His hand reached out and for a brief second brushed her upper arm. It was as if he warred between remaining aloof or coming near her and showing genuine care.
Perhaps, Libby mused briefly, he was torn as tumultuously as she was. “But who would follow a God who judges?” she whispered.
Jacobus ducked his head and smiled, the corner of his mouth tipping up in a wry chuckle. “Oh, Libby Sheffield. There is a balance to be struck between justice and grace. I say justice rather than judgment, although sometimes one comes hand in hand with the other. We cannot cheapen God’s righteousness by familiarizing Him to such a degree that His grace becomes a ticket to wanton freedom. Yet we cannot discount His forgiveness under the assumption He creates only to destroy.”
Libby blinked.
Jacobus must have seen the confusion in her eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair as if perturbed he was unable to connect with her. It ruffled from its careful style, and for a moment Libby was struck that in spite of his angular features, he posed an oddly striking appearance. One moment bordering on vaguely handsome, and the next not at all what one would consider eye-catching.
He sighed. “Let me rephrase. The consequence of sin is death, but the grace of God brings us life. One must fear God for what He can do, while loving Him for what He doesn’t do. A contrite heart results in the withholding of discipline in exchange for mercy—and love.”
“Love?” Libby muttered, before realizing she had been completely taken in by the hypnotic lake-blue of his eyes. Intense, unblinking, philosophically wise. Now not at all wicked, but still dangerous. She despised what this man did to her mind.
“Love.” He nodded while not breaking their staring at each other, their connection. “Grace.”
“Forgiveness?” Libby countered, almost unwillingly, but as if the word were dragged from her in a hesitant whisper.
“Precisely.” Jacobus snapped his fingers.
Libby jolted at the sound. As if he broke the hypnosis and brought her back to herself.
“I cannot believe that God would forgive the worst of sinners,” she breathed. Testing Jacobus. Studying his face to determine, once and for all, if he had taken the mantle of God’s reaper of justice or administer of grace.
Jacobus’s eyes narrowed. He raised his hand and hovered his palm over her cheek, as if he ached to touch her but dared not be tempted by the seduction of a sinner’s soul.
“Denying God’s ability to forgive,” he responded in deep baritone, “is denying oneself the ability to live.”
His answer left Libby with no satisfaction. Worse, she hated herself for regretting when the preacher dropped his hand without touching her and turned his back and walked away.
Calvin fingered through a wooden box of marbles as they sat on the floor of the Mueller home. Libby stared at the marbles, like little eyeballs rolling around, trapped. She blinked, breaking her stare.
Reverend Mueller sat perched in an overstuffed chair, his legs crossed at the knee, a large book in his lap.
So went the customary afternoon when Libby took time away from her day to spend with Calvin, on his level, doing what interested him. Often enough, he trailed after someone in town. Lately it had been the Corbin brothers, but before them, it was Elijah or herself. Libby watched him pick up a red marble. He grinned.
“You love red, don’t ya, Lollie?”
“Yellow,” she corrected him gently. He smiled wider and handed her the marble anyway.
“Well, you always look pretty in red to me.”
The words increased the ever-growing sharp pain in her heart. She’d worn a red shawl that night, nine years ago. Her throat hurt as she swallowed back tears, her gaze caressing the beloved features of Calvin’s face. So much could have been different. So much should have been different.
“Miss Sheffield is a good friend to you, Calvin,” Reverend Mueller interjected. “You should see if there’s a yellow marble in your box. She could use that as her shooter.”
Yes. Shooting marbles had been one of their favorite pastimes as children, and now it would stay with them forever.
“Did you want a yellow one?” Calvin asked.
Libby reached out her hand. “No, red is fine.”
His smile reached deep into his eyes. A loyalty and an honesty that made Libby care even more for him, and hate herself even greater.
“I saw the police at the Hayes home this mornin’.” Calvin’s voice was casual, almost disinterested.
Regardless, Libby perked up. “You did?”
