The Widows of Braxton County (25 page)
Fall 2012, the Krause family farm
A
s soon as Will’s car pulled in the driveway, Agnes Forsyth came running out of the house and headed toward her car.
Kate caught the fearful glance Agnes had cast toward Will’s vehicle.
Wonderful
. Agnes would have the gossip mill churning before nightfall, and she’d be judged just as Hannah had been.
“I’d better not go in,” Will said over his shoulder as Kate exited the car. “I don’t want to upset Trudy.”
“No. According to Joe’s will, the house is mine, at least for now. And I’m tired of worrying about who’s allowed in and who isn’t. We’re friends and Trudy needs to learn how to deal with it,” Kate insisted.
Reluctantly, Will followed Kate and Rose into the house. Inside, Trudy took one look at him and, waving a finger in his direction, whirled on Kate.
“
What’s
he doing here?” she bellowed.
“As of today, the feud is over,” Kate said wearily. “Will is a friend and as long as I live here, he’s welcome.”
Trudy’s lips thinned into a straight line. “Joseph Krause is rolling in his grave,” she declared, then flew over to the music box and grasped it in her hands. “If you’ve come for this, you can’t have it. Joe’s grandfather gave it to me. It stays here.”
“I don’t want your music box,” Will said calmly. “I don’t want anything that belongs to you.”
“Liar,” she cried out. “Hannah gave Joseph the farm and your family has never gotten over it.”
Will shook his head. “Not true. I think we’ve been better off without it. I can’t see where all this land has brought your family much happiness.”
Rose placed a hand on Will’s arm. “Maybe you were right, Will. We’re upsetting Trudy. We’d better go.” She walked over to Kate and gave her a hug. “You get some rest. And if you need anything, call.”
“I will,” she replied with a hesitant nod.
Saddened, Kate watched Will’s car slowly pull out of the drive, leaving her alone with Trudy. She heard her come up behind her.
“The sheriff was here,” she said brusquely.
“I know,” Kate replied, continuing to watch out the window.
“They searched the house.”
“Know that, too, Trudy.”
“They think you killed Joe,” she said with a malicious note in her voice.
Kate whirled and faced her. “Well, I didn’t,” she said, moving past her. As she headed for the stairs, she heard Trudy muttering.
“Just like Hannah.”
Unwilling to tolerate Trudy’s glaring presence or listen to any of her nonsense about curses or Will and Rose, or how Kate might be a murder suspect, she hid out in the back bedroom. She tried to rest as Rose had recommended, but Hannah’s story kept buzzing through her mind.
What happened in this house?
she thought as she stared up at the ceiling. Will was right—owning this land hadn’t brought Joe’s family much happiness. Their history was littered with tragedy—almost as if a judgment had been rendered against them.
Sounds from downstairs caught her attention. Trudy was playing that stupid music box again. Her son was dead, but it seemed that all she cared about was that music box.
Kate swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to ignore the music. The way the tune skipped a note was driving her insane. If it weren’t so valuable, she’d steal it away from Trudy and smash the damn thing.
At least have it fixed so it plays properly.
She stood and paced to the window. Pulling back the curtain, she stared out over the farm. Whether or not she’d be arrested again was out of her hands. She’d told the truth and it was going to be up to Mr. Brown to build her defense.
Turning away, she looked at the boxes stacked in the corner and the empty storage containers sitting next to them. She couldn’t do anything about the present, but she could try and make sense of the past.
She picked up a nail file lying on the dresser, then knelt beside the box containing the photo albums. Carefully, she went through each album, running the file under each picture. She hoped to discover another article or maybe a note—something that would shed light on Hannah’s mystery.
Finally, she’d finished the last of the albums and found nothing. Only the shoe box containing the portrait of Jacob and Hannah remained. Reluctantly, she picked it up, took off the lid, and began to remove the pictures.
Once that box was empty and all the portraits were stacked on the floor, she noticed something. The one of Jacob and Hannah had disappeared. She peeked into the larger box. It was empty, too.
When she’d entered the room earlier, she’d noticed that the room had been searched and had assumed her bedroom was listed on the warrant, but that picture wouldn’t be considered evidence in a murder trial. She sat back and looked around the room but didn’t see it lying about.
