Chapter 8
She hadn’t expected a dinner invitation to the Amos home, but apparently Mrs. Amos held a lot of clout over Mr. Amos and his crusty exterior. Still, Thea sat at the table set for three, thankful for the cloth napkin on her lap that she could fidget with. Tea with Rose Coyle had already pressed her abilities at fostering etiquette and acquaintances. Now she must dine with a man she’d all but pushed her way into working alongside, while also enduring the genuine sweet graces that were Mrs. Amos.
“Now, dear, you must tell us all about yourself.” Mrs. Amos eased her plump body onto her chair after setting dessert plates in front of Thea and Mr. Amos. Fine slices of vanilla cake, along with a side sauce made from canned peaches.
Precisely the comments Thea preferred to avoid. Nonetheless, she mustered a smile, flattening the napkin on her lap with a few strokes of her nervous hands.
“She won’t tell you a thing, that one,” Mr. Amos grumbled around a forkful of cake. Apparently he’d drawn a conclusion after only one day. Thea could hardly blame him, and she was a bit taken aback by his astute assessment of her. Here she thought she’d wheedled quite a lot from him without revealing much of herself at all, but in fact she’d exposed her penchant for remaining unreadable.
“Now, now.” Mrs. Amos reached out and patted her husband’s hand. The simple gray cotton of her dress softened the wrinkles in her face. A pretty woman, aged with soft white curls pulled back, and green eyes that twinkled.
She directed that gaze at Thea. “Mr. Amos is a bit grouchy, and I’ve grown quite used to it. You will too, I’m sure.”
Thea offered a smile and no words. What could one say in response to that?
“A blessing you are. I was just telling Mr. Amos yesterday that it was time to consider an apprentice. And then, a few prayers, and you appear.” She smiled. “An answer if I ever saw one.”
Thea stared at the elderly woman. She’d never been called an answer to prayer. A burden, a child who must be righted, a worker, but never that.
Mrs. Amos took a bite of cake, chewed, swallowed, and tilted her fork down for more. “Oh, child, you do need some good home care, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”
Once more, Thea had nothing to say.
“I suppose you met Pip.” Mrs. Amos chattered away. Her cheeks grew rosier, if that were possible, and a smile never left the corners of her eyes. “That cat found his way to the back door and never left. Seven years later, I think the cat could probably do all the work himself if Mr. Amos would let him.”
“He’s too lazy,” Mr. Amos grumbled.
“He’s old. Like you, dear,” Mrs. Amos countered.
Thea didn’t miss their exchange of looks. But unlike the usual negative glares she was accustomed to, having grown up beneath the care of the Mendelsohns, this one was laced with humor and a bit of love.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Mrs. Amos took a sip of her tea.
Cake stuck in her throat. Thea wasn’t trying to hide who she was. Not really. But talking about who she was would never be easy—or simple. In fact, her mind drifted to Mrs. Mendelsohn’s letter, her mother, and the faded memories of her four-year-old younger self. She would need to begin asking questions, revealing bit by bit why she was here. It was why she’d come to Pleasant Valley in the first place. Still, the years of Mr. Mendelsohn lecturing her on how to maintain a distance from all clients and working associates made loosening her tongue difficult. There were other things to hide, other elements of life, the behind-closed-doors part that Thea couldn’t tell. Would never tell. It was all a tricky balance.
“No.” She swallowed, finally answering Mrs. Amos. “I’m from several hours south of here. Toward the Illinois border. Although, we traveled quite a bit.”
“Drifters.” Mr. Amos coughed and reached for his coffee.
“Mr. Amos!” his wife chided.
Thea barely caught the wry smile that touched the older man’s lips. So he was trying to goad her? To be funny? Or to catch her off guard?
Thea chose to engage him in his silly little game, whatever it was. She offered him a warm, manufactured smile. “I do so enjoy the drifting life. Free, answering to no one, simply being true to oneself.”
