Old Wounds (4 page)

And here was the scuttle hole that Sam had built so many years ago, a narrow, zigzag parting in the fence that a person, but not a cow, could slip through. As she angled herself through the opening she could hear him saying,
Now maybe those girls won’t keep snagging their clothes trying to crawl under the barbed wire.
And for two years the path and the scuttle hole had seen almost daily use as the two little girls ran in and out of each other’s homes, families, lives. Elizabeth stood there on the other side of the fence, remembering.
And then it stopped. I don’t think Rosie ever came up this way again. I know I didn’t.

Long rays of afternoon sun shafted through the old hardwoods—maples, poplars, hickories, and oaks—that guarded the upper slopes of Mullmore. Emerging from the deep, chill shade of the pines into the brilliance of this south-facing slope was like coming into another country, a dreamlike, mazy kingdom of slanting autumn light. A small wind trembled through the treetops and a shower of brilliant leaves swirled around her.
Like Danaë,
she thought,
when Zeus came to her disguised as a shower of gold.
Caught in the dream, she held out her arms and lifted her face to feel the leaves flutter against it. She stood there as the air grew still and the leaves fell to the ground. Then she set off down the trail that led to the clearing below…and to whatever remained of Mullmore.

3.

S
LEEPING
B
EAUTY’S
C
ASTLE

Wednesday, October 5

The trail wound
through the trees, a narrow ribbon twisting down the wooded slope. Far below her and only partially visible through overgrown shrubbery and rampant wild vines, Elizabeth could see the dark red tile roofs of the abandoned house and outbuildings. Mullmore lay in the heart of the sheltered cove that previous generations had known as “the ol’ Ridder place.” Almost two hundred acres, it had once been a prosperous farm, comprised of steep woodland, gently rolling pastures, and an unusually large stretch of level bottom—so-called “tractor-land,” much prized for ease of cultivation. But when the Mullins had bought the property at a staggering price—“Paid cash for it too” the local grapevine had insisted, “cash out of a suitcase”—it had swiftly become apparent that they did not intend to farm.

The log barns had been sold—dismantled and hauled off on trucks. And the weathered old farmhouse, with its gently sagging porches festooned with ancient rambling roses, had been demolished in favor of the massive, four-storied brick Tudor-style house that rose in less than a year. The fact that no local builders were employed had rankled the native inhabitants of Ridley Branch and they had watched, incredulous, as truck after truck of building supplies were followed by a small fleet of campers, bearing the crew of workers. Soon the dwelling under construction was spoken of as “a mansion house” and speculation ran wild as to what the “millionaire new folks” would do next.

All the construction and landscaping had been finished when we moved here, but people were
still
talking about it. I think some of them were a little disappointed when we built such an ordinary, modest house.
Elizabeth’s neighbor Dessie, gone now, but always vividly alive in memory, had declared, “Why you uns ain’t a bit like them Mullinses! You and yore man is just as
common!”
It was a compliment, Elizabeth had come to realize.

She continued her descent, out of the forest into the rolling meadow that had circled the many-gabled house like a smooth jade collar. Smooth no longer. She picked her way through a maze of rampant growth: locust saplings in thorny and painful profusion; tall pokeweed that leaned over her, its strong magenta stems culminating in dangling clusters of hard emerald berries; and then a regiment of pale gray-green thistles, standing like prickly sentinels, their purple blooms mostly gone to down. A bevy of goldfinches, disturbed at their feeding, rose up from the thistles in a twittering cloud and scattered in their curious swooping, faltering flight.

I can understand why the Mullins would have wanted to leave after such a tragedy. But why didn’t they try to sell the place?
The great house loomed in the center of the cove bottom: a towering mass of deep purple-red brick relieved by multiple half-timbered gables. The lower windows were masked with plywood, but the upper ones were bare, their multiple panes winking blindly in the sun. It was an impressive piece of architecture and could have taken its place in a prosperous gated community without exciting comment.
Tudor revival—“stockbroker Tudor,” I think the Brits call it. But here—I don’t know—it’s like a spaceship in a cornfield.

