Echoes among the Stones

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Her fingers snapped in exclamation, and Aggie pointed to the model kitchen as though someone stood beside her.

  “There you are,” she muttered. She leaned closer, studying the room. At one point, it looked to have been carefully arranged to replicate the actual Grayson farmhouse kitchen. A tiny hand-sewn eyelet valance over the kitchen window was only one of the minute details. But what wasn’t customary were the objects in the room that seemed to imitate a photograph. The instant a picture had been snapped to freeze time and capture exactly what the room looked like in a precise moment.

  A miniature mixing bowl sat on the counter.

  On the kitchen table was a delicate teacup. Someone had been sipping tea, it appeared. Aggie’s eyes roved from the kitchen into the hallway. She noticed the lineup of black-and-white photographs on the wall. Sketches really, created by the dollhouse’s designer, but drawn beautifully to show the actual photographs that had hung in the farmhouse. Aggie narrowed her eyes. There were eight picture frames. Five had people posing from different eras. Older ancestors, she assumed, and impossible to make out the specifics in their minuscule features. Three of the photographs were landscapes. One of the farm, one of a valley, and the other a rather depressing sketch of field grasses around gravestones. Not a typical picture someone would wish to hang on the wall.

  Aggie fumbled for the magnifying glass Mumsie kept on the table by the dollhouse. She held it up to the imitation photograph. The markers on the graves were sketched in pencil or maybe charcoal, and the artist had taken the time to etch in pinpoint letters, the names that must have been on the actual stones.

  Billy

  Tom

  Aggie lowered the magnifying glass. Children maybe? Siblings of Mumsie? She’d heard of graves being significant enough to capture in a photograph or sketch. Specifically if they were children. She couldn’t put a finger on why it felt important, but it did. Not to mention, that photograph was the only one out of the eight tilted and hanging at an extreme angle to the others.

  “Why?” Aggie tapped the picture frame glued to the dollhouse wall. “Why would Mumsie deliberately hang this out of sorts to the others?”

  It must have been out of sorts the day of the murder.

  Aggie set the magnifying glass on the table and shook her head to clear her mind. She was grasping at straws for sure. Giving importance to things that more than likely had none.

  Walking from the room, Aggie started the shower and made quick work of hopping in. She poured cherry-scented shampoo into her hand and worked it through her hair. Yet she couldn’t stop picturing the stalled baking scene, the tilted picture, the gravestones.

  Gravestones!

  Aggie stilled as the hot water beat against her head, sending streams of soap down her neck and body. If “Billy” and “Tom” were Grayson gravestones, then there was a family graveyard. Somewhere outside of the Mill Creek Cemetery. Outside of Fifteen Puzzle Row. But for some reason, only Hazel was buried there. The rest of the Grayson family—Chet, Mumsie’s other brother Ivan, even John Hayward, Mumsie’s husband and Mom’s father—they were all missing. She’d not even found evidence in the logs she’d half organized that any Grayson or relative thereof existed in the Mill Creek Cemetery.

  She quickly rinsed her hair and shut off the water. Stepping out of the shower, Aggie wrapped a towel around her body and met her eyes in the reflection of the mirror. The librarian’s mention of a cemetery at the old powder plant acreage raced through her memory. It was the only other one she’d heard of in the area.

  “An old family cemetery on government land?” Aggie asked her reflection. It felt key not only as to why Hazel was buried in Fifteen Puzzle Row, but also why Hazel had died in the first place.

  “Of course, dear!” Mrs. Donahue patted Aggie’s arm. Jane stood sentinel next to her, with Mrs. Prentiss balancing three to-go cups of hot tea in a cardboard carrier. “We’re thrilled you called.”

  Aggie glanced at Mumsie, who still rested in the hospital bed. She’d seemed a tad more responsive today. Her fingers had moved and at one point squeezed Aggie’s hand. The doctor indicated it was a good sign that Mumsie didn’t have paralysis. At least on that side. She still hadn’t awakened, and her awareness seemed nonexistent. Aggie was going to go stir-crazy sitting in the hospital. Now that she’d had a twenty-four-hour fix of reassuring herself Mumsie was still very much alive, she was aching to find out more about the gravestones. Added to that, Collin had sent her a text message saying exhumation of the mystery grave was starting this afternoon. Part of her wanted to be there for that as well.

