Mammoth Secrets (28 page)

“What's gone?” Jake leaned closer, still, laid his hand on top of hers. “We're here, Mr. Dale.”

“Papaw,” Lilah smiled through her tears. “I'm here with Pastor Jake.”

“Good.” Under the tubing, Papaw managed a lopsided grin, tired eyes blinking into focus under the low, antiseptic light. “You two go on down to the river dock tomorrow. Catch me a stringer-full. Rebecca's makin' hush puppies.”

Lilah nodded. Throat too thick with tears to speak, she cleared it. All focus rested on the lined face of the man who'd raised her. “Do...you see her, Papaw?”

“Your mama'n others…out in the hall.” He blinked at her, pale eyes distant, cloudy. “Hear ‘em callin' me?”

She released him in a flash. Gooseflesh shot shoulder to wrist, worry replaced with a healthy dose of chills. Lilah rubbed her exposed skin, then tilted the mauve water pitcher over a paper towel.

“Shh.” She blotted Papaw's hot forehead, his bone-dry cheeks. “I'll get the nurse.”

“No.” He shook his head once, sighed back into his pillow. “Mama's singing. I'll just listen a spell.”

Lilah turned to the empty doorway, the silence deafened. “What do you think he hears out there?”

“Maybe everyone. Everything.” Jake's expression was locked in childlike wonder. “I have no idea. But, I think I'd better take you fishing tomorrow. By the restaurant?”

“No. He's talking about the place at our dock.” Lilah inhaled, barely able to believe it herself. “At the river house.”

Jake's eyes widened, though he said nothing. He turned his attention back to Papaw.

Hands clasped in silence, they listened for angels to come to call.

 

 

 

 

39

 

The next afternoon, the truck pulled into the parking area in a cloud of red dust.

Lilah guided them down the stone stairs, carved into the hillside, and pointed to a picnic spot, above where the river pooled above the falls. Tiny ripples showed a deceptively strong current. “It looks exactly the same.”

“You've not come out here since you've been back?”

Lilah shook her head. “Nana didn't want me to. Said it was dangerous. Like a good girl, I tried to listen.”

“It's good they closed the diner today.” Jake spread out the polka dot quilt on bare ground where she directed.

Lilah squished her bare toes into the muddy earth. “Everyone's dropping over to West Plains, to see him there.” She stopped on a broad patch of grass above the dock, and then settled herself down on the quilt along with the wicker basket. Jake cast the lines where she directed while she checked Eden's latest message. No change.

The family dock sagged from lack of use; the boards Papaw hammered together, now weathered gray and warped. The landing lay just above the rapid falls in the pool of rippling water.

She spied shadows of unattainable bass and rainbow trout that swam slow circles in the deep swimming hole, away from the murk of reeds and algae; this secret cove on the hidden bank was the family fishing hole. The best place to catch the limit in record time. He'd fed the masses from this spot. Gifted everyone up and down the river with all the rainbow trout and small mouth bass that they could eat.

The dusty silver of Papaw's small, upside down skiff remained chained to an enormous oak tree trunk, the motor gone, the jagged edge of a paddle peeked from underneath. Lilah couldn't remember the last time anyone had used the boat.

Fizzy soda tickled her throat. She traced a quilted white circle with her fingertip, thoughts drifting to when Nana gave her and Eden the fabric scraps to make it in a futile attempt to teach her twin granddaughters the art of quilting. Laughingly, they'd all three shoved it in the closet, pronouncing the “snowball quilt” the ugliest coverlet in history. “Life isn't always beautiful.”

“True.” Jake spun the reel to his satisfaction, jammed a y-stick in the mud, and laid the rod between the forks. Sitting beside her, he trained his gaze on the rocky cliffs above. “River house, huh?”

“Nana only agreed because it was too high to wash out in a flood.”

Not more than a singlewide trailer, it perched on a sheer cliff, the rockiest stretch of riverfront property from here to Memphis. Nothing grew here but stubborn weeds and ancient oaks with lichen covered trunks. Red rocks burst from the pebble covered landscape, crushed under years of truck tires and bicycle treads.

