“What do I deserve?” Her question hung between them. She tested Jacobus. In this moment she didn’t want tentative threads of platitude and heroics that would only dissolve later and leave her holding her own obituary.
Jacobus gave her a thin smile. He would not hide the truth from her.
“Your soul deserves to die.”
A chill ran through her.
Jacobus lifted the violet from her hand and in a slow, gentle motion, tucked it behind her ear, pushing away a dark curl that had escaped her coil. His touch against her ear caused her to lean into his hand. It stilled for a moment, as if surprised. Then he left it there, his fingers caressing her cheek with a featherlight touch. His eyes softened, the blue of them warming as if sunshine had emerged on an icy day.
“But with repentance, God forgives. In Him your soul will live. Therein lies the beauty amidst the weeds.”
It seemed too simple in comparison to the shocking and detestable shows Jedidiah Corbin put on in the tent meetings with Jacobus standing in the wings.
Libby reached up and touched the violet, but when her hand dropped to her lap, it rustled the paper that bore the words of her death.
She lifted the page, then her eyes, to Jacobus. “And if my soul lives, will my body still die?”
Jacobus’s eyes shadowed for a moment. He closed his hand over the paper, his fingers wrapping around hers. His silence left her question unanswered, but Libby was not alone. For once, someone finally understood her. All of her. And while there was fear, for a moment there was also peace.
Chapter 34
Annalise
Annalise leaned against the doorjamb of the basement door. It was midmorning and, having been up all night, her body was achy and her brain fuzzy. She studied the sky, the fluffy clouds that passed by over the old historic buildings. Tyler rustled about in the basement files, muttering under his breath. Christen had returned home hours before to care for her kiddos. Garrett had run—literally—to Annalise’s coffee shop to get a carafe and some mugs. They were going to need sustenance. Annalise had sent her barista a text to throw in a bag of scones to go.
“Hey, Annalise?”
Tyler’s voice at her shoulder made her jump. Annalise eyed him. He held out an old newspaper. “I just found this.”
Annalise took the paper and read the front page. A story about the Corbin brothers, an inked sketch of effigies hanging from lampposts. She gave Tyler a look of disbelief.
“They hung the imitation preachers in the town square?”
“I know.” Like it or not, Tyler was fully engaged now in the quest to uncover the story. “It’s so Scarlet Letter.”
Annalise bit back a sigh. Tyler tended to exaggerate things, but still, it was hard to believe something like this had happened in Gossamer Grove. A ruckus surrounding the Corbin brothers was just an odd piece of history lost with time. Now that they were discovering it, Annalise wondered what it was that had made Eugene tie them to the obituaries and subsequently to her.
She skimmed more of the article. It didn’t trigger anything significant in her mind. She handed it back to Tyler. He pushed against her hand.
“No. Open the paper.”
“Okay?” Annalise shot him a quizzical look, then carefully opened the aged, yellowed newspaper.
Tyler edged closer to her and pointed. “There. See that?”
Yes. Yes, she did. Annalise leaned forward. “Dorothy Hayes? There was an investigation around her death?”
“It appears so.” Tyler tapped the page. “Apparently, there were questions as to whether she’d been murdered. Drowned on purpose. If you read closer, toward the bottom of the article, it seems they were looking into an affair between her and Harrison Greenwood. Perhaps it was a motive for their deaths.”
“Wow.” So they had been considering murder back in 1907. She kept reading. “Dorothy had attended the Corbin brothers’ revival meetings. Even spoken to her friend of being baptized, it says.”
“Yeah, and look there.” Tyler ran his finger over the last paragraph. “Her husband was arrested for trying to stab the one revivalist twin, Jacobus Corbin. Ended up skewering—”
“Libby Sheffield!” Annalise’s eyes went wide. “So, Eugene Hayes’s grandmother, Dorothy, might have had an affair with Harrison Greenwood. She was coming to terms with that due to the revival meetings, and then after she died, her husband . . . what? Blamed the revivalists somehow?”
“Sorta gets the suspicion thrown off Paul Darrow,” Tyler muttered.
