The Forever Stone

by Gloria Repp

  She bowed her head. “I do forget. Thank you.”

  Slowly Evelyn Bozarth raised her other hand, moved it across the blankets as if it were a robotic accessory, and dropped it down to cover Madeleine’s. “Pray.” She smiled again. “Tell. What-school?”

  Madeleine shook her head. “Back in Virginia. What was your school?”

  “Sandy-Bank. Gone.”

  Nathan returned with a tea pot and cup. “Looks like they’re taking better care of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you getting some good baths now?”

  “Yes. Like-a-spa. You-cleaned-their-clock.”

  He smiled. “Sometimes they need a little push.”

  Evelyn Bozarth looked at him with affection, then at Madeleine. “He-takes . . . ex-tra-or-din-ar-y-care.”

  He pulled her walker close to the bed. “Can you walk for me today?”

  “Yes.”

  And she did, slowly, but with a precision that made him nod. “Excellent. You’re not shuffling as much.”

  She slumped over the walker, tired now, and he helped her back into bed.

  “Don’t push yourself too hard.” He patted her hand.

  She smiled her lopsided smile. “Yes-doc-tor.”

  “I’ll try to get over on Monday,” he said.

  At the doorway, Madeleine paused to give her a little wave. The woman on the bed raised a hand, slowly. “Mol-lee. Come-back.”

  For most of the way back to the Manor, Nathan drove without speaking.

  Finally he said, “One of my favorite people. She taught physics and chemistry, and now each word is a struggle.” He sighed. “She’s only forty-eight. Ten years older than I am. Makes me think.”

  “Makes me ashamed,” Madeleine said. “There I was, angry at God and doubting His love. So upset about Tara.”

  “His love is the only thing you can depend on,” he said quietly. “I’m learning that.”

  She looked out of the window, still ashamed. If only she could learn that too, learn it once and for all, and never forget.

  “Mollie, how long is it since you’ve cried?”

  She closed her eyes, and then opened them slowly. “Not since the first week I was married.”

  He didn’t ask any more questions. He looked straight ahead and told her about going to see the Liberty Bell, but his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  He cared.

  Like he cared for Evelyn Bozarth? How kind he’d been with that poor woman, how gentle!

  As he was with her. Maybe he was just being a good doctor. Kind, compassionate, and thorough. His question, for example. A clinical inquiry?

  The thought nagged at her for the rest of the evening, while she and Aunt Lin talked, while she baked the walnut bread, and while she mixed up a bowl of cookie dough. Chocolate chip, with nuts.

  Perhaps his interest was just sort of . . . professional. Except for the time he’d kissed her. She had managed to squelch that, hadn’t she?

  It shouldn’t matter, anyway. A romantic attachment didn’t fit with independence, and that’s where she was headed.

  Finally she had to leave the kitchen and pray over it. “Do-not-forget,” Evelyn Bozarth had said. “He-loves.”

  Thank you, Lord my Rock. Make me strong. I’ve got to let go of everything else.

  She went back to finish the cookies, and a prayer sang through her mind. You alone are my heart’s desire, and I long to worship You.

  Sunday morning, Howard took charge, since Timothy was away for the weekend. He gave an encouraging message, everyone sang heartily, and Jude stood beside her the whole time with a brooding look on his face. She had told him about the social worker coming to get Tara, and he blamed himself.

  “She kept telling me not to say anything,” he said. “That’s why.”

  “If it weren’t for you, Tara would be dead now, from blood poisoning or hypothermia.”

  She wasn’t sure that he’d been convinced.

  On the way back from church, they discussed where Tara’s branch of the Marrick family might live, and Jude said, “Why don’t we ask Gemma? She’s been hoping you’d come back.”

  “I’ll do it,” Madeleine said. “How about this afternoon?”

  In the kitchen, Aunt Lin was having a spirited phone conversation with someone, probably her partner, and waved at Madeleine when she walked in. While they ate lunch, she explained what they’d been discussing and Madeleine tried to follow the complicated threads of business politics, but Tara’s face kept reappearing in her mind.

