The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Annalise exchanged glances with Garrett. At least someone in this town could finally give them a starting point. Some answers maybe.

  Gloria drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair and smiled. “The next I heard of Eugene, he had been drafted into the war and was stationed somewhere in Vietnam.”

  “When did he come back to Gossamer Grove?” Garrett asked.

  Gloria shook her head and adjusted her glasses. “Oh, I don’t know. By the time the war ended, I was married and we’d relocated to Minnesota for my husband’s job. It was years later before we moved our family back to Gossamer Grove, and by then Eugene was a mystery to most. An alcoholic, a recluse, and for all sakes and purposes, one of those people you’re so set on helping, Annalise. God bless you for it.”

  There was an awkward shift of Garrett’s body in his chair. He looked ridiculous in a Victorian wing-back chair.

  Gloria continued. “I knew in the nineties that Eugene was living in an old trailer. But for the most part, he wasn’t the focus of anyone’s attention, least of all mine. On occasion, he would come into the library. I worked there for several years before I came here. He would spend hours on the microfiche when he did visit.”

  “What was he looking for?” Annalise asked. She scooted to the edge of her seat.

  Gloria bit her bottom lip. “That’s one of the reasons why he still sticks out in my memory. He read old papers, old archives, things the library had scanned that this historical society had not. I even heard that he used to scrounge around in the newspaper’s basement. Tyler Darrow’s father allowed it, more because Eugene was harmless. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Eugene carried off old artifacts from that basement. He was curious, that man. He had a proclivity, it seemed, for history. One of his favorite time periods to read about at the library was when Gossamer Grove was blessed, so to speak, with twin revivalists. The Corbin brothers.”

  Garrett cracked his knuckles.

  Annalise couldn’t help herself. She reached out and laid a hand over his to keep him from fidgeting. It was a move she made in error. He flipped his hand palm up and captured hers so that they sat across from Gloria, holding hands. Garrett’s fingers interlinked with Annalise’s.

  She tugged.

  He tugged back.

  Her lips tightened and she gave one more tug.

  Garrett’s mouth tilted up in a smile.

  Gloria’s eyes twinkled, as she hadn’t missed the exchange. She chose to ignore the not-so-subtle spat in front of her. “A rowdier, more controversial set of twins you’ll never hear of again.”

  “How so?” Garrett asked.

  Gloria frowned, considering for a moment. “Things like barroom brawls. They would go into the saloon and start preaching. If you read the newspaper articles from the Daily Democrat, the Corbin brothers weren’t afraid to stare sin in the face and cause quite the stir, but they still had an impactful ministry, it seems.”

  Gloria stood, smoothing her shirt over her straight hips. “Let me show you. I have some scrapbooks with newsprint about the Corbin brothers. Maybe something in there will help you understand why Eugene Hayes was so enamored with them. It’s really a rather forgotten but sensational series of events in Gossamer Grove.”

  They followed Gloria into a dining room converted to research room. Garrett finally released her hand, and Annalise massaged it with her other hand. She could still feel his callused skin and strong grip.

  “Here we are.” Gloria laid a large rectangular scrapbook on the table, its corners bonded with worn leather triangular guards. The black cover was embossed with the faded gold word Memories.

  “We found this old book in the home of Margaret Darrow about five years ago after she died. You know Tyler’s grandmother, don’t you? The Daily Democrat has been in their family for well over a century.” Gloria opened the scrapbook, and a musty scent permeated the air. Long strips of newspaper clippings were glued onto black paper pages. She pointed to one. “This clipping tells of the Corbin brothers’ partiality for tandem bicycling. Apparently, they rode from saloon to saloon to preach the Good News during the evening hours.”

  “Didn’t they have tent revival services?” Annalise peered down at the article. She vaguely recalled reading about the old-time religion ceremonies. Of Billy Sunday preaching under canopies. Even the early days of Billy Graham and congregants flocking to sit beneath a tent to hear the Word of God preached.

