by Ellery Adams
Nora got to her feet, pulling on her raincoat as she headed for the exit.
“Have a nice day! Thanks for comin’ in,” the hostess called after her.
Nora didn’t hear the hostess. She was too focused on the man. But when she glanced outside again, there was no one at the mouth of the alley.
Instinct propelled her to go after the man, to prove that he existed.
That he wasn’t a ghost.
This was the second time Nora had seen him. And it wasn’t just her. Hester had seen him too. On the street in front of her house. He’d stood there for a moment. And then, quick as a blink, he was gone.
Nora didn’t like the way this man melted into the rain. She didn’t like how he seemed to be made of mist.
She jumped on her bike and pedaled toward the alley. As she rode, several thoughts crossed her mind. Why was the man out in the rain in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt? The white made him stand out. It stuck to his dark skin like a wetsuit. Nora realized that she hadn’t noticed the color of his skin the first time she’d seen him. It had been a rainy night and he’d been bathed in shadow.
She glanced around the street, searching for the man.
Who are you? she wanted to ask him. Why are you watching me?
His behavior wasn’t normal. At best, it was furtive. At worst, he was stalking her. He’d been staring directly into the diner, as if he knew Nora would meet his gaze. And she had. She couldn’t even see his eyes, but his bold stare had felt predatory.
Nora slowed her pace. Did she really want to confront a man like that in a deserted alley?
No, she didn’t. All she wanted was proof of his existence. And when she reached the mouth of the alley, she found it.
In a patch of ground kept dry by the eaves of the florist building was a smoldering cigarette butt.
Nora took a long look down the stretch of empty alley before glancing back at the glowing stub. As she watched, the light went out and a whisper of smoke started to drift skyward.
The second it cleared the shelter of the eaves, it was pummeled into oblivion by the rain.
Chapter 4
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are sealed with scars.
—Khalil Gibran
Because they enjoyed eating together, Nora had become a better cook since she and her friends had formed the Secret, Book, and Scone Society.
After their book club meetings, a potluck supper was usually the meal of choice. Hester always organized the food, doling out assignments like an army general. She took care of the entrée and left the side dishes to the rest of them.
Nora was tired of lettuce in all its forms, so she decided to make a watermelon and berry salad for tonight’s supper at the Inn of Mist and Roses. She was in the middle of chopping the watermelon when the phone rang. It was Lou.
“I’m sorry, but we have to reschedule our potluck,” she said, sounding glum. “Sheldon isn’t feeling well, and it’s all our fault. Our attic is full of junk—old trunks and boxes filled with who-knows-what—and Sheldon heard us moaning about having to go through it. He volunteered to take a preliminary look. He wasn’t up there long before he said that he was going to his room to rest. Patty went to check on him, and she said his face was as gray as the sky.”
“Is he in pain?”
“From what Patty said, it’s really bad. She heated two rice bags and brought them up to him. He said that he has absolutely no appetite and wants to be left alone.”
Nora understood Sheldon’s need for solitude. She remembered her days in the burn unit. All she’d known was pain. It was her only company. Pain and guilt.
Unlike her, Sheldon hadn’t driven another car off the road. He hadn’t been the cause of his own suffering. Still, he had to live with it, and Nora had enough experience with physical pain to know that medicine had its limits. At best, it took the edge off the hurting. At worst, it did nothing. Which is why people came to the thermal pools. The heat was a blessed respite. But the pain always returned. Always.
Nora stocked lots of books on pain relief. Her inventory was a blend of traditional Western medical advice, holistic treatments, and the tenets of Chinese medicine. She’d spoken with hundreds of customers desperate to find a cure for their suffering, and by this time in her career, she had a deep understanding of chronic pain and its debilitating effect on people’s lives.
“I have lots of books on chronic pain,” Nora said. “Maybe I can find a holistic treatment he hasn’t tried yet. What does he have?”
“Rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. He wanted me to tell you that this is why he’d be an unreliable employee.” Lou paused. “Are you thinking about hiring him?”
