Chapter Thirty-Six. Grace
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
GRACE
The sky is clear, but gunmetal-gray clouds threaten as Rose and Cooper follow me down the flooded gravel path, past the drained pool—now with muddy water and leaves clogging the pretty blue-and-gold Italian tile—and around the rain-bowed pink crepe myrtles.
Before the renovation, there was nothing out here except the abandoned caretaker’s cottage and fields of wildflowers.
All the farmland went to seed years ago.
Dad never rented it out, even though we could’ve used the money.
Cooper and I used to play tag out here.
Did we chase one another, giggling, right over Daisy’s grave?
I’ve got to find her.
I’ve helped Ma enough to know what larkspur looks like. When we reach the tennis court, I point at the knee-high blue and white blossoms. Ma planted them all along the near side of the new clay court this spring.
“Where do we start?” Cooper leans against the shovel. It’s old, with a wooden shaft and a rusted handle, but it’s the only one we could find in the shed.
Is it the same one Dad used to bury Daisy?
I take it from Cooper and hold it in front of me like a water-dowsing rod. “Where?” I mutter out loud as I walk along the row of flowers. “Show me where, Daisy. Help me find you.”
I don’t know how long we have till the clouds let loose again. Or till Maggie’s baby is born and our families start hunting for us.
(I’ve hardly spared a thought for Maggie. Are she and the baby all right? What will Ma do if it comes down to saving Maggie’s life or Caleb’s?)
I’m listening so hard for Daisy’s voice in my head that I almost miss the buzzing.
There’s a hummingbird nosing into a patch of blue larkspur a little darker than the rest. The bird is tiny, maybe three inches tall.
It has a brilliant red throat and yellow-green feathers, and its small wings flutter unimaginably fast. It’s beautiful.
Daisy said she could hear the bees and hummingbirds.
“Here,” I say. “Try here.”
Cooper starts to dig. The soil is wet and heavy, but he makes quick work of it. His faded blue T-shirt darkens with sweat.
“If we find her—” Rose starts.
“When we find her,” I correct.
She crosses her arms. “We should tell Auntie first. She can phone the sheriff.”
“It could be days before they get the telephone lines back up,” I explain. Rose still doesn’t understand how isolated we are out here. “Cooper can go for the sheriff, soon as he can get over the bridge.”
I can’t help wondering about Ma. What she knew, and when.
First about our birth parents (if my sneaking suspicions are correct), and then about the murder.
Where was she when Dad dragged Daisy out of the house?
Where was she while Daisy screamed and screamed for help that never came?
Were Emmeline and the other wayward girls locked in their rooms for the night?
Did they blame her screams on the wind and the Home’s old pipes?
If Ma knew, she would have told the sheriff. But if she didn’t have proof—if she had newborn twins to feed and no money of her own—
I don’t know. A desperate woman can put up with a lot of doubts.
Eventually, the rhythm of Coop’s shoveling—the scrape and thud of it—stops. My brother’s face is pale behind his freckles.
“What is it?” I ask.
In my heart, I already know.
I want this, I remind myself. I want proof. I want revenge for Daisy.
“I think I hit something,” he says. “Maybe it’s only a rock.”
Rose and I exchange knowing glances. Cooper lowers the shovel again.
It makes a dull thud as it encounters something about three feet down.
Either the topsoil was disturbed during construction of the tennis court, or Dad was so confident nobody would look for Daisy that he didn’t bother to bury her very deep.
You’d do more for a dog.
That son of a bitch.
Clouds are brewing to the east. We don’t have much time before the eye of the storm passes.
Eventually, saddle-brown leather emerges. Cooper drops to his hands and knees, then his stomach. He leans down, brushing the soil away with his palm, leaving only a muddy smear across the top. “I think it’s an old trunk.”
“It must be her.” Rose says what we’re all thinking. “What else would be buried out here?”
“Pirate treasure?” Cooper suggests, climbing to his feet. None of us laugh.
“We need to get down there and open it.” I don’t relish the idea of what we’ll find.
What does a body look like after seventeen summers in the ground?
Cooper runs a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Are you sure you want to do this? We could wait and call the sheriff.”
“No. We’ve come this far. I have to know,” I say.
“If Daisy’s in there, we have to lay her to rest properly.
” Rose tucks a chestnut curl back into her pearl barrette.
The wind is picking up, tossing the trees around the cottage, tangling the larkspur.
“Mrs. Wheeler deserves to know what really happened to her. She deserves a chance to say goodbye.”