  “Oh yes.” Gloria gently flipped a few pages in. “This article tells of an evening revival where Jedidiah Corbin presented such a rousing sermon it stirred up the people. I’m not sure that it was a positive stirring. Oh, let’s see . . .” She turned the book and squinted to make out the fine print. Reading aloud, she continued the tale. “Well, the title itself is quite telling: ‘Insults, Epithets, Vituperation Vomited Forth by Twin Blasphemous Grafters.’

  “‘The Daily Democrat has refrained from outright discussion in regard to the circus that has been holding its acts in tent services by the pond and outside saloons. Also in question are the church organizations that allow the Corbin brothers to trail the teachings of the Meek and Lowly into filth and slang bordering on obscenity. The women of Gossamer Grove have been insulted by the brothers’ language. When confronted by a local church leader as to whether content of the sermon was appropriate, Jedidiah Corbin was quoted as responding, ‘Some of you don’t like it, do you? You’ll twist your face into a corkscrew and your head into hell.’ In summary, the Corbin brothers’ message of the Gospel is being taken into question as to whether it truly is upholding the church of God.’”

  Gloria stopped, her eyes wide and a slight smile on her face. “I do believe even now that would be, um, a fairly controversial approach within the church regarding evangelism.”

  “And yet they’re still credited for bringing revival to Gossamer Grove?” Annalise could understand why Eugene Hayes might be intrigued by the stories, as they were quite theatrical.

  “Apparently so.” Gloria closed the scrapbook. She tapped the top of the book with her fingertips. “There are more news stories in here, not only of remarkable amounts of baptisms but also of changes in the community. Good changes. The Baptist church went from a dwindling congregation to well over a hundred strong.”

  “That’s not the First Baptist Church still up on Walnut Street, is it?” Garrett interjected.

  Gloria nodded. “Interesting, yes? That men this conflicting and this divisive were still so key in bringing life and faith back into a dying church? And for it to affect generations over a hundred years later?”

  Annalise reached for her bag. The Corbin brothers were an interesting piece of history, but how or if they related to the obituary for Harrison Greenwood was yet to be seen. Not to mention how they related to her. She wasn’t Baptist. She wasn’t really anything of late.

  She pulled out Harrison’s photograph along with the sepia-tone print of the unidentified woman. She laid them atop the scrapbook.

  “Do you know what Harrison Greenwood might have had to do with the revival?”

  Gloria focused on the photo, and a warm smile lit her face. She turned to Garrett. “My, my, you are the spitting image of him.”

  Garrett offered an awkward smile.

  She furrowed her brow. “Hmmm . . . I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that question.” Gloria lifted the picture of the mystery woman and studied it.

  “What about her?” Annalise tapped the photograph of the woman.

  Gloria shook her head. “No. I don’t recognize her at all. You’re welcome to browse our photo database. Although”—Gloria pushed the scrapbook in Annalise’s direction—“you may have to do all of this the old-fashioned way, dear.”

  Annalise stared at the book. Then her eyes widened as Gloria reached down and hefted a banker’s box, dropping it on the table next to the scrapbook.

  “Dig, read, take notes, and dig some more,” Gloria finished with a grin.

  A wonderful thought, Annalise mused, if she cou
ld avoid more recluses dying, house break-ins, and slashed tires. She glanced at Garrett. He met her eyes. The fact that he read her thoughts and understood with a nod of his head was disconcerting.

  “We can search my family history online too,” Garrett offered. “Mom has a whole family tree built in her online ancestral account. Maybe that woman is one of my relatives.”

  Annalise grimaced. Yes. Garrett’s mother. Getting the username and password to log in to her account made scaling the Great Wall of China seem like a simple game of hopscotch. She couldn’t help but give Garrett a look of desperation.

  “I’ll help,” he said.

  They were the same words he’d used in Eugene Hayes’s trailer the night of the break-in at her house. The implication planted butterflies in her stomach and caused old memories to surface at all the wrong times.

  Garrett’s eyes, so dark, so unconcernedly self-assured, stared into hers.

  Annalise bit her bottom lip, then released it as she responded, forgetting Gloria witnessed it. “You’ll help, until you’re just not there anymore. Like before.”

