The Innocent

by Ann H. Gabhart

  A Shaker man came across the road. “Where are you trying to take the dog?” he asked. Then before Mitchell could answer, the man looked down the path. “Nothing down that way except an old home place, but the cabin’s long gone. We used the logs for a barn years ago.”

  “Are you sure nothing’s there now?” Mitchell asked.

  “Naught but an old cellar. Not used for anything these days. Could have fallen in by now.”

  “How far?”

  The man pointed. “See those walnut trees yonder? You used to be able to see a dirt path along about there.”

  “Show me,” Mitchell said.

  The Shaker looked past Mitchell toward the village. “I have duties.”

  “Your first duty is to help me find one of your sisters who is missing. And this dog, her dog, thinks she went that way.”

  “Unlikely, but I will show you the path.” He looked back at the dog and pulled out his handkerchief. He ripped it into three strips and tied them together. “Slip this under the dog’s belly to keep the weight off that sore leg.”

  Asher whined and began walking again with Mitchell holding him up.

  The Shaker nodded approval before striding in front of them, obviously eager to be finished with the interruption to his duties. When he stopped to point out the path, he said, “Looks as if someone’s been passing this way. Can’t imagine why.”

  His heart pounding, Mitchell could barely keep from pushing past the Shaker, but he let the man lead the way. Then the man pointed again. “There’s a graveyard over there. And look at that. For all the world, it looks like a new grave.”

  Please, Lord. The words came unbidden to Mitchell’s mind. He couldn’t be too late. He forced himself to turn toward the fresh grave and remembered the dirt on Elder Derron’s shoes. The Shaker man headed toward the graveyard, but when Mitchell moved to follow him, Asher refused to go. Instead he pulled against Mitchell and barked. Then Mitchell heard it too. A whistle. Not a bird. A person’s whistle. Carlyn whistling for Asher.

  He turned back toward the old cellar and ran with the dog. He could hear her now, calling to Asher. Calling to him. He couldn’t lift the heavy wooden bar away from the door fast enough. She exploded out of the cellar into his arms.

  “I knew you would come. I knew you wouldn’t give up until you found me.”

  Asher tried to nose between them, but Mitchell kept holding her. He never wanted to turn her loose ever again. She twisted away from him to reach down to the dog. She laughed. “The Lord gave me a dog.”

  “And a sheriff.” Mitchell kept one arm around her and she seemed happy with that.

  She kept her hand on Asher’s head, but looked back at Mitchell. “And a sheriff.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “I love you, Carlyn. Let me take you away from here.”

  She blinked as though the light was still too strong or perhaps his words too sudden. But he couldn’t hold them back.

  “I—” she started, but he jumped in front of whatever she was about to say. He couldn’t bear to hear her refusal. Not now when he’d just been given the gift of seeing her alive and whole.

  “Don’t say no.” He rushed out his words. “I know we can’t marry. Not until you know about your husband. But you aren’t a Shaker. Let me find you a better place and then maybe someday you’ll be ready for a place with me.”

  She put her fingers over his lips. “Shh. Give me time. Let me feel the sunshine. I’ve been in the dark too long.”

  He picked her up then and carried her up the stone steps to the brightest spot of sunlight he could see. She put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. Asher limped after them, obviously wishing Mitchell out of his way, but at least not nipping his ankles. Mitchell stopped walking but continued to hold her.

  After a moment, she raised her head. “I can walk, you know.”

  “I know.” He gently set her on her feet, but kept his arms around her. “I want to kiss you. Would one kiss be wrong?”

  “Nay.” She shook her head then with a frown and changed the Shaker word. “I mean no. A kiss will prove I am yet alive.” She lifted her face toward his.

  Her lips were even sweeter than he imagined. Whatever happened, whether she ever said yes, at least he had this moment with her in his arms.

  38

  Carlyn pulled away from Mitchell and whirled around, lifting her face to the sun while every inch of her tingled with joy. She laughed then, thinking of how she had finally learned to dance like a Shaker. Perhaps joy fell down on them in their worship and filled their heart, just as her heart was filling. With life. With hope. With the promise of tomorrow.

  Then a shadow fell across her. When she looked around and saw the Shaker, she froze. With the sun behind the man, she couldn’t see his face, but who else would it be but Elder Derron? Sensing her fear, Asher growled.

  “What’s wrong?” Mitchell had his arm around her again.

  “It’s him.” She pointed. Mitchell wouldn’t know to suspect him until it might be too late. The elder might have her gun and force them both back in the cellar. “He locked me in there.”

  “Nay, Sister. I would not do such a thing.” The man stepped closer.

  Relief swept through Carlyn. It wasn’t the elder, but another Shaker. “I thought you were Elder Derron.”

