Arcadia Falls (24 page)

O
n the morning of the autumn equinox Dean St. Clare announces that the last period classes will be cancelled in order to allow students to prepare for the equinox ceremony. I decide to use the time to hike up to the ridge to where the students are planning to have their ceremony. I tell myself it’s because I want to have a good look at the terrain to make sure that they’ll be a safe distance from the cliff, but in truth I also find myself drawn to the site after reading Lily’s last journal entry. I keep reliving that night in my mind, imagining Lily entrusting herself to the slippery rocks of the clove—almost as if she’d really wanted to die rather
than face the pain of Vera’s disappointment in her. Certainly her desperate coupling with Nash sounded as if she was punishing herself.

It’s a warm, clear day—more late summer than the first day of fall. I change out of my teaching clothes into jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers and, at the last minute, tie a windbreaker around my waist in case it’s colder on top of the ridge. I remember it as windy and cool, but maybe that was because the last time I was there I watched poor Isabel Cheney’s body being carried up out of the clove—a sight that would have chilled anyone.

The hike up to the ridge takes much less time than I expect. Of course, I remind myself, the last time I was pausing every fifteen minutes to call Isabel’s name. It saddens me, when I reach the fallen tree where we found the torn shred of her dress, to realize how close Isabel had been to her friends down in the apple orchard. She needn’t have felt so frightened—so alone. Yet turning around in a circle I see
why
she felt that way. Deep forest rings the tiny clearing; the trees stand like sentinels blocking the way out. The only sound is the roar of the waterfall. Even if she had screamed or called for help, no one would have heard her.

I sit for a moment on the fallen tree with my eyes closed, letting myself mourn for Isabel. I’ve been afraid, I think, in the weeks since she died, to really allow myself to feel it. The death of a girl Sally’s age is too unbearable to contemplate. But now I realize how cowardly—and selfish—my avoidance is. I let myself relive the brief glimpses I had of Isabel’s blunt, friendly demeanor and her naked ambition, which I’m sure wore on people’s nerves, but which I suspect would have mellowed with age and experience. Who knew how far her drive would have taken her? What a colossal waste for a girl of her talents to die so young.

When I open my eyes, a tear slides down my face. It seems like an insignificant tribute for such a tragedy. As I get up I see that someone before me has left something more tangible. A small bouquet of flowers, which I’d mistaken at first for naturally growing wildflowers, lies in the crevice of the log. It’s too late in the season for lilies of the valley, though, and the bunch is tied with lavender ribbon. I pick them up and see that
the crevice they were placed in is a Z-shaped gash. Was this the tree, then, that fell the night Lily said goodbye to Nash? I run my fingers along the mark, recalling that Lily had compared its jagged scar to the gash she felt in her heart. The years—and moss and rain—have softened its edges. I wonder if the years were so kind to the rend in Lily’s heart.

I get up and walk to the top of the ridge. A sign has been crudely hammered onto a tree near the head of the falls:
DANGER! STEEP DROP! NO HIKING BEYOND THIS POINT
.

It doesn’t look like much of a deterrent. In fact, I can see a fresh path worn through the grass on the path leading down into the clove. I can only hope that it’s not students who are still hiking here. I remind myself to talk to Sally about staying away from here, although a lecture on the subject might well have the opposite effect and spur her to frequent the spot to spite me.

I had thought that the clove would look less menacing in full daylight, but the black, shadowy cleft seems even darker in comparison to the blue sky above. When I look up from the clove I see the old barn in the valley below. From this angle it looks even more decrepit than from the road. The cupola leans crookedly and wide holes gape in the walls like missing teeth. Who knows how much longer it will stand? I imagine some enterprising builder—like Sheriff Reade—will eventually loot it for vintage barn wood. Then no one will watch the sunlight or moonlight paint patterns on its floors and walls ever again.

I’ve started down the path before even realizing I’ve decided to go. It’s reckless, I know; I don’t have the right shoes or know the trail well enough. I can hear the lecture I’d give Sally about hiking alone in unfamiliar terrain, but I can also hear—as if she’d told me her story aloud and not in writing—Lily’s voice describing the moonlight spilling onto the barn floor like a pool of water.

At first the path doesn’t seem so bad, but then it becomes so steep I have to grab at the tree branches along the side to keep from falling. The steep stone walls on either side of the waterfall block out all but a narrow band of sunlight that struggles to light the long descent. In the narrow chasm, the sound of falling water is deafening, like the roar of a beast
crouching at the foot of the falls, hiding behind the huge boulders. It looks like a giant tossed them down the slope to make the descent impassable—or perhaps to make the
ascent
impassable. It feels like I’m climbing down into a pit. Spray from the waterfall coats the moss-covered boulders. I have to sit down on them to navigate my way. At one point, after a near miss that would have sent me hurtling down to the bottom, I look up—and immediately wish I hadn’t. The steep slopes on either side seem to be closing over my head, like a giant jaw about to snap shut.

By the time I’ve reached the bottom, the damp from the moss and ferns has soaked through my thin canvas sneakers and into my socks, which squelch with every step. Despite my discomfort I can’t help but appreciate the beauty of the place. At the bottom of the clove, the water, glowing silver and black in the alternating light and shadow that falls between the stone walls, pools into a series of stone basins ringed by ferns. A circle of weeping willows rings the lowest pool. The only sound in this perfect round grove is the splash of water on moss-covered rocks and the wind stirring the long willow branches. That recording Fawn was playing in her shop could have been made here. No wonder local legend decreed the place to be sacred; it feels like I’ve wandered into the apse of a cathedral.

