by Melissa Tagg
She’d looked pretty in that skirt and sweater last night. But this Mara charmed him to his core.
And that . . . was a problem.
Because he hadn’t come here for this—here to the attic or here to the Everwood. Last night had proven that the darkness could still reach him here. A few good nights of sleep, a few days without the numbing effects of pills didn’t mean he’d suddenly transformed into the Marshall Hawkins of a decade ago.
Someone healthy and whole. He’d even been a man of deep faith at one time.
But that was then. He might find solace here in Iowa. Temporary relief. But healing? The kind of happiness and sturdy trust in God he used to know? Those things didn’t happen in a few days’ time. And if there was one thing Penny had made clear when she’d left, it was that the broken man he’d become in the wake of Laney’s death wasn’t fit for sharing a life with anyone else.
Which meant he had no business whatsoever being attracted to a woman in any way, shape, or form.
Never mind that her way, shape, and form tugged on strings inside him he hadn’t acknowledged for years.
“So have you found anything cool up here?”
She gulped down a bite of cereal. “Not much. Ratty furniture. Mothballs. There’s a box of old film reels. I recognized some of the titles. His Girl Friday. My Man Godfrey. Hands Across the Table. They’re classic movies. I guess that counts as cool.” She pointed toward the box.
“You guess? That’s definitely a sweet find.” He towed over a wingback chair with torn fabric then sat across from her. He glanced inside the box she’d gestured toward, pulled out a reel, and read the title. Love Before Breakfast. Next to the title, a set of initials scribbled in white marker. J.S. “If you come across a projector and screen, that’d be even better.”
“Not so far, but I can’t guarantee they aren’t around here somewhere under a sheet.” Mara set her bowl down beside her. “Oh, and I found this.”
She pulled a small photo from the front pocket of her overalls and handed it to him. A man and woman in sepia tones—the man leaning against a fireplace mantel and the woman grinning up at him. It’d been taken in the den downstairs, that much was clear. He flipped it over to see their names scribbled in blue ink. Arnold and Jeane.
“Do you know who they are?”
“No, I just love the photo. They look so sweet and innocent. Young and in love.”
He passed it back to her. “So, Mara Bristol is a romantic.”
Her smile was too small and too brief. She returned to her cereal, but only a couple bites in, she set it aside again. “I’ve felt so guilty all day.”
“Guilty? Why?”
“I’ve been assuming Lenora abandoned the Everwood.” Mara stood. “But today Jen told me about this cold case, other missing B&B owners, a police investigation and . . . I never thought to talk to the police, Marsh.”
She paced a few feet away. “What if Lenora was in a horrible car accident? What if she was mugged or . . . or hurt? What if she left because she was in some kind of danger?”
He rose. “You’re freaking yourself out—”
“That’s the point. Why wasn’t I freaked out earlier? I was a little worried, sure, but if I’d been thinking . . .” She shook her head, dropped her hands into the pockets of her overalls. “But I was thinking. I was thinking she’s just like Dad. Another person who chose to walk away. Once again it was all about my pain, about me. Just like it was with Mom—”
“Mara.” He said it softly but firmly.
She bit her lip, hands in her pockets, one strap of her overalls falling down over her shoulder.
And the urge was almost too much—to close the distance and pull her into a hug of comfort. Like he would’ve Laney.
No. Like he would’ve Penny.
Instead, he sat on the tub she’d abandoned, moved her cereal bowl, touched her elbow—enough of a gesture to prompt her to lower next to him. He rummaged around for words, for the right question to ask.
But she made it easy on him. “My dad left when I was eleven. You may have heard of him, actually. Stephen Bristol. Ring any bells?”
“Sounds a little familiar.”
“He put out a few albums over the years, but his real success was in songwriting. Turn on any country station for more than ten minutes and you’ll probably hear a Stephen Bristol song, even if he’s not the one singing it.”
Her dad had traded in his family for a stint in the spotlight. Marshall curled his fingers over his knees to keep from forming them into fists. “I can’t fathom leaving my . . . a father leaving like that.”
“He came back once, around my twelfth birthday. I had this childish thought that if we cleaned the house and made his favorite dinner and dressed up, maybe he’d stay. I talked my mom into going all out.” She looked up to the ceiling, cobwebs clinging to cedar beams. “Of course, he didn’t stay. Mom was upset we’d even tried. She never got over it and we were never close after that.” Her gaze lowered then. “She died right after my high school graduation. A heart attack. She was only forty-three.”
He couldn’t help it then. He reached over, gripped her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” She shifted, her knees bumping his, her palm still encased in his. “I always told myself I wouldn’t be like Mom—bitter, assuming everyone else would let me down just like Dad. But that’s what I did when Lenora didn’t come back. I should’ve—”
He squeezed her hand. “Mara, you’re human. You’re entitled to your pain.” He said it with a conviction born of experience. Because isn’t it what he’d told himself over and over since Laney’s death? The pills, the desperation, the recklessness at work . . . He had a right to be a mess of a person.
Because God or fate or maybe just circumstance had made a wreck of his life.
“But I don’t want to spend my life letting my pain be the lens through which I see the world.”