It was Nora’s turn to hesitate. “I don’t know yet. We need more time together.”
“We can reschedule our potluck when Sheldon’s feeling better. I’d call it a rain check, but . . .”
“The word rain is now taboo?” Nora asked.
Lou let out a dry laugh. “Seriously taboo. The local news channel says that the you-know-what will be over by tomorrow, but their credibility was shot to hell when they claimed that the whole system would move through in a day or two. Idiots. What are they doing with their fancy computers? Playing Candy Crush? They should try a Magic Eight-Ball for this week’s forecast.”
Someone knocked on Nora’s door and she frowned. She did not encourage visitors. Jed and her friends came over by invitation only. No one dropped by unannounced. They knew better.
Nora told Lou that she needed to go. “Tell Sheldon that I hope he feels better,” she added before hanging up.
There was another round of knocking. It sounded impatient. Still holding the knife she’d been using to cut the watermelon, Nora approached the door.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“Grant McCabe.”
Nora opened the door. The sheriff looked like a dog left out in the rain. She stepped aside to let him in.
“I don’t want to track water all over your house,” he said, hesitating in the threshold.
“Leave your boots on the mat. I’ll get you a towel.”
Nora dropped the knife on the cutting board and got a clean towel from her bathroom. When she returned to her living area, McCabe was glancing around for a place to put his wet hat. Nora set it on top of her tiny wood-burning stove.
McCabe dried his face with the towel before spreading it over a section of Nora’s sofa. “May I?” he asked.
Nora gestured for him to sit and asked if he wanted anything to drink.
“I’d like a shot of whiskey, but I’m on duty.” His attempt at levity was half-hearted. “I’d ask for a glass of water, but I’ve had it with water. If I complain about the heat in July, remind me about this week.”
Nora waited for him to continue. She expected him to talk about Danny. Instead, he pointed at her right hand. “Do you always answer the door armed?”
“I was cutting fruit. I hope you don’t mind if I finish while we talk.” Nora returned to the kitchen and continued chopping the watermelon. It was so juicy that the grooves in the cutting board had overflowed, pink rivulets flowing onto the counter.
The sheriff let his body sink a little deeper into the sofa cushions. He radiated fatigue. “The person you saw in the river was the man known as Cherokee Danny. I’ve already mispronounced his last name too many times today, so I’m going to call him Danny.”
“What is his last name?” Nora asked.
McCabe carried his phone into the kitchen and showed Nora the name on the screen.
Amo-adawehi.
Nora wiped her hands on a paper towel. “There’s a website with a list of Cherokee pronunciations. I can’t promise this name will be on it, but I can look.”
“Please.”
Nora found the site and an audio recording of the second part of Danny’s surname. She pressed a play button and a man with a deep baritone said, “ah-DAH-way-hee.”
“I’ll bookmark
this for you.” Nora indicated another word on the list. “It says here that Ama sounds like AH-ma, so maybe Amo sounds like AH-mo.”
“Would you like to work for the Miracle Springs Sheriff’s Department? You could be our official researcher.”
Nora smiled at him. “No, thanks. Your uniforms don’t look very comfortable.”
McCabe took a seat on a kitchen stool and grew serious again. “Marie is Danny Amo-adawehi’s wife,” he began, pronouncing the name correctly. “Last night, Danny told Marie that they wouldn’t be driving to the flea market today. He thought they should stay put because the roads in their area were going from bad to worse and he didn’t expect many customers at the flea market.”
“He was right about that,” said Nora quietly.
“Despite what he’d said, Danny got up and got dressed very early. He wrote a note telling Marie that he loved her and to be careful. She said that even though he wrote her little notes all the time, this one made her worry. She couldn’t understand why he’d gone out when they’d agreed not to.”
Nora remembered watching the couple interact. She remembered them exchanging smiles and playful digs. Danny and Marie were good together. Anyone with a pair of eyes could see that. She told McCabe as much.
