Shades of Simon Gray (21 page)

Wasn’t that what she’d been doing for the past three years, she and Kyle and the others, thumbing their noses at “them”? Outright daring “them” to do something about it? She rolled onto her back but kept a tight hold on the pillow, pressing it against her chest as if it could cushion any blows that might come her way.

Simon was sitting on Mr. Neidermeyer’s split-rail fence with Jessup Wildemere when it occurred to him that he
had never seen Jessup move beyond the area canopied by the branches of the Liberty Tree. It was as if Jessup was being held captive, locked in by some invisible force field.

When Simon asked Jessup where he lived, knowing full well he was treading on touchy ground, since Jessup wasn’t actually
living
at all, Jessup gave him a blank look. He didn’t seem to grasp the situation. Not in the same way Simon did.

Jessup said, “I have been wondering the same about you.” It wasn’t an answer and Simon was disappointed.

“It’s like I said before, I’m from here.” This time he didn’t mention Bellehaven.

It was barely dawn. Dark clouds hid the sun. A steady, soft rain was falling, but there wasn’t so much as a spot of water on Jessup. His clothes were as dry as dust. Simon, too, remained bone-dry.

Jessup slid off the fence and began to pace, slow steps that took him only to the very tips of the longest branches and back again. “I know everyone in these parts. The name Gray is not familiar.”

“Who is it you keep waiting for?” Simon asked, hoping to change the subject. “Every time I come to this place, you’re here waiting.”

Jessup rubbed his fingers across his forehead, looking puzzled. “Yes. That’s true. It has been a long wait.”

“How long?”

Jessup looked over at Simon; his expression shifted from blank to bewildered. “I don’t know. I can’t seem to recall when I first came here.”

Simon’s skin rippled with goose bumps. He had suddenly
realized that he, too, had begun to lose count of how many times he had come here. It seemed he was spending more and more time with Jessup and less in the hospital. But he couldn’t say for certain how much time had passed. He no longer traveled the halls of the intensive care unit, no longer visited Stanley Isaacson, or found himself in his bedroom at home, or down by the river. The only place he came to was the Liberty Tree. And he had no idea why that should be. He knew there must be some connection, but he still had no recollection of the accident and no idea why he was in the hospital.

“Are you here to meet someone again?” Simon was hoping Jessup’s answer would help him solve his own mystery. Maybe he was supposed to meet someone too.

“Hannah.” Jessup stared over at the Gulf station. But Simon knew from what Jessup had told him before that he saw only a narrow dirt road leading to the green at the center of what, in 1798, could scarcely be called a town.

“Hannah?”

Jessup looked worried. “You must swear not to say a word to anyone.”

“About what?”

“Hannah Dobbler.”

“Why not?”

Jessup frowned at Simon. “I shouldn’t be meeting her here at all. She is betrothed to Elias Belcher.” He cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. “If you are truly from around here, you would know that.”

Simon ignored Jessup’s observation. “Why are you meeting her, then?” But Simon thought he already knew
the answer to that. He’d been living a similar story for the past year.

“She doesn’t love Elias Belcher,” Jessup said. “He is widowed with five children and has barely a tooth left in his mouth.”

“Then why would she marry him?”

“Her father has arranged the marriage. Cornelius Dobbler’s land borders Elias’s. They are old friends. And their two properties together will amount to several thousand acres.”

Simon was only now beginning to realize that Hannah Dobbler was the daughter of the man Jessup Wildemere had murdered.

The rain had stopped, but a heavy fog had crept over the area. Jessup Wildemere blurred in the mist. Simon jumped down from the fence. He knew what was going to happen, knew Jessup was going to kill Cornelius Dobbler. Simon had to stop him. He reached out, but his hand found only air.

He wanted to know what had happened to Hannah. Why hadn’t she come? He wanted to know if Jessup would get a chance to see her one last time.

The fog was so thick he could no longer see the Liberty Tree. No matter which way he turned, he found only the damp gray mist.

A
NOTHER HEAT WAVE HAD MOVED INTO
B
ELLEHAVEN
,
sending ripples of alarm and fear up and down the streets. People worried that the mosquitoes might start to hatch again if the weather didn’t turn cooler soon, which could mean more cases of West Nile virus. Fifteen more families packed up and left town.

Late Thursday night, Liz sat on the floor of her bedroom in shorts and a T-shirt, her back against the foot of the bed, with both bedroom windows wide open, her notebook in her lap, and Pandora stretched out against her leg. Pandora’s chin and one paw rested on Liz’s thigh. Liz was on her third cup of coffee and fourth Snickers bar, and it was only eleven-thirty. Already her handwriting had the jagged, frazzled look of a caffeine-sugar high. But if
she was ever going to get her paper done for Mrs. Rosen by the next day, it would mean pulling an all-nighter.

It was her own fault, of course. Liz had found Lucinda Alderman’s diary almost a week earlier, sneaked it home in her backpack, glanced at the first few incredibly boring pages, and hadn’t bothered to look at it since. She had other things on her mind. Namely Simon. Lately she’d been spending every afternoon and early evening at the hospital, sitting in the waiting room outside the ICU, hoping for some word.