  “Surely you have no reason to fear him either,” the Shaker man said. “But I was right about the grave. Someone has been buried there.”

  “Curt Whitlow,” Carlyn said. “Elder Derron buried him last night. He was in the cellar.”

  “Are you saying the elder killed Curt Whitlow?” Mitchell asked.

  “Nay, that could not be so,” the Shaker said. “The elder is a man of peace. You must be overwrought, Sister.”

  Carlyn looked from the Shaker to Mitchell. “He said he didn’t kill him, that Curt died while locked away in the cellar.” She looked back at the Shaker. “He claimed not to know why except that your Mother Ann must be helping him, that perhaps she sent demons. But then he shot him.”

  “Nay, Mother Ann sends us love, not demons.” The Shaker recoiled from her words. “Your story does not make sense, Sister.”

  “Why did he shoot him?” Even Mitchell sounded a little skeptical.

  “So if the grave was found, people would think I killed him. He had my gun.” Carlyn was relieved Mitchell kept his arm around her.

  “You should not make up such dreadful stories, my sister.” The Shaker sounded so disapproving that Asher growled at him again.

  “She’s not making up anything.” Mitchell stared down the man. “If she said he did it, then he did. We may never know why.”

  “That can be easily solved. We will ask him.” The Shaker turned back toward the main village.

  “He’ll lie. You can’t believe him.” Carlyn twisted around to look up at Mitchell. He had to believe her.

  Mitchell touched her cheek. “You don’t have to worry about him now. He has to face his Maker with those lies.”

  “He’s dead?” Carlyn couldn’t stop trembling.

  The Shaker man whipped around to stare first at Mitchell, then the gun he wore. “How?”

  “I didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re thinking. His own demons got to him first.” Mitchell tightened his arm around Carlyn and looked down at her. “When he heard Sister Edna had come to and was talking, he took his own life.”

  “I do not believe you,” the Shaker said. “Not Elder Derron. He would not commit such a sin. One that cannot be forgiven.”

  “Believe me or not, evil has been afoot here in your village and the elder succumbed to it.” Mitchell’s voice changed as he gave the man orders. “Tell your elders that I will need some men to dig up Whitlow’s body and a wagon to carry it back to town. His family will want to give him a proper burial.”

  Carlyn felt a wave of sorrow for Curt’s widow. A widow like her.

  After the man left, Mitchell tightened his arm around Carlyn’s waist. “I’ll take you bac
k to one of the Shaker houses. You’ll have to wait for me there while I take care of things here.”

  “Elder Derron is really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “So much death. Perhaps my coming here did bring them misfortune as he said.” She was suddenly so tired.

  “He brought the misfortune on himself by wrong actions. You had nothing to do with it.”

  “But if I hadn’t seen Curt and Brother Henry arguing, perhaps none of this would have happened.” Carlyn stared down at the ground.

  “The barn would have still burned. I doubt Elder Derron lit that fire.”

  “He said not. He claimed his Mother Ann was protecting him by allowing Brother Henry to die in the fire so he couldn’t tell anyone about the trouble the elder was in with Curt. Everything else grew from that.”

  “Nothing about it was your fault, Carlyn. Nothing.”

  “Not all would say that is true.”

  “Sister Edna would. She demanded I find you.”

  Carlyn felt a smile coming back awake inside her. “She is demanding, but I should go see her. To thank her. Who would have ever thought I might owe my life to Sister Edna and a dog.” She reached down and laid her hand on Asher’s head.

  “Don’t forget the sheriff.”

  She looked back up at him then. “I could never forget the sheriff.” The smile slid out on her face.

  “Then will you leave here with me?” He turned her toward the Shaker village and kept her close to him while they walked. “Let me find you a place?”

  She liked it there in this place beside him. She looked back at Asher limping along behind them. “There has to be room for Asher.”

  “No worries there.” Mitchell glanced back at the dog too. “Mrs. Snowden has been beside herself ever since he got away from her at the boardinghouse. He has a way of worming into your affections.”

  “That he does.”

  Mitchell’s arm tensed a little around her. “Do you think I might ever gain some of your affections?”

  “You already have.” Carlyn felt her cheeks warm.

  “Then can there be hope of someday for us?”

  His voice sounded so tentative, so unsure, that she couldn’t keep from smiling up at him. “There’s always hope, Mitchell.” She stopped and turned to look up at him. “When you asked before, I wasn’t going to say no. But I need time. Time to properly mourn Ambrose.”

  “So you believe he’s gone now?”

  “I know. I got a letter from a woman in the South who took him in after he was wounded in one of the battles. She buried him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  And because he looked as if he really meant it, her heart warmed toward him even more. “He was a good man and I loved him very much.”

