Prologue

Pecan Springs, Texas

1885

It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years. Wasn’t it, after all, a kind of life?

Key of Knowledge, Nora Roberts

If Annie Laurie’s house could speak, it would have said that she was a contented woman.

She rose before the sun every morning to prepare her husband’s breakfast. Douglas always went out to his blacksmith shop the very first thing, to see that the fire was started in the forge and his smithy helpers were at their tasks. Then he would come in for the good food Annie had ready for him—eggs and bacon, grits, and biscuits with redeye gravy—before he began the day’s work. And there was always plenty of work to do, because Douglas Duncan was the best blacksmith in the village of Pecan Springs, Texas. Annie wasn’t the only one who had this opinion, and to prove it, there were the customers lined up waiting in the dusty alley behind their house at 304 Crockett Street, eager to have their horses shod or their implements mended or their wagon wheels repaired.

Their house. Annie loved the house Douglas had built for her. It was a fine, two-story dwelling with walls made of square-cut limestone blocks and a white-painted wood-frame veranda across the front, draped with ivy and honeysuckle. Behind the veranda were two large rooms side-by-side, one of them a sitting room, the other a dining room, with high ceilings and tall, deep-set windows in the outer walls. Behind them were a bedroom and a large kitchen and pantry. Above, there was a full second-story loft that Annie and Douglas planned to partition into bedrooms for their children.

The house was in a lovely setting, too. It faced Crockett Street, which was lined on both sides by large live oak trees that made a graceful canopy over the brick pavement. On the east side of the house was a garden, and behind it on the alley were Douglas’ smithy and the commodious stone stable where he kept his sleek, spirited horse and a shiny black buggy with red-painted wheels. On the other side of the garden hedge was a large, yellow-painted frame house where Adam and Delia Hunt lived with their little girl, Caroline. Adam Hunt had been Douglas’ best friend since their boyhood days and the two men often went fishing and hunting together.

All day long, as she went about her own activities, Annie could hear the musical clang clang clang of Douglas’ hammer, and her heart swelled with happiness. Her husband was an excellent provider. He gave her a generous household allowance and hired a woman to do the cooking and the laundry so that, when Annie’s housework was done, she could spend the rest of day doing what she most loved: making fine laces. For Annie, lacemaking was a challenging craft that kept her fingers nimble and her mind sharp, while Douglas saw it as a dainty lady’s hobby that gave his wife something to keep her hands busy before she became occupied with a growing family.

But in the Duncan household, all was not work. On mild Sundays, Douglas would drive them in the buggy west along the Pecan River. Or north, to the village of San Marcos, or east across the San Antonio Road to the blackland prairie. Or they might take a picnic basket to the spring, where they spread a blanket in the shade, ate Annie’s fried chicken, and enjoyed the breeze while Douglas played his guitar and sang. His father and mother had come to America from Scotland, and he loved the old Scottish ballads—“Highland Mary,” “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose,” and his favorite, which always brought tears to Annie’s eyes:

Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie

Where early falls the dew

And it was there that Annie Laurie

Gave me her promise true

Which never forgot will be

And for bonnie Annie Laurie

I would lay me down and die.

Annie hoped to give Douglas the son he wanted, but it had taken many months to conceive. While she was waiting, she continued to make lace—such beautiful lace that, while at first she gave it away, her friends and their friends soon clamored to buy it. Douglas wasn’t a man to be offended if his wife brought in a little extra money doing something she enjoyed, and he allowed her to keep what she earned. It gave her great pleasure to use it to buy little things for the house and for Douglas and herself: a white silk parasol, for instance, that she trimmed with frills of her very own lace.

But Annie was impatient to get her family started, so one afternoon shortly after their third anniversary, she walked down Crockett Street to call on Mrs. Jane Crow, who ran a boardinghouse on the next block. A plump, kindly woman with brown hair pinned up in a shaggy knot, Mrs. Crow had hung a sign on her porch rail: Herbs & Herbal Remedies For Sale. She grew a great many herbs in the garden behind her house and sold them to Mr. Jackson, the village pharmacist, and to anyone else who came to her with a request.

Annie found Mrs. Crow sitting in a rocking chair on the porch with her knitting, a kitten playing with the ball of yarn at her feet. “What can I help you with, my dear?” Mrs. Crow asked.

“I’d like to buy some herbs,” Annie said. Her mother was dead and her aunts lived far away, but she remembered hearing them talk about plants that were useful to women in their childbearing years—plants that could help you conceive. Or could help if your monthly was late, or too heavy or too scanty, or didn’t come at all.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“Red clover, perhaps,” Annie said. “And nettle and yarrow, too, I think.” She paused, frowning. “I’m sure there’s something else, but I can’t quite remember—”

“Ah.” Mrs. Crow picked up her ball of yarn and pushed her needles into it. “You and your husband are wanting a baby?”

“Yes,” Annie said, relieved that she wouldn’t have to go into a long explanation.

Mrs. Crow stood up. “I think I have what you’re looking for, my dear. Of course, there are no guarantees, but we can try to give nature a bit of a boost.”

A little later, Annie was on her way home with a large paper packet of dried herbs. On it was written: Red clover, nettle, evening primrose, chaste berry, yarrow. Pour boiling water over a spoonful in a cup and steep for fifteen minutes. Drink twice a day.

Annie brewed Mrs. Crow’s tea, drank it as prescribed for several weeks, and was delighted when her next monthly didn’t appear at the usual time. She waited until she missed the second, then sat down and wrote a thank-you note to Mrs. Crow. When her husband came in from the smithy that evening, she told him. He caught her up in his arms and whirled her around in an excited dance.

“A baby!” he cried. “Our baby. Oh, Annie, my dearest, dearest Annie, I love you!”

And then it seemed to Annie that their house was filled with such a great happiness that it should surely burst. Douglas never stopped smiling and she went about her work with a joyful song on her lips.

Later, she would tell herself that it was a very good thing that she couldn’t look into the future and see what lay ahead. After the worst had happened, she would look back on those days with a wistful longing, wishing with all her heart that she could have held on to the good times and kept them with her forever.

Of course she couldn’t. None of us can. But we can try.

Annie tried.