Hidden Falls (48 page)

“I hear what people say about you.” Eva choked back a sob.

Dani knew she was going to regret this. “What are you talking about?”

“I just want to know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“You don’t fit in, and it doesn’t bother you.”

At least the girl had her facts straight. “What does that have to do with you?”

“I don’t fit in either,” Eva said. “But it bothers me, and I
hate
that it does. I don’t want to care that I don’t fit in. Like you.”

Dani sighed. “We’re not very far from the river. Let’s go there.”

She turned and resumed hiking. Behind her, Eva shuffled but kept pace. Dani followed an arc of bushes back to the main trail and eventually emerged at the bluff she’d been aiming for all along. With the swift motion of experience, she sat on the ground and hung her feet against the rock.

“Is this safe?” Eva asked.

“Is that what matters?” Dani tuned into the sound of water flowing beneath her and watched a couple of kids fishing on the opposite shore.

With some care, Eva lowered herself to the ground beside Dani. Her fingers probed the tear in her pants.

“Okay,” Dani said, “if you insist on talking, this is where you do it.”

Below the bluff was the promise that the river would widen into the lake. From experience, Dani knew the kids would find better fishing if they went downstream about half a mile.

Eva’s voice was tiny. “Have you always been so … independent?”

Independent
was a kinder word than many people would choose.

“I suppose so.”

“Everyone says you don’t like to be around people much.”

Dani puffed out her cheeks. “Certain people in small doses are all right.” Liam called her socially inappropriate. If he weren’t her cousin, he might not make the list of people she tolerated.

“That’s how I feel!” Eva picked up a rock and dropped it down into the river. “I had friends in Memphis who understood me. But here everybody wants me to be like them.”

“And you’re not?” Eva looked like a pretty normal teenager to Dani.

“I went to a party last Saturday, and all I could think about was how I wished I could call my parents to come get me. But they were at that banquet for Mr. Quinn.”

“Well, I know how the banquet came out, but what was wrong with the party?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Eva said. “Except that it feels like so much
work
to go to a party.”

Dani knew the feeling. “So don’t go.”

“My mom thinks I need friends.”

“Do you think you need friends?”

“I feel like I’m supposed to say yes.”

“You’re not supposed to say anything.”

Eva was silent for a minute and then said, “It was Melissa’s birthday. She’s nice to me and I like her, but I
hated
being at that party.”

“So next time don’t go.” What was unclear about this dilemma?

“Is that what you do?”

“Look,” Dani said, “I’m no role model, and I don’t want you thinking I am.”

Eva’s head turned toward the lake, and she maneuvered to her feet and shaded her eyes for a better look. “I can see his truck from here. I have to go!”

Dani saw no reason to protest the girl’s departure. She wanted peace and quiet, and now she had it.

5:02 p.m.

Old Dom lifted a volume off the second shelf up. The ledgers were so tall that the only way to store them was to lay them flat. Ethan had been scanning the room, trying to discern a system to the way the books were organized.

“This was the one where Quinn left off,” Old Dom said.

“Left off?”

“He studied quite a few.” Dom laid the volume on a clear space on the counter and opened the cover. “But he kept coming back to this one.”

Ethan kept a hand at the small of Nicole’s back in case she lost her balance leaning on her crutches. The first page—and all the others, Ethan supposed—was marked off like an oversized sheet of notebook paper, with a red line down the left margin and rows of faint blue lines.

“Are these the official cemetery records?” Ethan asked.

“Might as well be.” Dom shuffled out of the way so Ethan and Nicole could get closer. “My father copied over all the entries in the official records.”

“But why?”

Dom pointed to a notation. “So he could write what the records left out.”

Ethan peered at the florid handwriting. After a few seconds, he began to see the system to the flourishes and cramped spacing between words. This particular note said,
Infant. Bad breather.

“What does that mean?” Nicole asked.

“Cause of death,” Ethan murmured. He looked at Dom. “Your father made notes about what he thought caused the deaths of people buried in this cemetery?”

Dom nodded. “Sometimes he took it from the death certificate. Sometimes he took it from what folks said. And sometimes he had his own ideas.”