She hated that picture. Handling it spooked her, so she should be relieved it was missing.
What next?
Her attention wandered the room. The attic. She’d never been up there.
Once she’d climbed the narrow stairs and stood in the dust-covered room, she wondered about the wisdom of her idea. The area was packed with
stuff
. Boxes were stacked haphazardly in the corners; old trunks sat in the middle of the room. She spied a moth-eaten dressmaker’s dummy leaning precariously against a chair, its stuffing sticking out in puffs.
With a sigh, she crossed to the first trunk and began her quest.
Two hours later, all she had to show for her trouble was a lot of sweat and a lot of dirt.
The Krause family had thrown nothing away in the 140 years that they had lived in this house. The trunks and boxes were full of nothing but junk—broken dishes and toys; books with the covers gnawed by mice; pieces of material that fell apart when touched.
Kate stood and shoved her hands on her hips while she thought about where she could search next. She snapped her fingers. The old cabin.
After washing the dirt from her face, Kate went to the kitchen. Trudy stood at the sink peeling potatoes.
Kate walked over to the key rack and began to thumb through the various key rings hanging there.
“Which one is the key to the padlock on the old cabin?” Kate asked.
“It’s empty,” Trudy replied, tossing a potato into a pan. “Nobody ever goes in there.”
“Which key?” Kate repeated.
“The one with the red tag,” she answered in a disgruntled voice.
Kate grabbed it and headed out of the house. When she reached the cabin, she inserted the key and unlocked the padlock. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The pale light shining through dirty windows revealed an empty room. Cobwebs hung in swaths from the beamed ceiling while dust obscured the wide plank floor. A fireplace was at one end and a long work counter at the other. Stairs to the left of the fireplace led to a loft. The air was cold yet at the same time musty, and if Kate wasn’t mistaken, it also smelled of dead rodents.
Wrinkling her nose, Kate eyed the stairs. While she was there, she might as well check out the loft. Mindful of any skittering creatures that lurked in the corners, Kate crept toward the stairs and gingerly tried the first step. It stayed solid under her weight. Step by step, she climbed until she was in the loft.
Because it was chillier here than the floor below, Kate shivered as she swatted at cobwebs in front of her. Squinting, she spied a tarp covering something in the corner. Again she tested the strength of the old boards, and once she was convinced that she wouldn’t tumble through the floor, she crossed to the tarp. She grabbed it and tossed it to the side.
Another trunk—much older than the ones in the attic. A name had been scrawled on the side, but the spidery handwriting was too faint for Kate to read.
She knelt and opened the lid. A blackened set of cutlery lay on top. Next she found a stack of books. She opened a cover and, holding it up to the light, saw the copyright listed as 1850. With a shake of her head she carefully laid the book on the dusty floor. One by one, she gently removed the objects from the old trunk and placed them next to the book. She discovered a graceful figure of a shepherdess, a fragile blue vase, a box of buttons. These things really should be in a museum.
When she’d reached the bottom of the trunk, only one more item remained. Another book—only it was in sad condition. Kate ran her fingers over the cover. Deep gouges obliterated the title and its author. Flipping it open, she saw that both the title page and copyright page had been ripped out. She slowly turned the pages, scanning them as she went. The book was a series of essays, but without the two missing pages, she couldn’t tell when it had been written. She abruptly stopped when one chapter title caught her eye.
“The Sins of the Father.”
Kate quickly read the first paragraph. The author was making a point about how, in families, violence can perpetuate violence. Immediately her thoughts flew to Joe and the revelations he had made about his childhood. She anxiously turned the page.
Nothing.
The rest of the chapter had been ripped from the book. She could still see the ragged edges sticking out from the binding.
Wanting to make a closer examination of the book, she quickly replaced the rest of the objects back in the trunk and stood. She had taken one step when she heard a noise from the main room of the cabin. Not the scraping of mice running across the floor, but the clump of heavy boots.
Alarmed, she clasped the book to her chest and held her breath. When she heard the sound of the door slamming shut, a lungful of air came out in a whoosh. She tore out of the loft and down the stairs, still clinging to the book. She pushed at the door.
It didn’t budge. She was trapped in the old cabin.
