“There’s my two lasses.” He leaned down a bit so Leah could give his cheek a kiss. “What’s with your sister?”
“She’s upset. With me.” Arms folded, her expression rueful, Leah waited until Garnet disappeared inside. “I suppose I shouldn’t have lectured her all the way home.”
“And what were you lecturing her about this time, little wren?”
She favored him with one of those particularly feminine looks that blended impatience with resigned tolerance. “This time, Papa, you’ll be surprised.”
Jacob tugged the drooping plume of her go-to-town hat. “Very well,” he countered with a wink, “Surprise me.”
“After we mailed the drawings, we ate lunch at Mrs. Booth’s Café. Everybody there was talking about this mysterious outlander from Pennsylvania or Maryland or somewhere. There’s even a wild tale about him being a miracle-wielding doctor who saved the lives of some travelers or some such flumadiddle. But apparently he’s bought the old Pritchett place. Paid cash, according to Mrs. Booth, who heard it from the banker’s wife. But the most startling—”
“Och, that farm’s been vacant for going on five years. No telling what manner of repairs he’ll need to make it habitable. Why would a rich Yankee doctor purchase a place like that?” Bemused, Jacob shook his head. “Does he have a family?”
“Don’t know. I don’t think so.” She waved her hand. “That’s not important. Listen to this, Papa. Garnet’s met him! She admitted it, calm as you please, then asked would I please pass the rolls.”
“Garnet met him? Where? When?” Leah had the way of it—Jacob was surprised. He was even more upset, however, because Garnet had not mentioned the incident.
“You remember the day she found the Bottomses’ nephew out along the Pike? Came home late, looking like a drowned kitten? Well, it was the very same day she met this mysterious stranger.” Leah brushed specks of road dust off the points on her lace collar. “He . . . ah . . . he climbed up the hill to where she was working and introduced himself.”
“He did what? ”
“To hear Garnet tell it, he didn’t do anything beyond disturb her concentration and act mildly annoyed when she wouldn’t stay to chat. She doesn’t recall his name, much less remember what he looked like, beyond having dark hair and a straight caterpillar mustache.” They exchanged looks of mutual exasperation.
“I think,” Jacob said after a moment, “it might be time to sit the lass down for a talk.”
“Papa?”
“Hmm?” Preoccupied, he set about unhitching the horses. When Leah hadn’t responded by the time he’d removed the shafts, he glanced over, frowning, then slowly tied the horses to the paddock gate.
Leah was by nature straightforward. Even as a scrap of a lass she had little use for prevarication in any form. Right now, however, her gaze avoided his, and the dainty frame fairly hummed with agitation. Jacob folded his arms and waited.
“Papa, is Meredith right?” she finally ventured, her voice reluctant. “Is Garnet . . . well, afraid of men?”
Something hot and bitter tightened his throat. “Just because your sister’s no’ like Meredith nor you doesn’t mean—” He stopped himself. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last, equally reluctantly. “She’s never said anything, never indicated an aversion—” Again, he stopped.
That summer, he realized. It all started in Garnet’s sixteenth summer. She’d been driving old Dipple home from school all alone, and the horse ran away with her when a rabbit ran across the road. Chowder, the family dog, had chased the rabbit and apparently run off himself. He hadn’t come when Garnet called, and they’d never seen him again.
“Aversion or no, she acts as though every male she meets is between six and eight years old . . . or ninety-six years, perhaps,” Leah said. “Even poor Joshua. Meredith and I used to talk about it a lot, whenever Garnet wasn’t around.”
Jacob ran a weary hand around the back of his neck, his resolve crumbling. “I know what Meredith thinks. It isn’t so.”
“But Garnet never used to be like that, not when we were young. I always wondered . . . people don’t change without a reason.” Her fingers combed through Goatsbeard’s mane. She still wouldn’t look at Jacob. “What if someone—I mean, what if a—a man . . .”
