by AJ Scudiere
Wanting to feel bad, Kayla lied. “I’m sorry.”
Evan stepped in before anyone could call her on it. “Did you two eat lunch? It’s nearly three.”
Reenie reached somewhere under the pile and pulled out her cell phone even as Ivy grabbed for her back pocket and frowned. Reenie showed her the screen. “Look at that. We were so involved we didn’t even think about food.”
Ivy’s stomach chose that moment to growl audibly.
The laugh that burbled out of Kayla was covered by Evan’s commentary. “Are you two developing Aspergers now?”
Reenie shrugged. “Maybe.”
Bless Evan. Kayla looked at what they had as the two women got up to see about food. It wound up being a bit of a throw-together, with Ivy ending up making three-cheese macaroni as they all talked. Stomachs protested the wait but went largely ignored as the two rushed to tell Kayla and Evan what they’d discovered.
“These are all the ledgers from the plantation for . . . close to seventy years. From 1740 to 1837. There are gaps.” Ivy stirred the water as though that would make it boil. The macaroni sat at her side, unmeasured, but in Ivy’s mind ready to go. Kayla fought the urge to weigh out four servings.
Reenie spoke over Ivy. “There are some big gaps. But the interesting parts are around the early 1800s.”
Evan was washing his hands now at the sink, even as he listened attentively. When he finished and stepped out of the way, Kayla stepped into the vacated spot and took up the job. As she went through the motions of hand washing—a constant series of movements and beats—she filtered the words she heard without any visual input.
Reenie’s voice filled in more of the story. “The plantation was doing well enough until one Martin Hazelton got his hands on it. It’s hard to tell where he takes over. His father died in 1801, but it looks like Martin was running things before that, and all accounts we read said that Reynold—his father—was ill in his later years. So that much makes sense.”
Ivy dumped in the macaroni directly from the box. Kayla held back from commenting only because she’d eaten macaroni and cheese before that Ivy had made, and it had tasted fine—whether or not she’d measured it properly. So, statistically, what she did was likely fine. But Kayla still itched.
Her brain was struggling to stay on the topic of discussion. Reenie didn’t seem to hear the near-simultaneous grumbling of stomachs, so she kept talking. Interrupted occasionally by Ivy.
“Martin was not a good manager.”
“He was actually pretty bad. Married Charlene—Lena—the first Charlene Hazelton—just after he turned eighteen himself. Reenie’s right, it’s hard to tell where it started, but the plantation went from thriving to barely surviving.”
Reenie pointed to one of the books. “He ran the place into the ground by 1807, just a few years after his father’s passing. But catch this: by then, Martin wasn’t keeping the books. Nor was the overseer. The housegirl did it.”
“What?” Even Kayla knew that was highly unusual. “Was she a slave? And how would a housegirl even read the books?”
Reenie and Ivy both stepped up to bat on that one, talking over each other.
“They were so poor—”
“It was very unusual—”
But Ivy waved for Reenie to go on and turned at least half her attention back to the macaroni.
“It seems Lena considered herself a great forward thinker once upon a time. And when she taught her oldest to read, she taught several of the house slaves, too. I read that in one of her diaries. Apparently having met with some success, she took it upon herself to see just how much she could educate the slaves. This matches with costs for primers, number books and chalks and slates over the years. She even taught one of them to play piano!
“There are withdrawals from the family coffers, first in the older Overseer’s hand, then in the housegirl’s hand. There are deposits where they sold off some of their slaves bit by bit over the years. So apparently, when the overseer was dismissed, several of the slaves were substituted into his place. The house girl took over the accounting. She notes several instances where money disappears from the coffers when she counts it each week.”
Reenie turned one of the books, flipped pages and then pointed while Kayla and Evan squinted at the embellished cursive. “Wow, it’s beautiful. Even the ledgers were an art form.”
