The Splendour Falls (44 page)

‘What does a geologist do at an archaeological dig?' I asked as the truck pulled to a stop, glad he'd given me an opening.

‘He isn't totally useless,' Dr Young said with a grin. ‘Besides the extra hands, it's nice to have someone with an eye for telling when a stone is part of the foundation, and when it's just a rock.' Climbing out of the truck he called over to the students, ‘You didn't have any trouble with the rain, did you?'

I got out too, noting the wet tarps over to one side. When I put Gigi on the ground, she ran to the edge of the pit, much too interested in the digging.

The girl, a blonde with short wisps of hair poking out of her baseball cap, looked at the dog askance, then at me. I recognized her from the Catfish Festival, mostly because she was giving me the dagger eye again, barely hidden as Dr Young provided an introduction. ‘Annabeth, this is Sylvie Davis. She's a friend of Rhys's. Sylvie, this is Annabeth, Rob and Steve.'

‘Hi.' I waved, feeling awkward under their curious stares.

‘We saw you yesterday,' said Rob, as if he'd placed me in his mental database. ‘You're that visiting girl who's dating Shawn Maddox.'

I inhaled slowly for patience, rolling my lips in between my teeth. Before I could collect myself to politely correct him, Annabeth spoke.

‘You know, you could tell your boyfriend that if he really gives a crap about nature, he should think about what that boat dock and what all he's planning will do to the river.'

‘He's not my boyfriend,' I said coldly, which I'm sure didn't make a good impression. ‘But you're welcome to tell
me
what the hell you're talking about.'

She gestured vaguely. ‘The Cahaba River is the most ecologically diverse waterway in North America. There are plants growing there that don't grow anywhere else in the world. And your friend wants to put motorboats on it.'

‘I did not know that.' Her words had distracted me from my irritation at her tone. ‘About the river, I mean.'

My response seemed to take some of the wind out of her sails, and her scowl lessened slightly. ‘More people would, if the ecological surveyor who came here to rate the impact of the proposed building had finished his report before he got laid up.'

I looked at Dr Young. ‘The guy who broke his leg was an environmental impact surveyor?'

‘Yes indeed.' He brushed the dirt off his hands. ‘The ecology of a place can be delicate. Get one thing out of balance, and you could have a disaster.'

‘Like floods and yellow fever?' I asked, thinking of the region's turbulent natural history.

‘Could be,' said Annabeth.

‘That's a big extreme,' countered Dr Young, though he looked impressed I'd been paying attention. ‘However, a lot of little things could lead to a big thing in ways we don't even realize.' He gave Annabeth a stern grandfatherly look. ‘But I didn't bring Sylvie over here to get a lecture.'

She and Rob both laughed, breaking the tension, and Dr Young sheepishly admitted, ‘Not a scolding one, anyway.'

Annabeth got out of the pit, carrying a box with a
screen bottom. ‘Sorry, Sylvie. I get a little hot about environmental issues. Still, you might put in a polite word with your boyfriend.'

‘I might,' I said testily, despite the genuineness of her apology, ‘if you stop calling him that, since he's not.'

She laughed and said, ‘Deal,' taking me at my word, then led the way to a folding table nearby, where an array of rocks and brick was laid out, many with tags and numbers. ‘Want the nickel tour? We're basically excavating the basement of the church.'

Over her shoulder, I could see the crumbling brick chimney through the trees. ‘Has there been any excavation of the old prison?'

She frowned. ‘That would be a big, expensive project. I'd love to be on it, though!' She shouted that towards Dr Young, who waved to show he'd heard.

I sort of liked Annabeth's direct personality now that she wasn't scowling at me and painting me with Shawn's brush. What I didn't like was the shiver that ran down my back as I thought about digging in that particular ground.

Hannah had written about the prison, and her youthful language and ladylike reticence had made her horror both stark and evocative. Even thinking about it now, in the humid afternoon, I felt an echo of the fingers of cold that had gripped me in that empty spot. The shadow of the chimney seemed to stretch towards me, like it would pull me back into that well.

Hiding a shiver, I realized that, imagination aside, the shadows
were
lengthening. ‘I should be heading to
the Hill. My cousin will have kittens if I'm not back well before dark.'

‘Do you need a ride home?' asked Dr Young.

‘Thanks, but not this time.' As he'd mentioned, my leg was holding up well. And the walk would give me more time to think. ‘I'd like to come back sometime, though. For that nickel tour,' I added to Annabeth.

She grinned. ‘We can use an extra pair of hands. Rhys has been busy with his dad's project, and hasn't been logging many hours. Of course, he's not earning college credit.'

I caught myself before I blurted out, ‘Really?' Because Old Cahawba had been his stated destination every morning, at least that I could recall. Had it only been an excuse for his rock hunting? Or was he up to something else?

‘Speaking of college hours,' said Dr Young, joining us at the worktable, ‘let's see what you've got, Annabeth.'

I took that as my cue to exit. I said goodbye and left them to their work.

Paula was livid when I got back. ‘Where have you been?' she demanded from the stairs of the back porch. ‘I've been worried sick about you.'

I was too surprised to be as angry at this overreaction as I ordinarily would. ‘Why? I just walked out to Old Cahawba. And I had my phone.'

