Chapter Fifteen
Old Friends
Every feeling Oliver had managed to hold in check in the Dysterwood came pouring out of him the moment he was in Felipe’s arms. If it hadn’t been raining so heavily, he might have sat on the grass in the cemetery a little longer and gotten all the ugly tears out, but Felipe was right about going back to the inn. They were both cold and exhausted, and overwhelm was rapidly approaching whether he liked it or not after losing hours of his life. Oliver held Felipe’s hand tightly as they walked back down Cemetery Hill toward the inn. Every few steps his partner glanced at him as if checking that he was still there. Watching Felipe unravel with relief upon seeing him emerge from the woods unscathed scared Oliver far more than anything he had encountered in the Dysterwood. He had assumed that as long as he kept his hands to himself and didn’t do anything obviously foolish, he would be fine, but Felipe didn’t underestimate dangers. He had seen too much in his twenty years with the society to not predict the likeliest outcome, and to him, that outcome had been death. Any thoughts of asking Felipe about it were dashed when they entered the inn.
“Felipe, is that you?” Gwen called from the parlor. Her voice was edged with fear and rough like when her asthma kicked up. She dashed to the front room, and Oliver watched as her expression went from devastation to realization to joyous relief. “Ol!”
Before Oliver could move, Gwen collided with his chest and hugged him fiercely. Oliver nearly stumbled into Felipe, but he patted her back and held his best friend close. It wasn’t like Gwen to be quite so unrestrained. The sickening suspicion that he should have been far more scared in the Dysterwood grew into a leaden weight in his gut.
“You’re going to get your dress wet if you keep hugging me,” Oliver said, trying to keep his voice light.
“I don’t care. I thought we lost you.” Letting go only long enough to grab Oliver’s shoulders, Gwen locked eyes with him. “Don’t you ever scare me like that ever again, Oliver Barlow. Felipe and I were worried sick. I had a theory and hoped I was right, but we couldn’t—”
Gwen abruptly cut off when Felipe cleared his throat and darted his eyes toward the doorway behind her. Following his gaze, Oliver found the innkeeper staring at him with equal parts amazement and confusion written across his features. His blue eyes narrowed as if probing Oliver’s form before widening with something akin to fear. Oliver wasn’t certain if it was because he had escaped the Dysterwood or because he looked dreadful after being dragged through a bog.
“I need to clean up,” Oliver remarked stiffly with a wince. The longer he stood in the warm, dry inn, the more obvious it was that he was covered in a thin film of slime. If he thought too hard about it, the sensation turned his stomach.
“Mr. Allen, is there any way Oliver could take a bath and we could dry our clothes?” Felipe asked.
The innkeeper blinked and shook his head as if coming out of a fog. “Of course, follow me.”
As Mr. Allen motioned for them to go ahead of him into the kitchen, his eyes never left Oliver’s back. He couldn’t help but wonder what Mr. Allen wasn’t saying when he looked at him like that.
** *
Quickly toweling off beside the wooden tub, Oliver had never been so happy to put his clothes back on. He had feared taking a bath in a strange place without Felipe might be the thing to finally send him into panic and tears, but washing off in frigid water seemed to shock him back into normalcy for the time being. He was too cold to be overwhelmed. The kitchen was warm from the dinner Mr. Allen was cooking in the oven, but the water was straight from the pump. Oliver hadn’t been willing to wait for it to be boiled on the stove, so it was his fault that it felt like icicles were forming in his hair and his fingertips were numb. Then again, he would have chosen hypothermia over feeling slimy a thousand times over. Oliver buttoned up his pajamas with chattering teeth and tugged on his robe before pushing the half-full tub toward the back door. Tipping the water into the grass, Oliver had never been so grateful for the Paranormal Society’s indoor plumbing and water heaters. He would not miss this inconvenience.
Tidying up as best he could, Oliver slipped out of the kitchen and followed Felipe and Gwen’s voices to the parlor. Oliver stood in the hall just out of sight, merely observing the room as he gathered the fortitude to join the conversation. Mr. Allen sat at the very end of the sofa with Argos curled at his feet and a smoldering pipe in his hand, listening to Gwen speak two cushions down. While Oliver was in the bath, Felipe had changed into his pajamas and robe as well. Oliver felt a bit conspicuous in his bedclothes, but Felipe had been adamant that their informality would be forgiven after getting soaked so late in the day. His partner sat near the fire with a damp towel around his neck and his curls sticking up at odd angles, though beneath his eyes were dark circles Oliver hadn’t noticed in the cemetery. A small smile crossed Oliver’s lips as he listened to Felipe recount what he had seen when Oliver reappeared in the cemetery. The warmth and relief in his voice was evident, but as Felipe finished, Mr. Lewis’s grip on the pipe tightened and his brows drew together. The entire time they had been there, the innkeeper had seemed affable, but the shadow that fell over his features didn’t sit well with Oliver. With a final fortifying breath, Oliver poked his head into the doorway. Felipe’s face broke into a wide grin as he patted the chair beside him.