“I’m just saying, it’s not your fault if the things that hurt you affect how you react to the events in your life now.”
Mara looked up at him. “But we always have a choice, don’t we? To let our hurts forever weaken us or . . . or instead find some way to draw strength from what we’ve been through.”
His gaze moved from their clasped hands to her face, tracing the pattern of her freckles. “I guess so.” It sounded nice, anyway. But he wasn’t sure he could ever look at all he’d lost in the past two years and see any of it as a chance to grow stronger.
But then, this was about Mara. Her past. Her pain. Her desire to choose hope over bitterness. He could admire her for that.
The orange light of dusk had faded; the attic, dimmed. Silence idled between them, neither one, it seemed, in a hurry to move.
Until, finally, Mara cleared her throat, slipped her hand from his. “Sorry, I, um . . . I’m not sure why I told you all that.”
“I’m a natural listener.” It’s what Penny would’ve said once upon a time.
“That’s how Lenora was too.” She sighed.
He wasn’t going to get a better opening. “About Lenora. I met with Sam Ross today. He, uh, he wants to look into her whereabouts.”
“He does?”
“And that means coming out here. He’ll want to look at her computer, go through anything she may have left behind. I think it’s a good idea and from the sound of things, maybe you do too?”
He could see her resolve as she stood, nodded, shook the dust from her overalls. “Yes. I should’ve talked to him weeks ago.”
“Hey, no more ‘should’ves,’ all right? Be a little nicer to yourself, Mara.” He bent to retrieve her cereal bowl, then rose. “You gonna stay up here for a while?”
“No. I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway. Maybe Sam will find something.” She rubbed her palms over her bare arms. “What I should be doing is working on that business plan for the city council. Figuring out how I’m going to fill up this place with guests.”
They started tow
ard the stairs that led to the second floor, the creaks and moans of old floorboards a chorus underfoot. “For what it’s worth, Mara, I hate country music.”
He thought she might laugh. Instead, she stopped him in his tracks when she lunged into him—arms around his waist, head against his chest, the leftover milk spilling from the bowl in his hand. He felt the warmth of her voice through his shirt. “Thanks, Marsh.”
Not two seconds later, she’d broken away and started down the stairs. Leaving him stunned. Frozen in place. Happy.
Yes, he definitely had a problem.
9
Lenora
We ran. And I’ve never understood why.
I’ve searched what few memories I still own from my youth, and I’ve combed through moments and images and snippets of conversation. I’ve wondered why it took me so long to question it all. Why didn’t I beg for answers when I had the chance—as a teenager, a young adult?
And would Mom, would Dad have even answered if I’d tried?
I remember it was summer and I was eight years old. The window in my bedroom—the room Mara chose her first night at the Everwood—was open. I remember the low hum of the cicadas the night before we ran and the reach of a full moon ringing all the edges in my room—my bed and dresser and closet door—with thin light.
I remember that I forgot to brush my teeth. That I could still taste on my lips the salt of popcorn from our weekly family movie night in the den. Another black-and-white film to which I’d fallen asleep. Only to awaken an hour later, or maybe two, nestled against Dad as he carried me upstairs.
I remember the happiness.
And then the shock. Awakening in the morning to Mom flinging open my dresser drawer and Dad calling my name in a frenzy as he shook my shoulders.
I remember clothes stuffed into an old leather suitcase and toys left behind.
They argued, Mom and Dad, as we piled into our 1952 Crosley station wagon. There was something Mom didn’t want to leave, though Dad insisted. But there, my recollection fades.
But I know we ran.
Away from the Everwood.
Away from Maple Valley.
Away from home.
Enchanting.
It’s the word I breathed upon my return to the house in the grove. I’d forgotten the smell of summer and soil, the tiny sounds that formed the great choir of nature—the chirp of birds, the far-off chortle of frogs and crickets, the hypnotizing hum of cicadas. I’d forgotten how far the fields stretched, how they reached into a golden horizon.
The same word came to Mara’s lips months later. It was Thanksgiving and there was just enough autumn left in the air to justify a morning walk through the grove. But winter had begun to awaken too—its hovering presence draping tree branches in ribbons of frost and glistening over the hard ground.
“If you think the countryside is enchanting now,” I said, “wait until it snows.”
“I can’t wait. I love snow.
Sunlight glimmered in Mara’s eyes that morning. It reminded me of a Bible verse somewhere in the Psalms. “Restore the sparkle to my eyes . . .”
I would wonder, later, if she’d still say the same about snow considering it was a blizzard that kept me from making it back to the Everwood by Christmas. I’d left a few days earlier—chasing my first lead, hoping to gift myself with answers to questions that grew with intensity the longer I lived at the Everwood, fruitlessly searching decades’ worth of items abandoned by past owners.
It’d killed me, waiting out that snowstorm in a Minneapolis Marriott, knowing Mara was spending Christmas alone in that drafty house.
But Thanksgiving.
“You know what, Lenora?” Mara’s tone matched her jaunty steps. She’d seemed to age backward while living with me. Her freckles had deepened in the last month of summer and hair that’d barely skimmed her chin now brushed past her shoulders. Gone was the anxiety that’d too often turned her knuckles white and shown itself in bruise-colored circles around her eyes.