K
ate ran over to the window and tried to force it open. It was stuck tight. Outside the cabin, the shadows of the trees were creeping across the ground. Soon it’d be nightfall, and the last thing she wanted was to spend the night locked in this old cabin. She placed the book on the floor and pushed at the window frame with both hands. It still wouldn’t move.
If I could just pry it open.
She remembered the box of cutlery.
She went to the loft, then returned with a couple of the old knives. Taking one, she carefully jammed its blade between the sill and the frame and ran it along the width of the window, cutting through the layers of paint. She repeated the procedure on each side and along the top. Placing both hands at the top of the frame, she pushed again.
The window moved a centimeter. She repeated the procedure again. The window frame raised a little more. She scraped again and again as the shadows grew longer and the room colder. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and a thin sheen of sweat gathered on her top lip. She felt a rising sense of panic and urgency.
She gave the window another try, and if it didn’t work this time, she’d break the glass. She had to get out of the cabin. Finally, the window slid far enough for her to wedge her body through and to toss a leg over the sill. Then she lost her balance and tumbled to the ground, landing flat on her back. Winded, she stared up at the sky and let relief flow through her. She was free.
The book.
After scrambling to her feet, she went to the door. The latch had fallen back into place, but the padlock still lay on the ground where she’d left it. She pulled hard, expecting it to be stuck, then stumbled backward as the door opened easily. Perplexed, she propped it open with a nearby rock and went to retrieve the book.
Kate returned to the house and heard Trudy’s TV playing loudly as she went up to her room, where she set the book down. She showered quickly, then dressed in a pair of sweats and sat cross-legged on the bed, skimming the book’s pages one by one.
It was a series of essays, specifically about family life and the role of women. Based on the way the subject matter was discussed, Kate deduced that the book had to have been written before women had the right to vote.
As she read, she thought of the things she had always taken for granted. She could vote, run for a political office, receive an education, hold a job outside of the home. She had choices that the women of the early 1900s were never given. This was the world Hannah had lived in?
She closed the book and stared at it thoughtfully. If this book was published in the early 1900s, as she suspected, the author must have caused quite a stir. Running her hands over the front of the book, Kate began thinking—whichever Krause had acquired this hadn’t been a fan, as witnessed by the gouged cover and the torn-out pages. Without a publication date or a title, she had no way of discovering who had been the author, and she knew nothing of twentieth-century women’s literature.
But Rose did.
After shoving her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, she grabbed the book and headed out of the house.
Rose answered her door with a look of surprise. “You’re supposed to be home resting,” she said as she motioned Kate into the house.
“I know, and if it’s too late to talk, I can come back tomorrow,” Kate answered in a rush.
“It’s fine.” She eyed the book in Kate’s hand. “What have you been up to?” she asked with a note of suspicion in her voice.
“I went through the attic and the old cabin,” Kate said, following Rose into the kitchen.
Rose shot a look over her shoulder. “You’re not still focused on Hannah, are you?”
Kate pulled out a chair and plopped down at the table, placing the book in front of her. “Can’t you see the similarities?” she asked. “Both men were stabbed and their wives were arrested.”
“Not yet,” Rose pointed out. “No charges have been brought against you.”
“No, but that’s where it’s headed as soon as the tests come back.” She tapped the book nervously. “And there’s nothing I can do about it. Either they’re going to arrest me or not. But I can try and figure out what happened one hundred and twenty-two years ago.”
“Kate,” Rose began in an exasperated voice, “you can’t solve a murder that happened over a century ago.”
“Maybe not solve, but I can find some answers.” She leaned forward. “You were close to your great-grandfather. Who did he think killed Jacob?”
Rose rolled her eyes, but answered. “He didn’t speak of it often, but as I recall I overheard him tell Essie that he suspected one of Jacob’s neighbors, but his suspicions weren’t proof. The man’s sister gave him an alibi.”
“Anyone else?”
“There were the same kind of rumors floating around then as now: an indigent—someone passing through the area.”
“Other than the fact Hannah was his wife, why did suspicion fall on her?”
