Refuge on Leebrick (The Hills of Burlington Book 4)

by Jacie Middlemann

  “Wait.” Carrie held her hand up much like a teacher would at the front of the classroom asking…in a demanding sort of way…for silence and expecting it. Carrie didn’t do it out of any sense of authority just simply an efficient way to allow her to speak. She didn’t want to get caught up in what she’d already come to terms with. She wanted to get to the gist of it. “I don’t doubt for a moment Beth senses…hears…something. We all do. I do.” And admitting it didn’t necessarily make it any easier to deal with. “But yesterday…well yesterday was just…” she floundered looking for anything that could describe what had gone on in that little room the day before.

  “Intense?” Mary offered quietly with a small smile that spoke only of her own understanding and nothing more.

  “Yeah. Intense works.”

  “What does Court think?” Mary asked, curious, but also buying a little time as she gathered her thoughts on how to answer her cousin.

  “He’s simply enthralled by it,” Carrie said without a thought. “And it’s not just him. When we got home it was all Addie and Rob could talk about. Court went straight to his computer and began researching. He was at it way into the night. And Rob and Addie were right at his side. They had their little tablets out and all of them were going to town at it. Both kids could probably write a text on the Teutonic Order at this point.”

  “I wouldn’t mind knowing a little more about them myself,” Mary said knowing it would do nothing to defuse Carrie but wasn’t at all surprised by anything she’d just heard.

  “Come over tonight for dinner and you’ll get an earful.”

  “I can do that.”

  Carrie looked out the back window much as Mary had earlier. They all did the same from time to time as if it would somehow give them the answers they sought. “Tell me what you think, Mary. What you really think without any couching in an effort to tell me what you think I need to hear.”

  “Ouch.”

  Carrie waved it away as quickly as the words were out of her mouth. “Don’t mind me. I’m pretty sure it’s a mother thing. Mom does it all the time. I’ve learned over the years she probably can’t help herself and I doubt she even realizes it half the time. And in all honestly most the time it simply isn’t an issue. But with this I need to know what you really think.” She looked away from the window and caught and held her cousin’s eyes. Eyes very much like hers. And Casey’s. And all their mothers. “Please.”

  Mary picked up the coffee cup she’d just refilled and sat back down at her cozy little table. Pointed at the chair beside her in a motion that very much requested company. Once Carrie was seated again she began with something she wouldn’t have told her otherwise.

  “When I went to bed last night I was missing my mother something horrible.” She took a long sip of the hot coffee. It did little to ease the ache in her throat, the clenching pain that sometimes came out of nowhere. “I’m certain it had a lot to do with everything that went on yesterday, of Beth’s vision…view…whatever you want to call it…of another daughter’s grief for her mother. Even though it was hundreds of years ago it felt as if it was only yesterday.” She looked at Carrie. “Sometimes even though it’s been years I miss my mother every bit as much as if I’d just lost her that day. The grief is sometimes so fresh in my mind…my heart…I can hardly bear it.”

  “Mary.” Carrie reached her hand out to lay it over the one clenched on the table top near a forgotten cup of coffee.

  “It’s the same for Casey. Maybe it’s the same for every daughter who’s lost their mother. Maybe it’s supposed to be that way. But when it sneaks up on you it’s enough to rip you open all over again.” She looked out the window and into her memories. “I honestly don’t remember a whole lot of those first days after she was gone. But I do remember all that she was to me.” She looked back at Carrie. “Is to me.” She took a long breath to clear her mind and her voice. “Somewhere during the night after I gave up trying to sleep I felt a whisper of wind against my face. Like a soft hand gently rubbing against the side of my face and down around my chin.” She looked into her coffee. Remembered the first time she and her mother had sat down for a cup of coffee together. Sighed at the memory, that rite of passage shared between the two of them, held it close as she did so many others. “Just as my mother used to do when I was a child and she thought I was asleep. She’d always come in to check on all of us before she went to bed. When I had my own children I understood what that nightly gesture was. Because I did the same. It was a need to touch your child one more time before you went to sleep for the night. Kind of a connection to hold close until the morning.” She took another quick sip of her coffee, wished it was hotter. Wished it was something stronger but knew nothing would dull the deep ache that ripped clear through to her soul. “That’s what I feel when it happens. As if my mother is touching me in the only way she can. Letting me know she’s still with me even if we can’t touch as we once could.”

  “Oh, Mary.”

  “Don’t you dare cry. I can’t keep mine at bay if you start crying.”

  “Oh. Crap.”

  Mary laughed. She couldn’t help it. Hearing her prim and proper cousin say any of the many words that simply didn’t fit her image always threw her for a loop. “Don’t be sad, Carrie. I’m only telling you because it’s part of how I look at what happened yesterday. And the only way I can explain that is to tell you about this.” She stared hard at her cousin, willing her to understand at least that much.

  “Okay.” Carrie took a cleansing breath of her own. “Keep going.”

  “We know that this ability, this extra sensitivity or whatever we want to call it, that over the generations has gone from daughter to daughter. It’s gone through the women of the family.”

