“Paul Darrow. He would have been Tyler’s great-great-grandfather. And . . .” She tapped on Paul’s name. A document loaded. Vintage. A census. “This is a census from 1915. It states Paul’s occupation as ‘newspaper owner.’”
“So, Paul Darrow owned the paper in the early 1900s?” Garrett asked.
Gloria nodded, setting down the iPad. “It makes sense. Tyler is just the next in his family to continue the business.”
“Wait.” Annalise looked down at the iPad. “The census is from 1915.”
“Yes?” Gloria gave her a questioning look.
Annalise tapped the tablet. “The obituary I saw stated he died in 1907.”
“No, that’s not possible.” Gloria shook her head. “I remember seeing Paul Darrow’s name in several bylines that covered stories from the First World War. He was quite prolific during that time.”
“How could that be?” Annalise cast a bewildered look in Garrett’s direction.
Appearing as lost as she was, he shrugged. “Maybe the obituary wasn’t real. Maybe it’s the same as the other one that doesn’t match my great-great-grandfather’s Mom referenced.”
“Why are we interested in Paul Darrow?” Gloria interrupted. “I thought you were inquiring about Eugene Hayes?”
“We are.” Annalise fumbled for words. Garrett caught her eye with a small shake of his head. Fine. She’d keep the disorganized details to herself. They were driving her crazy, let alone overwhelming an elderly historian with the toxic story. “I’m just researching all sorts of family trees.”
Lame, but Gloria bit. She smiled and nodded. “Oh, they’re so fascinating! I love them. It’s good to know where we came from, and Gossamer Grove has such a rich and beautiful history. The unity, the community—it’s inspiring.”
Not the words Annalise would have chosen. But Gloria was still speaking and drawing a scrapbook to rest in the middle of the table.
“I was working on scanning in some photographs from this old scrapbook. I wanted to add them to the database of historical pictures of Gossamer Grove.”
Annalise drew her attention to the scrapbook as Garrett positioned himself next to Gloria.
“I found a photograph of Eugene.” Gloria bent over the scrapbook and pointed. Annalise edged closer, and the three of them focused on the page. Gloria continued, “This scrapbook is a hodgepodge of pictures taken at a Gossamer Grove Fourth of July celebration in 1965. There he is.”
Annalise squinted to see the faces better. There were at least three couples in the photograph. The sky was blue, the grass a yellowed green from the photographic development. Two of the men wore white T-shirts. One of them had a long braid reminiscent of Willie Nelson. They had their arms draped over women in miniskirts and V-neck blouses. The third man was shirtless, his frame muscular, with a tattoo that spread across his chest and an eagle’s head framed in the middle of his pecs. He wore dog tags, his eyes were narrowed, his dark brown hair mussed from the wind.
“Dog tags,” Garrett mumbled. “Didn’t we send troops to Vietnam in ’65?”
“We did.” Gloria’s nod of affirmation was grim. “Eugene was already in the military by then. This must have been shortly before he shipped out. I remember someone—I don’t know who—mentioning when he came home a few years later, he was very unpredictable and very defensive of the time he spent there. You know”—Gloria glanced between them—“GI’s who fought in Vietnam weren’t praised when they returned home. Eugene flaunted his war wounds and made it known he’d done his duty, whether it was appreciated or not.”
Annalise frowned. She leaned closer and studied the woman who was huddled against Eugene’s side. Her brown eyes were dewy, her flaming red hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head with a bandanna tied around it. Her dress was long and bulging in the front. She was obviously pregnant. Obviously coupled with Eugene. It stood to reason, it was his child.
Confusion ripped through Annalise, the kind that shortened her breaths and made her step back.
Garrett shot her a look of concern. “You okay, Q?”
She shook her head. A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Honey?” Gloria turned and laid a hand on Annalise’s arm. Her eyes were knowing. “You saw it too, didn’t you?”
“Saw what?” Garrett glanced between them.
Annalise focused on Gloria’s earnest, caring gaze. She nodded. She hadn’t expected this. Not this.
“What?” Garrett pressed. Annalise shifted her focus to him. Greenwood men. She could hear Garrett’s mother on the phone. The women in their lives were their foundations in their times of indiscretions. Eugene Hayes was practically a Greenwood himself. Like Garrett, like who knew who else in their male family lineage?
