Echoes (9 page)

"Miss Carson?" Tess started, looking up to find that Mrs. Sanders' door had opened again and Caitlin stood at her side. "Miss Carson?"

"Yes. All finished?" Her voice sounded shrill, but Mrs. Sanders didn't seem to notice. Caitlin had a sticker on her shirt and a lollipop in her mouth. She gave it a loud slurp.

"No, we're just going down the hall to get Caitlin a soda from the machine in the faculty office. With your permission?"

"Yes, of course." She reached out to Caitlin. "Everything okay, Caity?"

"Uh-huh. I'm thirsty though."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"You can wait for us here," Mrs. Sanders said with a friendly, but decisive smile.

After they left, Tess wandered the small room. Ghosts from her childhood made uneasy company, but she was grateful for anything that kept her from thinking where her sister was or what had happened this morning.

Several framed black and white photos hung on the walls and Tess wandered from one to another. They were of the town in its early years of development. A tiny church with a boxy one-room structure beside it had an engraved metal tag proclaiming it the first Mountain Bend school. The present day one was bigger, but not by much.

Another picture showed the front steps of the school with a gathering of twelve or fifteen children in front. They all wore solemn expressions and dark colors. Behind them a dour woman in a long black dress stood, holding a bell. The sky was dark with rain clouds, the ground muddy as the banks of a river....

A cold gust washed across the room. Tess spun around to face the still silence behind her. She didn't expect to find an open window, but hope died all the same as she stared at the four solid, windowless walls. The cold pressed in from everywhere. Her breath plumed in front of her face.

No. Not again.

She pulled open the office door, and stared out at the still hallway and deserted classrooms all the way down. Not a whisper in between. Slowly she shut the door, afraid to turn. Afraid to find her worst nightmare waiting between the pictures and corners. She clenched her fists tight and faced the room.

The walls had vanished.

Around her everything seemed to pull in tight and suddenly it seemed that she was staring from a small window in a darkened shelter. The word "carriage" formed in her resistant mind. She was staring out at a man who stood in front of some studio prop from an old western. His face was in shadows, but she knew him…. she knew him…

She covered her eyes in a desperate attempt to hide, but gloves, white with gray tinge, cloaked her icy hands. Between her spread fingers she saw the full skirt of a dress that hung from her shoulders to the floor. The toes of black boots poked from the hem. Where were her jeans, her sweater, her sneakers?

In an instant of exploding sensation stays poked and pinched beneath a corset as alien as the dress. Pins jabbed her tender scalp, holding hair suddenly long enough to wear in a tight twist. Woolen socks rubbed where anklets had comforted and scratchy underwear chafed in place of the soft cotton panties she'd donned after her shower. And the cold. The cold damp air swirled around her…

"Oh God," she breathed hoarsely.

Terrified she looked back at the man knowing he was why she'd come, knowing he wouldn't welcome her. Of their own volition, her lips formed his name.

Chapter Twelve

Adam.
There he was, waiting when at last the carriage came to a stop in Oak Tree, Ohio. She'd feared he wouldn't be. Nervous, Molly glanced down at the dust coating her skirts and collected on her skin. She could taste the grit and dirt that was as much a part of the tedious journey as the rutted paths that masqueraded as roads. But she was here. Finally, she was here.

From the dark shelter of the coach, she peered out again at her sister's husband waiting in front of the tiny mercantile. Cool afternoon shadows played beneath the brim of his hat, keeping his expression hidden, but she knew Adam Weston was less than pleased by her arrival. No surprise there. He had promptly responded to her intentions of coming with a frank, though polite, insistence that she not bother. Perhaps under other circumstances she might have heeded his wishes.

He leaned against the hitching post, idly whipping his heavy work gloves on his thigh. They made a small snapping sound against the thick fabric of his weathered denim britches. The sleeves of his faded shirt were rolled to the elbows, revealing sun-browned forearms that flexed with the movements of his wrists. A small black and white dog sat obediently at his feet.

Even without two six shooters holstered to his hips, he looked like the frontier men Molly secretly read about in the penny novels. He had the long stare of a man whose aim never wavered, even as he pulled the trigger. Molly could not imagine those cool gray eyes filled with warmth or emotion. She doubted that they had ever gazed lovingly at her sister or that even her death had managed to bring grief to their bleak and unwavering depths.

Reluctantly, she opened the carriage door and stepped out. She held her skirts as high above the squelching mud as propriety allowed, while carefully placing her booted feet in the rare patches of solid footing. The team of tired horses that had drawn the carriage across rough, rocky trails shuffled their hooves in the thick mud and snorted at the damp air.

By train Molly had traveled from
New York to Columbus. There she'd transferred her person and belongings to this unwieldy coach and continued on to Oak Tree. Had she blinked at the town's border, she could have missed it entirely. Her bottom was sore from the constant bumping against the planked bench and every joint from jaw to ankle felt rattled. But it was nothing compared to the pain in her heart. Her sister was dead.

"Who's fer the bags?" the driver shouted from atop of the carriage. A swarm of flies buzzed madly above him.

"You may hand me my baggage," she said, holding her arms up for the first.

Under the most mundane of circumstances, the vile driver had the look of a man kicked in the head not once, but once too many. His eyes sank deep under a protruding ridge lined with wild and wooly brows and the left eye wandered disconcertingly. A giant mole crouched on his lip like a bug on a bruised and lumpy peach. He had watched Molly at every junction of the journey as if she were a wounded hare that could be caught with a well-planned pounce.

"I said, you may hand down my baggage," she repeated patiently.

