Читать книгу The Return - Dinah McCall - Страница 9

L uke wasn’t a believer in the supernatural, yet when he came out of a sharp curve and saw a small, two-story cabin at the end of the road, the hair on the backs of his arms suddenly rose. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen in these hills. Fashioned more in the style of a miniature Swiss chalet, it reminded him of a cuckoo clock his aunty had owned. It looked as if the owner had just left for the day, instead of the twenty-odd years he knew she’d been gone. To add to the aura of timelessness, four men seemingly materialized from the deep shadows of the porch and came down the steps to meet them as he parked.

They were tall and spare, with solemn expressions. He didn’t know whether it was in deference to the occasion, or if it was their normal manner. Their faces were shaded by matching weather-stained hats with wide, shapeless brims and their clothes were simple—faded denims and cotton. Catherine pulled up beside him and killed the engine. He glanced over, curious as to what her reaction would be. She looked relieved. It would seem she’d been expecting them.

Still, when she emerged from her Jeep, he got out and moved to her side, approaching the men with caution. Mountain people didn’t like strangers, so even if they knew Catherine, they were going to be wary of him. As they neared the porch, something began to dawn on Luke. He’d been sheriff of Taney County for more than eight years and knew everyone in the area—and these men were strangers to him, too. He thought of the thefts that had been going on up here for years. It would be too easy to believe that in a random act of kindness to Catherine Fane, he’d found the people he’d been trying to catch. But his musing ended when the eldest of the men suddenly took off his hat and reached for Catherine’s hand.

“You’d be Annie’s girl,” he said, without question or hesitation.

“Call me Catherine,” she said. “And you’re Abram Hollis?”

“At your service, Miss Fane. These are my boys, Jefferson, Dancy and Cleveland.” Then he turned to the boys. “Boys, this here is your cousin Annie’s granddaughter.”

The “boys” were all thirty-something in age and well over six feet.

Catherine smiled to herself at the term. Their gentle manners and soft words went a long way in washing away the hurt from the earlier incidents in Camarune.

“Grannie used to read me your letters, so I feel like I already know you. I just wish we could be meeting under different circumstances.”

“No one ever said life was fair,” Abram said. “Annie lived a long life. It’s time she came home to be with Billy.”

Belatedly, Catherine remembered the sheriff.

“I’m sorry. I forgot my manners. Abram, this is Sheriff Luke DePriest. He volunteered to help me get my…” Transient pain moved across her features as she corrected herself. “Helped me get the casket here. And, I might add, he was the only person who was willing to help.”

Her fingers brushed the fabric of Luke’s shirt as she directed his attention to the older man. “Sheriff, this is Abram Hollis. He and my grandmother were cousins, and they’ve worked together for as long as I can remember.”

Luke’s eye widened. Working? At what? As a fence for stolen goods? But undue curiosity was a breech of mountain etiquette. Instead of questions, he touched the edge of his hat in recognition of the introduction. The men nodded back, but they, too, remained silent.

Catherine sighed. Grannie had warned her that mountain people would be reserved, but she hadn’t expected mute. Then she saw the shovels leaning against the porch—a painful reminder of why she’d come. She looked at Abram.

“The grave…?”

“Right next to Billy, where Annie wanted it to be.”

Refusing to cry, Catherine set her jaw and looked away, letting herself take in the simple beauty of the place and imagining a young Annie Fane traversing these mountains, wrapped in the solitude she’d so badly needed after losing her young husband in the Second World War.

Oh, Grannie, you gave up so very much for me. Then she glanced toward the truck. It was time to lay Annie to rest.

“May we begin?” she asked.

Abram motioned to his sons. Immediately, they moved toward the casket. Luke felt like the odd man out as they lowered the tailgate of the truck. Impulsively, he touched Catherine’s shoulder.

“Miss Fane?”

She looked up, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

“I’d be honored to help,” he said, pointing toward the casket the men were about to lift out.

She hesitated, but only briefly. “I think Grannie would like that.”

Luke stepped into place between Abram and Dancy as they pulled the casket from the truck. He’d served as a pallbearer more than once in his life, but never in such humble surroundings.

A few moments later, they began to walk, moving toward some unseen destination behind the cabin, with Catherine leading the way. When they passed a tall oak, a small brown bird dropped from a limb above their heads, landing on a nearby bush, as if vying for a seat to watch the passing procession.

