Bitter Harvest

by Sheila Connolly

  Outside the library, Mercy pointed toward the white church, then retreated back inside. Seth asked, “You want to drive or walk?”

  “I think I can walk half a block, Seth. I wore my heavy boots. And I want to digest what Mercy told us. What a sad story! Poor Violet—she must have been all of ten when her mother died. And she would have seen all those babies—her half siblings—die first. I hope Mercy can find some more details, although it seems unlikely, unless somebody happened to have saved a lot of family correspondence. It does happen, but I don’t know if I’m that lucky.”

  They started walking, their boots crunching on the frozen snow. It took them two minutes to arrive at the cemetery adjacent to the church, surrounded by a low stone wall. A single path had been cleared from the gate through to the rear. “At least we don’t have to climb the wall,” Seth said. “But how do you expect to find anybody? I bet we’re seeing no more than half of the stones right now—the rest are covered with snow.”

  Meg scanned the scene, looking at the mostly slate stones, scattered like crooked teeth in the snow. After a minute she pointed. “There.”

  “Why?” Seth asked.

  “I recognize the profile of the stones. From the sampler. See that row of five, with the big one in the middle? The profile is distinctive.”

  “Ah,” Seth said. “So there they are.”

  “I wonder if the other Warrens in town put up the stone for the parents when they died?”

  “Are we going in?” Seth asked.

  “Of course,” Meg replied.

  Luckily the Lampson plot lay only a few feet from the plowed path, and the towering pines above had kept the snow from constant thawing and freezing, and it was still light and fluffy. Meg waded through the snow to stand in front of the row of stones: a large one for the parents, and smaller ones for the children. Young Violet had been scrupulous about recording the details in her sampler, and Meg counted off the children with their little stones, then moved to stand in front of the parents’ stone. Seth came up behind her.

  “It’s been over two hundred years, and here we are,” Meg said. “The story isn’t over yet.” She blinked back tears and looked around at the adjoining stones. “And here they all are, Coxes and Warrens. It feels kind of weird, knowing that I’m related to them, even if it’s distantly.”

  “Are you glad you came?” Seth asked.

  “Of course. It’s one thing to read about these people, but it’s different to see the place. Now we know that Violet was showing the real scene, not just a symbolic bunch of tombstones. We know she made the sampler after everyone died, and she must have been familiar with the family plot. How sad.” Meg shivered. The sun was sinking below the tree line, and it was getting colder by the minute. “Let me take a few pictures, and then we can leave. I’ll have to come back when the snow is gone, so we can see all of the stones.”

  Seth waited patiently while Meg snapped pictures, and then, taking her elbow, guided her back to the car. When they were settled, he turned it on and cranked up the heater to high. “You ready to go?”

  “I am. Let’s go home.”

  21

  It was dark when Seth pulled into the driveway, but the kitchen lights in the house were blazing and Bree’s car was in the drive. Meg turned to Seth. “Are you coming in?”

  “I told Mom I’d have a late supper with her. And I’ll be kind of busy this week—some people want their places shaped up in time for the holidays and all the company they expect. Why they couldn’t have thought about this three months ago mystifies me, but it’s business.”

  Meg felt a pang of guilt: Seth had downplayed how busy he was, and here she’d taken up a day of his time for her curiosity. “Thanks for today. I enjoyed the company, and I’m so glad we actually found something about the families.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll be around—call me if you need anything.”

  Meg watched him pull out of her driveway before going in. After she’d hung up her coat and scarf, and pulled off her heavy boots, she called out, “Bree?”

  “Be right there,” Bree called from the front of the house.

  Meg looked around the kitchen: it looked as though a hurricane had struck. Bree had clearly been cooking, and something sitting on the stove smelled wonderful, but apparently she had used every pot Meg owned. Bree stalked into the kitchen and immediately looked defensive. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Good. How was your day?”

  “Not bad. As you can see, I decided to make dinner. Did you eat?”

