Down by the River

by Lin Stepp

  “When is Vincent’s birthday?”

  “Next week on Wednesday. I sort of hinted that we might invite him for dinner that night—have a special supper and a cake or something. I thought I’d ask Jack, too.” She grinned at Grace mischievously, more like the Margaret who Grace knew so well.

  Grace cocked an eye at her. “And can I assume that I’m cooking this birthday dinner?”

  Margaret grinned. “I was hoping you would. Vincent loves your roast beef and mashed potatoes. Maybe we could have that? I’ll help. And I can make the cake.”

  “That sounds like a good deal. I can do Wednesday.”

  Later that day, Grace wandered through the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum on the River Road with the Scouts. She’d walked by the train engine and the museum hundreds of times, but she’d never taken the time before today to actually walk through the museum or to explore the museum gift shop. The historic museum proved to be interesting—and the little gift shop charming.

  Grace and the girls were reading about Colonel W. B. Townsend’s life and the early days of the Townsend community, when Grace’s cell phone rang. Grace fished it out of her shoulder bag to answer it.

  “Mother!” Margaret’s voice rang out, frightened and strained. “That man is following me—you know, Crazy Man. I know it’s him. I sort of recognize him from the times I thought I saw him watching me. He has on that same hat—like a cowboy hat. I thought I saw him sitting in an old black truck when I came out of the Hart Gallery, but I wasn’t sure. But now he’s following me.”

  “Good heavens, Margaret! Where are you?” Grace asked, pulling away from the talk of the girls to hear Margaret better.

  “Well, I was driving down the main highway through Townsend heading back toward the inn, but when I saw that man following me in my rearview mirror, I turned off on the Wears Valley Road—trying to lose him. I didn’t think he would turn and follow me, but he did. He’s staying a good distance behind me, but I swear, I really think he’s following me, Mother.”

  “Oh, Margaret.” Grace paced anxiously. “Look for some business or place where you can pull over along the road and run inside.”

  “There really isn’t much along here. It’s rural, and the road is narrow and winding. Listen, you call the sheriff, okay? Maybe he can come follow us and catch this man—if it’s him. Describe the truck to him and tell him where I am. I’m going to keep driving down the highway. Give the sheriff some time to get here. After a while, I’ll find a place to pull off. Or I might speed up and try to lose him. Maybe go to that waterfall place Vince took me to …” Her voice crackled out. “I’m losing my phone signal now. Call the sheriff, okay? …” And then Margaret’s voice faded out.

  Panicked, Grace called into her cell phone. “Margaret? Margaret? Are you still there? Are you all right?”

  Morgan came over to stand close to Grace. “Are you okay, Ms. Grace?”

  Grace saw that most of the girls were watching her with concerned faces. She patted Morgan’s shoulder. “No, dear. I’m afraid I’m not okay. There’s some trouble with Margaret. I need to go home.”

  She looked around in panic for Kyleen and then quickly explained the situation to her. “Can you watch the girls and walk them back to the house? I need to make several calls in the gift shop quickly and then run down to the house in case Margaret tries to call me on the land line there.”

  Her heart pounding, Grace raced over to the depot gift shop to look up the sheriff’s number. After reaching him—and then phoning Jack—she headed out of the shop to start back toward the Mimosa. Kyleen and the girls rushed out to follow her.

  “The girls want to go back with you.” Kyleen looked apologetic. “They heard us talking and they’re all worried about Margaret. They’re also scared about Crazy Man and what he might do.”

  Back at the Mimosa, the girls called their mothers one by one to come pick them up. Grace tried her best to put up a valiant front, not wanting to make the girls any more fearful than they were. Word got out quickly in the community. Jack came over to stay with Grace as the last of the girls were being picked up. Meredith was in tears by now, worrying about Margaret—and Morgan, as usual, was angry, talking about what people should do to someone who scared people like Crazy Man did.

  “It isn’t right!” she exclaimed.

  Vincent came barging in the back door at that moment. “I just heard. Have you had another call from Margaret? Is she all right?”

  Grace noticed this time Vincent wasn’t as calm as he usually was in crisis situations. If she hadn’t been so worried herself, she would have smiled.

  Vincent kept pacing the floor and running his hands through his hair while Grace and Jack tried to tell him what had happened.

  “I was in Maryville doing a book talk,” he said. “And when I got home, I got Jack’s message on the machine… .” His voice trailed off.

  The phone rang then. Jack grabbed it before Grace could.

  “It’s the sheriff,” he mouthed to them. Jack listened, relaying the information from Swofford Walker as he heard it. “They lost the truck. They saw it in the distance, but it turned off and they lost it.” He shook his head in exasperation.

  Grace stepped forward. “What about Margaret? Is she all right?”

  Swofford obviously heard her question. “Swofford said they’ve driven down the road looking for Margaret, but they can’t find her car.” Jack paused, listening. “He says she must have turned off somewhere. A man working out in the field said he saw her car speeding down the highway. He noticed it because she was going way too fast. He also noticed the truck come along later. It’s the only sighting the police have of her.”

  Jack pushed his hair back from his forehead restlessly. “They don’t think the truck was following her when it turned off. They think the man saw the police cars and turned off on a road he knew to lose them.”

