Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  She checked her phone. She was borderline late. Which was probably all her meeting with Amos was going to get her.

  As she left the paved roads and began to jostle down a dirt stretch, it seemed that crows had suddenly come from every direction, lighting on the tops of exposed, naked trees and the crumbling roof of an old barn and even a single, lonely power line. Because of Miriam’s tale, she instantly began to count the birds in the closest tree.

  Two. Unlucky.

  She stopped. Started again. It couldn’t be right. Everywhere she looked, though, the birds were in pairs. Tiny groups of two.

  She pounded the steering wheel. If you don’t watch out, you’ll soon be the most superstitious person in town, Kelly warned herself.

  Turning on the gravel lane leading to the oldest farmland in the entirety of Finley, she began to wonder if she would ever find a place to park among the work trucks dotting the landscape. The construction was the result of the entire town getting together to raise funds for Natalie and Damien, Kelly’s current clients. A couple who had asked for no presents—only the presence of friends and family at their wedding, scheduled to be held here, at the house Damien was inheriting from his grandaunt. But the people of Finley were in no way the sort who could be satisfied with no gifts required. Now, instead of wrapping small boxes containing silly kitchen trinkets or guest towels, the townspeople of Finley were going all out, collectively updating the oldest house in town by painting the exterior, rebuilding the porch, replacing the roof, and adding as many additional interior fixes as funds would allow—including new kitchen cabinets.

  Kelly let her eyes sweep out across the property as she inched along, more interested suddenly in the construction workers than in potential parking spaces. Their updates weren’t even close to being done. Workers were still pumping water from the nearby river in order to pressure wash the house and the outbuildings in preparation for a new paint job. Makeshift bridges were still stretched across the narrower sections of the river so that vehicles could zip back and forth without having to drive miles out of the way.

  They didn’t have long. It was already October, and the couple had chosen December to pledge their vows, in remembrance of the date of their first meeting, and as a nod to Damien’s unusual last name. When a couple was going to be known as Mr. and Mrs. December, it just didn’t make sense to marry any other time, did it? Still, though—October. Missouri could decide it was officially winter at any point. And then what? A construction zone wasn’t exactly the kind of place that made for a picturesque wedding site. That idea turned Kelly’s heartbeat uncomfortably fast and forceful—even more so than her coffee had. More, too, than the thoughts of her impending shawl battle.

  She edged her car into a slot so tiny, it reminded her far more of the gap between two planks in a wooden deck than a parking space. She pulled herself out, gently retrieved her box of fabric.

  “Ma’am?” a voice called to her as she took her first step away from her Sentra.

  She turned toward a man in a beat-up yellow hardhat, a loose-fitting orange vest draped down over a quilted plaid flannel shirt. He looked rough. Like instead of skin, he was covered in tree bark.

  “Kelly Marx,” she responded, offering a hand. “I planned to meet with Mary today. Maybe someone mentioned it?”

  He shook it, looking surprised. “You’re Marx.”

  Kelly figured the last name had brought to mind a different picture. Karl Marx, maybe. Or Groucho. Certainly not someone with her complexion. She’d been back home in Finley long enough to have forgotten how her name could result in a surprised response. Or, at the very least, she’d gotten unused to it. Sure, her family was a minority in Finley—but had never been made to feel so. There had been times, working as a seamstress in San Francisco, a far bigger city with far more faces that looked like her own, when she had been more aware of her skin color. Funny, that.

  “The wedding planner,” Kelly agreed, smoothing over the pause that had stretched long enough to grow awkward. Actually, now that she was looking, the man had a complexion not unlike her own. No, she thought, letting his features sink in. He’s Native American.

  “Kind of a mess right now. Not sure what planning can get done.”

  “Technically, that’s my business description, but I’m the wedding dress designer, too,” Kelly said. Her story rattled on, though she was unsure why she suddenly felt the urge to explain herself to him: “I got into designing wedding dresses sort of accidentally. Well. Not that accidentally, I guess. I actually left Finley to be a fashion designer. I feel like it just keeps pulling me back in, you know? Design. And home, too.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Why could she not stop talking? Was it nerves? Was she searching for a different sign than the crows had offered?

