The Forever Stone

by Gloria Repp

  He spun the fractured can across the table and leaned back, looking smug.

  “But it was gone when you returned?”

  “Somebody must’ve towed it away. Or dumped it in the bog.”

  “Who?”

  The man chewed on his lip. “Dunno.”

  Bria leaned forward and Madeleine knew why, and she had to ask, “What kind of car was it?”

  “Nothing special. One of them Ford Escorts. Black.”

  Bria made a tiny sound of distress, but Madeleine couldn’t stop now. “So Sam took the metal thing?”

  “Gave it to his wife. She fancied weird stuff like that. How come you have to know all this?” He smirked. “Sally and Dixie are always fighting over it. You want it too?”

  He unfolded himself from the chair. “Got a lot of work to do. Buildin’ me a car.”

  He was walking away, and she still didn’t know enough. Quickly she asked, “When did all this happen?”

  But he didn’t hear or couldn’t remember because he kept going, and a minute later the back door slammed shut.

  Tara nudged the beer can into the center of the table. “You heard him. My dad found it.”

  Bria sat white-lipped and silent.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Madeleine said quietly. “We’ll sort it out. Bria and I need to go back to the Manor now.”

  Tara looked downcast. “He always spoils our parties. Can you come back tomorrow? I don’t have to go to school.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sid says I gotta stay and help him with that car he’s building. He’s taking out the engine. You should see the pulley system he’s rigged up. It’s cool.”

  If she came back soon enough, maybe she could get a little more out of Sid.

  “You’re sure no one will mind?” Like Dixie.

  “Nah. It’ll be okay if we stay in the garage.”

  “Maybe just for a few minutes,” Madeleine said, deliberately vague. “I’ll have to see.”

  “Phone me tonight?”

  The girl’s persistence was heartwarming. Isn’t this what she’d prayed for? “Yes, I’ll phone you.”

  Bria didn’t speak on the trip back. She looked out the window, her lips crimped as if she were struggling not to cry.

  Her father’s car must have been a black Escort.

  But weren’t there hundreds of cars like that? (With a pendant in the glove compartment?) If only they could be sure about the car. What had happened to it? Why had it disappeared?

  At the Manor, Jude was helping Remi strip paint off the hearth. Remi grinned. “See this?” He pointed to the dirty white stone under the scum. “It’s sure enough marble.”

  “Good for you,” she said.

  But Jude had read her face. “What’s the matter?” He glanced from her to Bria, who was hunched in the doorway. His sister sent him a look, and he recoiled as if he’d been struck.

  Madeleine ached for them both. Do something! “Do you know a place called Quaker Bridge?”

  “Sure,” Jude said.

  “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  He swallowed. “It’s about the pendant, isn’t it? About Dad?”

  “Tara’s uncle said something about finding the pendant. In a car in the woods. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.”

  Did the man have enough imagination to make up all those details?

  Jude wasn’t asking questions. “Let’s go. But it’s all sand roads out there. You’d get stuck in a minute.”

  Remi stood up from the hearth. “I could drive my truck,” he said. “It’s a 4 x 4—we can go anywhere.”

  Bria straightened. “I want to come.”

  “Sure,” Remi said. “It’s got a crew cab.”

  Jude looked at Madeleine’s sneakers. “You’d better wear your hiking boots. And bring a flashlight. It’s going to get dark.”

  Hope pounded through her, but it had a sickening tinge of dread. She hoped Sid was telling the truth. She hoped there’d be a car. She hoped it wasn’t the right one.

  Surely Rhys Castell was still alive, somewhere.

  It seemed a long way, and the sand roads were as confusing as ever, but finally Remi paused at a narrow metal bridge. “Now what?”

  “He said he walked up the road,” Madeleine said. “Mentioned a big white tree. And ruins.”

  The soft, furrowed sand had become hard-packed, but Remi drove slowly. They passed a clearing, and Jude pointed out a dead tree that was stripped of bark and pale enough to be white. He and Remi discussed whether white trees could refer to the Atlantic white cedars beside the river, but it seemed unlikely.