  Bree’s look challenged her, and Meg was glad she could honestly reply that she hadn’t. “Whatever it is, it smells good.”

  “Thanks. It’s ready, if you want to eat now.”

  “Fine.” Meg cleared a space on the kitchen table, transferring several dirty bowls to the sink while Bree dished up, then went to the refrigerator and pulled out an open bottle of wine. “You want some?” she asked Bree, waving the bottle.

  “Sure, why not?”

  She found two clean glasses and poured wine for both of them before sitting down. Bree slapped a full bowl in front of her. “Eat.”

  Meg dug into Bree’s concoction. “Hey, this is great. What is it?”

  “You sound surprised,” Bree said. “I can cook. It’s jerk chicken.”

  “I know you can cook, but this is really interesting. Family recipe?”

  “Sort of. Nobody ever wrote things down, so I just did what I remembered my mom and my auntie doing. You had most of the ingredients here, except the chiles. My mom liked it hot, but this isn’t, even though I added some extra cayenne. Maybe next time.”

  Meg sampled some more, then said, “I hope there will be a next time.” After a few minutes of enjoying the food, Meg said tentatively, “No more unpleasant surprises?”

  Bree met her look. “Not that I’ve seen. This is so stupid! If somebody’s got something against you, or us, I wish he’d just come out and say so.”

  “I agree—but notice just how effective he’s been so far, without any kind of direct confrontation. All these annoying little things, but they sure add up.”

  “But why? Just because he can? He’s some kind of pervert?”

  “I wish I knew, Bree. Seth and Art don’t have any better ideas. Let’s try to think about it intelligently. We’ll ignore the ‘why’ for now and look at the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’ First, there’s been no real damage. Second, the events are kind of subtle—as we’ve said, there’s no way to prove there was a human hand involved, because any one of the incidents could have happened naturally. Third . . .” Meg stopped to think.

  “Look at the ‘when,’ ” Bree jumped in. “These things have happened at all different times—daytime, night. When we’re here, or not.”

  “So what does that tell us?”

  “That somebody is watching the house, and knows how to sneak around it. That kind of implies it’s a neighbor, or someone who knows you, or us.”

  Meg nodded, sighing. “That doesn’t make me feel much better. You think there’s someone spying on us? Have you seen anyone lurking around?”

  “No, but up until recently I haven’t been watching. I sure do now,” Bree responded.

  “And yet he was still able to get pretty close to the house without our noticing.” Meg suddenly felt depressed. There was nothing to get a handle on, no leads to follow. Whoever it was was doing a great job making them unsettled, if that was his plan. But she kept coming back to the “why,” and finding nothing. “You want me to tell you about my day?” Meg said, feeling a need to change the subject.

  “You had enough of wrestling with this lurker problem? Sure. How was your trip to Vermont? You and Seth survived six hours in a car together?”

  “We did. Is that some kind of test?”

  “Maybe.” Bree grinned. “So, any results? Please say yes—I’d love to see somebody finding some answers to something, even if it’s ancient history.”

  “Actually, yes. Between Gail in town here and the
librarian in Pittsford, I now know who Violet Cox was, and how she came to be in this house.” Meg recounted the story she had pieced together.

  “That’s sad,” Bree said when Meg had finished. “It’s a wonder anybody had kids back then, you know? So many of them died as babies, or young. I can’t imagine birthing them and losing them.”

  “Violet’s story isn’t unique. I’ve read about families where all the children were wiped out within a week or two, from diphtheria or something like that. Imagine trying to live with that. And a simple infection could kill you, before antibiotics. What amazes me is that anybody survived into their eighties or even nineties—the one who made it through childhood must have been tough.”

  “With terrific immune systems, too. And then there were wars, where you lost your kids and might not even know about it for months, if ever. Or wives whose husband sailed off and never came back.”