“Your friends told me someone pushed you into a swamp, Dr. Barlow. It isn’t every day someone falls into the Dysterwood and comes out the other side,” Mr. Allen said with a stilted laugh that could have been from nerves or disbelief, though Oliver couldn’t tell which. “I don’t know of anyone who has lived to tell what they saw in the woods beyond a select few.”
Oliver gave him a tight smile. “I guess I was very lucky.”
“Are you feeling better?” Felipe asked.
“Much, just cold.”
“I have a hot water bottle filled and waiting for you,” Mr. Allen replied, nodding toward the fireplace where a water bottle lay slumped against the hearth. “I meant to grab a blanket while I was up. No matter, I’ll get it now.”
As the innkeeper tried to stand, he winced and leaned heavily on his cane. Gwen looked like she was about to move when Oliver raised his hand for them both to stay seated.
“I can get it myself if you tell me where it is. I’m already up,” Oliver said quickly.
“Thank you, son. There’s a linen closet upstairs two doors down from the room you’re in. You can’t miss it. Feel free to borrow whichever blanket you’d like.”
Sighing, Oliver left the warmth of the parlor and trotted up the steps. As he rubbed his arms and scanned the hall of doors for the linen closet, he wondered what had become of his wet clothing. Felipe had interrupted his bath to scoop them up and leave his pajamas behind. He hoped someone in town could clean them as he didn’t want them polluting the other clothes in his bag. Not that it mattered, considering his other charcoal suit stunk of corpse. If he kept this up, he would need a whole new wardrobe.
Opening the linen closet, Oliver wished he had asked Mr. Allen specifically what he could use. Even when someone said anything , there were always unwritten rules. It felt invasive to go through the man’s things and take what he wanted, but it would have been worse to force him to go up the steps when he was perfectly capable of getting his own blanket.
What would Felipe do? He would grab the first one he saw , Oliver thought. He pulled a thick woolen blanket off the pile and was about to close the door when his gaze snagged on a wad of brown fabric that had fallen behind the stack of blankets. Oliver’s hands shook as he pulled out the familiar brown quilt. It couldn’t be the same blanket. There were probably hundreds of bolts of the same material made and shipped all over the country, he told himself. Carefully unfolding it, Oliver’s heart juddered at the sight of the appliqued horse. The blanket looked so much smaller than it had when he was a boy, and it had grown thin and dingy with use, but it was the same quilt made of scraps of brown, white, red, and blue fabric his nana had made. He would recognize her work anywhere. Flipping over the top corner, Oliver found her mark stitched into the underside.
Oliver stared at the blanket in disbelief. He hadn’t seen it in over thirty years, yet here it was in the linen closet of a stranger. It made no sense that Mr. Allen should have something so precious, that he should have any connection to his grandmother or to him. Oliver’s fingers tightened around the quilt. He didn’t like how the man had looked at him after he fell out of the Dysterwood, and the blanket was the final straw. Storming down the steps, Oliver found Felipe already rising from the sofa when he arrived in the parlor.
“Where did you get this?” Oliver demanded, thrusting the blanket in Mr. Allen’s direction.
Mr. Allen gave Oliver a gaping, wide-eyed look but said nothing.
“How did you get this blanket?”
Gwen looked between Oliver and Felipe in confusion as Argos let out a low growl. The innkeeper stammered a half answer, but Oliver missed it because Felipe grabbed his elbow and steered him into the hall with an apology.
Indignantly yanking his arm from Felipe’s grasp, Oliver cried, “Don’t apologize to him, and don’t let him out of your sight for that matter. There is no reason for him to have this blanket.” The words came out louder than Oliver intended, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t being unreasonable, though the wary, placating look on Felipe’s face gave him pause. Running his thumb over the stitchwork, Oliver deflated slightly. “I only want to know how it came into his possession.”
“May I see it?” Oliver reluctantly handed the quilt to his partner. Opening it up and turning it over, Felipe frowned. “What’s so special about it that you’re ready to interrogate our host?”
“My nana made it. Look, there’s her mark on the back.”
“Oliver, I say this with the utmost respect, but I think you’re overreacting. I’m sure many people have quilts your nana made. Didn’t she sell them?”
“Sometimes, but this wasn’t one of them. She made this special for someone. I remember.”
“Are you sure she didn’t use a pattern or make a second one for someone else? I know you’ve had a very tiring day, we all have, but you can’t just accuse people of— of I don’t even know what. There are plenty of ways he could have ended up with that blanket.”