“If Daisy’s dead, who’s been sending her mom money every month?” I ask.
Rose chews on her lip. “Your mother?”
“No.” Cooper pants as he digs a narrow ledge along one side of the trunk, wide enough for him to stand on. “Ma wouldn’t cover up a murder.”
I’m not sure. “What if she only suspected? She’d want to make it right. Maybe she’s been skimming some of the grocery money to send to Mrs. Wheeler.”
The wind is howling now. We shouldn’t be out here; it’s dangerous. The first raindrops plash against my forehead.
Cooper throws the shovel down and jumps onto the ledge.
Rose and I go to our knees to see better: her next to Cooper and me at the foot of the grave.
The hem of my green dress is going to be nothing but mud.
Rose is ruining her pretty raspberry linen trousers, and they probably cost a mint.
I bet she wishes she’d summered in the Poconos with Clara and never come to this godforsaken place.
She wasn’t born into this mess like Cooper and me. She’s choosing to be here. For us.
I toss my brother the shovel, and he clears the edges of the trunk.
The cold rain pelts down in earnest. Rose’s short-sleeved wool sweater is dripping wet. She hugs her arms around herself.
“There.” Cooper’s breathing heavily. He’s revealed an old brown leather steamer. It looks like something our grandparents might have taken on their honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls. There are three brass latches along the front. “Should I try to open it?”
“Yes,” Rose and I say in unison.
He reaches down and flips open the first latch. The one farthest from him takes a little maneuvering, but he manages it. I take a deep breath as he tries the last one. Rose is chewing on her damn lip again.
Cooper rattles the latch. His face falls, and he swears. “It’s stuck. Or locked.”
Rose rubs a hand across her cheek, leaving a streak of mud behind. “Grace, do you have any bobby pins?”
Who does she think she is, Nancy Drew? I shake my head. “Just hit it!”
Cooper picks up the shovel and smashes it into the lock. Once. Twice. The latch busts and hangs crooked.
“Stop what you’re doing, son.”
My whole body goes ice-cold at my father’s voice.
He’s snuck up behind me while we were all focused on the trunk. His blue eyes are slits against the rain. And he’s holding his hunting rifle.
He’s holding his hunting rifle, and he’s pointing it at my brother.
“Put the shovel down, Cooper,” he says.
“Yes, sir.” Cooper tosses it in the mud at my feet.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing out here?” Dad’s thin mouth is a scowl. “We’re in the middle of a hurricane, for God’s sake!”
“You’re right,” Cooper says. “We should get back inside.” He climbs out of the grave. “How’s Maggie? Did she have the baby?”
“A boy,” Dad says. “It’s touch and go for her.”
Oh God, please let Maggie be okay. Let us all be okay.
“Let’s go back inside. Put the gun down, Dad,” Cooper urges. Rose and I kneel there in the mud, still as statues, silent as cemeteries. “Don’t do something else you’ll regret.”
“Something else?” Dad growls. I wince. “I haven’t done anything I regret, son.”
That son of a bitch. How dare he stand over my grave and say taking my life was nothing!
Dad swings the rifle toward Rose. “This is all your fault, you little snoop. I told you to mind your own business. I warned you. I told you to leave!”
“I am leaving. Tomorrow. As soon as the storm’s over,” Rose lies.
“We haven’t opened the trunk.” Cooper is inching his way toward Rose. “It could be family heirlooms. The good silver. We don’t know. I’ll cover it back up, and we’ll forget we ever saw it. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
What about me? He needs to pay for what he did! You promised!
Someone’s already been hurt. And what about Emmeline? Did Dad kill his kid sister once he’d gotten what he wanted?
He’s already a murderer. What’s to stop him from firing that gun at Rose?
I climb to my feet. “We all know what you did.”
He scoffs. “Shut your mouth, Grace.”
“You killed Daisy Wheeler. When we open that trunk, we’ll find her body.”
Dad sneers. “The girl ran away. She was troubled. She probably is dead, but not by my hand. Girls like that generally come to bad ends.” He glares at Rose. “You’re just like her.”
Dead, but not forgotten. Not yet. Not unless you let him get away with it!
Anger rises over me like high tide, ferocious, tumbling everything along in its wake. I want to make him say the words. “She told us you shot her. Is that the gun you used?”
“Shut up!” Dad lunges at me, switching the gun to his left hand so he can wallop me with his right. I stumble from the force of it, disoriented, ears ringing. I trip over the shovel and fall against the chain-link fence. My teeth bite into my lower lip, hard. My eyes blur with tears.
