The Story Keeper (34 page)

My mind was racing now, scenes painting themselves in my head. “Wait a minute. What story?”

“The one about Rand and Sarra, of course. The one you came here for.”

Evan drew back. “Hannah, how do you know about that?”

“I read it . . . last summer at Uncle Clive’s place. He saves stuff, you know
 
—outta people’s trash cans around the cabins. I’m not s’posed to tell. It’s a secret.” A grin turned Evan’s way, then she winced and touched the mitten to her cracked lips.

My thoughts raced through the connections like an electrical pulse moving from one end of a circuit to another, but Evan asked the question before I could form it. “Uncle Clive saved the
Story Keeper
manuscript from the cabin trash when we cleaned it out?”

Hannah turtled her chin into the collar of the coat. “Don’t be mad, Uncle Evan. He can’t help it. It’s just . . . like . . . it’s a
com-pell-shion
he’s got. He wouldn’t ever sell the story to anybody or anything. He loves all his junk, a
lot
. But then when Jennia Beth came here, I told Uncle Clive he oughta leave Uncle Ev’s story at the cabin for her. Then nobody’d know Uncle Clive stole it and he wouldn’t get in trouble, and she’d get the story, and she’d talk you into making it a book. The Time Shifters people wouldn’t bug us anymore, and Granny Vi wouldn’t be all upset, and you would be happy, and my dad wouldn’t have to fix fences when people break in, so him and you wouldn’t fight anymore. I didn’t know Uncle Clive was gonna drop the pages off a little bit at a time, but he’s kinda . . .
different
, if you didn’t notice. I think he didn’t wanna give away his stuff, really.”

I stared at her, stunned. “So all week, it’s been your uncle Clive leaving envelopes at my door?”

“Well, except this last time. This last time, it was me and Uncle Clive. I found some more of it the other day in my secret place, but it wasn’t yours, Uncle Evan. It was somebody else’s
from a long time ago. I heard Jennia Beth tell you she was gonna go home, and I thought if we put some more of the story at her cabin, then she couldn’t leave.”

I was conscious of Evan’s confused look. He turned from me to Hannah, his mouth hanging slightly slack. “What . . . what secret place, Hannah?”

“Down the hill by the old rock house.”

“The old farmhouse? There’s nothing in there. No one’s lived there since Great-Grandma died when I was a kid.”

Hannah leaned closer as the noise of an approaching helicopter crowded the air. “There’s all
kinds
of stuff in the old milk barn down there. Dishes and pictures and trunks and chairs and a table and a bed. I made it my secret place. That’s where I found the box with the papers stuffed in it. That’s where I found more of Rand and Sarra’s story.”

Chapter 29

“
T
hey built this thing right into the side of the mountain.” Evan slipped a finger under the rusted hasp on the old barn I’d glimpsed on my first trip up the mountain. That seemed ages ago now, even though it wasn’t. So much had happened since then.

The hasp swung open in his hand, padlock and all. “My family ran a dairy out of here for years. Rumor was, back in the day, more than butter and cheese was stored in the spring cave, but just about everyone around here claims to have a bootlegger somewhere in the woodpile. I remember my grandparents processing the milk in the front room and curing blue cheese near the spring, where the temperature and humidity were right. They locked the place up after they took over raising Jake and me. I always figured they did that because they were afraid it’d be a reminder. My mother liked it here. She used the space along the windows as a greenhouse before Dad’s job took us to Florida. This was sort of her getaway.”

A sudden sense of grief competed with the warmth of the Indian summer day that had dawned the morning after Hannah’s rescue. Safe in the hospital now, she’d been given an IV of sedatives to combat the pain, but she was expected to recover completely, with time. Considering how bad things could have been, the prognosis seemed an incredible blessing.

Her hideout here at the farm had the feel of a place where cobwebs gathered and secrets waited. A cool, musty smell wafted out as Evan swung the door onto the weathered wooden porch. He smiled. “Leave it to Hannah to find her way down here.”

“It’s something I would’ve done at her age. I spent a lot of time sitting in the springhouse with stories in my head and books I wasn’t supposed to read.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

“Don’t laugh. Some of them were your books.”

He rolled his eyes and held open the door, waving me through. “After you.”

I peered into the cavernous barn. “You know what, I think I’m happy to let you go first.” The dirty plate-glass windows allowed only muted interior light. I’d had enough close calls with copperheads, coons, and possums in my childhood.

“I thought you’d go anywhere for a book,” he teased.

“
Almost
anywhere.”

A flirtatious grin parted his lips. My mind flashed back to the afternoon we’d first met, and the little goat in the trailer. In the hospital, I’d promised Hannah that, once she was better, I’d find a bottle-baby goat for her. Coral Rebecca said she’d help. I hadn’t confessed that plan to Evan yet.