  “It’s why I’m here. Today. It’s about the dress. Actually, it’s about the shawl. That I want to use. For the dress.”

  He grunted. Clothing, to him, was something that protected a person from the elements. It was functional. She assumed he’d never once ascribed the word “pretty” to any piece of clothing. A woman, surely. Maybe a few sunsets. The fresh look of a new snowfall. Not clothing.

  “Nobody here but the old woman.”

  Kelly pointed as another car came bouncing over the bumps and the ruts, straight toward them. “The bride,” she said.

  He offered a look of slight disdain. What she was doing was useless. That was how she interpreted his look, anyway. Here she was, worried about a dress that Natalie would wear for—what? Three hours at best, in her lifetime? What he and his crew were up to, that was real work that ended with real results: a home Natalie and Damien would live in every single day of their marriage, then hand down to the next generation.

  “You got one of those—fitting—things scheduled?”

  Kelly felt as though her insides had just been wrung out like a washcloth. Even the construction worker figured that by now, the dress was finished—or near completion. For a split second, she thought about getting even by asking him when he planned to have his own construction work done. His crew wasn’t exactly looking the portrait of speed and efficiency. But she was above that kind of snarkiness, wasn’t she? Adults didn’t exactly go around kicking each other in the shins, a whack for a whack, like it had been on their childhood playgrounds.

  At least, they shouldn’t.

  Kelly took a deep breath and waved at Natalie, currently pulling herself from her own car. And gave herself a silent quickie pep talk. It was all going to work out. The two women were here to tag team Mary, the owner of the shawl. Convince her. And they would. Of course they would. Approval would be Kelly’s, in a matter of minutes.

  She put on a smile to reassure her latest client—and herself. An easy smile. A no sweat smile.

  But Kelly had barely made it two feet across the bumpy, grassless ground when she let out a yelp and stopped in her tracks, her sneakers kicking up a small cloud of dust.

  A snake had been draped across a fence near the house. Bottom side up. A dead snake.

  Miriam’s diner story echoed inside Kelly’s ears. Something bad always followed the killing of a snake.

  “What—do you know—about the fence?” Kelly asked, grabbing onto the construction worker’s sleeve before he could get away. “The snake?”

  He chuckled at her horror. “One of the men accidentally ran him over with a truck. So I decided to make use of it. It brings rain.”

  “What—draping a dead snake on the fence?”

  “Long as its belly points skyward.”

  Kelly didn’t like it. She wanted that snake down. You’re not superstitious, remember? She asked herself. At that moment, though, the statement couldn’t have felt more untrue.

  “I haven’t noticed that we were in such a need for rain,” she said, mostly as a way to start to convince him to remove the carcass.

  “Of course you haven’t. So busy running back and forth. Rain is a bother nowadays. A hindrance to all you modern
people. So few farmers these days. And they just keep dropping—like flies, as the saying goes. No more living through the land, just on top of it. All these cars, cars, coming and going. It’s better for you if it doesn’t rain. No one minds a drought anymore.”

  His words struck her as out-of-place—old fashioned. And out-of-step with his occupation. “I wouldn’t think rain would be too conducive to construction work, either.”

  “Been so little rain all year long,” he said, propping his hands on his hips and sticking his nose toward the sky. “Like it just keeps going around us. Almost has the feel of some creature circling, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. I just thought—probably the best thing to do is tell it it’s welcome. We’re not afraid.”

  Only, Kelly was. She was afraid. “I thought a dead snake was a bad omen,” she blurted.

  “It’s a sign you’re looking for, then?” He stooped. His long black braid fell, draping over his shoulder and pointing toward the ground.

  He stood, holding something toward her. A black feather. “They’re a symbol of trust,” he told her.

  The braid and the feather seemed a bit stereotypical, she caught herself thinking. Almost like he’d walked off the set of some old episode of The Lone Ranger.