The train tracks glinted immediately behind the shanty, too close for Nana's comfort. Each town had their stories of children stuck between railroad ties, or struck by locomotives, losing limbs, or worse, their lives. Those stories never stopped Lilah and Eden from sneaking out and laying pennies on the rails, leaning an ear to the vibrating rail to listen for the next train to smash the coins into thin bits of copper. The thrill of the danger, the power of the locomotive pulling the cars, clackety-clacking, past their quiet lives into places they merely dreamed of visiting some day.

If Nana knew the truth, she'd have sold the place long ago, rather than merely forbid them to go near the shack, so close to the dangerous tracks.

Lilah's palms suddenly itched to see if her emergency runaway supplies remained under the shack. Something no one knew about. Not even Eden.

“What do you know about your father?” Jake's innocent question dug a deep groove in her heart.

Lilah pulled in her knees. “He was just a kid, barely eighteen. I don't even know his name. They never told me.”

Jake tugged the line, checking the float for resistance. “Why not?”

“Nana always said he was no good. Just biology, anyway. Rebecca is, for all practical purposes, good or bad, my mama. Though I don't suspect Nana ever saw it that way.”

“It takes more than birth to make a mother.” Jake settled back and took her by the hand, brushing his thumb a slow circle across her palm.

Waterfalls of sensation erupted at his touch. She tilted her head down, studying his face through the curtain of her hair. The fullness of his mouth, the concern in his bottle-green eyes, to the hard line of his jaw at his obvious disapproval of what her grandmother had considered what was best for her.

“Do we need to talk about them?” She rubbed her arms, skin dappled and warmed by sunlight raining through the oak leaves. “Can't we just fish?”

He glanced to the silent rods, slanted a grin, and edged closer still. “Apparently not.”

“What else did you have in mind, Pastor Gibb?” Lilah blinked, brows raised.

“Fine time to start calling me pastor.” His laughter ricocheted off the rock steps. He shifted toward her with full, smiling lips, and touched hers with the softest of kisses.

Every cell in her body focused on the sweetness, the subtle charge of heat, longing, wrapped in the embrace of a man intent on understanding her. Something no one else in the world had ever bothered to do.

As if on cue, the fish started to bite, interrupting any chance of a romantic interlude. Two hours later, with the time to relieve Eden of her duties weighing on his mind, Jake heaved the tackle, rods, and cooler of filleted fish in the truck bed. A stringer full, just as Papaw promised.

“Hot.” Jake shook the near-empty water bottle. “Fill this up?”

“Here.” Lilah unscrewed the cap, stepped to the hose bib by the boxy river house. Paint peeled off the sagging front porch, under which no less than twenty litters of kittens had been born to this world.

Water gushed. Filled, she handed it to him, then filled another, giving a peek through a gap in the under-house latticework. Choked with weeds, nurtured from the slow drip of a water spigot. Life found a way, even in the harsh, rocky hills of the Ozarks.

Her ears perked at the slight sound beyond that of rushing water. High pitched, sporadic. Then, silent.

“Ready?” Jake slammed the truck gate.

Cotton candy clouds spun overhead in the painfully blue, late-afternoon sky.

“Just a second.” She tilted her head, listening, then ducked down to the hole of the fading lattice, and spied under the porch. “I think there's something under there.”

Jake knelt and brushed back his tumble of bangs. “Too dark to see. Got a flashlight in the glove box.”

But she'd already wriggled her shoulders and torso underneath by the time he returned. Cobwebs, dust, and something else, something familiar. “Hello?”

“Lilah!” Jake tugged her ankle. “Should you really be under there?”

She saw the old box, a wood crate with a dark green lining. She had to stretch but managed to drag a corner. The mewing grew louder. “Kittens! Look.”

Commando crawling, she backwards-dragged the box of skinny, scrawny creatures out into the waning daylight. One suckled the tip of her finger, its gray eyes blinked up at her.

“Better check that we got them all.” She took the flashlight and headed back under the porch.

“What about their mother?” Jake frowned at the malnourished kittens she'd shoved at his midsection.

“Abandoned them, probably.” Her heartbeat kicked up a notch, thinking on how many litters of kittens didn't make it. Instantly, she was back to river girl again, fishing until dark, presenting her grandmother with lost dogs, stray cats, even injured birds. Each one, taken in, loved, and brought back to good health by Nana's subtle grace. How much about this place had she forgotten, chosen to ignore by blocking with bad memories?

