Chapter 9
LAINEY ISN’T LAINEY
Ahowl of wind interrupts the faint clacking of Maggie’s typewriter upstairs.
I’m reaching the end of my Friday night shift at Evermore, and so far, it’s just been me and Poe.
The cold, rainy weather has kept everyone indoors.
Jude didn’t have to worry about me going to Talenwah Run alone.
I can’t go to Talenwah Run at all, not in weather like this.
The whole situation makes me want to scream at the stormy sky.
Jude’s absence doesn’t help.
I sit on a tall stool behind the counter, bouncing my knee as I read the story Twig sent about the missing hikers.
Juniper Vale and Scout Mercer. Two female roommates, ages 18 and 20 who look like sisters but aren’t even related.
I look at their photographs on my phone screen.
Both have long, white-blonde hair and fine features.
Juniper has a port wine birth mark on the left side of her face.
They were living together in a studio apartment in Davis on a six month lease, working odd jobs to get by.
No family has come forward. Very few seem to have known them, but those who did say they probably don’t want to be found.
They dreamt of living in the wilderness, like that guy from Into the Wild. Nobody seems very worried.
Meanwhile, the search for 17-year-old Ivy Winslow continues.
Today marks two weeks since she went missing.
Poe jumps up on the counter.
I give his ear a scratch, my mind turning to Jude. “Why do I get the feeling he’s not being honest?” I ask the cat.
Poe purrs.
I pull up his last message, sent earlier this morning, and bite my thumbnail. “What would he say if I asked him to send me a selfie of him and his roomie?”
I tried looking him up—Greyson Beauregard, which doesn’t even sound like a real name. His digital footprint was as nonexistent as Jude Vandenberg’s.
The patter of rain intensifies.
Jude will be home tomorrow.
And I will get to see Mistress Bramble at Night of the Howl.
Which means I just have to be patient and get through one more night of restless sleep.
This past week, I’ve read Sophronia Bramble’s interview with the WPA at least five times through, along with the article Walt wrote back in 1988—Foggy Hollow’s Last Granny Woman.
Grandmother Bramble’s memory reached back to coal camp epidemics and the oldest of mountain stories.
She was a keeper of herbal lore, birthing traditions, and Appalachian superstitions.
Born in 1888 to Eleanor and Otis Lyle, she was the youngest of five and the only girl.
She learned midwifery and folk medicine from her mother.
She married a woodsman named Obadiah Bramble.
She spoke of hard years, of shared sorrow, of the slow realization that while she could help mothers, she would most likely never be one.
But then, at the age of thirty-seven, their long awaited blessing came, only for Obadiah to die.
Sophronia delivered her baby by her own hand, all alone in that cabin.
A healthy girl she named Enola, who was twelve when the WPA came for an interview.
Enola followed in Sophronia’s footsteps, becoming a well-respected midwife and healer.
Then, at the age of forty-two, Enola became pregnant under scandalous and mysterious circumstances.
She gave birth to Coraline Bramble in 1967, a baby born en caul.
And for twenty-two years, the three women lived together deep in the woods by Talenwah Run.
Sophronia died in 1989. Enola followed in 2005.
And Coraline has lived alone ever since, the last of the Bramble women.
I tap my finger against the counter, trying to devise a plan.
“How do I get her to talk to me, Poe?”
Because she must talk to me.
I can’t keep going like this, dreaming about my mother, staring at the sour cream container, watching Lainey Sikes, consumed with Ivy Winslow. I need answers, and as a woman born en caul, she must have at least some.
The cat meows and hops off the counter.
A light turns on in the far corner of the bookstore.
My knee stops bouncing.
Maggie’s typewriter continues to clack.
Outside, the thunder grumbles like a giant’s hungry belly.
I scoot away from the counter with a shaky breath. Very slowly, I creep down one of the aisles.
Floorboards creak underfoot.
The lamp by the armchair is on.
Goosebumps prickle up my arms. I reach under the shade and pull the chain.
Lightning flashes through the windows.
A loud crack of thunder makes me jump.
Behind me, a book thuds to the ground.
I turn around and pick it up.
Outside the rain-soaked window, the night sky ripples with electricity. Then another flash. And suddenly, he’s there. A reflection in the window pane.
Rafe Vandenberg, deathly pale.
“Lainey isn’t… Lainey,” he rasps.
A hand touches my shoulder.
With a strangled cry, I spin around.
Maggie jerks back, clutching her hand against her chest. “What in the name of Amos Vandenberg are you doing, staring off into the night like that?”
My heart crashes against my sternum—a violent one-two punch set on repeat. “I—I thought I saw something.”
“Jumpier than a cat in a house full of rocking chairs,” she mutters, turning toward the front. “I came down here to tell you to go on home. Nobody’s shopping for books in weather like this.”