The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “Why didn’t you clean out the trailer? Take the pictures, the evidence, everything? No one would have known.”

  Brian gave a short laugh. “Because I panicked. I just grabbed a few things, like—like that Darrow obituary, and then I ran. And then the next day Nicole had plans for us. I couldn’t get out of it so I didn’t say a word. By the time we got back that night, someone had already found him and called it in.”

  Annalise gagged. She turned to look out her window, trying to keep the nausea at bay. She sensed Brian lean up behind her, his breath hot in her ear.

  “I love Nicole. But, I can’t ask her to marry me with nothing. I’m nothing. I must offer her something. And to do that, I need the wilderness center and that land. I’m sorry, Annalise. I really liked you. I did.”

  Then a spearing pain shot through her head. The butt of the gun cracked against her skull, and Annalise crumpled against the door.

  “Brian . . .” she mumbled as her vision blurred. Annalise sank back against the seat.

  Brian leaned over her, his eyes wide and earnest. “I’m sorry, Annalise. I’m so sorry.”

  The woods, the pond, and Brian faded as darkness swamped her. So, this was it. This was what it felt like to die.

  Chapter 39

  Libby

  Reverend Mueller was a disturbed man. Libby eyed him as he paced back and forth in front of the kitchen table. She shivered in her damp dress, sitting obediently in the chair because she had no choice. Her hands were tied behind her, attached to the chair frame with twine that cut into her wrists. He stopped his pacing and stared down at her.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you leave Calvin in the fire? None of this would have had to happen. Think of what you did, Libby.”

  “I do. I have!” Libby sobbed. She wasn’t above begging. She had nothing to offer the reverend of any worth. “Please! Don’t do this.”

  “You know,” Reverend Mueller said, squatting in front of her, his knees cracking as he did so, “I have always looked on you as a daughter. Always. I have been disgusted by the sin in this community. As a minister of God, it stuns me how unrepentant humanity is. Greenwood, Dorothy Hayes, and even Paul—although he seems to have seen the truth. But you? All this time, I never imagined, never fathomed you would be worse than all of them! You would be guilty of letting my son, my Calvin, be disabled in that fire.”

  She wanted to ask how he knew. How he’d found out. But it would just make it worse. She would sound unremorseful for her sin, and only sorry she’d been discovered.

  Reverend Mueller reached up and pushed hair off her cheek. He answered her unspoken question anyway. “The Corbin brothers have a way of bringing clarity to the need for repentance. They’ve brought clarity even to Calvin. Jacobus has spent much time with my boy, and Calvin’s retained more memories of that night than any of us knew. He was able to finally put them into words, first to the preacher, then to me. A few days ago, my boy told me everything.”

  Libby swallowed hard, blinking as tears blinded her. Tears she couldn’t wipe away due to her bindings.

  Reverend Mueller stood, stalked over to the doorway, turned and faced her. “Wanton little thing. Calvin remembers you as his girl and as Elijah Greenwood’s girl.”

  “No.” Libby bit her lip, shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “But it’s what Calvin remembers.”

  “Calvin was—is my closest friend. But I was enamored with Elijah and—”

  “And you played with both of them!” Reverend Mueller hissed. “Toyed with them and played the whore!”

  “I didn’t!” And she hadn’t! “It was nothing more than a kiss—well, a few kisses, and Elijah found us and then the fire started. They were fighting, both of them.”

  Reverend Mueller marched up to her and glared down on her. “But you left Calvin to die.”

  “Is that what Calvin said?” She had to know. It might be the awful truth. It might be a truth one could forgive because she was young, or because she’d been so ashamed and frightened. She could hardly stand the idea that Calvin remembered.

  “He told me he ‘got stuck’ and you were fleeing and Elijah saved him. He thinks you ran to get help. To help him, Libby! But we know better, don’t we?”

  “I was scared,” Libby cried. “I—I don’t even know why I ran.”

  “Because you were guilty. You still are. And it takes this”—Reverend Mueller waved his arm at her bound to the chair—“to get you to confess! If I had known all these years, I’d not have wasted my time on Harrison Greenwood and the rest of the dirty lot.”