  “What about Jake? Tom?”

  “I don’t know. And honestly I just haven’t gotten to that aspect of it a whole lot. It was really only yesterday that I finally put together my own thoughts about a lot of this. That and a long night with little to do but think.” She shrugged knowing there was still much to think about but what she’d come to would have to do for now. “Maybe that long night was meant so that I could think it out and not just shrug it off. So I could help you with it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think…” she struggled again with how to explain her thoughts. “Carrie, you know better than many how different the mother-daughter relationship is from the father-daughter relationship. For that matter I think it isn’t just the daughter but any child, boy or girl, the relationship between a mother and her children is simply different from that of the father and those same children. I also believe a lot of it is simply because a woman approaches parenthood from a completely different place than a man. And when you get right down to it that relationship begins long before it does for a man.”

  “You’re talking about the months she carries the child.”

  “You bet,” Mary said firmly. “Don’t ever let anyone try to tell you those months aren’t the first months of motherhood. You worry. You do everything you can in your own life to take care of and protect theirs. You love them even then. That relationship, the connection, it begins for the mother long before it does for the father.”

  “Okay. Keep going.” Carrie repeated her earlier words. Mary was on a roll and she didn’t want her to stop.

  “Aside from whatever extra it is that’s in us…whether it’s our DNA or something else that allows us to sense what others can’t I believe that in some generations there’s someone in the family, a woman, a daughter who is stronger and will perhaps one day be the mother to her own daughter…or son,” she added thinking of Jake and especially Tom. “Someone who also has even more. Who can connect in a way the rest of us can’t, and that says a lot since what the rest of us are able to feel isn’t in your average job resume.”

  “No. That’s for certain.” Carrie twisted her fingers together. Thinking. “You’re talking about Beth.”

  “Yes. And Aunt Leslie and very likely
Tom. Though according to everything we’ve all read that’s unusual. Even Jake being able to sense things as we do is unusual. Dave does too. Before it was always through the daughters.” Mary shook her head. That was for another time. There was enough to think of just with all the rest of it. “I think that for some over the generations, and Beth now, those few somehow have the ability to connect to the other women of our family. Maybe not all the women, maybe just those like them. Stronger than the others. More connected than the others…like us. But even yesterday, Carrie, we could hear what they heard. Maybe it was because we were all in the room together and that made us stronger. We’re always stronger as a family in so many ways. Maybe it was Beth and Tom together with their own special strengths that allowed for it. But whatever it was, I heard…I felt her thoughts. Her grief. And when Tom and Beth laid their hands together on that book I could sense his. Not like I could hers but there was something there. Brief and not nearly as strong as the feelings I could get from her but I felt them.”

  “And you think it all has to do with the strength of the mother-daughter connection.”

  “I think that has a lot to do with it. Maybe even over the generations as family relationships evolved the son and mother connection did too. I would be a fool to think that was all of it. I don’t think any of us could claim to know all the answers to this. I think that’s way beyond us.” She took another deep breath. “And sometimes, Carrie,” she looked at her cousin, thought of her mother and those moments when that slightest touch gave her a sense of closeness that had been lost. “Sometimes I truly believe things are meant and nothing we think, say, or do will change that. I think what Beth is capable of, besides being difficult for her, is a gift and something we need to understand enough to treat it as such. I don’t have the slightest clue how Tom is able to do as she does or at least some variation of it. Maybe over the generations as the family spread out, third cousins might have married ninth cousins twice removed or some such distant relationship without even knowing. But could it have in those instances strengthened the connection? Where once the sons couldn’t sense as the daughters could, over time it just changed? Even Dave has a strong sensitivity to what hasn’t yet happened. Far stronger than mine.”

  “I know.” She knew how open and accepting Mary’s brother was about such things, more so than many of them were. “I need to think about this.”

  “I know you do. I think we all do.” And Mary knew just as Casey would research it to death, Carrie would think it out every which way from Friday until her eyes crossed and her dreams were filled with it. It was simply the way they each dealt with things.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Aunt Charlie, do you have a few minutes to spare?” Mary poked her head around the corner of the room her aunt used for a studio on the second floor of the Carriage House. She’d had Court add almost an entire wall of windows when her aunt decided she was going to begin painting again and wanted to do it here in this place where she’d spent so much of her childhood years. The multitude of windows allowed the room to be awash in light almost throughout the entire day.

  “For you, sweetie, anytime.” Charlie tilted her head, studied what she had accomplished so far that morning then finding she was satisfied, set her brush down in the small tray she’d set up for just that purpose.