Courtney wasn’t at all informative. When she returned to the waiting room between her ten-minute visits, she slumped into a chair, eyes closed, and listened to whatever was on her Discman. The music was turned up so loud Liz could hear it even though Courtney wore earphones.

Mr. Gray at least nodded to Liz, or mumbled some form of greeting, although he never sat in the waiting room with Courtney, as far as Liz could tell. Still, she continued to show up every day, hoping she hadn’t misread the signs—that almost indiscernible feather-light movement of Simon’s finger—hoping that each minute, each hour, he was struggling to come back to them. But every evening Liz left the hospital disappointed.

She had barely been able to keep up with her regular homework assignments. Spending extra hours researching her history project was more than she could handle. Earlier in the marking period, before her enthusiasm for the assignment had dwindled to almost zero, she had managed
to pull together a fairly decent account of daily life in 1798 Bellehaven, or Havenhill, as the town was called back then.

At the historical society she had even discovered an old map from 1787, the year New Jersey became a state. The park was the green in those days, the heart of the town, as in many ways it still was. Only a few homes and shops were scattered around the green, and only one main road came into town. On the outskirts were a number of farms. The one closest to the green, as far as she’d been able to find out, was the Alderman farm. The boundary of the Dobbler farm, one of the largest in the area, abutted the Alderman farm on one side, and another farm, owned by Elias Belcher, on the other. The town’s population, according to census records from that time, was 107.

Old court records turned up even less information, a single entry for September third “on which day, in the year of our Lord 1798, the execution of one Jessup Wildemere for the brutal murder of Cornelius Dobbler was carried out.” When Liz first stumbled upon this information, a few days before she found the Alderman journal, she had realized almost at once the discrepancy in the date. Local legend had the people of Havenhill hanging Jessup Wildemere in the dead of winter, after a severe blizzard and a dangerous food shortage. The court records, however, stated that the execution took place in late summer.

Liz had been so excited by this unexpected find that she’d spent the following Saturday gravitating back and forth between the county library and the historical society
looking for other errors in the account of the execution. But so far that was all she had to go on. That, and Lucinda Alderman’s journal, which she had yet to finish reading.

Somehow she couldn’t imagine Mrs. Rosen being impressed by something so insignificant as a discrepancy in a date. Still, if that much was questionable, Liz wondered, what other facts might have gotten changed or distorted over thousands of verbal retellings?

Liz ran her fingers through Pandora’s soft fur as she swallowed the last of her coffee. Given the sticky weather, iced tea would have made more sense. But she was afraid tea wouldn’t pack enough of a caffeine jolt to keep her awake. The heat in the room didn’t help. It made her drowsy.

She got up, pulled the oscillating fan from her closet, set it on the desk near the window, and plugged it in. For a few minutes she stood in front of the fan, letting the cool air chill her sweating skin. Then she reached for her backpack and pulled out Lucinda Alderman’s journal.

She flopped on her bed, stomach down, and had begun to flip through the pages when a sudden motion caught her attention. Across the room a large black feather danced recklessly in front of the fan, finally coming to rest on the page of her open book. Liz stared at the feather, then glanced up at the window. The screen was down. She looked at the sleeping Pandora.

Pandora opened one eye, stretched, and rested her chin on her paws. If she was the guilty party, she didn’t look the least bit contrite. But it was unlikely the cat would have gone after any of the crows. Liz had watched
her hide under the front porch whenever the birds took over the trees in her yard. They were, after all, as big as Pandora.

Liz blew the feather from the page and went back to looking for entries made in 1798. Unfortunately, Lucinda wasn’t consistent with her entries. Some had dates, others did not. As she read through the pages Liz discovered that Lucinda was the wife of a farmer, Joseph Alderman, and the mother of their four children. From what Liz could tell, the woman was not much older than twenty-five at the time she began the journal.

In between sipping two more cups of coffee and scarfing down half a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, Liz skimmed through boring accounts of Lucinda’s daily chores, household records, and descriptions of her children’s antics. About a third of the way through the journal, when Liz was just about to pack it in and begin writing her paper on the only discrepancy she had—the date of the execution—she stumbled upon Jessup Wildemere’s name.

Liz stared at the page. Comely? Well educated? Young? This was not at all how she had imagined Jessup Wildemere, the filthy, murderous drifter of legend. Surely there was a mix-up somewhere. Surely Lucinda Alderman wasn’t talking about the same man?

Pandora hopped on the bed and curled into a furry ball on Liz’s back. Liz glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was two in the morning. Maybe she was hallucinating? Maybe she was half asleep and dreaming. She rolled over—sending Pandora sliding—and looked up at the ceiling light. The glare hurt her eyes. No, she was definitely awake.

Liz’s heart had begun to race, and not just from the sugar and caffeine. She couldn’t believe her luck. Just when she had all but given up, here it was, the very thing she had been searching for. Lucinda Alderman’s account showed more than just a little discrepancy in the character of Jessup Wildemere as he appeared in local stories.

No matter how long it took her to wade through Lucinda’s tedious prose and barely legible handwriting, Liz was determined to stick with it. Somewhere in this long-forgotten piece of domestic scribbling there had to be some mention of Cornelius Dobbler’s murder and the subsequent execution of Jessup Wildemere. Liz was counting on it.