“ROSE, I KNOW YOU’RE REALLY TIRED,” GENNIE SAID, “but we’ve got to find Mairin. I think that woman got hold of her and maybe hurt her. Can you think where she might be?”
Josie had run on ahead to the Infirmary to prepare a bed for Rose. Supported by Lottie and Frieda, strong young sisters, Rose had relaxed to a state of semiconsciousness, from which Gennie had dragged her back. “What are you talking about, Gennie? I was in the Herb House almost the whole time. When would Clarissa have had time to kidnap Mairin?”
“I watched Mairin walk right in the same direction as the ghost—I mean, Clarissa. They must have seen each other.”
Rose moaned. “It never occurred to me . . . We’ve got to go back to the Herb House.”
“Nay, Sister, you’re in no condition,” insisted Lottie. “We’re almost to the Infirmary. When we get you inside, we’ll call the brethren to go search for Mairin.” With a whimper of impatience, Gennie held the Infirmary door open for the sisters.
Josie bustled into the waiting room. “I’ve got a bed all ready for you, Rose. Bring her along, Sisters.”
“Wait,” Rose commanded. “Gennie, tell Josie what you told me.”
After Gennie’s intense explanation, Josie shocked everyone by chortling. “My goodness, you two have had far too much excitement lately. You are expecting the worst.”
“No, listen, Josie—”
“Come along now, follow me.” Josie led the group toward the sickrooms that lined a long hallway.
“But Josie—”
“There,” Josie whispered as she stopped at the doorway of a sickroom. “Have you ever seen anything so precious?”
Gennie and the sisters clustered in the doorway. Inside the room, an adult-sized cradle bed held a small bundle. Mairin slept curled on her side, her face warm and soft against the white pillow. One arm lay outside the covers, curved around a tiny ball of calico fur.
“Angel wasn’t hungry for her supper, so Mairin was afraid she was sick,” Josie said quietly. “Mairin stayed with her for hours, and when Angel still seemed listless, she came to me for help. It was just a hairball, but Mairin couldn’t know that. When I’d gotten Angel feeling better, I put them both to bed. And now, Rose, you are going to bed, as well, if I have to carry you myself.”
“Believe me, I’m more than ready,” Rose said, and gratefully let go of her responsibilities for one night.
“There’s still something I don’t understand,” Gennie said. She and Grady sat on a blanket under a sweet gum tree on the Center Family Dwelling House lawn. The remains of a picnic lunch lay scattered around them.
“What?”
“The man so many folks heard in Mrs. Dunmore’s room Sunday morning—I realize Daisy was an actress and could sound like a man, but why? Mrs. Dunmore wasn’t killed in her room, was she?”
Grady shook his head. “Nope, poor Mrs. Dunmore was already dead by then. Daisy—Clarissa—had met her in the Sisters’ Shop, killed her, and then killed Brother Linus. She wanted to muddy the waters, make it sound like Linus had been in the room with Mrs. Dunmore. So she imitated both their voices. She hoped it would distract everyone long enough for her to find the jewels and get away. Also, if people believed Linus was the sort to visit a woman at night in her room, it would add credence to the theory that he would blackmail Wilhelm, as well.” Grady shook his head, and a stubborn lock of straight brown hair fell across his forehead. “Clarissa should have stuck to stealing from wealthy homes; she was good at that. She got greedy.”
“She got too big for her britches,” Gennie said.
The two grew silent, avoiding each other’s gaze. With her index finger, Gennie lightly traced a pattern in the blanket.
“You didn’t get your three peaceful weeks away from me,” Grady said.
Gennie curled her legs underneath her and settled into a more comfortable position. The warmth of the day spoke of summer, and she felt her concerns melt in the sunlight. “Maybe I didn’t need peace. Maybe I needed to do just what I did. I mean, I’m awfully sorry about Mrs. Dunmore and Brother Linus. Yet I know now that I just can’t sit still and plan dinner parties. I love you with all my heart, Grady, but I can’t be the quiet, proper lady you want me to be.”
“Is that what I want you to be?”
Gennie leaned toward him and looked up into his face. “Don’t you?”
Grady kissed her on the forehead. “I learned something, too, this time around. You were enormously helpful to us, Gen, and you quite possibly saved Rose’s life. After Andrew told me about Rose’s suspicions, I was ready to shoot that dancer in the Herb House window. I thought Clarissa was holding Rose hostage, tied up somewhere, maybe hurt. If you hadn’t noticed how real the dancing was and seen that she was only wearing a slip under that cloak, I might have shot Rose. And what you told me about Beatrice Berg was enough to get her husband’s murder investigation reopened. You and Rose saved Wilhelm’s life, too.” He reached over the edge of the blanket and picked up a half-rotted sweet gum ball. He sent it sailing across the grass. “You showed me how dangerous my own stubbornness can be.”
