Chapter 24

The river swept by with the persistent turbulence that imitated the tension lying just beneath the surface of Pleasant Valley.

Dinner with Mrs. Amos had been a kind gesture from the old woman, and Thea wanted to stay. Mrs. Amos had invited her to sit and read aloud the Scriptures, with Mr. Amos listening on with closed eyes. Thea hadn’t been exposed much to the Word of God, and it bewildered her that while reading, a strange sense of peace came over her. Something in the Amos house was different. Yet it was less a ghostly spirit and more, as Mrs. Amos declared, the whispering Spirit of God. If so, then He made the unknowns less frightening. Dangerous, yes. Imposing, for certain. But terrifying? No. She could sense that even crotchety Mr. Amos believed God had not lost control, and while he vehemently urged her to stay out of the asylum and away from the Coyles, she could see Mr. Amos also questioned what her part was in it all. As though her Creator had some exceptional plan for her life.

It was a lovely thought, if one fancied pursuing the idea of a Creator. Thea might have sidestepped the notion a month ago, but now? Perhaps it had merit after all. Considering everything else she’d been taught left her spiraling in a whirlpool of confusion and aimlessness.

Now, Thea wandered down the street toward the boardinghouse. The summer sky was still alight. Townsfolk mingled about, collecting at the Methodist church for the evening’s midweek prayer service. A couple of Kramer Logging wagons rolled through town at the end of the day. Thea took refuge in their distant company.

The river continued its endless journey. Thea considered it, debated, then chose to follow the river’s course. She headed to the riverbank, peering into the depths of the less frantic pools, to the smooth stones beneath the water. Stones Simeon Coyle etched with words of what now-deceased patients might have been like—in another time, or place, or really, another life.

“Are you lonely?”

The simple question, voiced by someone behind her, startled Thea. She jumped, twisting as she did so, her gaze colliding with the gray eyes of Simeon himself. He’d come out of nowhere. Like a ghost himself.

Was she lonely? Of course she was. But she dared not admit it to Simeon, who one moment she felt she could trust even with her deepest secrets, but in the next moment she realized with surety she really didn’t know him well at all.

“Are you?” She turned her attention back to the waters. To the tiny whirlpool that swirled at the base of a boulder in the middle of the river.

Simeon edged his way out onto a slick-looking rock and squatted. Dipping his hands into the cool water, he let it stream through strong fingers. He appeared more relaxed in the evening light, the orange sky in the distance, with the woods silhouetted as a dark mass in the foreground.

“More often now, yes,” he admitted, then plunged his arm up to his elbow, pulling forth a smooth, oval river stone. He wiped it on his pant leg and stood.

“What will you etch on it? And for whom?” Thea asked.

Simeon’s face muscles jerked, causing his eye to close in an unbidden wink. He gave her a sideways glance, almost like he knew there would be one more twitch and then he could face her, his faculties in control once again.

“There was an older man who passed last year. He would sit at a window and stare out. He would cry. For no reason.” Simeon balanced his way back to the rocky and jagged riverbank. He handed the stone to Thea. “I will carve the word comfort on it.”

Thea rolled the stone in her hand. Its dampness leaving her palm cool. She could almost envision the word etched there. See the stone laid at the base of a grave marker in the lonesome burial ground of the hospital.

“You assume death brings comfort, then?” Thea handed it back to him.

Simeon’s fingers grazed hers. He didn’t react, but every nerve inside her tingled at the touch. As if something magnetic connected them. Opposites and yet replicas of each other. Lonesome. Awkward. Private. One driven to find answers, and one haunted by a story he seemed to ignore.

“Death brings no comfort. At least to those left behind.” Simeon gave a small laugh. A dry one that resonated the undertones of grief. “Mr. Amos told me there is hope in the hereafter. That God provides a way to know Him. To experience peace.”

He stopped, and their eyes met.

“Do you believe that?” Thea truly wanted to know, considering the direction her thoughts had taken during the Scripture reading at the Amos home.

Simeon narrowed his eyes. “There is reason in it, though some might argue it’s a weak man’s way of coping with life. But, I’ve also seen too much sorrow to believe God is happy with it—with us. I mean, if He created it all, then wouldn’t He have a purpose for it? I think, as mankind, we have thoroughly ruined a good plan. Now, the Creator must fix it. One person at a time. It is no simple miracle.”

“What if we don’t let Him fix us? What if I don’t believe I am broken?” But she did believe it. Circumstances taught her she was broken long before she ever contemplated if the Creator might have more merit in existing than a wayward spirit passed on in the afterlife. If it were true, then part of her wanted to believe that God really had created her, had a reason for her, and maybe even wanted her.