I rest for half an hour. I only leave when I realize that if I want to make it to the barn and back before the ceremony at sunset I should get going. Before I leave the pool though, I recall what Vera told Lily at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park—that
whoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had
. As I watch, a breeze moves through the grove, sending ripples across the still, black-green surface. Before I can question why I’m doing it, I bend down and dip my fingertips into the ice-cold water and whisper a quick prayer for Sally’s safekeeping tonight at the equinox.

When I push aside the willow branches and step out of the clove I’m surprised to find a bright and sunlit day waiting for me. It’s a good ten degrees warmer in the field than it was in the clove. The grass in the
field is waist high and damp, the ground boggy and uneven. My legs are soon as soaked as my sneakers and flecked with seed pods. I walk quickly, trying not to think about snakes. When I reach the barn I’m surprised to find that the door is intact. I’d expected to just walk through one of the holes in the wall, but I see now that they’re covered with sheets of clear plastic. Maybe the barn isn’t as deserted as it looks from a distance.

The old wood shrieks against the rusted hinges and the plank walls shiver as I shove open the heavy door. As if in answer to the door’s complaint something inside the barn lets out a low, eerie moan that makes me freeze in my tracks. Thoughts of angry spirits—Lily’s? Nash’s? The white woman’s?—flit through my brain … and then something white takes shape out of the shadows and swoops toward me.

I shriek and duck, but the white phantom swoops back up before it reaches me. I’m poised to run—thoughts of the white woman in my head—but then I look up into the shadowy rafters where a white heart-shaped face stares out of the gloom.

A barn owl. That’s all, I tell myself.

When I step into the barn, though, I’m not so sure I’ve escaped the white woman. In the center of the barn, in the circle of light that pours through the broken cupola, stands a figure shrouded in white. I walk toward her, mesmerized. She—I can tell from the curves beneath the cloth that it’s a woman—is standing where Lily stood on May Eve. Any moment now she’ll turn and shed her cloak.

“Can I help you, Ms. Rosenthal?”

I turn in the pool of sunlight to find Callum Reade, silhouetted against the doorway. “What are you doing here?” I demand.

“What am
I
doing here?” he asks, stepping out of the bright light. I see that he’s dressed in jeans and a soft blue shirt that’s rolled up over his elbows. A spear of sunlight falls on his arm, lighting the red-gold hairs on fire. “I think I should be asking you that. You’re in my studio.”

“Studio?” I look around the barn and see, now that my eyes have adjusted to the gloom, a workbench set against one wall. The edge of a circular saw and metal tools glint in the uneven sunlight. Slabs of wood are
stacked on one side of the table; another shrouded shape crouches in the corner. “You’re a carpenter?” I ask. It makes sense, I suppose, since he also restores houses.

“Nothing so useful,” he says. He walks toward me, his hands on his hips, talking as he approaches as if he were trying to gentle a skittish horse. I must look as tense as I feel. It’s from being startled by the owl and then Reade’s unexpected appearance, I tell myself. But it’s also because this scene—a woman standing in a pool of light, a man walking toward her—so vividly recalls the May Eve that Lily and Nash first met here. “My dad used to carve decoys for duck hunting. I started fooling with his tools when I was a kid. After I moved back here, I needed something to keep my hands busy.” He lifts his hand and for a moment I think he’s going to touch my face, but instead he tugs at the cloth draping the figure beside me. It falls to the floor like water flowing into the pool of light.

I hear the sharp intake of my own breath in the silence of the barn. Standing in the pool is a naked woman in the moment of turning, one arm crossed over her breasts. Her face, tilted modestly downward, is unfinished. I feel Callum’s eyes on my back, relentless as the barn owl’s gaze. I’ve reached out to stroke the woman’s hip before I can think of how the gesture might look, but the softly rounded curve is irresistible. The wood is warm and smooth to the touch. Running my hand along the polished slope it’s hard not to think of Callum Reade’s hands carving, then sanding, then oiling the wood until it ripples in the light like flesh.

I try to swallow and find my throat dry. “She’s …” I turn and find Callum right behind me. My shoulder brushes against his arm and I feel a wave of heat coming off him along with a scent of fragrant wood. “She’s beautiful,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice steady. “The wood looks like skin—”

“Cherry,” he says. “It’s got a beautiful grain. I found a downed cherry tree in the woods a few years ago and I’ve been working on a few pieces from it.”

I take a deep breath and catch that scent again—the same scent I’ve noticed coming from Callum—also on the statue. There are flecks of
sawdust on the hair of his arm and clinging to a damp patch on his throat. “Um … it reminds me of the bronze statuette in the alcove in Beech Hall,” I say.

“I was inspired by it,” he says, his eyes staying on me, not the statue. When I nod he says, “But the face is unfinished on that statue and I haven’t been able to finish this one’s face.” He squints his eyes at me and then changes his mind about whatever he was going to say. “So. I’ve shown you what I’m doing here. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“I wanted to see the barn. I’ve been reading a journal that Lily Eberhardt kept in which she writes that she met Nash here….” I falter, embarrassed by the details of that first meeting, but Callum Reade rescues me.

“He painted her here,” he says. “You can see in those paintings that he loved her.”

“You’ve looked at the paintings in the Lodge?” As soon as the words are out I realize I sound as if I thought he wasn’t capable of appreciating art. I’m expecting a defensive response, but instead his eyes soften as he looks toward the sculpture.

“Remember I told you how kids used to dare one another to stay all night in the woods above the clove and brave the wrath of the white woman? Well, I did it once when I was fifteen. I sat all night at the head of the falls, waiting to see her appear out of the mist. I was scared at first, but then I was disappointed when the night was almost over and I hadn’t seen anything, so I hiked down to the Lodge. I think I had some minor act of vandalism in mind—something to mark the night since there’d been no supernatural visitation.”

“Sheriff Reade!” I exclaim in mock surprise. “Vandalism?”