“If she hadn’t mentioned that Danny left her notes on a regular basis, I might have viewed it as a good-bye.”
Nora said, “No. He wouldn’t.”
McCabe gave her a quizzical look.
“I didn’t know Danny or Marie, but you can’t fake the kind of quiet contentment they had. They were man and wife. They were also friends. It was plain to see. I don’t think a man who had a true friend in his wife would jump off a bridge.”
“I guess Danny was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” There was sadness in the sheriff’s voice.
“But why?” Nora asked. “Why was he on the bridge in the first place? He told his wife that they should stay home. He knew the roads were bad, but he drove to town anyway. And if he had a car, why was he on the footbridge?”
McCabe’s expression was solemn. “I wish I knew. I also wish I could figure out why Deputy Andrews found Danny’s truck parked near Cherokee Rock. It’s pretty far from town.”
Nora hadn’t been to Cherokee Rock, but she’d heard of it. Hikers often left the Appalachian Trail to take a brief detour to the famous site. The rock itself was an unremarkable outcropping, but it featured a pictograph created by a Cherokee artist thousands of years ago. A group of hikers visiting the bookshop told her that the paint used to create the mysterious pattern was still bright after all this time.
“It’ll be there long after we’re all dead,” one of them had said.
It’s already outlived Danny Amo-adawehi, Nora thought sadly.
“Cherokee Rock is three miles away,” she said while mopping up the watermelon juice with a sponge. “Why would he park there and walk through the rain?”
“I have no idea. Neither does Marie. She also doesn’t know why he had three boxes of pottery in the back seat. According to Andrews, Danny would have to take a trail through the woods to get to town. It would have been a long and miserable walk.”
Nora asked if he’d been wearing hiking boots.
“Tennis shoes. Though he owns rain boots. I asked his wife. They would have kept him dry, but they wouldn’t have been comfortable for a long walk.”
The story was getting stranger and stranger.
“Was he meeting someone?” Nora wondered aloud. “Why else would he park in a place he wouldn’t be seen?”
McCabe didn’t reply. He seemed on the verge of a decision, and Nora knew it was best to stay silent.
“There’s more,” he said. “This doesn’t leave this house, but Marie told us that Danny has been acting jumpy lately. Full of nervous energy.”
Nora immediately thought of the man in the white T-shirt.
“When did this start?”
“A few weeks ago. Marie said that nothing has changed at home. They live pretty simply. It’s just the two of them in a two-bedroom house. They have a small network of friends but spend most of their time working.” The sheriff spread his hands. “Something must have been going on with Danny, but Marie had no ideas and I didn’t want to press the point. She’d already had to identify her husband’s body and suffer through an interview. Speaking of which.”
McCabe asked Nora to recount every detail from her interaction with Danny and Marie at the flea market to how she’d come to spot his body in the river.
She finished up with a question of her own. “What about the cause of death?”
The sheriff frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“Because maybe he never meant to walk to Miracle Springs. Maybe he was never on the footbridge. Maybe . . . something else happened to him.”
McCabe sat very still. “Such as?”
“What if he ended up in the river because someone put him in the river?”
“At this point, there’s no evidence of foul play,” McCabe said. “We’ll wait for the ME’s ruling, but for now, we’re treating it as an accidental death.” He stood up and walked to the living room to collect his hat. Holding it in his hands, he looked at Nora. “As much as I’d like to dry off some more, I’d better be on my way.”
Nora was torn. Should she mention the man in the white T-shirt? What could she say about him?
He doesn’t seek shelter from the rain. He stood there, looking right at me, and then vanished. He’s like the monster from the story I used to read to the kids at the library. He becomes whole in the rain, and only certain people see him.
The sheriff would listen to her with an open mind. But even if she told him, what could he do with the information? The stranger hadn’t committed a crime. He was just . . . there. For a few seconds at a time. Staring. And then, he was gone.
Nora readied to open the door. “What about through-hikers? Maybe some of them checked into a hotel to wait out the rain? It’s a long shot, but one of them might have seen Danny this morning.”
