Tomorrow's Sun (8 page)

Jake swallowed hard. What she’d intended as a goofy shtick mesmerized him. He managed a laugh. And managed not to tell her she was beautiful.

She put her hands on her hips. Every time she did that he had the impression she hadn’t always been the timid woman she appeared to be now. Her head tilted, giving him a new angle from which to appraise her chin. He’d always thought “heart-shaped” was a strange way to describe a face. Until now.

“I have a confession.” She rested a fingertip on her chin. As if he needed it pointed out. “A concession.”

He couldn’t help the grin. “You’re keeping the dining room wall.”

“Not a chance. But—I want to keep the old windows. The glass, anyway. Is that possible—to replace the frames but keep the old glass?”

“Of course.” His grin morphed to a smirk.

“Don’t go getting your hopes up. I’m not caving. I’m refining my vision.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

“You’ve got to be the only remodeler in the country who has to be begged to do more extensive work. My vision makes you money.”

He turned toward the shelf. “Oh, I’ll make money off you. Don’t you worry about that.” He picked up a hammer. “I started working on some ideas last night.”

“I’m hearing the
cha-ching
already.”

“That’s the sound of quality you’re hearing. You get what you pay for. If you want a decent return on your investment, you won’t cut corners.”
And you won’t desecrate a historic landmark
. “If you want cheap and fast…”

Her gaze hardened.

“Any problem with securing this to the wall?” He gestured toward the peeling bead board that showed between the boards.

“No. Whatever it takes. I’ve got all my earthly possessions in Rubbermaid bins.”

He rapped his fist against the wood. “It looks stur—“The entire wall swung inward a good inch, banging at the bottom. “What in the…?” He looked up. The top edge of the wood hid behind a ceiling beam. “Do you know what’s behind this?”

She shook her head. As if needing to test the wall’s stability herself, she pushed the panel. Again, it banged at the bottom.

Jake stepped back. The shelves butted up to the adjacent wall on the left, but not on the right.

“Why don’t you stand back a bit? I’ll try moving this.” He grabbed hold of the freestanding shelving unit. It swayed side-to-side, but he couldn’t budge it away from the wall.

Emily stepped in front of him and placed her hands below his. Her ponytail tickled his Adam’s apple. She smelled like the lemon slices floating in the glass on the ledge. “One…two…
three.”

It didn’t move. They both stepped away. Jake looked again at the way the top of the wall was hidden from view. With one finger on his lips, he tapped out a nameless tune and then suddenly stopped. He took a closer look at the bead board. His breath caught. “There are two parts.” He pointed to the right side of the wall. “See if you can slide it toward me.”

“The wall?”

“Yes.”

Emily slid her fingers between wood and rock, pulled, and gasped. The entire thing slid, clanging into the far wall. “It’s a door!”

Cool, stale air wafted through the opening. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

Jake bent down and dug in his toolbox for a flashlight. He flicked it on and stepped behind her, lighting up the darkness.

“It’s a room.”

Tamping down his curiosity, he handed the flashlight to Emily. The light arced across rock walls. He tried to peer around her.

“Looks like an old cistern.” She slipped through the opening. “But there are shelves.” Her voice echoed.

Turning sideways, Jake squeezed through the opening and stared at the shadowy emptiness. Low, two-foot-wide boards braced with thick posts lined three walls.

Emily rubbed her bare arms. “It must be ten degrees colder in here. A root cellar maybe.”

He didn’t answer. The width of the bottom shelves reminded him of something altogether different—berths in the hold of an ancient ship.

The flashlight beam bounced from wall to ceiling and stopped at a square door in the wood above their heads. “Where does that lead? Wouldn’t it open under the porch?”

“It would now. Maybe the porch wasn’t there when the door was put in.”

Emily ran the beam across high shelves and a row of black hooks. “It looks like a coatroom like you see in old schoolhouses.” She lowered herself to a bench and scanned the room for a long moment then turned her eyes to him. “This feels significant. I can’t explain it. I guess that sounds crazy….” Her voice trailed to a whisper. She flattened her hand against a wall.

She didn’t sound crazy at all. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but the space almost vibrated with a sensation of—Emily had nailed it—
significance
. He reached up and touched the cold roughness of an iron hook. “I think you’re right.”

The flashlight painted the walls in systematic strokes. Floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor. When the beam reached the northwest corner, it stopped. The halo of light spilled onto the bench. Emily leaned forward then rose and stepped closer. The light concentrated into a plate-sized disk. She knelt. “Come here,” she whispered.

Jake crouched behind her. Carved into the bench was a picture he’d seen before—four five-petal flowers with rounded petals and two concentric circles in the center of each, connected by stems with three leaves. Crude block characters curved around one side of the wreath, spelling out “M
ARIAH
1852.”

His long, low whistle split the shadows, eclipsing Emily’s gasp. “What do you know about the Underground Railroad, Miss Foster?”

