Chapter Nineteen Ashley
NINETEEN ASHLEY
They hauled their bags out of the pickup, ready to settle in at the Deer Run Motel.
The rooms were as dark and dated as the office—musty-smelling, done in browns and golds, each with another splotchy, out-of-proportion Lorelei painting on the wall.
The lampshades were decoupaged with pictures of deer cut from magazines.
The furniture was heavy dark-brown wood, the mattresses lumpy.
“Not quite four-star accommodations, but I’ve definitely stayed in worse places,” Malcolm said.
He’d just come into Ashley’s room after getting the last load from the car and going to grab drinks from the Coke machine.
He plopped himself down on her bed and a small cloud of dust erupted from the duvet.
“Liz wasn’t exactly dripping with hospitality, was she?”
“She wasn’t that bad.” Mal was trying to smooth out a bump in the mattress now. “Just a little taken aback by your Law & Order shtick with the photo of Mom.” He put on a serious TV detective voice: “Have you seen this woman? Look closely now. What was that about, anyway?”
“Look, we’re here. What’s the harm in seeing what we can find out about what she did while she was here?” Ashley changed the subject. “Where are the sodas?”
“Machine’s out of order.”
“I don’t get how this place stays in business,” Ashley said. “I can’t imagine they get many people passing through. I mean, it sure looks like we’re the only customers.”
“Well, according to the brochure,” he said, holding up the glossy folded paper he’d picked up at the office and reading from it, “ ‘Boone’s Ferry is a hunter’s paradise, surrounded by thousands of acres of forest, teeming with wildlife: bear, moose, quail, turkey, and whitetail deer.
’ ” He flipped it over to the back, and read on, “ ‘Deer Run Motel. Meet as strangers—’ ”
“ ‘Leave as friends,’ ” Ashley finished. “Yeah, I got it. You know, forget the soda machine. I could use a beer.”
He grinned. “You’re speaking my language, Sis.”
“Let’s hit Lorelei’s first. See what records she might have on our great-grandparents, the house, other family we might have in town.
Mom would have been looking for family records, and if Lorelei’s the town clerk, I bet they met.
” Ash tried to keep her voice casual, but she was thrilled by the idea of talking to someone who might have a clue as to what her mother had discovered.
I know everything.
Mal gave her a look of concern. “You sure you don’t want to grab a beer first?”
“Nah, let’s see if we can catch Lorelei, then head over to Loon’s Call to fortify ourselves before we go take a look at this house we’ve inherited.”
“Sure,” Malcolm relented. “Doesn’t seem like Lorelei’s place is all that far. You still up for a walk?” After spending hours in the truck, Ashley was eager to stretch her legs.
They headed down Pickering Road, turned left on Main Street, and crossed the bridge, stopping to watch the old wooden waterwheel at the mill.
The factory itself was a long, two-story building painted white.
There was a tall bell tower at the front, just over the main entrance.
They could hear the buzz, hum, and whine of machinery inside the building.
“You think the wheel is actually doing anything?” Ashley asked. “Or is it just for show?”
Malcolm studied it. He’d always been better at mechanical things than she was.
When they were kids, he used to draw intricate pictures on graph paper of the castle he would live in one day, showing details of the battlements, the moat, the drawbridge, the winch that would pull up the big wooden door.
“See that shaft turning?” Mal pointed. “It’s going into the building.
I bet they’re still powering some machines with it.
Kinda cool, really. I doubt there are that many of these things in use anymore. ”
As Ash stared at the building and the old waterwheel, it occurred to her that Thomas Endicott had probably seen this same scene as he walked down Main Street a hundred years ago.
But unlike when her great-grandfather walked these streets, the factory parking lot was packed with beat-up pickup trucks and hatchbacks, most of which had gun racks on the back. “Looks like just about everyone in town works here,” Mal joked.
“I guess you’d have to,” Ash said. “Not like you can easily scoot over to the next town for a job.”
They were quiet for a few seconds, both of them watching the glistening river flow over the great wooden wheel, the wheel turning steadily, hypnotically, as it had for generations.
Ash felt the isolation closing in, like a strange pressure in her chest. Not only were they physically isolated from the rest of the world, it was as if they’d stepped into a time not their own.
They continued across the bridge and went left on Hook Meadow Street, a narrow street lined with maple trees and small, neat houses set back from the road.
The second house on the left was separated from the others by a hedge of lilac bushes, a few bunches of dead flowers still clinging to them.
The house was dark blue with a white door, marred by a painting that looked like something a child had done: the head of a horse, hastily rendered, brownish-red paint dripping down.
“Do you see that?”
“Yeah. I bet that’s the culprit inside, being punished.” Malcolm looked up and nodded toward the second floor.
A little girl was watching them from between two curtains in an upstairs window. She had dark, unkempt hair and big eyes. Ashley raised her hand and waved with a faint smile. The girl quickly ducked away from the window and out of sight.
Up ahead on the right was the pink house with white trim.
LORELEI PRENTICE WAS not out painting, but answered the door quickly.
She was in her sixties with silver hair cut short, wearing a simple denim dress.
Her thick, smudged glasses made her eyes look huge.
Once they introduced themselves and explained why they’d come, she smiled politely and invited them in.
She ushered them into a small office just off the living room, with a wide oak desk, and gray metal file cabinets lining one of the walls.
