The Family Plot (28 page)

“Withrow, Withrow, Withrow,” she muttered, like she could summon them on command.

Simple legwork found them in five minutes, no magic required.

They had a large family monument, classic and tasteful, and no doubt pricey if you weren't the folks who owned the company. It said, simply,
WITHROW
, and it was surrounded by smaller stones with more information about who was lying underneath them. Some of the older graves went back to the 1800s. Among the more recent ones was Hazel Withrow, who'd made it all the way to 1969. The lack of a nearby spouse or an additional surname implied she'd never married. Augusta's parents were right behind her, having died together on the same day, in that car wreck.

“Hello, Buddy,” she said. “And Hazel. And um … everybody else.”

Except Abigail. There was no sign of her. Now Dahlia had the photo, Augusta's lore, and the briefcase with the sanitarium records. It still amounted to family legend, instead of proof.

“Where
are
you, Abigail?” she asked the plot at large, but it wasn't like thinking out loud inside the mansion, where you might expect a reply. Her gut said she knew the answer anyway, but her gut was a big fat liar. Her gut had told her if she married Andy, he'd settle down. Her gut had told her—

Never mind.

She threw up her hands, and the umbrella dumped extra spray onto the nearest stones. “I guess it's just a fucking mystery,” she announced to no one in particular, then turned and headed back out of the cemetery, past the hogback ridge, up the side of Lookout Mountain, and back to the Withrow house.

By the time she trudged past the stone gateposts, it was almost eight thirty. The guys ought to be up and dressed, if not entirely ready to engage with power tools, but when she arrived inside, they were still staggering around like zombies. Gabe was upstairs taking a quick morning shower with the door open, steam spilling out into the hallway. Brad was groggily eating cereal in the kitchen, and Bobby was starting on the day's first beer.

He must've brought it back last night, because there hadn't been any in the fridge, that Dahlia knew of. She couldn't bring herself to get too worked up about it. Let him have a beer. God knew she wanted one. She thought about asking, but restrained herself—beer and coffee for breakfast, she'd be peeing all damn day.

“Good morning, boys.”

She got a low grumble of acknowledgment from both, followed by a belch from Bobby. “You didn't bring any coffee?”

“I took a detour on the way back. It would've gotten cold. And you never drink it, so what do you care?”

“Where'd you go?” he asked, exactly as apathetic about the oversight as he ought to be.

She pulled a seat up to the kitchen bar near Brad. “I went to the cemetery across the ridge. I found the Withrow plot.”

Brad brightened, and swallowed a mouthful of cornflakes. “And?”

“And … everybody's there except for Abigail. I think she's the big bad ghost who's been bothering everyone in the bathroom, so I've been trying to piece together what happened to her between the time she came back here and the time she vanished from the family record.”

Bobby burped again, and the room smelled sour. “Obviously, she must've died.”

“Yeah, but when? And how? Your son,” she pointed at her cousin, “thinks they might've locked her in the attic.”

“A madwoman in the attic,” Brad mumbled. “Isn't anybody tired of that one, yet?”

“Anyway, that's not what happened to her.” Dahlia told them about finding the satchel with the sanitarium records. She concluded, “They sent her away, but she was discharged, and she came back here, and must have died here. So why isn't she buried with the rest of the family?”

Bobby wasn't so sure. “You're hopping around a lot, making a bunch of assumptions.”

“Eh.” She waved her hand in his directions. “I have circumstantial evidence on my side. The only question is how she died.”

“And
why.
And where she is now,” Brad insisted. “Those are also questions.”

They all went quiet. They were probably all thinking the same thing, but it was Brad who said it out loud: “She might be buried in that little cemetery.”

Dahlia scooted her chair back, and pushed it out of the way. She refused to indulge the idea, no matter what her gut said. “Too bad we'll never know.”

“We could…,” Brad began.