“Oh yes!” Mrs. Amos clapped, stunning Thea for a moment and apparently Mr. Amos also, if his sharp look meant anything. The woman folded her hands. “I too have always had a bit of wanderlust. To see different places, meet new people. Still”—she gave Mr. Amos a loving look—“I do so love this old man, so I’ve stayed at his side.”
She smiled.
Mr. Amos harrumphed.
“And there are days I’ve questioned my choices,” Mrs. Amos tossed in at the last moment.
Mr. Amos choked on his coffee.
“There, there.” His wife patted his hand. “Just always remember, you won. Even my heart, you crotchety old thing.”
Thea bit back a real smile. He’d been had by his own wife.
“I’m not really a drifter.” Thea gingerly cut a tiny bite of cake with her fork. “Actually, I was taken in by an older couple when I was twelve. Mr. Mendelsohn was a photographer, and we traveled as a means to offer portraiture services home to home.”
“How delightful.” Mrs. Amos was clueless.
Mr. Amos raised a bushy eyebrow. “Taking photographs of the deceased, Greta.” He saw the need to educate his wife.
Her expression dimmed a bit, but not in judgment of anyone. “Oh, how sad, but how thoughtful too. Poor families having lost loved ones. It’s not always foremost on one’s mind to search out a photographer, is it?”
Thea bit the inside of her cheek. It was almost exactly what she’d said to Mr. Amos when acquiring the agreement of her employment. To be honest, she felt a bit validated.
Mr. Amos glowered at her.
Thea couldn’t help it. Her smile released in full genuine satisfaction at having bested him. For a moment, she thought his eyes twinkled with a hint of respect, but it was so fleeting, Thea determined she might have imagined it.
“Took you in, eh?” Mrs. Amos continued as though they’d never been sidetracked. “What a nice couple.”
Nice. Thea focused on her plate, on the cake, anything but the memories. The frightening tales of superstitions and ghosts from Mr. Mendelsohn that left her quivering, and the pious judgment from Mrs. Mendelsohn, who stated that anyone who believed such would see the fiery wrath of God. It seemed she’d been quite all right with that being her husband’s supposed eternal demise.
Thea wished for neither. Neither ghosts nor the blazes of Hell. But anyone had yet to offer an alternative.
“So, you’ve traveled here simply for photographic purposes?” Mrs. Amos was relentless in her innocent inquisition.
Thea concentrated on chewing and swallowing, then gave a small shrug. “Not entirely. M-My mother, supposedly, was from the area originally. I’m . . .” She hesitated, then decided there was no point in withholding. It was why she had come. It was only frightening to venture forth and begin. “I’m attempting to find her.”
There was no need to add that she hoped to find out her mother was dead, so she could finally lay to rest her deep sense of inadequacy as a daughter, as an unwanted child, and the bitterness that came from remembering a blurry face and hand that waved farewell.
“Oh, my dear . . .” Mrs. Amos stared at Thea in empathy. “What a lovely thing to do. A reunion perhaps?” She looked between Mr. Amos, who seemed vaguely interested, and Thea, who urged herself to stay with the conversation and not retreat.
“Perhaps,” Thea answered. Perhaps not. A gravestone would be resolution. The period at the end of a sentence, so to speak.
“Well, Mr. Amos and I have lived here in Pleasant Valley for well on to thirty years now. Perhaps we knew your mother, if she were from these parts.”
“I’m not certain she was from Pleasant Valley specifically.” Although, this was the name of the town Mrs. Mendelsohn had mentioned in her letters.
“What was her name?” Mrs. Amos inquired, her tea forgotten, her eyes sparking with interest.
Therein lay a portion of the problem.
Thea pushed her dessert plate away from her, the cake barely touched.
“I’m not entirely certain,” she admitted. “The orphanage, where I spent much of my younger years, listed me under my name of Dorothea Reed. But according to—well, the records—my mother was listed by the same surname with only the initials P. A. at the front.”
“P. A.?” Mrs. Amos spoke the initials as if chewing on them to determine their origins. “P. A. Reed. Hmmm. Mr. Amos, are you familiar with that name?”