It probably
had
been a cornfield, she mused, standing at the outer edge of the formal landscaping that had transformed this particular bit of Appalachia into the semblance of an English estate. Before her, the empty swimming pool gaped, its azure-tiled basin stained by the detritus of many seasons. She walked to the edge and saw that among the drifts of leaves and rotting black walnut hulls were the scattered and bleached bones of some large animal—a deer?
It must have blundered in and couldn’t get out.
She turned away, with a sick pang, saddened as always, at the suffering of animals in a man-made world.
The suffering of the innocent.

Broad limestone paving, now almost invisible beneath the fallen leaves, ringed the pool. Stately urns that she had last seen filled with late-blooming azaleas, their pink and coral blooms massed in tight perfection, now overflowed with a jumble of dead or dying weeds and a few tiny persistent seedling maples.

She remembered the scene as it had been twenty years ago: the pool shimmering turquoise, the assorted parents, drinks in hand, milling about, while at the far end of the pavement, in the open pavilion, a top-hatted magician entertained his audience of children. The pavilion was shuttered now, the children grown.
Except for Maythorn.
Elizabeth stood bemused, unwelcome memories flooding back, threatening to overcome her.

Well, here you are at last! Patricia Mullins had separated herself from a chattering crowd and hurried on clicking high heels toward Sam and Elizabeth. Tight blue jeans outlined her shapely legs and her blue chambray “work shirt,” heavily embellished with rhinestone studs, was partially unbuttoned to display an impressive bosom. Y’all must be worn out, letting those girls drag you through the woods like that. You should have come around by the road. She grabbed Sam’s elbow possessively and tugged him toward the bar. You come right over here and get a drink. I’m just dyin’ to introduce my big handsome neighbor to some of my girlfriends. Elizabeth, you want to go on and take Miss Laurel in with the kidlets? They’re having such fun. She had paused, looking Elizabeth up and down. You might want to freshen up a bit—you know where the little girls’ room is.

“Bitch!” Elizabeth had hardly known that she’d spoken, and the harsh sound of her own voice startled her. With a last bitter glance around her, she moved across the terrace and down three wide shallow steps into the remains of the sunken rose garden that lay at the back of the house.

Twenty years ago, at that horrible party, it had been early June and the roses had been at their best. Fat and sprawling, the blowsy petals had shed an intoxicating fragrance, marred only slightly by the acrid smell of the fungicides and insecticides necessary to achieve such perfection. Each curving bed had been devoted to a single variety. Roses ranged from the deepest reds at the garden’s center through corals, deep and then lighter pinks, yellows, and, at last, on the perimeter, a mass of white. The effect had been glorious, especially when seen from an upper window in the house.

I was a fool to go up there with him—all because I was angry with Sam. I should have known….
She thrust the bitter memories aside and surveyed the ruin of the garden.
All that work and all that money…all gone to waste now.
Today, only a few roses remained amid the weeds—unruly whip-like stems with mildewed leaves—the hardy roses that sprout from rootstock even after the fancy grafted cultivars have succumbed to disease or weather. A statue—a classic nude clutching her stony draperies ineffectually to her chest—had been knocked from its plinth to lie half-buried beneath a tangle of brambles.

The blackberry bushes seemed to be ahead in the Darwinian struggle of survival. They were everywhere, coursing thickly up the dark red walls of the house, barring entry almost as effectively as did the plywood shuttering the windows. They snagged her clothes and skin with their thorns as she threaded her way out of the rose garden to the deserted tennis court beyond.

The net was long gone but the composite surface had, astonishingly, held firm against nature’s rampant incursion. A mat of fall leaves covered the faded green surface and Elizabeth was surprised to see what looked like—no, what
were
—the fat tracks of an ATV, an all-terrain vehicle.
Hunters, probably, fooling around. The fence must be down somewhere, or they’ve cut it to get in. I’m obviously not the only one curious about Mullmore.

A loud
crack,
like a gunshot, made her gasp and look wildly around. As she peered up into the woods, the dull glint of metal caught her eye—the copper roof of the gazebo—
Our landscape architect said we had to have a folly to anchor the central axis of the garden, the Bitch had prattled to a seemingly entranced Sam.
Almost instantly, there was a second sharp report—a black walnut dropping from a tree onto the metal roof, with explosive results.