  Tara, ill. Tara, withdrawn. Tara, indignant. And at the last, Tara, haughty in defeat.

  Her aunt finished another chapter in what seemed like an endless story, and Madeleine said, “I want to find out where Tara lives.”

  “Going to visit her?”

  “Yes,” Madeleine said. “It’s the right thing for me to do. By the way, what’s your plan for the Blue Room?”

  The diversion succeeded. “Let’s go see,” her aunt said. “Bring a roll of masking tape.”

  The lavishly appointed room seemed drab without Tara, but it certainly wasn’t empty.

  “I’ll mark the things to get rid of.” Aunt Lin smacked a piece of tape onto each discard. “This chair, and this one too. The piano goes. And these lamps! Both of these chairs. Keep the willow ware if you think we should, but get all that stuff off the wall.”

  She paused beside a brass table lamp. “This would look good on your desk.”

  “I’d like it,” Madeleine said. “And this floor lamp would work for the library. I’ll put it by the couch.” She tapped the metal shade of a goose-necked lamp. “Jude’s grandmother likes to knit. She could use this. I’m going to see her later this afternoon.”

  “She’s welcome to it. You’re full of good deeds today, aren’t you?” Aunt Lin began to laugh. “I forgot to tell you. Your mother phoned and gave me instructions to find you a man. How can I tell her you’re going to spend the afternoon with a kid and his grandmother?”

  Madeleine tried to match her light-hearted tone. “We both know what we think of Mom’s instructions, don’t we? Besides, she’s busy these days with a new boyfriend.”

  Her aunt raised a sympathetic eyebrow and tore off another piece of masking tape.

  Jude arrived in the late afternoon as planned, and Madeleine met him with a smile, glad to be outside again. Thin sunlight filtered through the branches to warm her face, and Jude, carrying the gooseneck lamp, scanned the trees at the edge of the path.

  “What have you discovered lately?” she asked.

  “Green cullet.”

  “Sounds like a fish. Wait, that’s mullet.”

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out a rounded piece of dark green glass, large as a man’s thumb. “From one of those old glass furnaces. I like to look at it.” He rolled it in his palm, and it glowed like an emerald.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed. “And over by the Batona Trail I found a convertible full of pine needles. Someone stripped everything off it and left the body to rust.”

  After a moment’s thought, he added, “Probably stolen.”

  He swung the lamp as he walked. “Gemma will love this,” he said, and started whistling under his breath.

  “I like your grandmother.”

  “I’m glad you went up to see her. She gets lonely, especially since she broke her ankle. She likes visitors.”

  “All except Kent? She doesn’t seem to think much of him.”

  “Huh,” he said. “None of us do, except my mother. But Mom doesn’t live in the real world.”

  “I noticed that Bria disappears when Kent is around. She doesn’t like him either?”

  He squinted up into the trees, and after a while, he answered. “She hates him. He backed her into a corner and tried to kiss her.”

  “I hope she slapped him good.”

  “Yeah, she kneed him. He hasn’t bothered her since.”

  Madeleine couldn’t think of anything to say. Gemma was right.
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  A smile blossomed over Gemma’s face when she saw them.

  “Look what we brought you.” Jude set the lamp down beside her, plugged it in, adjusted the height, and turned it on. The light fell across the knitting in her lap, and her smile widened.

  “Did this come from the Manor, then? Thank you very much,” she said in her soft English voice.

  Jude moved his chair close to hers. “Gemma, we want to ask you something.”

  Her fond gaze rested on him. “I thought you might.”

  “There’s a family called Marrick. Do you know where they live?”

  “What’s the father’s name?”

  “Sid. Sid Marrick.”

  “Huh,” she said. “I never did care much for those Marrick boys. Hung around in school with Kent—three of a kind. The old Sandy Bank School. Why do you ask?”

  Madeleine leaned forward. “I made friends with Tara Marrick and I’d like to go visit her. She’s having a difficult time.”

  “No wonder,” Gemma said. “Tara? I’ve never heard of her.”

  “What about Sally?”

  “Now Sally, that would be Sam’s girl. Sam was the worst of the lot.”