Open-mouthed, the uncomely man darted a glance between Molly and Mr. Weston, who had at last abandoned his position and moved to the carriage. The driver's blackened teeth appeared like ancient tombstones poking from dark, desecrated graves.

"Toss 'em on down, Dewey," Mr. Weston said.

Dewey brightened with comprehension. Apparently Molly had not been speaking a language with which he was familiar. Or perhaps he'd merely been too enthralled with his detailed assessment of her bosom to respond to something as dull as her voice.

"Well, alright then," Dewey called back. He nodded furiously as he grabbed the handle of the largest. "I'll just toss 'em on down."

The weight of the first bag caught Mr. Weston by surprise, and he gave Molly one of those cool looks of his before dropping it to catch the next two.

"Thank you, Mr. Weston," she said when he'd finished loading her belongings and they had seated themselves in his wagon. He did not spare her even the curtest of answers. Instead, he gave a low whistle for his dog and gently snapped the reins. The dog leapt into the back as the horses started and the wagon lurched forward. Moving up to put her front paws on the bench between Molly and her master, the dog let her mouth hang open in a moist and noisy pant.

"You have not brought the baby," Molly said, when it appeared that Adam Weston would be content with riding in silence.

"Ma's got him."

"Him? It…he is a boy?"

Mr. Weston nodded.

"Is he. . .well?"

"Well as can be expected."

How very enlightening.

Irritated, she held onto the bench, endeavoring to stay on her own side and not let the swaying and eternal bouncing inch her closer to him. Her gloves made her grip on the seat less secure. Did she dare remove them? She very much doubted the society of Oak Tree would notice and the gloves no longer resembled the delicate white apparel they'd been when she left New York anyway. Like the letter, she thought, quickly pulling the gloves off and stuffing them in her pocket next to the battered envelope that she had carried with her the entire journey.

Torn and grease stained, bearing both the grubby smear of fingerprints and the beveled indent of a horseshoe, the letter had taken over two months from the time of its posting to arrive. When at last it had been delivered, she'd stared at the thick, slanting words written with a hand unaccustomed to holding a pen, and a deep, foreboding settled on her. It was addressed to Reverend Thomas Marshall, blue and white house on
Columbus Avenue, south side, middle of block, New York City. Apparently in this part of the country they did not bother with such things as house numbers in their addresses. In the upper corner of the envelope the initials AW and Oak Tree Ohio identified its origin. AW, Adam Weston. Her sister's husband.

Only two weeks had passed since she'd waited through the long day and well into the evening for her father's return home before the envelope could be opened. During the endless hours she had held hope against the dread that settled inside her. She reasoned that a message with urgent news would have arrived by telegram, but she could not stop pacing until the Reverend walked through the door. Silently he took the letter from her hand and read it. Silently he passed it back.

Her fingers felt strangely numb as she held the sheet of paper and read. "Dear Reverend Marshall," the letter began. "I am sorry to tell you that Vanessa has died. We gave her a good Christian burial on Sunday. The baby is alive and doing fine. Regretfully, Adam Weston."

The wagon bumped over the bridge and back onto the muddy road, painfully wrenching Molly from the past. Vanessa was three months buried, but to Molly she had only just lived and laughed, only just died.

"We did not know that Vanessa was with child," she said to Mr. Weston. She paused and an anguished laugh tittered out. "She had not mentioned it in her letters, though since last winter those became few indeed. Was it the baby that… Did …?" Molly took a deep breath, willing her tears back. Her grief was still too raw, too private to share with anyone. Especially not with Adam Weston. "Our mother died in childbirth, when I was born. I suppose the malady was handed down to Vanessa and myself, most likely."

It took so long for Mr. Weston to respond that she thought he might not intend to speak at all.

"No," he said at last. "She didn't die bringing Arlie into the world."

Molly frowned at his cryptic tone and the immediate, thick silence that followed. Turning to face him, she asked, "How then? Was she ill?"

"No. She wasn't sick. There was an accident."

"What accident?"

Her question met another of his pauses, but in this silence she could see that he searched for the words to explain. She waited, a part of her wishing that he might never find them.

"She fell," he said at last. "She fell from the loft. No one was home but her and the baby." He swallowed and the muscles in his jaw knotted. "She was bad off by the time I got there. We did what we could for her, but she never woke up. Never spoke, never even opened her eyes. She held on for a few days, but after that she didn't have the fight left."

This time there was no stopping the tears that brimmed in Molly's eyes and burned down her cold cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Molly."

Molly fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief but somewhere on the journey it had been lost. She found only her gloves instead. She wiped her eyes with one and blew her nose with the other.

"I wrote you as soon as I got your letter saying you were coming," he continued, as if answering a question.

Molly sniffed and shook her head as if she did not know to what he referred.

"When I got the telegram yesterday, I figured you must not have gotten the other."

"Was it important, the second letter?"

"It said for you not to come."

The wagon hit a rut and Molly bounced against his shoulder and arm that were as tight and knotted as seasoned oak. Quickly she pulled back and scooted to her side of the bench.

"Why would you tell me not to come?" she said. "You must know that nothing would have prevented my journey."

"I figured that too. I just didn't see the point in it. She's gone and buried. There's nothing you can do about that now. We could've used your help before she went, but we've managed to get along without you so far."

That his words closely echoed those the Reverend had used to dissuade her from going did nothing to make them easier to bear. If she had not intercepted Adam's second message, she would never have gotten away. Even thinking that she was welcomed, he had tried to forbid it.

Molly turned her face away, hiding her discomfiture. It was not as though she had anticipated open arms and a warm reception, but she had prayed that by the time she arrived, Adam Weston would have reached a point to be grateful for her appearance. After all, there was the baby to tend to.