“Are you all right?” Cooper asks.
I nod, wiping blood and salt from my mouth.
Coward. Hitting girls half his age and half his size.
I can feel Daisy in my head. Her anger mingles with mine.
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,” Dad says, glaring at Rose. “But it ends now, you hear me?”
“What are you going to do, kill her?” I ask. Dad is pointing the rifle at me again.
“Grace!” Cooper hisses.
“Like you killed Daisy and Emmeline?” I continue.
“Emmeline?” Dad looks at me, startled. The gun droops. “I didn’t kill Emmeline.”
“You’ll have to shoot all three of us.” Cooper raises his chin. “Can you do that? Shoot your own kids?”
Dad laughs. The sound is so out of place, so eerie, it gives me goose bumps. He lowers his voice, speaking to Cooper man-to-man over Daisy’s open grave. “You’re not mine.”
I knew it. I look to Rose, triumphant. I knew it!
“But I raised you, didn’t I? I fed you, clothed you.
Kept a roof over your head. I did my best to teach you how to be a man.
If I was strict, well, that was how my father raised me.
‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ … Look, what happened to Daisy, that was an accident.
I only wanted to scare her, but she was a mouthy little bitch … Nobody even missed her.”
“Put the gun down, Dad,” my brother says, his voice breaking on Dad. “Let the girls go back to the house. We’ll cover her back up, you and me. We’ll let the whole thing go.” He darts a worried glance at Rose.
“I see the way you look at her,” Joe Harrow says. “She doesn’t even like men! That girl’s playing you for a fool, and you can’t even see it.”
Rose flushes. “He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be!”
It happens so quickly.
He swings the rifle from me to Rose.
I don’t think. I move on instinct. While he’s facing Rose, his back to me, I pick up the shovel at my feet. I swing it with all my strength.
There’s a deafening crack as he fires. At the same time, I wallop him across the side of the head, and he crumples like a rag doll.
That wasn’t Daisy. That was all me.
I kick the rifle away from his body, and I stand over him with the shovel in my hands. He’s still breathing.
I could end this.
End him.
“Grace?” Rose is sprawled on the ground.
I knew it would be you.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I think so.” She sits up. “This big oaf tackled me. Are you all right, Coop?”
“I landed on my arm.” Cooper lets out a muffled groan. “I was trying to dive in front of you!”
“That’s very chivalrous.” Rose climbs to her feet. She’s shaking so hard her teeth are clacking together, but she extends a hand to help Cooper.
“He tried to shoot you!” He struggles to his feet.
“Well, thank God he’s a lousy shot,” she says. My brother pulls her into his arms and kisses the top of her head. “I’m fine. All in one piece. Thanks to Grace.”
I look down at the man who raised me. Who bullied me, beat me, bloodied me.
I could bash his skull in with this shovel.
The world would be a better place.
He tried to shoot Rose. She would lie for me. Say I had to do it in self-defense.
“No. Grace, don’t,” she says. Observant as always.
Or maybe my thirst for violence is written too clearly across my face.
I gaze down at the man on the ground. Laid out like this in the mud, he’s small. Weak. Pathetic.
Cowardly old worm. Do it.
I think of how many times he’s hit me. How many times he’s told me through words and deeds that I’m worthless. That there’s something in me—something stubborn and mouthy and bad—that he had to root out. For my own good.
“Grace,” Cooper says. “Gracie. I think my arm’s broken.”
Revenge. I need revenge. I can’t rest until he pays for what he did.
The rain turns into a downpour. The cold soak of it through my dress shocks me back to myself. And I am not Joe Harrow’s daughter.
“Not revenge,” I mutter. “Justice.”
I drop the shovel. “Rose, run back to the shed. Get the wheelbarrow and some twine. And see if you can find something to make a sling for Cooper’s arm.
” I nod at the man who is still breathing, on the ground at my feet.
“We’re going to need to tie him up good and tight before we wheel him back to the house. ”
“Wait. I broke the lock on the trunk before Dad—he—before. We have to open it.” Coop’s pale and grimacing. “We have to know for sure.”
I look at Rose. She nods. It’s up to me now.
I jump into the makeshift grave. Tug at the broken latch.
I lift the lid.
I don’t feel vindicated by what I find inside the old steamer trunk. Only sad.
“Justice,” I promise what’s left of Daisy Wheeler. “He’s going to pay for what he did.”