  The farther they went, the less certain she felt. “Ruins,” she said again. “And a little road that goes off to the left.” She stared out the window into the trees.

  From the back seat, Jude said quietly, “Not here, is it? I didn’t think there were ruins around Quaker Bridge.”

  Bridge. Ruins. River. A warm hand holding hers, the shared happiness.

  “Wait,” she said. “There’s some ruins farther up the river. Maybe not this river, even. At Hampton something.”

  “Hampton Furnace?” Jude said. “I’ve been there.”

  “It has a bridge too, not very big” she said. “With some ruins before you get to it.”

  “Yeah,” Remi said, “from what I’ve seen, you can have ruins, sand roads, bridges, and rivers just about anywhere in these zillions of trees. It’s a really cool place, but it makes me feel small.”

  Jude blew out an audible breath. “Keep going, Remi. This’ll take us to Atsion.” A minute later, he asked, “Mollie, how come you know about Hampton Furnace?”

  “Nathan and I—Doc—did some exploring around there on Saturday. We were checking out a hike for the teens.”

  Beside her, Remi grinned, but he didn’t say anything, and neither did the others.

  Past Atsion they turned onto Hampton Road, which was as rough as she remembered, and much longer.

  At last Jude said, “Here’s the meadows.”

  “That big sycamore,” she said slowly, “I remember it. Kind of white.”

  “There’s furnace ruins in all that grass,” Jude said.

  Remi edged past a mud hole, just as Nathan had done, and peered at the road Nathan had wanted to come back to. “Think it’s this one?”

  Jude shrugged. “He said off to the left, didn’t he? Whatever that’s worth.”

  She nodded, and he spoke her thought aloud. “Still lying?”

  Remi swung onto it. “Let’s find out.”

  It was the narrowest road she’d seen yet, with trees crowding close on both sides, and it soon became a series of humps, but Remi sent his truck across them like a skier cresting moguls. To her right, she glimpsed the river.

  “Lots of bushes here for hiding a car,” Remi said. “When did you say this happened?”

  “I didn’t,” Madeleine said. “He never got around to telling me, and I thought of it too late.”

  “Three years ago,” Bria said in a stifled voice. “If it’s Dad’s car.”

  Remi didn’t know all the details, and to his credit, he wasn’t asking a bunch of questions.

  Jude muttered, half to himself, “Might be all grown over.”

  “True.” Remi crouched over the steering wheel, peering ahead. “Is that the tree?”

  A huge pine sprawled from one side of the road to the other, an imposing barricade of wood and dead branches. Travelers had solved the problem by detouring around it through the underbrush, and Remi followed their tracks, accompanied by an ominous scratching sound.

  “Huh,” Jude said. “How many big old pine trees block the roads around here?”

  “About five hundred,” Remi said.

  “Got to try it,” Jude said. “Find a place to park.”

  Remi nosed his truck into the bushes. “This will have to do,” he said, reaching for a flashlight.

  After they’d pushed through the bushes, they came to a stretch of widel
y-spaced pines and Madeleine looked down the sandy aisles between the trees. “No car here. He said it might have been dumped in a bog. Where?”

  “If he meant the river, it’s on the other side of the road,” Jude said. “Not nearly big enough to hide a car.”

  “Swamps anywhere?” Remi asked.

  “Plenty. This used to be all cranberry bogs. Let’s take a hike down here.” He and Remi started at a trot toward a grove of cedars on the far side of the pines, and Madeleine and Bria followed more slowly.

  The cedars gave way to another forest, thick with underbrush. “Wait here,” Jude said. “We’ll see how far this goes.”

  They disappeared into the trees and returned a few minutes later, breathing hard. “Swamp.”

  “You couldn’t get a car through there,” Remi said. “Not even three years ago.”

  Jude said, “Try up farther.”

  The four of them re-crossed the woods, patterned now with the long gray shadows of evening, and birds rustled in the branches, settling down for the night. Madeleine glanced at Bria’s set face and tried to think of something hopeful to say.