“Yep.” Calvin made a circle on the carpet with some string. “I heard them sayin’ she might got herself killed, not drownded.”
“Calvin.” Reverend Mueller broke into the conversation again, closing his book. “We mustn’t discuss the grief of our neighbors with others.”
Libby watched Calvin. His long limbs curled underneath him like a boy’s. Overalls stretched over his shoulders, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing the toned arms of a man. She bit her lip. So very much a man, and yet he’d never grown up.
Calvin looked up at his father. “I wasn’t gossiping. Just sayin’ truth.”
Reverend Mueller offered him a patient smile. “I know.” He looked down at Libby. “And how does Elijah fare?”
She sniffed back some unbidden emotion from her perusal of Calvin and met the reverend’s inquiring gaze. “He’s—it wasn’t easy taking the information we found to the police.”
“No.” An empathetic tone entered Reverend Mueller’s voice, and he pressed his lips together in thought. “That had to be difficult. The implications of his father and Mrs. Hayes are . . . unfortunate.”
Libby nodded. Not many knew of the suspicions surrounding Harrison and Dorothy’s relationship, but Reverend Mueller was the Greenwoods’ minister.
“No one knows who killed her,” Calvin inserted as he dropped ten marbles in the center of the string circle. “I heard ’em say might not be true. Just a rumor.” He turned to Libby, frowning. “That’s an awful rumor if it’s true. Wouldn’t find me kissin’ someone who ain’t my wife.”
Libby blushed.
Reverend Mueller half choked and half chuckled. “Well then. Let’s see about this game of marbles.” He lowered himself onto the floor.
The game proceeded, but Libby fought distraction. Calvin’s words, the implications of them, rang in her mind. For so many years she’d convinced herself that Gossamer Grove wasn’t much better than a cesspool of humanity hiding secrets she was partially privy to by working at the newspaper. But instead it was she, made evident by the guilt she had lodged in her throat, threatening tears. By the fear she was attempting to assuage by making sure she was around people she felt were safe. And by trying hard, so very hard, to forget the day a stolen kiss changed the lives of those she cared about the most in Gossamer Grove . . . forever.
Chapter 27
Annalise
An earsplitting alarm jolted Annalise from sleep. She glanced at the clock as she vaulted out of bed—2:00 a.m. Her bedroom was dark save for the shaft of moonlight that floated through the lace curtains at her window and cast patterns across her blanket. She scrambled to grab her pepper spray from her nightstand and snatched up her cellphone, thumbing 911.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
Annalise clutched her phone tight to her ear. “My house alarm has been tripped. I think an intruder may be inside.”
“I’ll dispatch police, ma’am, if they aren’t already on their way. Please stay on the line.”
Stay on the line? Because if the intruder burst through her door, then the 911 dispatcher could record the sound of her being murdered? Annalise hesitated, holding the phone to her ear as she took a few cautious steps toward her open bedroom door.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?” Annalise hissed, the operator’s voice startling her.
“Police are on their way. Ma’am, where are you now?”
“In my bedroom,” Annalise answered, steppi
ng into the hallway. She peered down it, the darkness making it appear like a tunnel of doom in a house of horrors.
The shrieking of the alarm tortured Annalise’s ears. She paused in the doorway of her bedroom. A crash sounded downstairs. Annalise sprinted forward, flipping the hallway switch that shed blessed light through the upstairs. She hurried down the hall, turning at the landing to look down the glossy wood steps with the thick banister. The landing below was empty as well. She flipped on another light switch. Lights everywhere. They would have to scare an intruder away if the alarm hadn’t already pierced their eardrums.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?”
The 911 dispatcher’s voice was distant. Annalise realized she’d lowered her hand that was holding the phone to her ear. Quickly she lifted the phone again. “Yes?”
“Stay in your bedroom, ma’am. Do not attempt to confront the intruder.”