  “How did we get on this morbid subject?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who visits cemeteries for fun, and you even drag a date along. But things are better now, right? We’ve eliminated a lot of diseases, medicines have improved, doctors know a lot more than they did. We’re lucky.”

  “That we are.”

  Later, Meg was getting ready to close up the house and go upstairs when she remembered she wanted to ask Mercy to look for anything additional about the Lampsons. She switched on her computer and shot off a quick e-mail, thanking Mercy once again for providing copies of the Pittsford vital records, and asking if she could expand her search just a bit to include the Lampsons. In exchange Meg attached digital photos of the sampler, and sent it off. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she had a feeling that she hadn’t found everything there was to know after only a few hours in Pittsford. So many questions, so little time!

  She knew that Violet had come back to Granford, and had lived with Eli Warren’s family. Had she stayed in Granford when she married? The relevant censuses for the right time frame would list only male heads of household, but she had a date and a name. She jotted a sticky note to herself, to check the 1810 and later censuses in the morning and see if Violet and her husband had stayed around.

  When Meg went out to feed the goats the next morning, the air felt warmer, much to her surprise. She still wasn’t familiar enough with New England weather to know if there was a thaw coming, but it would be nice if some of the snow would go away. Ha! she said to herself, silently. At this rate they’d be pruning apple trees while wearing boots. Or maybe snowshoes. She made a mental note to herself to ask Seth if she could borrow a pair to try out. That was a skill that might come in handy.

  The goats were happy to see her, as usual, and butted her affectionately as she led them out to the pen. “Yeah, I know—you think just because I slept with you, that we’ve taken this relationship to the next level. But I’m not that easy.” The goats gave her one last quizzical look, then headed for their food. Meg looked around: everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be. Nothing broken, nothing dangling. No mysterious footprints.

  She felt restless. She stuck her head in the back door. “Bree, you need anything from the store?” Meg called out, and received a garbled reply that she took as a “no.” “I’ll be back in an hour or so.” She went out to her car, but before getting in she walked around it. All tires intact. The road muck on the fenders wasn’t disturbed. She thought she could probably get in safely. The car turned over on the first try, so nobody had tampered with the wiring. Should she check for a bomb underneath? Meg, you’re definitely paranoid!

  She pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the highway. But, she realized, she really wanted to talk to Violet. Yes, she knew Violet was dead, and had been for at least a hundred and fifty years. But if she and her husband had stayed around, as Gail had implied, then Violet’s mortal remains shouldn’t be far away, and if there was any spirit component of hers left, maybe it hovered nearby, or at least visited now and then. Unfortunately she didn’t have Violet’s married name, but how many Violets could there be buried there, in the right time frame? Would the tombstones be legible, even if they weren’t under a foot or two of snow? Did Violet even have a tombstone, or had her family been too broke to afford one, or had someone just added a line to her husband’s stone, assuming he was buried there, too? But even as she wondered if she was supposed to find a single tombstone in a snowy cemetery based purely on some unlikely psychic connection, Meg found herself turning off the highway onto the road that led to the cemetery. It was on her way—wasn’t it?

  The old Granford cemetery lay no more than a mile from Meg’s house, along a two-lane road that led off the highway. She had forgotten how little traveled the residential road was, and she drove slowly down the single plowed lane between two massive snowbanks. Luckily there was no other traffic on the road, since it might have been a tight fit if she had had to pass anyone. She stopped the car, leaving the engine running, and scanned the cemetery.

  The end of the cemetery nearer to the highway held the oldest burials; a second section had been opened farther back, perhaps a hundred years later. The grave markers in the older part marched in more or less orderly rows parallel to the road, the later ones perpendicular. She’d been here more than once before, but she’d never seen it under snow. The land was flat, and the wind had scoured much of the snow away, but then sent it drifting erratically around the stones. She knew where “her” Warrens were, in both the older and the newer sections, but she’d never looked for families not somehow connected with her. Of course, there were connections she was still discovering, and the list kept growing.

