Abandon the Dark

Only six o’clock, and it was growing dark already, with lights appearing in the houses and shops along Main Street. Fall was drawing in, no matter how nice the weather had been.

A string of orange pumpkin lights decorated the house he was passing, and in the next yard the sheet of a makeshift ghost fluttered from the branch of an oak tree. Halloween wasn’t until next week, but each year the decorations started earlier and grew more elaborate. The adults, it seemed, had taken over a holiday that used to be for kids.

There were no Halloween decorations at Rebecca’s house, of course. But every kid in town knew there’d still be whoopee pies waiting if you knocked on Rebecca’s door. Not this year. The thought depressed him.

He parked at the curb and got out. The glow of a gas lamp came from the front windows, so Lainey must be there.

He toyed with the thought of what she’d do for Halloween if she were back in St. Louis. A party, no doubt. She’d go as a gypsy. Or a witch. Either of those suited the somewhat wild quality of her beauty.

He reached the porch, raised his hand to knock, and nearly hit Lainey in the face as she swung the door open and charged through. For a moment both of them froze, probably equally startled.

“Sorry.” He lowered his arm, trying to look harmless. “I didn’t come to attack, honest.”

“My fault. I was just going out.” The way she said it invited him to leave.

“I’ll just take a few minutes of your time.” And then he could cross this job off his list and move on to a consideration of who would best care for both Rebecca and her property.

Lainey stared at him, maybe deciding whether or not to make an issue out of his unscheduled visit. Finally she shrugged and turned away from the door. “You may as well come in, I guess.”

Not a very gracious invitation, but he’d take it. He stepped inside quickly, before she could change her mind.

Lainey headed into the living room, and he followed. She slipped the handbag strap from her shoulder and tossed the bag onto the table next to Rebecca’s favorite chair. “You might have called.”

“Sorry.” He raised his eyebrows, feeling an urge to annoy her. “Have a hot date?”

For an instant he thought she’d snap at him, and then a reluctant grin tugged at her lips. “So far the only males I know in Deer Run are Uncle Zeb and young Thomas. Not exactly eligible, either of them.”

“You know me,” he pointed out. “I’m generally considered eligible.”

“And that’s according to the local newspaper, from what Aunt Rebecca said in one of her letters. Most eligible bachelor in the county, or something like that.” Lainey looked as if she felt she’d scored.

“Ouch. I hoped Rebecca didn’t know anything about it.” He grimaced. “How I let myself be talked into that idiotic contest I can’t see.”

“Someone caught you in a weak moment, no doubt,” she said.

“Something like that. Well, much as I enjoy having my follies paraded to the immediate world, maybe we’d best get down to business, so you can meet your date.”

“I planned to drop in on Rachel. Or Meredith.” She shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. “I’m not sure. There’s something I need to find out from them.”

Lainey’s eyebrows drew together, and she raised one hand to press her fingertips between them, as if to clear her thoughts. The urge to annoy her left him abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” He took a step closer, surprised by the strength of his concern.

Lainey blinked, seeming to make an effort to focus. “I was going to ask Meredith or Rachel, but actually I guess you would know it, too. What does the death of Meredith’s mother have to do with the summer I spent here when I was ten?”

He hadn’t expected that, and maybe he should have. Once she was back in Deer Run, Lainey was bound to hear about the events that had been a nine-days-wonder just a month ago. Not enough happened in Deer Run to eclipse something as dramatic as murder, attempted murder and suicide.

“I can, yes,” he said slowly, trying to think how to frame the story. “What did you hear about it? And how?” Obviously not from Rachel or Meredith, or she wouldn’t have been ready to seek them out tonight.

“Sit down, for goodness’ sake.” Lainey waved a hand toward the rocker that was drawn up close to Rebecca’s seat.

He obeyed. They were practically knee to knee, sitting in the two rockers. Rebecca always liked to have her visitors close to her, especially as her hearing worsened in recent years.