Too late. She was already down the stairs to the next light switch, brightening the entryway. To her left was the doorway into the kitchen. In front of her stretched the living room where only hours before she’d listened to Garrett’s mother all but insult the entire family tree of Greenwood men. To her right were the Victorian parlor and the main entrance.
A small table had been upended by the front door, a blue vase smashed on the wood floor. The door was partly ajar.
Annalise punched her code into the security system to silence the alarm. She heard police sirens in the distance, but she still held her pepper spray in front of her, fully prepared to release stinging havoc on whoever had invaded her home. But there was no one. Her bare foot slipped on something that fluttered across the floor. An unfamiliar blue note card glared up at her.
Her chest constricted. Balancing her phone and pepper spray, Annalise snatched it from the floor. The fact that it was here, foreign-looking, made the card as intimidating as finding a land mine in her house.
A man’s voice collided with the sudden silence of the alarm. A scream ripped from Annalise’s throat, and with no further hesitation she lifted her pepper spray to unleash it full throttle.
“Stop!”
Brent’s command brought reason back to Annalise. She dropped the pepper spray, and it rolled across the floor. Brent waved at his partner, who began to survey the perimeter of the property, her gun and flashlight held high. He took the phone from Annalise’s hand and spoke to the dispatcher before ending the call.
Annalise felt numb. She began to tremble all over.
Brent urged her to the front step as another cop car pulled up the driveway. “Sit here. I’m going to check inside.”
“There’s no one inside.” Annalise blinked rapidly to try regaining reason.
Brent nodded. “Probably, but let me check anyway.”
His partner rounded the corner of the house. “Nothing,” she stated, coming to stand at the bottom of the steps. They were joined by the other two officers who’d pushed into the house on Brent’s behalf. He gave them a grateful nod and then sank onto the step beside Annalise. She was grateful he was on the scene.
Annalise pushed her hair over her shoulder, glancing up at the night sky. Stars. Moon. It was very clear out. Crickets chirruped in the bushes as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
Brent reached for her hand. “What happened?”
Annalise gave a short laugh, more out of stunned disbelief than anything. “I woke up to my house alarm. Then I heard a crash.” She looked over her shoulder and back into the house. “The vase, the table—they were pushed over.”
“Probably when the intruder ran,” Brent said.
Annalise nodded.
The porch light at Garrett’s flicked on, and Brent cast a glance toward it and grimaced. “Looks like we woke up your ex.”
“Stop it.” Annalise nudged Brent with her shoulder. He was fiercely protective of her, partly due to their longtime friendship and partly because of Christen. Regardless, Garrett didn’t deserve Brent’s animosity. Not now anyway.
“What the heck is going on?” Garrett jogged up to the front steps.
Brent stood, leaving Annalise sitting there on the stoop.
“Q?” Garrett ignored him.
“I’m fine.” Annalise attempted a wobbly smile.
“Her security alarm went off,” Brent offered by way of explanation. “Someone broke into the house.”
“No way.” Garrett stared over Annalise’s head into the house, which was fully lit now. One by one, the police officers made their way outside.
“No one to be found,” one of them said. “We’re going to canvass the street. See if the neighbors saw anything suspicious.”
“Told ya,” Annalise muttered.
“You didn’t get a look at the intruder by any chance?” Brent’s partner asked.
Annalise met the woman’s eyes and shook her head. “No. I didn’t see anyone.”
Suddenly, Annalise remembered the blue note card. She still clutched it in her right hand. “Oh!” She held it out. “I did find this. On the floor by the front door.”
Garrett grabbed the note card before either police officer had a chance to respond.
Brent snatched it away from Garrett, holding its corner with a Kleenex. “Give me that. Between the two of you, you’ve probably smudged all the prints.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Annalise couldn’t control the shiver that passed through her. She wrapped her arms around herself. Her feet were cold against the wood plank of the old step.
Brent flipped the card over. His brows went up, and he held it out so they could all see.
“Is that an obituary glued to it?” his partner asked. She looked between them. “I don’t get it.”
