Chapter 17
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Ihold a penny in my palm and waffle between two wishes: Return the locked tome without incurring Maggie’s wrath or find the identity of Molly. I can’t tell if my fingers are tingling from nerves, anticipation, or the idea of seeing Jude.
I wish for luck, a vague request that feels like cheating, and toss the penny into the fountain.
Water ripples through my reflection. I’m still pale, my eyes a bit shadowed, but I’m not the spectral of death I saw in the bathroom mirror yesterday.
It helps being outside in the sunlight, dressed in clothes that aren’t pajamas.
I set my backpack on a bench across from a statue poised in the center of a flower bed, and sit down.
I twirl the stud in my left ear and watch the bees buzz, getting drunk on the last nectar of the season.
All day I’ve been antsy. Waiting for the afternoon.
Now it’s here and it feels like the bees are buzzing in my hands.
“Hey.”
I twist in my seat.
Jude stands behind me with the sun at his back. He’s dressed in a suede jacket over a tan polo and wears a pair of aviator sunglasses, his dark golden hair slightly tousled from the day.
My throat goes dry.
“You look good,” he says.
“You’re a liar,” I say back, smiling at the ground as I come to my feet and slide the strap of my backpack over my shoulder. “But since I’m pretty sure I almost died from norovirus, I’ll take what I can get.”
A breeze ruffles his hair as he taps the rolled-up sketch of Molly against his palm. “I’ve been thinking about Tales from the Crypt.”
“Oh?”
“Recovering from nightmares, actually.”
My smile grows as we turn in tandem toward Evermore Books.
“How did you discover this show?” he asks.
“I found a box set at a thrift store when I was like, eleven.” We cross the street. “As soon as I laid eyes on the Crypt Keeper, I knew I had to have it.”
“So, while most girls your age were watching dance trends on TikTok …”
“Twig and I were digging up a VHS player from his basement, and the rest is history. I fell in love.”
“With a skeleton in a bowtie.”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for a man with strong bone structure.”
A smile teases the corner of his mouth.
“Admit it,” I say, giving him a bump with my shoulder. “You had fun.”
“I had … an experience.”
“Well, prepare yourself for another.” We’ve arrived at Evermore Books with its taxidermy raven in the window. “Maggie’s an icon.”
As I tug on the door’s handle, Jude grips the frame over my head, so close behind me I can feel his warmth, smell the subtle note of that intoxicating cologne.
My stomach flutters.
The bell jingles.
And I force myself to move.
Maggie isn’t at the front counter. Just Poe, who meows his greeting next to an abandoned cup of tea.
Looking left, then right, I seize the opportunity. With a nod at Jude to follow, I speed-walk to the reading nook, unzipping my backpack and pulling out the unwieldy tome as I go. Just as I’m about to slide it into its spot, a familiar, raspy voice makes me jump.
“Good afternoon.”
I twirl around, book in hand.
Maggie peers suspiciously as she stirs her tea, a fresh cup curling with steam. Today, she’s wearing a velvet choker and a black and white hair scarf patterned with moths and crows. A pair of reading glasses hang around her neck; another is perched atop her head.
I hold the tome aloft. “I was just showing this to Jude.”
Maggie turns her suspicious gaze upon him. A lesser man might cower beneath her unblinking stare. Jude doesn’t even fidget.
“The new Vandenberg boy,” she mutters. “You and your stepmother have been spending an awful lot of time with that preservation society.”
“Regrettably.”
It’s the perfect response—one that brings a twinkle to Maggie’s eye.
I make official introductions. When I’m done, she nods at the rolled-up sketch in Jude’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Something we wanted to show you,” he says. “A sketch of a woman. We’re hoping to find out who she was. According to Selah, you’re our best hope.”
He gives her the sketch.
Maggie hands him her tea. She puts on her glasses—the pair hanging around her neck—and unrolls the paper.
Her attention pauses briefly over the symbol drawn in the upper right corner, same as the one on the cover of the book.
But then she catches sight of Ezra’s signature and the symbol is completely forgotten.
“A Vandenberg original,” she says in a breathless whisper, a tremor taking hold of her hands. “Young man, do you have any idea how valuable this is?”
“I could take a guess.”
“Ezra Vandenberg was a prolific limner, but much of his work was burned in the fire.”
“He was a prolific what-er?” I ask.
“Lim. Ner,” Maggie replies. “A portraitist. Three of his pieces hang in town hall.”
“They do?”
She looks at me dully. “Selah Whitlock, you mean to tell me you’ve never noticed those paintings in town hall?”