  Jack talked for a few more minutes and then hung up. “They don’t know where Margaret is.” He paced across the room restlessly. “Grace, what did she tell you again about where she might go?”

  Grace tried to remember. “Something about a waterfall.”

  Jack slumped into a chair and then looked at Vincent. “Margaret had this crazy idea, Vince, that she’d lead the guy along for a while so the sheriff could get there. Then she said she’d speed up and lose him if she couldn’t pull off somewhere.”

  Grace tried to think. “She said something about going someplace where you and she had been, Vincent … to a waterfall or something.”

  Vincent’s face lightened, and then he smiled in relief. “Thank God. I know where she’s gone. I’ll go see if I can find her. She must be frightened.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Jack stood up.

  “So will I.” Grace reached for her purse and phone.

  “No.” Vincent shook his head and held up a hand. “Let me go. Please. I want to go alone. I feel that I’m supposed to. I don’t think there is any danger of Crazy Man’s having followed her there. Margaret will just be hiding out—afraid and worried. Wondering when it might be safe to try to come back. Also, if she’s not at the falls, the two of you may need to go find her somewhere else when there is a lead.”

  Vincent looked at Grace. “Will you trust me to go? I know right where Slippery Rock Falls is. That must be the waterfall she’s talking about. It’s up Piney Road off Highway 321 on a narrow, rural, ridgetop lane behind the Buckeye Knob Camp. I took her there not long ago. I know right where the path is that leads to the falls.”

  Grace looked into Vincent’s passionate blue eyes. How could she say no?

  She nodded, leaning to Jack instinctively for support.

  “Vince could be right.” Jack agreed. “Swofford might get a lead on where Margaret has gone or find her himself. Then we might be needed. We don’t know if she really was able to get off the main highway and find her way to these falls, anyway. You were cut off, after all. She might have had several plans running through her mind. “


  “I promise I’ll call you if I find her.” Vince was already starting out the door. “I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  Grace sighed as Vincent shut the door behind him. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing to let him go alone?”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah. Margaret might not have been able to turn off the highway and try to get to those falls. Vince said she’d only been there once. The sheriff may find her car up the road soon. She might have pulled off somewhere, like you suggested to her, and gone into a business or store.”

  “Then why hasn’t she called?” Grace’s voice shook at the question.

  “I don’t know.” Jack put his arm around Grace in comfort.

  “Where are your girls?” She looked around.

  Jack grinned at her. “I guess you were so upset you didn’t notice that Samantha took them home with her when she picked up Daisy.”

  Grace shook her head.

  Jack led her toward the kitchen. “Let’s go make something to eat and then sit down to wait.”

  “I couldn’t eat anything, Jack. I’m too upset.”

  “Well, I can.” He flashed her a smile. “Stress always makes me want to eat. You can help me find something to eat even if you don’t want anything yourself.”

  Jack started toward the kitchen.

  Grace looked after him anxiously. “You’ll stay here and wait with me until we hear?”

  Jack turned back to kiss her lightly. “Where else would I be, Grace?” His voice was gentle. “Of course I’ll stay. I’m not running out on this one.”

  True to his word, Jack stayed with Grace for the next tense hour or two, answering the phones for her, fending off the concerned—or simply nosy—calls that came in. It was Jack who took the call from Vincent saying he’d found Margaret and that she was all right.

  “They’re on their way home,” he told Grace. “Vince wanted Margaret to leave her car, but she insisted on driving herself back.”

  Grace smiled in relief. “That shows more than anything that Margaret is all right. Praise God.”

  “Yeah.” Jack smiled and then gave Grace a thoughtful look. “You know this is the first time I ever prayed with a woman about anything?”

  “Really?” She looked over at Jack, remembering that the two of them had prayed for Margaret’s safety earlier before Vincent came. And then had prayed again when Vincent left that he or the sheriff would find Margaret and bring her back safe and sound.

  Jack flexed his fingers and studied them. “Did you used to pray with your husband, Charles?”

  Grace saw his gaze lift to her eyes. “No. Charles would have been uncomfortable doing that. So, I guess this is the first time I’ve prayed with a man about anything, either—except for praying with a minister or with my father when I was little.”

  A smile stretched across Jack’s face. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And you were a great comfort to me in this trial, Jack. I’m grateful.”

  He shrugged, but she could tell he was pleased. “I’m glad I could do it right this time. It felt good.”

  Before she could comment on that, Margaret called to talk to Grace herself. And soon, in a flurry of hugs and excitement, she and Vince were back. Margaret sat in the living room telling them everything that had happened in her wonderfully dramatic way.

  “I am so disappointed they didn’t catch him.” Her mouth tightened. “I know it was him following me. I got a feeling—and goose bumps—when I saw him, and then he followed me when I turned off the Townsend highway.”

  Jack, ever practical, said, “It could have been a coincidence, Margaret.”

  “No.” She gave him a steely look. “I recognized that hat pulled down over his eyes. A cowboy hat. Not many people wear cowboy hats here, Jack. And there was something creepy about the way he watched me from his truck in the parking lot, a kind of glazed-over look.” She shivered.