  She jumped a foot when a voice said, “You okay?” A man had approached her car, and she hadn’t even heard him coming. This was what she called being wary? Stupid, Meg, stupid. Before she could panic she realized she recognized the man, and cranked down her window a cautious couple of inches. “Hi, John. Yes, no problem. I was just thinking about looking for something in the cemetery. I know, it’s kind of a weird time of year for it, and I hadn’t thought how hard it would be in the snow. I guess I’ll have to wait. What brings you here?”

  “I’m in charge of keeping the paths clear. There are people who visit their loved ones no matter what the weather.”

  Now that she looked, Meg could see that there were several paths that had been recently shoveled, although mainly in the more modern section. Meg knew from past visits that there were no paved paths leading among the eighteenthcentury tombstones. “I can understand that. But what I’m looking for is pretty early, so I guess I’ll have to wait until the snow melts.”

  “Feels like it’s warming up—maybe a couple of days’ll do it. I’ll get back to work, long as you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. I’m going now.” She put the car in gear and continued along the road again. Meg watched in the rearview mirror as John remained observing her, until she turned a corner at the end of the road.

  She shook herself. Here she’d wanted Art to take her seriously about all these maybe-threats, when she wasn’t doing it herself, even after Seth had lectured her about it. What on earth was she thinking, stopping by a deserted cemetery on the spur of the moment? When nobody knew where she was? If there was a stalker—still an “if”—she couldn’t do things like that. Okay, she’d met someone she knew, but it could have been anybody. What if it had been someone who wanted to do her harm? She shivered. Murdered in a cemetery—what a tale that would be!

  In a chastened mood Meg hurried on to the market.

  22

  Meg returned home restocked with supplies, and after stashing them in the kitchen, she sat down and checked her e-mails. She didn’t expect to hear from Mercy before Monday, but Gail had replied, and her e-mail read, “I think I’ve got Violet’s marriage record now. She married Abiel Morgan, but I don’t have access to my records right now. There aren’t a lot of Morgans in Granford. I’ll confirm in a day or two and get you a photocopy.”

  Hurry up and wait, as usual
, Meg fumed. She did some mental math: if Violet had been born in 1786, she would have been in her sixties in 1850, which was the first year the federal census had listed all family members and not just the male head of household. So if she looked online for a Violet Morgan in Granford, she might learn a little more. She clicked through to the appropriate Web site and held her breath as she entered the information. Bingo! There was a Morgan household headed by one Abiel Morgan, with wife Violet, in 1850. No children listed in the household, but they were probably long out of the house, and Meg didn’t feel like wading through all the other Morgans in town just to satisfy her own curiosity. She pulled up the 1860 census and found Violet living alone, so Abiel must have died in the intervening years. In 1870 she was living with another family, with a different surname—a married daughter? Had there been sons? She couldn’t tell from the earlier censuses. In 1880 there was no sign of Violet, which wasn’t surprising. Gail had already said that she knew Violet had died before the Warren sisters who had owned the house were born.

  At least Violet had lived a long life, unlike the rest of her close family. Abiel was listed as a farmer during his lifetime, as were most people in Granford in the nineteenth century. Meg felt obscurely pleased: now at least she knew who she was looking for the next time she visited the cemetery, whenever the weather permitted.

  She was surprised to see Seth’s van pull into the driveway, followed shortly by the pickup truck she recognized as John Taylor’s—he was certainly getting around today. But John wasn’t alone: she could see someone else in the passenger seat. Meg ambled out to say hello.

  Seth and John were talking when she approached. “Hi, John,” she said. “We meet again.” When Seth quirked an eyebrow at her, she explained, “I drove past the cemetery on the way to the market, and John stopped to make sure I was okay.”

  Meg was amused when John hung his head and kicked at the snow. She almost expected him to say, “Aw, shucks, ma’am, it weren’t nothin’.” Instead he said, “We don’t get too many people passing along that road, except the ones who live there. I didn’t want you to get stuck.”