  They entered another dense growth of saplings and underbrush, and Jude kicked at a charred trunk. “Looks like a fire went through here,” he said. “We’ll probably run into that swamp again soon.”

  The air pressed cold and heavy against her face, and she knew Jude was right about the swamp. Should they turn back?

  Remi paused. “What’s that?” He peered through the gloom at a tangle of vines and branches that humped into a mound.

  Jude ran to it and began pulling off handfuls of vine.

  One part of her brain remarked that the vine was catbrier, and the other said they’d found what she’d been hoping wasn’t there.

  “A car, a black one,” Jude gasped. He wiped a bleeding hand on his jeans. “But there’s lots of abandoned cars in these woods.”

  He attacked the vines once more with Remi’s help, and finally they stepped back.

  The car must have been caught in the fire, because it was partially burned. The blackened skeleton of a tree lay across it, and the windshield was cracked. The fenders were bent and rusted, scabbed with blistered paint. The windows had disintegrated into fragments or disappeared altogether.

  Bria stared at the ruin, her face carved in lines of grief. Jude stood motionless.

  It was Remi who moved to the window on the driver’s side. “Not too bad inside.”

  Jude darted forward, looked in, and struggled to open the door, but it was rusted shut.

  “Hey, man,” Remi said, “what’re you after?”

  “On the steering wheel.”

  “That silver inset?”

  “Yeah.” Jude pulled out a pocket knife and leaned through the window. “Give me a boost.”

  Bria crept closer. Jude pried a round object from the depression in the center of the steering wheel. He backed out, holding it in his hand.

  It was a small black medal with a raised design of silver interlocking lines.

  Remi bent to study it. “Isn’t that what they call a Celtic knot?”

  “Yeah. Celtic,” Jude said, and he handed it to Bria. She closed her fingers around it and turned away.

  They stumbled back to the road, following the beam of Remi’s flashlight. The trees, muffled in black, seemed to close in around them with a hushed and weighty stillness.

  It would be much too easy to lose your way out here, Madeleine thought. Already, Bria and Jude seemed lost in their own private world of grief.

  No one spoke during the long trip back, but Madeleine knew the questions that burned in each mind. Who? and Why?

  Remi dropped Bria and Jude off at the end of their driveway and turned toward the Manor. “I wonder if their dad had any enemies,” he said. “Even a disgruntled student. I read once about a couple of kids who played a prank on their teacher, and the guy ended up dead.”

  “I don’t know,” Madeleine said. “He’s been gone for such a long time.”

  “All those bogs around there,” Remi said. “They’d never find his body.”

  Sorrow grew inside her. “Jude will think of that, after a while.”

  The headlights of Remi’s truck lit up the driveway and then the porch. She tried to collect herself. “Thank you for coming. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Hey, no problem.” He parked beside the porch. “I can’t work tomorrow—I’ve got something to do for Timothy. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “The Manor can wait.”

  Mac met her in the hall with welcoming noises, and she remembered that he hadn’t been fed. She reached into a cupboard for the bag of cat food and stopped to think.

  Had Rhys Castell been murdered? If so, this was no job for amateurs. More than once, her father had told her, “Don’t try to play superman with criminals. If you’re suspicious, talk to a policeman. He’s a trained professional.”

  But who was the criminal? And how could he be found, three years later?

  She set the bag on the counter and leaned her elbows against it. Who could she talk to?

  Nathan was probably still working, but Timothy would be home. Maybe he’d be opening a can of stew for his supper. One of these days she’d have to invite him over.

  She dialed his number, and it rang for a long time.

  “Dr. Parnell.”

  “Nathan? Is something wrong?”

  “Timothy’s sick. I’m spending the night with him.”

  “His cough?”

  “Getting worse. He might have a bad case of the flu,” Nathan said.

  She heard a phone ring and stop. His unhurried voice continued. “Did you have a question for Timothy?”

  She told him about finding Rhys Castell’s car, and the connection between it and Tara’s uncle.

