by Amanda Wen
“Thank you. He didn’t suffer, at least we can be thankful for that. And we know where he is now, so …” Garrett swallowed hard against a thickened throat. His grandfather’s rock-solid faith in Christ left no doubt as to his eternal destination. It took the edge off the ache.
“That definitely helps.”
The beautiful huskiness had returned to Sloane’s voice, and with it that strange inward pull.
“What about your grandmother? I’d love to visit with her if I could.”
Garrett switched his phone to the other ear. “I’m sure she’d welcome a visit, but you probably won’t get much out of her.”
“She’d at least know her parents’ names, and whether she ever traveled to Indiana.”
“I’m not so sure about that. My grandma has Alzheimer’s. She’s still functional and communicates well, but her memory’s like Swiss cheese.”
“Wow, I’m so sorry. That really sucks. For all of you.”
Her offbeat forthrightness gave him pause. No one had ever said it in quite those words before, and their truth resonated in the very depths of him.
“This might sound weird, but I appreciate you saying that.”
“You do?”
“Definitely.” Everyone he shared the diagnosis with always said they were sorry. Then they asked if they could bring over a casserole. Or grilled him about her medications. Or questioned if he’d tried this doctor or that diet or these experimental treatments.
All of them meant well. They’d fix it if they could.
But some things couldn’t be fixed.
And when that was the case … it sucked.
He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to hear that from someone.
“Phew. I can be pretty blunt. It’s sometimes a problem.”
“Not for me.” Garrett cleared his throat. “Anyway, it sounds like I’m not much help on this diary, but if I find anything else while I’m digging around, I’ll—”
“Need any help?”
“Are you sure? There’s a ton of dust and mold.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before. Trust me.” Her low, throaty laugh brought an unexpected ping of pleasure. “And if there’s anything else of Annabelle’s in the house, it might tell us more about where I should send this diary.”
Her present eagerness couldn’t be further from her earlier icy demeanor, but voicing that observation probably wouldn’t win him any points. And if she was sincerely willing to come help with the house? He needed all the points he could get.
“Okay, I’ll call your bluff. How about tomorrow?”
The thoughtful pause filled with soft tapping, like she was bouncing a pencil off a stack of papers. “I’m free any time during the day.”
“Great. Ten thirty?”
“Perfect.”
He gave the address. “Do you need directions?”
“The GPS should do fine. I’ll call you if it does something squirrely.”
After they hung up, Garrett slid his phone in his pocket with an amused shake of his head. Never in his life had he met someone who looked forward to digging through decades’ worth of junk.
But if she did find something of historical value, it’d be one less thing he needed to make a decision about. One more item checked off the endless to-do list.
And one step closer to enacting his perfect plan.
Friday’s deluge had given way to a Saturday of brilliant sunshine and a sky of liquid blue. A beautiful day for a drive to Jamesville, a small town on Wichita’s western outskirts. To Garrett’s grandparents’ house, and possible answers.
But as she rolled along the highway, Sloane stared, goggle-eyed, at the proliferation of new big-box stores and cookie-cutter McMansions, a far cry from the gently rolling farmland of not even five years ago. Subdivisions whizzed past, all with brick walls, lit signs, and names that sounded pretty but were utterly devoid of meaning. Harbor Pointe. Meadowlark Mountain. Pineridge.
Ugh. Suburbia had spilled across the countryside like red wine on a white tablecloth.
Just past the last cathedrals of conformity, the GPS chirped instructions to turn right. And when she did, onto a mud-and-gravel road marked by a shrubbery-obscured mailbox, Sloane’s irritation with suburbia faded to nothingness.
Stately, thick-trunked trees stood at attention on both sides of the long driveway, kissed with the pale pinks, creamy whites, and tender greens of spring. Branches split the morning sunshine into shafts of magic that danced on the hood of her car.
She rounded a slight curve, and a white two-story house came into view. A delighted squeal bubbled up in her throat. This house, this beautiful, silent testimony to days gone by, stood in a cool oasis of evergreen and elm, flanked by the quintessential red barn and a scattering of smaller buildings. Sunlight dazzled like diamonds off the puddles in the bright green yard. The whole scene couldn’t be more idyllic if it tried.