“Well, only with the housegirl.” Reenie cradled the ledger almost as though it was a baby. Then she looked sad, and Kayla started putting some of the pieces together while Reenie talked. “It was an art form until the abrupt departure of the housegirl from the record keeping in 1805. There’s a note about a payment in cotton from the housegirl’s husband for baby supplies in late April.”
Kayla cringed. She recognized the year. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. Then there’s an abrupt ending to her entries in May of that year. No entries at all until about a week later. Then, there are several entries backdated for the missing days, but there’s one for supplies purchased from the plantation for two pine boxes by the housegirl’s husband. And that’s the last record of them. The records go on from there in some scrawl that’s clearly by a different person.”
“It matches the letters from the wall, doesn’t it?” Kayla asked.
“Really?” Evan had given up the wait and grabbed chips from the pantry. Kayla could tell he was trying not to stuff his face. It wasn’t working.
“Yes, it does.” Ivy stirred the pot and Kayla finally smelled melting cheese. Her head floated a bit, and her stomach felt like it would invert. She wasn’t certain that it wouldn’t.
None of the other words that were said made it into her brain as Ivy served her first, the plate containing a heap of mac and cheese with a fork set on the side. Kayla wasn’t sure how Ivy did it; Kayla always measured. By sight sometimes—she could just tell how long a foot was, or a meter. Maybe Ivy could just tell what was the right amount of cheese. Kayla sniffed the air again and her body relaxed as the food went in.
It wasn’t until Reenie answered a question Kayla didn’t hear, that the words around her came into sharp focus again.
“Yes, I think Lena killed the housegirl. And not much later, there’s an entry for a fine coffin from town for a baby. It matches the dates, and I’m more convinced than ever that’s what she was talking about in the letters. I think she killed her own baby, too.”
Evan and Kayla were back at work in the barn when the late afternoon sun finally slanted enough to come through the back door. It hit Kayla squarely where she was working. While she contemplated the sad story told by the accounts in the ledgers, she’d assembled her third machine. It would power this place for the tourists so they could get their hands on plantation life—or at least tiny pieces of it. It would heat and cool and provide light for classes that Reenie wanted to run. That could be a drain on the bills, but not with this, not now.
As she oiled and set gears, her brain adjusted for the change in size from the other machines. But the strong sun in her eyes was an indicator that once again time had passed and she had not paid attention.
Straightening, she felt the protest from her knees and ankles, a sign that she had not moved from that position during the time she’d not been paying attention. With a cock of her head one way, then another, she stretched her neck, then her arms, loosening her shoulders as she stood aligned in the open frame of the doorway.
Not speaking—she knew Evan wouldn’t hear her over the singing of the saw—she motioned that she was stepping out. A nod was all she needed in return and she was on her way. Out the door and down the short hill to the wall formed by the woods. Her short sleeves left her arms exposed to the sun, but she had on sunscreen. It was part of the many steps she took in the morning; she had to trust that it was still working. The hem of her shirt moved around the gun as she walked, the hem of her jeans disappearing into the grass as it got higher. Approaching the tree line, she found her eyes squinting.
There was something back there in the trees.
Thinking it was a deer and hoping to catch a glimpse, Kayla slowly crouched down and tried to become more silent, more stealthy. She could watch it if it didn’t see her.
On the slow downward slope she approached, hoping to be silent, trying to sink into the grass.
And that was why the two men didn’t see her.
Kayla drew her gun.
16
The Barn
When Evan found Kayla, she was shaking. The gun was loose in her hands, but from what he’d heard, she’d been holding it plenty tight just a moment ago.
Putting his arms around her, he tried to still her movements, but nothing he did worked. She rattled like a machine about to come apart. He wondered if that might be exactly what she was.
And then he realized he was shaking, too, and with his own disturbed hands he took the gun. It had that feeling—an almost-ringing—that let you know it had been fired recently and it liked it. Evan was less happy than the gun.
He’d done exactly what he made everyone promise not to do: he’d let down his guard.
