Death of a Winter Shaker (19 page)

When Molly shed her bonnet at the worship service, it had looked like a declaration of independence, like she was planning to leave North Homage. If that were true, then some of her clothes should be gone. Her underthings, at least. Maybe she wouldn't want to wear Shaker dress outside of the community, but she wouldn't have much choice. She would need something to start with, as well as warm outer garments.

Gennie cut through the nearly empty kitchen garden. The kitchen door hung open as though someone had run through it and not bothered to push it all the
way shut. Odd, she thought. Except on very hot days, Charity insisted that the door stay closed. She said it kept the baking more even.

Gennie stepped inside. For once, no one scurried around the kitchen. Plates of uncut bread and clean, empty soup tureens covered the center worktable, and a large kettle of soup bubbled furiously. She cut the flame under the kettle and stirred the thick liquid. The spoon scraped against a spongy layer stuck to the bottom. The soup had scorched. Charity must have heard all the ruckus at the Meetinghouse and fled the kitchen without a thought for saving the food.

She closed the door behind her and continued toward the Children's Dwelling House. The room was just as she had left it. No sign that Molly had returned in her absence. Gennie went straight to the storage drawers built into the wall and jerked Molly's open, one by one. She rifled through the contents with more urgency than care. She found enough undergarments to last until the next washday, and all of Molly's warm leggings. Her two work dresses hung on pegs, along with her everyday bonnet. So she must still be wearing her Sabbathday clothes.

Gennie grabbed the mattress on Molly's bed, but nothing had reappeared underneath. She must have hidden the things before coming to the service. And why did she come to the service, anyway? Nibbling on her lower lip, Gennie decided to check the deserted Water House. It was a logical place for Molly to hide.

The abandoned Water House, considered tempting and dangerous to children, was secured with a padlock on its only door. But Molly had met Johann here more than once. There must be a hidden entrance.

Gennie circled around to the back, where she found a small, low window, its latch hanging broken. That in itself was unusual. Normally Albert fixed broken doors and windows within a day or two. She pressed the
window, and it creaked open. The space was just big enough for a slender person to squeeze through. The windowsill hit just above Gennie's waist. It looked clean. She stuck her head inside and searched the dim interior.

“Molly?” she called.
“Molly.”
Her voice bounced off the two-story, kettlelike container that took up most of the building. The container used to provide the village's water but had been empty since they had installed modern plumbing. A narrow concrete walkway encircled the kettle. As she remembered, a metal stairway on the other side led both to an upper walkway and down to a crawl space, all designed to facilitate repair work.

Just beneath the window on the dusty floor, Gennie sighted a scuffed, dented object, small and tubular. It was the right size and shape for a lipstick container.

She hesitated to slip inside through the window. Though Molly could be hiding on the upper story or around the corner, the Water House was such a dank, cramped place to go for privacy, and Molly loved to be outdoors.

Still, she ought to rescue the lipstick, if that's what it was. She could show it to Rose. And she was curious about the crawl space. Wouldn't it be an ideal place to hide lipstick and powder and perfume?

She glanced back toward the fields and a dense grove of trees behind the Water House. She saw no one. She flattened her palms on the sill and jumped up, twisting to a sitting position. Gathering up the fullness of her skirts to keep from catching on any sharp edges, she slid one leg over the windowsill.

“What are you doing?”

The harsh voice stopped Gennie halfway through the window. Her heart pounding with guilty fear, she ducked her head back outside. Just at the corner of the building stood Albert Preston, his wiry body rigid, his
eyes narrow slits in his bony face. He clutched his toolbox in one taut arm.

“Hello, Brother Albert, I—I'm looking for Molly. Have you seen her?” she finally managed to say.

“Building's locked up.”

“Well, I . . .” Gennie was reluctant to mention the lipstick just inside. She hadn't even told Rose about Molly's mysterious beauty items yet. “It's just that I've looked everywhere else I could think of,” she explained, sounding lame to her own ears.

“Nobody'd be in there,” Albert said.

“But this window . . .”

“I'm about to fix it.”