The part about the phone made her blink, since she
clearly hadn't thought to call me. Then she heated back up. ‘You couldn't have told me you were going?'

Now irritation began to overtake confusion. ‘I left a note. What's the big deal?'

She huffed, mirroring my annoyance, but I suspected some of it was aimed at herself. She'd flown off the handle, and I'd acted responsibly. Well, relatively. I
could
have told her I was going.

‘Someone broke into the office trailer out at Maddox Point,' she said. ‘That kind of thing just doesn't happen around here, not by local people. So no wandering in the woods by yourself. Not even in the daytime.'

This news tumbled my thoughts around like leaves in the wind. I answered with an absent ‘Sure, Paula' and tried to remember where Rhys had said he was yesterday. Not at the Catfish Festival like everyone else in town, that was for sure.

Gigi bounded up the stairs, dirty from our walk, and Paula didn't even comment, so I knew she was distracted. ‘Was anything taken?' I asked.

My lack of argument to her order to stay out of the woods seemed to have calmed her down, and she shook her head. ‘They think it might have been a drifter looking for money. They don't keep any out there. And a good thing, too.'

I was baffled. What were the odds of a random break-in, with nothing taken? And obviously no one local would have robbed the
Maddoxes,
of all people. But what could Rhys have possibly wanted from the Maddox Point office?

My feelings could have been lifted from Hannah's journal. She liked J, and if he was a scalawag, she wanted to believe it was for the best of reasons. Whatever Rhys was up to, I wanted to believe he was in the right somehow. But how could I trust him when he never gave me an explanation for any of his actions?

I
finished reading Hannah's journal that night. It was as dissatisfying as a mystery novel with no ending, as unsettling as a symphony that doesn't resolve to a final chord.

Turning back a few pages from the ambiguous last entry, I read again her disjointed description of the ‘spectre of a dishevelled man in a blue uniform' that she'd seen while cutting through the woods from Cahawba. Her handwriting – never that great – showed her tremors, as did her admission that she attributed the incident to her ‘condition'.

Her prose had been extremely circumspect about her love life. She wrote in veiled references and no detail. This was the only indication that she was, as I had wildly guessed, pregnant.

Back in the chair, I stared out the window, the moonlit woods superimposed with the reflection of my own face, pinched with worry for a girl long dead.

Not only did she not indicate who the father was, she didn't even describe any kind of baby-making interlude. What girl keeps a diary and doesn't write about her first time?

I got up again, leaned over the desk and opened the window. It wasn't just reading Hannah's troubles that was putting me on edge. There was something about the night, the full moon on the river, the wind in the trees.

There were three ghosts. The Colonel. The girl in the woods – Hannah, I corrected myself. And the wailing cry of an infant. What did it mean? That the baby had died with her? Or was it crying
for
her?

Maybe that was why I couldn't face Reverend Holzphaffel's journal before I went to sleep. If Hannah had, by her suicide, abandoned her baby, I didn't want to know.

Naturally, since I expected something extraordinary to happen now that my suspicions were boiling, and Rhys – or someone – had stirred the pot by messing with Shawn's precious Maddox Point project, and I was
poking under the rocks of the family history, the house and even the woods stayed calm through the night.

It was unnerving, like waiting for a storm you know is coming, know is only going to build more strength the longer it takes to arrive.

In the morning I dressed in my least dirty gardening jeans and brought the others down to put in the washer. With Gigi trotting beside me, I entered the kitchen to find Clara alone, putting away the last of the dishes.

‘Good morning, sleepyhead. Throw those clothes in the laundry basket and I'll wash them for you.'

‘Oh, you don't have to do that,' I said.

‘I wouldn't offer if I minded.'

I tossed the clothes in the basket on the porch, opened the door for Gigi and came back into the kitchen. ‘Where is everybody?'

She waved a hand at the empty air. ‘Paula is in town buying paint, the professor is at work in his room, and Rhys is off doing what Rhys does.'

The comment started my usual round of internal arguments. What was he doing, what were his motives, why the hell wouldn't he tell me unless he had something to hide? By the time I got a carton of yogurt out of the refrigerator, my head hurt from all the arguing.

I worked in the garden all morning. Feeling driven, I channelled all my emotion into pulling weeds and cutting vines. The reverend's journal waited for me upstairs, but Hannah's problems were too tangled with my own, and I needed a respite from that for a little while.

And I had catching up to do. Though I'd squeezed in some work before sundown, I'd lost most of the previous day to the rain and my walk to Cahawba. Not to mention the time I'd spent with Hannah in the past.

Eventually, Clara made me stop for lunch. Paula and the professor had already eaten, so I wiped Gigi's feet (and mine) and we both came in, safe from my cousin's dislike of dogs.

‘That's enough work for the day,' Clara said firmly as she set a bowl of minestrone soup in front of me, a piece of fresh bread beside it.

‘I just have a little more to do,' I said, washing down a bite with some iced tea. I was surprised how much progress I'd made in just a week, but this close to being done, it pained me to stop, even to eat.

Clara left her stove and stood across from me, arms folded. ‘Girl, you don't have to prove anything. Paula thinks hard work would cure the devil, so bugging you is the only way she knows to show she cares.'

That explained a lot. I bet she'd never had a puppy as a kid, either. Still, I couldn't help but be a bit touched, feeling the truth in what Clara said.