Envy welled inside her. Had Mr. Get-Rid-of-Everything spent any time here at all? He couldn’t have, or he’d understand what a priceless pearl this place was.
As she drew closer, the home’s age became evident. Paint peeled from both the house and the barn. One side of the screened porch listed to the left. Weeds sprang up with abandon. But despite these imperfections, its century-old charm was still there.
It was love at first sight.
She slowed to a near crawl, lost in daydreams and questions about the people who’d lived here, about their stories, their lives. It reeled her in up to her knees. Stuck fast with no hope of escape.
No.
Wait.
She wasn’t just stuck in her daydreams.
She was stuck in a giant puddle of oozing mud.
CHAPTER THREE
“WORK WITH ME, Edna.” Gritting her teeth, Sloane revved the gas. “You can do it.”
But the little Hyundai’s only response was helplessly whirring and squealing its tires as it sank deeper into the muck.
Perfect.
With a great deal of trepidation, Sloane turned off the ignition and cracked the door to reveal a pool of shiny gray-brown goop. Goop that would be almost impossible to scrub out of the new pair of Toms she’d just treated herself to.
She kicked off her shoes, tossed them onto the passenger seat, and rolled her jeans to her calves, then set her jaw and climbed from the car.
Cold mud swallowed both feet up to her ankles, and she let out a yelp. When the shock passed, she leaned against Edna’s smooth, dark blue side and carefully slogged to the rear of the car to assess the situation.
Ugh. The ground beneath the back tires was part rocky gravel, part tall grass, and part mud, but the front wheels were sunk halfway into the same slop that sucked at her feet. Somehow, in nearly fifteen years of driving experience, this had never come up.
With a silent prayer for guidance, she retraced her sloppy steps, leaned inside the driver’s door, and groped around the passenger seat for her phone. Time to turn this problem over to Professor Google.
“Are you stuck?”
She straightened, and there was Garrett, leaning against the porch railing, his mouth quirked with amusement.
“Nope. Just a quick mud mask for my feet. Did you know they charge fifty bucks for this at the salon?”
His gaze slid from her face to the mud and back again. “So you don’t need a hand or anything?”
“If all else fails, I’ll call AAA.” She lifted her phone. “Thanks, though.”
“C’mon, I can have you out of there in two minutes.” The porch steps creaked as he strode toward her. “Just put a few sticks under the tires for traction, and I’ll get back there and give it a good shove.”
“You think that’ll work?”
He bent to examine the rear tires. “This isn’t the first car to get stuck here, and it probably won’t be the last.”
Gone was his suit from yesterday, and in its place was a pair of faded jeans and a plaid flannel shirt over a Kansas Jayhawks T-shirt. He wasn’t skin an
d bones, but he was no beefcake either.
“You don’t really look like the sort of person who makes a habit of pushing cars out of the mud,” she said.
That dimple in his right cheek deepened. “You don’t really look like the sort of person who makes a habit of getting cars stuck in mud either. And yet here we are.”
“All right.” Swallowing her pride, she tucked her phone into her pocket. “If you can get me out of here, I’d be most appreciative.”
“Happy to help. I’ll grab some sticks.”
She wasn’t sure which was more irritating: the smirk on his lips as he turned away or how perfectly those jeans fit him. Heat blasting her face, she sank into the driver’s seat, twisted awkwardly to retrieve an old hoodie from the back, and gave her filth-covered feet a cursory wipe.
When she looked up, Garrett stood beside her open window. “Okay, we’ve got enough traction, I think.” He patted the roof and headed toward the back. “Go ahead and fire it up.”
With a turn of the key, Edna vroomed to life.
“Now give it some gas,” he called. “Don’t floor it, though. Nice and gentle.”
Mindful of the squalling fit Edna had just thrown, Sloane eased down the accelerator. The car whined a moderate protest, then lurched forward onto a patch of grassy gravel near the house. Relief washed through her as she climbed from the car, her bag over her shoulder, her shoes dangling from two fingers. The grass was cool and damp beneath her bare feet.