Smirking, he led the way into the dairy house, and I followed. Inside, Hannah had created an imaginary kingdom of sorts, complete with an apple crate table and upturned buckets for chairs.
A tea service for two had been pieced together from mismatched cups and saucers. Old shelves along one wall displayed a throng of antique bottles that looked like they had probably been sifted from a dump somewhere on the property, and nearby, several creations fashioned from clay sat drying on a leaning Hoosier cabinet. The cedar chest Hannah had described to us in the hospital waited beneath the window near a tumbledown potting table. In the corner, a jumble of furniture sat draped in dust and spider silk
 
—an iron bed, an antique high chair, a white metal cradle with ornate finials. Dilapidated moving boxes squatted along the wall. Mice had clearly enjoyed a field day there.

Evan took a few steps toward the strange conglomeration, his movements almost trancelike. If he noticed the cedar chest by the window, he didn’t stop to look at it.

“I think this is the quilt box she was talking about,” I said but Evan didn’t respond. Instead, he stood gazing at the mess in the corner, mesmerized.

“Evan?”

“These were my parents’ things. That was our baby bed. I remember my mother putting Jake in there.” He moved toward the cradle, stretched out his hand, touched the milky railing, disturbing a gathering of dust, then wrapped his fingers around the metal and clung to it.

Standing back, I rubbed away the gooseflesh on my arms, not quite knowing what to do or say. Despite the artificial familiarity between us these past few desperate days, the truth was that I knew very little of Evan Hall, the man. Most of my knowledge was still confined to the myths invented by fans or produced by a crack publicity team. In reality, Evan kept everyone an arm’s length away, including me.

“Would it be better if I left you alone?” It seemed the right
thing to say. I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling right now, finding these remnants of the family he’d lost, uncovering memories long put away.

He shook his head but didn’t speak.

I waited as he skimmed the ornate metal scrollwork of roses and vines, swiping off the dust.

His voice was thin, shell-shocked. “My dad found this thing tangled in some debris along Sarra Creek. He brought it home and fixed it up for Mom before they had my sister. Mom told that story to us all the time. She called this her Moses basket.”

Again, I was at a loss for words. It was wrong for something so precious to have been left here to decay, but I understood it. I could imagine the pain that must have caused the locking away of these heirlooms.

He laughed softly, the sound a memory mist. “She loved this thing. They had a fight over it when Dad got the engineering contract with NASA and we moved to Florida. The little house there was sleek and modern, and Jake was way too big for the cradle, but she insisted on taking it anyway. She said it was a piece of home.”

I thought of the sewing basket I had kept tucked in my dresser drawer all these years, the memory of Wilda Culp and her big, book-filled house hidden inside. “Sometimes those are the things that matter most.”

“She’d be disappointed in where we are now.”

I wondered if he was thinking aloud or talking to me.

“Evan, life turns blind corners sometimes. We do the best we can.” How would my mother feel about where I’d ended up? Did she have dreams for me? Did she nurture hopes as she stood over our beds at night?

“Mom always told me I’d be a writer.”

“Well, she was right, wasn’t she?” What did my mother think I would be? Could she ever have guessed I’d end up in New York, bringing books into the world?

“I don’t think Time Shifters was what she had in mind.”

I closed the distance between us, laid a hand on his shoulder. “You know, you may be surprised at what your mother would think about Time Shifters. I understand it differently since coming here
 
—why all these people want to see Looking Glass Gap, why they want to experience a bit of what you created. They’re here because what you wrote touched something human in them. It makes them believe in things we’ve almost lost hope in these days.”

He straightened, turned to look at me, surprised. No doubt he thought I’d be the last one defending the enduring value of Time Shifters, yet it was true.

“There’s a magic in the way Nathaniel loves Anna
 
—not in a way that’s trying to gain anything from her, but in a way that’s selfless and sacrificial. He gives up
everything
for her
 
—his world, his military career, his chances of ever returning home. He’s willing to forfeit it all to run with her through time, to try to find a place where they can be together. That’s the thing we all want to believe in, the kind of love we still need to see as possible between people. I see it in what you wrote about Rand and Sarra, too.”

Had he ever thought of it that way? Did he realize that he wasn’t just creating stories, but the thing that underlies the very best stories? Hope. “If your mother were here, if she could see fathers taking their teenage daughters on trips for the first time ever, grandmothers and mothers and twelve-year-old girls reading together and talking about what the story means, whole families coming here to spend time and dress up in crazy costumes, grown-ups playing
let’s pretend
just like they’re kids again . . . I
think if your mother could see that, she’d be proud. I think she’d tell you to embrace it, not let a few crazy people spoil it. If you’re done with Nathaniel and Anna, if you’re finished with their story, then be finished, but
find
another story, Evan. You have a gift. A gift for showing what we’re really capable of, a gift for touching people in the ways that matter, for making them believe in the best version of themselves.”

He sent a wry look my way. “You make it sound so much more noble than a college kid trying to make a quick buck.”

“I think it
was
more noble than that.”

“Maybe.”