“No. We
couldn't.
We have an epic shit-ton of work to do today, so there won't be any time for any further grave robbing, thank God. We still have to rebury the soldier, for heaven's sake. Besides, I don't think the weather's going to hold. Except for some quality shovel time for you, Brad, the rest of the work stays indoors.”

Bobby glanced out the kitchen window. “It's not raining half so bad as it was last night.”

She checked the weather app on her phone, and turned the screen around to show him. “The radar says we're in for a beating over the next couple of days.”

Gabe appeared in the kitchen entryway, rubbing his head with a towel. “What about Uncle Chuck?”

“What about him?” Bobby asked, finishing off the beer and tossing the bottle into the trash. “He can't control the weather.”

“But he's still coming tomorrow, right?”

“No, not until Friday, unless…” She scrolled around on her phone, and saw that the forecast was even worse for Friday. “Hm. I don't know. We can get most of the house done before bedtime today, between us. If we can get Daddy to come down tomorrow, I bet he can help us wrap up a day early.”

Brad leaned back to take a peek at her phone. “How bad does it look?”

“There's a storm front headed right for us. Tell you what, I'll give him a call and see how he wants to play it. The rest of y'all, get your asses in gear. I won't be a minute. Knowing him, he probably won't pick up.”

She left the kitchen for the communal living area, then climbed the stairs, as if she needed some privacy. She didn't, but she took it anyway. As predicted, Chuck didn't answer. No great shock. Half the time he didn't hear his phone, and half the time he forgot to carry it. She left him a message.

“Hey Daddy, it's me. I know you planned to show up on Friday, but I was wondering if you couldn't drive down tomorrow instead. The weather is going to get bad tonight, and worse tomorrow. We may have to skip some of the house's exterior stuff, but we'll still have a hell of a haul, I promise. This was a good buy, and it'll pay off—even without the bay windows and whatnot, so don't worry about that. Anyway, call me, would you? We should talk. You should come out tomorrow.” She paused, and then said quickly, “We're all tired of camping here at this crazy-ass house, and we want to come home.”

She ended the call, and put the phone in her back pocket.

A dull drone in the background turned out to be the rain kicking up again. She strolled to the broken hallway window and stood in the spray of water and chilly air that splattered through the jagged pane of glass. There was no dead soldier standing in the cemetery below; just a tarp weighted down by rocks, covering the spot where he'd been laid to rest in a shallow grave under someone else's headstone.

“Were you Abigail's first lover? What happened to you?”

The house didn't answer, and neither did any helpful ghost.

With that thought, she turned around—and saw that Hazel's door was closed again. The trunk that'd held it propped open was now sitting outside, in the hall. Dahlia approached it, and nudged it aside with her foot. It was heavy, but it moved. The lovely doorknob wiggled, but didn't turn. Hazel had locked her out again.

“I've got to get in there someday, Aunt Hazel,” Dahlia said to the closed room. “Please don't make me destroy this door to do it. I'd rather not ruin anything I don't have to,” she said under her breath. But when she thought about it, and tested the sound of the words again, she wasn't so certain. “I wish we could save this house…” didn't taste right anymore. She tried again. “Fine, the house can go to hell. But you seem all right, Aunt Hazel. I apologize to you for everything that's coming. I've already apologized to the house, but if you're hanging around, and if you still care for the place, then you get an apology, too. That's literally all I can do for you, now. If Daddy were here, he'd say it's more than I
ought
to do.”

She looked down at the trunk, pushed out into the hall where it clogged the thoroughfare. One heavy corner had shoved up against the rotted carpet runner, and torn a great hole in it—leaving a drag mark in the old boards beneath.

She bent down to open it again and examine the contents in daylight. The flimsy old latch hadn't mysteriously locked since last night, so that was something. Not everything closed for good when you looked away.

This time, she saw the same paperbacks as before. And something else.

Atop the jumbled pile of romances, gothic and otherwise, rested an overstuffed envelope. Dahlia picked it up. It smelled like mildew and dried flower petals. Inside, the folded papers were as fragile as tissue, brittle and brown with age.

