Shenandoah Home (Sinclair Legacy Book 1)

by Sara Mitchell

  “We need to go,” Garnet announced. Sloan watched her produce a determined and completely artificial smile. “I’ll see that your clothing is returned to you, Sloan.”

  She wasn’t going to say anything at all. In a reflexive motion his arm shot out, his hand closing over her slender wrist. “There’s time yet.” An expression of desperation flashed across her face, but Sloan pushed ahead. “Sun won’t go down for three hours at least. Wait a bit. Let the water run off the road.”

  Jacob’s chair creaked as he stirred and made uncomfortable noises in the back of his throat. “Ahem . . . Sloan indicated there was something you needed to be telling me,” he finally got out.

  Garnet went stiff as a plank, but she’d had five years of practice at living a lie. “Oh? Well, it’s nothing important. I’m sure the Pike is fine. I—you’ll not protest about Phineas, will you, Papa? We don’t keep chickens, he won’t be any trouble . . . I’ll take care of him.” She tried to free her wrist.

  “Boils,” Sloan murmured into her ear, “need to be lanced in order to heal.”

  His fingers tightened. Scarcely aware of his actions, he began stroking the racing pulse in soothing circles. He knew he was confusing her, probably alarming her, but he couldn’t help it. Someday, hopefully soon, he would try to explain. Until then, all he could do was to try and earn back Garnet’s fragile trust through whatever options presented themselves, gentlemanly or not.

  The angle of Jacob’s chair prevented him from noticing Sloan’s unprofessional behavior. “Lass, a fox is a wild thing,” he argued, albeit kindly. “You can’t turn him into a pet. He needs to be free.”

  Garnet stilled. “You heard Sloan. He’s been injured, Papa. He’ll never be the same, never be free in the wild again.” Her voice faltered. “If we don’t take care of him, he’ll die.”

  “Och, you were ever the soft-hearted one, weren’t you, flowerface.” Jacob stiffly rose and leaned over her, cupping her cheeks in his scarred workman’s hands. “Garnet, don’t you ken I know you too well? This isn’t about that fox, and I’m no’ fooled by these great big eyes. For over five years I’ve waited, hoping you would come to me, tell me what monstrous thing was eating up your soul.”

  “Papa,” she began, her voice thick. “I didn’t mean—I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Sloan released her wrist, sat back, and folded his arms, feeling like a hulking intruder. Feeling more than ever the sterile isolation of his exile from his own family.

  Jacob gave his daughter a hard hug. “Ye canna hurt the man who loves you more than his own life. I was there when you came into the world, lass. A wee precious gift from God. I held you, and your tiny fingers took hold of mine, gripping with strength enough for ten. You trusted me then, completely. Blindly. Trust me now, lass. Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

  Three beats of silence passed.

  Then a shudder rippled through Garnet. “Trust. So easy to say—so hard to feel, put into practice. I meant to ask Sloan not to say anything to you. I”—her hand lifted to smooth a damp strand of gray off Jacob’s broad forehead—“the silence is . . . safer. Easier.”

  “Not for me. Not for your sisters. That silence builds walls, not bridges.”

  Garnet winced but didn’t speak again.

  Sloan abruptly rose. Two giant strides brought him to the back door, and he propped his shoulders against the doorjamb. Three months earlier he’d dynamited some bridges of his own, and there would be no loving family member handing him bricks and mortar to rebuild. Black longing spilled through him, and the bitter taste clogged his throat.

  He focused on the troubled woman before him, and the longing intensified, narrowing until Garnet alone was at the heart of it. Sloan marveled at the paradox of her personality. She was as different from Jenna as a ruby to a river stone. Certainly no other woman in his “privileged” life could have carried the burden Garnet had borne alone for five years, borne with grit and grace and a dash of unexpected humor. If he were honest with himself, he’d acknowledge that her courage far surpassed his own. She hadn’t run away, hadn’t renounced her life, disguising cowardice by claiming self-preservation.

  I don’t want this, Lord.

  Trouble was, it was too late. Better he should concede and ask for God’s help instead.

  “Garnet, I’ve waited all these years.” Jacob jostled her chair leg with his foot to gain her attention. “Just get on with the telling, girl. Whatever it is can’t be worse than the waiting.”