“See? Piece of cake.” Garrett fell into step beside her, and her heart twinged with sympathy at the mud-spattered Jayhawk in the center of his T-shirt.
“Thank you. Truly.”
He’d been right, of course. She couldn’t have done it without him. And the satisfied smirk he wore told her he knew that, and he knew she knew that.
Being right was doubtless something he was used to.
“It was the least I could do, considering it’s my fault you got stuck.” He gestured toward the patch of mud. “This road’s terrible, even without three inches of rain. I feel bad for not warning you.”
“I was too busy gawking at the house to watch where I was going, so no harm, no foul.” She feasted her eyes on the house once more. “This place is beautiful.”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Even knee-deep in mud?”
“That patch of mud has probably been there for decades. There’s beauty in that.”
“There’s beauty in pavement too.” Garrett crouched beside a spigot next to the porch. “I should rinse off my shoes before I go in. You’re welcome to use this, but this water’s nowhere near as warm as what they’d give you at the salon.”
“That won’t bother me. I’ll just be glad to get this mud off my feet.”
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The spigot squawked to life, and Sloane stepped beneath a flow of water so cold it drew a startled cry despite her efforts to suppress it. Ignoring Garrett’s chuckles, she scraped off the worst of the mud with aching toes, then leaped to dry ground and glared daggers at him.
“Where’d this water come from, the iceberg that sank the Titanic?”
Blue eyes sparkling, he shed his plaid shirt and handed it to her. “Here. Rub some feeling back into them.”
The rest of her froze as much as her feet. His T-shirt-covered shoulders were broader than they’d looked, his arms more muscled than she’d given him credit for.
Maybe he looked like the sort of person who made a habit of pushing cars out of the mud after all.
“Thank you.” Bracing herself against the side of the house, she wrapped the soft, woodsy-smelling flannel around her grateful left foot. Garrett kicked off his mud-covered sneakers and held them beneath the spigot. The water ran brown, then beige, as the original bright blue of the shoes shone through.
The screen door banged open, and a young woman with long, dark blonde hair poked her head out. “Everything okay out—whoa, what happened?”
“Just a little mud,” Garrett replied. “No big deal.”
The woman switched her gaze to Sloane, and Sloane found herself staring at a female version of Garrett. Same eyes, same nose, same cleft in the chin, same dimpled smile.
What must it be like to look at another human being and see your own reflection?
“Hi.” The woman stuck out her hand. Sloane glanced at her own to make sure it was clean enough to return the handshake.
“Sloane, this is my incredibly annoying sister, Lauren,” Garrett said. “Lauren, this is Sloane Kelley from the historical museum.”
Lauren held the door for Sloane. “Can I get you anything? Coffee cake? Blueberry buckle? Cinnamon rolls?”
That explained the fragrant mix of sweetness and spice hanging heavy in the air as Sloane stepped into the living room. At her apartment there was only one breakfast option—instant oatmeal—and she hadn’t even bothered with that this morning.
“Lauren’s a food blogger,” Garrett explained.
“Dollop of Delicious. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” Lauren’s smile was wide and hopeful.
“Sorry, no.” Sloane handed the now-damp flannel shirt back to Garrett. “I’m not much of a cook.”
“Let me get you something then.” Lauren’s blonde waves swished across the back of her plaid shirt as she headed to the kitchen. “You’re probably starving.”
Not until now, anyway. The drool-worthy aromas made Sloane’s stomach gnaw its protest at the missed breakfast.
“Come on in.” Garrett indicated a room to the right of the entryway, and Sloane drank in the sight. Though the floral wallpaper and deep green accents spoke of the 1990s, the bones of the house were from a century earlier. Wood-framed, thick-silled windows. Creaky hardwood floors. The gorgeous stone fireplace. This house was amazing.
“Land’s sake, if it isn’t Auntie Boop.”
A slight, snowy-haired woman piped up from a blue recliner beside the fireplace, eyes twinkling behind large gilt-framed glasses.
“Sloane, this is my grandma, Rosie Spencer,” Garrett said. “And Grandma, this is Sloane Kelley from the historical museum.”