  “I’m so appreciative the three of you are willing to stay with Mumsie.” Aggie gave the elderly ladies a smile.

  “Nonsense.” Mrs. Prentiss waved her off. “You can’t leave her here all alone.”

  “Well, she could,” Jane interrupted pragmatically. “It’s not as though we’re adding to her physical well-being by being here.”

  “We are to Aggie’s, though. She can rest in good conscience while she goes out and brings home the bacon.” Mrs. Donahue gave Aggie a reassuring smile.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that,” Mrs. Prentiss frowned.

  “What? Bring home the bacon?” Mrs. Donahue cocked her head and looked sideways at her friend.

  “It’s offensive to animal rights activists and vegetarians,” Jane inserted.

  Aggie bit her lip. The women were entertaining of their own right.

  “Now, doesn’t that beat all!” Mrs. Donahue clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry.” She shot Aggie an apologetic look. “I just never know what I can say anymore these days.”

  “It’s okay,” Aggie reassured. “I’m not a vegetarian, so no offense taken. And I haven’t taken a membership with my local animal rights organization.”

  “Your what?” Confused, Mrs. Prentiss furrowed her brow.

  “That’s wonderful!” Mrs. Donahue heaved a sigh of relief.

  Jane rolled her eyes.

  Aggie began gathering her purse and phone and a few other items when the thought crossed her mind. She hesitated, then decided to go for it. “Do any of you know anything about the cemetery on the old powder plant property?”

  Mrs. Donahue shook her head.

  Mrs. Prentiss was busy removing the cups from the carrier and setting them on the hospital table by the bed.

  Jane nodded. “A little.”

  “Could you share it with me?” Aggie asked.

  “Of course! I was ten, I think—ohhh, maybe five or six—doesn’t matter. I was a young thing when the government erected the plant.” Jane tapped her chin with her finger. “I believe the government tended the cemetery, but after the plant was bulldozed several years ago, the cemetery was made available to the remaining relatives.”

  “Do you know who’s buried there?” Aggie inquired.

  Jane shook her head. “Not specifically—Graysons, I think. I’ll be in one soon enough. No need to go exploring there before my time.”

  “You’ll be buried in Mill Creek Cemetery.” Mrs. Prentiss handed Jane her tea. “Not that old one out at the plant.”

  “Very true.” Jane nodded, taking the tea.

  “I remember, when I was in my twenties, there was a big to-do made by the Grayson family,” Mrs. Donahue mused aloud.

  “Mumsie’s family?”

  “Mm-hmm. Of course, Imogene wasn’t here then. She’d moved out of the area. It was later when she moved back. But her brother, Ivan, pitched a fit like none I’ve ever seen after their parents died. Died within days of each other, like two souls who couldn’t stand to be apart.”

  “Oh, how romantic!” Mrs. Prentiss clapped her hand to her heart.

  Aggie tossed her a glance but kept her attention riveted on Mrs. Donahue. “Ivan would have been my great-uncle. What did he pitch a fit about?”

  “Well, he wasn’t a nice man, and I vaguely recall it had something to do with wanting to bury his parents at the old cemetery by the ammunition plant
. I don’t know why. I think—he had a sister at Mill Creek Cemetery, so I’m not sure why his parents were too good to be buried there.” Mrs. Donahue took a sip of tea.

  Jane’s small sigh of exasperation puffed out her round, powdery cheeks. “Well, of course anyone would want to be buried with family. If the Grayson family plots were on the plant property, they couldn’t have buried Hazel there when she died, because the plant was in full production. The government wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Oh. Well, to be sure then.” Mrs. Donahue nodded.

  “So, Uncle Ivan somehow obtained permission to bury Mumsie’s parents in the old family cemetery on government property?” Aggie ventured.

  Mrs. Donahue nodded. “I think so? It’s amazing I even remember that much.”

  “They probably didn’t want to be buried next to Hazel anyway,” Mrs. Prentiss said. “I remember my mother saying Hazel died and was a bit of a town pariah. Everyone tried to ignore the fact she’d existed.”