Kayla had motioned to him that she was heading outside. She was going out where he’d seen strange tracks and suspected someone was casing their property when they weren’t around. And he’d just let her walk out, hadn’t thought twice.
Back in its heyday, this place had been bustling. Animals in the barns and the slaves in their cabins guarded every corner. But now the guards only numbered four. And four clearly was not enough to do a good job of keeping the outside from creeping across their borders.
Evan had been working, thinking that it had been a while, that Kayla must be doing more than stretching, when the gunshot pierced his musings. At least, he’d thought that’s what it was. With the saw buzzing and his ear protection muffling all sounds, his brain hadn’t been certain what the noise was. Even so, he’d jerked to cut the machine off, stopping the board mid-rip. He’d yanked his ear plugs and goggles, tossing them before the saw blade even began to slow.
First he saw the men in the woods. They stared at him for one brief minute, hands in the air. While he’d gotten a good look at their faces, his memory of their features had been distorted by his fear for Kayla.
She stood in a ready stance, hands firm on the gun he could practically see smoke rising from. Glancing back to the men, he’d seen that they weren’t shot. No one wore growing blooms of bloodstain; no one stood awkwardly, protecting a limb.
But as he looked them over, they looked at him.
The change in them, the direction of their glances, had Kayla looking for him, for just a fraction of a moment. And as his eyes met hers, saw that she was threatening the men out of raw anger more than fear, he caused her to lose her grip on the standoff.
Taking advantage of her distraction, the two men slipped away, counting on cover of trees to at least thwart any shots Kayla might try to get off. They crashed like fumbling beasts through the woods, but because of that Evan could hear that they were heading off the property.
Kayla rapidly scanned the area, seeming to see nothing. And it took Evan a second to grasp that—as loud as they were—Kayla couldn’t hear them. Her ears must be ringing from the shot she’d fired.
He’d turned to her then, as the men left his own hearing range, and he pulled the gun from her now-lax grip. Jerking, he remembered at the last minute to put the safety back on before he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans where it butted against his own gun. If the weight of one gun wasn’t enough to make him rethink his choices, two—one smelling of fresh-fired cordite—definitely did the job.
A rustle beyond their sight had him jerking around to check that direction, too.
There wasn’t much to see, a slight rise blocked the view of the big house from where the barn sat on the flat ground below. But someone was definitely coming.
By feel, Evan pulled his gun—the cooler one, the higher caliber one—from the back of his jeans. Leaving one arm around Kayla, he thumbed off the safety and lifted the piece, aiming toward the person who was coming. At high speed.
He could hear it now, the sound of running feet, and though he knew that anyone coming from that direction was likely Reenie or Ivy, he still raised the gun. Kayla had subsided to small tremors, but the way she was reacting indicated that she had no idea why he was aiming where he was. Probably a sign that her hearing hadn’t yet returned. Or that she’d shut down. Nothing like firing a gun to set off some bad side effects of Aspergers.
Shit.
“Ev?” the voice was small, tinny, Kayla wanting to know what was going on. But he didn’t have time. The plantation was big. The grass tall and loud in its dry August stage. It was taking the running person a while to get to them. Or so it seemed in his adrenaline-fueled brain.
“Shh, Kay.” He didn’t take his eyes off the hill. “Shit.”
Reenie topped the crest, running strong, her gun out, held stiffly at her side the way she must have seen on some cop show. And his eyes threatened to go blurry, squeezing to mimic the sensation in his chest. What had he done?
He lowered his gun, thumbed the safety, and shoved it haphazardly back into his waistband before he could do something stupid. Or rather, so that when he did something stupid, it didn’t involve twitchy fingers and random bullets.
“What happened?” As she reached them, Reenie’s words revealed she was slightly out of breath, but not as much as he would have expected for the run she’d just completed. She’d been hauling ass, too. “I thought I heard a gunshot.”
“You did.”
