My breathing was shallow, my heart an engine. I knew I couldn’t stay hidden while Jay and my mother might be in danger.
I looked at Robin.
She said, Where’s your crossbow?
Joy is waiting for me at the door when I walk up the path. She is a slim and angular woman with a steel gray bob. She smooths her pencil skirt, tugs at the collar of her crisp white blouse, every inch the elegant librarian. But as I approach, she softens and opens her arms. She smells like Miss Lovely; they wore the same perfume, L’Aire du Temps, floral and light. Her embrace is solid, strong, where Miss Lovely was soft and ensconcing. But I still take comfort in it, hold on to her longer than I would hold on to most people.
“I take it you two know each other.”
Joy pulls back and peers over her glasses at Bailey, who comes up the walk behind me. Her expression leaves no doubt that she is not impressed.
“You don’t return calls,” he says into the silence that follows.
“I do,” she says. “In time.”
She loops her arm through mine and brings me inside. I wonder if she’ll shut him out, but she lets him enter, too. The interior of the building smells of hardwood and old paper, a comforting smell that makes me think of Miss Lovely and her library of books. The more digital the world becomes, the more I find myself craving wood and paper, solid, simple things.
“I knew you’d have questions one day,” she says. “These things have a way of rising up as we come of age, grow older, find new perspectives.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Tell me.”
I sit at the long wood table that stands in an open area between the shelves and shelves of books. I’ve been here before and know that this historical library houses books and records, primary documents like letters and diaries. Everything from the town’s founding documents, to files of old newspapers. There’s a microfiche room, and a computer lab, a nod to the new way records are kept. Here in this library, Joy Martin has amassed as many pieces of town history as exist. The place has an energy, like a thousand voices whispering their piece of the story of this town.
I tell Joy about everything that’s happened, and she listens carefully, foot tapping. Bailey stands by the door, arms folded. Something about the expansiveness of the room, the silent presence of recorded moments in time, the ticking of the clock on the wall over the desk, I feel lifted away from the world outside. My words seem to float on the air, soft and dissipating like a breath. When I’m done, I take the newspaper article from my bag and put it on the table.
She reaches for it, regards it for a second with a frown, then stands to sort through a stack of red, hardbound binders that sit on the table. She opens one labeled Carson Family Murder and starts shifting through the pages. When she finds what she’s looking for, she opens the book to me. Bailey moves in closer, standing over my shoulder.
The space in the book is blank. She places a protective hand on the newsprint.
“That article came from this book.”
I stare at the empty page, trying to make sense of it.
You were here in this room, digging though my past? How? When? Why?
“Was someone here, asking about this event?” Bailey wants to know.
“When?” I ask. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Joy raises a hand.
“Hold on,” she says. “About a year ago someone did make an appointment to come in and search through old records. One of the local Realtors was searching for a history on a property a client was looking to buy. Your property.”
“You still own the property?” asks Bailey.
I nod my head, but find I’ve lost my voice.
“It’s been in the Carson family for generations,” says Joy. “Luke Carson signed it over to Robin, well, legally Wren Greenwood, when he went to prison. He’s serving two life sentences without possibility of parole.”
Yes, she’s right. The property is mine, and it’s true that Realtors do often call with offers on the place. City people looking for their little piece of nature, their escape from the modern world—for the weekend anyway—make huge offers to raze the house and put up some gleaming monument to their wealth. And anyone with half a brain would have sold it years ago. But I didn’t. I’ve held on to it because some piece of me still lives there. We used to think that the house was haunted. But really it’s our ghosts that roam that land. It’s their home, and though I should chop off that part of my life like a gangrenous limb, I find I can’t. In my dreams, I still live there roaming the woods and listening to the birdsong, even if in my waking life I can’t stand the thought of stepping foot on that property.