Annalise
You scared the living tar out of me!” Christen’s cry made Annalise jump, sloshing hot coffee onto a pair of jogging pants Garrett had brought from his house. She raised an eyebrow at her friend.
“I was almost shot and almost drowned, and now you’re going to give me third-degree burns.” Annalise set her coffee on the hospital table. She drew her legs up to her chest, smelling the scent of Garrett. He sat on the edge of her hospital bed, wrapping a blanket over her shoulders and around her hospital gown.
Christen hugged her, burying her face in Annalise’s damp hair. “What happened?”
“I just gave your husband the entire debrief.” She leaned back against Garrett as Christen pulled away. He was strong. For now, he was safe. When she’d busted the car window, it had only taken a few kicks to get to the surface of Gossamer Pond. Then she’d run for what seemed like miles until she found a house. Banging on the door brought the owners, a cellphone, and in short order an ambulance and cops. The hospital had been a welcome sight, the same as it had been a welcome sound to hear Garrett’s voice on the end of the line when she’d called him from the ambulance.
Brent had taken her account and left a few minutes before his wife plowed into the hospital room. An APB had been put out for Brian, and apparently a call was made to Mayor Nicole Greenwood.
“This is insane!” Christen plopped into a pleather-covered hospital chair. “Who would’ve thought it was Brian!”
“It makes sense. Now.” Annalise pushed hair behind her ear. Garrett’s arm adjusted and she glanced at him. He gave her a small smile.
“I guess.” Christen blew a puff of air between her lips, sounding like a mix between a motorboat and a baby blowing bubbles. “All because of Nicole and the land?” Christen’s eyes widened. She redirected her gaze at Garrett. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Garrett shook his head. “It’s way past time for all this to come out. Every bit of it. Besides, no one has really given this town a chance to forgive people. We keep hiding stuff.”
“It’s time for Gossamer Grove to show its true grit.” Christen nodded in affirmation and conviction. “Show we are a community with a history, but a community of people who can move forward. Together.”
Annalise sighed, eyeing the coffee from the hospital and debating calling her coffee shop and having a special delivery made to her hospital room.
“I just want it to be over.” A tremor passed through her, and she snuggled deeper against Garrett. “I know it was Brian now. I know he tried to scare me after I started looking into Eugene’s findings. Watching me, my slashed tires . . . all of it. But, I still have questions. Libby Sheffield. That revival meeting from 1907. Lawrence and Eugene. What happened to them all? Can you imagine being in their shoes? I mean, they couldn’t have imagined years later we’d be similar”—she directed her words to Garrett—“or that their descendant would be a mayor with an impeccable legacy to uphold.”
Garrett rolled his eyes. “Not exactly impeccable.”
Christen moved to the edge of her chair. She clapped her hands like a kindergarten teacher, eyes wide behind her blue-framed glasses. “Children, children. Things have developed since you were off designing climbing gyms and plunging beneath the chilly waters of a pond.”
“Thanks.” Annalise knew her voice was flat and her expression derisive.
Christen smiled, and Annalise loved her for it. “So, I got a babysitter this afternoon and helped Tyler at the paper. We found some stuff.”
“Yeah?” Annalise felt Garrett tense behind her.
“Yep. Libby Sheffield? Well, she was quite the woman. Not to mention Paul Darrow.”
“Paul wasn’t the bad guy?” Garrett asked what Annalise was going to.
Christen looked down her nose at them in full schoolteacher mode. “Paul Darrow was a rascal, like Tyler, because he buried it. All of it. The news stories!”
“I don’t get it.” Annalise shook her head, perplexed.
Christen leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. She leveled a serious look on Annalise. “The entire story was written in a series of news articles. Written by Mitch Sheffield, the man who’d been part owner of the paper at the time, and Libby Sheffield’s father—per the ancestral website I browsed in.”
“Okay?” Annalise reached for the coffee. She needed it. Even if it tasted like mud.
“Tyler and I found a trunk way back under several old crates. It was Paul’s, as evidenced by an old monogram and then a label on the inside cover. Inside it was an article written by Mitch Sheffield. And an old obituary for Dorothy Hayes that matches the ones you have for Harrison Greenwood and Paul Darrow! Full of Edgar Allan Poe and really bad original poetry, I might add.”