The pain in Jacob’s belly cramped suddenly, viciously, and he reached into his pocket for one of the bismuth tablets. Closing his eyes, he chewed the medicine and waited for the searing pain to ease. For years he’d fought—but kept to himself—the niggling suspicions. Now ’twas plain as the barn door he’d not done right by his daughters. He’d buried his concern, pretended that Meredith and Leah hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Pretended that their innocence shielded them from all knowledge of the world’s capacity for wickedness.
He looked Leah straight in the eye. “Your sister was not . . . violated,” he stated, bluntly because the time for shielding was over. “Not like poor Olive Lindemann, four years ago.” For months the entire community had been shaken by the vile incident involving a local young woman.
Leah’s gaze jerked up to his at last, her expression confirming Jacob’s hunch both about her reluctance, and her determination. He hooked his thumbs through his suspenders, “But I do think Garnet is holding on to a dark secret. Don’t know why she won’t share it, and I tell you plainly that hurts my soul something fierce. I reckon whatever it is, it’s painful enough to her that she’s spent these past years convincing herself, her family, and the rest of the world, that this secret—whatever it is—doesn’t exist.”
“You truly don’t know what it is? Only what it isn’t?”
“Lass, I’d almost be willing to sell my immortal soul to know. But she’s never told me.” And as he’d confessed to Leah, the bitter pain of it was a monstrous thorn in his flesh.
“Papa . . . if someone had done that to Garnet, we’d know. We’d know.”
Jacob lifted her clenched fist, tucking it close against his chest. They stood in silence for a long time before he lifted her face to rub noses, then gently set her aside. “About this . . . miracle-wielding doctor. Tell me everything you heard about the Yankee outlander and everything Garnet said.”
Six
May. Ever since she was four years old and waved her very first picked flower under Papa’s nose—a dandelion that made him sneeze—Garnet had loved the month of May. March and April vacillated too much; balmy sweetness one day, snow and sleet the next. Flowers tended to be timid and short-lived. Lovely, of course, because they were flowers and part of God’s gifts to the earth, but Garnet still preferred the exuberance of May.
It was as though the Lord finally allowed Mother Nature to indulge to compensate for the monochrome winter, incorporating all the rainbow colors in His palette. Above her, a deep blue sky hurt her eyes with its jewellike brilliance. Around her, infinite shades of green from fragrant gray green cedars to emerald meadows. And the flowers! Bright yellow buttercups, hot pink lady’s slippers. Purple violets and periwinkle. Scarlet poppies and trumpet honeysuckle. Just this morning she’d stumbled across a breathtaking Rhododendron calendulaceum, blooming in flamelike brilliance beneath a stand of beeches. The clustered flowers decorated the towering bush like gigantic brooches. Garnet remained bowed over her sketchpad for hours, determined to capture enough detail to achieve that effect with her pens later on, back in the studio.
Perhaps one day she would take up oils or watercolors, instead of pen and ink. More likely not. It was a contradiction that baffled her sisters. “How can someone who loves flowers so much prefer to draw them in shades of gray and black?” Meredith always asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“We’re talking about Garnet,” Leah usually responded. The two sisters would nod at each other, then run shrieking when Garnet pretended to toss an open bottle of ink between them.
Fifteen years earlier, a stubby pencil clutched in matchstick fingers, she’d painstakingly drawn her first flower on the back of some crumpled butcher paper. Jacob hung
the finished product on the parlor wall, and the next week wheedled an old set of draftsman’s pens from a civil engineer in Strasburg—all they could afford at the time. Garnet, transported by a joy that had yet to fade, still occasionally fitted one of those old pen points to the worn wooden barrel, just to savor the memory.
And to remind her why she stayed with the medium.
Part of it was the challenge, she thought now as she trudged up a tree-choked hill near Cedar Creek. The perfection of detail, of reproducing one of the Lord’s creations as faithfully as one of Mr. Eastman’s cameras. Smelly oils and temperamental paintbrushes just weren’t the same. Likely she’d still be lining and crosshatching when she was a bent old lady.
Near the top of the wooded rise she paused to catch her breath, listening to the muted song of rushing water, the endless whisper of wind weaving through the trees. And pressing down and around and through her—the magnificent silence of an ancient mountain chain washed in sunlight. A rush of gratitude flooded her being, stinging her eyes with tears. Thank You for this day. Then, feeling almost shy, she darted through the trees, nimbly hopping over half-buried stones and around massive boulders, until she came to the crest.