He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “So the answer to your question is no. I want you to be Gennie. My Gennie. I’d be proud and honored to have you as my wife.”
This time Gennie, being Gennie, rose to her knees, took his face in her hands, and gave him her answer.
“How is Wilhelm faring since his release?” Rose asked. She sat in Agatha’s retiring room, her bandaged foot elevated on a short-backed chair borrowed from the dining room. Dazzling sunlight shone through the window and warmed her.
“Josie says he is regaining his strength,” Agatha said. “According to Grady, the only thing he ate during his imprisonment was the one slice of Mairin’s birthday cake.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t suppose he has expressed any gratitude to everyone who helped free him?”
“Nay, but I believe he feels it in his heart.” Agatha smoothed a thin, shaky hand over her blanket, as if comforted by its softness. “There is something I must tell you about Wilhelm,” she said. “He told me this in the early days, but it never seemed necessary to reveal it to anyone else. I know it looks like he came to us as a Winter Shaker, but his reasons were quite different. He is still deeply grieved over how he lived his life before becoming a Believer. He was wild, driven by his passions. He deserted his family because the responsibility felt too burdensome. He admitted as much to me, with great shame.”
“Yet it took him thirteen years to reach us,” Rose said. She had prayed for release from her anger with Wilhelm, but so far she’d been left to stew in it.
“He did not immediately feel his shame. It took another experience. Grady discovered, did he not, that Wilhelm had served in the war? He had volunteered, thinking it was just the thing for him—action, violence, excitement. It was the reality of war that changed him. The horrors—seeing the terrible destruction of life, the impersonal cruelty. He watched friends die. One day he shot a German soldier. When he checked, he found the man still alive—and no more than a young lad. The boy held against his heart a photo of his wife and baby. He died in Wilhelm’s arms. I believe Mother Ann took pity on Wilhelm that day and opened his heart. But an open heart is not always a peaceful one.”
“I see,” said Rose. “So that is why he sought us out and became a Believer.”
“And it is why he often goes in a different direction than you and I. I used to remind myself of that several times a day when I served as eldress alongside Wilhelm.”
“Did it help?”
“Sometimes.” Agatha laughed softly.
“And Elsa? Do you have any stories that might help me understand her?”
“Nay, but I have an idea she sees Wilhelm more clearly than the rest of us do. The trance you described to me—I suspect Holy Mother Wisdom might have had a hand in it.”
“I wondered about that myself,” Rose said. “In a sense, Elsa’s revelations were correct. All the guests had secrets that drew them to the Shaker Hostel—with the exception of Gennie, of course. There was indeed a terrible soulless evil to be stomped out. And Horace started it all. He did not kill anyone, but he wrote the stories that brought Clarissa here, hoping for riches. His stories served as the catalyst for murder.”
“Have we recovered all the items stolen from the village?” Agatha asked.
“I think so,” Rose said. “Grady said Saul made the most charming and thorough confession he’d ever heard, in hopes of leniency. He even confessed he’d gone into Mrs. Dunmore’s room the morning she was found dead. He’d found the door unlocked and the room empty, so he took a quick look around for something worth stealing. That’s how he knew about the port bottle Clarissa had planted in her room.
“He admitted he’d romanced a widow living near here on a run-down farm, and she agreed to bring her wagon to the village every night to pick up whatever Saul had been able to steal. When Grady went there, he found everything still piled in her barn, waiting for Saul to find buyers. I’ve no doubt he would have abandoned the poor woman as soon as her usefulness ended.”
“Unlike Wilhelm,” Agatha said, “he would have felt no shame.”
Rose gazed out the window to a large sweet gum tree, where two people sat near each other on a blanket. “It looks like Gennie and Grady are resolving their differences,” she said.
“Does that still sadden you?” Agatha asked.
“Nay. Gennie is a wonderful friend, but she belongs in the world. I wish her every happiness.”
“Besides,” Agatha said, “you have another charge who might just make a wonderful Shaker, when the time comes.”
“Mairin. Yea, I believe you are right, though she certainly is a handful.”
“A handful of promise, Rose,” Agatha whispered, as she relaxed against the back of her rocker. “A handful of promise.”