“I do.” Annalise rose to her feet. She peered down at the card illuminated by Brent’s flashlight. “Someone doesn’t want us to forget,” she stated.
“Or maybe the opposite,” Brent said. “Maybe that’s exactly what they want you to do. Forget about it. Forget about everything.”
An old obituary, with yellowed edges and typeset, stared back at her. Beneath it, scribbled in pen at the bottom of the card, were words that sliced through the moonlight into Annalise’s soul.
We weren’t meant to come back from the dead. Leave us alone.
Annalise was no longer to be left alone. Period. Brent’s orders. She’d packed a bag under Brent’s guard and moved into the Drury home. A police report was filed, documentation was submitted as evidence for investigation, and Annalise was left with only photographs of the newest obituary to join her previous collection of Harrison Greenwood’s and Dorothy Hayes’s online record. But, the dooming handwritten note left below this obituary didn’t need a photograph stored on her iCloud to be remembered. The words were etched into Annalise’s psyche with the indelible mark of a nightmare.
It was all she could do not to take Garrett’s hand. But it was daylight now. She was safe. Annalise glanced at Garrett. His confident stride was more alert than normal.
“You okay?” He gave her a sideways glance.
“Yeah,” she lied.
They hiked up the sidewalk, maple trees arching over it in quaint style, enhanced by old-fashioned iron lampposts on every block. A robin cheeped and a squirrel scampered across their path. As usual, Gossamer Grove looked unstained by anything remotely dark or sinister.
“So. Paul Darrow.” Garrett’s words snapped her from her internal, anxious thoughts. He gave her a slight smile. He knew she was overthinking everything. Turning a mountain into an asteroid. Annalise stepped around a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk.
“I wonder if he’s related to Tyler,” Annalise mused, seeing Tyler’s self-satisfied smirk in her mind. The image of the blue note card with its obituary glued on it had been riddled with Edgar Allan Poe. This one was also like Harrison Greenwood’s. Typewritten. Undated. No byline at the top, like Dorothy Hayes’s, indicative of being printed in the newspaper.
Paul Darrow. Apparently, another man in 1907 had been doomed to die. But then he
wasn’t a Greenwood. The addition of another old Gossamer Grove family name only muddied the waters further. Who had written such cryptic and morbid obituaries?
Garrett pulled open the door to the historical society, and Annalise entered. Their footsteps fell on the invisible prints left behind by those who’d once lived in the old house.
“You’re here!” Gloria’s voice was shakier today, belying her age. Her seventy-plus form appeared more fragile too. She met them with a smile and outstretched hands. “I’m so happy to see you both again.”
Gloria’s phone call had arrived this morning, right on the heels of finishing out the night at the police department. Gloria’s message stated she had found something interesting about Eugene Hayes and she thought Annalise would want to know.
Gloria led them into the original dining room, where a long oak table was used to lay archived works on, old books, and photographs.
“We had a few questions for you as well,” Annalise ventured.
Gloria smiled. “Of course! Would you like to go first?” The older woman pulled out a chair, motioning for Garrett and Annalise to do the same.
“I guess—” Annalise cleared her throat and started again. “I was wondering if you were familiar with the name Paul Darrow? I’m estimating from around the same year as Harrison Greenwood—1907.”
Gloria’s thin, gray eyebrows rose. She tapped a finger to her chin. “Of course. The Darrows have been a part of Gossamer Grove for decades.”
“Tyler Darrow is related to this Paul Darrow?” Annalise asked.
“Yes. Let me see how they were related exactly.” Gloria eased out of her chair. “One moment.” She left the room for a long moment. Silence pervaded until her footsteps announced her return. She held an iPad in her hands. A smile tilted her lips. “I hate these things. An old lady like me shouldn’t have to learn how to use them when I’m seventy-one!”
Regardless, Gloria seemed adept, if slow, and soon she turned the tablet so they could see the genealogy tree. Gloria pointed with her index finger.
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond Page 20