Simeon shrugged. “I’m no scholar. I just know . . .” He stared across the river. “When you see death face-to-face, you wish to know what lies after. I know one ghost exists. It is the ghost of my soul, suspended, with a choice to make. To acknowledge a Creator, or to acknowledge only myself and assume I am all I have.”

“Maybe that’s why we’re lonely,” Thea ventured. She was tired of being her only constant, her only source of strength. She was so tired.

“I believe it is so.” Simeon met her eyes again.

Thea realized he’d stepped nearer to her. Perhaps to balance on the river’s rugged edge. Perhaps because he felt the same tug toward her as she felt toward him.

The right side of his mouth twitched. Just enough to draw her eyes. She rested them there and, without thinking, raised her fingers and laid them over the corner of his mouth.

Simeon stilled.

She watched his lips, carved like a strong man’s but set in the face of one whom life had beaten into submission with its violent whip of tragedy. “Has your face always . . .” Thea asked without finishing.

“No,” he whispered, his lips moving beneath her fingers.

“When did it begin?” It was none of her business why his face would jerk, why his shoulder would suddenly seize upward toward his ear and pull his head down toward it as if latching together for seconds at a time.

He didn’t answer. Perhaps because she’d not removed her fingertips from his mouth. Thea tried again. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Simeon responded.

Thea could feel him. His chest inches from hers. Not touching, and yet close enough to sense his very soul lifting and combining with hers.

“Then why?” Thea slowly withdrew her hand, but this time Simeon’s lifted and clasped her wrist with a gentle but firm grip.

“My father—he was not a kind man.”

“He hurt you?”

“Many times, yes.”

“And Rose? Mary?”

“Often.” A low response.

“And he damaged you? That’s why your body—”

“He frightened me,” Simeon admitted. “As a boy. Terrified me. When I am nervous, or unsettled, it becomes more pronounced. I don’t know why.”

Thea noticed his shoulder lift a bit, and Simeon struggled to right it.

“Are you afraid now?” she whispered.

He stepped closer, her wrist still held in his grip between them. Simeon lowered his face, compelling her to lift her eyes from his malady and to his gaze. Thea did.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Of what?” Thea frowned, searching his face.

“Of you.”

Thea froze as Simeon released her wrist, but he did not step away.

“I shouldn’t frighten you,” Thea argued, though her voice was hardly above a whisper. And her conviction was as much to convince herself as to convince Simeon.

His eyes narrowed, the right eye almost shutting in a wink. Twice, three times, four, and then it steadied. “You’re like a sailor’s siren, Thea. Dangerous. I don’t know why, but you call me with a silent song. I’m afraid you will wreck me.”

Thea’s breath held, suspended between them. “I’ve done nothing to you,” she breathed.

Simeon’s fingertips lifted and grazed her cheek. “And that is why I fear you. Because you will. And that will be my undoing.”

Sleep had become a taunt. Something Thea attempted to grasp but was left with an empty arm extended. She rose, washed her face in the porcelain basin on her bureau, dried it with a clean linen, then brushed through her long, honey-colored hair. She’d watched herself in the mirror, noted the shadows growing under her eyes, questioning all things.

To the right of the basin and its pitcher rested Mrs. Mendelsohn’s letter. It was what had brought Thea to Pleasant Valley to begin with. To lay to rest—she’d hoped—the mystery that was her mother. Now? She stared at her reflection, wondering if her mother’s story somehow held hands with the tragedy that seemed to surround Pleasant Valley like a shroud. Like the black crepe draped in a parlor room, covering mirrors and paintings, embracing a loved one’s casket, casting a thin, see-through film over life. Just blurry enough to confuse, to darken, and to make one wonder.

Thea reached out and laid a palm against the mirror. Against her reflection.

Was this emptiness, this questioning, because she didn’t know who she was? Because she had no belonging, no point of reference, no identity? Or was it deeper than that? Was it just a longing to know her Creator and the reason why she existed in the first place?

Regardless, Thea pulled her hand toward herself, her fingers toying with the ribbon at the V in her chemise that dipped over her breasts and created a shadow. She was Thea Reed. She’d always believed she was capable, strong, and ached for her independence. Now that Mr. Mendelsohn was dead, she had found it. And she felt more imprisoned than ever . . .

Shaking her head as if to awaken from a trance, Thea tightened the ribbon and reached for her blouse. She would head to the asylum this morning. If she found something about her mother, about P. A. Reed, perhaps it would put to rest her personal restlessness.

