Ghost on Black Mountain (33 page)

“Yes. I’m still looking for Iona. I’ve called her dorm house so much the girls hang up on me.” I smiled weakly. “How can she be off with Anthony?”

“Maybe the girl got her wires crossed. Iona’s good about talking to us. She would have called us if Anthony was visiting.” He patted my shoulder.

“I hope she’s okay.”

“She’s a grown woman, Annie.”

“She’s not grown, Harold.”

He laughed in his quiet way. “Yes, she grew up without you even seeing her.”

He was right.

Harold gave me a big hug. “Do you want to go see your mother?”

I took a deep breath. “I want to wait for Iona to call.” I pictured Mama in that bed in the tiny room of the nursing home. She never had to go there. I made her so I could cover my tracks, my lie from so long ago. When would the past quit following me?

That night, after Harold was snoring, I went down to the kitchen table. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mama. Poor Mama. Where was Iona? Why hadn’t she called? The clock ticked in the front room,
tick, tick, tick.
The moon was big in the sky, and that February night in 1939 played out in my mind. I learned to just go with the pictures because they weren’t going away. Those terrible choices set Annie’s life in motion. The long-ago flames still parched my heart.

The phone made me jump. “Hello?” The clock showed two in the morning.

“I’m calling the parents of Iona Harbor.” The voice was clean and crisp, professional.

“This is her mother. What’s wrong?” Because I knew something was wrong. Finally I would pay the price for my sin.

“This is the county hospital in Asheville. There has been a serious accident and your daughter has been badly injured. We need you to come as soon as possible.”

My head roared. “My daughter is not in Asheville.”

“We have an Iona Harbor here. Her contact information at school was your number.”

Harold stood in the door. “Here.” He took the phone from me.

Anger boiled up inside me. “She’s my daughter. I need to know what happened.”
Mama!
I screamed in my head. I forgot she wasn’t here anymore.
Please!
I managed one word to Harold’s God.

“Yes. Yes. We’ll be there in a few hours. We’re coming from the Georgia coast. Can you give me a number?” He scribbled on the pad that sat by the phone. “Please do everything you can.”

I sank onto the floor. “Don’t you tell me she’s dying. Don’t do it!”

He dropped to his knees. “We have to go. She’s not good, Annie. But we raised a fighter. She was in a car accident. She was driving a boy’s car. He was in the car with her. That’s all I know.” He pulled me up with him. “We have to be strong for her, Annie.”

“I want my mama.”

He hugged me. “I know you do.” I could hear the tears in his words.

Iona had to live. But I couldn’t grasp this in my heart. We ran to the car. The air was heavy with salt. I had been in Darien for nineteen years and never once went farther than Savannah or Brunswick. I saw Iona’s face in my mind.
Live. You have to live, my sweet, sweet darling.

“I don’t know where the hospital is in Asheville.”

“I know where it is. Just drive.”

Harold looked at me but stayed quiet.

“Drive, Harold. Don’t let my baby die.”

“We have to pray.”

“I’m praying to your God, Harold. You drive.”

Fifty-six

W
hen I went into labor with Iona, the pains came hard every two and a half minutes, fooling me into believing birth would come easy for me. The midwife checked me and frowned, telling me I had a long way to go before my baby was born. She suggested I walk around the house, but the pains were horrible. Instead, I sat in the old rocker in our upstairs bedroom. I rocked back and forth, watching the red maple out the window. By the time I moved through the horrible pains into a place only I could enter, twelve hours had gone by. I wasn’t aware of the passage of time, and yet I was inside each moment, waiting, working to move forward. The trip to Asheville was like this. Each second glowed around the edges. Inside my head, I saw her face. Silent prayers for her to live moved in and out of me like the air I was breathing.
Let my child live. Let her live.

When we pulled into the hospital’s parking lot, it was before lunch. Inside of me Iona’s heart beat, a rhythm not unlike when a mother holds her baby on her chest. I ran to the emergency room doors as if all the time pent up in the car had
ruptured something inside me, pushing me into a chaotic world.

A woman looked up from the desk. “Are you Lonnie Allen’s parent?”

“No!” I screamed over the
thud, thud, thud
resounding inside me. “My daughter is Iona Harbor.”

The woman’s face relaxed. Did I imagine that? “Wonderful, Mrs. Harbor. Let me get someone to take you back.”

The double doors pushed open and a doctor appeared wearing a blue surgery suit, a mask pulled down around his chin. “Mr. and Mrs. Harbor?”

I noticed Harold was standing close. His breath hit my neck. “How’s our girl?” He took the doctor’s outstretched hand.

“She’s much better than we thought. She’s going to make it. Come with me.”

Those sweet words filled my heart, spilling into each breath of air. A woman entered through the big outside double doors. Something about her stopped me in my tracks. Her face was marked with tears. Out of a reflex, I held out a hand to the woman.

“Annie, are you coming?” Harold was with the doctor. Both were waiting on me.

Behind the woman a man walked through the doors. Tall, rattled around the edges. Because of this, I almost missed who he was: Jack. In his face I saw the death of his son. The boy in the car with my Iona. I don’t know how I knew this. I just did. My daughter lived and his son died. For a minute I thought he was reaching for my hand, but he gathered the woman in his arms. The gray around his temples made him more handsome than ever.

“Doctor, Lonnie Allen’s parents are here,” the woman at the desk called to the doctor with Harold.

There Harold and I were, paused at the double doors
leading to my Iona. The whole world stood still. I looked away, but not before I knew Jack saw me. He knew me. The past and the present twisted together.

“Step through the doors. I’ll join you in a minute.” The doctor held one door open.

Harold and I passed through it together. I held the arm I had outstretched to the woman close to me, protective, as if it were burnt, damaged in some horrible way. The woman’s long shadow stretched through the small church’s door, the church where I married my first husband.