“Evan, if your mother were here, she’d just want you to be happy.” Somehow, in spite of everything, I’d always told myself my mother wanted that for me, but happiness isn’t always within a mother’s control. In the end, Evan’s mother hadn’t lived long enough and my mother had lacked the strength to take six kids and leave. I needed to believe that she’d wanted to. That she hadn’t just walked away and forgotten us.

“I based Nathaniel and Anna on them, you know. My parents. They were so completely in love. It was as if they’d always been connected on some level, the way Nathaniel and Anna are in the story. I know that’s a simplistic view of it. A child’s memory. I’m sure they had their problems just like anyone else.”

His description fell over me like warm water, comforting and tempting. “I think it’s nice the way you remember it.” How would it be to have a memory like that? Even one? To know for certain that love didn’t have to be a cycle of breaking and destroying and surviving and controlling?

“Yeah, it is.” A mixture of emotions played on his face
 
—awe, disbelief, sadness, grief. “No one ever told me they’d saved my parents’ things. Maybe Paps even kept it a secret from Granny Vi.”
He moved to the table by the window, tested the dusty plywood with his fingers, and smiled slightly. “When Mom was pregnant with Jake, round like a watermelon, she had all her spring plants growing here. I guess my sister was gone that afternoon, because it was just Mom and me, carrying pots up the hill to the garden. My dad kept trying to get her to stop working. He said it was too hot, but she was determined to put those seedlings in the soil.”

“It sounds like a good day.”

“Yeah, it was.”

Sunlight pressed through the window, scattered over the desk, and dappled the warped cedar chest on the floor. His head tilted as he followed the trail. “She loved that old chest. Her family had been through a tornado when she was a teenager, and that was one of the few things that survived.”

“Hannah said that’s where she found the other pages.” I’d forgotten, for a moment, why we were here.

“I don’t understand what my mother would’ve been doing with someone’s manuscript. She told me the story about Randolph and Sarra, but I never knew her to write or proofread or anything like that. Dad did, but just professional stuff for engineering journals and so forth.” Already he was leaning over the chest, lifting the lid. The time-rusted hinges squealed in protest. Rather than the scents of must and old fabric, the smell of cedar salted the air.

I peered in, my gaze settling first on a quilt and a baby’s christening gown. Had it once been Evan’s or his mother’s? A ragged teddy bear lay beside it, a single button eye staring vacantly upward.

“That was Jake’s.” Evan turned the bear over, then set it aside on the table, shaking his head. “Mom tried every way in the world to get him to give it up so he could start preschool.”

“Sounds like my little brother, Joey.” It was the first time I’d thought of him without sadness.

Evan thumbed through the trunk, checked under blankets, baby clothes, what looked like an old dresser scarf. “There’s nothing here.” Pushing aside the fabric, he drew something from beneath. A scrap of paper. The edge of a page, moth-eaten and yellowed. The impressions left behind by typewriter keys were visible even before he turned the scrap over to reveal words.

“That’s from the manuscript. It looks just like the last chapter that showed up at the cabin. The part Hannah found here.” I tilted my head to read the text.
Her
on one line and
the mountain
on the next. “What was in this space when Hannah opened the chest, I wonder.” I outlined a hollow area in the contents, then turned to scan the room. “Maybe she moved whatever came from there and forgot she did it or didn’t think to tell us. She was so groggy at the hospital and . . .”

I saw it then. A wooden silverware box, seemingly out of place among shelves of dirt-encrusted mason jars. Fresh screwdriver marks marred the wood around the old skeleton locks. “Evan, look. Over there.”

Angling a glance, he drew back in surprise. “That was my mother’s. She kept it in the cedar chest.” Four quick strides and he’d crossed the room to retrieve the box. A sense of anticipation hung in the air as he brought it back to the window table. “She always said the family silver was in here, but I never saw her get it out or use it.” Pinching the tiny knob on the bottom drawer, he attempted to wiggle it open. The warped slides surrendered only a fraction at a time.

There was something inside: papers
 
—old, damaged, mildewed around the edges . . .

The drawer gave way, nearly catapulting to the floor before Evan caught it. Inside, the pages fluttered, whispered softly, then settled, the stack lying facedown. “I think this is what we’ve been
looking for.” Evan’s thumb traced a missing corner on the top sheet, the empty space a match for the scrap he’d unearthed in the hope chest. “Look familiar?”

“Yes, it does.”

Setting the discovery in my hands, he tugged at the second drawer, but the tiny knob came loose, obviously having been torn off before and tucked back in place. He tried the lid next, but the box seemed determined to keep its secrets. “Pretty sure these two are actually locked. Looks like Hannah tried to pry them open but didn’t have any luck. Maybe she was afraid she’d get in trouble if she destroyed the thing.”

I thumbed through the pages in the drawer. “I’m guessing there are about thirty pages or so here. With the fifteen that showed up at the cabin three days ago, that would only be around forty-five, total. The numbers are random. They’re out of order.” I wanted to sneak off to some quiet place, rearrange them, discover the lives that lay in ink and paper.