  Reverend Mueller seemed to try to steady himself as his hands shook and his mouth twitched in anger. He lifted a teakettle from the stove. He’d been warming the water for over twenty minutes. Now he pulled a teacup from the cupboard and poured water into it, sloshing over the sides of the cup onto the counter.

  Taking a sip, he eyed Libby over the rim of the cup. “As a minister of the Word, I’m privy to much in this community. People pretending to seek confession when they merely want to patch their souls so they can continue in sin. There is no true repentance! This town needs cleansing!”

  “Then let God do it!” Libby breathed, wishing instantly she hadn’t.

  Reverend Mueller slopped tea onto the floor.

  “God? He uses His people to enact justice. Think of Samson, of Gideon, the judges of Israel!”

  “But—” The idea that Reverend Mueller believed God had accorded him the same position as an Old Testament judge was beyond her. She ventured to speak reason to the reverend. “Yet God spared many. When they confessed,” she argued.

  “Yes!” Reverend Mueller raised his index finger in the air. “When they confessed. But it was sincere confession. Like Paul Darrow. He paid back what he’d taken. Dorothy, Deacon Greenwood, they pretended—but they never paid for what they’d done. Not after Dorothy gave her firstborn Elijah to the deacon’s wife, and not after Dorothy bore Lawrence.”

  Libby froze. Elijah was Dorothy’s son? Her stomach turned at the revelation. Elijah was Lawrence’s full-blooded brother!

  Reverend Mueller set his cup on the table. He rubbed his hands together. “Now. I gave Harrison a chance to truly repent. He refused. Oh, he begged and pleaded, but in the end I couldn’t even squeeze a confession from him. Even when I made him write his own suicide note and he could see what I intended. And then there was his lover. Dorothy. I made her stand in her near-nakedness. To make her feel the sin of it and she just begged to live. She didn’t see her errors.” He spat the words like a curse.

  “Then why make them look like accidents? And why write their obituaries and drop them at the newspaper before you even killed them? You never intended to let them go.”

  Reverend Mueller smiled, but it wasn’t kind. “I knew they wouldn’t confess. They’d had years to and yet they chose to live double lives. Sinful lives. The obituaries were to send a message. A warning to repent. Originally, I thought your news-hungry father would find them and print them. But he didn’t. You did. But now I’m glad you found them. Now that I know the truth about my son. The truth of what you did. I will never have my son back—you killed the boy I had.”

  Spittle dotted her face as the reverend grew angrier. His face reddened. “It’s too late now, Libby. It’s too late.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She was. Oh, how she was! “I confess!” It sounded pithy, even to her. The insincerity of a coerced confession. Deacon Greenwood and Dorothy Hayes probably had done the same. Begged for forgiveness, but with Reverend Mueller there was no grace to be found.

  The man leaned into her, his fingertip wiping away his spit from her cheek. “I will listen to your pleas, Libby Sheffield, as your last breath seeps from you. But you have come to the gateway of eternity and it is too late. I will bury you alive in your sin. Maybe then, Calvin will be vindicated, and God—God can be at work in this town once again.”

  Annalise

  Cold startled Annalise awake.
Water soaked her feet and legs. The world was blurry as she opened her eyes, trying to gather where she was, where Brian had disappeared to. She peered out the window.

  “Oh, God, help me!” And she meant it. Pond water encased the car. Brian must have pushed the car into Gossamer Pond!

  Annalise clawed at the seat, pulling her feet up beneath her, her head hitting the car’s ceiling. Water poured through cracks in the doors. The smell of it caught her breath. She coached herself to keep from hyperventilating. Deep breaths. Pushing the car door open would be impossible. She needed to break a window. But, when she did that, she’d lose all oxygen, and the car would flood. At least she could swim.

  The water at her knees splashed as she clamored for the glove compartment. The nose of the car shifted down, and through the windshield all she could see was murky water. Annalise looked for something sharp. Something with a point to ram into the driver’s window so it would shatter. She didn’t think she’d have enough strength to kick it out.