Gennie gave up. She slid her leg back through the window and slipped to the ground.

“Could you at least let me in so we could take a quick look around?” Gennie asked, shaking out her wrinkled skirt and moving hopefully toward the door.

“It wouldn't be right for you to go in there with me,” Albert said sternly. He turned his back to her and began to inspect the broken window latch.

“I'll look later,” he said, without turning around.

D
ISAPPOINTED IN HER SEARCH FOR
M
OLLY, BUT EXCITED
by her glimpse of the object on the Water House floor, Gennie went in search of Rose. She found the trustee heading toward the herb fields and fell into step with her.

“You look like you could use a good ironing,” Rose said, eyeing Gennie's wrinkled dress. “Where on earth have you been?”

Gennie swiped at her skirt. “Have you seen Molly? I've looked everywhere.”

Rose sighed. “I'm sure she's about. I hope she's thoroughly ashamed of herself, too.” She glanced sideways at Gennie. “I'm sorry, dear, I know you two are friends. But that girl is rebellious and troubled. Too troubled, I think, for you or me to help her.”

“I'm scared for her.”

“So am I,” Rose said grimly. “But her soul is too twisted right now for anyone but God to help her.”

“I don't mean her soul! I mean
her.
I'm scared for
Molly.
I'm afraid something bad has happened to her. Can't you understand? You just don't seem to understand anymore!” Gennie kicked at a rock in the grass and avoided Rose's eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Gennie mumbled. “I didn't mean all that. It's just that . . . it used to be I could tell you
anything, ever since I came here as a little girl. But now there are things . . . I don't know what's happening anymore.”

Rose slipped her arm around the girl's shoulders. “It's time we talked,” she said.

They strolled past the Herb House and into the fields. A few lacy clumps of fennel and coriander still struggled to form their seeds during the last sporadic warmth of the season. Ordinarily, Gennie loved to walk these rows, even when the harvesting was nearly done. But she might as well have been back in the kitchen, for all the pleasure it gave her now. She barely noticed the pungent rosemary, as she brushed against it upon entering the fields.

“Gennie?”

Gennie didn't respond. She wished she could take back much of what she had already said.

“My dear child,” Rose began. “Nay,” she corrected herself, “my dear friend. You aren't a child anymore, Gennie. You don't know how difficult it has been for me to accept that. I know I should love everyone equally, but you and Agatha are the two people I love most in the world. And I fear I am losing both of you. Nay, don't shake your head at me, we both know it's true. Agatha is failing, and you are growing up—and maybe away.”

“But we'll speak more of that in a moment. First, Molly. Please don't think me heartless, but I do believe that Molly's soul is in much more peril than her body. I don't know where she has gone. Perhaps . . . perhaps it would be best if we never found out.”

“Nay!” Gennie stomped hard on a clump of discarded basil root and a scattering of dirt flew out.

“Gennie, hear me out. The sheriff arrived as the service was ending, and we talked. He had found out—from others, not from me—that Molly and Johann had . . .”

“I know that they were together,” Gennie said.

“Oh.”

“Molly told me right after I found Johann. I promised her I wouldn't tell, and I had to keep my promise. You taught me that. And, anyway, what they did, that doesn't make her a bad person. It doesn't make her not worth looking for, does it? Anyway, I don't think so.” She crossed her arms and rolled back on her heels.

“Of course she is worth looking for. But there's more that you don't know. Come on, let's walk.”

Still frowning, Gennie strolled with Rose between rows of blackening plant stumps.

“Without my knowledge,” Rose began, “the sheriff questioned Molly again. He's convinced that she killed Johann because he used her and then scorned her. The sheriff thinks that's probably why she ran off, because she knew he was getting close to the truth. You see, she was . . . with Johann . . . only a short time. Then he turned his attention elsewhere.”

“Where?”

Gennie shot a sidelong look at Rose and waited to see how grown-up she really was in the older woman's eyes. A deep shadow passed overhead, followed by the far-off rumble of thunder. Rose glanced at the sky.

“All right, you don't have to tell me,” Gennie said. “I know who it was. Charity.”