“What?!” She looked them over as she took in a deep breath, but it didn’t bend her over or change her stance. It seemed his Reenie was made of sterner stuff than he’d given her credit for. She must have decided that his two words were insufficient, because she repeated herself. “What happened?”
He wanted to reach out and hold her, but she didn’t come nearer and he was fully aware that he was keeping his sister upright. He couldn’t move to Reenie, so he settled for an update. “There were two men out in the woods, Kayla shot at them.”
Reenie’s gaze went to Kayla, still tipped against him for support. “Why?”
The muscle twitch in his shoulder was the only response to his surprise that Kayla answered Reenie. Not only did she answer, she did it in a clear voice, shocking the shit out of him with both her steadiness and what she revealed. She did the opposite of what he expected, standing straighter, pushing out from under his arm and taking a breath.
“They had cameras, each of them.” Her voice modulated up and down and it took him a few beats to realize that she was trying to find the right volume. “They took pictures of the barn, used telephoto lenses to try to see what was inside. One was the same man who came here the first time.”
“Holy shit.” Reenie gave a hard blink and darted her eyes away for a moment. Her comment was about the men. Evan almost said the same thing about Kayla standing tall. She hadn’t snapped loudly, or crumbled quietly.
And that worried him even more, because it meant Kayla made a rational decision to shoot at those men.
Her words confirmed his concern. “I didn’t shoot at them, just aimed into the trees. I wanted them to know I wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger. I yelled that I was giving one warning shot, then I put it right near their heads.”
Reenie looked for a moment like someone had punched her in the stomach and Evan knew she was thinking about what could have happened if Kayla had missed and hit one of them. But this wasn’t the time to discuss that. She turned to him instead. “You didn’t hear any of this?”
“No.” He was ashamed and appalled that he hadn’t. “I had my earplugs in and the saw turned on.” And apparently his common sense turned off. “I barely heard the shot and came out to check.”
Kayla didn’t let their conversation sidetrack her from her own. “They both wore holsters. And when I warned them they were trespassing and asked for their cameras, they reache
d for their guns. I already had mine out.” She smiled a bit. “So I was faster.”
“Oh, Jesus, Kayla.” Reenie stepped up and gave her a hug.
Evan cringed. Kayla was sensitive about who touched her and a hug could be a near violation on some days. But she did nothing. Just squeezed her eyes and allowed Reenie to embrace her.
With that one motion—or lack of it, no shoving Reenie away, not even a step back—his world completed its inversion. They were wearing guns; he was tilling fields and planting cotton; they were fending off invaders after Kayla’s machine; he and Reenie were convinced Ivy was a mole; and Kayla had just let Reenie hug her. Had the moon risen and subsequently fallen from the sky just then, he couldn’t have summoned the energy to find it strange.
Reenie let his sister go and Kayla looked back and forth at both of them. “They didn’t seem surprised that I had a gun or that I shot at them. Only that I was so close before they saw me.”
There was silence between the three of them for a moment. Evan could see that Kayla was slowly reorganizing the fragments of her thoughts that had been scattered by the surprise visit. He and Reenie scanned the area, at least until Reenie let out a tiny, “Oh, crap!” and dove into her pocket for her cell phone.
With a few touches of buttons she was on it and talking, clearly to Ivy. “Yes, it was a shot. . . . no, don’t come down, stay there, keep a lookout.” She turned her eyes to his, conveying some message that he failed to intercept, but then her focus went back to the call. “Everyone’s okay. We’re going to stay here and see if we can find anything they left behind, that kind of thing. . . did you see anything up there?” Reenie gave a short shake of her head at him, telling him that Ivy hadn’t. “Well, you stay. Keep your eyes peeled and your hands ready and we should be up in a bit.”
She hung up then and they went about the business Reenie had suggested, searching the near woods and finding only one small broken digital camera. Kayla pocketed it and mentioned trying to pull something off the drive. Given the shape it was in—it looked stepped on—Evan could only wish her luck.