Rose pursed her lips. “Jacob was abusive and everyone had turned a blind eye.” Her face grew grim. “Women didn’t have a lot of choices back then. Divorce caused a scandal, and there were the children to consider. They belonged to the husband, and it was within his rights to deprive his ex-wife of any contact with them.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s only been in the recent past that we’ve created women’s shelters. Back then, they had nowhere to go if their families weren’t in a position to help them.”
“So Hannah allegedly killed out of either revenge or self-defense?”
“Yes,” she answered with hesitation.
“Your great-grandfather didn’t buy into that?”
“No, and neither did Essie.” An angry light flared in Rose’s eyes. “You’re picking scabs off some very old wounds—of both my family’s and Will’s.”
“Why is looking for the truth reopening old hurts?”
“Not solving Jacob’s murder was the biggest regret of my great-grandfather’s life, and we’ve always let it be.” She gave a tired sigh. “Then there’s Will’s family. His great-grandfather, Willie, lost not only his birthright, but his mother.”
“Will said Hannah’s arrest changed his great-grandfather’s life, but I assumed it was because she was arrested.” Confusion was written on Kate’s face. “Will said she wasn’t convicted.”
Rose leaned back in her chair and studied Kate. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You want the truth?” she asked, leaning forward abruptly. “Her attorney and the county attorney made a deal without Hannah’s knowledge. It was determined that she was not guilty due to ‘uncontrollable impulse.’ ”
Kate’s eyebrows shot up. “An insanity plea?”
“Yes, and they confined her to an insane asylum. Willie was taken away and raised by her sister and brother-in-law.”
Kate’s mouth had dropped open and she snapped it shut before speaking. “Those were terrible places,” she declared.
Some of the anger seemed to leave Rose. “Yes, they were. Inmates often lived in substandard conditions. Some were beaten. They were isolated and not allowed any contact with family or friends.” Her lips tightened. “If a body wasn’t crazy going in, they would be shortly after living under those circumstances.”
Kate remembered how she’d felt last night locked up in the jail cell. Sympathy for Hannah flooded her. The woman had lost everything, her home, her child, and never received a reprieve.
“How did Willie ever survive the trauma?”
“He had a good home with his aunt and uncle and went on to become a doctor.” Rose traced a line across the table. “But I don’t think he ever got over the way his mother had been treated. He seldom spoke of her.”
“Is that why Will won’t talk about her?”
“Yes. We’ve come a long way since then, when it comes to the treatment of mental illness. But even now, it carries a stigma.” She tugged on her lip. “Even today, there are those who view it as a genetic defect and one that can be passed on to children.”
“ ‘The sins of the father, ’ ” Kate murmured.
Rose looked at her sharply. “What did you say?”
“It’s in this book.” She handed it to Rose. “There’s an essay in here entitled that, but it’s talking about violence not insanity. At least I think it is. Most of the chapter’s been ripped out.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the book. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it in a trunk out in the old cabin.” A realization dawned in Kate’s mind. “You recognize this book, don’t you? Do you know who the author is?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rose said quickly and handed the book back to Kate. “I’m not familiar with this at all.”
“But, Rose, your grandmother was an early-twentieth-century writer, so was this person. Take a look at it and maybe you will recognize it.” She pushed the book toward her.
Rose’s attention darted away. “No, I won’t. I’m too old to remember such things.”
Bullshit
. There wasn’t a thing wrong with Rose’s mind or her memory.
“Rose,” she said painfully, “I don’t believe you.”
Rose abruptly stood. “I’m sorry to hear you say that.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s getting late and you don’t want to leave Trudy for too long.”
Dismissed, Kate picked up her book and left, but on the way home her mind spun with questions.
Hannah had been unjustly locked away, and according to Trudy, this cursed their branch of the family. If Trudy was correct, then logically Hannah must’ve held her stepson Joseph responsible for what happened to her. Why?
And Willie’s birthright—how did it manage to fall to his brother? She understood why Hannah hadn’t inherited a portion of the farm, but it didn’t explain Willie not receiving his share.
Will had minimized the bad blood between his side of the family and Joe’s, but both he and Rose clammed up whenever she brought up Hannah. She’d heard the pride in his voice when he’d spoken of his great-grandfather Willie. Did he harbor more resentment over Willie’s fate than he let on?
A terrible thought occurred to her.
Was it deep enough to seek revenge?
