The Secrets She Carried (19 page)

L
eslie stood and stretched, stiff and restless after three hours at the kitchen table with a sketch pad and her laptop. At Jay’s request, she’d spent the week brainstorming ways to market the winery on their scanty budget. She had come up with some ideas: offering daily tours, wrangling all the free media they could manage, and teaming up with local inns and restaurants. They’d need a kickass label and brochure, as well.

She’d given that last part a bit of thought. If she designed the label and brochure herself, it would save them a fortune. And why not? If she could peddle sports cars and cigars, why not a winery? She’d been writing copy and working on a design for days and knew exactly what she wanted—the feel of antebellum lace and a sepia-washed shot of Peak standing high on its hill.

As she powered down her laptop, she tried to recall the last time she’d felt this passionate about work and realized the answer was
never
. At
Edge
she’d been driven, obsessed, even proud at times, but never passionate. A year ago she couldn’t have imagined a life other than the one she’d built around success, title, and a six-figure salary. Now that life was dimming, and much faster than she expected. She found herself suddenly eager to roll up her sleeves, to make this winery
a success, not for the money it might yield, but for the creative challenge of it, something she hadn’t felt in years.

Just thinking about the prospect made her itch to get started. Pulling back the kitchen curtains, she peered at the sky. A little overcast, but that would probably work in her favor. She would need shots of the crush barn and the rows, and a perfect shot of the house. That’s where she’d start, with the house.

But after nearly two hours she still hadn’t gotten the shot she was after. The perspective was wrong. She was too close, too low, too something. Scanning the horizon, she considered and discarded several options, until her gaze settled on the sharp thrust of land known for generations as Henry’s Ridge, after Maggie’s father. She had ventured partway up once, when she was a girl, but had soon given up. It was hard going back then and didn’t look to be any easier now. But if it meant getting the shot she wanted, she’d find a way.

Still, she hesitated at the foot of the ridge. There had been a kind of road once, a crooked clay lane that cut up through the trees, but time had had its way, whittling it to little more than a footpath. Maybe she should wait until she had better shoes, but the promise of the perfect shot beckoned.

Her legs rebelled as she started up, then pressed on until the trail became nothing but a trickle of packed red clay. At intervals she stopped to rest, attempting to shake the sense of déjà vu that moved with her as she climbed. She’d been this way just once, yet each step felt familiar, as if she’d made the trek only days ago. And then she realized she had, in the pages of her mother’s album. It was here—the grave her mother had discovered and photographed all those years ago—somewhere on Henry’s Ridge.

The realization came with a prickle of goose bumps, a knowing that this moment had somehow been inevitable, that for reasons she couldn’t begin to grasp, Maggie had wanted her to come looking and had left the photo as a kind of treasure map. But why?

Suddenly, Leslie was covering large chunks of real estate, striding purposefully over ground strewn with pebbles and dead leaves, the Nikon thumping soundly against her ribs. By the time she reached the crest, she was drenched in sweat, a stitch nipping sharply at her side. How she’d ever make it down again she had no idea. And right now she didn’t care. She had to be close—unless she was wrong about the whole thing. But no, the tree was here, overrun by years of kudzu but still here, lightning struck and split down the middle, just like in the photo. If she had her bearings right, and she was sure she did, it should be here. Only she couldn’t find it anywhere. Had she been mistaken? Woods were woods, after all, and one tree did look like another. And then she saw the stone.

The years had done their best to reclaim it, the low iron fence so overrun with weeds and vines that it had nearly become part of the landscape. The top of the headstone was barely visible, crumbling and mealy with age. It bore no resemblance to her mother’s photo, but then after thirty years it was hardly likely to. An eerie kind of quiet filled her head, as if her heart had suddenly stopped. Until now, her curiosity had been about the image, the art and technique of the shot itself. Now she only wanted to know who was buried in this remote place, and why.

Sadly, it seemed there was no way to get at the inscription. Efforts to locate a gate proved futile, and yanking at the tangle of vines made almost no dent in the chaos. Still, she wasn’t ready to give up. It was crazy, she knew, maybe even a little macabre, but before Leslie could question her motives, she was down on her hands and knees. Now that she’d found the grave, she couldn’t just leave it to the whims of nature.

She worked until her shoulders ached and her hands were raw with broken blisters, tearing at ropes of kudzu and wild grape that seemed
to lead nowhere and everywhere at once, unearthing all manner of crawly things in the process. Finally, she sat back on her haunches to survey her progress. It had taken the better part of the afternoon, but she’d managed to clear a sort of path that almost reached the gate.

A low growl of thunder suddenly caught Leslie’s attention. For the first time, she noticed the dark, flat-bellied clouds scudding in from the west, scented the breeze racing up the ridge’s west face, sharp with coming rain.
Damn.
She hated to quit now, when she was so close. The plan had been to work until the gate was free, then come back in the morning and finish the job. She was going to have to work fast to pull that off.

But before she could reach for another vine, the sky splintered into a thousand blue-white shards, leaving a wake of crackling ozone and opening the clouds. A second fork of lightning, even closer than the last, finally got her attention. Rain was one thing; wicked bolts of random electricity were quite another. Grabbing the Nikon, she scrambled for the path. She’d gone only a few yards when the rain came in earnest, an icy deluge that soaked her to the skin in minutes. Suddenly she was running, skidding and stumbling down the soupy clay slope slick with wet leaves and shifting stones.