  “Even if I’m an accessory after the fact to a murder?” she finally said, her voice not quite steady. “Even though by telling Sloan, and now you, I might be responsible for your deaths? My sisters’?”

  “Don’t forget your own.” Sloan jerked away from the doorjamb to loom over her. “While you’re busy hefting the cross of responsibility for all our lives, you might remember that you’ll be the first one those men will be coming for.”

  Eighteen

  Can’t be helped.” Sheriff Amos Pettiscomb shoved his derby off his perspiring forehead. “ ’Twas a long shot, at the best.”

  “Garnet, lass, are you sure this is the spot?” Her father’s eyes were clouded with anxiety.

  Swallowing, Garnet searched the peaceful glade once again. Nausea rolled greasily up into her throat. Oh yes, she was very sure. A squirrel churred its indignation amid the stand of beech trees off to her left, where years ago she had brought her buggy to a halt. Over there, the men had stood beside those ancient boulders, a mud-coated shovel propped against the granite surface. Instead of a scolding squirrel her ears filled with the memory of Chowder’s deep-throated growls.

  The trees had grown a bit, and since it was late June instead of early May, a canopy of leaves cast shadows over the churned up earth where a cluster of sweating deputies now waited in stolid silence. Two hours of digging the half-dozen holes had yielded nothing but stones, crumbling dirt, and tree roots.

  But five years and two months ago, unforgiving sunbeams had spotlighted the chilling lifelessness of a sprawled body.

  “This is the place.” Garnet fought to keep her voice shorn of emotion. “The body was lying at the foot of those boulders, next to . . . the hole they’d dug for a grave.” She’d always known that one day she would have to return. Lay the ghosts of the past to rest and conquer the jolt of terror that spiked through her every time she passed the turnoff to this sheltered glade.

  What she had not anticipated was the disbelief. It wrapped her in numbness, stifling the queasiness. All the terror had flattened out, as though the stick of dynamite she had been juggling for so long had detonated with a wet pop instead of a deafening bang. She wandered back over to the empty hole at the foot of a mangled sumac. “I’m quite sure of everything I’ve shared.”

  She faced the group of men, seeing her own disbelief reflected in their faces. Disbelief—and boredom. To them, Garnet’s story was no more than a hysterical girl’s implausible concoction. “I know every inch of this end of the Valley. This is where I came that day. And I saw what I saw.”

  “We’re not disputing that, Miss Garnet,” the sheriff said. “Don’t fret yourself none. Likely they buried the corpse somewhere else after you stumbled upon this spot, for just this eventuality.”

  “So why didn’t they just kill her off as well?” one of the deputies muttered.

  “Shut your mouth, Will. Ain’t no call to bring it up again. Miss Sinclair’s told us the ringleader stopped ’em from doing just that. We’ll never know his reasoning either.” His eyes crinkled at Garnet, though his bulldog face remained somber. “Let’s just say the good Lord was watching after one of His lambs real good that day.”

  Jacob wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go back to the courthouse. You can go through the wanted posters one more time. That all right with you, Amos? Perhaps after being here, something will jog her memory.”

  “Papa—” Garnet bit her lip to keep from voicing the protest. The lines on his face had de
epened over the past several days, and she knew his stomach was giving him problems again.

  So she leaned into the sturdy embrace, slipping her own arm around his waist. “All right, Papa. You may be right. I’ll look through everything again, if Sheriff Pettiscomb doesn’t mind.”

  The sheriff nodded, dismissed his deputies, then walked with Garnet and Jacob back to their buggy. “If you still don’t recognize anyone in those fliers, reckon you both realize there’s not much else I can do,” he said gruffly. “I searched the records back a full six years, all the way back to ’83. Only missing persons unaccounted for were a young gal, and an old man whose grandson warned me was still fighting the ’62 battle at New Market. Couldn’t find a soul we can match with your man’s body. And with no confirmed grave site and no suspects, there’s nothing to investigate.”

  “Can’t we question folks?” Jacob’s fist pounded the buggy wheel. “What am I to do for my daughter’s safety? Her peace of mind? She can’t live looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.”