  “Stories float around us all the time,” he told her. “You decide to believe them or discount them depending on where your heart is at that moment.” Before she could figure out how she felt about that, he quickly added, “Stop thinking of yourself so much. You and your dress and your…When you stop thinking about yourself, you find your true way.”

  She glanced down at the feather. Had it come from one of the crows that were suddenly everywhere? Did it have the sheen Miriam had described? Wait. Why did she need to find any true way? What was that supposed to mean?

  She glanced up to ask him, but the man was gone. When she looked back down at her hand, she was no longer pinching anything between her fingers. The wind must have blown the feather away.

  Tightening her grip on the storage container, Kelly raced to catch up with Natalie.

  Mary, Damien’s grandaunt, sat waiting for the two women in the only corner of the living room not under repair, knitting.

  “No,” Mary said suddenly, as if to remind Kelly of the reason she and Natalie had come. And to tell her no polite small talk chitchat was necessary. Down to business.

  “I brought sketches, though,” Kelly offered, walking closer to Mary. She’d taken a Sharpie to her drawings back in the Corner Diner, so that the woman’s century-old eyes could see them better. “I would never do anything to harm the shawl. I don’t want to cut it or decorate or change it in any way. It wouldn’t even leave the property.”

  “Shawl’s not mine,” Mary said as her needles moved, still directing her yarn. It was an intricate pattern, Kelly noted. A tight lattice stitch.

  “Yes, it is, Aunt Mary,” Natalie cooed. “It’s yours. You inherited it. Remember?”

  “No. It’s Finley’s,” Mary insisted. “Never was mine. Thing like that—it’ll never belong to anyone but Finley.”

  “Finley—Powell?” Kelly asked, her voice rising at the end far more than a simple question called for. Her voice registered her surprise. Surely there had to be another Finley in the family. Surely, Mary couldn’t be talking about the same woman who had made the shawl.

  “Yes,” Mary sighed. “Finley Powell. My mother’s aunt. Who died before the end of the Civil War—and before her own wedding. Before she could marry Amos.”

  “Mary, I’d only wear it one day,” Natalie promised. “It’s my idea. I thought it would please you and Damien.”

  “She’ll need it. The same day,” Mary said.

  “My wedding day?” Natalie asked.

  Mary nodded.

  “Finley Powell,” Kelly said, trying to think up a tactful way to push Mary to explain. How could Finley be the one to need the shawl on Natalie’s wedding day?

  Mary sighed with frustration. “Yes. I told you. Finley Powell, who calmed the stress and the pain and the worry of not knowing if Amos, her brave solider, would live or die by stitching that shawl. But it was more than stitching. More than taking her mind off of things. She spent the entirety of the War Between the States putting her heart and soul in that shawl.”

  “Mary, I totally understand what you’re saying,” Kelly insisted. “I sew, too. I’m designing Natalie’s dress. I know exactly what you mean by putting your heart and soul—”

  “No,” Mary scolded, placing her needles in her lap and pointing a finger at Kelly. “Listen. Listen to me. There was an Indian. Lived right here on this land. He taught Finley things. Secret things. Things that got passed down. He taught Finley how to make sure that shawl was filled with everything she desired. Everything she wanted the future to be for her and her sweetheart. She was weaving magic in that shawl. Don’t you see? She was creating something that would bring him home, her love. That would keep him safe from harm. Ensure they would be together. Each stitch binding them closer.”

  Mary paused here, frowning in her attempt to find her next words. “Finley worked so hard. She didn’t pay attention when she started feeling poorly. She didn’t take care of herself like she should have. Finishing the shawl was always a matter of life or death, you see? No one could have guessed that Finley would be the one to die, not Amos.”

  Mary picked her needles up again and resumed her stitches. “Sewing’s like a river,” she said. “You ever notice that? A river’s not always on top of the ground. It dips down every once in a while, going underground before it pops back up again. Just like stitches on a piece of fabric, I always thought.”