Elizabeth picked her way through more brambles toward the octagonal structure, remembering that it enclosed a spring and hoping that she could get a drink of water. She noticed that there seemed to be something of a trail through the thorny shoots—
Probably animals using the spring,
she reassured herself, as she stepped into the cool interior of the Mullmore folly.

No, not animals, not
wild
animals, anyway.
The sordid little heap of Vienna sausage cans, the empty plastic bottles, cigarette butts, and snack-food wrappers told another story.
Hunters again. Why are some people so trashy?

In the distance she heard the throaty growl of a vehicle. Suddenly she was extremely aware of three things: she was trespassing; she was alone; and she hadn’t brought Sam’s gun. He had always insisted that she carry it when she went hiking.
You might meet a skunk ape or a booger man,
he had teased her.
Or if you fell and broke your leg, at least you could make a racket so I could find you.

She was out of the folly and jogging, as quickly as the brambles and saplings permitted, toward the cover of the wooded slope. Behind her, the vehicle’s roar seemed louder.
This is probably foolish,
she told herself as she tore free of yet another thorny multiflora rose.
It’s just hunters…maybe even someone I know.
But she didn’t slow, though her sides were aching and her breath was coming fast. The vehicle was on the other side of the deserted house, hidden from her view, but approaching steadily.

At last she reached the shelter of the woods. Ducking quickly behind the trunk of a giant tulip poplar, she sagged against its comforting mass, closed her eyes, and tried to catch her breath. The motor below roared and then fell silent. She listened hard, but there was no further sound of the intruder.
The
other
intruder, Elizabeth.
Peeking around the tree trunk, she studied the scene below, but nothing moved and there was no further sound of human activity.

She waited, listening intently. When five minutes passed with no renewed sounds, Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned her hiding place and began the climb back to the ridge and the scuttle hole. She went slowly and quietly, slanting up through the trees in search of the path that she had followed before. At last she came to the trail, climbing with confidence now, eager to be out of this haunted realm.

Too many memories. It was a mistake to come over here.

The scuttle hole lay just above her and she moved gratefully into its crooked opening then stopped, frozen in place by a single high thin cry. A cry like that of a terrified child, it was a sound that reverberated in her memory. She stood there, not breathing, braced to hear it again, to be certain that she’d heard rather than imagined that mournful wail.

Nothing. No sound but the low murmur of the wind in the pines. Elizabeth looked up through the dancing green boughs to the sky over Mullmore…listening…listening. As she stared into the blue depths, a sudden shadow fell across her, and with a plaintive cry the raptor caught the current to ride the wind over the breadth of Full Circle Farm and down into the cove to the north.

A hawk, you idiot. It was a hawk you heard.
Still, she lingered to be sure. There were no more cries and so she set off, back down the trail to the welcome familiarity of her own home.
Just a hawk,
she reassured herself, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the voice that whispered,
What if…what if…what if it was Maythorn?…or another lonely child? What if you’re supposed to do something? Something that’s been left undone?

The doubts were still with Elizabeth as she finished the wreaths that afternoon; the doubts rode on her shoulder as she climbed up the hill to her house; they continued their nagging refrain as she ate her supper. She willed them to silence and called Laurel to leave a message about coming to dinner on Friday. Then she stretched out on the sofa, a mug of tea in one hand and her phone in the other.

She and Phillip had talked the night before and he had been firm in his insistence on giving her time and space to deal with Rosemary’s problem. “Which doesn’t mean I won’t be staying in touch,” he had said. “It’s just that after all the drama you just went through with Ben and now Rosemary…well, what I have in mind…”

He hadn’t quite articulated what he had in mind.
And I’m not sure what I have in mind either. I just know that I like being with him, that he makes me smile…that I miss him when I don’t see him for a while…and that a few days ago I was ready to go to bed with him.

She keyed in the familiar number and was rewarded by the sound of Phillip’s voice. “I just got done with my night class and was getting ready to call you. Are you okay?” His tone was soft, concerned. “What about Ben? He seemed pretty low when I was out there Saturday.”