  The sheriff stroked the side of his nose, his gaze sliding away from them. “Well now,” he said after a while, “You know where I stand on this matter, Jacob. I’ve been straight with you all since you came to me with the tale four days ago.”

  “My daughter told you the truth, and I’ll no’ have any man think otherwise!”

  “Now, Jacob . . . I ain’t saying that. I’m just saying she was sixteen and frightened.”

  Garnet laid her hand on the bunched muscles of her father’s arm. “It’s all right, Papa,” she said. “Truly. I understand how difficult this is—for all of us.” She took a deep breath. “Sheriff Pettiscomb, it would have been wiser if I had come straight home five years ago and told my father what had happened. I didn’t . . . because you’re right. I was only sixteen, and I was frightened. But I was as frightened for my family’s safety as for my own. My judgment may have been faulty, but it was based not on misunderstanding of the circumstances, but what I considered a very real threat to my family.”

  “And yourself.” Her father’s warm hand came down to quickly cover hers. “Amos, you’ve known us for twenty years.”

  “Let it rest,” the sheriff interrupted wearily. “Let it be, Jacob. I’m just telling you that there’s naught else that can be done.”

  “What do you recommend that I do then, Sheriff?” Garnet asked, her voice low.

  Pettiscomb spat in the dirt, then settled his hat back firmly on his head. “I recommend you forget the whole blamed mess. They’re long gone, that’s what I think.” His gaze touched on her bonnet. “ ’Cause—beggin’ your pardon, Jacob—you’d be easy to find, Miss Garnet. For all you’re the sweetest-natured young lady I’ve ever known, not a prideful bone in your body . . . everybody from Strasburg down through New Market knows about the red-headed gal who draws pictures for the American Monthly magazine. If these men wanted you, they’d have tracked you down by now.”

  Garnet barely controlled the flinch. After talking to Sloan MacAllister, she had reached the same conclusion herself. How could she have been so naive, all these years? Ever since that day on his porch, she’d wondered how she would scrape together the courage to once again ramble about her beloved Valley with the same freedom, believing the bonnet would shield her from discovery.

  Sheriff Pettiscomb mounted his horse. “Get on with the rest of your life,” he said. “Just . . . get on with your life.”

  “But you will keep an ear to the ground?” Jacob said.

  Pettiscomb gave a curt nod, then left.

  Garnet and Jacob drove home in a silence heavy with thoughts neither of them was inclined to air.

  June melted into July. The air thickened like syrup, hot and sticky; afternoon thunderstorms blustering over the mountains provided the only relief. Farmers cut hay, half-grown calves gamboled in wildflowered meadows—and Jacob spent almost as much time interrogating the neighbors as he did fashioning a maple highboy in his workshop. In spite of Sheriff Pettiscomb’s counsel, her father wouldn’t lay the matter to rest. These days he wandered up and down the Valley Pike more than Garnet.

  A garden slug had more freedom than Garnet. For the first week or so, she didn’t care, clinging to the security of home, of friends and family. Then the restlessness crept in, followed by the longing. Now she grudgingly abided by her father’s wishes, yearning to test her recovered fortitude while she waited until he satisfied himself that stirring old ashes wouldn’t ignite a fire. Fortunately she had a number of drawings to complete, left undone while her shoulder recovered its freedom of movement. Even so, if it hadn’t been for Phineas, she might have bolted.

  To the mystification of the entire family, the fox adapted to life in the Sinclair household as though born to it. He clearly doted on Garnet, trotting by her side whenever she was out in the yard, sleeping at her feet, or even in her lap when she was drawing or reading. At night, when every other fox on God’s green earth was out chasing mice and moles, Phineas sat on the window seat in Garnet’s bedroom, almost as though maintaining watch.

  “The two of you make a good match,” Leah liked to remark. “Both of you red-haired, both of you paradoxes.”

  “I finished the picture,” JosieMae announced, halting Garnet’s restless musings. “Can I pat Phineas now?”

  Once a week JosieMae faithfully appeared for a cherished art lesson. Occasionally one of her brothers or sisters tagged along, but most of the time JosieMae came alone.