Mr. Amos scraped the last bit of crumbs from his plate. “Not at all.”
“Nor am I,” Mrs. Amos sighed. She shook her head in thoughtful consternation. “I would think I’d recognize the name of Reed, but I do not.”
Thea tried to ignore the twinge of disappointment. It would have been far too simple to stumble upon someone who’d coincidentally known her mother, and so fast on Thea’s arrival in Pleasant Valley.
“Perhaps . . .” Mrs. Amos’s voice rose in pitch, like she had a grand idea. She looked to her husband. “What if she were from—?”
“I do believe that was good cake,” Mr. Amos interrupted, pushing back on his chair, the legs scraping against the floor.
Mrs. Amos appeared bewildered at his sudden movement, and perhaps his compliment.
“Well, I—thank you, dear. As I was saying—”
Mr. Amos leaned over and planted a kiss at the base of Mrs. Amos’s ear. Thea could have sworn that he also whispered something. Whatever it was, Mrs. Amos’s brows raised and her expression grew shuttered, as though she understood—didn’t like, but understood—whatever the man had to say.
As he shuffled from the room, Mrs. Amos watched him leave before turning a lovely smile on Thea. “Oh, the old man and his gout. Now, let me tell you about my hobby. Quilting. Do you quilt, Miss Reed?”
It was apparent the personal inquisition was over.
A fog had settled over the rooftops of the buildings in Pleasant Valley, and there was a gray blue pallor that never seemed to lift. It was made more emphatic by the midnight blue tones of the trees that bordered the town. Thea could hear the river, its muted riffles as it rolled over rocks and dead trees. She paused, her skirts hitched in her hands, her foot tentatively hovering over the rutted dirt street, ready to step from the boardwalk and cross onto the Protestant side of Pleasant Valley. Bringing her toe back, Thea planted it once again on the walkway.
Pleasant Valley was eerily silent. It was only seven p.m. and dusk had settled. She’d declined Mr. Amos’s offered escort home at least three times before the couple reluctantly agreed. Now she questioned the wisdom of that. There were no sounds of a piano from a whiskey bar, no wagons rolling past as loggers returned to town to join their families, no Wednesday night prayer meeting lighting up the white clapboard church on the Protestant hillside, and no one out for a stroll. It was only her.
The reminder of the letter in her room at Mrs. Brummel’s, and that its contents had been the inspiration to bring her to Pleasant Valley, made a shiver ripple down her spine. Thea had a feeling that people were watching her, ducking out of view behind a pushed-back curtain or darkened window. As if they were asking, Why has this strange young woman come to town? A woman who photographed the dead and was neither Catholic nor Protestant but tended to believe in unsettled souls hovering between earth and eternity.
Thea shifted directions. She hurried down the walk, away from the portrait studio, past darkened doorways of random little shops she didn’t bother to identify. The boardwalk ran out where an alley sliced between it and the blacksmith’s shop. She veered to the right, down the alleyway. In the distance ran the river. It sliced a shimmering gray swath through the woods on its far side, the uneven downward slope of the hill and the road that led out of town. Something about the river called to her, and Thea didn’t understand why.
She ventured from the road, and her feet found the earth beneath them rocky and hard. The soil was a thick clay. Muddy when permeated by rainwater, but today, unwilling to bow beneath her steps and allow even a footprint. She leveraged her body toward the hillside as she sidestepped down the embankment until she stopped at the river’s edge. Boulders dotted the shoreline, and truthfully there wasn’t much of a shore to be found. It was a bank, cut and jutted by the waters, probably during flooding. A downed oak tree exposed its broad root base toward the town above them, while its trunk and dead branches splayed into the river, daring the water to best its great strength and sweep it away.
She halted, the toes of her shoes extending precariously over the edge. Drawing her navy blue cloak around her, Thea stared down into the roiling waters as they collided with rocks and fell over miniature waterfalls into calm pools before swirling in their tempestuous journey forward.
“It makes you want to jump, doesn’t it?”