  Aggie drew back, dropping her car keys on the table next to the tea and sinking onto the edge of the bed by Mumsie’s legs. “Mumsie never said anything about that.”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t!” Jane said quickly. “Her life has been devoted to honoring her sister.”

  “Then—why was Hazel a pariah?”

  Mrs. Donahue coughed and drank her tea, making a pretense of looking out the hospital window. Mrs. Prentiss busied herself with breaking down the cardboard cup carrier so she could stuff it into the room’s recycling bin.

  Jane looked between the two, narrowed her eyes, and then patted the side of her head as though she needed to remember clearly. She met Aggie’s eyes. “Rumor had it that Hazel helped with the destruction of the post office and the town hall. One was an explosion, the other a fire.”

  Aggie recalled the newspaper articles she’d read at the library. “But—she was already dead? How could she have helped?”

  Jane clicked her tongue. “No one knows. That’s why it’s just a rumor. They say Hazel got mixed up in some snafu against the United States and got killed for it.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Donahue protested, casting a corrective look at Jane. “No, no. She wasn’t involved in espionage!”

  “I never said she was!” Jane snapped.

  “That’s so exaggerated!” Mrs. Prentiss tapped her finger on her teacup. “It sounds like a spy novel. Next you’ll say she fell in love with a Nazi and they planned to rally the strong German population of our town and create a new society!”

  “Careful.” Jane’s voice lowered. “Also not politically correct.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mrs. Prentiss rolled her eyes at Jane and leveled a frank look at Aggie, who was about ready to shout at all of them to stop bantering in circles and speak only the facts.

  “The fact is,” Mrs. Prentiss began to Aggie’s relief, “it was a local skirmish. They caught whoever it was. End of story. Whether Hazel was involved or not was simply part of town gossip. Nothing more.”

  The hospital room was quiet for a moment, and then Mrs. Donahue cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice sounded a bit wobbly, as though weepy at some distant memory. “My mother told me that when the boys came home from the war, people thought the world would go back to the way it was before. But it didn’t. The war lived on in souls for years after, and people were just never really the same again.”

  CHAPTER 33

  It appears female.” Collin’s voice through the phone brought an odd thrill to Aggie. She really needed to get past this flip-of-the-stomach thing whenever he was around.

  “The body?” Aggie adjusted her grip on her phone as she made her way across the hospital parking lot.

  “Skeleton, actually.”

  “Ah, wonderful.” She tried to sound flippantly interested, but Aggie was more than happy now to not be at the mystery grave’s exhumation.

  “It’s going to be a beast to determine the individual’s age. For that matter, how long she’s been dead. Although, on my initial assessment, she appears to have wisdom teeth, so that would put her age to be eighteen or more at time of death. And the fact it’s strictly skeletal remains tells me it’s more than likely been many years. Still, decomp and time deceased are wonky things to try to calculate.”

  Aggie opened her car door, tossing her bag onto the passenger seat. “How will you find out?”

  “I’ll complete my initial assessment here in a bit, but they’ll take the remains to a lab for an assortment of lovely tests in order to make more accurate determinations. Will you hop down to see her before she goes?”

  Aggie choked, coughed, then slipped into the driver’s seat, shutting the car door. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “You really should! It’s quite remarkable. I assure you, she’s not gruesome in the slightest.”

  “I almost passed out at the fake skeleton in Mumsie’s yard the first day I arrived in Mill Creek. How do you expect me to stay standing when I know I’m staring at a real one?”

  Collin’s chuckle seemed far too relaxed considering the topic of conversation. It just went to show how familiar he was with his field of work. “Very well then. I shall do my work here on my own and text you my theories.”

  She didn’t miss the inflection on the word text. At least he was a fast learner and knew her preferred form of communication. Aggie didn’t want to be guilty of abusing too much time off from the cemetery, but today seemed like a marvelous day to avoid work.

  “If Mr. Richardson is there, will you tell him that I plan to return tomorrow? I have a few errands I need to run today for—um—Mumsie.” She faltered. It was a tiny white lie. Mumsie hadn’t exactly asked her to visit the old cemetery and check out the graves there. But if Hazel was somehow the black sheep of the family, Mumsie’s devotion to her memory told Aggie that Mumsie didn’t believe the accusations against Hazel were real. It was as though, by having a stroke, Mumsie had dropped her mantle of dedication to finding proof, and Aggie had inadvertently picked it up and could now not set it down.