  “I know.” He stared down into her eyes as though he could see to her heart. Perhaps he did as he went on. “But the heart has room for many loves.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does.” Then she brazenly tiptoed up and put her lips against his there in the middle of the Shaker village with the sun shining down on them.

  Epilogue

  JUNE 2, 1866

  The sun was shining. The day was perfect. The night before, Carlyn had taken off her black mourning dress and hung it in the back of the wardrobe in her room at Mrs. Snowden’s. Now Asher swept his tail back and forth across the floor when she pulled the yellow dress out, as if he knew the sight of that dress meant everything was changing for them.

  The dress was ordinary with few frills or ruffles, but it was the color of sunshine. The minute she laid eyes on the bolt of cloth at Hopkin’s Dry Goods Store a month ago she’d known that it would become the dress she would wear to begin her new life. With the sheriff. With Mitchell.

  He had courted her with sweet patience and deliberate diligence after she came away from the Shaker village with him. The very sight of him now warmed her, like the sun was overhead and shining straight down on her.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Snowden was baking a cake big enough for the whole town. At noon, Pastor Rory would stand in front of them in the parlor downstairs and read the words to tie Carlyn and Mitchell together till death parted them.

  Carlyn opened her mother’s Bible and touched Ambrose’s letter stored there next to Psalm 23. She didn’t have to read his words. They were written on her heart and she imagined him smiling down on her. He would be glad she’d found a man like Mitchell to father the children they had once dreamed of having together.

  Below her, she heard Berdine come in the boardinghouse and call a greeting to Mrs. Snowden. Berdine was only weeks from delivering her first child. The first of half a dozen at least, she assured Carlyn.

  Carlyn closed the Bible and ran her hand over the cover. Then she pulled the yellow dress over her head, smoothed the skirt down over her petticoats, and quickly fastened the buttons.

  She took a last look around the room that had been her home for months. She would not be sleeping there this night. Mitchell had found them a house on the edge of town and had been spending every free moment building a picket fence around the yard. A place for Asher, he said, but she knew they were both seeing children playing with Asher in the sunshine.

  Everything was good. She looked over at her mother’s Bible again and her mother’s voice whispered in her head.

  Pray anyway.

  And so she did. With a glad and thankful heart.

  Acknowledgments

  It has been good to return to my Harmony Hill Shaker village and walk those Shaker paths again. Without the encouragement of my editor, Lonnie Hull DuPont, I might never have discovered so many stories in that village. Lonnie is one of those people who are fun to work with and get to know. I love it when she starts hitting those exclamation marks!! So thanks, Lonnie.

  On in the editing process, Barb Barnes makes sure I don’t get carried away with pet words and run-on sentences that make readers dizzy. She keeps my characters on task and me too. Barb, you’ve made me a better writer. Thanks to Lindsay Davis too who is always ready to help whatever the need. A big thanks to the whole publishing team at Revell Books for putting my story in a great package and getting it in front of readers.

  And of course I can never thank my agent, Wendy Lawton, enough. She encourages me and prays for me and laughs with me.

  Here at home, I am blessed to have a wonderful family who support me and read my stories. You’re the best.

  Last of all I thank the Lord for giving me stories to share with you, and for you, my reading friends. I appreciate how you have been willing to travel with me from Rosey Corner to Hollyhill to Harmony Hill or wherever my imagination might take us. Who knows where we might go next? But wherever it is, I hope we’ll all remember Carlyn’s mother’s advice to “pray anyway” no matter our circumstances.

  Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of more than twenty novels for adults and young adults. Angel Sister, Ann’s first Rosey Corner book, was a nominee for inspirational novel of 2011 by RT Book Reviews magazine. Her Shaker novel, The Outsider, was a Christian Book Awards finalist in the fiction category. She lives on a farm not far from where she was born in rural Kentucky. She and her husband are blessed with three children, three in-law children, and nine grandchildren. Ann loves reading books, watching her grandkids grow up, and walking with her dog, Oscar.

  Ann enjoys connecting with readers on her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/anngabhart where you can peek over her shoulder for her “Sunday mornings coming down,” see bits of Shaker history on “Shaker Wednesdays” or laugh with her on “Friday smiles” day. Then, come visit Ann at One Writer’s Journal, www.annhgabhart.blogspot.com. You never know what might show up there. Find out more at www.annhgabhart.com.

  Books by Ann Gabhart

  The Outsider

  The Believer

  The Seeker

  The Blessed

  The Gifted

  The Innocent

  Words Spoken True

  Angel Sister

  Small Town Girl


  Love Comes Home

  Christmas at Harmony Hill

  THE HEART OF HOLLYHILL

  Scent of Lilacs

  Orchard of Hope

  Summer of Joy

  AnnHGabhart.com

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