The rest of the walls displayed a number of Lorelei’s watercolors, mostly landscapes and paintings of buildings in town—the church, the clothespin factory, and her own bright-pink house.
The desk held a bulky computer monitor, an ancient-looking Rolodex, and a manual typewriter.
Beside the typewriter, a little wooden doll, no more than three inches tall, was propped up.
It looked like something a child would make, with gray yarn hair and a tiny painted face staring outward, toward the chairs that Ashley and Malcolm settled into.
Lorelei offered them coffee, which turned out to be more like a weak tea, accompanied by hazelnut-flavored powdered creamer. She served it in old china cups carried in on a tarnished silver tray.
“Descendents of Dr. Thomas Endicott,” she repeated with reverence as she studied them from behind her desk, perhaps looking for some sign of their great-grandfather. Her eyes lingered on Malcolm.
“So you’ve heard of him?” Ashley set her cup down and leaned forward now, waiting for Lorelei to tell them how their mother had come searching for information about the Endicotts.
“Oh, yes, yes!” Lorelei smiled broadly. “He was a great man, greatly respected here in Boone’s Ferry.
You know, he stayed when the flu came back in the spring of 1919?
A lot of folks, they left town. But Thomas Endicott, he was the town doctor and he took his oath seriously.
He stayed and tended to the sick until he succumbed to the illness himself. ”
“Our grandmother always told us the flu killed almost everyone in town that spring,” Mal said.
“Yes, about half the residents died that spring,” Lorelei said, looking down into her murky coffee. “Terrible thing. Flu hit this area hard.”
Ash nodded, thinking these were the exact same words Liz St. James had used.
“Ms. Prentice,” Ash said, digging around in her purse for the photo. “I believe you may have met my mother not long ago.”
“Your mother?” Lorelei gave her an owllike blink behind her smudged glasses.
Ashley could feel Malcolm’s annoyance, but she pressed on.
“Louise Flanders,” Ashley said, handing over the picture. “She was here just about two years ago, looking into our family history. You must have spoken with her.”
Lorelei held the photo and blinked three more times in rapid succession. “I’m afraid not,” she said, handing the photo back.
“But if you were town clerk, I’m sure she—” Ash continued.
“It was before my time in the position, dear.”
Ashley’s heart sank.
“I’ve been town clerk for not quite a year,” Lorelei went on.
“Took over when Ellie Bellinsky had her heart attack and passed away, God rest her soul. She was running the office out of a little storeroom at the back of the library. I moved it all over here and we had a big fundraiser to help the library turn that dingy old room into a children’s section!
You should stop by. It’s a lovely spot. There’s a train table and a puppet theater! ”
“Sounds great,” Mal chimed in. “The children must love it!”
Lorelei nodded proudly. Ashley willed herself not to shoot a death glare at Malcolm.
Malcolm took a polite sip of coffee.
“Do you need more sugar, dear? More creamer?” Lorelei asked.
“Oh no, it’s delicious just as it is,” Malcolm said with a convincing smile. Ash picked up her cup as well and took a dreadful sip.
“So, Ms. Prentice—” Mal continued.
“Lorelei,” she corrected.
“Lorelei,” he continued with another smile. “I’m curious—was there ever a real town hall?”
“Oh, sure there was. A great big yellow building right on Main Street, across from the Congregational church. It was the oldest building in town, other than the clothespin factory, in fact. But it burned to the ground… oh, would’ve been about two years ago.
That’s when Ellie moved operations over to the library. ”
“Were many of the records destroyed in the fire?” Ashley asked.
“Oh yes, I’m afraid so. We lost everything: old charters and maps, vital records, property tax records, all the archived historical materials. It was like the history and memory of the whole town went up in smoke.”
“That’s… that’s terrible.” Ashley felt a burning sensation rising in her throat.
“Any idea what caused the fire?” Malcolm asked.
“I believe it was an electrical problem of some kind. Old building, old wires.”
“So there’s nothing from prior to two years ago?” Ashley tried not to sound suspicious. “No papers? No archives? There’s no historical society or anything like that?”
Lorelei shook her head again.
“It’s just… we were hoping to learn something about our family,” Ashley went on. “About what happened during the flu. Anything about our great-grandparents. What other family might have been around back then.”
The things her mother must have come here to learn.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid everything was in the town hall.
Any records we had on the town, the residents, the history—it’s all gone.
” Was it Ashley’s imagination, or did Lorelei seem strangely indifferent about this?
“I hate to say it, but if that’s what you came to Boone’s Ferry hoping to find, you’re better off getting in your car and heading home before the daylight’s gone.
Don’t want to be navigating the mountain pass in the dark. ”
“Well, Ms. Prentice—Lorelei—that’s actually not the only reason—” Malcolm began.
“When exactly was this fire?” Ashley interrupted, feeling a little warning ripple run through her like a low-voltage current.
“October,” Lorelei said. “The fifteenth of October, 2014.”
Ashley set down her tepid mug of coffee.
“Are you all right, dear?” asked Lorelei. “You’ve gone quite pale.”
“Fine.” Ashley glanced over at Malcolm, who was sipping his awful coffee, unfazed. He’d never been good at remembering dates, birthdays, anniversaries.
The letter her mother had written to Gram from Boone’s Ferry was dated October 14. The town hall had burned to the ground the very next day.