“I’m not overwrought!” Oliver yelled, his voice shrill in a way that didn’t help his case.
Taking a calming breath, he hugged the familiar quilt beneath his chin. If he closed his eyes, he was four years old again hiding in his grandmother’s attic because she had company over, and he very much did not wish to speak to them. Even after his nana reminded him the blanket belonged to someone else, Oliver had secretly taken it out of its trunk and hunkered into it more times than he could count. A four year old didn’t truly understand or care that the handsome, warm blanket with a horse on it didn’t belong to him. Oliver didn’t remember that much from when he was so young, but he vividly remembered sorting a tin of buttons while wrapped in the horse blanket and the comfort it brought. When the trunk disappeared one day while he was outside playing with a neighbor, he was beside himself. His nana had quieted his tears and reminded him that he had several perfectly good blankets of his own, but they weren’t that quilt. After thirty-three years, he still remembered how it smelled back then, like wood and leather and ever so slightly like his grandmother. Now, it smelled like the sachet of herbs hanging inside the linen closet to ward off pests, yet it was undoubtedly the same.
“You don’t understand, I remember this quilt. I coveted this quilt. If we had stumbled upon it in a junk shop or some other person’s house, I would have thought it was a marvelous coincidence to run into an old friend, but,” Oliver dropped his voice and held Felipe’s gaze, “Mr. Allen is not saying something. Ever since I got back, he’s been looking at me . Mark my words, the man knows something he isn’t telling.”
Felipe ran a tired hand over his face. “Oliver, if you’re worried that he pushed you into the woods, he couldn’t have. He was at the sheriff's office with me the entire time.”
“Then, perhaps he knows who did because he seems very alarmed that I’m still here. I know you think I’m overreacting. If I was overwrought and upset, I would admit it, but I’m not. Ask him. Ask him what he’s not telling us.”
Holding up his hands in surrender, Felipe replied, “All right. We can ask him, but you need to calm down first. Mr. Allen is the only person in this town willing to cooperate with us. We can’t afford to lose that right now. Let’s go into this assuming there is a logical explanation for him having this blanket and looking at you strangely, okay?”
Oliver was fairly certain the explanation was that whoever was raising the dead needed more fodder and killing off a few more investigators would do quite nicely, but he nodded anyway. Frowning at him, Felipe stepped closer and rubbed Oliver’s upper arms as he would back at the society. The tension in his neck and shoulders fell away under his partner’s touch, but the knot of unease in his chest remained. With a quick kiss and a squeeze of his shoulder, Felipe motioned for him to follow him into the parlor. Gwen gave Oliver a raised brow, but he merely shook his head.
“Is everything all right?” Mr. Allen asked, his hoarse voice thin and his mouth tense as his attention flickered from one man to the other.
“Mr. Allen, can you tell us where you got this blanket?” Felipe asked, gently taking it from Oliver’s hand and holding it out to the other man.
“A dear friend made it for me years ago. Why?”
“What was your friend’s name?” Oliver pressed, ignoring Felipe’s exasperated look.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? It’s a blanket, not a bomb. Ever since I came out of the Dysterwood, you’ve been acting weird. Did you get this from Abigail Hansson of Philadelphia or not?”
Mr. Allen’s blue eyes widened in surprise. “How do you know Mrs. Hansson?”
“Because she raised me! She was my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother? Then, that means— Come closer.”
Setting his pipe against the horse figurine on the end table, Mr. Allen motioned for Oliver to stand before him. He glanced at Felipe for help, but he nudged him toward the innkeeper. As Oliver knelt before his chair, Mr. Allen held the monocle to his damaged eye and studied his features. Oliver tried not to squirm under the man’s intent stare. He wasn’t certain Mr. Allen would find much of anything that resembled his nana in his features, but he let him look. Mr. Allen’s gaze slid over Oliver’s hair and moved to his eyes and down his nose before coming to rest on his hands. Oliver resisted the urge to tuck them out of sight when Mr. Allen hesitantly reached for them. He eyed the lattice of veins on the back of his hands and the shape of his fingers before letting them go. Mr. Allen shook his head and blinked as tears crept to the corners of his eyes. Oliver nearly apologized out of habit when he patted his cheek and smiled.
“You’re Joanna’s boy. When I heard you came out of the woods, I was afraid Edmund or Francis had had a child out of wedlock, but no, you’re Joanna’s. Did you know you were born here?”
Oliver nodded. “That’s why I came.”
“It’s been, what, thirty-seven years since I carried you all the way from Aldorhaven to Philadelphia to take you to your grandmother. The last time I saw you, you weren’t even a year old yet. Now, look at you. You’re a grown man. I can’t believe it never occurred to me that it was you. I knew your name was Oliver, but that’s not an uncommon name. You probably don’t remember me, but I lived with you and your grandmother for a year until I got on my feet and joined the Union Army.”
