Tomorrow's Sun (32 page)

A flash of reproach warmed Emily’s neck. Until this point she had looked at the woman as purely a conveyor of information. “How old is your son?”

The smile returned. “He’ll be fifty next month. He lives in Chicago. Harry is my only child and he never married.” She wiped the corners of her mouth with her thumb and index finger. “For me, the reflections in the mirror continue through my students and their children.”

Emily swallowed hard. Not a one of her preschoolers would remember her in years to come. “What an incredible legacy.”

They talked about teaching until their salads came and then Dorothy began a monologue of Rochester history. She spoke of people long buried in the Rochester or English Settlement cemeteries as if they were “alive, but not fully.”

Mr. Godfrey, who built the original tavern, had supported himself from the age of twelve. He brought his family to his little log hut in the spring of 1836 “to a humble home in a setting of surpassing beauty” along a clear stream banked with carpets of green and overflowing with wildflowers.

Before the first marriage ceremony was performed in Rochester in 1838, the groom, Philander Cole, traveled over twenty miles to Racine on foot to obtain his license. His new bride became the envy of every woman in the area for owning the first cupboards with doors.

When Mrs. Allen Stetson was thirteen years old, she rose before dawn every morning, fixed breakfast, and finished the household chores so she could accompany her father and brother to the fields. She was too fearful to remain at home alone because of the Indians.

Sunlight angled lower through the windows as Dorothy spoke. Emily slipped her hand into her purse and discreetly checked the time on her phone. An hour had passed and they hadn’t yet made it to the middle of the nineteenth century.

The first church society was organized in 1837. They sometimes met in the tavern. Mr. Taggert, the first schoolteacher, cut willow switches on his way to school. Mail was delivered only once a week in the early years. A letter could be sent for six and a half cents.

Every bit of it was fascinating, but when Dorothy began to yawn, Emily feared they’d never see 1852. Pushing her bowl aside and folding her napkin, she took advantage of a yawn and stared up at the ceiling. “I love the feel of this place.” As casually as she could manage, she added, “It mentioned on the menu that this building was a station in the Underground Railroad.”

“It may have been. We know for certain that several places in Rochester were safe havens for runaways. You know about the Ela house?”

Emily nodded. “A runaway slave and his conductor stopped there.”

A long-suffering look pinched Dorothy’s mouth.
“Joshua Glover’
— she formed the name as if speaking of royalty—“and his conductor, Chauncey C. Olin, got a fresh team from the Elas for five dollars and stayed for a cup of hot tea and lunch in March of 1854.”

“Fascinating.” Emily sipped her water with what she hoped was a casual air. “Do you think there’s any chance my house was involved?”

“In the Underground Railroad?” Dorothy leaned forward. In a single blink, her eyes lost their tired look. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? That letter from Missouri. Very mysterious, isn’t it? What was the work they’d accomplished? I’d read that letter several times years ago but after meeting you I’ve been absolutely obsessed by it. Grace Ostermann was a bit of an odd duck. I asked her many times if I could go through her house looking for historical evidences and she refused every time. Almost as if she were protecting something”—her pupils widened—“or some
one.”

“Some
one?
”

“If I lived in a house inhabited by spirits of the past, I wouldn’t too readily share them with the public, would you?”

“No. I guess I wouldn’t. But maybe she was just a private person.”

“Well, I can understand that, but since she’s gone…”

Emily was sure she was expected to finish the sentence. She drained her water glass.

“If I could just look around a bit, get some pictures—”

Swallowing wrong, Emily answered with a cough. “What would you be looking for?”

Dorothy leaned yet closer, glanced left then right. “There could be signs that aren’t obvious to the untrained eye.”

“Like what?”

“That shed behind the house has been there as long as I can remember. It’s stone, isn’t it?”

“Just the bottom half. It’s wood on top.”

“Hmm. Could be the original foundation.” Her eyes brightened. “There could be a tunnel. What if the the legendary tunnel actually existed, but on the opposite side of the river from—” She stared over Emily’s shoulder. “Oh my. Isn’t this awkward?”

“What?” Emily craned her neck. Three men and a woman followed the hostess to a table.

“You don’t know her?”

“No.”

“That’s Jacob Braden’s last girlfriend. Heidi something-or-another. They were quite the item for months.”

Emily ordered her neck not to crank to the right, but it wouldn’t obey. She stared at the woman who could have been a cover model.

“Never did hear why they broke up.They seemed happy enough—”

“Do you need more coffee? I do.” Emily felt no qualms about cutting the woman off. She was here for a lesson in history.

But not Jacob Braden’s.

Emily handed Adam a glass of lemonade and sat beside him on her front step. Upstairs, Jake and Topher taped and sanded drywall at an astounding speed.

Adam took a drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What if Mrs. Willett just shows up here?”

“I’ll tell her no one is allowed during remodeling.”

“Watch her come over with a shovel in the middle of the night and start digging in your shed.”

Emily laughed. “If she does, I’ll rattle chains and make howling noises.”

Adam’s eyebrows took turns arching. “Maybe you won’t have to. Maybe the real ghosts will scare her away.”

“They haven’t tried to scare us yet.”