  “So you know where they live?”

  “I was coming to that. Up Mt. Misery way. Ask at the gas station in Four Mile. Mr. Bontray, he’ll know. Jude, you be careful if you go near there.”

  “I will,” he said. “Would you like some tea?”

  “That would be lovely. And perhaps a few of those biscuits too.”

  While they drank their tea, Gemma inquired about the Manor, and Madeleine described their progress in the Blue Room. Jude asked whether she could give them both a ride to church next week, and they left Gemma to her nap.

  Jude walked out onto the porch with Madeleine. “What are you going to do about Tara?”

  “I’d like to go see her tomorrow morning.”

  “I can come to work after school,” he said. “Tell me everything that happens.”

  That evening, she searched again for her paperweight, but it didn’t seem to be anywhere on the floor.

  She meant to pray about the decoy scam and the Castell family, but she fell asleep wondering what Tara’s Aunt Dixie looked like.

  CHAPTER 21

  I’m not sure what to think

  about this visit to Tara’s,

  except that I need to go.

  Her aunt and uncle sound

  worse than peculiar.

  I’m trying not to dislike them, sight unseen.

  ~Journal

  He said there’d be a name on a sign, somewhere along Salty Spung Road. She’d had to detour because of a forest fire, and the officer had given her directions. She could only hope that he knew which Marrick was Sid.

  The sign turned out to be a rusted iron post with a crossbar made of wood and a name painted in red: MARRICK’S MIRACLE SHOP. Trees grew to the edge of the narrow driveway, sheltering piles of car doors, fenders, and bumpers.

  The driveway led to a house dwarfed by a ramshackle barn that towered behind it. Both seemed deserted, and after she parked and turned off her engine, the silence closed in. If anything moved here, it would be only the crawling vines and the creeping rust.

  She picked her way around a sprawl of engine parts and hesitated before walking up the steps to the door-less screened porch.

  “Mollie!” A red-haired streak rushed down the steps and pulled her into a bear hug. “Oops!” Tara let her go. “I think I crushed whatever was in that bag.”

  “Just your cookies,” Madeleine said, handing them to her,

  “For me!” The girl’s eyes were puffy, but a smile lit her face. An instant later, it vanished. “You’d better meet my uncle.”

  A tall, gaunt figure ambled down the steps, blinking in the sunlight.

  “Uncle Sid,” Tara said. “Mollie brought us cookies.”

  The man scratched at the tuft of red whiskers on his chin, nodding, and she recognized him from Timothy’s store.

  He peered into her face. “I thank you,” he said, “for lookin’ after our Sally.”

  He spoke with care, as if finding and retrieving words from his brain was a risky business, but his blue eyes examined her appreciatively.

  “We enjoyed having her,” Madeleine said, as if Tara’s presence had been a pre-arranged social occasion.

  “Hey, let’s go for a walk in the woods,” Tara said. “Can we, Uncle Sid, just for a few minutes?”

  He considered. “You be careful.” He gazed at the smoky pallor of the sky, and sniffed the air. “That fire is still movin’. And . . .” He paused to drag out a new thought. “Make sure you get back before . . .”

  “We will.” Tara was hopping from one foot to the other. “You can hold the cookies. C’mon, Mollie.”

  She darted into the trees as if she’d been let out of a cage, and Madeleine hurried to keep up. She hadn’t locked her car. Would it be safe? Or would the Miracle Man dismember it just for the fun of putting it back together again?

  “Got to hurry,” Tara said over her shoulder. “I’m grounded. But I want to show you something.”

  She turned off the path, pushing through waist-high bushes, and Madeleine stayed close behind.

  “Over there,” Tara said.

  “That?” All she could see was a huge brush pile.

  “I piled a whole lot of branches over it for camouflage.”

  Tara ducked under a tree limb, dropped to her hands and knees to crawl forward, and Madeleine did the same. She found herself in a tiny brush-lined cave that was roofed with wood scraps. It ended at the rusted body of a truck with flattened tires.