  She was talking about a river now? Kelly needed to focus her mind again. “But the shawl, Mary—” She struggled to latch onto the words that would convince Mary that Natalie and Damien’s love was as powerful. “Finley’s—”

  “Finley’s out,” Mary blurted.

  “Finley is out?” Maybe it was the story Kelly’d just heard at the Corner Diner. Or the sight of the crows lining the road. Or the snake draped on the fence outside. But she found herself paying attention rather than disregarding the words of Damien’s ancient grandaunt.

  “Yes. Finley is out. Looking for her sweetheart, Amos. The man she will marry. She’s out.”

  “Mary, Finley can’t marry anyone,” Natalie told her. “Right? Finley died a long, long time ago. During the Civil War.”

  Natalie was talking pure sense. But Kelly couldn’t bring herself to discount Miriam’s story, either—not like the rest of the diner had. Ghosts. Miriam had encountered two of them. Black, but with a sheen like a crow. One’s lucky, two’s unlucky…

  And now, Mary was telling a ghost story—wasn’t she?

  “I knew I could help,” Mary said. “But it was never the right time. I was waiting for it, waiting to help Finley reunite with Amos. Even without much time left myself, I was in no hurry. Maybe, I’d started to think, I’d just pass the responsibility on—to you and Damien. Same as the responsibility had been passed down to me. The time came before I thought it would—she got out accidentally. They’re closer now than ever to finding each other. Finley and Amos.” She paused to sigh, like a young girl imagining what it might feel like to kiss a boy.

  She got out accidentally? Kelly opened her mouth to ask. What’s that mean, Mary?

  Before she could get it out, though, Natalie suggested, “Aunt Mary, why don’t you let Kelly show you her sketches? The dress she’s drawn is gorgeous. And you know what makes it work—what makes that dress stand out? Your shawl. Finley’s shawl.” By now, she was squatting beside the woman’s feet and placing her hands on top of Mary’s. “In fact, Kelly’s designed the whole dress around that shawl. I know you probably can’t see what Kelly’s drawn very well—” a certain irked expression came to life behind the milky exterior of Mary’s eyes with these words— “but what if we showed you in another way? I asked Kelly to bring the fabric she purchased…”

  Kelly nodded
in compliance. She peeled back the corner of her container. She motioned for the woman to feel it for herself.

  “Kelly would sew the dress in her shop,” Natalie went on, “and the day of the wedding, I’d wear the shawl. I promise, Mary, I’d return it straight back to your trunk after the ceremony. I wouldn’t even wear it during the reception. After all, Finley’s going to be my family, too. This December, right? I’d never do anything to harm my own family heirloom.”

  Mary started to shake her head. Before the woman could get a word out, Natalie motioned for Kelly to put down her fabric container. “We’ll bring the shawl downstairs. And Kelly can drape the fabric around me a little. So you can get a sense of it…”

  Mary let out a small groan of protest, but it was too late. Natalie was already leading Kelly toward the stairs to the attic.

  The sounds of construction grew louder near the landing. Once Kelly’s feet hit the top, she realized there was no ceiling above them. The attic was open to the dank gray watercolor sky.

  “Roof boards were rotten,” one of the hardhats called down.

  “But—where did the contents of the attic go?” Natalie asked, sweeping her arms out at the empty room.

  “Your fiancé had us move it all out. Two piles: one to keep, one to toss. Lots of stuff to toss. All that old stuff just sitting around in this house—”

  “Lots of that stuff is sentimental, you know,” Natalie said, concern flickering across her face. “Family heirlooms.”

  “Naw, naw, I’m talking about box after box of old fruit jars nobody uses anymore. Broken picture frames. Curtains with holes. Boxes of old kitchen pots and pans.”

  “Where’d you take the things to store?” Natalie asked.

  “Out to the shed.”

  “The shed?” Natalie repeated. “Good thing we’re here,” she told Kelly. “The shed’s not exactly weatherproof.”

  The women raced outside, eyes tearing against the harsh wind that had picked up, perhaps forecasting the rain that the construction worker had said they so desperately needed. Kelly glanced about, surveying the area—searching for his black braid and finding no sign of it.