“Did Molly tell you that, too?”

“She said enough for me to guess. Anyway, it was easy after seeing them look at each other at the Union Meeting.”

“Of course, the Union Meeting. What else haven't you told me?”

Gennie folded her arms tightly against the growing wind and the edge in Rose's voice.

“Someone was giving Molly gifts or something,” she said slowly.

“Gifts of what?”

“Well, things to make her pretty, like lipstick and perfume. I think I saw one of the lipsticks just now in the Water House, but Albert wouldn't go in with me to get it. And, also, she had a bunch of money. Maybe a hundred dollars.”

“Money! Did Molly tell you that these were gifts?”

“Well, nay, just that someone gave them to her. I just thought . . . What else would they be?”

Rose walked silently, head bent. Another crack of thunder failed to distract her. Gennie hurried to keep up and watched her with growing concern. The information about Molly was important, that was clear. She should have told Rose sooner.

“There's more, too. Molly was out really late on Saturday night, and I went to look for her, and . . . Wilhelm found me and sent me back. He looked sort of sick, too, like maybe he wasn't sleeping well.”

Frowning, Rose halted and stared down a row of gray-green lavender plants.

“Rose, are you mad at me?”

“What? Oh, Gennie, I'm sorry, I was just thinking, trying to understand . . .” With a slight shake of her head, she faced Gennie.

“Nay, I'm not angry with you,” she said. “You have kept a great deal from me, but you did what you thought right.” Her delicate face looked strained, her pale red eyebrows drawn together. “And I have not been completely honest with you, either. It is time that I told you a few things about myself, about my past.”

The thunder rumbled closer now. There would be a downpour soon, and that would make it even harder to repair the trampled herb fields, but Gennie didn't care at that moment.

A spray of lavender stems had fallen to the ground during the harvest. Rose knelt and retrieved them. Twisting them absently between her fingers, she said, “Do you remember Seth Pike, the man I introduced to
you at the market in Languor? He helps out with the farming chores, too, and he is Elsa's son.”

Gennie nodded. None of this was new to her.

“When I was just a little older than you are, only eighteen, I left North Homage for about a year.”

A few drops of rain splattered against Gennie's bonnet. She squinted to see Rose's face in the dim light.

“I'd been here since I was three, you see, so I'd never seen the world except those few tantalizing glimpses when Agatha took me into town for some errand or other. I used to make up stories for myself about the beautiful dresses I'd wear if I lived in the world, and the dances I'd go to. And about boys, how they would flock around me. So you see, I'm not so different from you. At eighteen I wanted to love and to be loved.” Rose shook her head at her younger self.

“I met a young man, Seth Pike. He was gentle in those days, and eager for the future. We planned to marry. But I felt the call to come back, to become a Believer. It was so strong. I don't believe it was just guilt, I believe that God called me. So I left Seth.”

“Did you tell Agatha that you wanted to leave the Society?”

Rose laughed. “Nay, I did not tell Agatha. Not until I decided for certain to leave. I didn't want to hurt her or lose her love.” Rose looked intently down at the smaller Gennie.

“Gennie, you will never lose my love. Not ever.”

“Not even if I leave, too? Even if I marry someday?”

“Maybe I'm not meant to be eldress,” Rose said with a short laugh. “Sometimes these questions are too much for me. But, yea, even if you marry. I do truly believe that to be chaste is the higher calling, but I could never stop caring about you. And perhaps I'm not qualified to judge. I never married.” She gazed steadily into Gennie's eyes. “But I was not chaste.”

M
ONDAY BROUGHT SUNSHINE BUT NO SIGN OF
M
OLLY
and no improvement in Agatha's condition. Just before lunch, Rose closed her ledger books early to allow time for a visit to the eldress's bedside.

She bent and kissed the cool forehead. The eldress lay in an adult-sized cradle, tucked all around with a soft blanket as if she were a sleeping infant. Rose pulled up a chair and nudged the wooden cradle into a gentle rocking motion. Josie had said the rocking helped prevent bedsores. Rose hoped it would comfort.