At the bottom of a steep rock-strewn slope Cedar Creek babbled its way toward the north fork of the Shenandoah. Some hundred yards or so west was the old Valley Turnpike Bridge, momentarily free of travelers. At last, Garnet thought, rubbing her hands in a fever of anticipation. She was here at last, after weeks of more pressing obligations.
Now . . . all she needed was a nice healthy selection of twinleaf, or perhaps some vivid yellow puccoon? The blood in her veins all but hummed with eagerness. She examined the bank on both sides of the creek and abruptly saw a flash of color at the bottom of the hill. Red. Not a vivid scarlet, but definitely red, which ruled out puccoon and twinleaf. She squinted, peering more closely.
Why, it looked like . . . yes, it was an animal.
Surprised but unalarmed, Garnet watched without moving for a while, puzzlement growing when the animal didn’t stir at all. Sleeping, perhaps? More likely it sensed her presence and was playing possum, except she’d never heard of another animal that employed that tactic. And this was definitely no possum, not with that coloring. A noisily jawing bird landed on a branch overhanging the creek, directly opposite the animal, which didn’t so much as twitch. Garnet belatedly realized something was wrong, that the splash of red might in fact be blood. Without further thought she searched for and found a way to negotiate the steep, rocky slope.
Halfway down she was close enough to tell that the animal was a fox, obviously injured because it was so still, lying on its side, paws and tail limp. Uncertain, Garnet fiddled with the strap of her cloth bag. She knew next to nothing about foxes except that, around here, the animals were considered thieving varmints. Farther east, Meredith once told her, rich folks enjoyed fox hunting solely for the sport of galloping their fancy horses over meadows and woodland. But Doc Porter said foxes carried rabies, like raccoons and bats, and that if Garnet ever happened upon one while she was wandering, she’d best keep her distance.
Yet she couldn’t blithely go about her work, knowing the poor creature was hurting and she’d made no effort to help. “I can at least determine if it’s still alive.” The actual sound of her voice seemed decisive.
Her heavy bag would make it awkward to maintain her balance, so she laid it in front of a large sumac bush, anchoring the straps with a heavy rock. “Don’t run off,” she said, then looked back down toward the inert animal.
A loose stone turned beneath her left foot. With a choked-off gasp she wavered, pitched forward, then tumbled down the hill in a painful kaleidoscope of rocks, dirt, and flailing limbs. Dimly she felt blows to her head, an icy-hot knife scoring her shoulder . . . blood spurting warm and wet into her face, soaking her shirtwaist.
Her out-of-control descent slammed her to a stop against flat-sided boulders by the creek. Pain and shock swirled around her in a thick black cloud, sucking her toward unconsciousness. Grimly she clenched her teeth and lay without moving, trying not to panic, focusing instead on the little fox, only a yard or so away.
After a time she realized that its head was turned toward her. And its eyes were open. “I won’t hurt you,” Garnet croaked. She tried to reach out her hand. The effort was so agonizing tears flooded her eyes. Bile, thick and hot, crowded her throat.
The fox whimpered, a thready sound like that of a tiny baby. It stirred, then collapsed and lay still once more.
Resolve flooded Garnet’s noodly limbs; after a few sickening moments she managed to drag herself to a sitting position with her back against the boulder. When the sky ceased spinning, she gingerly lifted her right arm to her aching forehead—her left arm was useless, the pain accompanying any movement so awful she knew further effort would send her hurtling into unconsciousness for sure.
Her right hand came away covered with blood. “B-blast,” she mumbled. It was the strongest epithet she’d ever heard her father utter, but she was too woozy to feel guilty. An errant thought surfaced: What would happen to her cloth bag? Panic flared briefly, but the starburst of pain in her temple forced her to remain still. She should be grateful to be alive. After all, drawings could be recaptured on paper. Life could not.