  Napkins fell into the pond water on the passenger seat, soaking through, the logo from her coffee shop bleeding off the brown paper. The owner’s manual, tire pressure gauge, an old straw. Annalise clawed through the contents of the glove compartment.

  A screwdriver! Annalise gripped it tight. She couldn’t afford to lose it in the dark, mottled water that was now up to her waist.

  In mere minutes she could be face-to-face with God instead of sucking in air and seeing the sky. The ironic thought raced through Annalise’s mind. As she repositioned herself on the seat, balancing as the car tilted downward, an odd sense of peace enveloped her. She would be fine. Dead or breathing. Maybe her parents—Garrett’s parents—held her life’s choices against her, but God didn’t. He never had. She knew that. Deep inside her soul where she never liked to explore. A verse from childhood Sunday school filtered through her brain. More water poured in through the seams in the car. The chill caught her breath as the water hit her chest.

  “The wages of sin is death . . .”

  Annalise gripped the screwdriver. She probably wouldn’t have enough strength to bust through the window.

  “But the gift of God . . .”

  She aimed the tool like a weapon. Two hands wrapped around each other.

  “Is eternal life . . .”

  Sucking in a deep breath, she brought her arms down with as much force against the window as she could. The water pushed back against her, but the screwdriver drove into the glass.

  “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  Libby

  His fingers were cold. Thumbs pressed into the hollow of her throat. Libby kicked, her legs tangling with Reverend Mueller’s. The chair tipped backward and they fell to the floor. Pain surged through Libby’s hands, still tied behind her back. Something sharp cut into the side of her hand. The back of the wooden chair had shattered, exposing a nail. Reverend Mueller’s grip released in the fall, and for a moment Libby’s vision cleared. She coughed, gasping in a deep breath. He repositioned, straddling her body.

  “No,” he hissed in her face, his hands rising to grip her throat.

  Libby pulled her wrists downward against the nail. It bit into the twine and her skin. She did it again and again, flailing her legs and trying to bring her knees up into the reverend’s middle to disable him. Her hands broke free, and she pulled her arms out from beneath the weight of the chair and their bodies. She clawed at Reverend Mueller’s face.

  Pushing her hands into the reverend’s nose, she shoved. He grunted and his fingers released her throat. Blood spurted from his nostrils and dripped onto her dress. Libby rolled away and scrambled to her feet. She slipped as she ran, her body slamming into the doorframe of the kitchen. Reverend Mueller was close behind, his hand tearing at her collar as Libby launched herself down the hall toward the front entrance.

  Before she could reach for it, the door flew open, rain pelting the darkness in the background, and a silhouette in the doorway.

  “Calvin!” Libby screamed. “Please!”

  Reverend Mueller had hold of her waist and was pulling her back into the kitchen. He yelled at his son, “Close the door, boy! I will bring justice for you!”

  Calvin’s eyes widened, and instead of closing the door he spun on his heel and ran back into the storm.

  “Calvin!” Libby’s scream echoed after him. She twisted in the reverend’s grip, scratching his hands at her waist. She drove her elbow into Reverend Mueller’s gut, and his breath released in a grunt.

  As she fell forward, catching herself against the wall, two men barreled into the room. One grabbed for her, the other slammed into the reverend, tackling him to the floor. She heard a fist smack into the reverend’s face, then again and again. Libby buried her face against the chest that held her. She felt the man turn, as if to shield her from the sight, but Libby pulled back and struggled to look around the arms that held her.

  Elijah. Elijah held her, shielding her, just as he had since that night. She didn’t want to be shielded. Not anymore. Libby squirmed to have him release her.

  Another solid fist landed against the reverend’s face. A shout. Calvin came rushing through the doorway, two policemen following him. They dragged the second man off Reverend Mueller, who moaned and rolled on the floor, holding his bruised and bloodied face in his hands.

  “Get him up!” one of the policeman commanded. The other dragged Reverend Mueller to his feet. Calvin collapsed against the wall, sliding down, sobbing frightened, terrified tears.

  “Let me go!” Libby pulled away from Elijah.

