Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

Bitsy

 

Dear Miss Galloway,

I have been very interested to hear of the plans you have for turning your family’s farm into a haunted attraction for this Halloween season. I read the stories that you presented for the consideration of the residents of the Hollow and while I commend you for your creativity and willingness to be courageous and present a truly gruesome and terrifying haunt, I offer you a recommendation. Rather than crafting a tale of horror, I suggest you look into the true history of the land that is now your family’s farm and build your haunt around the grisly secrets that it holds. I assure you reality is far more horrifying than anything that you could create out of your mind and will draw in more curious visitors than you could even hope to attract.

But I warn you, once you have begun to delve into what has happened on this ground, you may never be able to look at your home the same way.

Sincerely,

Steven McAllister

 

The letter sent a chill through me, but in a way that was welcome.

Finally, something that made some damn sense. Even though it didn’t really say anything and didn’t make any sense at all- which was pretty sad.

“Do you know him?” Roman asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“The man who wrote the letter. Steven McAllister.”

I searched my mind, trying to find the name in some distant memory of the people of the Hollow, but I couldn’t find it. I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember ever hearing it.”

Roman took the letter from me and looked down at it.

“What do you think he means that you should look into the true history of the land?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that might have happened here?”

“No,” I said. “I only know that my family has been here for generations. We were actually here before the Hollow was even formally established. They say that the little original house was the first thing that the men who escaped from the prison saw when they came near here, and that they were welcomed no-questions-asked with supper and a bed for the night in the hay loft. That’s when they decided that they were going to stay here and build up the Hollow around it.”

“That didn’t bother your family?” Roman asked.

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so. If you and your family were the only people living within miles and miles and probably only saw other living souls when peddlers came around to sell goods, wouldn’t you be relieved when other people showed up and wanted to stay around?”

“I think that it might be wonderful to live in my own world with my family.”

There was something different in his voice and I looked up at Roman, my breath somehow caught in my chest. We stared at each other, his emerald, velvety eyes seeming to look beyond me and into somewhere deep within me where no one had ever ventured. He had already gone so far, delved so much further than anyone else ever had. I had already given over so much to him, but then it was my body. Now I felt like it was my mind and my heart that were pulling toward him, going against all of my instincts, all that I had convinced myself of over the last year and a half. I pulled my eyes away from him, needing to break the tension between us, and picked up the envelope that the letter had been in.

“No return address,” I pointed out.

“You said that you wanted the responses to be anonymous,” Roman said.

“But he signed his name. Why would he leave off his address so he could be anonymous, but then sign his full name?”

“I don’t know.”

I turned the envelope around to look at the flap, but there were no more identifying marks. By the postmark on the front I knew that, as opposed to the vast majority of the other letters and cards, this one had actually been mailed.

“Do you think that Coy would know who mailed it?”

“Coy?” Roman asked.

“The Post Master-slash-newspaper-man.”

“Coy’s a person?”

I looked up at him strangely.

“Of course, Coy’s a person. What else would he be?”

“I don’t know, a dog? A fish, maybe? A palm reader?”

“A palm reader? You think that Whiskey Hollow has a palm reader named Coy?”

“I’m sorry. It just seemed from what I’ve seen that there was probably a palm reader around here somewhere.”

“There is. But her name’s Barbara.”

“Barbara the Palm Reader.”

“Yes.”

“Mystical.” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “Coy. Is that that Luther Heggs-looking guy at the post office?”

“Who’s Luther Heggs?” I asked.

Roman stared back at me as if he thought that I was going to laugh.

“Are you serious?”

“What?” I asked, feeling suddenly defensive. “Who is he? Oh, no. Is he another guy that I met at the party?”

Roman shook his head.

“No. Luther Heggs. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken? Don Knotts? You seriously don’t know what I’m talking about?”

Now it was my turn to stare back at him.

“I’m sorry, I’m not all that familiar with movies that were made decades before I was born.”

“That’s right. I forgot that you were an infant from a generation that has forgotten how to appreciate actual entertainment.”

The truth was I could barely even name movies that had come out in the last five years, so he was probably entirely right, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to defend myself and every member of my generation. I leaned slightly toward him, planting my hand on my hip.

“And I forgot that you were twice my age and probably don’t understand three-quarters of the words I use.”

“In all of those text messages that you send to your friends on the phone that you lost in one of the fields three months ago?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Shut up.”

Maturely, apparently.

Roman laughed and shook his head.

“Alright, well, I’m going to give you a proper film education.”

“I look forward to it.”

I stood up and started for the playpen.

“What are you doing?” Roman asked.

“I’m going to get Lorelei ready and go to the post office to talk to Coy. He might know how to get in touch with this Steven McAllister guy and then he can tell us what he meant about the ground the farm is on. This is actually sounding like it has some potential.”

