The Mirror (10 page)

He returned her stare, his head cocked to one side, sun highlighting the pale Maddon hair and the flecks in amber eyes. "I ain't a ghost, Mrs. Strock."

Oh yes you are. A
shiver made her grit Brandy's teeth. She took a step backward as he approached and stood over her.

Lon Maddon grinned, ran his fingers through his hair and put his hat on. "Brandy's a pretty name and you're a pretty woman."

The shadow of his hat brim lent a threat to insolent eyes.

Bug off, Shay. You're going home. He'll be Brandy's problem.
Would Brandy come back to her body when Shay left it? Come back to find herself already married?
Maybe I should leave a note for her.

"I've come to get Samuel's washing." She tried to smile. "Do you know if a large mirror came up in a freight wagon today, from Boulder?"

"No, ma'am. But I see one, I'll bring it right up."

"Thank you, Mr. Maddon," she answered primly and turned toward the cabin.
Man, you're really getting into this part, Shay.

Someone was having a coughing fit inside and she waited for it to subside before knocking. Lon still watched her from the road.

"Come in."

This cabin was larger than the Strocks', with pretty braided rugs on the floor and dyed burlap on the walls. The man in the rocking chair spit into a bowl. "Thora K. sent me for your washing."

Samuel had dark rings around his eyes and looked at her without interest.

"That is very kind of her." Something faintly British in his cultured accent. He shuffled into a bedroom and brought her a cloth bag. "Tell her thank you." His hands shook.

"I will and I'm . . . sorry . . . about--"

"Yes." He turned and coughed into his handkerchief.

Lon Maddon was gone when she left the cabin and Shay didn't step so lightly on the way back. The racking sound of Samuel's coughing followed her up the road.

She delivered the bag of clothes to Thora K. and asked about the man's health.

" 'Ee have the consumption, poor man. Came to 'ere from the East with his bride, 'oping to recover in the mountain air. And then her dies with 'er babe and all Samuel 'as left is the consumption."

Shay'd never heard of consumption. "Is the air here helping?"

"Do seem to me, him be getting worse the longer 'ee do stay." She strung rope between a hook on the cabin and a pine tree, moving leisurely but efficiently. No one seemed in a great hurry around here.

Shay hung clothes on the rope with hand-carved clothespins. "I saw Lon Maddon at Samuel's."

"Us don't 'ave nothin' to do with they." Thora K. pressed her lips tightly and wrung Brandy's twisted day dress. "They mother were a lady of the night." China-blue eyes widened. "And the fayther was hunged by the neck fer he did kilt a man."

If Rachael'd ever told this side of the family's background, Shay would've remembered it. But then her school studies on local history had never mentioned Water Street either. "They? Is there more than one?" With Thora K.'s habitual mix-up of pronouns, she couldn't be sure.

"There be just the two boys now. And one's as bad as t'other. Wild with the drink and the fallen women. Can't tell 'em apart to look at, neither."

Shay paused at the makeshift clothesline to stare at Brandy's mother-in-law. "Twins?"

"Aye. And nothin' good ever came of that. Bad luck to theyselves and others too. Queer things 'appen around twins." She nodded wisely.

Perhaps Brandy would marry the other brother. He might be more lovable than Lon.
She must come back to this body. How else could the family history go on? Unless it's really me that . . . No!

Samuel's handkerchiefs were stained and had to be soaked in cold water before they could be washed. But rusty smudges still streaked them when she hung them up.

Is consumption contagious?
Those handkerchiefs had soaked in a pail that would carry drinking water.

"Does the brother live around here too?"

"Why are 'ee so interested in they Maddons, you?"

"Just curious."
because one of them's my grandfather.

"
'Ee be one of they ranch 'ands and do come and go."

When the clothes were partially dried, Thora K. ironed them on the table. "Don't s'pose 'ee know 'ow ter do this neither?"

"Not very well."

"Watch then. Next week 'ee can 'elp. I'll never understand that Sophie McCabe." Thora K. ironed everything, even underwear, and while she did she told Shay stories of Cornwall. About "piskies" leading people astray at night with little lights that beckoned up the wrong paths.

"'Appened to me granny onst. Way back along it were, when her were but a girl."

"Did they find her?"

" 'Course they did or 'er couldn't 'ave grown to be me granny."

As my grandmother will reinhabit this body to become Grandma Bran.

And stories of the great mines in Cornwall, especially the Pednandrea, where Thora K.'s father and brothers worked until it closed and the family emigrated.

Shay had to laugh as the old woman gestured with her thumbs and shoulders and the iron. Some of the words were strange but Thora K. acted out her tales so Shay had little trouble following.

"Where's your family now?"

"I be all that's left of they. All buried in this land. But someday I'll go back to uld Cornwall an' that's where they'll bury me. Saved the money for me stone, I 'ave, and on it will be writ, 'She be buried in Cornwall, where she were born.'" She stared into the air as if she were seeing her tombstone, and nodded. "That's as it do belong to be." Sighing, she traded the cooled iron for the hot one on the cookstove. "I 'ear you tell 'andsome stories yerself."

"Corbin just thinks I'm crazy."

"'Ee don't appear to be 'ere though, do 'ee?" She poked Shay in the ribs with her elbow. "Could be ye have the sight. Corbin says yer stories are of wot will come to be. McCabe sounds like a Scottish name and them do say many of they have the sight."

Shay was having such a good time, she gave in and told Thora K. of the reservoir and dam.
I'm going home anyway.

Corbin came from the Brandy Wine tired and hungry, but the mirror didn't come that day. He said it was probably waiting for other items to make a load and would surely arrive on Tuesday.