  Garrett withdrew, his expression unreadable. His words in response stung. “And you’ll take my help, and more, and then blame it all on me when it falls apart. Go ahead. I’ve spent a lifetime getting used to it.”

  Chapter 20

  You know you live in a creepy old house, don’t you?” Christen stood from her chair at the kitchen table and retrieved the bag of mint Oreos from the counter.

  Annalise gave the room a quick inspection. “It’s not creepy.”

  “It has so many nooks and crannies. I swear, the Victorians sure knew how to add angles into their architecture. Shadows are everywhere. So, yes, considering recent events, it’s creepy.”

  Christen raised an eyebrow as she came back to the table and plopped the Oreos down. Fingering one from its row, she waved it in a circular pattern as if selecting the items splayed out on the table. “Made more so, I might add, by the plethora of disturbing artifacts as seen here in Exhibit A.”

  Annalise smiled a little at her friend’s overdramatization. But her vision drifted to the piles she’d created early in the evening after she escaped Garrett and the historical society’s laundry basket of research.

  “So, explain all this to me.” Christen munched on the cookie. She’d dropped by after her kids were in bed, needing a break from home. Annalise was thankful Brent had an occasional night off.

  Annalise drew a deep breath and reached up to adjust her ponytail, tucking wisps of hair behind her ears. “Okay. Pile one is newspaper articles photocopied by Eugene Hayes about the Corbin brothers’ revival in 1907. Pile two is obituaries, although it’s not really a pile so much as a few obits. Pile three is old photographs Eugene had on his wall and desk. Pile four is pictures of me.”

  Christen nodded and swallowed her cookie, reaching for another. The packaging crinkled as she fumbled for an Oreo. “And we are assuming all of this is tied to you, and he’s not just a really dead, weird old man?”

  “Well, considering there are at least fifty different pictures of me here, I think that fact has been established for some time now.”

  “Hmm.” Christen adjusted in her chair. “Fine. So we know this is Harrison Greenwood?” She pulled the man’s picture from pile three.

  “Correct.” Annalise reached for a few older photocopied pictures. “These are two photographs of Harrison Greenwood as well. One with some family members, I assume, and another in front of his church.”

  “Was he a religious man?” Christen inquired.

  Annalise gave her a wry smile. “Aren’t all Greenwoods?”

  “Pardon me.” Christen rolled her eyes. “Was he a man of faith, not just pious and churchgoing for show?”

  Annalise shook her head. “I’m not sure. But what I am sure of . . .” She reached for her iPad and flicked the screen on. “I logged on to that ancestry site and started researching Eugene Hayes. I need to understand why he felt connected to me, and frankly the Greenwoods. I found information that substantiated what Gloria at the historical society told me. I also found out some about his lineage.”

  “Like?” Christen had depleted half a row of Oreos.

  Annalise shifted in her seat. “Well, Eugene was only twenty when he fought in Vietnam. He was born in 1948, and his father, Lawrence, was fifty-two when Eugene was born. So he was an older father, which may or may not be important. It also means that Lawrence was only eleven years old when the Corbin brothers were in town for their revival.”

  “Okay.” Christen sealed the cookies before she could eat another row. “So maybe Eugene started researching his own family tree and that’s one of the interesting time periods here in Gossamer Grove that his father lived through?”

  “Maybe. But look at this other obituary Eugene had in his trailer.” Annalise reached for pile two. She set Harrison Greenwood’s obituary aside and lifted a copy of another obituary. “This was from the same year as the revival, 1907, and the same month of Harrison Greenwood’s death.”

  “And?” Christen pulled her feet up onto the seat of her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  Annalise adjusted her glasses. “Dorothy Hayes. Lawrence’s mother, and Eugene’s grandmother.”

  “Okay, now that’s weird!” Christen breathed.

  “I know.” Annalise nodded.

  “And is it all Edgar Allan Poe creepy like Harrison’s obituary?”

