on the desk. Elijah had disappeared into the throng. Townsfolk had already filtered past her, motor vehicles bouncing by, leaving her in a cloud of exhaust and dust. Carriages rolled past, wagons, and then Libby was very much alone. Lights from the tent behind her dimmed and went out. Someone was still there, yet no one she knew. It seemed everyone was so affected by Reverend Corbin’s preaching that they hadn’t the decency to pause and offer her transport.

  Libby froze as a cat scurried across the road, its tail bushy and the fur on its back bristled as if escaping a foe. She fisted the green material of her dress, the flash of her white petticoat the only bright spot on the darkened lane. The trees rose thicker on either side of the lane, and although
Libby could see fields to the east and the river winding to the west, the branches of the clusters of trees reminded her of skeletal arms poised to snatch her.

  She picked up her pace, eyeing the bats that swooped and crisscrossed the lane in front of her. Their little black-winged bodies were catching mosquitoes, but Libby cringed as she hurried. They were like a bad omen, of something dark, someone evil, someone with intent to kill.

  A squeaking tinny sound came out of the darkness behind her. Libby whirled on her heels and peered into the night from where she’d just traversed. The outline of a man astride a bicycle became clearer. His dark jacket billowed behind him as the wind picked up. The bicycle wobbled and metal clanked as the man neared her. A hat was tugged low over his face. Libby picked up her pace, spinning back toward town and stumbling over the uneven road. But, within a moment, the two-wheeled contraption was beside her, rolling along, slowing pace to match her strides.

  “Miss?”

  She stumbled over a stick.

  “Miss?” he repeated. His voice sounded familiar, but Libby had no desire to stop and identify who he was by squinting in the darkness.

  “Please. I intend you no harm at all.”

  Of course not. Every killer probably said that before stabbing, shooting, or—heavens—hanging their victim.

  The bicyclist stopped and lifted his leg over the seat. Libby reached up to snatch the hatpin from her hat. Let the hat fall to the ground and be trampled, she was not going to die without a fight. A hatpin could inflict damage if necessary.

  “Stop!”

  The command, the tone, the voice.

  Libby froze.

  Reverend Jedidiah Corbin was tall. She recognized the voice now. Recognized his frame in the dark. Or was it his brother, Jacobus? His lanky form reminded her a bit of a branchless sapling. The craggy lines of his face, the whiskers that frizzed from the chops that bordered his face, and the deep-set eyes were not particularly friendly. He seemed ageless yet also not old.

  Libby shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Reverend.” She acknowledged him but cast a wary glance around her. She readjusted the hatpin in her hand.

  The reverend tipped his head, gripping the handlebars of the bicycle. “Jedidiah Corbin, miss.”

  He’d known she was wondering, although it was more than likely a common question considering he was an identical twin.

  “You’re alone. Quite disconcerting in this darkness.” An eyebrow lifted as he read her fear like a book propped open for perusal. “And unwise,” he added.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Pitiable response. Libby stiffened her shoulders. She would not cower beneath the imposing judgment of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher.

  Shouldn’t one feel safe in the presence of a godly man? And where was the man’s twin? Rumor had it they were inseparable, riding a tandem bicycle everywhere. This was a single bicycle, however.

  “Allow me to escort you home.” Jedidiah Corbin tilted his head as if trying to see her features in the night.

  “Thank you, but no.” Libby resumed her pace. She squinted, trying to maneuver over the ruts in the road that she could barely see.

  He ignored her dismissal but kept beside her, wheeling his bicycle over divots and stones in the path. “I would not be doing God’s work to keep the weaker vessel safe if I allowed you to walk alone.”

  The weaker vessel? Libby considered using the hatpin still poised in her hand just to prove she wasn’t helpless. But then, she wasn’t convinced she wasn’t helpless.

  “I’ve heard rumblings about town this week as I prepared for tonight’s service. My brother, Jacobus, indicated there was a death of one of your church leaders. Jacobus is ill tonight and could not be with us.”

  Libby wasn’t concerned why the other twin wasn’t there, but she did stifle a shiver as Jedidiah Corbin referred to Deacon Greenwood’s untimely death. She let the revivalist’s words remain unacknowledged. Maybe Libby was imagining it, but the grit in his voice seemed to take on a warning tone of a prophet who knew things everyone else did not.

  “The circumstances around your deacon’s death, of the question surrounding who he really was. It does not bode well for the future of this town. Without a foundation of confession and grace, it will all fall.”

  “I don’t believe anyone is questioning who Deacon Greenwood really was,” Libby muttered.

  “No? I always believed that one who took his own life was a cavern filled with untold mysteries that drove him to that point.”

  “Perhaps.” Libby didn’t want to think on it. Didn’t want to allow Reverend Corbin’s words to remotely justify the insinuation in the obituary that Deacon Greenwood went to the grave with some sort of untold secret.