“Oh, hogwash. I know Auntie Boop when I see her.” Rosie cut her broad smile from Garrett to Sloane. “You haven’t changed a bit except your hair. Are you letting it grow out?”
Sloane put a self-conscious hand to her wavy chin-length bob. “Maybe?”
“You remember what we talked about last night, right?” Garrett’s voice was low and close to Sloane’s ear.
She nodded. “So who’s Auntie Boop?”
“No idea. We just roll with it.”
“Gotcha.”
“Here we are,” came Lauren’s bright voice. “You didn’t say what you wanted, so I brought you one of everything.”
Sloane’s mouth watered at the tray of goodies Lauren set on the coffee table.
“All gluten free, allergy friendly, non-GMO—”
“But they taste good anyway,” Garrett interjected. Lauren rolled her eyes, and he planted a kiss on top of her head. “Save me a slice of that coffee cake. I’m going to go change.”
“M’kay.” Lauren pulled a TV tray from beside a large bookshelf, unfolded it, and placed it in front of Rosie.
“What a beautiful house.” Sloane settled on the couch. “Do you all live here?”
“All except Garrett.” Lauren poured coffee into a trio of mugs. “He’s up in Kansas City. Comes down every couple weekends or so to help out.”
Rosie blew a raspberry. “Garrett’s a big worrywart.”
Sloane chuckled. She liked Rosie.
She liked this cinnamon roll too. Warm and gooey, with the perfect blend of sweetness and spice. Who needed gluten anyway?
Lauren leaned back in the recliner, cradling a steaming green mug. “So Garrett says you’re here about that satchel he brought in yesterday.”
Sloane took a much-needed sip of coffee. “It’s not so much about the satchel as what was inside it. A diary from 1861.”
Lauren’s eyes
widened. “Wow. Do you know whose it is?”
“It belonged to a nine-year-old girl named Annabelle Collins.” Sloane’s heartbeat kicked up a notch as she watched Lauren for a reaction. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No.” She turned to Rosie and raised her voice slightly. “Grandma? Do you know an Annabelle Collins?”
“Annabelle …” Rosie’s brow creased; gnarled hands curled into loose fists. “Blast it. If I ever did, I don’t anymore.”
“It’s all right. I’ve never heard of her either.” Lauren tore off a bite of cinnamon roll and turned back to Sloane. “Our mom died years ago, Dad moved to Florida, and with Grandpa gone, it’s just Garrett, Grandma, and me. And we didn’t know much about our family history to begin with.”
“I’m sorry about your mom.” Sloane lowered her mug to the table. “And you’d be surprised how little most people know about their heritage.” Try as they might to uncover it.
“Wait a minute. You said Annabelle was nine?” Lauren rose and fluttered across the room. “I found a notebook last week that looked pretty old. The handwriting was a little unsteady and the spelling wasn’t great. I thought maybe it was Grandma’s from when she was a girl, but what if it’s even older?”
“It’s certainly worth a look.” Excitement rose in Sloane’s chest. She shouldn’t get her hopes up.
But where history—and life—were concerned, sometimes hope was all she had.
Garrett spread an old towel on the hardwood floor of the guest bedroom. The bedroom he slept in when he visited, for as long as he could remember. Stepping out of damp, mud-hemmed jeans, he glanced out the window to a view that remained unchanged: a vibrant green clearing leading up a slight rise to a grove of cottonwoods, on the other side of which ran Blackledge Creek.
Long weekends. Lazy summer days. Anytime he visited, sooner or later he’d find himself by that creek. Learning to fish with Grandpa. Wading in its cold, clear waters. Sitting on the banks and tossing in sticks, watching the current carry them away. City kid though he was, being here always brought him closer to some part of himself. To nature.
To God.
Those waters must’ve had that effect on people. His mother running barefoot through wildflowers and doing cannonballs into the creek’s deeper sections remained among his most cherished memories. Even at the last, when cancer had devoured everything but her soul, when her cheekbones jutted sharp against the sheets and colorful head scarves did little to hide the ravages of chemotherapy, she still wanted to come home. Feel the fresh air against her skin one last time. The creek’s rippling water on feet that would no longer support her.