Not long after, Thea left Pleasant Valley behind her. The quiet bustle of the early dawn beginning. A low fog settled around her ankles as the cool air from the night warred against the warmth of the spring morning. She cast a glance at the riverbank where she’d stood the night before with Simeon. But then she turned her attention to the bridge that crossed the waters. The woods loomed ahead, the road open yet dark beyond.

She entered, the trees rising around her. Really, it was a peaceful place. The deep blueish hues of the woods’ shadows matching the evergreen depths of its biology. Valley Heights Asylum was not far, and Thea breathed deep of the air. It was rife with earth and moisture. That sort of perfume created by dirt and moss and leaves wet with dew.

A stick cracked.

The tiniest sound and yet, with that one snap, Thea’s tentative peace dissipated.

She stopped in the middle of the road. Looking behind her, she saw no mode of transportation approaching her. Nor was Simeon or Rose following her, also on their way to work.

A crow swooped in front of her, its black wings beating the air, calling a repetitive caw caw that echoed down the road.

Thea collected her wits, adjusting the strap of the bag she’d slung over her shoulder, packed with a shawl, a handkerchief, and a small lunch Mrs. Brummel had provided.

There was nothing.

She was alone.

A few more moments, and this time the crack of a stick was definite and loud. Thea turned toward the sound. It came from deep in the forest.

She saw a flash of white.

Then a small laugh echoed through the woods. A chuckle that started in someone’s throat and traveled into their chest. As if they knew something Thea didn’t.

“Who’s there?” Thea gripped the strap of her bag until her knuckles were white.

Another twig snapped. This time on the opposite side of the road from where Thea was looking. She spun around.

Another chuckle floated through the air and the low-lying fog, carrying across the morning and wafting into the narrow shafts of sunlight that broke through the treetops.

“Misssss-ty . . .” a woman’s voice called. Musical. Lilting. Taunting. “Misssss-ty.”

“Come out!” Thea shouted. Yelling at whoever teased from the shadows. She turned a full circle in the road.

The crow swooped over the lane again, turning its head as it flew and leveling its beady black eyes on Thea.

The voice began to sing, a tremoring vibrato. The melody was both haunting and unfamiliar.

Thea’s chin quivered as tears burned her eyes. She plowed forward, eyes fixed on the road ahead, wishing away whoever—whatever—mocked her from the darkness of the forest. The asylum was not far ahead. She would get there, then take refuge within its whitewashed walls.

But as she hurried, the voice seemed to parallel her. Minor tones. Eerie notes.

Thea began to run, her breath catching in small gasps.

There. The iron fence. The gate. The roof of the asylum. Thea stumbled over a root that rose in the lane. She catapulted forward, but as the ground surged up to meet her, she was hauled upward by hands that gripped her forearms and a body taking the brunt of her weight.

Simeon.

Thea reached up, grasping his shoulders. She looked wildly about her, in the woods, toward the asylum, into the shadows. Where was it? Where was she?

“Did you hear her?” Thea demanded, her eyes raking Simeon’s face with a frantic urgency.

Simeon frowned. His face wasn’t twitching. His body was firm. Confident.

He wasn’t afraid.

Thea released him and stepped back, as if he were a stranger. Different. Somehow unaffected by the mockery that had followed her through the woods to the hospital.

“Did you hear her?” she asked again, her voice watery, rising with insistence.

“Who?” Simeon shook his head. “Hear who?”

Thea stopped. She could hear herself breathing, heavy and upset. The singing had vanished. The voice calling for Misty had disappeared.

The forest was still.

Even the sunshine had broken through, with the asylum and grassy grounds bathed in a beautiful warmth. Like a refuge in a dark, venomous world beyond.

“Misty. Misty Wayfair,” Thea breathed. Only it couldn’t have been her. Why would she call her own name? “She was singing,” Thea reasoned aloud, trying to come to terms with what she’d heard—what she thought she’d heard.

“Singing?” Simeon responded.

“Yes.” Thea nodded. Vehemently.

Then she looked up.

Looked into gray eyes. Saw his shoulder rise and fall, his head and mouth twitch repeatedly. Simeon backed away from her. His own chest rose and fell now. He turned, and with an uneasy sweep of his gaze through the woods, he gripped her hand and pulled her toward the hospital.

The iron gate slammed shut behind them.

He locked it, a ring of keys pulled from his belt hook.

But even as the key resonated and grated the lock into place, Thea knew. No iron fence, or gate, or brick building filled with the mentally insane would keep Misty Wayfair at bay.