“Well?” he asked, a little too aware of how near she was—enough that her elusive, exotic scent touched him.

Lainey shrugged. “I don’t see why it matters, but I was in Miller’s Store today when two women came in—Jeannette Walker and Laura Hammond.”

Jake sent a startled glance out the front windows to the Willows, which sat diagonally across the street. “Laura? Laura’s back in town?”

She nodded. “I thought she looked unwell, and after they left, Anna told me why. She said Laura had been in a psychiatric facility. That her husband had killed Meredith’s mother.” Her eyes grew shadowed. “She said it had something to do with that summer I was here.”

How much to tell her? Maybe he’d have been better off not to interrupt her visit to Meredith and Rachel. They’d do a better job of this than he would.

“Well?” She interrupted his thoughts. “Is it true?”

“More or less. How much do you remember about the summer you were here?”

She considered. “I remember a lot about some things, not much about others. I’ve started to remember more about Meredith and Rachel since I talked to them last night. But there are holes.”

“Natural enough. You left here, went back to your normal life. I stayed here, but I still don’t remember much about the summer I was ten.” He grinned. “Except that I probably spent most of it playing basketball.”

“The years do run together. But...” She frowned. “I should remember more about that summer, I’d think, because it was the only one I lived here.”

He didn’t know whether that theory was true or not. “What makes one thing stay in your memory and another fade? I can remember every single detail of a Saturday afternoon I worked on a science project with my dad and nothing at all about the class I was in.”

She gave him a look. “That must gratify your teacher. Anyway, just tell me. Don’t assume I know anything.”

“That makes it harder. The important thing about that summer was a romance between Laura Mitchell, as she was then, and an Amish boy, Aaron Mast. Ruffled the feathers of both sets of parents, I suppose.”

Lainey nodded, looking a little surprised. “I remember him. Blond, blue eyes.” She smiled suddenly at whatever it was she saw in her memory. “He was our knight.”

“You recall the game you girls played, then.”

“Bits and pieces. We made up a kind of fantasy world, and the three of us played it all that summer. Aaron was the noble knight, and Laura...of course. Laura was the beautiful princess.” Her eyes lit with the memory, and for an instant her face was the face of the little girl she’d been. “Everyone wanted to marry the princess, but she had eyes only for Aaron.”

“That’s it, from what I heard from Meredith and Rebecca.” He hesitated. “Do you remember how it ended?”

“Ended? I went away. My mother came, out of the blue, and took me with her. I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to people.” Lainey’s words were underlined with resentment and something else...resignation, was it?

“Surely you must have heard that Aaron died—drowned in the pond back by the dam.” He nodded toward the rear of the house, seeing in his mind’s eye the stretch of lawn, the narrow belt of brambles and tall grass, and then the strip of woods that bordered the stream where it tumbled over Parson’s Dam—only three feet high, but deadly when a day or two of rain turned it into something like a riptide.

Lainey put her hand to her head. “I...I don’t think so.” Her face paled. “How could I have forgotten something that terrible?”

She looked so white and distressed that he reached out and clasped her hand. Her fingers curled around his.

“Apparently the day after his death your mother took you away. You weren’t here to have any reminders.”

“Even so.” She seemed to realize she was clinging to his hand, and she let go, drawing back in her chair. “But I still don’t understand. How could that have anything to do with Meredith’s mother’s death?”

This was the complicated bit, trying to piece the story together. “I guess it began when Rachel came back to Deer Run in the spring. She and Meredith got together, and they started remembering things from that summer. And they started asking questions.”

She nodded, and it surprised him that she seemed to find that normal. “They would, wouldn’t they? It seems impossible to me, coming into it cold, that Aaron could have drowned that way. He was sensible, and a lot more responsible than most teenagers. He even warned me about the dam one day when he found me down by the creek. How could he have an accident there?”