“My grandmother.” Annalise stared at the picture. “That’s my grandmother.”
Garrett bent over the photograph. “Wow. Yeah. She looks a lot like you.”
“She was pregnant.” Annalise’s words slipped from her mouth like an accusation.
“But Eugene is not your grandfather,” Gloria said.
“No. He’s not. My grandmother was happily married. She—she had my mother in 1967.”
“So . . .” Garrett let the word hang between the three of them.
So it only meant one thing.
“You’d best talk with your mother, dear.” Gloria patted Annalise’s hand.
The last thing she wanted to do.
“I’m so sorry, Gloria, but I need to go,” Annalise choked out. She hurried from the room toward the front door. She heard the echo of Garrett’s voice calling her name, but she ignored him. Her grandmother had had a relationship with Eugene Hayes? It was insanity. No. No. It was small-town secrets, that’s what it was. Family secrets. Secrets everywhere.
Annalise sprinted down the steps outside the house. She was going to open them. Every last one of the secrets. She would exhume them all from every grave if necessary, and there was no way—she thought of the warning written on the note card with Paul Darrow’s ominous obituary—there was no way she was going to give up. If Gossamer Grove was willing to murmur and scuttle about her own scandal and secret child, then Annalise was going to uncover everyone else’s.
It was time for answers, for retribution, for tearing down the façade and exposing Gossamer Grove for what it was. A town like every other town. A town filled with broken people.
Chapter 28
Libby
Dusk had settled over Gossamer Pond. The mist rolled off its surface, making the mossy green algae glow in the moonlight. The meadow grasses, the sound of the canvas tent shifting beneath the evening’s rather brisk wind—it all brought a sense of peace crashing into chaos. With the spring night’s humidity, the wisps of fog reminded Libby of spirits hovering over the waters. Of Dorothy Hayes, somehow locked between worlds in a struggle for her soul. It was wrong that the revival continued in the shadows of her watery grave.
“Utterly thrilling.” Mitch’s voice wobbled with excitement, its sharp tone snapping Libby from her haunted musings. She glanced at Elijah, who flanked her other side. Though her hand rested in the crook of his elbow, this was anything but an evening out as a couple.
They neared the tent, joining with throngs of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Libby caught sight of the town drunk, Old Man Whistler, who sidled up to Mitch. His clouded blue eyes flashed with a vigor that made Libby raise her eyebrows.
“Here to twist them words again, Sheffield?” Old Man Whistler spit a stream of tobacco juice as he nudged Mitch’s arm.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been converted.” Mitch’s snide response brought a scowl to the other man’s face.
“And if I were? Might do you a lick of good too.” Whistler cast them all a stern look.
Elijah cleared his throat. “We are faithful followers of the Lord.”
“Huh.” Old Man Whistler eyed him. He tipped up his chin in a challenge, white whiskers sticking out from it like porcupine quills, thick and ugly. “Might
need to step it up in that regard. Don’ seem to be shared by the rest of your family.”
Libby felt Elijah’s arm tense. She gripped his elbow tighter, watching his jaw set. His brow furrowed, and his expression turned dark.
Mitch intervened. “Ease off the boy.”
Whistler held his palms up to them, widening his eyes in a pretentious and inauthentic wide-eyed apology. “I’m just sayin’. A saved man ain’t goin’ to string himself up like a dead deer, and a saved woman ain’t goin’ to wander around half nekked in the dark.”
Elijah’s arm jerked, attempting to shake off Libby’s restraining hold. She was sure if she released him, Elijah would strike the old man. Libby glanced around them. The people entering the tent were oblivious to the tension.
Old Man Whistler scowled at Elijah. “Can’t stop thinkin’ it’s mighty strange those two died within days of each other. And so odd-like.” He gave Elijah a long look, as though he too had surmised something scandalous, something hidden behind closed doors. The elderly man turned on his heel and sauntered into the tent with the rest of the townsfolk.
Elijah took a determined step forward, half dragging Libby with him.
“Stop, Elijah,” she urged.
He looked down at her, his eyes stormy.
