“This is hard now, Miss Caitríona,” he replied, “but it will be worth it when we can breathe free.”
His confidence reassured her. Their food stores were getting low, and they were all battered and bug-bitten and weary, but she reminded herself that she had endured worse. She glanced over at Deirdre who was lying on a blanket next to Hannah. Watching the two of them sleeping together, she knew she would do anything to keep them safe. Anything.
§§§
“Conn? Conn!”
Conn became aware of her brother prodding her. Blinking, she looked around. Her grandparents were staring at her as if she had sprouted horns, but her mother was shaking her head, her hand over her eyes.
“Day dreaming,” Conn shrugged with a half-laugh. She realized she was still holding the mayonnaise. She passed it on to Will. “Sorry.”
Lowering her eyes to her plate, she breathed a sigh of relief that this dream had not been a bad one. She was not really listening for a while, so she was jolted when the conversation between the adults began to penetrate her preoccupation.
“The whole family thinks it would be for the best,” Clara was saying.
“They do?” Elizabeth said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Of course they do. Why shouldn’t you come back to Indiana to be near family?” Harold interjected. He waved a hand in the air. “I can’t see how anyone would be sorry to leave this old place.”
Conn looked up, panic in her heart. Surely, her mother would never – but Elizabeth met her eyes and Conn knew it was okay.
“Mark would want you to be with family,” Clara said.
A shadow immediately fell over Elizabeth’s features, but she calmly said, “Mark wanted us, if anything happened to him, to be where we felt at home. This is our home and we are with family.”
“What family?” Clara demanded.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Conn said.
After dinner, Elizabeth insisted that Harold and Clara go sit on the porch while Will entertained them by catching faerieflies. As she and Conn were clearing the table, she whispered, “And you tell Caitríona, her timing could be better!”
CHAPTER 29
“Hey.”
Conn looked up to see Jed sliding down off Jack’s back.
“Hey,” she returned in surprise. “How’d you know where I was?”
“Your ma said she thought you was fishing.”
Jed tossed the reins to the ground and let Jack graze. He clambered up onto the rock where Conn was sitting, dangling her bare feet in the creek while her fishing rod lay idle next to her. Jed sat on her other side.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My grandparents got here a few days ago,” she said. “My dad’s mother and father. They just showed up from Indiana and they’re driving us crazy.”
Jed plucked a small purple flower growing in one of the cracks of their rock and dropped it, watching it swirl in the eddy circling at the base of the boulder. “What’re they doin’?”
Conn expelled an exasperated breath. “They keep trying to tell Mom that we shouldn’t be here. They want us to move back to Indiana with them.”
“Your ma won’t do that, will she?” Jed asked, aghast. “You can’t leave.”
“I don’t want to,” Conn said. She leaned back on her hands, splashing her feet in the water. “I don’t think Mom will do it.”
Jed’s shoulders slumped in relief. “It just wouldn’t be the same ‘round here without y’all.”
Conn grinned. “I didn’t think you liked me.”
Jed said seriously, “You’re my best friend.”
Conn blushed. “You’re my best friend, too.”
“You wanna do some more explorin’ in the tunnels?”
Conn shook her head. “I can’t. If anything happens with them here, it’ll make things worse for Mom.” She sighed. “I’ve already been gone for a while. I should get back.”
She started to get to her feet, and Jed followed. “Why don’t they think y’all should be here?” he asked curiously.
“Daddy was –” She caught herself, and bit her lip for a second as she climbed down off the rock to where she’d left her shoes in the grass. “Daddy is their only son, and mom says having us closer would be like having him back with them. But we belong here. We can’t leave.” There was a determined note in her voice as she spoke.
Jed whistled and Jack shuffled over to them, a large clump of succulent grass hanging from his mouth as he chewed. “How about we ride back?” he asked, leading Jack to a tree stump. There was no answer, and he turned to see Conn on her hands and knees.
§§§
“Have we gone far enough yet?”