  Garnet smiled at her childish depiction of the sleeping fox. “That’s much better. I can tell from the smoothness of your lines that you’re holding the pen at the proper angle. But look”—Garnet covered the sweating fingers with her own—“press the point lightly to the paper. Let it sort of glide like a drop of water sliding down a block of ice.”

  “I’d like to be sitting on a block of ice.” JosieMae flashed her a walleyed grin. “It’s so hot my feet stick in the dirt.”

  “It’s so hot Leah can bake her biscuits on the porch steps,” Garnet returned, and they both laughed. She stood from her seat at the sturdy square table set up in the dining room by the bay window, where she taught JosieMae and the few other children whose parents allowed them the luxury of art lessons.

  “I’ll go fetch us some limeade while you finish drawing. Then you’ll have to scoot, so you’ll be home in time to do your chores.”

  “Why aren’t you ever in the meadow anymore, Garnet? Is it because of those bad men?”

  “No, sweet pea. Mostly it’s because I’ve drawn all those flowers.” Garnet escaped from the dining room before the girl could pepper her with more questions she didn’t want to answer.

  Even the children knew. Thanks to Jacob’s mule head and bugler’s mouth, the Secret of Sinclair Run was now the Talk of the Valley, from toddlers to the hard-of-hearing Effie Tweedie. On alternate days Garnet longed to either pluck the remaining hairs from her father’s balding head or curl into the sanctuary of his loving embrace.

  On her way to the kitchen she detoured through the parlor, where Leah was absorbed in a book on calculus. She was absently chewing a lock of her fine brown hair, a childish habit that unexpectedly made Garnet’s eyes sting. When September arrived and Leah left for Mary Baldwin, at least both of her sisters would be safe from even the remote possibility of threat. “Want some limeade? I’m fetching some for JosieMae.”

  “Thanks.” Leah marked the page and shut the book. “I could use a break. Why don’t I get it?”

  “Leah, you’re not a paid servant.” The words hung suspended in the sultry air. “Sorry.” Garnet straightened the edge of a fraying antimacassar and avoided her sister’s eye. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “That’s not snapping. Turtles snap . . . beans snap. Meredith and I—well, we won’t compare our respective tempers with what passes for yours.” Leah rose, came over, and wrapped a comforting arm around her waist. “You’re just in a pother because you haven’t been confined to the house and yard since you
were six years old. Honestly, sissy, you remind me of a cat in a cage.”

  “The sheriff told us to forget about it,” Garnet burst out. “If those men were still around, we’d have known by now. Thanks to Papa, everyone from Winchester to Woodstock knows the story.” Which was why she hadn’t mentioned that after she mailed Mr. Smoot her finished drawings, Garnet planned to head for the hills. Alone. “I never should have told him what happened.”

  “It was a mistake for you to keep quiet about it all these years.” Leah moved away. “Garnet . . . Oh, never mind. Let’s go fetch the limeade.”

  “It was a bigger mistake to tell.”

  Leah whirled on her with an exasperated groan, fists on hips. “It was not a mistake to tell! Far as I’m concerned, the only mistake was telling Sloan MacAllister instead of your family.”

  Garnet winced, instinctively cupping her palm over the scar while she confronted her sister. “Sloan found the secret drawer in my heartwood chest,” she finally said. “Do you know he’s the only one in all the years to have discovered it? Papa keeps all of our chests in the parlor—I never thought about it because . . . well . . . that’s where they’ve always been. People make remarks about them the same way they do the furniture. It’s Papa’s craftsmanship they notice—not the unique nature of each of our heartwood chests.”

  Leah sniffed. “They’re advertisements. People see them and then order one. It’s sound business, not sentimentality.”

  “The other chests he makes are seldom from the heartwood. And he doesn’t add secret compartments in them.”

  Phineas ghosted across the floor. Garnet scooped the fox into her arms, nuzzling the soft fur. “Our chests are different, Leah. For Papa, they’re . . . somehow they represent his hopes for us. His dreams. I still don’t understand . . . I just wish—” She lifted her head, her hands burrowing into the fox’s thick ruff. “Sloan discovered the differences,” she finally continued. “Differences that nobody else took the time to search for or talk with Papa about.”