Maybe she no longer fears Garrett showing up.
Though I knew by then that Garrett wasn’t the only tender spot in her past. Her parents had left their own indelible marks on her life.
“What?” I finally answered.
“This is my first holiday in a decade spent exactly where I want to be.”
If not for a crisp wind drying my eyes, the remark might’ve drawn tears. Joyful tears at the contentment I heard in her voice. But also tears of sadness for all her lonely years.
“I liked being a nanny. I really did. But I hated holidays. The families always assumed I had a place to go. Or, almost worse, if they knew I didn’t, they’d give me a pity invite.” Mara had wiggled on her gloves. “That’s not fair, I guess. They were well-intentioned invitations. But the couple times I took up my employers on spending holidays with their family, I felt awkward and out of place.”
“Well, you’re not out of place here, Mara.”
“And I’m grateful for it.”
My limbs were tired and my breath tight, but the hallowed set to Mara’s profile kept me from complaining. “You know, I think maybe God led you here, Mara.”
“Actually, it was a random brochure in a rest stop.”
“Don’t underestimate God’s ability to use even the things we label as ‘random.’”
“Maybe. But I always got the feeling I wasn’t quite impressive enough to warrant that much notice from Him.” She bit her lip in that way of hers.
“Far be it from me to speak for the Almighty, but I feel fairly confident saying God isn’t looking for impressive people. He’s looking for people who are willing to be impressed by Him.”
Mara took a long, deep breath and looked around. We’d reached the far end of the grove, where the space between trees widened and the countryside unrolled into hilly meadows and farmland. “I don’t know if I have the kind of faith you do, Lenora. But I know God created all this—and that’s impressive. I can’t get over how beautiful it is out here. I don’t know if it’s the quiet or the frost or what but it almost seems . . . sacred. Like church or something.”
And surely it was.
For months I searched the attic, hoping to find clues, hoping the boxes I dug through might spark memories or return to me forgotten snatches of conversation. We left something behind the day we fled the Everwood. If I could only find it, remember it . . .
This is why I bought the old house, after all. Though, as time passed, I started to think maybe God brought me here not to expose my past but to pave the way for Mara’s future.
George’s brother—one of my few relatives left—is an accountant. Wise with money but not always with a widow’s heart.
On the day I bought the Everwood, he scoffed. And can I blame him, really? To use what little was left of his brother’s life insurance on a ramshackle house in a grove on the edge of a tiny town. He called it foolish and I suppose he wasn’t all wrong.
For if I hadn’t bought the Everwood, I might not be here now. Without sight and sound. Other than a beeping that every now and then severs the quiet.
And maybe, strangely, a voice I once knew.
10
“That was incredibly unhelpful.”
Sam Ross jabbed his phone into the pocket of his navy blue police uniform. Mara tried not to let his scowl intimidate her. Just as she’d been attempting for the past forty-five minutes not to let the three other officers currently tromping through the Everwood morph her unease into straight-up intimidation.
They’d already carried out the computer behind the registration desk, hauled boxes from the attic, combed through Lenora’s room.
And just now, Sam had finished a short and apparently futile conversation with the only living relative of Lenora’s he’d been able to find so far.
Mara paced the sitting room while waiting for him to continue the uncomfortable questioning he’d been in the middle of before his phone had rung. When exactly did Lenora leave? Had she given any indication of her dest
ination? Was Mara sure she didn’t have a cell phone?
Why hadn’t Mara reached out to anyone when three, four, five weeks went by and Lenora didn’t return? Hadn’t she been worried?
The pungent smell of fresh paint clung to the air. She was redoing the room in a pleasant, airy yellow—so different from the striped burgundy wallpaper that had darkened the room before. Mara had covered two walls this morning before Sam and his officers arrived.
If only her mood were as sunny as those two walls.
If only Marshall were here.
But he was in the dining room, taping around the baseboards and crown molding. Which is exactly where he should be. Because they couldn’t let a police investigation slow down their progress on the renovation—not with an open house less than three weeks away.
And because it was silly to think she needed him by her side just to answer a few questions. She felt ridiculous enough as it was considering last night—that impulsive hug in the attic. He had to think . . .
Well, she didn’t know what he thought. But she knew what she thought—that she was as much embarrassed by that hug as she was touched by the time Marshall had spent listening to her. That while laying in bed last night, all she’d been able to think about was how he’d brought her that bowl of cereal. How he’d held her hand.
How an embrace that hadn’t lasted more than a couple of seconds—one he hadn’t even returned—could so wholly and abundantly fill her senses. The solid warmth of his chest. The subtle woodsy smell of his soap. The sound of his thumping heart.
The echoes of warning in her own, cautioning that she’d known him less than a week. Not nearly enough time to have begun forming the kind of attachment that led to spontaneous hugs and spilled secrets. It’d taken her a good month, maybe more, to share as much with Lenora as she had last night with Marshall.
Yes, it was a good thing he was working a room over. She could deal with Sam Ross’s questions on her own.