They had passed through Rucker’s Gap six days ago. As close as Caitríona and Henry could tell, they were now in West Virginia, but Caitríona had insisted they push deeper in, wanting to get farther away from slave territory.
As they walked through a lightly forested area, they came unexpectedly upon a log cabin. Caitríona and Henry hid the others behind a dense thicket while they cautiously approached the cabin. There was no smoke coming from the stone chimney, and there were no signs of any people about.
“Hello?” Caitríona called out, but there was no answer.
The door was hanging crookedly on rough hinges so that it juddered as she pushed it open to reveal a single room, empty and seemingly abandoned. There were a few old pieces of broken crockery lying about, and some dry firewood stacked next to the hearth, but no other sign of recent occupants.
“What do you reckon?” Henry asked.
Caitríona turned to look at him hopefully. “I think we should stay here a few days, see if anyone turns up. If they do, we’ll just say we were resting before moving on.”
The relief was plainly written on Ruth and Hannah’s faces as they were told they would be stopping for a while. Ruth was far enough along in her pregnancy that she was riding most of the time, and was getting more and more uncomfortable. Even the horse seemed happy as he carefully lowered himself onto the grass to roll and scratch his back. A nearby spring provided water for horse and humans. When Ruth found an old cast iron pot in a corner of the cabin, she lit a fire and set to work making a sort of stew using wild onions she found nearby. Hannah made small loaves of bread with some of their last remaining flour and set them to bake in the coals.
Days passed, and no one came by to demand they leave or question who they were. Henry managed to trap a couple of rabbits, providing them with the first meat they’d had in weeks. They explored the land surrounding the cabin. Hannah found a large patch of blackberries which Deirdre delighted in picking, though she ate as many as she put in the basket.
There was a rocky outcropping about fifty yards away from the cabin. As Caitríona explored this one day, she suddenly disappeared from view. Yelling for her, the others crowded round the spot through which she had fallen.
“Wait,” she called up as they lowered a rope to her. They stood there, waiting anxiously until she reappeared, saying, “There are tunnels down here. We need to see where they go. One heads toward the cabin.”
Once back up on solid ground, she looked at the others and said, “I think we’ve found our new home.”
They began cleaning out the cabin, making it habitable. Henry fashioned a simple ladder and climbed up to repair some of the wooden shingles that had broken, allowing water to leak in during the previous night’s rainstorm. Ruth and Hannah began foraging for wild asparagus and turnips.
“We found another abandoned cabin nearby,” they announced after one such trip.
“Why would we need another cabin?” Caitríona asked.
Hannah tilted her head, looking at Caitríona as if having to explain the obvious to a child. “If anyone else comes around, we cannot look like we’re all living together. We can fix the other cabin up just enough to look like someone lives there, and then if anyone gets nosy about why we’re here, we can say we only work here for you.”
Caitríona opened her mouth to protest, but Ruth cut her off. “Miss Caitríona, most white folks don’t look at things the way you do. This is for the best.”
Grudgingly, Caitríona acquiesced.
One morning, they opened the cabin’s door to find a basket containing smoked bacon and fresh baked bread with a crock of butter. Caitríona looked around, but could see no one.
“Can’t we just be grateful for someone’s kindness?” Hannah asked when Caitríona seemed upset by the gift.
“We can’t trust anyone,” Caitríona insisted worriedly. “Who knows we’re here?”
She got her answer a couple of days later. Each morning since the first basket, fresh food had been deposited on their doorstep. Caitríona, determined to find out who was leaving it, stayed outside one night, perched in the crook of a nearby tree that gave her a view of the cabin. Drifting off for a few minutes at a time, she was startled by movement off to her left just as the eastern sky was beginning to turn a lighter gray.
A stooped figure stepped out of the woods, making its way quietly to the cabin. There, it deposited another basket near the door, picking up the empty basket they had left outside.
Caitríona cautiously climbed down from her tree and cut the figure off just before it reentered the woods. “Who are you?” she asked.