My dearest Gregory, I want you to know that I'm yours, every inch of me—but my father's starting to wonder, and I fear he will give you grief when you come to get me …

The handwriting was slender and tidy, and very precise. The words were composed in pen, but the letters had faded to the off-brown color so very common to old missives, courtesy of all the iron in the ink.

Dahlia closed the trunk lid and sat down on top of it.

 … not our type, as Mother puts it, but how would she know? She does not see the best parts of you, as I do. If Father were not in the way, I think she might come around, in time. But you know she'll never stand against him. No one ever does, not even Hazel—who is quite fond of you, and thinks that you and I would make a very nice match. That's how she put it, when I pressed her on the matter. She's concerned for me. For both of us, I'm sure.

But this is not the time to dally. Time is running short, and in this case, we must risk asking forgiveness, instead of permission. You know as well as I do, that we must risk it soon. Come another few weeks, and people will be counting the months since our honeymoon, and raising their eyebrows high.

“Dahl? What are you doing?”

Gabe. She hadn't heard him come up the stairs, nor down the hall, nor to the spot where he was now standing over her shoulder, but he hadn't startled her, not exactly.

She looked up and gently waved the old paper. “Aunt Hazel locked us out again, but she left a little present.” She pointed to the signature at the bottom on the back side. “Abigail's love letters to Gregory.”

“Gregory who?”

“I have no idea. Lovers don't generally use their full given names when they write back and forth.”

“Not in e-mail, but this was, like, the olden days, right?”

“Not even in the olden days. She didn't date these, either. I don't know if she mailed them, or snuck them out of the house through a friend, or a servant, or something. But Gregory … that's the name of our soldier downstairs, I'd bet money on it. I'd also bet money…” She closed the trunk and sat back on the lid, still scanning the narrow lines of penmanship. “They both knew she was pregnant. There's a bit in here about counting the months after the honeymoon.”

Gabe crooked his neck to see the letter better. He began to sit down beside her on the trunk lid, then changed his mind. It was old, and it might not hold them both. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “What else do the letters say?”

She flipped through them, skimming quickly. “Oh, the usual. Lots of ‘my darling,' ‘my dearest,' and promises of eternal love. She was worried about how the family would take it, so maybe her dad really did fly off the handle and do something rash. But I wonder why…” Dahlia carefully checked each page. “I wonder why only Abigail's letters are collected here. You'd think she would've saved his letters in return, wouldn't you?”

“Could be there weren't any. Or maybe he gave these back to her,” Gabe proposed. “Because the feeling wasn't mutual. Dads have killed boyfriends for less than knocking up their daughters. Since the beginning of history, I'm pretty sure. Maybe that's how he died.”

Dahlia stood and put the letters back into the trunk, closing it up and fastening the latches without locking them. “True, but if he knew she was pregnant, you'd think he'd whip out the shotgun and force them to make it legal. Regardless … could you do me a favor and go stuff this trunk up in the attic, out of the way?”

“Why me?”

“Because you are big and strong, and I am small and super tired from last night. Please? I just don't want to trip over it all day as we start the breakdown.”

Her phone picked that moment to ring, so she asked him “Please?” one more time and answered it. “Hey Daddy, there you are.”

“Here I am. What's this about closing up shop a day early?”

She shooed Gabe away. “Right. About that…” She gave him the breakdown on the weather. She wandered back to the broken window while she talked. “And in case you don't believe me, can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Rain, Dad. Lots and lots of rain. I'm afraid you won't be able to bring in the trailer if it gets too much soggier, and things will only get worse through tomorrow night. If we weren't on a time limit, that'd be one thing.”

“Technically we have until the fifteenth.”

She shook her head, like he could hear it rattle. Down across the grounds she stared, picking at the broken glass with her fingernail. “I know, but nobody wants to stay another night. That's the truth of it, okay? This place isn't…” She struggled with how much to tell him, and how much to keep to herself. “Let's just say it's not healthy, and now that I've spent some time here, I totally understand why Augusta wants to see it leveled.”