A soft gasp escaped her, and Thea teetered forward when a hand gripped her shoulder and held her steady. She tilted her head to look at the fingers curled over her arm. Her eyes lifted to meet eyes the color of the gray river-water foam. “I wasn’t considering diving in,” Thea answered, her tone soft, even though she highly suspected Simeon Coyle hadn’t been looking for one. A warm flush covered her face.
The wind lifted straight hair from his forehead, tossing it into a disheveled mess. His shoulders were just slightly higher than hers as he stood beside her, hands now slid into trouser pockets. Suspenders wrapped over his torso like two bands imprisoning him from flying away. His mouth twitched.
“You wouldn’t drown. Not here. It’s not as deep as it looks.” Simeon’s words lingered as he dropped to the edge of the bank and slipped over, his shoes landing in a splash. Water swirled around his ankles, and he bent, plunging his hand into the river.
“What are you doing?” Thea leaned forward gingerly.
He didn’t respond, only fished around with his hand before swishing it in the water as he brought it up to the air. In his palm Simeon held pebbles. River pebbles, smoothed by the water. Black, gray, marbled, and some copper in tone. He bounced them in his palm a few times, making a clattering sound. Simeon’s fist closed around the pebbles, and he slipped them into his pocket. Within seconds he’d grasped the bank by Thea’s feet and jumped up beside her. Droplets of water from his sudden movement spattered Thea’s skirt.
Simeon wiped his hands on his pants as he stood. Without a word, he started forward, toward the road and away from Thea.
“Wait!” Thea spun around. The man was going to just leave? With nothing said but an awkward rhetorical question?
Again, Simeon’s shoulders were hunched, though this time she realized it was not from timidity. He had some physical malady that caused his body to twitch, to seize, and even to momentarily disfigure his face. It did so now, contorting his features as he ducked his head away.
“Simeon Coyle!” Thea shouted.
The man stopped. He looked over his shoulder at her without turning his body.
Thea lifted her hand to hold hair from her face. “What will you do with the pebbles?”
It wasn’t what she’d expected herself to ask. The question just spilled out. Inane and meaningless.
A slight quirk tilted the corner of his mouth, but other than that hint of emotion, his face was placid. Until it wasn’t. His right cheek seized upward, closing his eye and tilting his head. Simeon seemed to accept the tic, and when it eased, he shrugged.
“I’m going to give them meaning.”
At her bewildered frown, Simeon hunched against the wind and hiked toward town, leaving Thea at the edge of the river.
Give them meaning? The man was more bewildering than a pig hitched up to a wagon.
A splash in the river snagged Thea’s attention. She spun back to the water but saw nothing. Just the same tempestuous waters that were hypnotic in their journey. Her eyes skimmed the breadth of it, then lifted to study the opposite side of the river. The woods, the shadows, the long trunks of oak and pine, with some poplars a stark white against the deeper hues. The miles of forest that stretched beyond, hiding wildlife and . . .
Thea squinted. A flash of light, or . . . Curious, she stepped forward, but her foot dangled over the edge. She yanked it back, balancing as she focused on the diminishing light.
There.
Another wisp of white. Filmy and loose, like a long sash of material waving in the wind. It seemed to float through the trees until . . .
Thea covered her mouth with her hand, stifling her intake of breath.
Long, bare legs with bare feet. She could see them moving slowly, her eyes following their form up until the rest of the body disappeared behind undergrowth and shadows.
No.
There.
A being came into full view. For a moment it stopped. The sheer white of a gown, thin and almost translucent against the black forest. Long hair, wavy, so dark it was almost black. And her face—
Thea blinked, the instinct of her body against the force of the breeze that sprang tears into her eyes and pressed her skirts against her legs. Thea wiped frantically at her unbidden tears, cursing the blurring of her eyes.
The vision was gone.
Left behind was the forest, the willful river water, and Thea. Trapped between a town shrouded in silence, a ghostly apparition dancing along its borders, and a strange man with pebbles in his pockets who made her insides as weak as Mrs. Brummel’s coffee.