On Tuesday Thora K. went back to cleaning rooms at the Anders Hotel, Corbin to his mine and Shay was left with few chores to do. After she'd watered the garden, she sat on the front steps and watched a relaxed Nederland. A faint coughing came from Samuel's cabin. Maybe she should go down and see if there was anything she could do for him.
Now don't get involved, Shay. You're leaving, remember?

Finally she put on Brandy's bonnet and walked along a footpath that angled past the cabin and away from the road. She knew Corbin would consider this wandering, but if the mirror came today, he wouldn't have time to put her away.
And if it doesn't I'll go bananas!

The path ended at another cabin, abandoned and sagging. She peered inside to find it insulated with newspapers glued to the walls between the joists and went in to read the insulation.

A cricket made a lonely chirping sound in the corner.

An ad for Captain Briar's Tonic that would cure warts and carbuncles and almost everything else. And below that--"Abisha Weir proudly announces a new steamship cruise of the Weir Line to the magic isles of the Caribbean on . . ." Rain and weather had wasted away the rest, but Shay was caught up by the name Weir.

Odd how little she'd thought of Marek, she who was soon to become Mrs. Marek Weir. Her homesickness was for her parents, not her fiance. "You don't love him," Rachael'd said.

Perhaps she'd think again about that marriage when she went home.

Marek Weir had seemed so right and she'd been intrigued with him. He had money, looks, and was some years older than she. Perhaps all that had lent him an illusion of romantic mystery and sophistication.

His work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research was due to last about two years more, long enough for Shay to finish at the university, and then he'd be off to a new location, possibly even another part of the world. To Shay, suffocated by the Gingerbread House and the town she'd lived in all her life, this had appeared ideal, but now . . .

"Careful, there's rats in there and the floor's rotted."

Startled, Shay looked up into a face under an enormous bonnet at a side window. She stepped out of the cabin quickly. "Thanks, I don't like rats."

The woman's gown was covered with tiny flowers and leaves. She wore a curious half-smile.

"I'm Shay Garre ... I mean, I'm Brandy . . . Strock."

"My name's May Bell." The direct gaze seemed to expect a reaction. "You're Corbin's new wife."

Not really.
"That's right."

"He's told me all about you." Tiny pieces of sun pricked through the eyelet holes of her bonnet. She reminded Shay of the shepherdess figurine on the mantel at home.

"Are you a friend of Corbin's?"

The smile widened to a full one, but May Bell didn't answer. Instead she turned back to the path and Shay followed.

"Did Corbin send you to keep an eye on me?" Shay persisted.

"I'm the last person in the world he'd call on to do that." She straightened white gloves. A large-framed woman, very plump, a creamy dimpled face. "I'm just out for a walk. I like walking."

May Bell stopped in front of the Strock cabin. "Must be quite a come down from McCabe's house. Corbin thinks of nothing but his mine now." Her expression hardened. "But he could have prettied it up some for a young bride. Even a crazy one."

On Sunday Shay stood at the graveside of Cara and Baby Williams, Corbin and his mother on either side of her.

Samuel leaned on the arm of Lon Maddon as the circuit preacher said a final prayer over the gaping hole.

Cara had been eighteen. Her husband, tall and much too thin, stood with shoulders stooped and eyes sunken. Shay guessed it wouldn't be long before he joined his little family here on this rocky hillside.

The faraway hoot of an old-fashioned train whistle wailed across clear mountain air . . . haunting, sad.

Shay bit Brandy's lip. The pine box holding both Cara and her baby had been mercifully nailed shut.
All these people are dead and past to you anyway, Shay. Don't get so involved.

She looked up to see Lon Maddon grinning at her from across the grave. Brandy couldn't possibly marry him. Shay was afraid of him.

And others watched her too, if less openly. Corbin Strock's crazy bride must have been big news in this tiny community. Thora K. had introduced her to some of the women outside the town hall before the funeral and to others at the church service held that morning, defiantly dragging Shay from one group to another, pretending ignorance of the discussions that went on in whispers after they'd passed. May Bell hadn't come to either service.

The musty smell of woolen clothing brought out of storage for rare occasions only, the pungency of dried pine needles crushed under shuffling boots, the dankness of raw earth torn from its rocky bed . . .

Wind and pine trees breathed a final amen with the circuit preacher.

Corbin slid a hand under her elbow and guided her between graves and over rocks to the road. Shay kept her eyes on the toes of Brandy's shoes. She didn't want to see the curious glances of the people around her, tried not to hear the shovels at work behind her.
I want to go home.

Thora K. had stopped to talk with the preacher and now she caught up with them, a man in a seedy gray suit on her arm. "I did ask Tim up fer supper. Tim, this be Brandy."

Tim Pemberthy was the man who helped Corbin at the mine. His speech was not quite as Cornish as Thora K.'s. The four of them walked on together, Tim and Corbin's mother exchanging good-natured insults.

Thora K. stopped on the bridge over the creek in the valley and turned to look back up the hill. "Ahhh . . . 'twere a lovely funeral."

Shay stared at her in disbelief. This woman was fast becoming the strangest person she'd ever known.

Elton McCabe made a stop on Main Street to inquire the way to the Strock house.

As he urged tired horses up the hill, Elton wondered if perhaps May Bell would be free for a time this evening. He remembered a night years ago when his father'd brought him to Nederland on business. Part of that business had been to introduce him to May Bell. Ever since, he'd longed to atone for that particular fiasco.

When he reached the Strock house, he sat for a moment on the buggy seat, hoping he'd been misdirected. It was little more than a shack.

But before he could get down, the door opened and his sister rushed onto the porch, her hair braided into a funny topknot, a wild look in her eyes.

"Hello, Bran. How-"

"Elton, you've brought the mirror!" She was off the porch with skirts flying and peering into the back of the buggy.