“You read the articles?” Garrett inquired.
Christen shook her head. “No, there’s too many. I mean, there are articles about these Corbin brothers who ran the revival. And articles about the trial of the man who killed Harrison Greenwood and Dorothy Hayes.”
“Wait. So it was proven that they were murdered?” Annalise straightened.
Christen nodded. “Looks like it.”
“How come no one remembers it? If it was printed and publicized?” Annalise was incredulous. A century could muddy a lot of history, but that was a very sensational story.
“That’s just it. It wasn’t printed. The articles were all handwritten and stashed away.” Christen laughed. “You should’ve seen Tyler when we figured that out. Mitch Sheffield pretty much wrote an exposé on how Paul was a proposed victim of the killer—some guy named Reverend Mueller—that Darrow basically aided Greenwood and Dorothy Hayes in their longtime love affair by helping them get time together. He threw poker games in the basement of the paper, and Greenwood used that as a cover to go and be with Dorothy.”
“Whoa.” Garrett shook his head. “That’s seriously messed up.”
Annalise shivered as she felt Garrett press a light kiss to her temple.
Christen’s eyes flickered when she noticed it. “As best as we can figure, Paul Darrow actually shut down the paper right after things came to a head. It was as if he couldn’t stand to be at the paper, or who knows? It didn’t reopen until two years later.”
“Crazy.” Garrett’s voice vibrated against Annalise’s back.
Annalise took a sip of the coffee. “How did Libby Sheffield fit into this? Please tell me she wasn’t murdered.”
Christen looked between Garrett and Annalise before leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. “Libby Sheffield. Funny thing. She’s sorta the one who started the whole mess. Who would’ve known what I’d find when I looked up Reverend Mueller, the man who killed those people and who wrote those creepy old obituaries. There are newspapers from outlying towns that tell all sorts of crazy stuff.”
“Like what?” Annalise pressed.
Christen waggled her eyebrows. “How much time do you have?”
Libby’s mother wrapped a quilt around her lap. Her eyes were tired as she considered Libby’s.
“Your father is going mad with the paper closing. Paul just locked the doors and sent everyone home.”
Libby gave her mother a sympathetic look. They were both relieved that Mitch wasn’t part of the paper anymore. While Libby had been confronting Paul about her own obituary, Jacobus Corbin was confronting his brother Jedidiah about working alongside Mitch to create a sensation that would boost paper sales and attendance for the revival meetings. Apparently, Jedidiah saw numbers of converted souls as the sign of eternal success. Souls that apparently backslid very fast if Old Man Whistler’s drunken altercation in the middle of the town square last night was any indication. And Mitch saw paper sales as success. The fact the two had created a fake death threat and conspired to hang effigies of the brothers to create a mad sensation and potentially inspire more riots had brought Jacobus to the boiling point. He’d outed them to the police after taking his deductions to his brother, confronting him with the suspicions, and gaining perhaps the most honest confession in the entire career of their revivals.
Jacobus had agreed not to press charges against Mitch if he gave up the paper—and gave it back to Paul Darrow.
“I doubt Paul will stay out of the newspaper business forever,” Mother continued, breaking into Libby’s thoughts. “But we all need time to heal. Including Paul. And your father.” Her lips pursed. “Be that as it may, if it can all go away and not be tied to Gossamer Grove, we’ll all be better off. There are too many good people here—churchgoing people—and we don’t deserve that type of pall hanging over our town because of one man.”
“One man?” Libby raised incredulous eyes to her mother. “Good people? We’re all broken people. We can’t make a secret of these things. For the sake of grace and faith, it will only hurt generations to come. Look at what it’s done to me and to Calvin. To Paul and to the Greenwoods.”
She thought of Lawrence Hayes, Dorothy’s son. Of Elijah, Dorothy’s son. It was known now that both boys were the sons of an illegitimate affair. Mrs. Greenwood seemed intent on not speaking of it, insisting the town leave her husband and sister to rest in peace. It seemed that with time, perhaps Gossamer Grove would respect the grieving widow’s request. But Elijah? The truth of his birth, of who he was, staggered him. Libby mourned the absence of Elijah in Gossamer Grove. He’d left town shortly after, and whether he ever returned, only time would tell. They’d shared a swift farewell, a strange, longing look that shuttered into a cool nod, and then Elijah had left Libby too.