Although it had been muggy down in Camarune, the air was cooler up here. The ground was rocky and almost grassless in the front, but as they passed the side of the cabin, the ground cover changed from sparse to ankle-high grass mixed with wildflowers and plants he didn’t recognize. The fact that it had a cultivated look surprised him. If Annie Fane had been gone all these many years, who’d been taking care of her home? Within seconds of his thought, Catherine made a remark that gave him an answer.

“You’ve done a fine job taking care of Grannie’s home.”

“She was kin,” Abram said. “She would have done the same for me.”

Luke frowned but kept silent. Another bit of information to add to the pot, but one thing kept bothering him. If this place was so special to Annie Fane, why had she left it?

And then they stopped, bending in unison as the casket was lowered to the ground. The pile of fresh earth and the pit beside it were harsh reminders of why they’d come. He looked up in time to see Catherine reach for a nearby tree to steady herself. The urge to hold her was strong, but without asking, he knew she would not welcome it.

He took a deep breath, feeling a sense of reverence for what was about to occur. The men gathered a series of ropes with which to lower the casket into the grave, and then time seemed to stand still. Later he would remember it in a series of brief images.

The scent of freshly dug earth as a shovelful of dirt hit the top of Annie’s casket.

The soft sound of Catherine’s sobs.

The trill of a robin’s call from somewhere high.

The perfect unison with which the Hollis men worked as they fulfilled their kinswoman’s last request.

The sonorous tone of Abram Hollis’s voice piercing the silence as he recited the Twenty-third Psalm.

The wilting blooms from the bouquet of wildflowers that Catherine laid upon the grave.

And then it was over. The fresh pile of dirt lay like a wound upon the landscape. With time, it would settle, and the ivy that lay over Billy Fane’s grave would blanket his Annie’s, as well.

Catherine stood staring down at the grave. It was done. She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears.

“There aren’t enough words to thank you men for what you’ve done for me today.”

The Hollis men took off their hats in unison, slight flushes coloring their faces as Abram nodded.

“Like I said before, she would have done the same for me.” Then he reset his hat, shifting it slightly from side to side until it fell into some invisible slot. “If you’re of a mind to stay on for a while, you’re welcome to stay with us over in Crocker. It’s in the next county, but I’d be happy to draw you a map.”

“Thank you, but no,” Catherine said. “I’ll only be here for a few days until I can go through Grannie’s things.”

Luke had remained silent through most of the proceedings, but the thought of her staying up here alone bothered him.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” he said abruptly.

Catherine turned. Her voice took on a sharp, angry edge. “Why? Because the people of Camarune might not like it?”

He flushed. “No, ma’am. That’s not what I meant at all. There has been a rash of thefts in the area, and this place is too isolated to be safe for a woman alone.”

“No one is going to bother the witch’s cabin or anyone in it, remember?”

The sarcastic tone of her voice was impossible to miss, but before Luke could respond, Abram Hollis intervened.

“She’ll be safe,” he said shortly. “Me and mine will see to it.”

“I don’t need baby-sitters,” Catherine said, including the Hollis men in her answer. “And just so you understand, city living is far more dangerous than this place is, and I’ve been taking care of myself there just fine. I appreciate your concerns, but I’m staying, and that’s that.”

Abram accepted her decision far better than Luke. Once again, he touched Catherine’s arm as he had when they met.

“As you know, we’ve been staying in the house a couple of times a year during hunting season, so it’s not too run-down. But me and the boys touched the place up a bit while we were waiting for you, and my Polly sent you some supper. And I had the power turned on in the cabin, so the necessary is working.”

Catherine’s smile was bittersweet. The necessary, meaning the bathroom, was a word Grannie had used all her life. Now she knew where it came from.

“Again, Abram Hollis, I thank you.”

He nodded. “We’ll be going now. Boys, go get your sacks. We’ve got a ways to go before dark.”

The three men headed toward the front of the house, returning moments later with large, bulging gunnysacks thrown over their shoulders.

Again Luke thought of the thefts, and even though it might be bad manners to ask, he had a duty he couldn’t ignore.

“What’s in the sacks?” Beside him, he heard Catherine take a deep breath.

Abram Hollis turned, fixing him with a cool, blank stare.

“That would be our harvest.”

Luke’s thoughts slipped right into illegal drugs as his hand moved toward the pistol he wore on his hip.