September 2, 1852

Water lilies brushed the sides of the canoe with a soft whisper. Quiet, yet more noise than Liam would have liked. The night was still. A chill hung over the moonlit river in clouds of low fog, engulfing him in thick gray mist one moment then dropping like a sheet falling from a clothesline the next. Paddling just enough to steer clear of the bank, he combed the river’s edge with seasoned eyes. His newly rifled musket rested on his thigh. A dozen minié balls rattled in his pocket like a handful of lead acorns. But the weapon that fit his hands as if he’d been born with two fingers attached to the string nestled beside him like a trusty hound. Balancing his paddle across his knees, he reached over his shoulder and stroked the turkey fletching of an arrow pulled out, ready and waiting, from the others in his quiver.
Soon
. A half mile ahead, a clearing created a gathering place. As the deer nibbled on the lily pads and stems, he would find the young buck that had eluded him for three nights.

He shifted his cramped legs, inadvertently grazing the traps with his boot. Chains rattled. Liam gritted his teeth. Ten more yards and he’d pass Hannah’s porch. No one should have to travel at night in this dampness that seeped through buckskin like it was parchment.

With a deep breath for courage, he let his gaze travel the riverbank to the porch. Two rugs hung over the railing. His heart missed two beats. His stomach felt as though he’d swallowed the bullets in his breast pocket.

He would be back tomorrow night.

E
mily still sat on the low, scarred bench, rubbing her arms for warmth. Leaning back against the rock wall, she tried to separate logical thought from the fanciful musings of the man who had just left.

She regretted the “significance” remark. Though the feeling hadn’t left, it made her sound melodramatic. And it had fed Jake’s imagination. Like the ink blots framed as modern art on the walls in Vanessa’s office, this room could be whatever a person wanted it to be. She, a preschool teacher in her former life, saw a coatroom filled with giggling children and muddy boots. Jake Braden, the history buff, saw it as a secret hideaway for runaway slaves. He’d rattled on and on about abolitionists known to live in Rochester, and documented letters proving the village had been a temporary sanctuary for fugitives from the South. But they’d searched every inch of the room before he left and it gave no clues of its previous life other than the flower and a woman’s name.

Had Nana Grace known about this room? Emily pictured the woman who’d always reminded her of a giant pillow cinched in the middle. Shoulders wide for a woman, a puffy chest that could smother an unsuspecting child, and she was even wider at the bottom. Grace Ostermann’s generous hourglass figure could never have squeezed into this space.

Jake seemed to think that none of the previous owners knew anything about it, or they’d kept its stories secret. More than likely, the room’s origin and history was simply nothing worth sharing. A root cellar or storeroom dating back to the 1840s was interesting, but not something people would pay to see.

Pay to see
. The thought lodged in her brain like a tree damming a river.
He wouldn’t…
Why hadn’t she told Jake not to tell anyone about this? Within hours, the place could be swarming with curious neighbors and little old ladies from the Historical Society. She suddenly saw Jake, megaphone in hand, pulling people in from the street like a sideshow barker. The house would never get finished. Or started.

Her phone stuck in her pocket. She stood, slid it out, and dropped it. With a groan, she bent, retrieved it, and stilled her hand enough to punch in his number.

“Find something?” He didn’t bother with hello.

“No.” Relax. Be casual
. She exhaled melodrama and tried not to think of him as the sideshow barker who could ruin her plans. “I was just thinking…it probably goes without being said, but I don’t want anyone to know about this just yet. Okay?”

The quick assurance she’d hoped for didn’t come. Silence seeped from the phone and filled the darkness. “Jake?”

“Um…yeah…well, I only told two people. My niece and nephew. They’re just kids. I’ll tell them to keep it to themselves. They had an early release day, and I just picked them up at school. We’re on our way to your place. They’ve studied the Underground Railroad, and I promised I’d show them the room. They’re really excited about…”

Just kids?
If he’d known her background, he wouldn’t have used that as a defense. “Mr. Braden”—the formal address gave her a smidgeon of power—“we don’t know anything for sure.”

He laughed.
“I’m
sure.”

“But you won’t tell anyone else, will you?”

A protracted pause followed. “You are going to check this out, right? Do some research? We have to find out who Mariah is. Maybe you’re right, maybe she’s just a kid who used to live there, but we have to look at records and…”

We?
“Of course.” If she didn’t debunk the idea, sooner or later it would bubble out of him.

“So it’s okay to bring the kids over?”

Emily sighed and closed her eyes. “Sure. Bring them over.”

“We’re having lunch at McDonald’s. Can I bring you something?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Okay. Be there in about an hour.”

She closed her phone and rested her hand on the bench. On top of the flower.

Mariah, who are you?
Eyes still closed, she traced the name with her fingertip and tried to envision the person who’d carved it. A young girl, sent to dig carrots and potatoes from a barrel of sand, or to leave leftovers here to stay cold? Bored with her chores, she pulls a paring knife from her apron pocket. Or a runaway slave, exhausted, scared, running for her life. Huddled under a ragged blanket, waiting out the night with a shivering child in her arms. Carving a circle of flowers and her name—or her little girl’s—busying her hands to stay awake on her watch, a precious piece of candle disappearing as she worked.

A dog barked, muffled and distant, but jarring in the silence. Emily’s eyes opened.

The old house was getting crowded. The fluffy white dog, the boy in the striped shirt, and now the shivering woman dressed in tatters. Like an illustration in one of her favorite children’s books, would she lead a parade of imaginary friends wherever she went?