“And you left your trunk in our attic.”
Mr. Allen nodded. “Why is your last name Barlow? I assumed you would have taken your grandmother’s last name, but I didn’t think to ask. It’s not as if anyone calls a baby by its full name.”
“Technically, I did. Barlow was my nana’s maiden name,” Oliver said quietly.
“Of course, she gave you a different last name. We didn’t know if anyone in Aldorhaven knew Joanna’s maiden name was Hansson.” Staring into Oliver’s features once more, Mr. Allen lingered on his eyes. “You look so much like your parents. I didn’t see it before because I wasn’t looking. Now, I can’t not see it. For years, I wondered what you would look like, which of your parents you took after. It’s both.”
“I wouldn’t know.” A flare of bitterness rose in Oliver’s throat that this man had known his parents, both of them, when he couldn’t. Pulling out of Mr. Allen’s grasp, Oliver staggered back on shaking legs. “I don’t know anything about either of my parents. My nana never spoke of them.”
“That was to protect you. That’s all any of us wanted, to keep you safe, and now, that’s all gone out the window. You were never supposed to come to Aldorhaven. That was the whole point of the plan, for you to go somewhere safe and never look back. It’s why I never tried to reach out to find you after the War Between the States; I wanted to give you a clean break and to not say something that might lead you back here.” Letting the eyeglass drop into his pocket, Mr. Allen sat back and rubbed his brow with a grimace. “Joanna told me to leave Aldorhaven behind and never come back. I should have listened. I came back and tried to fix things, and now, you’re here. I’ve undone everything she and Stephen sacrificed themselves for.”
When he let out something that sounded like a groan or the prelude to tears, Oliver froze. “You didn’t do anything to bring me here. I’ve known about Aldorhaven for years. I found the letter my mother left for my grandmother, the one she was supposed to throw out. I could have come here eighteen years ago.”
“But you didn’t. You came because I wrote to the Paranormal Society for help. If I hadn’t come back here, I doubt anyone would have written to them, and if the woods hadn’t taken the first investigators and scared off the second, you all wouldn’t be here. Maybe Joanna was wrong, and you really can’t fight fate.”
“I chose to take this case,” Oliver snapped. His face heated and his chest tightened with frustration. He had chosen to go to Aldorhaven. He didn’t believe in destiny or fate, and him coming there against Felipe’s wishes and his own sense was his choice , not some cosmic game to spite his parents or Mr. Allen. When Felipe’s hand closed around his shoulder, the righteous fire dimmed a fraction. He would not be a pawn. “Whether you wrote or not, Mr. Allen, I would have eventually come here looking for answers.”
“Either way, you all should leave Aldorhaven as soon as possible. You shouldn’t have come back here, Dr. Barlow; it isn’t safe for you. Once whoever pushed you into the woods realizes you survived, everything Joanna and Stephen did will be for nought. Eventually, they will figure out who you are.”
Who am I? Oliver’s pulse pounded in his ears, spurring his spiraling thoughts. And who were Mr. Allen and his grandmother trying to keep him safe from for all these years? If he hadn’t been overwrought before, he was now. Suddenly, his body was tight with unspent tension, and he didn’t know where to put his hands or how to stand when all he wanted was to curl in a ball and be invisible. All he wanted was to be Oliver Barlow the necromancer and medical examiner and nothing more. He shouldn’t have come. He should have minded his business about the horse blanket. And about his parents. And about Aldorhaven. And about— A soft, furry head nudged against his hand, and Oliver looked down to find Argos pressing his body against his legs. The moment Oliver knelt to pet him the dog bullied his way onto Oliver’s lap. Argos stared up at him with large, soulful eyes as he rested his wide head on Oliver’s chest. Oliver released a tremulous breath as he ran a soothing hand over the dog’s back and watched Felipe whisper something to Gwen. She nodded and slipped out of the parlor without a word. A single tug came across the tether as Felipe patted the dog’s head and approached Mr. Allen.
“Before we make any decisions about leaving, Mr. Allen, we need to know what we’re up against. Oliver truly knows nothing about his family or why he shouldn’t be in Aldorhaven, and it isn’t fair for him to have come all this way and leave with nothing. If we can’t stay to finish the case, Oliver at least deserves to know what happened to his mother and father.”
For a long moment, Mr. Allen said nothing. When Argos let out a mournful whine and gave Oliver’s face one long lick, Mr. Allen relented. “As much as it pains me to see Joanna and Stephen’s work in jeopardy, it’ll be safer for you to leave at first light. Let me deal with dinner, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”