“Was he a doctor?”

“No sir. He was a groundskeeper, same as me. Started tending graves in 1918 after his own father died. Folks were afraid of anything to do with dead bodies because of the Spanish influenza, but Daddy figured he’d already been exposed. He started digging graves and stayed on.”

Nicole gingerly lifted one of the thick pages to turn it. It made the sound of creasing cardboard. “And Quinn was looking at this book?”

“Last I saw.”

Ethan scanned the dates copiously entered in the left margin next to the names on the first page. “This is from the early 1930s.”

“Well, he’s a history teacher. I figure liking old records comes with the occupation.” Dom scrunched up his wrinkled features to inspect Ethan. “What did you say your name was?”

He hadn’t. “I’m Ethan Jordan.”

“Richard’s boy?”

Ethan winced but nodded.

“You don’t look like him.”

Ethan had heard that all his life. His older brother was the spitting image of their father. Ethan had his mother’s eyes but little other family resemblance.

“Jordan was one of the names on Quinn’s list,” Dom said.

Nicole looked up. “Quinn had a list?”

“Just a scrap of paper he kept in his shirt pocket.” Dom patted his own pocket. “He borrows my pencil a lot. He’ll scratch something out and write something else in and make his thinking noises. But I saw it once. He wrote
Jordan
in big letters.”

It made no sense. Ethan’s parents didn’t move to Hidden Falls until his father started working at the screw factory in Birch Bend after they were married. Ethan had no relatives buried in town, and Quinn knew that.

“My hot chocolate is getting cold,” Old Dom said. “You folks stay as long as you like. I’ll just be in the other room.”

“Wait,” Nicole said. “Can you tell us what else Quinn was looking at?”

Dom pointed. “Those right there. That was his stack.”

Ethan glanced at Nicole, balancing on her crutches, trying not to put weight on her bad foot while using her hands to turn pages in the records book.

“I don’t suppose there’s a stool Nicole could use.”

“Maybe in the front office. Tell them I said it was okay.”

Dom left the room. Ethan heard the creak of Dom’s chair as he sat and the slurp of hot chocolate that followed.

“Are we staying?” Ethan said to Nicole.

She looked up. “How can we not?”

“Then I’m going to find you a stool. And there’s a pain pill in your future.”

She nodded. “I know. I need one. But we might not get another chance with these books.”

Ethan was persuasive in the front office and returned with a wooden three-legged stool. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but at least Nicole would be off her feet.

Dom whistled softly at his desk and turned on a radio.

“Old Dom doesn’t know about the photo,” Nicole said softly as she adjusted herself on the stool with the oversized volume on the counter in front of her.

Ethan agreed. “So what are we looking for here?”

“We go back to our own list of names, especially Tabor, Fenton, and Pease.” Nicole looked at the stack Old Dom had pointed them to. “Can you pull those books down and see when they’re from?”

Ethan laid two more volumes on the counter and opened one to a random page toward the back. “June 3, 1934.”

“And the other? Earlier or later?”

He opened to another random page. “September 8, 1956.”

“So we have three volumes covering roughly twenty years.”

Ethan put fingers to his temples. The cemetery wasn’t large, and the population of Hidden Falls had always been small and was probably smaller in the decades represented in these books than the present ten thousand residents. Old Dom’s father wouldn’t have needed so many pages to record basic information about deaths. There had to be more to it. He flipped to the back of one book and found rubbings of tombstones pasted in.

“What are these marks?” Nicole’s question broke into Ethan’s thoughts.

“What marks?”

“Look.” She placed a finger above a line. “Little pencil dots and dashes. You don’t think it could be Morse code, do you?”

Morse code? In cemetery records? Ethan took the book into his hands and carried it to better light. He turned a few pages. The pencil markings, faint and smudged, didn’t appear on every page, and slanted ascenders and descenders of inked handwriting nearly obscured the marks.

“Quinn borrows Dom’s pencil,” Nicole said.

Ethan looked up. The markings, whatever they were, came from Quinn’s hand. Ethan took his phone from his pocket and opened an Internet search bar to tap in M
ORSE CODE.