  Mary moved around the various stools and chairs her aunt had set up around the room for when she might need them. Many were different heights and some seemed more like lounge chairs than anything else. She took a peek at what her aunt had been working on and even though it wasn’t near complete she could see Addie’s smile. Ever since Carrie’s young niece, the daughter of her ex-husband’s sister had arrived, traumatized by inexcusable and unrelenting online harassment, Charlie had taken her under her expansive wings. This was only the latest of at least a dozen paintings of the girl in what her aunt referred to as her Dreams series. And they had been that. She had painted Addie dressed in everything that anyone could possibly consider as dreamy fairytale dresses. And the young girl on the bridge to being a young woman had loved every single moment of it. Casey had been thrilled as well since each of the paintings had sold in their online store within an hour of its listing. And as always they’d gone without negotiation at the exorbitant prices Casey listed them at. No one dickered when it came to Charlie McMuerty paintings. After being out of the art world for over ten years no one wanted to take a chance on losing out on their chance for a painting by the world renowned artist who just happened to be her aunt.

  “Aunt Charlie,” Mary said softly as she continued to gaze at the painting, kept her voice as casual as she could. “The other day when we were over at the Summer Street house up in your grandmother’s little room, you asked Beth who it was who spoke in the shaky voice. The man that we heard.” She sensed more than heard her aunt’s quiet sigh. Decided in that moment she wasn’t going to dance around it with this woman who’d been so much to her…to all of them for so long. “Will you tell me why?”

  Charlie studied the painting they both stood in front of as if she was contemplating where to go with it. In truth she knew exactly where she was going with it. She always knew from the moment she sat down with a brush in hand how a painting would look when she was done. Sometimes it was better and sometimes she wanted to pitch it. But the end result was always as she planned. But she hadn’t planned on this conversation. Not like this. She figured Casey would come and ask…maybe her daughter. But she hadn’t planned on Mary. And she certainly hadn’t planned that whoever came would be completely upfront with her. And because of that alone she answered honestly whereas with the other two she would have tiptoed around it until they were worn out from it and left her to her painting.

  “I’ve heard that voice in my dreams.” At least she’d always believed they were dreams. She wasn’t certain anymore.

  Mary waited. She knew as well as Carrie that her aunt wouldn’t be rushed. She also knew that whatever she was told there would be more that wasn’t shared. At least not now. Not yet.

  “I heard it most often when I was a child and less so as I got older. When I heard it the day before yesterday it was the first time in years that I had.” But she had recognized it immediately. The grief in his voice had nearly ripped her apart. It had so mirrored that which she’d felt so many years ago. Feelings that still crept up on her, caught her unaware even now. What she hadn’t understood as a child…she did now.

  “Aunt Charlie,” Mary said knowing what she wanted to ask but simply wasn’t certain how to pose the question. It wasn’t one she had planned to ask but now felt that the time would never be better than this moment. “Did your mother ever speak to you about any of this? At all?”

  Charlie sighed feeling a weariness she didn’t care to. This too wasn’t what she was expecting. “My mother was many things and all of them good. She never spoke of it to me. Or to my knowledge to either of my sisters.” She thought of her sister, Leslie. Those years in their teens when she was absorbed by all things that went bump in the night. She’d thought back to many of those times lately…a lot. The late night talks. The questions they never asked and as such never found the answers to. With a deep breath she knew there would be another of these conversations before long. She needed to talk with Jake and Casey…Leslie’s children. She knew she’d talk to Carrie about it but she had yet to decide whether she was going to share it with her other children.

  “Aunt Charlie?”

  “I’m okay, sweetie. I was just thinking about all of this.” She turned back to her other sister’s daughter. “Our mother never spoke of it to any of us. But we heard whispers. We never knew exactly what to make of it so we spun our own version of what they might be. One that turns out to be very close and yet very far away from the truth or at least what seems to be the truth of it as we now know it now.”

  Mary moved closer to her aunt. For a moment her face had been etched with a sadness so keen it hurt to see it. “Aunt Charlie,” she leaned her head
against her aunt’s as she had done for as long as she could remember. And had always found comfort in the closeness, in the whispery floral scent that was unique to her aunt. A mix of baby powder and gardenias. “Will you tell me?”

  “I’ve been writing down what I remember as it comes to me. It’s been a long time…so long ago, sweetie.”

  “I know. It can wait until you’re ready to show us.”

  And they would, Charlie knew. The three girls had always been a unit. They’d had their share of spats most certainly. But no three cousins could be closer than her girls. And they were her girls. Just as all three had been Leslie and Miri’s as well. She took another deep sigh and told her some of what she’d already written down. “My mother and father would talk of it when they thought we were in bed and asleep. Looking back I think they must have been talking about my grandmother. I believe my mother completely turned her back on what it was my grandmother had…what little she knew about it. And I really don’t think she knew that much, she didn’t want to. Didn’t want what she too had, whether or not she believed in it or not. And I think so that she could somehow live with it she convinced herself that it was all in grandmother’s head.”

  Mary sighed, softly, but enough to where the woman beside her heard it.

  “Oh, sweetie. My mother was the best in so many ways. But she wasn’t comfortable with anything that fell outside of what she believed to be normal. And for her, I’m sad to say, normal was a very confining little box at times.”

  “I’m sorry it makes you sad.”

  “Oh, Mary. Many things can make me sad. Thank the Lord that few things keep me that way for long anymore.” She knew her niece thought of the years she’d closed herself away from everything and almost everyone when her world had crumbled apart into pieces.