“Let him go. It’s not worth arguing,” she whispered.
“Brazen idiot,” Mitch muttered and wandered away.
Elijah worked his jaw back and forth. The mist rolled over the meadow, beneath their feet, bringing with it the pungent smell of pond water. “Everyone knows, don’t they? It’s gotten out, I suppose. My father. My Aunt Dorothy.” He looked down at her, and the look in his eyes made Libby ache even worse than she already did.
“They were adulterers,” he said aloud.
Libby didn’t respond. There was no glorying in being right.
Elijah turned his back to the pond and surveyed the revival tent. Organ music crooned through the open doorway. He breathed deep through his nose and set his shoulders in a straight, determined line. “God help us all.”
The twin revivalists stood at each end of the makeshift stage. Wooden risers made their already-tall forms tower over the crowd. Hay bales and wooden benches served as chairs. Sawdust ran down the middle in an aisle that beckoned newcomers to come and be saved.
Libby’s breath was snagged by the scents of the hay and sawdust. Along with perfumes of women, sweat from men who’d worked all day, the kerosene from lanterns lighting the innards, and even some lingering smells of liquor and tobacco that clung to the rabble-rousers in the crowd.
Jedidiah Corbin’s booming voice and swinging arm led the attendance in a hymn. Libby’s shoulder brushed Elijah’s as they found seats on a hay bale. The straw poked through her dress into her thigh. It was uncomfortable. Hot. She longed for a cool breeze that made the canvas of the tent sway in and then collapse out as the wind removed its breath.
The hymn drifted away, and Jedidiah began to pray. It was earnest, not as condemning as she’d heard him in the last tent meeting. Perhaps he was less assertive tonight since it was Jacobus who was going to preach. Jacobus.
Libby opened her eyes. She froze. His were open too. Fixed on her with an expressionless face. His iridescent blue eyes pierced her. She couldn’t look away, feeling magnetized as he didn’t avert his gaze in a gentlemanly fashion, not seeming to consider that he was supposed to be in prayer.
“Amen.” Jedidiah finished the prayer, and heads around them lifted.
Jacobus didn’t break his stare.
Libby saw Elijah’s head move from its bent position. He shifted beside her, but she couldn’t look away from Jacobus.
“Grace.” As the word left Jacobus’s lips, he blinked and their connection was broken. He scanned the crowd slowly. “In spite of our sin, there is grace. But sin must be recognized. It must be admitted or freedom will linger in the shadows ever out of your reach. Ever mocking the hollowness in your soul as you hide your shame and you try to find peace where it does not exist.”
Libby squirmed, and Elijah glanced at her. Was he remembering too? She couldn’t help but skim the faces in the crowd before her eyes fell on Calvin, who was seated beside his father, Reverend Mueller.
“Jesus said, ‘Come to me, you who are weary.’ Are you weary tonight? Weary of bearing sorrow and pain?”
Jacobus’s eyes rested on her. There was gentleness in them in that moment. He fell silent. His delivery was so different from his brother’s, who seemed to want to terrify people into salvation from the pit of hell. Jacobus believed there could be relief from the darkness that lingered in one’s soul—in her soul.
Elijah frowned and looked between Jacobus and Libby. No one else seemed to notice who Jacobus was looking at, but the silence in the tent grew thick. Palpable. Someone coughed. A child whined.
“That is grace,” Jacobus finally said, his voice lowered but his tone slicing through the stillness. “That is forgiveness.” He seemed to plead with her, something desperate in that moment, something haunting that he was trying to communicate over the heads of those gathered.
A shout outside the tent startled the audience. People murmured, looking over their shoulders toward the tent flaps tied open in the back of the meeting place. Another shout, and it shook Libby from her stupor. Elijah twisted where he sat as more yelling echoed through the tent. It sounded riotous, dangerous, and not at all complimentary to the meeting.
Reverend Mueller stood, as did Mitch, as did Elijah and a few other men. Jedidiah hopped onto the platform beside his brother, almost shoving in front of him. His face was ruddy, irritated.
“They don’t wish to hear the truth of the Word of God!” Jedidiah shouted.