“You have a lot in common with those two, you know that? You’re reacting just the way Rachel and Meredith did. So, as I say, they started asking questions.”

She looked pleased at being told she was like the two girls who’d been her friends. She brushed a strand of thick, curling hair back from her face, and again he wanted to touch it, to feel it twist around his fingers.

“What did they find out?” She seemed to take it for granted that they would have uncovered something.

“At first it seemed they’d found a reason for Aaron to have killed himself. As you can imagine, that opened up his family’s grief all over again. But they dug deeper and learned that someone had been with him at the dam that night. That it wasn’t an accident or suicide. That knowledge nearly cost Meredith her life.”

Lainey considered his words, staring down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Then she looked up. “Laura’s husband, I understand. Victor Hammond. I remember him now. Kind of pudgy, anxious, eager to please. One of Laura’s followers. Are you seriously saying he killed Aaron? And why Meredith’s mother?”

“Margo King had seen or heard something at the dam that night, and she made the mistake of letting Victor know she had. She was drowned, same as Aaron. And when Meredith got too close, he tried the same to her.”

Lainey shuddered. “Thank heaven he failed.”

Jake nodded. He’d been there, that day, arriving with the police and Zach, Meredith’s fiancé, in time to save her. He didn’t like remembering how close it had been.

“No wonder Laura looked as if she’s...” Lainey hesitated, apparently considering the word. “Empty. That’s how she looks. Empty.”

“That describes it pretty well. If she knew, and I think she must have at some point, she wasn’t strong enough to cope with the knowledge.”

“Poor woman. And poor Meredith, losing her mother that way. I’m surprised they didn’t say something about it last night.”

He considered. “It’s a pretty complicated story to hit you with the first time they see you after twenty years. But I’d guess they’re eager to talk to you about it. They even have the scrapbook you kept that summer. You were quite an artist for a ten-year-old.”

Her gaze slid away from his, as if she were embarrassed. “Kid stuff. Not enough talent for the real world.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that comment. It was revealing, and he suspected she’d regret it if he got too close.

Maybe she thought so, too, because her expression changed and her chin came up. “You didn’t come here to tell me this story, Jake. So why did you come?”

Jake had to do some rapid reordering of his thoughts. “Right, that. I was hoping you’d come to a decision about Rebecca’s wishes, so we can move ahead.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You mean you hope I’ve decided to give up the power of attorney.”

“No.” It had sounded that way, hadn’t it? Why was he so inept in dealing with this particular woman? “Not at all. I just need a decision, one way or the other.”

“Fine, you’ve got it.” Her face firmed. “I told Zeb Stoltzfus today, so I’ll tell you. Aunt Rebecca wanted me to do this, so I’m doing it.”

“Right.” She wouldn’t be leaving, then. He had a certain sneaking pleasure in the thought. “That’s all I needed to know.” He stood. “We’ll go from there, then.”

“Really? No arguments? No pointing out that I don’t know anything about Rebecca’s way of life?” She stood, which put her very close to him. “Aren’t you going to tell me that I’m...” She looked up into his face, and their gazes caught. She seemed to lose track of what she was saying.

And he didn’t think he could utter a coherent sentence to save him. His eyes traced the line of her cheek, the curve of her lips. It was all he could do to prevent his hand from following along. She leaned toward him, as if some force of gravity pulled them together.

With an effort of will and muscle, he drew back away from her.

“Right,” he said, not pleased to discover that he was breathless or that he was repeating himself. Couldn’t he think of something else to say? “I...I’ll have to talk to you about business in a day or two if Rebecca doesn’t improve. In the meantime, you can refer to me anyone who has a question about finances.”

“Yes, all right.” She turned and walked a few steps away. Maybe she felt the need to put some distance between them as well. “Thank you, Jake. And thank you for telling me.”

She’d thanked him twice in one meeting. That had to be a record. Now he’d better get out of here before he did something foolish, like checking for himself how those lips tasted.

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