“Great.” Jake snorted. “We're going home with trout and a box of cats.”

Back under the porch, the beam of light aimed at dark corners, light overtaking gloom. Pipes, dust, block stacked to level the floor above. No animals. Nothing. Except...She angled her beam to the propane tank, the gas line attached to it.

That was new. Her heart jogged. “Someone's been here.”

Jake's reply was muffled as she disappeared back underneath the porch, headed to the tank, and spun it closer to her.

She frowned at the label. Milton's Gas ‘n' Go.

Dragging herself back out, Lilah hoofed it to the front door. The knob turned easily in her hand, lock broken. “Squatters.”

“Wait.” Jake returned from the truck, cats properly stored. “You can't just go barreling inside. What if...”

“It's my house—my family's, anyway. Hello?” She pushed her way inside, anger swelling in her blood. “Anyone here?”

Darkness pressed against the threadbare, fully drawn curtains.

Jake halted her forward attack, his hand firmly on her shoulder. He shoved past, voice authoritative. “Me, first.”

She followed as he swept room to room, mimicking what he'd probably seen on cop shows.

The counters were swiped clean of dust. Furniture, undraped of the white sheets. A dog-eared, weeks old
People
magazine rested on the coffee table. In the kitchen, a pan, plate, and dishes, washed clean and dried, lined the dish rack.

Jake returned from the small bedroom, hand in his hip pocket. “Someone's staying out here.”

“They're trespassing!” she spat. “We'll go tell the sheriff.”

“Now, wait.” He took her by the wrist. “They're not hurting anything. In fact, it looks like they're taking good care of the place. Maybe they'll listen to reason.”

“Jake!”

“Let me handle this, will you? You've got other things to worry about.”

He edged her back to the truck.

They could be anyone, growing pot or cooking up worse, using the place she remembered the most joyous for heaven knew what purpose.

“Think about it. Your papaw told us to come out here. Maybe this is the reason.”

Jake's sincerity dispelled all the fight from her heart. Just like Papaw, to give all strays shelter. “Fine.” She sat with a thump and looked over at the mewing kittens. She stroked the tiny, yawning orange tabby's back, it stretched tiny claws into cardboard. “I'll get these guys settled and go back to the hospital. You get until tomorrow to figure out what's going on here, and put a stop to it. Any longer, I'm calling the cops.”

 

 

 

 

40

 

Eden pocketed her mobile, no news to offer Lilah. “What the heck's she doing out at the old river place, anyway?” At her right, Papaw's monitors beeped and hummed. The numbers didn't mean anything to her, only something for the nurses to frown at, then jot down on Papaw's chart.

Where was Luke? He'd know...if he'd speak to her. He'd never answered her message. Not even a text back. Nothing. Here, in her hour of need, Eden was completely alone.

“If Nana knew where she was, she'd tan Lilah's hide.” Eden straightened the thin white blankets over her grandfather's frail form. “She's always hated that house.”

The
whiz-shush
of the leg balloons squeezed and released, keeping blood clots from forming, they said. Some sort of medieval torture device.

She sniffed, swiped and smoothed over the covers yet again.

Still and sleeping, her grandfather snored with his mouth slack like a child in deep slumber, yet there was nothing childlike in that husk of a body he clung to. Like that river house.

“You loved that river place, though.” Eden crossed her arms, fingernails clacking. “Was it the little dock we worked so hard on? Or happy memories, maybe? Why'd you keep it, Papaw?”

But, she knew the answer.

The river was everything to him. Eighty-some-odd years of fishing those waters, he knew them better than anyone. Its moods. Its dangers. Its blessings. The river house was testament to a time before, filled with hand me downs and cast offs. He'd threatened, many a time, to go out there and cool off when Nana had one of her tirades. “Nothing like the river to cure all ills,” he'd said, whether it was running beyond the house, or under the cliffs, he'd told her once while they'd watched the sun set over the falls, amber light behind misty oak and boulder dotted hillsides. They'd watched the cows on the opposite bank drink from the quiet spot, just beyond the little island where she and Lilah spent so many happy summer days as children. Where they'd sneaked off to as teenagers when they wanted to be alone.