“It can’t be,” I whispered. The doors shut.

“What did you say?” Harold tried to touch my shoulder but I moved away, leaning on the cement-block wall.

I hugged myself as if I were part of the woman’s misery. What was her name?

“Did you know that woman?” Harold searched my face with an innocent stare.

“I think they’re the parents of the boy Iona was with.” My voice was calmer than I expected. “I’m not sure how I know. I just do.”

He nodded.

We heard what sounded like sobs through the doors.

A doctor walked up to us. “You’re the Harbors?”

“Yes,” Harold answered.

He motioned us to follow. “Your daughter has a lot of recovery to go through. We lost her once at the accident. We have to wait for her to wake up.” He looked at us. “How long it takes her to wake up is crucial.” He placed a hand on a curtain and swept it back.

Iona was covered with cuts and bruises. Tubes ran everywhere. Her eyes were closed. Bandages covered her hands.
Dear God, I don’t deserve you to listen but please let her have her music. Don’t take that away.

“The car caught fire. She is lucky to be alive.”

Nothing about luck figured into this miracle.

“She plays piano.”

The doctor’s face grew impassive. “We don’t know right now how her hands will heal. It will depend on her determination.”

How many times had I yelled at her for thinking about music? A large stone sat on my chest. I touched one of her bandaged hands. “You fight, Iona,” I whispered above the whining machines.

“Talk to her, Mrs. Harbor. She can hear you.”

“Can I speak to someone about the accident?” Harold looked at me and I nodded. “We’d like to know just what happened.”

“Come with me. The young man who owned the car didn’t make it. The state police are speaking with his parents. I’m sure they would like to speak to you.” The doctor pulled the curtain closed.

Harold turned and winked at me. What would I do without him?

I sat beside Iona. I refused to give Jack and his wife any more thought for the time being. I couldn’t think of their son or why Iona was driving his car. I had hovered over her so much—I was only trying to protect her—that she kept secrets from me. Was Jack’s wife who I thought she was? I just wouldn’t speculate. It was too dangerous. I was back in North Carolina—Nellie’s final resting place. How could I be back here? Nellie wasn’t dead; she lived in Jack. She lived on Black Mountain. She was a prisoner. For that matter, she lived in my heart this whole time. She kept me awake at night, worrying. She made me shelter Iona. It was her who put Mama in the nursing home. Maybe if I became Annie all the way through, or better yet told the whole truth …

Harold stuck his head around the curtain and motioned me into the hall. A state trooper was there to tell us what happened. He held his big hat in front of him. My hands shook so bad I hid them behind my back.

“It seems your daughter was driving the car when a deer jumped off an embankment. This kind of thing has been happening more and more these days. We never found the deer, but we’re sure that’s what caused your daughter to swerve over the embankment. We found alcohol in the car, but all indications point to the young man drinking, not your daughter. Her blood test was clean. This may have been why she was driving.”

“Iona would never drink.” Harold spoke with confidence.

“How are the boy’s parents?” My daughter had another life I didn’t know about.

“They are not doing too good, as you can imagine. You see, your daughter and Lonnie Allen had just left his parents’ house. They were having some kind of Halloween party.”

“Where did the accident happen?” My head roared.

“A place called Black Mountain. It’s probably a good forty-five minutes from here.”

My legs went weak. I held out my hand to Harold, but it was the trooper who caught me going down. “Let’s find you a chair, ma’am.”

Harold pulled a chair from the wall.

“Mr. and Mrs. Allen would like to speak with you before they leave the hospital with their son.”

I nodded.

“Only if you’re up to it, Annie.”

There was my open doorway, my clean way out, my way to keep running like I had been since I killed Hobbs. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know they’ll be beholding, ma’am.” The trooper placed his hat back on his head.

Harold touched my shoulder, and I sank into him. My mind shattered. “We’ll do this together.”

I heard Jack before I had the nerve to look at him. Heavy footfalls with soft ones right beside him. I looked directly at the woman, who held out her hand. Her eyes were ringed red and her curly dark hair escaped a scarf she must have grabbed when word came. I took her hand and a shift in my soul pushed us together, tangling our thoughts. Her son died. My daughter lived.

“My name is Rose Allen.”

My fingers trembled. Her name put my teeth on edge. “I’m so sorry.”
Stand tall. You’re Annie Harbor.
It came in a tiny whisper, Mama’s whisper.

“He was my life.”

I couldn’t look her in the eyes.

“It’s a terrible thing.” Harold spoke from beside me.

Rose clutched my hand. “When Iona is better, I need to see her. I need to know why he wanted to leave early without saying good-bye. Your daughter is so kind and sweet. You’ve raised her well. Lonnie always had trouble. There were problems that night because he thought he saw his real father, who’s been dead since before his birth.”

I pulled at my hand, but she held tight.

“I just need to know why they left.”

“Come on, Rose, come on.” Jack gently pulled his wife’s hand away from mine.

Rose? That was the name of the girl Hobbs was going to see in Asheville, the girl he loved better than me.

Had Jack married Hobbs’s girl? The boy—Iona’s friend—could he have belonged to Hobbs? What kind of mess was this? The thoughts rushed around my head while I tried to listen to Harold speak his condolences. Jack looked away when I tried to meet his stare. Yes? Yes. He knew it was the face of Nellie he
looked into. He knew my secrets. He knew my unspoken questions. He knew everything.

Jack led Rose away without looking at me again. Harold nodded toward the couple and followed. He was in full character, the good minister.

Iona’s doctor walked down the hall toward me. “I need to speak to you and your husband.” He looked so stern and serious I thought it was the worst news ever.

“My husband stepped away. You can tell me.”

He cleared his throat. “Your daughter’s bloodwork came back.”