  Still crouching, Tara grinned at her. “Like it? My hideout. Right in my own backyard. Got the boards from Sid’s pile behind the garage, but he won’t mind. We’ve got to hurry,” she said again. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  She crawled to the truck body, reached underneath it, and pulled out a black metal box with dented corners.

  “This is my hideaway box,” she said. “Sid comes home with all kinds of junk and this was just what I needed. I . . . um . . . acquired it from him.”

  She crouched over the front of the box and opened it, shielding the contents with her body.

  A second later she clicked the door of the box shut, and she slid it back underneath the truck before turning. In her palm lay the pendant she’d worn around her neck.

  “This is mine,” Tara said, her voice grown fierce. “And I’m not going to let her steal it from me again.” She gave Madeleine a pleading look. “Can you keep it for me?”

  “If you’re sure you want me to.”

  Why was it so important?

  Tara slipped the metal disc into the outside pocket of Madeleine’s purse and zipped it shut. “There, it’s safe now. It belonged to my mother. And it—oh! C’mon, or she’ll catch me.”

  She crawled outside and plunged into the woods again, and after only a few minutes they reached the clearing. Uncle Sid stood in the sunlight where they’d left him, eating a cookie and gazing at Madeleine’s car. “Need a bumper,” he said. “I kin fix you up. Paint job too.”

  He shifted his gaze to a black pickup barreling down the driveway, and both he and Tara seemed to stiffen.

  A grizzly-sized woman stepped from the truck. Her jacket, pants, and boots were black leather, and a knotted brown plait hung down her back. “Sally! What’re you doing outside? You’re grounded, remember?"

  “Hi, Aunt Dixie.” Tara’s voice had changed timbre. It was lighter, more childlike. “Mollie just stopped by to say hello.”

  The implication was clear: she’s just leaving.

  Madeleine arranged a smile on her face.

  The woman gestured toward the house and Tara scampered back inside. “Sid, it’s cold out here,” she said in a caressing voice. “And you without your jacket.”

  “I’m okay, Dixie. She brought cookies.”

  The woman’s gaze skimmed across her, and the black eyes were disdainful.
r />   She put a muscular hand on her husband’s shoulder and turned him toward the house. “I will make you plenty of cookies.” She linked her arm with his.

  He went willingly enough, but they had gone only a few steps before his head rotated on the thin neck. “Come see us any—” His words squeezed off in mid-sentence.

  As she opened her car door, Tara’s shout came from the porch. “Bye, Mollie. Thanks for coming!”

  How much would Tara have to pay for that cheerful expression of defiance? She did a careful three-point turn to get out of the small clearing and prayed for a chance to come back.

  She had kept her cell phone off during the visit, and now it blinked at her with voice mail. Nathan’s mellow voice said, “Do you have time to go visit Mrs. Bozarth with me this afternoon? I’ll be with patients, so leave a message.”

  She told his voice mail that yes, any time in late afternoon would be fine, and stopped on the way back to the Manor to buy groceries.

  Aunt Lin helped her to carry them in. “I’ve called the Truck Guys about the Blue Room,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what it looks like without the clutter.”

  The men arrived by the time lunch was over, and they cleared the room under Aunt Lin’s watchful eye. The blue sofa went too, and Madeleine thought about the nights Tara had spent on it. What could be done about her?

  Afterwards, Madeleine joined her aunt in the doorway, and Bria came to stand beside them. “That fireplace,” Aunt Lin said. “I could tear off those blue tiles with my bare hands. Another of Henrietta’s fantasies, and all wrong for this house.”

  Bria tilted her head. “I wonder what the original fireplace looked like.”

  “That’s a good question,” Aunt Lin said. “Let’s see if we can find out. I hope Jude’s coming today.”

  As soon as Jude arrived, he pitched into the work. Madeleine walked past while he was wiping down the fireplace. “What happened at Tara’s?” he asked.

  “I think I’d run away too. That aunt of hers is terrifying.

  “Tara said she’s big and strong.”

  “Understatement. Twice my size and all muscle.”

  Jude grinned. “What about the uncle?”

  “He’s different. Sort of quirky and passive. He seemed almost normal until the aunt showed up.”