“Why don’t you just go? I can watch the baby.”

I straightened and turned around to look at him, positive I hadn’t just heard what I thought I did.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Roman said. “She’s having a good time in there and it wouldn’t be any fun for her to go all over the place. Besides, what if you do find out who this guy is and you want to go talk to him? Would you want to bring her along with you? Just go. I’ll just sit here and watch her play.”

I thought about the offer for a few seconds, unsure if I felt comfortable with the idea of leaving my daughter alone with Roman for what could be a couple of hours. The image of him cradling her in his arms came into my mind again and I realized that no matter how I felt about him, or how I was going to allow myself to feel about him, he was still her father and they had a year of her life to make up for. Besides, even if he was hiding in his bedroom, Granddaddy was there in the house and if something went truly wrong, Roman could get him for help. I let out a reluctant sigh and leaned down to kiss the baby on her head as she made her way past me. She continued her progress around the playpen for a few steps before she seemed to process that I had kissed her. She turned enough over her little shoulder to send me a drive-by kiss and kept on her way.

“Alright,” I said. “If she gets hungry, there is food for her in the refrigerator and some snacks in the top drawer. Her diapers are in her nursery. If she needs her clothes changed –”

“I can figure it out.”

I nodded.

“OK. I know. I know you can. I won’t be gone long.”

I grabbed up the letter and envelope and swept my purse over my shoulder. I didn’t look back over my shoulder because I knew that if I did I would have second thoughts and stay firmly planted in the house with the baby rather than going out and doing what I needed to do to protect the future that I wanted for her. I could feel tears starting to form in my eyes when I closed the door behind me. I brushed them away sharply and squared my jaw, forcing myself to get control of my emotions again.

Dammit all to hell. What’s wrong with me? Did Roman bring my pregnancy hormones back with him?

When I got to the post office I could hear another ruckus going on inside. I braced myself and stepped through the door. The sound of the bells above my head didn’t seem to make any difference to either Coy or Rue, who were yet again locked in apparent mortal combat over the counter.

“You said that you would release the mail as soon as you got a request from my daddy,” she said.

“And I will,” Coy said, “but this is not a request from your daddy.”

He held up a piece of paper, which Rue promptly smashed back down to the surface of the counter with her finger, poking at something on it.

“It has his signature on it,” she said. “Right there. It says to please release all held mail for my address and has his signature. You are welcome to compare it to the hold request.”

What the hell was going on here?’

Coy looked at her angrily, then stomped across the office to a filing cabinet. He sifted through files inside and then pulled out a manila envelope. Out of it he withdrew a card that he carried over to the counter. He glared at Rue suspiciously as he held the card and the piece of paper up, then looked over the top of his glasses at both. I assumed that the card that he had gotten out of the file was the original hold request filled out by Rue’s father years before and that he was now scrutinizing the signatures on both to make sure that the letter he had just received really was from the dead man.

“Well?” Rue asked.

Coy looked at her again, the expression on his face tense.

“Fine,” he said. “Fill this out.”

He handed Rue another card, which she filled out hastily and shoved it back toward him. Coy took all three pieces of paper, put them back into the envelope, and tucked it back into place in the filing cabinet. He then stomped through the door behind him into the back of the office. A few moments later the door swung open and he came through looking like a reject Santa Claus with a bulging mail sack over his back and a crate tucked under his arm. He brought them into the middle of the lobby and dropped them at Rue’s feet, then headed back to the back room. She stared at the mail, stunned either that her plan worked or at the sheer volume of mail that was now sitting on the floor. Potentially both.

A few moments later Coy came back again with another load of mail. These, too, ended up on the floor in front of Rue.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“One more.”

She let out an exasperated sigh as he made his way into the backroom again and came back carrying a crate that looked like it was entirely full of fruitcakes. He set this down on the floor and looked at Rue pointedly.

“Now that’s it.”

Without offering to help her carry the haul out to her car, Coy returned to the counter and flashed me a smile.

“Can I help you?”

I walked carefully around the pile of mail as Rue grabbed one of the bags and started out of the office. Placing the envelope that had contained the mysterious letter from Steven McAllister on the counter, I looked at Coy.

“Do you happen to know who sent this?” I asked.

Coy picked up the envelope and turned it over a few times.

“Doesn’t look like it has a return address.”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t. The letter inside was signed Steven McAllister.”

Coy looked up at me blankly.

“Then I would venture to say that it came from Steven McAllister.”

“But that’s the thing. I don’t know a Steven McAllister. I don’t know any McAllisters. I was hoping that you might have seen who mailed it and recognize him. Maybe he actually came into the post office.”

Coy shook his head.