“What kind of harvest would that be?”

Abram stiffened as his sons stopped in mid-step. It was Catherine’s intervention that eased the moment.

“Abram, I’m sure the sheriff isn’t interested in poaching on your territory.”

Luke frowned. “Poaching?”

Catherine sighed. This had all been too easy. She should have expected something like this.

“Grannie was a herbalist,” she said softly. “Not a witch. Abram has been harvesting Grannie’s crops and sharing in the profits for as long as I can remember.”

“What kind of crops?” Luke asked, still thinking along the lines of illegal drugs.

Abram took one of the sacks and dropped it at the sheriff’s feet. The top fell open, revealing a jumble of brown, tangled roots. Luke knelt, lifting one out into the light.

At first glance it looked something like a sweet potato, but then he picked up another, then another, and the humanlike shapes of miniature arms and legs began to dawn.

Ginseng.

The crop was worth big money on the Asian markets, even in the raw.

He dropped the roots back in the sack and then stood and offered his hand to Abram Hollis.

“Sorry,” he said. “But in my line of work, a man can’t overlook the obvious.”

Abram hesitated, then shook Luke’s hand. “No offense taken,” he said shortly.

Within minutes, they were gone.

Now Luke and Catherine were alone, and from the expression on her face, she was impatiently waiting for him to take his leave, too.

“Is there anything I can carry into the cabin for you?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “I have a couple of boxes of groceries and my suitcase.”

“Just show me where you want them,” he said, and let her lead the way.

As they entered the cabin, once again he was struck by the fairy-tale quality of the place. It consisted of only two large rooms. One up. One down. But the inventiveness of the builder was evident. Minute nooks and crannies were filled with everything from jars of dried herbs to stacks and stacks of books. There wasn’t an inch of wasted space. The furniture was sturdy, but simple, and the quiet hum of an old refrigerator was the only sound within the room.

Although Catherine was grateful for his help, she was anxious for him to leave. This was the place where Grannie had lived. She wanted to explore it in private.

“Just put the stuff down anywhere,” she said quietly, then walked to the door, holding it ajar for him to exit so that there would be no misunderstanding as to her intent.

Luke did as she asked, then turned, hesitating beside the table.

“I wish you’d reconsider and—”

“Thank you again for all you’ve done for me today.”

Luke frowned. He was being dismissed, and there was little he could do. She was a grown woman, and it wasn’t against the law to be a fool.

“You’re welcome, but if you don’t mind, I’ll stop in sometime tomorrow and make sure you’re all right.”

An expression of relief came and went on Catherine’s face so quickly that Luke thought he’d imagined it.

“There’s really no need,” she said, holding the door back a little further.

He settled his Stetson a little more firmly. “On the contrary, Miss Fane. There is a need. Mine. I won’t rest easy tonight, thinking of you up here by yourself. At least do me the favor of shoving a chair underneath the damned doorknob before you go to bed.”

Then he was gone, moving across the porch and then the yard in long, angry strides. He got into the borrowed truck, backed up and then drove away without looking back. Catherine had the feeling that he was angrier with himself for leaving her there than at her for insisting on staying.

Then she forgot about the kindness of strangers as she turned around, for the first time letting herself into what was left of Annie Fane’s world.

Catherine stared into the fire that she’d built in the fireplace, watching the voracious appetite of the flames as they consumed the dry logs that had been left on the hearth. Even though the night wasn’t all that cool, the fire lent a fake cheeriness to the room. But cheer was lacking in Catherine’s heart. Here, in the place where Annie had begun her life with the man she’d loved, Catherine had expected to find peace. Instead, she felt empty. The legacy of Annie’s love had not been enough to assuage the horror of Catherine’s birth.

A log suddenly rolled against the back of the firewall, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Outside, a wind had come up, whining and moaning through the trees and shifting the walls in the old cabin just enough to give an occasional creak. But she wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of what lay beyond these walls. It was what festered inside her heart that she feared the most. The rage she felt at an entire community who’d let a senseless feud play on was making her sick. And the fact that they’d ignored it while shunning Annie was an evil too preposterous to accept. On her deathbed, her grandmother had warned her about their prejudice, but she hadn’t believed—not until she’d seen their faces and heard the accusations and whispers.

Witch.

The notion was so absurd that it was all she could do not to scream. How could ignorance such as this still exist? They were in the twenty-first century, and these people chose to accept an eye for an eye as justice, and believed in curses and spells?