  Without hesitation, Elijah’s hands slid from her, protecting her no longer. She hurried to Calvin, dropping beside him. She cradled her friend—her best friend—against her and held him. A grown man, yet a boy. Reverend Mueller had been right. She had taken Calvin’s life, if not his breath, from him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried, her tears mingling with Calvin’s. “I never meant for you to get hurt. I was scared. I ran. I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

  They rocked together, and as they did, Libby looked up at the man whose shadow cast over them. His knuckles were skinned, raw from the force he’d unleashed on Calvin’s father. His chest heaved from the exertion, but his eyes were clear. Sure. Strong. It was justice and mercy mingled together.

  Jacobus looked less a revivalist and more a lean fighter. His hair was askew, his lip swollen from where Reverend Mueller must have hit him. He gave a small shrug. “Sometimes the soul and the mind aren’t enough, Libby Sheffield.” It was if he was continuing the conversation from earlier when he’d left her and walked away. Jacobus pressed a handkerchief to his knuckles before casting her a sideways smile. “But I do believe God will also forgive me the sin of a very bad temper.”

  Chapter 40

  Annalise

  You scared the living tar out of me!” Christen’s cry made Annalise jump, sloshing hot coffee onto a pair of jogging pants Garrett had brought from his house. She raised an eyebrow at her friend.

  “I was almost shot and almost drowned, and now you’re going to give me third-degree burns.” Annalise set her coffee on the hospital table. She drew her legs up to her chest, smelling the scent of Garrett. He sat on the edge of her hospital bed, wrapping a blanket over her shoulders and around her hospital gown.

  Christen hugged her, burying her face in Annalise’s damp hair. “What happened?”

  “I just gave your husband the entire debrief.” She leaned back against Garrett as Christen pulled away. He was strong. For now, he was safe. When she’d busted the car window, it had only taken a few kicks to get to the surface of Gossamer Pond. Then she’d run for what seemed like miles until she found a house. Banging on the door brought the owners, a cellphone, and in short order an ambulance and cops. The hospital had been a welcome sight, the same as it had been a welcome sound to hear Garrett’s voice on the end of the line when she’d called him from the ambulance.

  Brent had taken her account and left a few minutes before his wife
plowed into the hospital room. An APB had been put out for Brian, and apparently a call was made to Mayor Nicole Greenwood.

  “This is insane!” Christen plopped into a pleather-covered hospital chair. “Who would’ve thought it was Brian!”

  “It makes sense. Now.” Annalise pushed hair behind her ear. Garrett’s arm adjusted and she glanced at him. He gave her a small smile.

  “I guess.” Christen blew a puff of air between her lips, sounding like a mix between a motorboat and a baby blowing bubbles. “All because of Nicole and the land?” Christen’s eyes widened. She redirected her gaze at Garrett. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Garrett shook his head. “It’s way past time for all this to come out. Every bit of it. Besides, no one has really given this town a chance to forgive people. We keep hiding stuff.”

  “It’s time for Gossamer Grove to show its true grit.” Christen nodded in affirmation and conviction. “Show we are a community with a history, but a community of people who can move forward. Together.”

  Annalise sighed, eyeing the coffee from the hospital and debating calling her coffee shop and having a special delivery made to her hospital room.

  “I just want it to be over.” A tremor passed through her, and she snuggled deeper against Garrett. “I know it was Brian now. I know he tried to scare me after I started looking into Eugene’s findings. Watching me, my slashed tires . . . all of it. But, I still have questions. Libby Sheffield. That revival meeting from 1907. Lawrence and Eugene. What happened to them all? Can you imagine being in their shoes? I mean, they couldn’t have imagined years later we’d be similar”—she directed her words to Garrett—“or that their descendant would be a mayor with an impeccable legacy to uphold.”

  Garrett rolled his eyes. “Not exactly impeccable.”

  Christen moved to the edge of her chair. She clapped her hands like a kindergarten teacher, eyes wide behind her blue-framed glasses. “Children, children. Things have developed since you were off designing climbing gyms and plunging beneath the chilly waters of a pond.”