The figure stopped and turned to her. An ancient woman peered at her in the half-light. “Come.”
Mystified, Caitríona followed the old woman through the woods, apparently following a path only she could see as darkness closed around them once more. Caitríona had no sense of time as they wandered, eventually coming to a small cottage tucked under a grove of hemlocks. The old woman beckoned her to follow as she entered the little house.
“Please, who are you?” Caitríona asked again as the woman led her into the kitchen.
The woman gestured to the table and chairs, bidding Caitríona to sit as she made tea for the two of them. Caitríona was reminded forcefully of Brónach as the old woman pushed a cup of tea into her hands, her wizened face so wrinkly that her eyes were mere slits.
“I know who thou be,” said the woman, in a rasping voice that sounded rusty from lack of use.
Caitríona’s heart pounded. How could this woman know anything? “What do you mean?” she asked.
The old woman smiled, at least Caitríona thought it was meant to be a smile. “Raising a child of thy blood but not of thy womb,” she croaked, “and protecting those who would be defenseless.” She nodded. “Aye, I know who thou be.” She reached out and pushed Caitríona’s cup up toward her mouth as she took a sip from her own cup. “I be Lucy. Lucy Peregorn. I have been waiting for thee.”
The hot tea scalded Caitríona’s throat as she choked upon hearing the old woman’s words. “How do you… how can you know these things?”
Lucy sipped her tea, her cup held in both her gnarled hands, not answering for a long moment. “Some things there be, things that be truth if thou knowest how to listen,” she said. “Whether thou be in Ireland or here.” Caitríona stared at her with frightened eyes. “Thou hast naught to fear from me, child,” the old woman told her. “I have been asked to help thee.”
“Asked? Asked by whom?” Caitríona whispered.
But Lucy did not answer. She got up and brought a loaf of bread and a small wheel of cheese to the table. Cutting them, she placed some on a plate and slid it across the table to Caitríona.
“Thou hast found the tunnels,” said Lucy.
Caitríona nodded as she chewed on a piece of cheese.
“Use them. Build on them. Thou wilt have need of them one day,” Lucy said.
“Why? What will happen?” Caitríona asked.
“That be not given to me to know,” said the old woman. “Only this have I been shown – that thou and those with thee wilt face grave danger one day, and that thou wilt sacrifice thyself to save them.” Lucy looked at her with eyes that seemed to pierce her. “And that thou wilt need another’s help to redeem thy soul.”
§§§
Jed’s face looked scared as Conn blinked and found herself on the ground.
“Are you okay?” he was asking, shaking her gently.
She sat back on her heels, pressing her fingers against her eyes, and said, “I’m okay.” But it was a few minutes before she let Jed pull her shakily to her feet.
“C’mon,” he said, leading her to the tree stump where Jack stood, waiting patiently.
Jed helped Conn onto the horse’s back and climbed up behind her, wrapping an arm protectively around her waist as he nudged Jack with his heels and reined him toward the Mitchell house.
Will greeted them as they entered the yard. “Hi, Jed!” he called out.
Conn slid down off Jack’s back. “Where is everyone?”
“In the kitchen,” Will said. “Mom told me to go play outside.”
Conn’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Why?”
Will shrugged. “I dunno. They’re arguing about something.”
“Wait here,” she said, letting herself quietly in the front door. She paused outside the swinging door to the kitchen, listening.
“This is not normal,” Grandma was saying.
“She’s always had a vivid imagination,” Elizabeth replied heatedly. “Regardless of what’s in it, you should not have read it.”
Conn shoved the door open and stepped into the kitchen. Sitting around the table, her mother and grandparents started at her unexpected entrance. Her journal was lying on the table.
Conn’s face drained of all color. “How dare you!” she demanded.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady!” Clara said.
There was a roar in Conn’s head that drowned all other sound. “You’ve no right!” she shouted. She looked at her mother accusingly. “You told me journals were private.” There was such a tone of hurt betrayal in her voice, that Elizabeth couldn’t meet her eyes.