Between the rain and her sopping-wet hair, it was nearly impossible to grope her way down, and more than once she landed on her knees or backside, torn between protecting her camera and saving her neck. The Nikon usually won.

By the time Leslie reached the foot of the path, all she could think of was a hot bath and an even hotter cup of tea. She was exhausted and chilled to the bone, so numb she could barely keep her teeth still. She’d nearly reached the house when she heard her name over the heavy thrum of rain. She winced at the sight of Jay leaning against the door of the tractor barn.
Damn, damn, damn.
Short of being rude, though, there was no way around it. Reversing course, she headed for the barn, shaking off like a wet dog as she ducked inside.

Jay scanned her with narrowed eyes, lingering on the puddle slowly forming at her feet. “Just out for a stroll?”

Leslie opened her mouth, fully intending to tell him where she had been and what she’d found, but somehow the words stuck in her throat. The discovery was too fresh, too curious. And so she held back, like a child with a new toy, unwilling to share until the novelty had worn off.

“I was scouting shots for the brochure,” she told him instead, holding up the Nikon as proof. “Before I knew it the storm blew up and I had to run for it.”

Jay took the camera and set it on the workbench. “Sounds like a good way to catch pneumonia, if you ask me. Your lips are blue, and you’re shaking like a leaf.” Grabbing a dubious-looking towel from a nearby hook, he wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight and snuggling the corners in under her chin. “Better?”

Leslie nodded, relaxing involuntarily as his hands began to move over her shoulders in long, bone-melting strokes. The rattle of rain on the roof was faintly hypnotic, the heat of Jay’s body vaguely disturbing, so that soon she was aware of nothing but the smell of his soap and the sudden warmth kindling in his whisky-colored eyes.

To see it there was startling—startling, but not unpleasant. In fact, it felt a little like being drunk. Closing her eyes, she yielded to the tender assault, dimly aware of something warm and languorous stretching awake in her belly, hungry after a long, cold slumber. Would it really be such a bad thing? To let herself feel something for someone? But she already knew the answer to that. Jay wasn’t some stockbroker she’d bumped into at a cocktail party. Tomorrow would come, or next week, or next month. Something would go wrong—it always did—and then they’d be stuck, tiptoeing around each other every day, trying not to make eye contact.

He was staring at her when she opened her eyes, probing for answers to the questions that hung unspoken between them. Leslie looked away first. Stepping back, she peeled off the towel. She needed to
get away from him, from his warmth and his scent, before she did something they’d both regret.

“Thanks,” she said, reaching for her camera. “I’m fine now.”

“Did you get what you were after?”

“After?”

“The pictures you wanted for the brochure. Did you get them?”

No, she hadn’t, come to think of it. The minute she’d found the grave, all thoughts of the brochure had simply evaporated. “The pictures—oh, I don’t know, maybe. I won’t know until I go through them. Right now, I just want to get dry. I’ll see you later.”

Before Jay could respond, Leslie had ducked back out into the rain and was splashing blindly across the lawn, the icy drops a relief after the close heat—and the close call—of the barn. When she finally reached the shelter of the porch, she looked back, worried that he might have followed, and wishing just a little that he had.

Four days later it was still raining.

Leslie was going stir-crazy, itching to get back to the ridge and clear a path to the stone. Instead, she’d been stuck indoors, combing through her mother’s albums until she knew the order of the photographs like the back of her hand. When she grew bored with that, she had pored over the cryptic mother-daughter letter until the words were burned into her memory. And four days later, she was no closer to knowing what any of it had to do with anything.

When Angie called to suggest lunch downtown, Leslie jumped at the invitation, offering to drive, or to don flippers and a wet suit if necessary. Anything to get out of the house and away from questions that seemed only to breed more questions.

At the height of what should have been the lunch rush, Bishop’s was deserted. The brass bell over the front door jangled noisily as Leslie and Angie stepped into the empty lobby. Susan Bishop looked up with
a blend of surprise and relief from the stack of menus she was wiping.

“What brings you two out in this slop?”

Angie peeled out of her raincoat and hung it on the rack near the door. “I didn’t care if I had to swim. I had to get out of the house. Young Buck’s about to run me crazy, moaning about the rain and the threat of bunch rot setting in.”

“Let’s not talk about rot,” Susan shot back over her shoulder as she grabbed two menus and walked them to a corner table. “I just had to toss an entire shipment of salmon. It’s been like a ghost town all week. I’d tell you the specials but I didn’t bother planning any.”

“Actually, I think we were both going to do salads,” Angie told her. “And pick us out a good bottle of Chardonnay. We’re celebrating.”

Susan disappeared, promising to return with bread and the requested wine.

Leslie spread her napkin in her lap and leaned in. “So what are we celebrating?”

“You. Staying. Jay told me the news yesterday. I’m glad.”

Leslie made a face. “I couldn’t come up with a reason not to. At least I’ll have a roof over my head. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“Sometimes that’s the way it works. So what’s new on the getting-settled-in front? I don’t guess it’s much fun sifting through all that old stuff.”

Leslie thought of her recent discoveries, the letter and old photographs, articles her mother had clipped and saved for no reason she could think of. And she thought of the ridge and the stranger whose name and story she still didn’t know.