  The reverend reached out, forcing her to stop. Surprised at the sudden grip, Libby stumbled and shrugged off his hold. Corbin released her, but his eyes, the pools of shadows around them, speared her like a ghost risen from the grave who had seen the pit of Hell. His hand rose and he pressed it against her cheek with the unwelcome burning of his palm.

  “Unconfessed sin will always lead to death,” he whispered. “May this not be so for you.”

  Chapter 11

  Annalise

  If the dingy, gray, shingled siding on the trailer home wasn’t bad omen enough, the litter and debris piled on the built-on porch was enough to send her back to her car. She really shouldn’t be here. But when she’d mapped out her schedule for the day, she’d penciled it in. Yes. Always good to pencil in prospective trespassing onto one’s list for the day. This was a dumb idea, but knowing who Eugene Hayes was seemed just as important as finding out about Harrison Greenwood from 1907. Who were these men and how, or why, were they connected to her?

  Annalise rolled her eyes at her hesitation and swatted a mosquito that buzzed its high-pitched warning in her ear. She took determined steps forward, climbing the first step and avoiding a hole in its wooden structure. She snuck across the sloping porch, holding her breath at the pungent scent emanating from inside. A mixture of old alcohol, filth, and rotten food made her gag. Peering in a foggy window, Annalise squinted into the darkness of the deserted trailer.

  An old sofa, bowed in the middle, sat across the room under a window with a long crack running through its top pane. A pile of newspapers at least three feet high perched on one end of the couch, and next to them, books upon books littered the cushions and the floor. Annalise took her sweatshirt sleeve and wiped the glass, hoping to clear away some of the cloudiness on the window.

  The floor was carpeted, and it looked very soiled. Although it was hard to tell, Annalise thought she saw patches of where it had worn thin, but even that was debatable with the floor covered in piles of magazines, newspapers, books, and garbage.

  Annalise wasn’t sure if she was appalled or horrified for the one who’d died in this infested hole. Eugene Hayes, whoever he was, couldn’t possibly have deserved to pass away in this hovel, alone and surrounded by garbage. Even if he did have some weird fetish with her life, with her pictures, with her.

  Cringing, she lifted her gaze from the floor to the walls and stiffened, like a stone gargoyle on a rotting porch with gaping mouth and wide eyes. Annalise lifted her hand and splayed her fingers across the glass, scrunching her face and pushing close until her nose kissed the pane. The thud of her heart echoed in her ears, and for a brief, unedited second, she cursed at Officer Brent Drury. He hadn’t told her. Not this. The scope was far beyond a desktop.

  Annalise’s breath quickened as she swept her alarmed gaze across the inside of the trailer. Papered on the walls were photograph after photograph of Annalise. Her childhood, her teen years, her at the library, and, if Annalise was making it out clear enough through the filthy window, several of her with Garrett. This was a trailer turned into a nine-hundred-odd-square-foot bulletin board of her life!

  She stumbled away from the sight, tripping over a bucket of rotting vegetables and fruit. The momentum took Annalise flailing through a spide
r web that stretched from a metal chair to the top rail of the porch. She barely cleared the steps in her backward catapult off the deck. Spinning, Annalise sprinted to her car, her eyes burning and her breaths coming shallow and fast.

  Eugene Hayes’s trailer was a shrine to her life. Her very candid, very photographed life. Annalise scurried into the front seat of her ride and slammed the door. She stared at the trailer, its decrepit state, and then twisted the key in the ignition. She needed to get away. She never should have come here. She never should have snooped, or looked, or tried to figure out what the connection was between her, a recluse, and a century-old obituary she read briefly on Brent’s phone.

  Her tires peeled in the gravel as she spun down the driveway toward the main road. If she hadn’t come—hadn’t trespassed—she could have forgotten. Maybe. At least that was probably why Brent hadn’t told her the scope of the old, dead man’s fixation. Did Tyler at the paper even have a clue how dramatically worse it was, even than what he’d reported on? This was far more than an old man she’d somehow overlooked in her mission to save Gossamer Grove’s down-and-out. This was more than an elderly reject who was bored and made clip art for his scrapbook.

  Annalise gripped the steering wheel as she turned onto the asphalt and sped away from the gravel drive, the sequestered trailer, and the memories. This was personal. Far more personal than she’d considered. This was about her. About Garrett. All about a past she had carefully hidden away in a numerically coded date file in her memory. To be left untouched. Until Eugene Hayes ripped open the seal the day he died.

  The knock on the front door startled Annalise. She turned her attention from her laptop and the scanned newspaper document to glance at the wall clock.

  Seven-thirty in the morning. Saturday. It wouldn’t be Christen. She always played with her kids on Saturdays and cleaned the house. Annalise tugged her gray T-shirt over her hips as she padded to the door. She didn’t need visitors. Her restless evening scouring the internet for anything she could find on Eugene Hayes, Harrison Greenwood, and even the revival meetings in Gossamer Grove in 1907 had melted into a fitful sleep. Dreams of the dilapidated trailer and being trapped inside were only made worse by opening her eyes and staring at her dark ceiling, knowing real photographs of her still wallpapered the dead man’s house.