“We’re going to need some paper,” Nicole said.

Ethan selected one of the search results. Just as he turned to ask Old Dom if he had any paper they could use, a website for decoding Morse code popped open.

6:07 p.m

The first question that niggled at Dani all afternoon was how Eva Parker got out to the trail in the first place.

The second question was whose truck Eva saw and why it spurred her into running back down the trail.

Dani didn’t want to be the last person to see Eva Parker.

When she got back to town, Dani drove straight to the Parker house and climbed the front steps to ring the bell.

As soon as Gianna Parker opened the front door, Dani could see Gianna wasn’t pleased to see her. Since the two of them had never spoken five words to each other, Dani wasn’t clear just what objection Gianna had already formed. Dani wasn’t completely incapable of appropriate manners. She’d put on a dress for Quinn’s dinner, after all, and she pleased people enough that they called her back for small home repairs and computer work. This was one of those moments where Dani had to reach inside herself and pull out the manners she knew were there.

“Hello, Mrs. Parker. I’m Dani Roose.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Eva.”

“For what purpose, may I ask?”

Purpose? Dani smiled. “Friendship.”

“Aren’t you a bit old to be friends with a fifteen-year-old?”

Dani was now counting the remaining life of her smile in single-digit seconds. This was the mother who thought her daughter needed more friends. Apparently Gianna meant friends she could personally approve of.

“Is Eva here?” Dani’s primary objective was to be sure the girl had gotten home safely.

“My husband will be home any minute, and we’ll be sitting down to dinner.”

How was that an answer to a simple question?

“I only need a minute,” Dani said.

“Eva hasn’t been feeling well,” Gianna said. “I’d rather not disturb her.”

The answer was still indirect, but it seemed to indicate Eva was home. Dani looked past Gianna and saw the movement behind her.

“Hello, Eva,” Dani said over Gianna’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mom.” Eva came to the door.

Gianna scowled, an expression Dani suspected was well practiced and which Dani disregarded.

Eva slipped past her mother. “We’ll just wait for Dad and Brooke in the yard.”

With a sigh, Gianna surrendered and withdrew into the house. Eva pulled the door closed and led the way across the yard to a two-seater glider under a spreading oak tree. Dani followed.

Eva started a swinging motion. “What are you doing here?”

“You were a long way from home,” Dani said, “for someone who looks too young to drive.”

“I have my permit.”

“But you weren’t driving today.”

Eva swung a little harder. “No.”

“That trailhead is a good three miles from here.”

“I know.”

“Whose truck did you see?”

“You have a lot of questions.”

Two cars drove past the house. Dani waited for answers.

“I know this boy, Zeke. His uncle works at a bait shop at the lake,” Eva said. “Sometimes his uncle asks Zeke to bring him things he needs from town.”

“And sometimes you ride along with Zeke.”

“He doesn’t mind giving me a ride. I can walk for a few minutes while he makes his delivery. But he borrows his dad’s truck, so he can’t be late getting back. Please don’t tell my mother.”

They swayed with the glider. Dani had the information she’d come for. Eva was doing something behind her parents’ backs, but it wasn’t nearly as creepy as some of the alternatives that had passed through Dani’s mind after Eva ran off. She didn’t like to be in between people who ought to be talking to each other. Eva and Gianna would have to work this out.

“Why does your mother think you’re not feeling well?” Eva looked fine to Dani. No one could be certain what was going through another person’s mind, but Eva didn’t act sick.

“I get a lot of stomachaches. I had one today, but she made me stay at school.”

Going to school used to give Dani a stomachache, too. If she hadn’t been able to sign up for a class with Quinn every semester, she would have gone bonkers. At least for fifty-two minutes every day, she was in a room with someone who made an effort to understand her.

Dani buzzed her lips.

“What’s wrong?” Eva said.

“Look, kid … Eva … I don’t know why you chased after me today, but there are no easy answers to what you’re going through. You just have to be who you are, that’s all.”

“I don’t think I’ve figured out who that is yet.”

“You’re fifteen. You have time.” Dani gave the swing a fresh push. “This Zeke, does he give you a stomachache?”