“Through-hikers,” McCabe repeated the term that referred to the men and women hiking the Appalachian Trail in its entirety. “I’ll check on that.”
Nora handed him the bowl of fruit, which was now covered in plastic wrap. “Take this with you. I’m sure everyone at the station could use a little taste of summer.”
McCabe thanked her and left.
Nora listened to his footfalls on the deck’s metal stairs. When she turned back to her kitchen, she realized that she had nothing for dinner. Other than a box of Raisin Bran, she’d just given away the only food she had.
“Cereal it is,” she murmured.
It wasn’t a total loss. The great thing about cereal was that it only required one hand to eat, which left her other hand free to turn the pages of a book.
Nora read while she ate. Afterward, she moved to the sofa and read some more. Two hours passed. She made a cup of chamomile tea and carried the book and the tea to her bedroom. She sipped and read until her eyelids felt heavy.
Just one more chapter, she told herself.
The softness of her pillow and the steady rhythm of the falling rain lulled her off to sleep. She slept with her lamp still burning, her book pressed against her chest. The feel of it brought her comfort. The words between its covers were a bridge to dreams, and Nora crossed it without looking back.
* * *
The next morning, the sun came out. After a week of rain—of endless, drenching, hammering rain—there was finally sunshine.
It was a joy to hear a sound other than rainfall. Birds sang. Insects buzzed. The streets thrummed with traffic noise. There was activity everywhere.
In town, the sidewalks were jammed with people. The merchants swept their stoops and cleaned their windows. Visitors left their hotel rooms in droves, eager to shop, to eat out, to feel the sun on their skin.
Customers congregated on the sidewalk outside Miracle Books well before opening, and though Nora would have loved to get a jump on
sales for the week, she wasn’t prepared for a crowd. Coffee had to be brewed, the floors needed vacuuming, and the shelves were crying out to be restocked and rearranged.
After deciding that the floor was only going to get dirty again, Nora focused on the coffee. She had two pots brewing when she remembered the book pastries. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to get them from the Gingerbread House and still open the shop at ten.
The bakery was packed. Nora gently pushed her way through the eager customers and waved at Hester.
Hester waved back and called out, “I haven’t boxed them. Can you do it?”
Nora gave her a thumbs-up and continued into the kitchen. She packed the chocolate- and raspberry-filled book pockets into a large cupcake box, slapped on a few pieces of tape, and returned to the front of the store.
Hester was cutting a slice of brown sugar coffee cake embellished with pecan flowers and a coffee drizzle when Nora came up and whispered, “I saw the man in the white T-shirt.”
“When?” Hester asked in a hushed tone.
“Saturday night, outside the bookshop. After the rest of you left. I saw him again yesterday. It was the middle of the day. I was at the Pink Lady.”
“Do you recognize him?” Hester handed the piece of cake to a woman who smiled with childlike delight. Hester smiled back and turned to the next customer in line. “What can I get you?” she asked.
Nora didn’t have time to wait for Hester to fill another order, so she asked her friend to tell Deputy Andrews about the man and left.
Hester and Deputy Jasper Andrews had been dating for six months. Andrews was a good guy, and Nora knew that he’d listen to Hester. If Andrews thought the strange man’s presence had any bearing on Danny’s death, he’d raise the subject with the sheriff.
Nora hurried back to Miracle Books and arranged the pastries on a platter. The rest of the morning passed by in a blur as she made coffee and sold books. Around one, a middle-aged man entered the shop holding apiece of paper in his right hand.
“Do you have a notice board?” he asked. “We’re selling our daughter’s moped.”
Nora was taking her first breather of the day. She really wanted to drink her cup of coffee while it was still warm and spend a few minutes perusing the newspaper, and her inclination was to tell the man that she couldn’t help him. However, as she studied his haggard face, she had a feeling that he needed to talk to someone. He was practically brimming with unspoken words. If Nora’s hunch was correct, he would need books too.