  Annalise smoothed the page on the table. “It’s not.” She dropped her gaze and read. “‘Dorothy Hayes. Born September third, 1854, passed from earth into God’s loving arms on May fourteenth, 1907, after she was found in Gossamer Pond. Medical Examiner Dr. Rutherford Penchan has identified Dorothy as a victim of a tragic case of drowning. Funeral services will be held—’” Annalise stopped. “Blah, blah, blah. It’s bland and boring.”

  Christen sniffed. “What’d you want? Another gloomy poem about buried sins and shameful secrets and the grave swallowing them whole?”

  “No, but look at them.” Annalise placed the obituaries side by side. “Harrison’s is typewritten. Dorothy’s even has the header of the Daily Democrat on it. So, what if Harrison’s is fake?”

  “Like a prank?”

  Annalise shrugged. “I don’t know. I showed it to Tyler at the paper, and he said it probably wasn’t an obit run in the Daily Democrat because theirs of that time had an entirely different typeset.”

  Christen reached for the iPad and pulled it toward her.

  Annalise eyed her friend, whose nose was scrunched up in contemplation as she typed into the tablet. She grew antsy waiting for her unnaturally silent friend to say something.

  Christen leaned closer to the tablet. “I wonder . . . what if the reason Eugene Hayes is so interested in Harrison Greenwood is because . . . bingo!”

  “What?” Annalise hurried around the table to look over Christen’s shoulder. They both stared at the iPad’s screen.

  “I just kept connecting the dots to suggested relations in Dorothy Hayes’s family tree and look what happens.”

  Annalise frowned as she studied the online ancestral tree for Eugene Hayes. She blinked and leaned closer until her nose brushed Christen’s hair. “Is that—?”

  “Yeah,” Christen breathed. She leaned away from Annalise, staring up into her face. “Eugene Hayes’s grandmother, Dorothy, was Harrison Greenwood’s sister-in-law.”

  “Which means . . .” Annalise moved to the sink and gripped the edges of the stainless-steel bowl. She stared out the window into the evening’s blackness as a few pieces fell together in a very perplexing way. She turned back toward Christen, whose expression might have mirrored her own. Bewildered.

  “Eugene Hayes is a distant cousin to the Greenwoods.”

  “Yeeeeeep.” Christen dragged out the word, ending it with an exaggerated pop.

  “Technically, then, Garrett’s great-great-grandfather died in the same month as Eugene’s grandmother.”

  “Same
month. Same town. Same family attending both funerals.”

  Annalise bit the inside of her bottom lip. “With the probability that Eugene’s dad, Lawrence, was at both his mother Dorothy’s funeral and Garrett’s great-great-grandfather’s funeral.”

  The iPad slowly dimmed to black, and Christen picked at a fingernail while Annalise contemplated what it all might mean.

  “Gossamer Grove gets smaller and smaller every day, doesn’t it?” Christen broke the silence with her quiet mutter.

  Annalise tried to take a deep breath, but the weight on her chest made her breath shudder. “Smaller and more suspicious.” She caught Christen’s look of empathy and shook her head. “I should have left Gossamer Grove years ago. I could have avoided all of this.”

  “Would you still have Gia if you had?” Christen asked the question that made the air in the room feel heavy.

  Annalise didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Gia was a door she had refused to open for years. Until Eugene Hayes’s death busted it wide open by force, leaving her exposed, weak, and very, very vulnerable.

  Chapter 21

  Libby

  She was helpless, utterly helpless. The only other time she’d felt that way was years before. Libby remembered the gut-clenching pain, the breath-stealing panic, and the screams that tried to rip from her throat. Elijah had been there too. It was their secret, their shared agony, and now . . . Libby watched him stagger as he climbed down from his carriage. They shared distress a third time, with the second, his father’s death, barely having collected dust.

  Even though he had the gentlemanly instinct to circle and help her down, the feel of her hand in his failed to excite her as it once had. She saw the grief etched into Elijah’s face, the stoop of his shoulders, the bow of his head. He was merely escorting her back to the paper, but his mind was far away with his father and now his aunt. Leave it to Mitch to abandon her at the pond and make a mad dash back to the newspaper. Poor Elijah. Libby blinked away the memories, the guilt. He was always rescuing her.