“Or raises the bigger question. Why did he have an obituary written about him? He wasn’t related to any of this, was he?”
“I’m going back in to see if I can find more papers on this.” Tyler scowled at her, obviously not keen that she was still trying to find some link to Paul Darrow and potential murders.
She watched him disappear farther into the basement. Could she blame Tyler? Really? No one liked hearing their family could be tainted. One wanted to remember the nostalgia, the smiles, the successes. Not the sins.
Annalise sank onto a cement stair. She pulled her phone from her pocket. She had no desire to, but now that she had a moment to herself, she needed to summon the courage to call her mom. Garrett was willing to be open about their past, about Gia. Even Tyler was facing the fire and looking into his family’s and the paper’s own questionable pasts. The image of her pregnant grandmother with Eugene Hayes’s arm draped around her shoulder was burned into Annalise’s mind, including the penned warning in the obituary for Paul Darrow: “Let the dead stay dead.” Buried. Both Eugene Hayes and her grandmother were gone, yet she couldn’t leave them in their graves. Not when someone was exhuming her own past.
Before she could chicken out again, Annalise made the call to her mom.
“Hello?”
Her mom’s greeting filtered through the cellphone’s speaker. Annalise’s voice caught in her throat. “Hi, Mom,” she finally answered.
“Annalise.”
Awkward silence. They couldn’t even fake pleasantries. Fine. She’d just dive right in.
“Mom, I, uh . . .” Not for the last time did Annalise wish she could press rewind and go back to the days before Eugene Hayes was found dead in his trailer, half buried in pictures of her. There was no easy way to bring up the question to her mother, who had never wanted to speak of Gia or of Annalise’s indiscretions. So now she was going to propose that her own grandmother, her mother’s mom, was guilty of the same thing as Annalise?
“What is it?” her mom pressed.
“I’ve been digging into some old family records at the historical society.” There. That was a start.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. And there was a picture in a scrapbook, of Grandma. Grandma Ellen?”
“Yes, I suppose she might’ve made a few of the photographs around town. My father did own the bank.”
Oh yes. The always inserted reminder that they were of the upper class of Gossamer Grove. Good grief, one would think this was Hollywood in 1952.
Annalise adjusted her position on the stair and caught a glimpse of Garrett striding down the alley, a coffee carrier in his hand, a carafe and the bag of scones in his other. She tried to ignore it—ignore him. That was difficult. The sun haloed behind him, making his skin tan, his lean muscles highlighted. . . . She tore her eyes away.
“So Grandma was in a photograph with Eugene Hayes.” Annalise hurried on before she lost courage. “Eugene passed away not long ago, and he left me his trailer. I—he had pictures in it, of me.”
“Of you?” Her mother’s voice turned grave. Low. As if the woman couldn’t decide whether to hang up or stay on the phone.
Annalise took a deep breath and blurted, “He had a photo of me when I was pregnant at Aunt Tracy’s. Of—”
“Stop.”
Annalise did. She’d always obeyed. Dutifully. At the cost of her own self.
“Yes, your grandmother knew Eugene Hayes”—Annalise could tell her mom was gritting her t
eeth—“but that was years ago. The man went crazy, and it was due to his war memories. Vietnam did horrible things to those men. Anyway, he was probably fascinated with our family and that was why he had your picture.”
Annalise knew she was in an intricate dance with her mother. Going straight in for the truth would have them both crashing to the floor. She chose to tiptoe instead.
“But, Aunt Tracy took the picture of me pregnant, Mom. In Connecticut. It’s the only picture anyone took of me pregnant.”
“Fine. All right. Well, does it really matter?” her mother snapped.
A whiff of coffee alerted Annalise’s senses, and she jerked her attention toward the aroma. Garrett stood by her, the coffee in his hand. She reached for a disposable cup, carefully removing it from the carrier.
“It’s black,” he whispered. “Just how you like it.”
She really needed to not be so predictable. At least where Garrett and coffee were concerned.
“Mom,” Annalise continued, her coffee in hand now, “why did he have that photo? Why was Grandma in a picture with him?” Fine. There wasn’t any point waltzing around the truth. “And why was she pregnant?”