  “I’ve been wondering how Kent and Sid fit together,” he said. “If Birklund finds something useful, we can turn it over to the police. Even if he’s gone, they’ll catch up with him.”

  “Yes.” Kent was leaving tomorrow. She should feel relieved, but failure gnawed at her. He was going to get away.

  Nathan said, “I’ll talk it over with Timothy when I can.” He lowered his voice. “And pray for him, will you, please? He’s a tough old guy, but he worries me.”

  In the background, Timothy was coughing, much too hard.

  “I’m looking forward to our date.” His voice softened. “Fear not, Mollie.”

  She smiled. “Fear not. See you tomorrow.”

  Her smile faded as she put down her phone.

  She wandered from room to room in the old house, unmindful of the deepening night, and ended up on the window seat in the library. “He worries me.”

  Doctors didn’t worry about little things like a sore throat or a cough. But the flu could be dangerous, and Timothy was old.

  “Lord,” she whispered, “Please. I ask you in Jesus’ name to spare Timothy. We need him here. I need him.”

  She squirmed on the upholstered seat. “But if You want to take him away . . .”

  Like He had taken Dad? What would she do? Accept.

  She covered her face with her hands. “Be my Rock, my strong tower. I’m running to You as fast as I can. I bring You Timothy’s sickness. And Kent’s scam. And the horrible mystery of Rhys Castell. And Tara.” Her eyes burned. “I can’t even think straight anymore. Make me wise.”

  She sat for a minute, letting the stillness quiet her.

  Whiskers brushed against her hands, and she lowered them from her face. Mac nibbled delicately on one of her fingers.

  She pulled her hand back. “What’s the matter with you?”

  He gave her a mournful look.

  “I never did feed you, did I?” Slowly she got to her feet. “Let’s take care of that.”

  She fed him and took a bowl of chicken stew out of the freezer for her own supper. Before she could do anything with it, Aunt Lin phoned. “How’s the work going?” she asked.

  Madelei
ne told her about the marble fireplace, and her aunt exclaimed in delight. “And have you come up with any ideas for recycling the dear old place?”

  “Someone suggested a tea room,” Madeleine said. “With regional specialties, like cranberry-whatever’s.”

  Aunt Lin laughed. “Now that’s worth considering. We could call it Cranberry Manor. Maybe I’ll see what Vance thinks.”

  Madeleine had to smile. The lunch with Vance must have gone well. “See you Wednesday,” she said. That would be soon enough to tell her everything else.

  She pried the top off the frozen stew, and the kitchen phone rang again.

  A woman’s soft voice said, “Hello? Hello? Is this Madeleine?”

  “Cousin Willa? Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, my dear.” The voice faltered. “Vera was supposed to call and invite you. Last week. But she didn’t, did she?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe the phone lines were down out there or something. Such a wild place! Anyway, there’s wonderful news. Your mother and Wayne.”

  Madeleine put the stew into the microwave and turned it on.

  Cousin Willa sounded more cheerful. “She told you about him, surely. They just got married, and they’re off to Bermuda for two weeks, and we are all so thrilled.”

  The bowl of stew revolved slowly, round and round and round.

  She let Willa give her the details and said goodbye as sweetly as possible. So that was that. No need to feel guilty about deserting dear old Mom.

  Dad, I miss you. Again, again? Yes. You will hurt for the rest of . . .

  After she’d eaten, she tidied up her bedroom and searched for the paperweight once more. Was it in the closet? No, it definitely was gone.

  She picked up her journal and sighed. Why did that little egg-shaped piece of glass seem so important to her? Because it was one of her last links with Dad?

  Let it go. Get ready for bed, and then write about all the things that happened today.

  She had almost finished when Tara called, sounding apologetic.

  Eleven o’clock! She’d forgotten to phone her about tomorrow.

  “Can you?” Tara said. “I waited as long as I could.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll come. Around ten in the morning, is that okay?”

  “Thank you a million times, Mollie. You are my truehearted friend.” She sounded like someone in a book.