“No. I would have remembered that. This here is my post mark and it means that it was actually mailed from someplace.”

I had the visual of Coy standing at the counter with a pile of mail, stamping each piece, and handing it to people coming in to get theirs for the day. His operations couldn’t be so complex. I nodded, feeling defeated, and took the letter from the counter. When I turned around I saw Rue coming in for another trip with her own pile of mail.

“Can I help you carry some of that out?” I asked.

She looked up at me gratefully.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed a crate and followed her out to her car, where I shoved it into the back next to a frilly pink car seat. The cushioned headrest insert was a reminder of just how tiny her newborn daughter was and I got an unexpected pang in my heart thinking about Lorelei. At just a year old she was already growing up so fast and I found part of my mind and heart longing for those days when she was still a squishy little newborn.

“So how did you manage that?” I asked.

Rue looked up at me.

“Manage what?” she asked.

“Getting permission from your dead father to release the mail.”

She laughed slightly.

“Oh, that. Silly Putty.”

“Silly Putty?”

She nodded.

“I found a document with his signature on it and used Silly Putty to pick it up and transfer it to another piece of paper, then I outlined it in another pen, picked it up again, and transferred it onto the release that I wrote up.”

“That’s devious,” I said with a laugh.

“It was actually Richard’s idea. I never would have thought about it.”

“Ah, yes. Your fiancé,” I said. “I read the article.”

We laughed and she nodded, looking slightly embarrassed at the acknowledgement of the tiff I had witnessed between her and Coy.

“Yes, that would be him.” She looked at me in the same way that I had seen so many people in the Hollow look at me since I had gotten back. “And how about you? Anything special going on in your life?”

It was a somewhat feeble attempt at skirting around the questions that she really wanted to ask, but I went along with it. That was part of growing up in the Hollow. At some point, everyone was up in everyone else’s business. It was just how we functioned.

“Well, since you’ve been deprived the journalistic majesty that is the Holler Holler, you may not have heard that we’re trying something new at the farm this year.”

“I had heard something about that,” Rue said. “Something about a haunt?”

I nodded.

“That was Roman’s idea. He thinks it will bring business to the farm again.”

“I’m guessing Roman is the mysterious man who’s been seen hanging around your family’s farm?”

“That would be him.”

“He certainly has the tall, dark, and handsome thing going on.”

Her tone sounded leading, as if she was trying to get me to tell her something about our relationship, but the truth was that I didn’t have anything to tell her that I thought she didn’t already know, or at least suspect.

“He does,” I agreed, then went for the big reveal, knowing it’s what she wanted anyway. “Lorelei is looking more and more like him every day.”

Rue glanced over her shoulder toward the post office.

“I’d be careful. You might end up with a birth announcement in the newspaper.”

“Oh, I already had one of those,” I pointed out. “Besides, I know everybody who’s seen him has figured it out. It’s not like she looks terribly like me.”

“So, what is…. I mean…. are the two of you…”

I could see her mind churning, trying to figure out how to ask the question that I knew that she wanted to without sounding like she was sitting around under the dryers at the Up-Do or Dye beauty shop. I was briefly tempted to see just how much she would squirm and if she would eventually give up or if she would actually ask, but I decided against it.

“No,” I said simply. “We aren’t. But he wants to know Lorelei and I suppose he has the right to.”

“Do you really think that’s all it is?”

I was surprised by the question. That’s not what I would have thought that she would have on her mind. My mouth opened and closed a few times but I couldn’t figure out any words to say. Finally, I found a few, though they were likely not the most effective.

“Do I really think that’s all what is?”

I never cease to amaze myself with my mastery of the English language.

“That man doesn’t look like he fits into the Hollow terribly well.”

“No,” I said. “He’s fairly out of his element here.”

Rue nodded knowingly.

“Yet he came all the way out here and hasn’t left since he got here.”

“I told you, he wants to get to know the baby.”

“Take it from someone who has been in this type of situation,” Rue said, leaning down to pick up the crate of fruitcakes, “a man like that isn’t going to go out of his way and change his life completely just for a baby. If that was the case, he would have just gotten custody of the baby, or at least gotten a court order requiring you to bring her to him for visitation. He wouldn’t move his life out here, stop working, and put everything on hold. A man like that has something else on his mind.”

“Like what?”

“Babies change men. As soon as they find out that they’re going to be a father, or that they are a father, they see the whole world differently, and that definitely applies to the woman who carried that baby. Your Roman isn’t just here because of Lorelei. He’s here for you. Now you have to decide what you’re going to do about that. If you really do only want him here to get to know the daughter that the two of you share, then you have to make sure that he knows that. Because if you don’t, he’s just going to keep trying.”

“What if I don’t know what I want?”

Rue gave a small smile.

“You have to be willing to find out.”