“That’s ‘cause we’re cool.” He lifted a book from the stack on the step and pointed to a two-page spread depicting Underground Railroad quilt symbols. “We should make some of these.”

Emily scanned the page for the pattern of the quilt on her church pew. “I don’t sew. Do you?”

“Actually …” He patted both of his pant legs then unzipped a pocket and pulled out a hinged metal Altoid box.

“You piece quilts with breath mints?”

“Funny.” He opened the box and showed her two sewing machine spools of thread and three sizes of needles. “I could sew, if I had to. But I meant we should make these out of paper. They could be cards in a board game. The board could be a map with all the Underground Railroad routes.” He flipped to the beginning of the book and showed her what appeared to be a map of rivers of the eastern half of the United States.

Like veins flowing backward into arteries, several lines converged in southern Indiana and formed a thick northward line through Ohio and across Lake Erie, ending in Canada. One line verged off, following the Mississippi along the curves of Illinois then arcing northwest across Lake Michigan, Michigan state, and into Ontario.

Emily’s breath caught in her throat. The line dissected Rochester and Grand Rapids, connecting two parts of her life she was trying to separate. She turned several pages, back to brightly colored quilt blocks, and focused on their beauty and not on their hidden meanings. “I have a box marked ‘art supplies’ in the basement if you want to run down and get it.”

“Awesome.” Adam pushed the book toward her and jumped to his feet. “We should be reading these books in the secret room.”

“By kerosene lamp.”

“Yeah. Can we?”

She hated trampling his enthusiasm. “It’s too damp down there for my lungs.”

“Oh yeah. I forget you’re still sickly.” He pounded his chest and wheezed as he opened the door.

The boy was good for her soul. Emily closed her eyes and lifted her face to the midmorning sun.

“Excuse me!” The voice was breathless. Footsteps pounded. Sherry Vargas ran across the street, both boys in tow. All three were barefoot. “Is there any chance you could watch the boys for a few minutes?
Somebody
closed the drain in the bathroom sink to play with submarines and somebody else came along and left the water on. So we now have our very own swimming pool and—”

“Go! I’ll watch them. Adam and I were just going to do some crafts anyway.”

“Thank you so much.” Sherry backed away, still talking. “I keep telling Tina I want to invite you over for dinner, but with work and the kids—”

Emily waved her away with a smile. “Go drain the lake. Maybe we can chat when you’re done.” The little voice that was supposed to remind her she wasn’t here to make friends seemed to have contracted laryngitis.

Adam returned. “Hey.” He greeted the boys. “You guys want to make some cool stuff?” He looked at Emily. “Maybe we should move to the back porch where we have more room.”

“Good thinking.”

“Always.” He tapped his temple then hoisted the plastic bin to his hip and motioned for the boys to follow.

She couldn’t explain why the craft supplies had made the trip around Lake Michigan with her. Maybe, like a pioneer woman hiding her favorite teacup in the flour barrel as she packed the Conestoga, she needed just one souvenir of her old life to take west. Glue sticks, round-tipped scissors, rulers, markers, copy paper, construction paper. The box transported her to a room with rainbow-shaped tables and miniature chairs. Primary colors, wooden blocks, puzzles, nap mats, cubbyholes filled with tambourines and maracas.

For a moment, she was Miss Em again, the teacher who made up silly songs and rhyming stories, who wore a clown suit for birthdays and danced the hokey-pokey with four-year-olds.

She’d told the other teachers she couldn’t come back because she couldn’t be the Miss Em the children were used to. They knew she couldn’t lift or bend. They didn’t know she couldn’t spend her life loving other people’s children.

As Emily walked around the side of the house, Topher waved through an open upstairs window and blew her a kiss. The boy was getting annoying. Jake had ordered her to stay out of the house while they were sanding. Whether he was more concerned for her lungs or her lips, she wasn’t sure. He’d commanded her to sit in the sun and not lift a finger, but she’d just about finished scraping the porch spindles.

Three boys sat cross-legged on the porch by the time she joined them. She offered lemonade and opened the back door. Jake stood by the sink, downing a glass of water, the front of his shirt soaked with sweat.

“I’m sorry it’s so warm in here.”

He winked at her over the rim of the glass. “It’s not all your fault.”

Her only comeback was a smile and a shake of her head.

“Do that again.”

“Do what?”

“The hair thing.”

She whipped her head to the right. Her hair splashed over her cheek. “Like this?”

“Exactly like that.” He took a step toward her and set the glass on the counter. His eyes said dangerous things.

She couldn’t listen. “Michael and Russell are here.”

“I see that.” He took another small step.

“They want lemonade.”

He brushed a rogue strand of hair from her cheek. “They won’t dehydrate in the next two minutes.”

Two minutes. If he was about to do what she thought he was about to do, two minutes could kill her. How long could a person go without oxygen before brain damage set in? Maybe it was too late. If she let him kiss her it would be proof she’d already been holding her breath too long.

Kiss and run, oh what fun
.

She inched away while she still had the power to run. Any closer and she’d be rooted to the spot.

Maybe forever.

“I can’t keep them waiting.”

Jake’s chin lowered a fraction of an inch. Dust-covered arms crossed his damp shirt. “But you have no problem keeping me waiting, do you?”