“Of course I have, I just didn’t realize they were painted by Ezra.” The portraits in question feature our town heroes, the same three men who have their own statues in the square—Amos Vandenberg, Kit Bogaard, and Alexander Doorn.
Maggie brings the sketch to her bosom. “A relic such as this belongs in a museum.”
“If you can tell us who that woman is,” Jude says, “you can have it for yourself.”
She makes a strangled noise, then adjusts her glasses as if his offer is a visible thing, and she wants to make sure she’s seeing it correctly.
When his expression remains utterly sincere, she releases a loud bark of laughter.
“Tell you who she is? My dear boy, I will write a dissertation if it means I get to keep this.”
She peers down at the graphite strokes, muttering Molly’s name several times over. “A pretty girl Ezra Vandenberg sketched. Simply a subject, or was she more?” She peers a bit longer, as if considering her own question.
“What do you think about the symbol?” I ask. “It’s on the sketch, and this book.”
She casts a look at the book in question, still in my hand. “It is curious, isn’t it?”
“We’d like to open it up,” Jude says. “See what it says.”
“Do you have a key?” she retorts.
“I could break the lock.”
Maggie lets out an indignant huff. “Absolutely not.”
Then, quite decisively, she pushes up the sleeves of her cardigan and tells us to keep up.
Jude and I follow her to the back of the store, me with the locked tome, him with her teacup.
We climb the rickety staircase that leads to the second floor—an unevenly shaped room with Maggie’s small office straight ahead and the rest, a playground for the curious.
The space is lined with shelves crowded with obscure ledgers, incidental records, and old newspaper archives.
Featured on one of the wood-paneled walls are the same three men who hang in town hall.
Not grand portraits, but smaller silhouettes—hand cut black paper set against aged parchment—arranged inside elegant oval frames.
Maggie marches to the shelves and Jude strolls past the displays, three exhibits dimly lit beneath hanging bulbs.
The first, a model of Foggy Hollow as it was in 1822, set beneath a cracked glass case.
The second, artifacts from the fire, including a list of people who perished, a piece of blackened stained glass from St. Fortuna’s Church, a charred jewelry box from the original Bogaard Estate, a warped horseshoe from the blacksmith’s forge, and a half-burned prisoner’s boot from the old jail house.
At the third and final exhibit, Jude stops.
This one features his family and their mysterious disappearance thirty years ago.
He studies each item. Maureen Vandenberg’s pocket planner, marked with appointments that would later be cancelled.
A sketch of a man with no face, signed by Lily Vandenberg, placed into evidence but later removed under unknown circumstances.
And most peculiar of all, a Vandenberg clock that stopped two minutes after Maureen dialed 911.
I watch as Jude takes in the newspaper article titled, No Bodies, No Clues - Just Questions, written by our very own Walt Jensen in the spring of 1995.
“Hey Maggie,” I call, my eyes still on Jude. “Have you ever heard of a painting called Ezra’s Obsession?”
He gives me a sharp look.
This wasn’t part of our plan.
But I don’t know why not.
Or why I haven’t thought to ask her sooner.
“Of course I have,” she says, removing a leather-bound album from one of the shelves.
“You’ve seen it?” I ask.
“That would require a time machine now, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ezra’s Obsession was burned in the fire.”
Jude and I exchange a look.
Ezra’s Obsession wasn’t burned in the fire.
It’s currently in his bedroom.
“I do, however, have a related artifact.” She sets the album on a long, solitary table and hobbles into her office. When she returns, she holds a folio wrapped in linen, tied with faded twine. She places the folio on top of the album and carefully begins unwrapping it.
Jude sets Maggie’s teacup aside.
I do the same with the locked tome.
There are two items inside the folio. On top is a note written in Maggie’s handwriting.
Unproven fragment from Ezra Vandenberg’s personal journal. Acquired in 1973 with donation of salvaged fire artifacts.
She shuffles the note aside to reveal a clear sleeve underneath—protection for a brittle piece of parchment dated 1807. The handwriting matches Ezra’s.
“Maggie,” I exclaim. “Why isn’t this on display?”
“I wouldn’t dare expose it to light, and we can’t definitively say Ezra wrote it. If I put it behind glass, people will call it gospel.”
I pick up the sleeve.
“The dates coincide, you see.” Maggie taps the time stamp written on top of the parchment. “By all historical accounts, Ezra Vandenberg finished the portrait in question on this very day.”
I read the short, cryptic entry while Jude looks over my shoulder.
Finally, I have captured her, and yet I know not who she is.
Balm or blight.
Beacon or burden.