In the midst of her musing, something thudded out on the porch, then rattled across the old wooden planks.

Catherine jumped to her feet, pivoting sharply to face the door, too late remembering Luke’s final warning. With racing heart, she grabbed a chair from beside the kitchen table and shoved it up under the doorknob, jamming it so tightly that she inadvertently pinched her finger.

At the moment of pain, sanity returned.

“Lord,” she muttered, then she took a deep breath, silently berating her panic.

She listened again. The sound was gone. All she could hear was the wind. She made herself calm. More than likely it had been something blowing across the porch. There wasn’t anything—or anyone—out there.

To prove to herself she was right, she kicked the chair away from the doorknob and yanked the door open wide, striding out onto the porch to face the night. Immediately, strands of hair whipped across her face and into her eyes, clouding her vision with stinging tears.

“There’s no one out here but me,” she muttered, then took a deep breath and walked to the edge of the porch. “There’s no one out here but me,” she said louder, letting the wind rip the words out of her throat.

She looked up at the sky. Straggly clouds scudded across the face of a quarter moon, leaving wispy bits of themselves behind as they flew. Something took flight from a nearby tree, cutting briefly across the periphery of her vision. For the first time in her life she was, quite literally, alone. No neighbors down the block. No cars. No lights. No telephones. No sounds of civilization except the sound of her own voice. Her fingers curled into fists as she gazed into the blackness of the tree line. Again she spoke, and this time, it came out in a defiant shout.

“There’s no one out here but me!”

She waited, challenging the darkness for an answer that never came. Shaken in both body and spirit, she spun around and strode into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

A short while later, she climbed the stairs to the loft. When she reached the top, she took a last look down at the big room below, then at the meager lock and the chair beneath the doorknob. Hating herself for being afraid, she crawled into bed, certain she would never be able to close her eyes. Within minutes, she was asleep.

Less than a hundred yards from the house, the hunter crouched among the trees, his expression wary. Someone was in the cabin. It couldn’t be the ghosts that he’d seen there before, because ghosts didn’t need lights. And whoever was in there had not only turned on the power, but had also built a fire. Even though the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, there were brief moments when he could smell the smoke.

Curiosity was a powerful emotion, and the urge to move closer was upon him. But years of solitude and caution kept him hidden from sight. As he continued to watch, the door to the cabin was suddenly flung open. Instinctively, he shrank back into the trees, although he knew it was impossible for her to see him from where he was standing. Her slender form was nothing but a silhouette as the light from within spilled out around her.

When she started to speak, he stared into the darkness, believing that she was talking to someone out in the yard. But the longer he stood, the more certain he became that she was talking to herself, which made him relax. He’d been talking to himself for years.

At first he caught only a word or two of what she was saying, but when she shouted, “There is no one out here but me,” he froze. Even though he didn’t want to know her, at that moment, he knew how she felt.

The wind began to rise, wailing through the trees in a high, mournful sound. His stance became motionless. He tilted his head to listen, as he had done so many times before. Would this be the time? Would his search finally come to an end? His breathing became shallow, his pulse all but nonexistent, as he willed himself to an unnatural quiet.

There! He heard it again—the high-pitched cry of a newborn child. His eyes narrowed, his jaw setting as he disappeared into the night.

Luke tossed aside the latest file on the thefts and then stood up from his desk, stretching wearily as he strode to the window to look outside. Moths and other night bugs made kamikaze runs at the streetlight outside his office as he stared into the dark. But his mind wasn’t on what lay before him. Instead, he kept thinking of the thief, who, like a pack rat, stole one thing, only to leave another in its place. Added to that were the oddities of what he stole—anything from foodstuffs to a pair of overalls drying on a clothesline, as well as odds and ends of small tools. If memory served, the thief had once taken a handsaw rather than the more expensive chainsaw hanging beside it, and left a hand-carved bowl in its place. Another time he’d obviously watched a farmer cutting firewood, waited until the man went inside to eat a meal, then took the ax he’d left in the stump, leaving behind a small, wooden stool. Dogs never barked a warning of his arrival, and to date, no one had even gathered a glimpse of his face. Rumors were starting to spread that it was a ghost. Only Luke knew better. Ghosts had no need of earthly things, and ghosts didn’t wear shoes, especially shoes with a notch in one heel.