Lightheaded and dizzy, she tried to decide how to proceed. Hard to tell who needs assistance more—me or the fox. It hurt to move, though she didn’t think any bones were broken. So don’t whine, Garnet. Go and see what you can do for that poor little critter, before it’s too late. Setting her teeth, breathing in shallow pants, and ignoring the pain, she set about dragging her uncooperative body across the intervening space.
She might not know a lot about wild animals, but she did know herself. Never again would she helplessly stand by. Didn’t matter whether it was an injured child or an animal reviled as a pest. She would do what she could, or she could never look in the mirror again.
Sloan grumbled all the way down the weed-choked lane that meandered past his recently purchased house, grumbled all the way down the two-track road leading into Tom’s Brook, and vowed with every step after he headed north on the Valley Pike that he was turning around and returning home. Now. By four o’clock though, when he was twenty minutes past Strasburg, he had changed tactics. He badgered God instead, demanding answers.
He still couldn’t believe he’d given in to this inexplicable but infuriatingly persistent urge to walk to Winchester to retrieve his horse, for crying out loud. All right, yes. He’d known since he’d taken possession of the gone-to-seed farmhouse that eventually he’d have to either fetch Dulcie or sell her to the livery owner who’d been caring for her.
Mr. Grigsby had written Sloan twice in the past two weeks, wanting to know what Sloan planned to do. Dulcie had recovered completely from her lameness, and Mr. Grigsby had declared a liking for her malleable disposition. She’d be a fine addition to his stable . . .
Feeling a strange reluctance to doom the faithful mare to the ofttimes brutal life of a livery hack, Sloan had balked at selling. Until this morning he’d also balked at interrupting his work to fetch his horse. Over the past week he’d been installing new mantels over the fireplaces—marble in the front parlor, carved mahogany in the sitting room and his bedroom. The trip to Winchester would waste an entire day, even if he caught a northbound train at Tom’s Brook.
Adding insult to injury, at dawn he’d been pulled from a dreamless sleep, awakened by the vague notion that there was something important he was supposed to do that day. As though something had grabbed the back of his neck and shaken him, demanding his attention. But he knew it had been Someone, not something, and he’d been angered at the intrusion.
Two years earlier Sloan would have listened without questioning for what he had come to recognize as God’s spirit-manifestation in his life. He would have waited, confident and alert, for the Lord to reveal how Sloan could serve Him this time. Usually it required a middle-of-the-night trip to deliver
a child, set a broken bone or two . . . with depressing frequency to offer comfort to the dying. Once, heeding that inner urging, he’d woken a brakeman and his wife, both healthy as market-bound hogs, from a sound sleep. The wife shrilled invective, while the bleary-eyed brakeman threatened to break his interfering nose before slamming the door in Sloan’s face.
Sloan had barely climbed back into the buggy when the brakeman yelled his name. Seemed as though the surly fellow had stopped on his way back to bed to check on his mother, who lived with them. Turned out the woman had awakened and was suffering a cardiac asthma attack, complicated by hysteric angina. If a qualified physician hadn’t been on the spot, she could have died within an hour.
On this particular morning, however, instead of heeding the call, Sloan grumbled defiantly, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
When he jerked awake a second time to that prickling sense of urgency, rebellion rather than obedience dictated his actions. “I won’t listen to You!” he’d shouted, stomping down the stairs to the kitchen to grind some coffee. No longer was he a healer, a shepherd to God’s wounded sheep. Sheep, ha! More like jackals, snapping and snarling, biting into his soul until it bled dry. He’d devoted his life to a profession that had crushed him, pledged his fidelity to a woman who had betrayed him, and trusted his soul to a God who demanded the impossible.
So why was he here, sweating and coated with road dust? Sloan asked himself for the dozenth time in the last hour. He glared at the medical bag he’d picked up out of habit on his way out the door, then lifted it above his head. “I’m selling this in Winchester!” he shouted to the sky. “I’m through with doctoring, do You hear?”
The echo of his voice mocked him. But a cool breeze blew across the road, caressing his perspiring face. The bitterness he wore like a suit of armor could not deflect a sensation of . . . of an understanding hand, patting him on the back.
Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1) Page 5