“They are. Your grandmother was wrong to read it,” she said.
“You’re eleven. You don’t deserve privacy,” Clara cut in, waving her hand dismissively as if the whole idea was absurd. “If this is what’s going on around here –”
Conn rushed to the table and snatched the journal. “You are an evil, wicked old –”
“Connemara Faolain!” Elizabeth stood, holding her hands out as if physically pushing everyone apart. She took a deep breath. “Conn, go upstairs, please.” Conn glared at her. “Please,” she repeated.
Conn spun on her heel and stomped from the kitchen. As the door swung shut behind her, she heard her grandmother say, “This would never have happened when Mark was –”
“Well, Mark isn’t here!” Elizabeth shouted, losing her composure at last. “He isn’t here, and this is my house to run as I see fit!” Conn paused to listen. “I’m sorry you don’t approve. Maybe it’s best you leave.”
“Now, Elizabeth,” Harold said placatingly, “there’s no need to be hasty.”
“You showed up here with no warning, no invitation,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve violated my daughter’s trust and her privacy. You owe her an apology.”
Clara began to sputter a protest, but Elizabeth cut her off, repeating, “I think it would be best if you left.”
“When?” Harold asked in shock.
“Now,” Elizabeth said firmly. “See how far your Cadillac can get you and you can find a hotel when you feel like stopping for the night.”
“Well, I never,” said Clara.
Conn could hear chair legs scraping, and she scampered up the steps to her mother’s room. She wondered how much of that exchange Will and Jed had heard from outside. She went to the window, and saw Jed mounting Jack to leave. He looked up and she waved. He waved back with a sympathetic shrug and nudged Jack into a trot.
She went to the bed and crawled up, sitting cross-legged as she listened to the activity down the hall. Her grandparents were soon packed. She could hear the sound of heavy suitcases thumping down the stairs, as well as a gre
at deal of unintelligible grumbling.
The door opened a short while later and Elizabeth came in. “I would like for you to come say good-bye to your grandparents, please.”
Conn stared at her mulishly for several seconds. “I’ll do it for you. Not for them,” she said at last.
Elizabeth nodded in acknowledgement. “Thank you.”
Conn followed her mother downstairs and stood off to the side as awkward farewells were said.
“Good-bye, Elizabeth,” Clara said, her voice high as she blinked back tears. “We only meant –”
“Good-bye, Mother Mitchell,” Elizabeth said calmly. “Tell everyone in Indiana that we send our love.”
Harold gave Will’s head a tousle before he grumbled a muffled good-bye to Conn.
“Good-bye, Grandpa,” she said. She looked at her grandmother, who pursed her lips primly and gave Conn a curt nod before getting into the car.
The Cadillac backed up and then rolled away in a cloud of dust, and Conn breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Elizabeth also looked relieved, but she muttered, “Oh, we’re going to hear about this for a long time.” She looked down at Conn, one eyebrow raised, and said, “Please hide your journal in a better spot.”
Despite the more relaxed atmosphere in the house now that it was just them again, Conn knew that the argument had brought up a harsh reminder of Daddy’s absence.
But, later that night, when she tiptoed down the hall to her mother’s room, she didn’t hear any sounds of crying. Instead, she could hear the soft sound of her mother’s bare feet pacing, pacing back and forth in her room. Conn sat listening and wondering. It seemed like a long time before she heard the bedsprings squeak as her mother went to bed and things eventually got quiet.
CHAPTER 30
“Hello, Mrs. Mitchell.”
“Why, Mrs. Thompson,” said Elizabeth as she got out of the car, “how are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Mrs. Thompson, who was the wife of Buck Thompson, one of the two men who had brought the logs from Mr. Peregorn when the bathroom was being re-built. Mrs. Thompson had contributed her wonderful fried chicken to the impromptu meal they had all enjoyed.
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