Her mother cursed through the phone.
Annalise was expecting a gasp or even an abbreviated “shush.” But she wasn’t expecting her mom to swear, then follow it up with stony silence. She gripped the phone tighter. Garrett’s gaze drilled into her. She could tell he was waiting, trying to gather what was being said.
“Mom!” Annalise’s voice was sharper than she intended. She shoved the coffee cup back into Garrett’s hand, dragging her fingers through her hair until the red strands were pulled tight away from her face. “Mom, tell me whatever you know before Tyler Darrow plasters on the front page of his newspaper that I had Garrett’s baby.”
It was a fake threat, but it did the job.
Another curse from her mother, then a cough, then more silence.
Finally, Annalise heard the clacking of her mom’s fingernails, probably being drummed atop the granite counter in her kitchen.
“Before your grandmother married your grandfather, she had a fling. It was the sixties.”
The sixties. Free love. Hippies. Sex and drugs. Got it. Annalise’s image of her proper grandmother evaporated.
“She was with Eugene Hayes for over a year. That was when she had your Aunt Tracy.”
The knot that had been forming in Annalise’s stomach, that foretelling insight just before someone spoke the actual truth, twisted into a permanent stitch. “Eugene Hayes was Aunt Tracy’s father?”
Annalise fixed her stare on Garrett’s. She had to or she might faint, or maybe just bash her head against the doorjamb to knock some sense into herself.
“Yes.” Her mother’s voice was tight now. “That’s really all I know. Your grandmother never spoke of it—never spoke of him.”
“But Aunt Tracy knew?”
“Well, she must have. It’s obvious she found out somehow.”
Suddenly, the words on the back of Annalise’s pregnant picture made sense. Save Annalise. Had Aunt Tracy sent the picture to Eugene herself with instructions to look after her? She’d known Annalise needed someone to see Annalise for who she was, not who she could be. Someone who would understand her circumstances. Someone like Eugene.
“Did you know?” Annalise asked the question—the elephant in the room.
Silence at first, and then her mother cleared her throat. “I know you think your father and I didn’t take your feelings into consideration back then. But now you understand why I pushed for things to happen the way I did with you. Good heavens, you were so naïve. It took years for your grandmother to live down her pregnancy with Eugene. And Tracy? There was an unspoken stigma over her growing up. The child who really was a Hayes.”
“Were you ashamed of her?”
God help Aunt Tracy. Help Gia. Why did people stare down their noses at others? Were they without sin? Then throw the stone. Otherwise, toss it in their own faces!
“I was never ashamed of Tracy,” her mother snapped.
“Were you ashamed of me?” Annalise clutched the phone, her knuckles white. She locked eyes with Garrett, who drew his eyebrows in concern.
A sigh.
A pause.
Then, “I need to go, Annalise. Your father is calling for me.”
Annalise stared at the phone for a long moment after her mother hung up. She snatched her coffee back from Garrett, who eyed her cautiously. She took a gulp and bore it as the liquid scorched its way down her throat.
Annalise swiped her tears with the back of her hand and gave Garrett an honest look. “Well, now you know what it was like when you weren’t around. My mom never received the gift of nurturing.”
Garrett sat on the step next to her, setting down his load of coffee and scones. Their shoulders brushed in the narrow space.
“Our moms are—they need help.”
Annalise gave a watery laugh. “Yes. Yes, they do.”
Garrett gave her a lopsided smile. “Considering, we didn’t turn out so bad.”
Annalise met his eyes. “No,” she answered softly. “I guess we didn’t. We just did things backward.”
Garrett nodded. “At least our daughter has a name.”
“And we claim her?” Annalise whispered.
Garrett’s eyes grew serious and deep. “Yeah. Yeah, we claim her.”
“No more secrets?” Annalise reached for his hand. She couldn’t help it. His fingers closed over hers.
“No more secrets.”
“Oh my gosh!” Annalise dropped Garrett’s hand and lurched to her feet. “Why didn’t we put two and two together?”
Garrett reared back, surprised at the sudden shift from their intimate moment.