  Vincent took her hand in his. “They’ll find him now. They have more of a description than ever before—plus a description of the truck he was driving.”

  “It had a front headlight out. I told the sheriff that.” Margaret leaned back into the sofa, settling into Vince’s arm comfortably.

  He looked down at her, and there was something different in the way they looked at each other. Grace felt almost uncomfortable watching Vincent gaze intently down into her daughter’s eyes and seeing Margaret look back up into his face to smile softly.

  She shifted her eyes to Jack’s and saw him raise an eyebrow and grin. He’d noticed it, too. Something was different with Margaret and Vincent.

  Margaret turned then to smile at her mother and Jack broadly. “Vincent and I are going to get married, Mother.”

  Grace sucked in a breath in surprise.

  Margaret looked up at Vincent again with that worshipful gaze Grace had never seen on her daughter’s face before. “Vincent was the first thing I thought about when I was afraid and when I was hiding out at the falls, Mother. And when he walked into the clearing beside the falls, I knew. Just like that, I knew. We’re supposed to be together, Vincent and I. He knows, too.”

  Margaret smiled radiantly at Vincent once more. He hugged her closer under his arm before lifting his eyebrows and passing a smug and knowing look across at Grace. She knew he was remembering that first night he met Margaret—right here at the Mimosa Inn not so long ago—and what he had told Grace that night.

  Jack grinned. “Guess you had a right witness, Vince, to go find Margaret on your own and be the hero. Look what it got you? Congratulations, Preacher!”

  Margaret threw a sofa cushion at Jack. “You be nice, Jack Teague. This is a special occasion.”

  Late that night, Margaret came padding into Grace’s bedroom in her nightgown to curl up on the bed with her. Margaret had always loved to lie in bed at night and talk to Grace when she was smaller.

  “Are you happy, Margaret?” Grace asked.

  “Yes. And very sure I’ve made the right decision, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “You weren’t so sure this morning. Are you positive it wasn’t just the emotions of the day that played into this sudden pronouncement?”

  “No. I was thinking of it before he came to find me. Even knowing, somehow, that it would be Vincent who would come to find me. I guess that sounds silly.”

  “No. Not silly.”

  “He told me he loved me when he came, Mother. It was the first time. And I couldn’t keep the words back from telling him the same.”

  Grace patted Margaret’s hand. “Those are special memories to cherish.”

  Margaret hugged a pillow to herself and then turned to give her mother a shy smile. “You know how passionate Vincent is when he’s preaching? Well, it’s no comparison to what he’s like when he’s feeling romantic! Whew! Who would have thought?”

  Grace found it hard to comment. This was her little girl, after all.

  Margaret grinned at her mother. “I guess that’s too much information, huh?”

  Grace laughed and reached over to squeeze Margaret’s hand. “Just as long as you’re happy, darling.”

  “I am. I really am, Mother.”

  “What about those concerns you had when we were talking earlier this morning? Have you forgotten about those?”

  “No.” Margaret hugged the pillow to her. “We talked about everything, Mother. Vincent said that, wherever I wanted to go to school after I graduate next summer, he would go with me. He has his books, you know. He doesn’t really need his pastor’s income. He said he could always find places to preach or give lectures on his books in whatever place I get the best offer to study. He’s willing to go wherever I need to go.”

  “That’s very generous.”

  “He is so supportive of my dreams and goals, Mother. He also really believes I have a gift for writing music. He said, laughing, that maybe we’d just end up back in Montreat someday, living near the conference center where he grew up, writing books and
writing music—him doing lectures and events and me playing for praise and worship services. That was a sweet idea, wasn’t it?”

  Grace kept her comments to herself about this. She had a feeling that none of Vincent’s words were ever idle words. She sighed. At least Montreat was only about two and a half hours away.

  “Did you talk about a date when you might get married?” Grace asked.

  “Probably not until I graduate.” Margaret giggled. “If we can wait until then.”

  Margaret turned to look at Grace. “Do you think I could live with you and commute to Maryville this year, Mother? That way I would be closer to Vincent. We could see each other more.”

  “Of course.” Grace squeezed Margaret’s hand. “It would delight me to have you live here with me instead of in the dorm.”

  As Grace drifted to sleep later, she thought how nice it was that the daughter she had thought she’d lost would be so close to her now. On a last thought, before sleep claimed her, Grace wondered what Jane Conley would have to say about all this. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t be “congratulations.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The atmosphere was tense around the River Road community over the next week. It made Jack nervous that Crazy Man had appeared so openly. He knew he’d been cross and overprotective with the girls because of it—causing Morgan and Meredith to flash out in anger at him several times.

  “You can’t lock us up in a cage because some crazy goon is leaving notes and was maybe following Margaret around!” Morgan had shouted at him defiantly with both hands on her hips several days ago.

  Jack had just told the girls he wasn’t going to let them go over to Kinzel Springs to a spend-the-night party one of the Scouts was having for her birthday.

  “It’s only to spend the night at Mary Jean Watkins’s house.” Meredith gave him a wounded, puppy-dog look. “There will be a mommy and a daddy there.”