“It’s Ralph Hayes! He’s rounding up a posse of no-good heathens!” a yell informed the tent’s occupants. Several more men jumped to their feet.
Ralph Hayes? Dorothy’s husband? Libby had no time to react as Elijah launched himself past her into the aisle just as snapping and tiny explosions ripped through the night.
“Cannon crackers!”
There were screams from some of the women. Libby stumbled as a few shoved to get by her to the aisle where they could flee with their children.
“And eggs! The boys are throwin’ eggs!” Old Man Whistler seemed to summon every ounce of youth in him as he waved his cane in the air like a flagman heading into battle. He ran toward the back of the tent. “The Corbin twins don’t deserve this madness!” he hollered.
Frantic lunacy erupted around her. Libby’s toe caught on her skirt and she fell forward, her palms slamming into the hay bale, stalks of straw stabbing her skin. She looked in every direction. Elijah had disappeared, and Mitch was pushing his way toward the door, determination on his face to witness every gory detail. She shot a desperate look toward the platform. Reverend Mueller had hold of Jedidiah’s coat sleeve and was urging him through the back of the tent to safety. Jacobus stood, indecision on his face. When he spotted her, he bent and said something in Calvin’s ear. Calvin nodded, his eyes round. He ducked his head and charged after his father and Jedidiah.
Jacobus hopped off the platform, pushing people out of the way, heading toward Libby. His hand closed around her arm. “Come with me. Out the back,” he urged.
“I can’t.” Libby pulled in the opposite direction. “Elijah!”
“He’ll be fine.” Jacobus almost sounded as if he growled. She tugged against his hold.
“It’s Ralph Hayes. He’s Elijah’s uncle. We can talk sense into him, I know it.”
Jacobus considered her words, then gave a quick nod.
They made their way out of the tent. Jacobus pulled her down into a crouch as an egg flew toward them, hitting the tent over their heads.
“They’re mad!” Libby yelled at Jacobus. It was as if Ralph Hayes had recruited every teenage boy and miscreant in Gossamer Grove. She scanned the crowd, people dispersing toward wagons and motorcars. The pond lay still behind them, its waters a glittering background to
the chaos. She saw some men attempting to calm the teenage vigilantes. Mr. Thurgood, the night watchman, along with a policeman brandishing a stick.
“Where are the twins?” Ralph Hayes wove through the mob, his fist in the air.
Elijah’s head and shoulders bobbed over a few of the young lads.
“Elijah!” Libby shouted. But he didn’t hear her. He was moving in the opposite direction of his uncle, apparently not having caught sight of Ralph Hayes.
Libby jumped forward, away from Jacobus. He reached for her, his fingers grazing her sleeve. She didn’t pause to think about his safety, one of the twins the crowd was shouting about.
“Mr. Hayes!” Libby panted, out of breath as she reached his side. His arm swung out and shoved her away. “Mr. Hayes, you must stop!”
“Where are the twins?” he shouted. A man beside him brandished a pistol and shot it into the air. Screams. People ducked. More gunshots sounded at the opposite side of the meadow near the main road.
“Don’t do this! The Corbin brothers have done nothing wrong!” Libby hung on Ralph Hayes’s arm. He tried to shake her off.
“Nothing? They drove away my wife! Drove her to leave the house and drown!”
Libby’s own suspicions about them, especially Jedidiah, raced through her mind. But there was no time to consider. “Mr. Hayes, you must bring this to an end. This won’t resolve anything.”
His eyes were wild as he hissed in her face, spit dotting her cheeks. “My son is motherless. Dorothy wasn’t the same after she went to one of these meetings. Said she was ‘convicted.’” Rage filled his eyes. “It would’ve been better if they never came and stirred things up. I wasn’t going to say nothin’ or do anythin’! We were fine the way we were! She didn’t need to leave me. Didn’t need to get herself drowned!”
“Libby!” Elijah appeared from the mass. He edged between her and his uncle. “You need to go, Libby. It isn’t safe.”
He spun toward his uncle. “What are you thinking?”
Libby answered for Ralph Hayes as the man glared at Elijah. “He thinks the twins’ message started everything. Made Dorothy feel convicted, and then she left him that night. The night she drowned.”
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond Page 21