“An illegitimate child! That’s the common denominator! Eugene and Aunt Tracy. Harrison Greenwood and Dorothy Hayes. They had to have had an illegitimate child. It’s the only reason why Eugene would have tied them to his story and to our story!”
Garrett just sat there staring at her, stunned.
Annalise waved for him to follow her to the basement. “Tyler found a newspaper. An investigation into Dorothy’s death. Rumors of an affair between her and your great-great-grandfather. I swear, Eugene was connecting the dots! I’d place bets that his father, Lawrence, was really a Greenwood—Harrison’s illegitimate son with Dorothy. And now”—she looked Garrett in the eye—“our daughter. A Greenwood. It comes full circle back to the Greenwoods.”
“You should be an investigative journalist,” Tyler snarked from the doorway as he edged past Annalise to reach for a scone from the bag. “Problem is, you’ve no proof of the affair between Harrison and Dorothy. Just a theory.”
Annalise nodded. “But if we work from that theory, then what does Libby Sheffield have to do with all this? And how did Libby’s watch end up in my jewelry box? She had to have known someone in Eugene’s ancestry. Someone more her age. Like—like Harrison’s son maybe?”
“Elijah.” Garrett was still on the stair, his elbows resting on his knees.
Annalise turned to him. “What are you thinking?”
Garrett shrugged. “I just remember my grandpa mentioned him once. I remember him saying his father avoided anything religious. Especially church and preachers.”
Annalise raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it all comes back to the revival? Libby Sheffield was hurt at a tent meeting, stepping between Jacobus Corbin and his attacker, Dorothy’s husband and widower. What if one of these people was so upset at all the filth and scandal, they determined to take God’s justice into their own hands and clean up the town themselves?”
“Good grief, that’s the craziest idea yet!” Tyler rolled his eyes as he chewed his scone. “Who would be that stupid to write horribly scripted obituaries and start killing people?”
“Paul Darrow.” Garrett’s grim words silenced Tyler.
He glared at Garrett and shook his head. “No. No. This is conspiracy theory at its worst.
You’re saying my great-great-grandfather was somehow inspired by the revival meetings and decided to kill them because they, what, didn’t confess? And you have his obituary! Why would he be the killer if he was on the list to be knocked off himself?”
Annalise didn’t reply. It did sound outlandish. Yet, it also made sense when she thought of it from the angle that Eugene might have. A string of generational sins all mirroring one another and coming full circle. Especially with Garrett’s mother’s implication that Greenwood men weren’t known for their fidelity.
Tyler hiked back into the basement, the scone in his hand leaving a trail of crumbs. Then he turned on his heel, his eyes bright. “Fine. You want to go down this trail? I’ll play along. You’ll need to talk to Doug Larson. His dad and Eugene Hayes used to hang out at the veterans’ center downtown. I remember ’cause I did an article on them. If there’s anyone still alive who might be able to answer your question about an affair, then Doug’s dad is the one.”
Annalise had no desire to search for Doug Larson. His wilderness center had already usurped priority over the broken people of Gossamer Grove. People like Eugene Hayes. Groveling at his feet for information seemed tacky at best and nauseating at worst.
“I can ask him.” Garrett’s voice sliced through the silence. He sipped his coffee as though it were any normal day. “I need to talk to him about the climbing gym in his plans anyway.”
Annalise chose to let that comment slide. “I’ll go with you.” She glanced at Tyler and gave him a stern frown. “We already know the Corbin brothers had stirred up a lot of emotion in Gossamer Grove. It seems 1907 was a year of pot-stirring and murder.” Addressing Tyler, Annalise added, “See what you can find on Libby Sheffield.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Tyler groused. “Paul Darrow too. There’s no way I’m going to let you pin this conspiracy on him.”
Annalise leveled him with a dark look. “Here’s hoping. For your sake. But I don’t have a good feeling about it.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about any of this,” Garrett muttered.
Chapter 35
Libby
Libby attempted to match Jacobus’s long strides. His jaw was set, even under his muttonchop whiskers.
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond Page 26