Her mother reentered the house, leaving Libby alone on the porch. She heard footsteps and raised her eyes to see Calvin coming up the walk. His familiar walk, somewhat hindered as if he had to think about each step before taking them, was accompanied by a smaller form. Lawrence Hayes. The adolescent boy smiled up at Calvin, chattering away as if they were the best of friends. Lawrence’s father, Ralph, had been released from jail and seemed to be doing better, although many whispered that in the evenings he hit the bottle rather hard. Everyone knew Ralph had told Lawrence that he wasn’t his son, but the man was still going to care for the boy as his own. God help the lad and his future.
“Hello, Lollie.” Calvin was more serious, but his smile was genuine. Mrs. Beaton, the Mueller’s housekeeper, had been caring for Calvin for the time being. But Libby had seen little of him.
“Hi, Calvin.” Libby bit her bottom lip.
“I brought Lawrence. Like you asked.” Calvin pushed Lawrence forward.
Libby clasped the item in her hand. Maybe she’d had too many days to think while sitting on the porch recovering from her ordeal. Maybe she was too sentimental or it had all just gone to her head. But people needed hope. Grace. Something to hold on to in the dark moments, whether by life’s doling hand or by one’s own choices. She needed to tell Lawrence that too. He was a victim, like Calvin. His mother had been taken, his older brother had abandoned him, and his father might well be on his way to being a drunkard. What hope did Lawrence have?
“Lawrence, I wanted to give you something. Something that, years from now, maybe you’ll look at and remember what I tell you.”
Lawrence frowned, his young eyes studying hers as if trying to comprehend.
Libby reached for his hand, and he gave it to her. She laid her watch in his palm. It was broken, the hands stopped at the very moment his father had stabbed her shoulder in an attempt to hurt Jacobus.
“Eight thirty-six p.m., Lawrence. It was the moment in my life when time stopped. When I made a choice to do what was right, to turn my back on selfishness.” She remembered launching herself in front of Jacobus. He was alive because of that act. She took no pride in it. Her heart ached that she’d not done the same years before when it mattered just as much. Libby glanced at Calvin, who was kicking a stone with his toe.
“I learned that night that the journey to grace is painful but necessary. It’s turning your back on yourself in order to give to another. It’s beginning the journey toward forgiveness. Remember that. Remember that it can be found, if you look for it. No matter who you become, no matter whose life you hurt, no matter how many regrets you carry with you, there is forgiveness. There is grace. Can you do that? Can you remember that?”
Lawrence gave her a quizzical look, but his fingers closed over the watch. “Sure. I can do that.”
Libby knew she would probably always be remembered by him as a strange lady who gave him a broken timepiece. She prayed he wouldn’t throw it away. She prayed it would be used one day, to set him or someone else onto a new path of grace.
“Calvin?” She shifted her attention to the man in the overalls.
He lifted soulful eyes and shook his head. “Don’t, Lollie.”
Her heart sank.
Calvin neared her and took her hand. “My daddy said you ran away and you didn’t get help. I know—I know I’m not like Elijah. I’m just a boy.”
Lollie bit her lip harder.
Calvin continued. “You may’ve run then, but you always been here. You didn’t run forever, Lollie. You’ve been my girl forever.”
Tears escaped and trailed down her face. Calvin shifted uncomfortably, but Libby couldn’t stop. It was overwhelming, the innocence in which Calvin stated his forgiveness. While he didn’t comprehend entirely, he remembered enough. He accepted she’d left him. But he also accepted she’d returned, even if it had been too late.
Libby reached out her hand to her old friend. “Yes, Calvin,” she nodded. “I’ll always be your girl.”
Calvin smiled and gave her an eager nod in return. The moment for him was over. He pulled a bag of marbles from his pocket and a piece of chalk and proceeded to draw a circle for the game on the sidewalk. Lawrence trailed beside him, chattering about a cat-eye marble of blue.
Libby wiped the tears from her face. Forgiveness was sometimes a bitter thing. Freeing, but also so undeserved. So very, very undeserved. It made God’s grace more precious. And—she watched Calvin flick a marble with his thumb and finger—and Calvin’s forgiveness a treasure she would carry with her forever.