  “Certainly, I can do that.” Collin paused. “Are you all right, Love?”

  His question was straightforward and really shouldn’t have mattered much to Aggie, but somehow it did. She blinked furiously as her eyes filled. “I-I’m fine.”

  “You’re such a horrific liar, Agnes.”

  “No, really, I’m fine.”

  “And I’m the king of England. Very well, do what you will. If you need, drop me a line, eh?”

  Drop him a line? Aggie had the sudden desire to race over to the cemetery—skeletal remains or not—and hide her face in his chest, breathe in that old spicy aroma, and feel the crisp cotton of his perfectly ironed shirt.

  “Okay.” It was all she had to offer in response.

  “And, Love?”

  He really needed to stop calling her that! “Yes?”

  “A wise man once said, ‘When you walk a lonely road, take hold of the hand of a friend when it is offered to you.’”

  That belonged on a calendar. Aggie smiled a resigned smile into the phone. “And who was the wise man?”

  Collin’s voice held a bit of humor laced with a large measure of intent. “Me.”

  Aggie wasn’t sure what to say to that. Friendship was a great thing and all, but sometimes it was offered and then withdrawn when the going got tough. And something deep inside told Aggie that she had yet to experience the tough. If Collin was anything like the typical male of her experience, he wouldn’t have enough stamina to stick with her.

  “Sometimes walking alone is safer,” Aggie responded at last, turning the key to fire up her car’s engine.

  “Self-preserving, yes. But satisfying? Hardly.” Collin’s words pierced her. Made her wish for a moment that she could really believe him. Truly believe that, somehow, God reached down from heaven and plopped someone next to you to be His hands and feet in your life, and that they would carry you when you couldn’t walk on your own.

  Aggie rested her hand on the steering
wheel, even though she had yet to put the car into reverse and back out of the parking spot. “How do you know that God is truly real, and if He is real, that He cares?” The question came out of nowhere, surprising even her. “It doesn’t seem evident He’s all that concerned with sparing us from pain.”

  Collin was quiet. Aggie pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the screen to check whether the connection had been cut. She heard his voice and raised the phone again so she could listen.

  “People make the mistake of thinking if God were real, we’d live in some sort of Utopia. But we won’t, not when we’re human and have the nasty habit of making awful errors. Not to mention, God did sort of create a Utopia—the Garden of Eden—but that’s another topic for another day. All I can say right now is that we sell God short when we look at the pain. Instead, we should focus on what He’s provided us to help us heal.”

  “Magic juice?” Aggie quipped.

  Collin chuckled. “No, Love. His medicine comes in various forms, although I’ve found the best is simply being in the company of those willing to fight for you. One person can easily be overpowered, but two? They can defend themselves. Add a third, and it’s a very difficult combination to break.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to do with that explanation.” Aggie had to be honest. Religion, faith, God—none of these were new concepts to her. They just weren’t practiced.

  Collin answered with a softness that wrapped around her soul. “Just call me if you need to. It’s really quite simple.”

  Aggie ended the call, setting her phone on the seat beside her. She gripped the wheel and stared through the windshield at the hospital that rose in front of her. Mumsie’s room window was on the fourth floor, sixth window in. She fixated on it.

  Just that simple.

  One of these days, she knew she was going to break. That the dam that held back the tears since the day she’d heard the last breath slip from her mom’s lips would collapse. The very idea that she could move beyond Mom’s death—experience life without Mom—that was what kept her from healing, from taking comfort and strength from others. It was a betrayal. A betrayal to Mom and everything they’d experienced together. Their closeness, the intimacy of mother and daughter, the way Mom could read her soul by just looking into her eyes—how could Aggie move on and close that chapter of her life? It was better to leave it a raw, gaping wound. At least then, Mom was still with her, even if Aggie’s spirit was slowly dying its own death at the hand of a tenacious grief. At least then, Aggie didn’t close the door and walk away, leaving Mom behind.